TERMS STARTING WITH
capacity ::: 1. The ability to receive, hold, or absorb. 2. The power to learn or retain knowledge; mental ability.
capacity "communications" The maximum possible {data transfer rate} of a communications channel under ideal conditions. The total capacity of a channel may be shared between several independent data streams using some kind of {multiplexing}, in which case, each stream's data rate may be limited to a fixed fraction of the total capacity. (2001-05-22)
capacity ::: (communications) The maximum possible data transfer rate of a communications channel under ideal conditions. The total capacity of a channel multiplexing, in which case, each stream's data rate may be limited to a fixed fraction of the total capacity.(2001-05-22)
capacity models / resource allocation models (of divided attention): those models proposing that we have a pool of processing resources that we can allocate according to the demands of the task and environmental factors.
capacity ::: n. --> The power of receiving or containing; extent of room or space; passive power; -- used in reference to physical things.
The power of receiving and holding ideas, knowledge, etc.; the comprehensiveness of the mind; the receptive faculty; capability of undestanding or feeling.
Ability; power pertaining to, or resulting from, the possession of strength, wealth, or talent; possibility of being or of doing.
capacity: quantifies the amount of information that can be held in memory, e.g. short-term memory has a limited capacity of 7 +/- 2 items.
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.
Capacity - The level of output that corresponds to the firm's minimum short-run average total cost.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. The fact, character, or quality of being useful or serviceable; fitness for some desirable purpose or valuable end; usefulness, serviceableness. 2. Philos. The ability, capacity, or power of a person, action, or thing to satisfy the needs or gratify the desires of the majority, or of the human race as a whole. 3. A useful, advantageous, or profitable thing, feature, etc.; a use. Chiefly in pl. utility"s, utilities.
56 kbps "communications" (56 kilobits per second) The data capacity of a normal single channel digital telephone channel in North America. The figure is derived from the {bandwidth} of 4 kHz allocated for such a channel and the 16-bit encoding (4000 times 16 = 64000) used to change {analogue} signals to digital, minus the 8000 bit/s used for signalling and supervision. At the end of 1997 there were two rival {modem} designs capable of this rate: {k56flex} and {US Robotics}' {X2}. In February 1998 the {ITU} proposed a 56kbps standard called {V.90}, which is expected to be formally approved during September 1998. (1998-09-15)
ability ::: n. --> The quality or state of being able; power to perform, whether physical, moral, intellectual, conventional, or legal; capacity; skill or competence in doing; sufficiency of strength, skill, resources, etc.; -- in the plural, faculty, talent.
absorptive ::: a. --> Having power, capacity, or tendency to absorb or imbibe.
accendibility ::: n. --> Capacity of being kindled, or of becoming inflamed; inflammability.
"Action is a resultant of the energy of the being, but this energy is not of one sole kind; the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of energies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire, passion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of truth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a pursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure, life-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or collective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction of the body.” The Life Divine*
“Action is a resultant of the energy of the being, but this energy is not of one sole kind; the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of energies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire, passion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of truth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a pursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure, life-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or collective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction of the body.” The Life Divine
Ada/Ed "language, education" An {interpreter}, editor, and {run-time environment} for {Ada}, intended as a teaching tool. Ada/Ed does not have the capacity, performance, or robustness of commercial Ada compilers. Ada/Ed was developed at {New York University} as part of a project in language definition and software prototyping. AdaEd runs on {Unix}, {MS-DOS}, {Atari ST}, and {Amiga}. It handles nearly all of {Ada 83} and was last validated with version 1.7 of the {ACVC} tests. Being an interpreter, it does not implement most {representation clauses} and thus does not support systems programming close to the machine level. A later version was known as {GW-Ada}. E-mail: Michael Feldman "mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu". {(ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/amiga/languages/ada)}, {(ftp://cnam.cnam.fr/pub/Ada/Ada-Ed)}. {For Amiga (ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/adaed)}. {RISC OS port (ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/c/c052)}. (1999-11-04)
adaptiveness ::: n. --> The quality of being adaptive; capacity to adapt.
adhikara ::: capacity; something in the immediate power of a man's nature that determines by its characteristics his right to this or that way of yoga.
Al-Azim ::: The magnificent glory beyond any manifestation’s capacity of comprehension.
“All that manifested from the Eternal has already been arranged in worlds or planes of its own nature, planes of subtle Matter, planes of Life, planes of Mind, planes of Supermind, planes of the triune luminous Infinite. But these worlds or planes are not evolutionary but typal. A typal world is one in which some ruling principle manifests itself in its free and full capacity and energy and form are plastic and subservient to its purpose. Its expressions are therefore automatic and satisfying and do not need to evolve; they stand so long as need be and do not need to be born, develop, decline and disintegrate.” Essays Divine and Human
amarthya ::: capacity for action, a quality common to the four aspects of daivi prakr.ti, also called sarvakarmasamarthya: "a rapid and divine capacity for all kinds of action that may be demanded from . 90 the instrument".
amarthya (bhogasamarthya; bhogasamarthyam; bhoga samarthyam) ::: "the capacity to take all enjoyment of the world without desire but also without exhaustion and satiety", an element of pran.asakti. bhogas bhogasamarthyam
amarthyam (premasamarthyam; prema samarthyam) ::: "capacity for unbounded love for all beings", an element of cittasakti.
amarthya (sarvakarmasamarthya; sarvakarmasamarthyam) ::: capacity for all action, a quality common to the four aspects of daivi prakr.ti, also called karmasamarthya: "a rapid and divine capacity for all kinds of action that may be demanded from the instrument". sarvakarmas sarvakarmasamarthyam
. amaya ::: full of infinite qualities (anantagun.a); the "Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature" who "appears in a sea of infinite quality" expressing his "absolute capacity of boundlessly varied selfrevelation"; Kr.s.n.a seen in the second degree of the third intensity of Kr.s.n.adarsana, a kind of vision of the divine Personality corresponding to anantaṁ brahma in the impersonal brahmadarsana. ananta-j ñana
ample ::: a. --> Large; great in size, extent, capacity, or bulk; spacious; roomy; widely extended.
Fully sufficient; abundant; liberal; copious; as, an ample fortune; ample justice.
Not contracted of brief; not concise; extended; diffusive; as, an ample narrative.
amplitude ::: n. --> State of being ample; extent of surface or space; largeness of dimensions; size.
Largeness, in a figurative sense; breadth; abundance; fullness.
Of extent of capacity or intellectual powers.
Of extent of means or resources.
The arc of the horizon between the true east or west point and the center of the sun, or a star, at its rising or setting.
anadharan.asamarthyam ::: the capacity to contain all knowledge; same as jñanasamarthyam. j ñanadipena
anasamarthyam (jnanasamarthyam; jnana samarthyam) ::: capacity for knowledge, "the power of the mind to receive and adapt itself to any kind of knowledge without feeling anywhere a limit or an incapacity", an element of buddhisakti. j ñani
ana (sanjnana) ::: sense-knowledge; "the essential sense" (see indriya) which "in itself can operate without bodily organs" and is "the original capacity of consciousness to feel in itself all that consciousness has formed and to feel it in all the essential properties and operations of that which has form, whether represented materially by vibration of sound or images of light or any other physical symbol". Saṁjñana, like prajñana, is one of the "subordinate operations involved in the action of the comprehensive consciousness" (vijñana); "if prajñana can be described as the outgoing of apprehensive consciousness to possess its object in conscious energy, to know it, saṁjñana can be described as the inbringing movement of apprehensive consciousness which draws the object placed before it back to itself so as to possess it in conscious substance, to feel it"...
an.a ::: "the life-energy as it acts in support of the mental activities", also called sūks.ma pran.a; the pran.a in its psychological aspect, which, however, normally "leans on the physical life, limits itself by the nervous force of the physical being, limits thereby the operations of the mind and becomes the link of its dependence on the body and its subjection to fatigue, incapacity, disease, disorder".
and not by an opening of themselves to a superior Povver or by the way of surrender ; for the Impersonal is not something that guides and helps, but something to be attained, and it leaves each man to attain it according to the way an^ capacity of his naturc.
and the power that perseveres and conquers. It is really a habit that one has to get of opening to these helpful forces and either passively receiving them or actively drawing upon them — for one can do either. It is easier if you have the conception of them above and around you and the faith and the will to receive them ; for that brings the experience and concrete sense of them and the capacity to receive at need or at will. It is a question of habituating your consciousness to get into touch and keep in touch with these helpful forces ; and for that you must accustom yourself to reject the impressions forced on you by the others, depression, self-distrust, repining and all similar disturbances.
And these are in fact always acting upon our subliminal selves unknown to our vvaking mind and with considerable effect on our life and nature. The physical mind is only a little part of us and there is much more considerable range of our being in which the presence, infiuence and powers of the other planes are active upon us and help to shape our external being and its activities. The awakening of the psychical consciousness enables us fb become aware of these powers, presences and influences in and around us ; and while in the impure or yet ignorant and imperfect mind this unveiled contact has its dangers, it enables us too, if lightly used and directed, to be no longer their subject but their master and to coroe into conscious and seJf-confroJled possession of the inner secrets of our nature. The psychical consciousness reveals this interaction between the inner and the outer planes, this world and others, partly by an awareness, which may be very constant, vast and vivid, of their impacts, suggestions, communications to our inner thought and conscious being and a capacity of reaction upon them there, partly ako through many kinds of symbolic, transcriptive or representative images presented to the different psychical senses. But also
anisata (anishata) ::: incapacity; same as anisabhava. anisata
aptitude ::: n. --> A natural or acquired disposition or capacity for a particular purpose, or tendency to a particular action or effect; as, oil has an aptitude to burn.
A general fitness or suitableness; adaptation.
Readiness in learning; docility; aptness.
aran.asamarthya (dharanasamarthya; dharana-samarthya; dharanasamarthyam; dharana samarthyam) ::: the capacity of the body to contain "without strain or reaction any working however intense and constant, of energy however great and puissant", an element of dehasakti. dh dharanasamarthyam
asakti (ashakti) ::: incapacity; lack of sakti. asakti asam asamahita ahita as asanta-manusa
asamarthya ::: incapacity. asamarthya
ASCENT AND RETURN. ::: Once the being or its different parts begin to ascend to the planes above, any part of the being may do it, frontal or other. The samskāra that one cannot come back must be got rid of. One can have the experience of Nirvana at the summit of the mind or anywhere in those planes that are now superconscient to the mind; the mind spiritualised by the ascent into Self has the sense of laya, dissolution of itself, its thoughts, movements, samskāras into a superconscient Silence and Infinity which it is unable to grasp, - the Unknowable. But this would bring or lead to some form of Nirvana only if one makes Nirvana the goal, if one is tied to the mind and accepts its dissolution into the Infinite as one’s own dissolution or if one has not the capacity to reorganise experience on a higher than the mental plane. But otherwise what was superconscient becomes conscient, one begins to possess or else to be the instrument of the dynamis of the higher planes and there is a movement, not of liberation into Nirvana but of liberation and transformation. However high one goes one can always return, unless one has the will not to do so.
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 th
refore 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 th
refore 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.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 452
atmaslagha (atmaslagha; atma slagha) ::: self-affirmation, "the high atmaslagha self-confidence of power, capacity, character and courage indispensable to the man of action", an attribute of the ks.atriya.
audibility ::: n. --> The quality of being audible; power of being heard; audible capacity.
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
bandwidth "communications" The difference between the highest and lowest frequencies of a transmission channel (the width of its allocated band of frequencies). The term is often used erroneously to mean {data rate} or capacity - the amount of {data} that is, or can be, sent through a given communications circuit per second. [How is data capacity related to bandwidth?] [{Jargon File}] (2001-04-24)
baud "communications, unit" /bawd/ (plural "baud") The unit in which the information carrying capacity or "{signalling rate}" of a communication channel is measured. One baud is one symbol (state-transition or level-transition) per second. This coincides with bits per second only for two-level {modulation} with no {framing} or {stop bits}. A symbol is a unique state of the communication channel, distinguishable by the receiver from all other possible states. For example, it may be one of two voltage levels on a wire for a direct digital connection or it might be the phase or frequency of a carrier. The term "baud" was originally a unit of telegraph signalling speed, set at one {Morse code} dot per second. Or, more generally, the reciprocal of the duration of the shortest signalling element. It was proposed at the International Telegraph Conference of 1927, and named after {J.M.E. Baudot} (1845-1903), the French engineer who constructed the first successful teleprinter. The UK {PSTN} will support a maximum rate of 600 baud but each baud may carry between 1 and 16 bits depending on the coding (e.g. {QAM}). Where data is transmitted as {packets}, e.g. characters, the actual "data rate" of a channel is R D / P where R is the "raw" rate in bits per second, D is the number of data bits in a packet and P is the total number of bits in a packet (including packet overhead). The term "baud" causes much confusion and is usually best avoided. Use "bits per second" (bps), "bytes per second" or "characters per second" (cps) if that's what you mean. (1998-02-14)
capacity ::: 1. The ability to receive, hold, or absorb. 2. The power to learn or retain knowledge; mental ability.
capacity "communications" The maximum possible {data transfer rate} of a communications channel under ideal conditions. The total capacity of a channel may be shared between several independent data streams using some kind of {multiplexing}, in which case, each stream's data rate may be limited to a fixed fraction of the total capacity. (2001-05-22)
capacity ::: n. --> The power of receiving or containing; extent of room or space; passive power; -- used in reference to physical things.
The power of receiving and holding ideas, knowledge, etc.; the comprehensiveness of the mind; the receptive faculty; capability of undestanding or feeling.
Ability; power pertaining to, or resulting from, the possession of strength, wealth, or talent; possibility of being or of doing.
bench ::: 1. A long seat usually made of wood, for two or more persons. 2. A seat occupied by a person in an official capacity, esp. a judge. 3. Such a seat as a symbol of the office and dignity of an individual judge or the judiciary.
Bernoulli Box "storage" A high capacity storage device, {Iomega Corporation}'s first popular product, that spins a mylar disk over a read-write head using the {Bernoulli principle}. (1997-04-15)
bhogasamarthya ::: capacity for enjoyment. ::: bhogasamarthyam [nominative]
binary prefix "unit" (Or "IEC prefix") A prefix used with a {unit} of {data} to mean multiplication by a power of 1024. Binary prefixes are most often used with "{byte}" (e.g. "{kilobyte}") but also with {bit} (e.g. "{megabit}"). For example, the term {kilobyte} has historically been used to mean 1024 {bytes}, and {megabyte} to mean 1,048,576 bytes. The multipliers 1024 and 1,048,576 are powers of 1024, which is itself a power of two (1024 = 2^10). It is this factor of two that gives the name "binary prefix". This is in contrast to a {decimal prefix} denoting a power of 1000, which is itself a power of ten (1000 = 10^3). Decimal prefixes are used in science and engineering and are specified in widely adopted {SI} standards. Note that the actual prefix - kilo or mega - is the same, it is the interpretation that differs. The difference between the two interpretations increases with each multiplication, so while 1000 and 1024 differ by only 2.4%, 1000^6 and 1024^6 differ by 15%. The 1024-based interpretation of prefixes is often still used informally and especially when discussing the storage capacity of {random-access memory}. This has lead to storage device manufacturers being accused of false marketing for using the decimal interpretation where customers might assume the larger, historical, binary interpretation. In an attempt to clarify the distinction, in 1998 the {IEC} specified that kilobyte, megabyte, etc. should only be used for powers of 1000 (following SI). They specified new prefixes for powers of 1024 containing "bi" for "binary": {kibibyte}, {mebibyte}, etc.; an idea originally propsed by {IUPAC}. IEC also specified new abbreviations Ki, Mi, etc. for the new prefixes. Many other standards bodies such as {NIST}, {IEEE} and {BIPM} support this proposal but as of 2013 its use is rare in non-technical circles. Specific units of IEC 60027-2 A.2 and ISO/IEC 80000 IEC prefix Representations Customary prefix Name Symbol Base 2 Base Base 10 Name Symbol 1024 (approx) kibi Ki 2^10 1024^1 1.02x10^3 kilo k, K mebi Mi 2^20 1024^2 1.05x10^6 mega M gibi Gi 2^30 1024^3 1.07x10^9 giga G tebi Ti 2^40 1024^4 1.10x10^12 tera T pebi Pi 2^50 1024^5 1.13x10^15 peta P exbi Ei 2^60 1024^6 1.15x10^18 exa E zebi Zi 2^70 1024^7 1.18x10^21 zetta Z yobi Yi 2^80 1024^8 1.21x10^24 yotta Y (2013-11-04)
B. In ontology, power is often synonymous with potency (q.v.) Aristotle, who is mainly responsible for the development of this notion (Metaph. IV (5) 12.), distinguishes three aspects of it as a source of change, as a capacity of performing, and as a state in virtue of which things are unchangeable by themselves. Hobbes accepts only the first of these meanings, namely that power is the source of motion. Various questions are involved in the analysis of the notion of power, as, for example, whether power is an accident or a perfection of substance, and whether it is distinct from it.
breath ::: n. --> The air inhaled and exhaled in respiration; air which, in the process of respiration, has parted with oxygen and has received carbonic acid, aqueous vapor, warmth, etc.
The act of breathing naturally or freely; the power or capacity to breathe freely; as, I am out of breath.
The power of respiration, and hence, life.
Time to breathe; respite; pause.
A single respiration, or the time of making it; a single
brimming ::: filled to capacity. new-brimming.
broadband "communications" A class of communication channel capable of supporting a wide range of frequencies, typically from audio up to video frequencies. A broadband channel can carry multiple signals by dividing the total capacity into multiple, independent bandwidth channels, where each channel operates only on a specific range of frequencies. The term has come to be used for any kind of {Internet} connection with a {download} speed of more than 56 {kbps}, usually some kind of {Digital Subscriber Line}, e.g. {ADSL}. A broadband connection is typically always connected, in contrast to a {dial-up} connection, and a fixed monthly rate is charged, often with a cap on the total amount of data that can be transferred. Domestic broadband connections typically share a telephone line with normal voice calls and the two uses can occur simultaneously without interference. See also {baseband}, {narrowband}. (2006-03-30)
Buddhi (.Discrimination) ::: Buddhi is a construction of conscious being which quite exceeds its beginnings in the basic chitta; it is the intelligence with its power of knowledge and will. Buddhi takes up and deals with all the rest of the action of the mind and life and body. It is in its nature thought-power and will-power of the Spirit turned into the lower form of a mental activity. We may distinguish three successive gradations of the action of this intelligence. There is first an inferior perceptive understanding which simply takes up, records, understands and responds to the communications of the sense-mind, memory, heart and sensational mentality. It creates by their means an elementary thinking mind which does not go beyond their data, but subjects itself to their mould and rings out their repetitions, runs round and round in the habitual circle of thought and will suggested by them or follows, with an obedient subservience of the reason to the suggestions of life, any fresh determinations which may be offered to its perception and conception. Beyond this elementary understanding, which we all use to an enormous extent, there is a power of arranging or selecting reason and will-force of the intelligence which has for its action and aim an attempt to arrive at a plausible, sufficient, settled ordering of knowledge and will for the use of an intellectual conception of life. In spite of its more purely intellectual character this secondary or intermediate reason is really pragmatic in its intention. It creates a certain kind of intellectual structure, frame, rule into which it tries to cast the inner and outer life so as to use it with a certain mastery and government for the purposes of some kind of rational will. It is this reason which gives to our normal intellectual being our set aesthetic and ethical standards, our structures of opinion and our established norms of idea and purpose. It is highly developed and takes the primacy in all men of an at all developed understanding. But beyond it there is a reason, a highest action of the buddhi which concerns itself disinterestedly with a pursuit of pure truth and right knowledge; it seeks to discover the real Truth behind life and things and our apparent selves and to subject its will to the law of Truth. Few, if any of us, can use this highest reason with any purity, but the attempt to do it is the topmost capacity of the inner instrument, the antahkarana.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 651-52
Buddhi is a construction of conscious being which quite exceeds its beginnings in the basic chitta; it is the intelligence with its power of knowledge and will. Buddhi takes up and deals with all the rest of the action of the mind and life and body. It is in its nature thought-power and will-power of the Spirit turned into the lower form of a mental activity. We may distinguish three successive gradations of the action of this intelligence. There is first an inferior perceptive understanding which simply takes up, records, understands and responds to the communications of the sense-mind, memory, heart and sensational mentality. It creates by their means an elementary thinking mind which does not go beyond their data, but subjects itself to their mould and rings out their repetitions, runs round and round in the habitual circle of thought and will suggested by them or follows, with an obedient subservience of the reason to the suggestions of life, any fresh determinations which may be offered to its perception and conception. Beyond this elementary understanding, which we all use to an enormous extent, there is a power of arranging or selecting reason and will-force of the intelligence which has for its action and aim an attempt to arrive at a plausible, sufficient, settled ordering of knowledge and will for the use of an intellectual conception of life. In spite of its more purely intellectual character this secondary or intermediate reason is really pragmatic in its intention It creates a certain kind of intellectual structure, frame, rule into which it tries to cast the inner and outer life so as to use it with a certain mastery and government for the purposes of some kind of rational will. It is this reason which gives to our normal intellectual being our set aesthetic and ethical standards, our structures of opinion and our established norms of idea and purpose. It is highly developed and takes the primacy in all men of an at all developed understanding. But beyond it there is a reason, a highest action of the buddhi which concerns itself disinterestedly with a pursuit of pure truth and right knowledge; it seeks to discover the real Truth behind life and things and our apparent selves and to subject its will to the law of Truth. Few, if any of us, can use this highest reason with any purity, but the attempt to do it is the topmost capacity of the inner instrument, the antahkarana.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 651-52
buddhisakti (buddhishakti) ::: the power, capacity and right state of buddhisakti activity of the thinking mind, one of the four kinds of sakti forming the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya. 40
buddhisaktih. (vishuddhata, prakasha, vichitrabodha, jnanadharanasamarthyam iti buddhishaktih) ::: purity, clarity, variety of understanding, capacity to hold all knowledge: these constitute the power of the thinking mind.
burden ::: n. --> That which is borne or carried; a load.
That which is borne with labor or difficulty; that which is grievous, wearisome, or oppressive.
The capacity of a vessel, or the weight of cargo that she will carry; as, a ship of a hundred tons burden.
The tops or heads of stream-work which lie over the stream of tin.
The proportion of ore and flux to fuel, in the charge of a
bushel ::: n. --> A dry measure, containing four pecks, eight gallons, or thirty-two quarts.
A vessel of the capacity of a bushel, used in measuring; a bushel measure.
A quantity that fills a bushel measure; as, a heap containing ten bushels of apples.
A large indefinite quantity.
The iron lining in the nave of a wheel. [Eng.] In the
But since no human system has this endless receptivity and unfailing capacity, the supramental Yoga can succeed only if the
By Saraadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of with- drawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consdousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consdousness and posses thence to the higher supra- mental planes on which the indiWdual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and conrentrated energising of consdousness on its object which our phiJos^hy asserts as the priraa/j' cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the
calibre ::: n. --> The diameter of the bore, as a cannon or other firearm, or of any tube; or the weight or size of the projectile which a firearm will carry; as, an 8 inch gun, a 12-pounder, a 44 caliber.
The diameter of round or cylindrical body, as of a bullet or column.
Fig.: Capacity or compass of mind.
capability ::: n. --> The quality of being capable; capacity; capableness; esp. intellectual power or ability.
Capacity of being used or improved.
capable ::: a. --> Possessing ability, qualification, or susceptibility; having capacity; of sufficient size or strength; as, a room capable of holding a large number; a castle capable of resisting a long assault.
Possessing adequate power; qualified; able; fully competent; as, a capable instructor; a capable judge; a mind capable of nice investigations.
Possessing legal power or capacity; as, a man capable of making a contract, or a will.
capable ::: having the capacity or ability; efficient and able.
capacious ::: a. --> Having capacity; able to contain much; large; roomy; spacious; extended; broad; as, a capacious vessel, room, bay, or harbor.
Able or qualified to make large views of things, as in obtaining knowledge or forming designs; comprehensive; liberal.
capacities ::: pl. --> of Capacity
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.
centilitre ::: n. --> The hundredth part of a liter; a measure of volume or capacity equal to a little more than six tenths (0.6102) of a cubic inch, or one third (0.338) of a fluid ounce.
charge ::: 1. An assigned duty or task; a responsibility given to one. 2. Care; custody. 3. An order, an impetuous onset or attack, command, or injunction. 4. The quantity of anything that a receptacle is intended to hold. v. 5. *Fig. To load to capacity; fill. *charged.
charged ::: 1. Filled; loaded to capacity. 2. Given the responsibility of or for; entrusted.
cheshwarabhavah sarvakarmasamarthyam) ::: heroism, impetuosity, the urge towards battle, loud laughter, compassion, sovereignty, capacity for all action: the four specific attributes of Mahakali and the three attributes common to all four aspects of daivi prakr.ti. savaso napatah savaso
cittasakti (chittashakti) ::: the power, capacity and right state of activcittasakti ity of the emotional being, one of the four kinds of sakti forming the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya.
cittasaktih. (snigdhata, tejahslagha, kalyanasraddha, premasamarthyam, iti chittashaktih) ::: richness of feeling, assertion of psychic force, faith in the universal good, capacity for unbounded love: these constitute the power of the emotional being.
clairaudience ::: the power to hear sounds said to exist beyond the reach of ordinary experiences or capacity.
coagulability ::: n. --> The quality of being coagulable; capacity of being coagulated.
Compact Disc Read-Only Memory "storage" (CD-ROM) A {non-volatile} optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio {compact discs}, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. CD-ROM is popular for distribution of large databases, software and especially {multimedia} {applications}. The maximum capacity is about 600 megabytes. A CD can store around 640 {megabytes} of data - about 12 billion bytes per pound weight. CD-ROM drives are rated with a speed factor relative to music CDs (1x or 1-speed which gives a data transfer rate of 150 {kilobytes} per second). 12x drives were common in April 1997. Above 12x speed, there are problems with vibration and heat. {Constant angular velocity} (CAV) drives give speeds up to 20x but due to the nature of CAV the actual throughput increase over 12x is less than 20/12. 20x was thought to be the maximum speed due to mechanical constraints but on 1998-02-24, {Samsung Electronics} introduced the SCR-3230, a 32x CD-ROM drive which uses a ball bearing system to balance the spinning CD-ROM in the drive to reduce noise. CD-ROM drives may connect to an {IDE} interface, a {SCSI} interface or a propritary interface, of which there are three - Sony, Panasonic, and Mitsumi. Most CD-ROM drives can also play audio CDs. There are several formats used for CD-ROM data, including {Green Book CD-ROM}, {White Book CD-ROM} and {Yellow Book CD-ROM}. {ISO 9660} defines a standard {file system}, later extended by {Joliet}. See also {Compact Disc Recordable}, {Digital Versatile Disc}. {Byte, February 1997 (http://byte.com/art/9702/sec17/art5.htm)}. (2006-09-25)
compass ::: n. --> A passing round; circuit; circuitous course.
An inclosing limit; boundary; circumference; as, within the compass of an encircling wall.
An inclosed space; an area; extent.
Extent; reach; sweep; capacity; sphere; as, the compass of his eye; the compass of imagination.
Moderate bounds, limits of truth; moderation; due limits; -- used with within.
competency ::: n. --> The state of being competent; fitness; ability; adequacy; power.
Property or means sufficient for the necessaries and conveniences of life; sufficiency without excess.
Legal capacity or qualifications; fitness; as, the competency of a witness or of a evidence.
Right or authority; legal power or capacity to take cognizance of a cause; as, the competence of a judge or court.
Compossibility: Those things are compossible in Leibniz's philosophy which are literally "co-possible," i.e., which may exist together, which belong to the same possible world. Since metaphysical possibility means for Leibniz simply the absence of contradiction, two or more things are compossible if, and only if, their joint ascription to a single world involves no contradiction. All possible worlds are held by Leibniz to have general laws analogous to those of our own actual world. Compossibility for any set of things, consequently, involves their capacity to be brought under one and the same general system of laws. That this last provision is important follows from the fact that Leibniz affirmed all simple predicates to be compatible. -- F.L.W.
comprehension ::: n. --> The act of comprehending, containing, or comprising; inclusion.
That which is comprehended or inclosed within narrow limits; a summary; an epitome.
The capacity of the mind to perceive and understand; the power, act, or process of grasping with the intellect; perception; understanding; as, a comprehension of abstract principles.
The complement of attributes which make up the
computron "jargon" /kom'pyoo-tron"/ 1. A notional unit of computing power combining execution speed and storage capacity. E.g. "That machine can't run GNU Emacs, it doesn't have enough computrons!" 2. A mythical subatomic particle that carries computation or information, in much the same way that an electron carries electric charge (see also {bogon}). [{Jargon File}] (2013-03-02)
conductibility ::: n. --> Capability of being conducted; as, the conductibility of heat or electricity.
Conductivity; capacity for receiving and transmitting.
congestion "communications" The condition that arises when the amount of data that senders want to send down a communication channel exceeds its {capacity}. Typically this will result in some {packets} being delayed, thus increasing the average {latency}. (2014-05-04)
contain ::: v. t. --> To hold within fixed limits; to comprise; to include; to inclose; to hold.
To have capacity for; to be able to hold; to hold; to be equivalent to; as, a bushel contains four pecks.
To put constraint upon; to restrain; to confine; to keep within bounds. ::: v. i.
cor ::: n. --> A Hebrew measure of capacity; a homer.
corporately ::: adv. --> In a corporate capacity; acting as a corporate body.
In, or as regarda, the body.
corporation ::: n. --> A body politic or corporate, formed and authorized by law to act as a single person, and endowed by law with the capacity of succession; a society having the capacity of transacting business as an individual.
correlation ::: n. --> Reciprocal relation; corresponding similarity or parallelism of relation or law; capacity of being converted into, or of giving place to, one another, under certain conditions; as, the correlation of forces, or of zymotic diseases.
Cosmology: A branch of philosophy which treats of the origin and structure of the universe. It is to be contrasted with ontology or metaphysics, the study of the most general features of reality, natural and supernatural, and with the philosophy of nature, which investigates the basic laws, processes and divisions of the objects in nature. It is perhaps impossible to draw or maintain a sharp distinction between these different subjects, and treatises which profess to deal with one of them usually contain considerable material on the others. Encyclopedia, section 35), are the contingency, necessity, eternity, limitations and formal laws of the world, the freedom of man and the origin of evil. Most philosophers would add to the foregoing the question of the nature and interrelationship of space and time, and would perhaps exclude the question of the nature of freedom and the origin of evil as outside the province of cosmology. The method of investigation has usually been to accept the principles of science or the results of metaphysics and develop the consequences. The test of a cosmology most often used is perhaps that of exhibiting the degree of accordance it has with respect to both empirical fact and metaphysical truth. The value of a cosmology seems to consist primarily in its capacity to provide an ultimate frame for occurrences in nature, and to offer a demonstration of where the limits of the spatio-temporal world are, and how they might be transcended.
crowded ::: 1. Filled near or to capacity. 2. Filled with a crowd. 3.* Fig.* packed closely together, as experiences, events; occurrences.
daksaya kratve ::: [for], capacity and effective power or will and discernment. [Ved.]
darkness ::: “Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision’s limited range.” Essays Divine and Human
data storage "storage" (Or "memory") A device or medium into which data can be entered, in which it can be held, and from which it can be retrieved at a later time. The distinguishing characteristics of a device are its capacity (the number of bytes it can hold), its {access speed}, whether it is {volatile} (loses data when the power is turned off), whether it is {removeable} or fixed and whether it is writeable or read-only. Some examples are {DRAM}, {hard disk}, {CD-ROM}, {Flash memory}. {Storage timeline (https://www.frontierinternet.com/gateway/data-storage-timeline/)} by {(https://www.frontierinternet.com/)}. (2018-04-11)
data transfer rate "communications" (Or "throughput, data rate", "transmission rate") The amount of {data} transferred in one direction over a link divided by the time taken to transfer it, usually expressed in bits per second (bps), bytes per second (Bps) or {baud}. The link may be anything from an interface to a {hard disk} to a radio transmission from a satellite. Where data transfer is not continuous throughout the given time interval, the data transfer rate is thus an average rate that will be lower than the peak rate. The peak or maximum possible rate may itself be lower than the {capacity} of the communication channel if the channel is shared, or part of the signal is not considered as data, e.g. {checksum} or {routing} information. When applied to data rate, the multiplier {prefixes} "kilo-", "mega-", "giga-", etc. (and their abbreviations, "k", "M", "G", etc.) always denote powers of 1000. For example, 64 kbps is 64,000 bits per second. This contrasts with units of {storage} where they stand for powers of 1024, e.g. 1 KB = 1024 bytes. The other important characteristic of a channel is its {latency}. The {bandwidth} of a channel determines the data transfer rate but is a different characteristic, measured in {Hertz}. [Relationship?] (2008-02-08)
daya isvarabhavah. sarvakarmasamarthyam ::: compassion, soverdaya eignty, capacity for all action (the attributes common to all four aspects of daivi prakr.ti).
deafness ::: n. --> Incapacity of perceiving sounds; the state of the organs which prevents the impression which constitute hearing; want of the sense of hearing.
Unwillingness to hear; voluntary rejection of what is addressed to the understanding.
decalitre ::: n. --> A measure of capacity in the metric system; a cubic volume of ten liters, equal to about 610.24 cubic inches, that is, 2.642 wine gallons.
decastere ::: n. --> A measure of capacity, equal to ten steres, or ten cubic meters.
decilitre ::: n. --> A measure of capacity or volume in the metric system; one tenth of a liter, equal to 6.1022 cubic inches, or 3.38 fluid ounces.
dehasakti (dehashakti; deha-shakti) ::: the power, capacity and right dehasakti state of activity of the physical being, one of the four kinds of sakti forming the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya.
dehashakti) ::: the sense of a greatness of sustaining force, assertion of .. strength, lightness, the capacity to hold all workings of energy: these constitute the power of the body.
depressomotor ::: a. --> Depressing or diminishing the capacity for movement, as depressomotor nerves, which lower or inhibit muscular activity. ::: n. --> Any agent that depresses the activity of the motor centers, as bromides, etc.
detestability ::: n. --> Capacity of being odious.
Dhyana ::: There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of Dhyana, "meditation" and "contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana; for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. There are other forms of dhyana. There is a passage in which Vivekananda advises you to stand back from your thoughts, let them occur in your mind as they will and simply observe them & see what they are. This may be called concentration in self-observation. This form leads to another, the emptying of all thought out of the mind so as to leave it a sort of pure vigilant blank on which the divine knowledge may come and imprint itself, undisturbed by the inferior thoughts of the ordinary human mind and with the clearness of a writing in white chalk on a blackboard. You will find that the Gita speaks of this rejection of all mental thought as one of the methods of Yoga and even the method it seems to prefer. This may be called the dhyana of liberation, as it frees the mind from slavery to the mechanical process of thinking and allows it to think or not think as it pleases and when it pleases, or to choose its own thoughts or else to go beyond thought to the pure perception of Truth called in our philosophy Vijnana. Meditation is the easiest process for the human mind, but the narrowest in its results; contemplation more difficult, but greater; self-observation and liberation from the chains of Thought the most difficult of all, but the widest and greatest in its fruits. One can choose any of them according to one’s bent and capacity. The perfect method is to use them all, each in its own place and for its own object.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Page: 293-294
Digital Versatile Disc "storage" (DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared with the {Compact Disc}. DVD, like CD, was initally marketed for entertainment and later for computer users. [When was it first available?] A DVD can hold a full-length film with up to 133 minutes of high quality video, in {MPEG-2} format, and audio. The first DVD drives for computers were read-only drives ("DVD-ROM"). These can store 4.7 GBytes - over seven times the storage capacity of CD-ROM. DVD-ROM drives read existing {CD-ROMs} and music CDs and are compatible with installed sound and video boards. Additionally, the DVD-ROM drive can read DVD films and modern computers can decode them in software in {real-time}. The DVD video standard was announced in November 1995. Matshusita did much of the early development but Philips made the first DVD player, which appeared in Japan in November 1996. In May 2004, Sony released the first dual-layer drive, which increased the disc capacity to 8.5 GB. Double-sided, dual-layer discs will eventually increase the capacity to 17 GB. Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives record a 3.9GB DVD-R disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive. Pioneer released the first DVD-R drive on 1997-09-29. By March 1997, {Hitachi} had released a rewritable DVD-RAM drive (by false analogy with {random-access memory}). DVD-RAM drives read and write to a 2.6 GB DVD-RAM disc, read and write-once to a 3.9GB DVD-R disc, and read a 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB DVD-ROM. Later, DVD-RAM discs could be read on DVD-R and DVD-ROM drives. {Background (http://tacmar.com/dvd_background.htm)}. {RCA home (http://imagematrix.com/DVD/home.html)}. (2006-01-07)
disability ::: n. --> State of being disabled; deprivation or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like.
Want of legal qualification to do a thing; legal incapacity or incompetency.
disablement ::: n. --> Deprivation of ability; incapacity.
discapacitate ::: v. t. --> To deprive of capacity; to incapacitate.
Discretion: (Lat. discretum, pp. of discernere, to discern) The mental capacity for critical discrimination especially in matters of ethics and conduct. -- L.W.
disk drive "hardware, storage" (Or "hard disk drive", "hard drive", "floppy disk drive", "floppy drive") A {peripheral} device that reads and writes {hard disks} or {floppy disks}. The drive contains a motor to rotate the disk at a constant rate and one or more read/write heads which are positioned over the desired {track} by a servo mechanism. It also contains the electronics to amplify the signals from the heads to normal digital logic levels and vice versa. In order for a disk drive to start to read or write a given location a read/write head must be positioned radially over the right track and rotationally over the start of the right sector. Radial motion is known as "{seek}ing" and it is this which causes most of the intermittent noise heard during disk activity. There is usually one head for each disk surface and all heads move together. The set of locations which are accessible with the heads in a given radial position are known as a "{cylinder}". The "{seek time}" is the time taken to seek to a different cylinder. The disk is constantly rotating (except for some {floppy disk} drives where the motor is switched off between accesses to reduce wear and power consumption) so positioning the heads over the right sector is simply a matter of waiting until it arrives under the head. With a single set of heads this "{rotational latency}" will be on average half a revolution but some big drives have multiple sets of heads spaced at equal angles around the disk. If seeking and rotation are independent, access time is seek time + rotational latency. When accessing multiple tracks sequentially, data is sometimes arranged so that by the time the seek from one track to the next has finished, the disk has rotated just enough to begin accessing the next track. See also {sector interleave}. Early disk drives had a capacity of a few {megabytes} and were housed inside a separate cabinet the size of a washing machine. Over a few decades they shrunk to fit a {terabyte} or more in a box the size of a paperback book. The disks may be {removable disks}; floppy disks always are, removable hard disks were common on {mainframes} and {minicomputers} but less so on {microcomputers} until the mid 1990s(?) with products like the {Zip Drive}. A {CD-ROM} drive is not usually referred to as a disk drive. Two common interfaces for disk drives (and other devices) are {SCSI} and {IDE}. {ST-506} used to be common in microcomputers (in the 1980s?). (1997-04-15)
dissolubility ::: n. --> The quality of being dissoluble; capacity of being dissoluble; capacity of being dissolved by heat or moisture, and converted into a fluid.
dissolvability ::: n. --> Capacity of being dissolved; solubility.
distensibility ::: n. --> The quality or capacity of being distensible.
Ditto Drive "hardware, storage" The Ditto {tape drives} range in capacity from 120 {megabytes} to 1.6 {gigabytes} ({data compression} can roughly double these figures). The newer devices are designed for special tapes, though they will read standard tape types. The largest of tape stores up 3.2 {GB}. Using an enhanced {floppy drive} card the transfer rate approaches the claimed 19 {MB}/minute. External {parallel} port versions are also available. {Compatibility details (http://iomega.com/support/techs/ditto/3040.html)}. (1997-03-26)
diversifiability ::: n. --> The quality or capacity of being diversifiable.
DS level "communications" (Digital Signal or Data Service level) Originally an {AT&T} classification of transmitting one or more voice conversations in one digital data stream. The best known DS levels are {DS0} (a single conversation), {DS1} (24 conversations multiplexed), {DS1C}, {DS2}, and {DS3}. By extension, the DS level can refer to the raw data rate necessary for transmission: DS0 64 Kb/s DS1 1.544 Mb/s DS1C 3.15 Mb/s DS2 6.31 Mb/s DS3 44.736 Mb/s DS4 274.1 Mb/s (where K and M signify multiplication by 1000 and 1000000, rather than powers of two). In this sense it can be used to measure of data service rates classifying the user access rates for various point-to-point {WAN} technologies or standards (e.g. {X.25}, {SMDS}, {ISDN}, {ATM}, {PDH}). Japan uses the US standards for DS0 through DS2 but Japanese DS5 has roughly the circuit capacity of US DS4, while the European standards are rather different (see {E1}). In the US all of the transmission rates are integral multiples of 8000 bits per second but rates above DS1 are not necessarily integral multiples of 1,544 kb/s. (1998-05-18)
dvandva (dwandwa) ::: duality; any of the pairs of opposites that "are the positive and negative terms in which the ego soul of the lower nature enjoys the universe", freedom from which is part of the mukti or liberation of the nature, also applied to pairs of related terms that are not opposites, such as hunger and thirst; the "discordant and divided experience" that consists of "an oscillation between or a mixture of constant pairs of contraries", due to "an ignorance which is unable to seize on the spiritual truth of things and concentrates on the imperfect appearances, but meets them not with a mastery of their inner truth, but with a strife and a shifting balance of attraction and repulsion, capacity and incapacity, liking and disliking, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, acceptance and repugnance". dvandva rragadvesa
Dyadic Relation: A two-termed relation (q.v.). Dynamic Vitalism: See Vitalism. Dynamis: (Gr. dynamis) In Aristotle's philosophy (1) a source of change or power to effect change; faculty; (2) more generally the capacity a thing has of passing to a different state; potentiality. See Aristotelianism; Energeia. -- G.R.M.
E-carrier system "communications" A series of {digital} transmission formats promulgated by the {ITU} and used outside of North America and Japan. The basic unit of the E-carrier system is the {DS0}, which has a transmission rate of 64 Kbps, and is commonly used for one {voice circuit}. The {E1} format consists of 32 DS0 channels, for a total capacity of 2.048 Mbps. {E2}, {E3}, {E4}, and {E5} circuits carry multiple E1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of up to 565.148 Mbps. The E-carrier system is similar to, and compatible with, the {T-carrier system} used in North America, but has higher capacity since it uses {out-of-band signaling} in contrast to the {in-band signaling} or {bit-robbing} used in the T-system. (2000-03-10)
enation ::: n. --> Any unusual outgrowth from the surface of a thing, as of a petal; also, the capacity or act of producing such an outgrowth.
endowment ::: n. --> The act of bestowing a dower, fund, or permanent provision for support.
That which is bestowed or settled on a person or an institution; property, fund, or revenue permanently appropriated to any object; as, the endowment of a church, a hospital, or a college.
That which is given or bestowed upon the person or mind; gift of nature; accomplishment; natural capacity; talents; -- usually in the plural.
energetical ::: a. --> Having energy or energies; possessing a capacity for vigorous action or for exerting force; active.
Exhibiting energy; operating with force, vigor, and effect; forcible; powerful; efficacious; as, energetic measures; energetic laws.
Energy: (Gr. energos, at work) The power by which things act to change other things. Potentiality in the physical. Employed by Aristotle as a synonym for actuality or reality. (a) In physics: the capacity for performing work. In modern physics, the equivalent of mass. (b) In i axiology: value at the physical level- -- J.K.F.
energy ::: n. --> Internal or inherent power; capacity of acting, operating, or producing an effect, whether exerted or not; as, men possessing energies may suffer them to lie inactive.
Power efficiently and forcibly exerted; vigorous or effectual operation; as, the energy of a magistrate.
Strength of expression; force of utterance; power to impress the mind and arouse the feelings; life; spirit; -- said of speech, language, words, style; as, a style full of energy.
engine ::: n. --> (Pronounced, in this sense, ////.) Natural capacity; ability; skill.
Anything used to effect a purpose; any device or contrivance; an agent.
Any instrument by which any effect is produced; especially, an instrument or machine of war or torture.
A compound machine by which any physical power is applied to produce a given physical effect.
enlarge ::: 1. To increase the capacity or scope of; expand. 2. To make or grow larger in size, scope, etc.; increase or expand the range of. enlarged.
enlarge ::: v. t. --> To make larger; to increase in quantity or dimensions; to extend in limits; to magnify; as, the body is enlarged by nutrition; to enlarge one&
equality ::: samata, equality of soul and mind to all things and happenings, equanimity founded on the sense of the one Self, the one Divine everywhere; the capacity to remain unmoved within all conditions.
euplastic ::: a. --> Having the capacity of becoming organizable in a high degree, as the matter forming the false membranes which sometimes result from acute inflammation in a healthy person. ::: n. --> Organizable substance by which the tissues of an animal body are renewed.
expansibility ::: n. --> The capacity of being expanded; as, the expansibility of air.
expansive ::: a. --> Having a capacity or tendency to expand or dilate; diffusive; of much expanse; wide-extending; as, the expansive force of heat; the expansive quality of air.
extensibility ::: n. --> The quality of being extensible; the capacity of being extended; as, the extensibility of a fiber, or of a plate of metal.
extension ::: v. t. --> The act of extending or the state of being extended; a stretching out; enlargement in breadth or continuation of length; increase; augmentation; expansion.
That property of a body by which it occupies a portion of space.
Capacity of a concept or general term to include a greater or smaller number of objects; -- correlative of intension.
The operation of stretching a broken bone so as to
faculty ::: n. --> Ability to act or perform, whether inborn or cultivated; capacity for any natural function; especially, an original mental power or capacity for any of the well-known classes of mental activity; psychical or soul capacity; capacity for any of the leading kinds of soul activity, as knowledge, feeling, volition; intellectual endowment or gift; power; as, faculties of the mind or the soul.
Special mental endowment; characteristic knack.
Power; prerogative or attribute of office.
farad ::: n. --> The standard unit of electrical capacity; the capacity of a condenser whose charge, having an electro-motive force of one volt, is equal to the amount of electricity which, with the same electromotive force, passes through one ohm in one second; the capacity, which, charged with one coulomb, gives an electro-motive force of one volt.
fathom ::: n. --> A measure of length, containing six feet; the space to which a man can extend his arms; -- used chiefly in measuring cables, cordage, and the depth of navigable water by soundings.
The measure or extant of one&
Fichte conceives the ultimate Ich as an absolute, unconditioned, simple ego which "posits" itself and its not-self in a series of intellectual acts. He emphasizes the dynamic, creative powers of the ego, its capacity for self-determination, the act in which the absolute subject creates the I. Self and not-self are products of the original activity of the conscious subject. Schelling conceives the I as a creation of the Absolute Idea. Hegel, however, treats the Ich as thought conceived as subject, as thinking, abstracted from all things perceived, willed or felt -- in short abstracted from all experience. As such it is universal abstract freedom, an ideal unity.
fidiciary ::: a. --> Involving confidence or trust; confident; undoubting; faithful; firm; as, in a fiduciary capacity.
Holding, held, or founded, in trust.
field-programmable gate array "hardware" (FPGA) A {gate array} where the logic network can be programmed into the device after its manufacture. An FPGA consists of an array of logic elements, either gates or lookup table {RAMs}, {flip-flops} and programmable interconnect wiring. Most FPGAs are reprogrammable, since their logic functions and interconnect are defined by RAM cells. The {Xilinx} LCA, {Altera} FLEX and {AT&T} ORCA devices are examples. Others can only be programmed once, by closing "antifuses". These retain their programming permanently. The {Actel} FPGAs are the leading example of such devices. Atmel FPGAs are currently (July 1997) the only ones in which part of the array can be reprogrammed while other parts are active. As of 1994, FPGAs have logic capacity up to 10K to 20K 2-input-NAND-equivalent gates, up to about 200 I/O pins and can run at {clock rates} of 50 MHz or more. FPGA designs must be prepared using {CAD} software tools, usually provided by the chip vendor, to do technology mapping, partitioning and placement, routing, and binary output. The resulting binary can be programmed into a {ROM} connected to the FPGA or {downloaded} to the FPGA from a connected computer. In addition to ordinary logic applications, FPGAs have enabled the development of {logic emulators}. There is also research on using FPGAs as computing devices, taking direct advantage of their reconfigurability into problem-specific hardware processors. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.arch.fpga}. (1997-07-11)
fill ::: n. --> One of the thills or shafts of a carriage. ::: a. --> To make full; to supply with as much as can be held or contained; to put or pour into, till no more can be received; to occupy the whole capacity of.
To furnish an abudant supply to; to furnish with as mush as
finite ::: a. --> Having a limit; limited in quantity, degree, or capacity; bounded; -- opposed to infinite; as, finite number; finite existence; a finite being; a finite mind; finite duration.
firkin ::: n. --> A varying measure of capacity, usually being the fourth part of a barrel; specifically, a measure equal to nine imperial gallons.
A small wooden vessel or cask of indeterminate size, -- used for butter, lard, etc.
floppy disk "hardware, storage" (Or "floppy", "diskette") A small, portable plastic disk coated in a magnetisable substance used for storing computer data, readable by a computer with a floppy disk drive. The physical size of disks has shrunk from the early 8 inch, to 5 1/4 inch ("minifloppy") to 3 1/2 inch ("microfloppy") while the data capacity has risen. These disks are known as "floppy" disks (or diskettes) because the disk is flexible and the read/write head is in physical contact with the surface of the disk in contrast to "{hard disks}" (or winchesters) which are rigid and rely on a small fixed gap between the disk surface and the heads. Floppies may be either single-sided or double-sided. 3.5 inch floppies are less floppy than the larger disks because they come in a stiff plastic "envelope" or case, hence the alternative names "stiffy" or "crunchy" sometimes used to distinguish them from the floppier kind. The following formats are used on {IBM PCs} and elsewhere: Capacity Density Width 360K double 5.25" 720K double 3.5" 1.2M high 5.25" 1.44M high 3.5" Double denisty and high density are usually abbreviated DD and HD. HD 3.5 inch disks have a second hole in the envelope and an overlapping "HD" logo. (1996-08-23)
fluctuability ::: n. --> The capacity or ability to fluctuate.
"Force is the essential Shakti; Energy is the working drive of the Force, its active dynamism; Power is the capacity born of the Force; . . . .” Letters on Yoga
“Force is the essential Shakti; Energy is the working drive of the Force, its active dynamism; Power is the capacity born of the Force; …” Letters on Yoga
force ::: v. t. --> To stuff; to lard; to farce. ::: n. --> A waterfall; a cascade.
Strength or energy of body or mind; active power; vigor; might; often, an unusual degree of strength or energy; capacity of exercising an influence or producing an effect; especially, power to
full-bottomed ::: a. --> Full and large at the bottom, as wigs worn by certain civil officers in Great Britain.
Of great capacity below the water line.
full-duplex Switched Ethernet "networking" (FDSE) A {Switched Ethernet} link which can carry data in both directions simultaneously, doubling transmission capacity from the usual 10 to 20 megabits per second. (1996-06-20)
gallon ::: n. --> A measure of capacity, containing four quarts; -- used, for the most part, in liquid measure, but sometimes in dry measure.
gauge ::: 1. To determine the exact dimensions, capacity, quantity, or force of; measure. 2. To appraise, estimate, or judge; assess; evaluate. gauged.
gauge ::: v. t. --> To measure or determine with a gauge.
To measure or to ascertain the contents or the capacity of, as of a pipe, barrel, or keg.
To measure the dimensions of, or to test the accuracy of the form of, as of a part of a gunlock.
To draw into equidistant gathers by running a thread through it, as cloth or a garment.
To measure the capacity, character, or ability of; to
grasp ::: v. 1. To seize and hold firmly; lit. and fig. 2. To take hold of intellectually; comprehend. grasps, grasped, grasping.* n. 3. A hold or grip. 4. Fig. Total rule, possession or control. 5. Capacity or power to understand or comprehend. 6. One"s power of seizing and holding; reach. 7. The act of grasping or gripping, as with the hands or arms. 8. One"s arms or hands, in embracing or gripping. ::: to grasp at: To try to seize someone or something. Also fig.*
growthful ::: a. --> Having capacity of growth.
gumption ::: n. --> Capacity; shrewdness; common sense.
The art of preparing colors.
Megilp.
Gum's cr.padfiet ::: One can lia*c a Guru •■'/crK'f n tpiD- lual capacity (to onc\clf or to other Gunn) carry trp in h'-n tnjf) human imperfectiona and >cl, if ymi hue the faitS. ihf«rj;h attain to ■.p'mtual cspcticricc^. to ipnituai irafnatlfm. enm Srfo'r tlic Guru himveU.
hardness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being hard, literally or figuratively.
The cohesion of the particles on the surface of a body, determined by its capacity to scratch another, or be itself scratched;-measured among minerals on a scale of which diamond and talc form the extremes.
The peculiar quality exhibited by water which has mineral salts dissolved in it. Such water forms an insoluble compound with
Head Disk Assembly "hardware, storage" (HDA) A sealed, high capacity {mainframe} {hard disk} with integral heads, as opposed to a {removable disk}. (1999-01-13)
hogshead ::: n. --> An English measure of capacity, containing 63 wine gallons, or about 52/ imperial gallons; a half pipe.
A large cask or barrel, of indefinite contents; esp. one containing from 100 to 140 gallons.
Hsien: The Confucians and Mohists demand that people of "superior moral character" should be rewarded and put in power, irrespective of their previous achievements; or "better", someone above the normal level of human capacity, almost a sage. -- H.H.
Human nature: The limited range of human possibilities. The human tendency toward, or the human capacity for, only those actions which are common in all societies despite their acquired cultural differences. See Primitivism. -- J.K.P.
ideality ::: n. --> The quality or state of being ideal.
The capacity to form ideals of beauty or perfection.
The conceptive faculty.
ideation ::: n. --> The faculty or capacity of the mind for forming ideas; the exercise of this capacity; the act of the mind by which objects of sense are apprehended and retained as objects of thought.
idiotism ::: n. --> An idiom; a form, mode of expression, or signification, peculiar to a language.
Lack of knowledge or mental capacity; idiocy; foolishness.
imaginability ::: n. --> Capacity for imagination.
imagination ::: “… our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: . . . . Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of a limited capacity of knowledge, a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious and visible the things that are not obvious and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of the possible and the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true to outer experience. That is at least the appearance of its operation; but, in reality, it is the mind’s way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilities, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Immateriality: (Scholastic) Immaterial substances are the human soul and the subsistent forms, the angels. The rational faculties of the human soul, intellect and will are called immaterial and believed to need no bodily organ for their performances, although they depend on the senses for their activities. Their immateriality is proved by their capacity of becoming cognizant of the universals and of reflection on their own performances. -- R.A.
impotent ::: a. --> Not potent; wanting power, strength. or vigor. whether physical, intellectual, or moral; deficient in capacity; destitute of force; weak; feeble; infirm.
Wanting the power of self-restraint; incontrolled; ungovernable; violent.
Wanting the power of procreation; unable to copulate; also, sometimes, sterile; barren.
inability ::: n. --> The quality or state of being unable; lack of ability; want of sufficient power, strength, resources, or capacity.
In a legal sense, any claim against others, recognized by law. Political rights, the capacity of exercizing certain functions in the formation and administration of government -- the right to vote, to be elected to public office, etc. Natural rights, as against positive rights, those claims or liberties which are not derived from positive law but from a "higher law", the law of nature. The right to live, the right to work, the "pursuit of happiness", the right to self-development are sometimes considered natural rights. -- W.E.
inapt ::: 1. Without aptitude or capacity; incapable. 2. Not inclined or disposed.
incapacity ::: lack of ability, qualification, or strength; esp. to receive.
incapacity ::: n. --> Want of capacity; lack of physical or intellectual power; inability.
Want of legal ability or competency to do, give, transmit, or receive something; inability; disqualification; as, the inacapacity of minors to make binding contracts, etc.
incapability ::: n. --> The quality of being incapable; incapacity.
Want of legal qualifications, or of legal power; as, incapability of holding an office.
incapable ::: 1. Lacking the necessary ability, capacity, or power. 2. Not open to; not susceptible to or admitting.
incapacitate ::: v. t. --> To deprive of capacity or natural power; to disable; to render incapable or unfit; to disqualify; as, his age incapacitated him for war.
To deprive of legal or constitutional requisites, or of ability or competency for the performance of certain civil acts; to disqualify.
incapacitation ::: n. --> The act of incapacitating or state of being incapacitated; incapacity; disqualification.
incapacities ::: pl. --> of Incapacity
INCAPACITY. ::: There is a part in the physical and vital consciousness of every human being that has not the will for sadhana, docs not feel the capacity for it, distrusts any hope or promise of a spiritual future and is inert and indifferent to any such thing. At one period in the course of the sadhana this rises up and one feels identified with it.
incompetency ::: n. --> The quality or state of being incompetent; want of physical, intellectual, or moral ability; insufficiency; inadequacy; as, the incompetency of a child hard labor, or of an idiot for intellectual efforts.
Want of competency or legal fitness; incapacity; disqualification, as of a person to be heard as a witness, or to act as a juror, or of a judge to try a cause.
incompetent ::: a. --> Not competent; wanting in adequate strength, power, capacity, means, qualifications, or the like; incapable; unable; inadequate; unfit.
Wanting the legal or constitutional qualifications; inadmissible; as, a person professedly wanting in religious belief is an incompetent witness in a court of law or equity; incompetent evidence.
Not lying within one&
incontinency ::: n. --> Incapacity to hold; hence, incapacity to hold back or restrain; the quality or state of being incontinent; want of continence; failure to restrain the passions or appetites; indulgence of lust; lewdness.
The inability of any of the animal organs to restrain the natural evacuations, so that the discharges are involuntary; as, incontinence of urine.
inefficiency ::: n. --> The quality of being inefficient; want of power or energy sufficient; want of power or energy sufficient for the desired effect; inefficacy; incapacity; as, he was discharged from his position for inefficiency.
infant ::: n. --> A child in the first period of life, beginning at his birth; a young babe; sometimes, a child several years of age.
A person who is not of full age, or who has not attained the age of legal capacity; a person under the age of twenty-one years; a minor.
Same as Infante. ::: a.
infinite ::: a. --> Unlimited or boundless, in time or space; as, infinite duration or distance.
Without limit in power, capacity, knowledge, or excellence; boundless; immeasurably or inconceivably great; perfect; as, the infinite wisdom and goodness of God; -- opposed to finite.
Indefinitely large or extensive; great; vast; immense; gigantic; prodigious.
Greater than any assignable quantity of the same kind; --
infinity ::: n. --> Unlimited extent of time, space, or quantity; eternity; boundlessness; immensity.
Unlimited capacity, energy, excellence, or knowledge; as, the infinity of God and his perfections.
Endless or indefinite number; great multitude; as an infinity of beauties.
A quantity greater than any assignable quantity of the same kind.
ingenerabillty ::: n. --> Incapacity of being engendered or produced.
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
In more general epistemology: Theory of knowledge which maintains that truth attaches to a proposition by virtue of its capacity to represent or portray fact. -- A.C.B.
Inner sense: The capacity of feeling immediately, (i.e. unconditioned by the knowledge of principles, causes, or advantages) the beauty and harmony (or their opposites) of material objects. (Francis Hutcheson.) -- K.E.G.
insanity ::: n. --> The state of being insane; unsoundness or derangement of mind; madness; lunacy.
Such a mental condition, as, either from the existence of delusions, or from incapacity to distinguish between right and wrong, with regard to any matter under action, does away with individual responsibility.
In scholasticism: means either faith or opinion. Opinion is a statement lacking evidence. Faith is a supernatural act, due to God's grace, referring to things reason finds beyond its capacity of proof, though not contradicting its principles. Statements capable of experimental proof are not objects of faith. -- R.A.
In Scholasticism: Reflexion is a property of spiritual or immaterial substances only. It is, therefore, a capacity of the human intellect which not only operates, but knows of its operating and may turn back on itself to know itself and its performances (reditio completa). A particular kind of reflexion is, in Thomism the reflexio super phantasma, by which the intellect retraces its steps until it reaches the phantasm from which it originally derived the universal; this is, according to Aquinas, the way the intellect comes to know the particular which, because material, is otherwise inaccessible to an immaterial faculty. -- R.A.
insufficiency ::: n. --> The quality or state of being insufficient; want of sufficiency; deficiency; inadequateness; as, the insufficiency of provisions, of an excuse, etc.
Want of power or skill; inability; incapacity; incompetency; as, the insufficiency of a man for an office.
insufficient ::: a. --> Not sufficient; not enough; inadequate to any need, use, or purpose; as, the provisions are insufficient in quantity, and defective in quality.
Wanting in strength, power, ability, capacity, or skill; incompetent; incapable; unfit; as, a person insufficient to discharge the duties of an office.
insusceptibility ::: n. --> Want of susceptibility, or of capacity to feel or perceive.
intellect ::: n. --> The part or faculty of the human soul by which it knows, as distinguished from the power to feel and to will; sometimes, the capacity for higher forms of knowledge, as distinguished from the power to perceive objects in their relations; the power to judge and comprehend; the thinking faculty; the understanding.
intellectual ::: a. --> Belonging to, or performed by, the intellect; mental; as, intellectual powers, activities, etc.
Endowed with intellect; having the power of understanding; having capacity for the higher forms of knowledge or thought; characterized by intelligence or mental capacity; as, an intellectual person.
Suitable for exercising the intellect; formed by, and existing for, the intellect alone; perceived by the intellect; as,
Intellectual virtues: See Dianoetic virtues. Intelligence: (Lat. intelligent, from intellegere, to understand) The capacity of the mind to meet effectively -- through the employment of memory, imagination and conceptual thinking -- the practical and theoretical problems with which it is confronted. Intelligence is more inclusive than intellect which is primarily conceptual. See Intellect.
intelligence ::: 1. A capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc. 2. Superior understanding. 3. An intelligent being, esp. one that is not embodied. Intelligence, Arch-Intelligence.
intelligence ::: n. --> The act or state of knowing; the exercise of the understanding.
The capacity to know or understand; readiness of comprehension; the intellect, as a gift or an endowment.
Information communicated; news; notice; advice.
Acquaintance; intercourse; familiarity.
Knowledge imparted or acquired, whether by study, research, or experience; general information.
intelligent ::: 1. Indicating high intelligence; perceptive. 2. Having the capacity for thought and reason especially to a high degree.
Intelsat "company, communications" A private satellite communications company that provides telephony, corporate network, {video} and {Internet} solutions around the globe via capacity on 25 geosynchronous satellites. (2003-05-13)
intermobility ::: n. --> Capacity of things to move among each other; as, the intermobility of fluid particles.
intolerance ::: n. --> Want of capacity to endure; as, intolerance of light.
The quality of being intolerant; refusal to allow to others the enjoyment of their opinions, chosen modes of worship, and the like; want of patience and forbearance; illiberality; bigotry; as, intolerance shown toward a religious sect.
Intrinsic goodness, or that which is good in itself without depending upon anything else for its goodness (though it may for its existence), is conceived in many ways: Realists, who agree that goodness is not dependent upon persons for its existence, say good is anything desirable or capable of arousing desire or interest, a quality of any desirable thing which can cause interest to be aroused or a capacity for being an end of action, that which ought to be desired, that which ought to be. Subjectivists, who agree that goodness is dependent upon persons for existence, hold views of two sorts: good is partially dependent upon persons as anything desired or "any object of any interest" (R. B. Perry), "a quality of any object of any interest" causing it to be desired (A. K. Rogers); good is completely dependent upon persons as sittsfaction of any desire or any interest in any object (DeW. H. Parker), pleasant feeling (Hedonism). See Value. Opposed to bad, evil, disvalue. -- A.J.B.
intuitive mind ::: same as vijñanabuddhi, a higher form of the buddhi whose "inspirations, revelations, intuitions, self-luminous discernings are messages from a higher knowledge-plane", but which "can perceive the truth only by a brilliant reflection or limited communication and subject to the restrictions and the inferior capacity of the mental vision".
jnanadharanasamarthyam ::: [capacity for receiving and sustaining knowledge].
judgment ::: 1. The capacity to assess situations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound conclusions. 2. An opinion or estimate formed after consideration or deliberation, especially a formal or authoritative decision. judgments.
judicially ::: adv. --> In a judicial capacity or judicial manner.
kilolitre ::: n. --> A measure of capacity equal to a cubic meter, or a thousand liters. It is equivalent to 35.315 cubic feet, and to 220.04 imperial gallons, or 264.18 American gallons of 321 cubic inches.
lapidescent ::: a. --> Undergoing the process of becoming stone; having the capacity of being converted into stone; having the quality of petrifying bodies. ::: n. --> Any substance which has the quality of petrifying other bodies, or of converting or being converted into stone.
large ::: superl. --> Exceeding most other things of like kind in bulk, capacity, quantity, superficial dimensions, or number of constituent units; big; great; capacious; extensive; -- opposed to small; as, a large horse; a large house or room; a large lake or pool; a large jug or spoon; a large vineyard; a large army; a large city.
Abundant; ample; as, a large supply of provisions.
Full in statement; diffuse; full; profuse.
Having more than usual power or capacity; having broad
leadership ::: capacity or ability to lead.
light ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” *The Life Divine
"Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.” *The Hour of God
"Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
The Mother: "The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Light, light"s, lights, light-petalled, light-tasselled, half-light.
line probing A feature of some {V.34} {modems} that will allow them to identify the capacity and quality of the phone line and adjust themselves to allow, for each individual connection, for maximum throughput using the highest possible data transmission rate. (1994-06-09)
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.
liquation ::: n. --> The act or operation of making or becoming liquid; also, the capacity of becoming liquid.
The process of separating, by heat, an easily fusible metal from one less fusible; eliquation.
litre ::: n. --> A measure of capacity in the metric system, being a cubic decimeter, equal to 61.022 cubic inches, or 2.113 American pints, or 1.76 English pints.
Same as Liter.
live ::: v. i. --> To be alive; to have life; to have, as an animal or a plant, the capacity of assimilating matter as food, and to be dependent on such assimilation for a continuance of existence; as, animals and plants that live to a great age are long in reaching maturity.
To pass one&
Logical Block Addressing "storage" (LBA) A {hard disk} {sector} addressing scheme used on all {SCSI} hard disks, and on {ATA-2} conforming {IDE} hard disks. The addressing conversion is performed by the hard disk firmware. Prior to LBA, combined limitations of {IBM PC} {BIOS} and {ATA} restricted the useful capacity of IDE hard disks on IBM PCs and compatibles to 1024 cylinders * 63 sectors per track * 16 heads * 512 bytes per sector = 528 million bytes = 504 megabytes. Modern BIOSes select LBA mode automatically, and work around the 1024-cylinder BIOS limit by representing a hard disk to the OS as having e.g. half as many cylinders and twice as many heads. However, there is still an unbreakable BIOS disk size limit of 1024 cylinders * 63 sectors per track * 256 heads * 512 bytes per sector = 8 gigabytes, but modern OSes (including {Windows 9x}, {Windows NT} and {Linux}) are not affected by it, since they issue direct LBA-based calls, bypassing the BIOS hard disk services completely. (2000-04-30)
magic number "jargon, programming" 1. In {source code}, some non-obvious constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line ({hard-coded}), rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commented "
Mahasarasvati bhava (Mahasaraswati bhava) ::: the MahasarasvatiMahasarasvati aspect of devibhava; the temperament of Mahasarasvati, the personality of the sakti or devi who "is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things".Mah Mahasarasvati-Mahakali
mahattvabodho, balaslagha, laghutvaṁ, dharan.asamarthyam (mahattwabodho, balaslagha, laghutwam, dharanasamarthyam) ::: the sense of a greatness of sustaining force, assertion of strength, lightness, the capacity to hold all workings of energy (the elements of dehasakti).
"Man is a transitional being, he is not final. He is too imperfect for that, too imperfect in capacity for knowledge, too imperfect in will and action, too imperfect in his turn towards joy and beauty, too imperfect in his will for freedom and his instinct for order. Even if he could perfect himself in his own type, his type is too low and small to satisfy the need of the universe. Something larger, higher, more capable of a rich all embracing universality is needed, a greater being, a greater consciousness summing up in itself all that the world set out to be. He has, as was pointed out by a half blind seer, to exceed himself; man must evolve out of himself the divine superman: he was born for transcendence. Humanity is not enough, it is only a strong stepping stone; the need of the world is a superhuman perfection of what the world can be, the goal of consciousness is divinity. The inmost need of man is not to perfect his humanity, but to be greater than himself, to be more than man, to be divine, even to be the Divine.” Essays Divine and Human
“Man is a transitional being, he is not final. He is too imperfect for that, too imperfect in capacity for knowledge, too imperfect in will and action, too imperfect in his turn towards joy and beauty, too imperfect in his will for freedom and his instinct for order. Even if he could perfect himself in his own type, his type is too low and small to satisfy the need of the universe. Something larger, higher, more capable of a rich all embracing universality is needed, a greater being, a greater consciousness summing up in itself all that the world set out to be. He has, as was pointed out by a half blind seer, to exceed himself; man must evolve out of himself the divine superman: he was born for transcendence. Humanity is not enough, it is only a strong stepping stone; the need of the world is a superhuman perfection of what the world can be, the goal of consciousness is divinity. The inmost need of man is not to perfect his humanity, but to be greater than himself, to be more than man, to be divine, even to be the Divine.” Essays Divine and Human
Manufacturer Resource Planning "application" (MRP II) A system based on {MRP} which allows manufacturers to optimise materials, procurement, manufacturing processes, etc., and provide financial and planning reports. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, manufacturers integrated MRP and other manufacturing and business functions. This renaissance is commonly known as Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II). According to the American Production and Inventory Control Society, Inc. (APICS), MRP II is a method for the effective planning of all resources of a manufacturing company. Ideally, it addresses operational planning in units, financial planning in dollars, and has a simulation capability to answer "what if" questions. It includes business planning, sales and operations planning, production scheduling, material requirements planning (MRP), capacity requirements planning, and the execution support systems for capacity and material. Output from these systems is integrated with financial reports such as the business plan, purchase commitment report, shipping budget, and inventory projections in dollars. Manufacturing resource planning is a direct outgrowth and extension of closed-loop MRP. See also {Enterprise Resource Planning}, {SAP} R/2, R/3, and {Baan}. (1999-02-16)
masamarthyam) ::: compassion, sovereignty, capacity for action (see next).
Material vital ::: The \ital so involved in Matter as to be bound by its movements and gross physical character; the action is to support and energise the body and keep in it the capacity of life, groulh, movement, etc., also of sensitiveness to outside impacts.
measurement ::: n. --> The act or result of measuring; mensuration; as, measurement is required.
The extent, size, capacity, amount. or quantity ascertained by measuring; as, its measurement is five acres.
measure ::: n. --> A standard of dimension; a fixed unit of quantity or extent; an extent or quantity in the fractions or multiples of which anything is estimated and stated; hence, a rule by which anything is adjusted or judged.
An instrument by means of which size or quantity is measured, as a graduated line, rod, vessel, or the like.
The dimensions or capacity of anything, reckoned according to some standard; size or extent, determined and stated; estimated
measuring-rod ::: an instrument, as a graduated rod or a container of standard capacity, for measuring.
megafarad ::: n. --> One of the larger measures of electrical capacity, amounting to one million farads; a macrofarad.
mesocephalic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to, or in the region of, the middle of the head; as, the mesocephalic flexure.
Having the cranial cavity of medium capacity; neither megacephalic nor microcephalic.
Having the ratio of the length to the breadth of the cranium a medium one; mesaticephalic.
metaphone "algorithm, text" An {algorithm} for encoding a word so that similar sounding words encode the same. It's similar to {soundex} in purpose, but as it knows the basic rules of English pronunciation it's more accurate. The higher accuracy doesn't come free, though, metaphone requires more computational power as well as more storage capacity, but neither of these requirements are usually prohibitive. It is in the public domain so it can be freely implemented. Metaphone was developed by Lawrence Philips "lphilips@verity.com". It is described in ["Practical Algorithms for Programmers", Binstock & Rex, Addison Wesley, 1995]. (1998-12-22)
might ::: 1. Power, force, or vigour, esp. of a great or supreme kind. 2. Power or ability to do or accomplish; capacity. Might, mights, Mights.
millilitre ::: n. --> A measure of capacity in the metric system, containing the thousandth part of a liter. It is a cubic centimeter, and is equal to .061 of an English cubic inch, or to .0338 of an American fluid ounce.
ministerially ::: adv. --> In a ministerial manner; in the character or capacity of a minister.
module ::: Any aspect of human capacity that can be trained (e.g., quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types).
monodynamic ::: a. --> Possessing but one capacity or power.
Moore's Law "architecture" /morz law/ The observation, made in 1965 by {Intel} co-founder {Gordon Moore} while preparing a speech, that each new memory {integrated circuit} contained roughly twice as much capacity as its predecessor, and each chip was released within 18-24 months of the previous chip. If this trend continued, he reasoned, computing power would rise exponentially with time. Moore's observation still holds in 1997 and is the basis for many performance forecasts. In 24 years the number of {transistors} on processor chips has increased by a factor of almost 2400, from 2300 on the {Intel 4004} in 1971 to 5.5 million on the {Pentium Pro} in 1995 (doubling roughly every two years). Date Chip Transistors MIPS clock/MHz ----------------------------------------------- Nov 1971 4004 2300 0.06 0.108 Apr 1974 8080 6000 0.64 2 Jun 1978 8086 29000 0.75 10 Feb 1982 80286 134000 2.66 12 Oct 1985 386DX 275000 5 16 Apr 1989 80486 1200000 20 25 Mar 1993 Pentium 3100000 112 66 Nov 1995 Pentium Pro 5500000 428 200 ----------------------------------------------- Moore's Law has been (mis)interpreted to mean many things over the years. In particular, {microprocessor} performance has increased faster than the number of transistors per chip. The number of {MIPS} has, on average, doubled every 1.8 years for the past 25 years, or every 1.6 years for the last 10 years. While more recent processors have had wider {data paths}, which would correspond to an increase in transistor count, their performance has also increased due to increased {clock rates}. Chip density in transistors per unit area has increased less quickly - a factor of only 146 between the 4004 (12 mm^2) and the Pentium Pro (196 mm^2) (doubling every 3.3 years). {Feature size} has decreased from 10 to 0.35 microns which would give over 800 times as many transistors per unit. However, the automatic layout required to cope with the increased complexity is less efficient than the hand layout used for early processors. {(http://intel.com/intel/museum/25anniv/html/hof/moore.htm)}. {Intel Microprocessor Quick Reference Guide (http://intel.com/pressroom/no_frame/quickref.htm)}. {"Birth of a Chip", Linley Gwennap, Byte, Dec 1996 (http://byte.com/art/9612/sec6/art2.htm)}. See also March 1997 "inbox". {Chronology of Events in the History of Microcomputers (http://islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist.htm)}, Ken Polsson. See also {Parkinson's Law of Data}. [{Jargon File}] (1997-03-04)
Mother, four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this Universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embo&es her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact per- fection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it Is these powers that they bring with them into the world. To the four we give the four great names, Maheshvari, Mahakali, Mabalakshmi, Mahasarasvati.
motion ::: n. --> The act, process, or state of changing place or position; movement; the passing of a body from one place or position to another, whether voluntary or involuntary; -- opposed to rest.
Power of, or capacity for, motion.
Direction of movement; course; tendency; as, the motion of the planets is from west to east.
Change in the relative position of the parts of anything; action of a machine with respect to the relative movement of its parts.
myrialitre ::: n. --> A metric measure of capacity, containing ten thousand liters. It is equal to 2641.7 wine gallons.
neurility ::: n. --> The special properties and functions of the nerves; that capacity for transmitting a stimulus which belongs to nerves.
Novell DOS "operating system, product" {Novell}'s fully compatible alternative to {MS-DOS}. It is intended as an {operating system} for {workstations} on {Novell} networks. It features enhanced {memory management} that moves the operating system, {network drivers}, and {memory-resident programs} ({TSRs}) out of conventional memory on all systems with an {Intel 80286} or later processor and {extended memory} or {expanded memory}. It supports {preemptive multitasking} and {peer-to-peer networking} using the same {DOS Requester} and {VLMs} for a "common client" with native {Novell NetWare}. A data {compression} utility effectively doubles storage capacity of the hard disk. It supports disk {defragmentation}, a read/write {disk cache} for better performance of both DOS and {Microsoft Windows} {application programs}. An undelete utility recovers erased files, even on network drives. It has a complete on-line reference guide, command help, and menu-driven install and setup utilities for easy configuration changes. Novell DOS has internal and external commands like {MS-DOS}. The following commands have been significantly enhanced in Novell DOS: CHKDSK, DISKCOPY, HELP, MEM, REPLACE, UNDELETE, and XCOPY. Novell DOS also includes many new commands such as XDIR, CURSOR, XDEL, TOUCH, SCRIPT, and RENDIR. Version: 7. (1995-04-14)
occupy ::: v. t. --> To take or hold possession of; to hold or keep for use; to possess.
To hold, or fill, the dimensions of; to take up the room or space of; to cover or fill; as, the camp occupies five acres of ground.
To possess or use the time or capacity of; to engage the service of; to employ; to busy.
To do business in; to busy one&
One ought not to settle down into a fixed idea of one’s own incapacity or allow it to become an obsession ; for such an atti- tude has no true justification and unnecessarily renders the way harder. Where there is a soul that has once become awake, there is surely a capacity within that can outweigh all surface defects and can in the end conquer.
optical disk drive "hardware" (Or "optical disc drive", "optical storage") A generic term for any device that reads and/or writes {optical media}, i.e. {compact discs}, {DVDs} and/or {Blu-ray discs} or future media that uses light (from a small laser) to read data off a removable, rotating disk. At least one such drive is commonly installed in most {personal computers} to allow them to play and/or record {audio} and {video} media and load and store data such as program {installers}. The {floppy disk} has been replaced by optical media due to its vastly greater capacity, e.g. 50,000 {megabytes} for a dual-layer {blu-ray disc} compared with 1.5 {megabytes} for a floppy (over 30,000 times as much). (2014-04-27)
organize ::: v. t. --> To furnish with organs; to give an organic structure to; to endow with capacity for the functions of life; as, an organized being; organized matter; -- in this sense used chiefly in the past participle.
To arrange or constitute in parts, each having a special function, act, office, or relation; to systematize; to get into working order; -- applied to products of the human intellect, or to human institutions and undertakings, as a science, a government, an
::: "Our incapacity does not matter — there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable — but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one"s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga
“Our incapacity does not matter—there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable—but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one’s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga
Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision's limited range. For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere. God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 188
“Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision’s limited range.
overmind ::: (from 29 October 1927 onwards) the highest plane or system of planes of consciousness below supermind or divine gnosis; especially the principal plane in the overmind system, apparently corresponding to what earlier in 1927 was referred to as supreme supermind. Possessing "an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity", the overmind "takes up all that is in the three steps below it and raises their characteristic workings to their highest and largest power, adding to them a universal wideness of consciousness and force"
passion ::: n. --> A suffering or enduring of imposed or inflicted pain; any suffering or distress (as, a cardiac passion); specifically, the suffering of Christ between the time of the last supper and his death, esp. in the garden upon the cross.
The state of being acted upon; subjection to an external agent or influence; a passive condition; -- opposed to action.
Capacity of being affected by external agents; susceptibility of impressions from external agents.
PATIENCE. ::: The capacity to wait steadily for the realisa- tion to come.
personable ::: a. --> Having a well-formed body, or person; graceful; comely; of good appearance; presentable; as, a personable man or woman.
Enabled to maintain pleas in court.
Having capacity to take anything granted.
personality ::: n. --> That which constitutes distinction of person; individuality.
Something said or written which refers to the person, conduct, etc., of some individual, especially something of a disparaging or offensive nature; personal remarks; as, indulgence in personalities.
That quality of a law which concerns the condition, state, and capacity of persons.
piggybacking 1. A method for passing {acknowledgement frames} and {data frames} in the same direction along a line. 2. The practice of increasing memory capacity by soldering chips on top of other chips. The chip-enable or high address pins would be connected to the {address bus} by a flying lead. Many {Ohio Superboards} were expanded to a massive 8K of {RAM} in this way. (1994-11-29)
pigmy ::: 1. Of very small size, capacity, or power. 2. Unusually or atypically small.
pint ::: n. --> A measure of capacity, equal to half a quart, or four gills, -- used in liquid and dry measures. See Quart.
The laughing gull.
plastic ::: “That which can easily change its form is ‘plastic’. Figuratively, it is suppleness, a capacity of adaptation to circumstances and necessities.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 4.
Platonic Realism: See Realism. Platonism: The philosophy of Plato marks one of the high points in the development of Greek philosophical genius Platomsm is characterised by a partial contempt for sense knowledge and empirical studies, by a high regard for mathematics and its method, by a longing for another and better world, by a frankly spiritualistic view of life, by its use of a method of discussion involving an accumulation of ever more profound insights rather than the formal logic of Aristotle, and, above all, by an unswerving faith in the capacity of the human mind to attain absolute truth and to use this truth in the rational direction of human life and affairs.
platymeter ::: n. --> An apparatus for measuring the capacity of condensers, or the inductive capacity of dielectrics.
pneumometry ::: n. --> Measurement of the capacity of the lungs for air.
portage ::: n. --> A sailor&
Postulate: See Mathematics. Potency: (Scholastic) Potency is opposed to act as asserted of being. It means the capacity of being or of being thus. Prime matter (q.v.) is pure potency, indetermined in regard to actual corporeal being. Any change or development or, generally, becoming presupposes a corresponding potency. Some potencies belong to the nature of a thing, others are merely passive and consist in non-repugnance. Thus to be thrown is not due to a potency strictly speaking in the stone which has, in regard to this a "merely obediential" potency. The first kind is also called operative potency. -- R.A.
potence ::: n. --> Potency; capacity.
potency ::: 1. Efficacy; effectiveness; strength. 2. Inherent capacity for growth and development; potentiality. potencies.
Potentiality: See Dynamis. Power: In general: the physical, mental and moral ability to act or to receive an action; the general faculty of doing, making, performing, realizing, achieving, producing or succeeding; ability, capacity, virtue, virtuality, potency, potentiality, faculty, efficacy, efficacity, efficiency, operative causality, process of change or becoming; natural operative force, energy, vigor, strength, or effective condition applied or applicable to work; person, agent, body, institution, government or state, having or exercising an ability to act in accordance with its nature and functions; spirit, divinity, deity, superhuman agent, supernatural principle of activity; an attribute or name of God; in theology, an order of angels; in law the authority, capacity or right to exercise certain natural and legal prerogatives, also, the authority vestcd in a person by law; influence, prerogative, force. A. In psychology, power is sometimes synonymous with faculty (q.v.). It also means a quality which renders the nature of an individual agent apt to elicit certain physical and moral actions. Hence, power is a natural endowment enabling the intellect to condition the will and thus create hibits and virtues, in a higher degree, power is a moral disposition enabling the individual to cultivate his perfectibility. The distinction between powers is given by the distinction of their actions. Powers are acthe or operative, and passive or receptive; they are immediate or remote. Even impotence and incapacity are not different in kind from power, but simply in degree. These Aristotelian views on power, including its ontological interpretation, have held the ground for centuries, and we find them partly also in Hobbes and Locke who defined power as the ability to make or to receive change. Hume's analysis of power showed it to be an illusion; and with the advent of positivism and experimental psychology, this concept lost much of its value. The notion of power has been used by Fechner in his doctrine and law concerning the relation between stimuli and sensations.
pounder ::: n. --> One who, or that which, pounds, as a stamp in an ore mill.
An instrument used for pounding; a pestle.
A person or thing, so called with reference to a certain number of pounds in value, weight, capacity, etc.; as, a cannon carrying a twelve-pound ball is called a twelve pounder.
power ::: n. --> Same as Poor, the fish.
Ability to act, regarded as latent or inherent; the faculty of doing or performing something; capacity for action or performance; capability of producing an effect, whether physical or moral: potency; might; as, a man of great power; the power of capillary attraction; money gives power.
Ability, regarded as put forth or exerted; strength, force, or energy in action; as, the power of steam in moving an engine; the
prakasho, vichitrabodho, jnanasamarthyam) ::: purity, clarity, variety of understanding, capacity for all knowledge (the elements of buddhisakti).
pran.asakti (pranashakti; prana-shakti) ::: life-force, "a pervading vital pranasakti force other than the physical energy", which one can come to feel "concretely with a mental sense, see its courses and movements, and direct and act upon it immediately by the will"; pran.a as a universal force "which in various forms sustains or drives material energy in all physical things"; the power, capacity and right state of activity of the sūks.ma pran.a or vital being, one of the four kinds of sakti forming the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya.
pregnancy ::: n. --> The condition of being pregnant; the state of being with young.
Figuratively: The quality of being heavy with important contents, issue, significance, etc.; unusual consequence or capacity; fertility.
premasamarthyam ::: rich. slagha, kalyanasraddha, ness of feeling, assertion of psychic force, faith in the universal good, capacity for unbounded love (the elements of cittasakti). snigdhata, tejah.s.lagha, kalyan.asraddha, premasamarthyam, iti snigdhata,
prema-samarthya ::: power of [capacity for] love.
prepotency ::: n. --> The quality or condition of being prepotent; predominance.
The capacity, on the part of one of the parents, as compared with the other, to transmit more than his or her own share of characteristics to their offspring.
professionally ::: adv. --> In a professional manner or capacity; by profession or calling; in the exercise of one&
propheticalness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being prophetical; power or capacity to foretell.
proxy ::: n. --> The agency for another who acts through the agent; authority to act for another, esp. to vote in a legislative or corporate capacity.
The person who is substituted or deputed to act or vote for another.
A writing by which one person authorizes another to vote in his stead, as in a corporation meeting.
The written appointment of a proctor in suits in the
Purity, simple sincerity and capacity of an unegoistic, unmIxed self-offering without pretension or demand are the conditions of an entire opening of the psychic being.
pūrn.ata, prasannata, samata, bhogasamarthyam ::: fullness, clearpurnata, ness, equality, capacity for enjoyment (the elements of pran.asakti). pūrn.ata, prasannata, samata, bhogasamarthyam, iti pran.asaktih. purnata,
(purnata, prasannata, samata, bhogasamarthyam, iti pranashaktih) ::: fullness, clearness, equality, capacity for enjoyment: these constitute the power of the life-force. purna p
qua ::: conj. --> In so far as; in the capacity or character of; as.
qualification ::: n. --> The act of qualifying, or the condition of being qualified.
That which qualifies; any natural endowment, or any acquirement, which fits a person for a place, office, or employment, or which enables him to sustian any character with success; an enabling quality or circumstance; requisite capacity or possession.
The act of limiting, or the state of being limited; that which qualifies by limiting; modification; restriction; hence,
qualify ::: v. t. --> To make such as is required; to give added or requisite qualities to; to fit, as for a place, office, occupation, or character; to furnish with the knowledge, skill, or other accomplishment necessary for a purpose; to make capable, as of an employment or privilege; to supply with legal power or capacity.
To give individual quality to; to modulate; to vary; to regulate.
To reduce from a general, undefined, or comprehensive
Quarter Inch Cartridge "storage" /kwik/ (QIC) a type of {magnetic tape} and {tape drive}. Development standards for QIC make it possible for tapes written on one QIC drive to be read on another. QIC drives are made to work with different lengths of tape. The model number of the drive consists of QIC followed by a number which indicates the drives tape capacity in {megabytes} (MB). (1996-12-09)
quart ::: n. --> The fourth part; a quarter; hence, a region of the earth.
A measure of capacity, both in dry and in liquid measure; the fourth part of a gallon; the eighth part of a peck; two pints.
A vessel or measure containing a quart.
In cards, four successive cards of the same suit. Cf. Tierce, 4.
rajas ::: (etymologically) "the shining"; (in the Veda) the antariks.a,"the middle world, the vital or dynamic plane" between heaven (the mental plane) and earth (the physical); "luminous power" established in this intermediate realm; (post-Vedic) the second of the three modes (trigun.a) of the energy of the lower prakr.ti, the gun.a that is "the seed of force and action" and "creates the workings of energy"; it is a deformation of tapas or pravr.tti, the corresponding quality in the higher prakr.ti, and is converted back into pure tapas or pravr.tti in the process of traigun.yasiddhi. This kinetic force "has its strongest hold on the vital nature", where it "turns always to action and desire", but "finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; therefore its whole action takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering".
Raja yoga ::: This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts th
refore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalinı, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi. By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. For the ancient system of Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 36-37
Ratio: According to St. Augustine, reason is the mind's capacity of distinguishing and connecting the things that are learned. Ratio est mentis motio ea quae discuntur distinguendi et connectendi potens. He also calls it an aspectus animi, quo per seipsum, non per corpus verum intuetur. It precedes the exercise of the intellectual capacity. He says of man: Nam ideo vult intelligere, quia ratio praecedit. Reason is, however, inferior to the intellect. Man possesses reason before he begins the activity of intellection, which is a contemplation. Action is rather the province of reason. -- J.J.R.
reach ::: n. 1. Range of effective action, power, or capacity, area, sphere, scope. 2. The range of influence, power, jurisdiction, etc. reaches. v. 3. To stretch out or put forth (a body part); extend. 4. To arrive at or get to (a place, person, etc.) in the course of movement or action. 5. To arrive at; attain. 6. To make contact or communication with (someone). 7. To extend in influence or operation. reaches, reached, reaching.
reason ::: n. --> A thought or a consideration offered in support of a determination or an opinion; a just ground for a conclusion or an action; that which is offered or accepted as an explanation; the efficient cause of an occurrence or a phenomenon; a motive for an action or a determination; proof, more or less decisive, for an opinion or a conclusion; principle; efficient cause; final cause; ground of argument.
The faculty or capacity of the human mind by which it is
recapacitate ::: v. t. --> To qualify again; to confer capacity on again.
receipt ::: n. --> The act of receiving; reception.
Reception, as an act of hospitality.
Capability of receiving; capacity.
Place of receiving.
Hence, a recess; a retired place.
A formulary according to the directions of which things are to be taken or combined; a recipe; as, a receipt for making sponge cake.
receptivity ::: n. --> The state or quality of being receptive.
The power or capacity of receiving impressions, as those of the external senses.
RECEPTIVITY. ::: The capacity of admitting and retaining the Divine workings.
receptivity ::: the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action; the capacity of admitting and retaining the divine workings. "One may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. The force works...behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little" [S24:1361]
Redundant Array of Independent Disks "storage, architecture" (RAID) A standard naming convention for various ways of using multiple disk drives to provide redundancy and distributed I/O. The original ("..Inexpensive..") term referred to the 3.5 and 5.25 inch disks used for the first RAID system but no longer applies. As {solid state drives} are becoming a practical repacement for magnetic disks, "RAID" is sometimes expanded as "Redundant Array of Independent Drives". The following standard RAID specifications exist: RAID 0 Non-redundant striped array RAID 1 Mirrored arrays RAID 2 Parallel array with ECC RAID 3 Parallel array with parity RAID 4 Striped array with parity RAID 5 Striped array with rotating parity RAID originated in a project at the computer science department of the {University of California at Berkeley}, under the direction of Professor Katz, in conjunction with Professor {John Ousterhout} and Professor {David Patterson}. A prototype disk array file server with a capacity of 40 GBytes and a sustained bandwidth of 80 MBytes/second was interfaced to a 1 Gb/s {local area network}. It was planned to extend the storage array to include automated {optical disks} and {magnetic tapes}. {(ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/doc/techreports/berkeley.edu/raid/raidPapers)}. {(http://HTTP.CS.Berkeley.EDU/projects/parallel/research_summaries/14-Computer-Architecture/)}. ["A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)", "D. A. Patterson and G. Gibson and R. H. Katz", Proc ACM SIGMOD Conf, Chicago, IL, Jun 1988]. ["Introduction to Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)", "D. A. Patterson and P. Chen and G. Gibson and R. H. Katz", IEEE COMPCON 89, San Francisco, Feb-Mar 1989]. (2012-08-26)
reference ::: n. --> The act of referring, or the state of being referred; as, reference to a chart for guidance.
That which refers to something; a specific direction of the attention; as, a reference in a text-book.
Relation; regard; respect.
One who, or that which, is referred to.
One of whom inquires can be made as to the integrity, capacity, and the like, of another.
reflection ::: n. --> The act of reflecting, or turning or sending back, or the state of being reflected.
The return of rays, beams, sound, or the like, from a surface. See Angle of reflection, below.
The reverting of the mind to that which has already occupied it; continued consideration; meditation; contemplation; hence, also, that operation or power of the mind by which it is conscious of its own acts or states; the capacity for judging rationally, especially
rehabilitate ::: v. t. --> To invest or clothe again with some right, authority, or dignity; to restore to a former capacity; to reinstate; to qualify again; to restore, as a delinquent, to a former right, rank, or privilege lost or forfeited; -- a term of civil and canon law.
repellency ::: n. --> The principle of repulsion; the quality or capacity of repelling; repulsion.
Retentiveness: (Lat. re + tendere, to hold) The mind's capacity to retain and subsequently revive earlier experiences. See Memory. -- L.W.
sack ::: n. --> A name formerly given to various dry Spanish wines.
A bag for holding and carrying goods of any kind; a receptacle made of some kind of pliable material, as cloth, leather, and the like; a large pouch.
A measure of varying capacity, according to local usage and the substance. The American sack of salt is 215 pounds; the sack of wheat, two bushels.
Originally, a loosely hanging garment for women, worn like a
sakti (shakti) ::: force, power; capacity; the supreme Power, the "Consakti scious Force which forms and moves the worlds", the goddess (devi) who is "the self-existent, self-cognitive Power of the Lord" (isvara, deva, purus.a), expressing herself in the workings of prakr.ti; any of the various aspects of this Power, particularly Mahesvari, Mahakali,Mahalaks.mi or Mahasarasvati, each corresponding to an aspect of the fourfold isvara and manifesting in an element of devibhava or daivi prakr.ti; the soul-power which reveals itself in each element of the fourfold personality (brahmasakti, ks.atrasakti, vaisyasakti and sūdrasakti); "the right condition of the powers of the intelligence, heart, vital mind and body", the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya; the sakti catus.t.aya as a whole; spiritual force acting through the siddhis of power. sakti catustaya sakti
samadhi ::: Yogic trance (in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness); [in the Gita]: calm, desireless, griefless fixity of the buddhi in self-poise and self-knowledge. ::: samadhih [nominative]
samarthya ::: capacity. samarthya
sama (shama) ::: a mental imitation of the true sama or divine calm of the traigun.yasiddhi; the inactivity of an enlightened tamas "which by this saving enlightenment is more of a quiescence than an incapacity". mental sus susupti
sama (shama; çama) ::: quietude, peace, calm; rest, quiescence, passama sivity; the "divine peace and tranquil eternal repose" which replaces tamas in the liberation (mukti) of the nature from the trigun.a of the lower prakr.ti, "a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of action, but a perfect power, sakti, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law of calm even the most stupendous and enormous activity".
samata ::: equality, equanimity, "the capacity of receiving with a calm samata and equal mind all the attacks and appearances of outward things", the first member of the samata / santi catus.t.aya, consisting of passive / negative samata and active / positive samata, "samata in reception of the things of the outward world and samata in reaction to them"; sometimes restricted to the first of these or extended to refer to the samata catus.t.aya as a whole; also an element of pran.asakti. samat samata a catus catustaya
sarvajnana-samarthya ::: [capacity for all knowledge]; integral capacity of the thinking intelligence.
saturation 1. "graphics" In colour theory, the "colourfulness" of a stimulus relative to its {brightness}, the amount of the dominant wavelength relative to other wavelengths in the colour, one of the three coordinates in the {hue, saturation, value} (HSV) and {hue, saturation, brightness} (HSB) {colour models}. White, black and grey contain equal amounts of red, green and blue light and are completely unsaturated. A pure colour with very little gray in it is highly saturated. The amount of saturation does not affect the {hue} of a colour and is unrelated to the {value} (total amount of light in a colour). There are several competing mathematical definitions of saturation. {(http://www.ncsu.edu/scivis/lessons/colormodels/color_models2.html
Scepticism, Fourteenth Century: At the beginning of the 14th century, Duns Scotus adopted a position which is not formally sceptical, though his critical attitude to earlier scholasticism may contain the germs of the scepticism of his century. Among Scotistic pre-sceptical tendencies may be mentioned the stress on self-knowledge rather than the knowledge of extra-mental reality, psychological voluntarism which eventuallj made the assent of judgment a matter of will rather than of intellect, and a theory of the reality of universal essences which led to a despair of the intellect's capacity to know such objects and thus spawned Ockhamism. Before 1317, Henry of Harclay noticed that, since the two terms of efficient causal connection are mutually distinct and absolute things, God, by his omnipotent will, can cause anything which naturally (naturaliter) is caused by a finite agent. He inferred from this that neither the present nor past existence of a finite external agent is necessarily involved in cognition (Pelstex p. 346). Later Petrus Aureoli and Ockham made the sime observation (Michalski, p. 94), and Ockham concluded that natural knowledge of substance and causal connection is possible only on the assumption that nature is pursuing a uniform, uninterrupted course at the moment of intuitive cognition. Without this assumption, observed sequences might well be the occasion of direct divine causal action rather than evidence of natural causation. It is possible that these sceptical views were suggested by reading the arguments of certain Moslem theologians (Al Gazali and the Mutakallimun), as well as by a consideration of miracles. The most influential sceptical author of the fourteenth century was Nicholas of Autrecourt (fl. 1340). Influenced perhaps by the Scotist conception of logical demonstration, Nicholas held that the law of noncontradiction is the ultimate and sole source of certainty. In logical inference, certainty is guaranteed because the consequent is identical with part or all of the antecedent. No logical connection can be established, therefore, between the existence or non-existence of one thing and the existence or non-existence of another and different thing. The inference from cause to effect or conversely is thus not a matter of certainty. The existence of substance, spiritual or physical, is neither known nor probable. We are unable to infer the existence of intellect or will from acts of intellection or volition, and sensible experience provides no evidence of external substances. The only certitudes properly so-called are those of immediate experience and those of principles known ex terminis together with conclusions immediately dependent on them. This thoroughgoing scepticism appears to have had considerable influence in its time, for we find many philosophers expressing, expounding, or criticizing it. John Buridan has a detailed criticism in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics (in 1 I, q. 4), Fitz-Ralph, Jacques d'Eltville, and Pierre d'Ailly maintain views similar to Nicholas', with some modifications, and there is at least one exposition of Nicholas' views in an anonymous commentary on the Sentences (British Museum, Ms. Harley 3243). These sceptical views were usually accompanied by a kind of probabilism. The condemnation of Nicholas in 1347 put a damper on the sceptical movement, and there is probably no continuity from these thinkers to the French sceptics of the 16th century. Despite this lack of direct influence, the sceptical arguments of 14th century thinkers bear marked resemblances to those employed by the French Occasionalists, Berkeley and Hume.
scrofula ::: n. --> A constitutional disease, generally hereditary, especially manifested by chronic enlargement and cheesy degeneration of the lymphatic glands, particularly those of the neck, and marked by a tendency to the development of chronic intractable inflammations of the skin, mucous membrane, bones, joints, and other parts, and by a diminution in the power of resistance to disease or injury and the capacity for recovery. Scrofula is now generally held to be tuberculous in character, and may develop into general or local tuberculosis
second-sight ::: n. --> The power of discerning what is not visible to the physical eye, or of foreseeing future events, esp. such as are of a disastrous kind; the capacity of a seer; prophetic vision.
Second Tier ::: Used to summarize the Flex Flow and Global View stages of value systems development from the Spiral Dynamics model. These stages are defined by their capacity to see the relative importance of all value systems, as opposed to First-Tier value systems, which declare their values to be the only correct values. Integral Theory uses Second Tier to refer to the Teal and Turquoise levels of developmental altitude.
self-complacent ::: a. --> Satisfied with one&
sense ::: n. 1. Any of the faculties, as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch, by which humans and animals perceive stimuli originating from outside or inside the body. 2. Meaning, signification. 3. A more or less vague perception or impression. 4. Any special capacity or perception, estimation, appreciation, etc. 5. A mental or spiritual discernment, realization, or recognition of a dream, or of anything cryptic or symbolical. sense"s, senses, senses", sense-appeal, sense-formed, sense-life"s, sense-pangs, sense-pleasures, sense-railed, sense-shackled, soul-sense. v. 6. To apprehend, detect, or perceive, without or in advance of the evidence of the senses; to perceive instinctively. 7. To be inwardly aware; conscious of. sensed, sensing. *adj. *sensed.
sensibility ::: 1. Capacity for sensation or feeling; responsiveness or susceptibility to sensory stimuli. 2. Mental or emotional responsiveness toward something; such as the feelings of another; discernment; awareness. sensibilities.
sensibility ::: n. --> The quality or state of being sensible, or capable of sensation; capacity to feel or perceive.
The capacity of emotion or feeling, as distinguished from the intellect and the will; peculiar susceptibility of impression, pleasurable or painful; delicacy of feeling; quick emotion or sympathy; as, sensibility to pleasure or pain; sensibility to shame or praise; exquisite sensibility; -- often used in the plural.
Experience of sensation; actual feeling.
sensible ::: a. --> Capable of being perceived by the senses; apprehensible through the bodily organs; hence, also, perceptible to the mind; making an impression upon the sense, reason, or understanding; ////// heat; sensible resistance.
Having the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects; capable of perceiving by the instrumentality of the proper organs; liable to be affected physsically or mentally; impressible.
sensibleness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being sensible; sensibility; appreciation; capacity of perception; susceptibility.
Intelligence; reasonableness; good sense.
sensitive ::: a. --> Having sense of feeling; possessing or exhibiting the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects; as, a sensitive soul.
Having quick and acute sensibility, either to the action of external objects, or to impressions upon the mind and feelings; highly susceptible; easily and acutely affected.
Having a capacity of being easily affected or moved; as, a sensitive thermometer; sensitive scales.
shiftless ::: a. --> Destitute of expedients, or not using successful expedients; characterized by failure, especially by failure to provide for one&
Smart Battery Data "hardware, protocol" (SBD) A method to monitor a rechargeable battery pack, initiated by {Duracell} and {Intel}. An special {IC} in the battery pack monitors the battery and reports information to the {SMBus}. This information might include: type, model number, manufacturer, characteristics, discharge rate, predicted remaining capacity, almost-discharged alarm so that the PC can shut down gracefully; temperature and voltage to provide safe fast-charging. {Smart Battery System Implementers Forum (http://sbs-forum.org/)}. (1999-08-08)
SNR bandwidth product "communications" The {integral} of the {SNR} over {frequency}. The SNR bandwidth product is an important limit in the capacity of a communication channel. (2003-07-20)
Solid State Disk (SSD) "storage" Any kind of {solid-state storage device} that appears to the system as a disk drive. SSDs are more expensive that the same capacity of magnetic disk but have much shorter {access time}. (2013-04-27)
sonometer ::: n. --> An instrument for exhibiting the transverse vibrations of cords, and ascertaining the relations between musical notes. It consists of a cord stretched by weight along a box, and divided into different lengths at pleasure by a bridge, the place of which is determined by a scale on the face of the box.
An instrument for testing the hearing capacity.
SPEC rate "benchmark" Results of the throughput measurement using {SPEC} {benchmark} suites {CINT92} and {CFP92}. With the throughput measurement method, several copies of a given benchmark are executed. The method is particularly suitable for {multiprocessor} systems. The results, called SPEC rate, express how many jobs of a particular type (characterised by the individual benchmark) can be executed in a given time (The SPEC reference time happens to be a week, the execution times are normalized with respect to a {VAX 11/780}). The SPEC rates therefore characterise the capacity of a system for compute-intensive jobs of similar characteristics. See also {SPEC ratio}. (1994-11-14)
Spens, Will: An English educator (born 1882), who as Master of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, has written widely on educational theory. In philosophy and theology, he has developed a theory of Christian doctrine as based on religious experience, which it generalizes and states in terms whose adequacy is determined by their capacity to nourish and develop that experience (Belief and Practice); he has also written on sacramental theology, including several essays (chiefly in the symposium Essays, Catholic and Critical) on the Eucharist; here his view is that by the "real presence" is meant the congeries of opportunities of experiencing through material means the spiritual reality of Christ. -- W.N.P.
spirometer ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring the vital capacity of the lungs, or the volume of air which can be expelled from the chest after the deepest possible inspiration. Cf. Pneumatometer.
spirometry ::: n. --> The act or process of measuring the chest capacity by means of a spirometer.
spiroscope ::: n. --> A wet meter used to determine the breathing capacity of the lungs.
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: . . . . Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of a limited capacity of knowledge, a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious and visible the things that are not obvious and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of the possible and the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true to outer experience. That is at least the appearance of its operation; but, in reality, it is the mind"s way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilities, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.” *Essays Divine and Human
stereometer ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring the solid contents of a body, or the capacity of a vessel; a volumenometer.
An instrument for determining the specific gravity of liquid bodies, porous bodies, and powders, as well as solids.
sthairya ::: [steadiness]; the capacity of fixity (in jnana) . ::: sthairyam [nominative]
sthairya (sthairya; sthairyam) ::: steadiness; constancy; "the capacity of fixity in jnana", an attribute of the brahman.a; a term in the second general formula of the sakti catus.t.aya.
Storage Area Network "storage" (SAN) A high-speed subnetwork of shared storage devices. A storage device is a machine that contains nothing but a disk or disks for storing data. A SAN's architecture works in a way that makes all storage devices available to all servers on a LAN or WAN. As more storage devices are added to a SAN, they too will be accessible from any server in the larger network. The server merely acts as a pathway between the end user and the stored data. Because stored data does not reside directly on any of a network's servers, server power is used for business applications, and network capacity is released to the end user.
Storage Management Services "storage" (SMS) Software that enables network administrators to route {backup} data from various devices on a network to another device such as a server or a {magnetic tape} backup unit. This is done either to make use of a high-capacity storage system such as a tape {juke-box} or for disaster protection. (1996-02-18)
strength ::: n. --> The quality or state of being strong; ability to do or to bear; capacity for exertion or endurance, whether physical, intellectual, or moral; force; vigor; power; as, strength of body or of the arm; strength of mind, of memory, or of judgment.
Power to resist force; solidity or toughness; the quality of bodies by which they endure the application of force without breaking or yielding; -- in this sense opposed to frangibility; as, the strength of a bone, of a beam, of a wall, a rope, and the like.
subtle Matter ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use of for the manifestation of their forms and forces.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"All that manifested from the Eternal has already been arranged in worlds or planes of its own nature, planes of subtle Matter, planes of Life, planes of Mind, planes of Supermind, planes of the triune luminous Infinite. But these worlds or planes are not evolutionary but typal. A typal world is one in which some ruling principle manifests itself in its free and full capacity and energy and form are plastic and subservient to its purpose. Its expressions are therefore automatic and satisfying and do not need to evolve; they stand so long as need be and do not need to be born, develop, decline and disintegrate.” Essays Divine and Human*
surpass ::: 1. To go beyond in excellence or achievement; be superior to; excel. 2. To go beyond in amount, extent, or degree; be greater than; exceed. 3. To be beyond the limit, powers, or capacity of; transcend. surpasses, surpassed.
svasakti (swashakti; swaçakti) ::: "self-power"; one"s own power or svasakti capacity; the power of the divine sakti manifested in oneself.
Synaesthesia: (Gr. syn. with + aesthesis, sensation) A connection between sensation of different senses which is indepedent of association established by experience. For example, the capacity of certain musical notes to induce color-images. -- L.W.
tamas ::: darkness, obscurity; [one of the three gunas]: the mode of ignorance and inertia, the force of inconscience (translates in quality as incapacity and inaction) .
tamas ::: darkness; the lowest of the three modes (trigun.a) of the energy of the lower prakr.ti, the gun.a that is "the seed of inertia and non-intelligence", the denial of rajas and sattva, and "dissolves what they create and conserve"; it is a deformation of sama, the corresponding quality in the higher prakr.ti, "an obscurity which mistranslates, we may say, into inaction of power and inaction of knowledge the Spirit"s eternal principle of calm and repose", and it is converted back into pure sama in the process of traigun.yasiddhi. This principle of inertia "is strongest in material nature and in our physical being"; its "stigmata . . . are blindness and unconsciousness and incapacity and unintelligence, sloth and indolence and inactivity and mechanical routine and the mind"s torpor and the life"s sleep and the soul"s slumber".
TAMAS. ::: One of the three gut^as, fundamental qualities or modes of Nature ; principle of inertia of consciousness and force ; translates in quality as obscurity and incapacity and inaction.
telepathy ::: the faculty formed by the combination of prakamya and vyapti, the two siddhis of knowledge; also, either one of these powers separately. Telepathy is the capacity of consciousness "to communicate between one mind and another without physical means consciously and voluntarily", overcoming the habitual limitations because of which "Consciousness in one material being communicates with the same consciousness in another material being by certain fixed methods such as speech, gesture, writing etc. and unconscious mental communication". telepathy-trik telepathy-trikaladrsti aladr.s.t.i (telepathy-trikaldrishti; telepathy trikaldrishti)
testamentary ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a will, or testament; as, letters testamentary.
Bequeathed by will; given by testament.
Done, appointed by, or founded on, a testament, or will; as, a testamentary guardian of a minor, who may be appointed by the will of a father to act in that capacity until the child becomes of age.
The causes which it is the aim of scientific inquiry to discover are of four sorts: the material cause (that of which a thing is made), the efficient cause (that by which it comes into being), the formal cause (its essence or nature, i.e. what it is), and the final cause (its end, or that for which it exists). In natural objects, as distinct from the products of art, the last three causes coincide; for the end of a natural object is the realization of its essence, and likewise it is this identical essence embodied in another individual that is the efficient cause in its production. Thus for Aristotle every object in the sense world is a union of two ultimate principles: the material constituents, or matter (hyle), and the form, structure, or essence which makes of these constituents the determinate kind of being it is. Nor is this union an external or arbitrary one; for the matter is in every case to be regarded as possessing the capacity for the form, as being potentially the formed matter. Likewise the form has being only in the succession of its material embodiments. Thus Aristotle opposes what he considers to be the Platonic doctrine that real being belongs only to the forms or universals, whose existence is independent of the objects that imperfectly manifest them. On the other hand, against the earlier nature-philosophies that found their explanatory principles in matter, to the neglect of form, Aristotle affirms that matter must be conceived as a locus of determinate potentialities that become actualized only through the activity of forms.
The fear of death shows a vital weakness which is also contrary to a capacity for yoga. Equally, one who is under the domination of his passions, would find the yoga dilhcuU and, unless supported by a true inner call and a sincere and strong aspiration for the spiritual consciousness and union with the Divine, might very easily fall fatally and his effort come to nothing.
The gunas affect every part of our natural being. They have indeed their strongest relative hold in the three different members of it, mind, life and body. Tamas, the principle of inertia, is strongest in material nature and in our physical being. The action of this principle is of two kinds, inertia of force and inertia of knowledge. Whatever is predominantly governed by Tamas, tends in its force to a sluggish inaction and immobility or else to a mechanical action which it does not possess, but is possessed by obscure forces which drive it in a mechanical round of energy; equally in its consciousness it turns to an inconscience or enveloped subconscience or to a reluctant, sluggish or in some way mechanical conscious action which does not possess the idea of its own energy, but is guided by an idea which seems external to it or at least concealed from its active awareness. Thus the principle of our body is in its nature inert, subconscient, incapable of anything but a mechanical and habitual self-guidance and action: though it has like everything else a principle of kinesis and a principle of equilibrium of its state and action, an inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness, the greatest portion of its rajasic motions are contributed by the lifepower and all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle of rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is the Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but the life-power in earthly beings is possessed by the force of desire, th
refore rajas turns always to action and desire; desire is the strongest human and animal initiator of most kinesis and action, predominant to such an extent that many consider it the father of all action and even the originator of our being. Moreover, rajas finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; th
refore its whole action takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering: even its gains are precarious and limited and marred by the reaction of the effort and an aftertaste of insufficiency and transience. The principle of sattwa has its strongest hold in the mind; not so much in the lower parts of the mind which are dominated by the rajasic life-power, but mostly in the intelligence and the will of the reason. Intelligence, reason, rational will are moved by the nature of their predominant principle towards a constant effort of assimilation, assimilation by knowledge, assimilation by a power of understanding will, a constant effort towards equilibrium, some stability, rule, harmony of the conflicting elements of natural happening and experience. This satisfaction it gets in various ways and in various degrees of acquisition. The attainment of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony brings with it always a relative but more or less intense and satisfying sense of ease, happiness, mastery, security, which is other than the troubled and vehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire and passion. Light and happiness are the characteristics of the sattwic guna. The whole nature of the embodied living mental being is determined by these three gunas.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 684-685
The idea of the three essential modes of Nature is a creation of the ancient Indian thinkers and its truth is not at once obvious, because it was the result of long psychological experiment and profound internal experience. Th
refore without a long inner experience, without intimate self-observation and intuitive perception of the Nature-forces it is difficult to grasp accurately or firmly utilise. Still certain broad indications may help the seeker on the Way of Works to understand, analyse and control by his assent or
refusal the combinations of his own nature. These modes are termed in the Indian books qualities, gunas, and are given the names sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattwa is the force of equilibrium and translates in quality as good and harmony and happiness and light; rajas is the force of kinesis and translates in quality as struggle and effort, passion and action; tamas is the force of inconscience and inertia and translates in quality as obscurity and incapacity and inaction. Ordinarily used for psychological self-analysis, these distinctions are valid also in physical Nature. Each thing and every existence in the lower Prakriti contains them and its process and dynamic form are the result of the interaction of these qualitative powers.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 232-233
The Mother: "That which can easily change its form is ‘plastic". Figuratively, it is suppleness, a capacity of adaptation to circumstances and necessities.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 4.
theopathy ::: n. --> Capacity for religious affections or worship.
The origin, nature, and the continued existence or immortality of the soul is widely discussed in Jewish philosophy. As to origin, Saadia believes that each individual soul is created by God -- considering, of course, creation a continuous process -- and that it is of a fine spiritual substance. As to its faculties, he accepts the Aristotelian-Platonic division of the soul into three parts, namely, the appetitive, emotional, and cognitive. Ibn Daud thinks that the soul exists prior to the body potentially, i.e., that the angels endow the body with form; he further considers it a substance but says that it undergoes a process of development. The more it thinks the more perfect it becomes, and the thoughts are called acquired reason, it is this acquired reason, or being perfected which remains immortal. Maimonides does not discuss the origin of the soul, but deals more with its parts. To the three of Saadia he adds the imaginative and the conative. Gersonides' view resembles somewhat that of Ibn Daud, except that he does not speak of its origin and limits himself to the intellect. The intellect, says he, is only a capacity residing in the lower soul, and that capacity is gradually developed by the help of the Active Intellect into an acquired and ultimately into an active reason. All thinkers insist on immortality, but with Saadia and ha-Levi it seems that the entire soul survives, while the Aristotelians assert that only the intellect is immortal. Maimonides is not explicit on the subject, yet we may surmise that even the more liberal thinkers did not subscribe to Averroes' theory of unitas intellectus, and they believed that the immortal intellect is endowed with consciousness of personality. To this trend of connecting immortality with rational reflection Crescas took exception, and asserts that it is not pure thought which leads to survival, but that the soul is immortal because it is a spiritual being, and it is perfected by its love for God and the doing of good.
The principle of rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is the Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but the life-power in earthly beings is possessed by the force of desire, th
refore rajas turns always to action and desire; desire is the strongest human and animal initiator of most kinesis and action, predominant to such an extent that many consider it the father of all action and even the originator of our being. Moreover, rajas finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; th
refore its whole action takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering: even its gains are precarious and limited and marred by the reaction of the effort and an aftertaste of insufficiency and transience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 684-85
these openings in one’s nature and ieam to close them perma- nently to such attacks or to throw out the intruders at once or as soon as possible. The recurrence is no proof of a funda- mental incapacity ; if one takes the right inner attitude, it can and will be overcome. One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right lime He will reveal His Presence.
thoughtless ::: devoid of or lacking capacity for thought.
Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist. Bibliography: B. Geyer, Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano, Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle, Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter, Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922). --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B. In logic, see Operationism. In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations. 1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events. 2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance. Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning). Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class. The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined. In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations. For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.) For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation. Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes. Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion. For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R. The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .). The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C. G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M. In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established. Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset: Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914; El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935; El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921; España Invertebrada, 1922; Kant, 1924; La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925; Espiritu de la Letra, 1927; La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929; Goethe desde Adentio, 1934; Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939; Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939; El Libro de las Misiones, 1940; Ideas y Creencias, 1940; and others. Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P
Thus nature begins as a four-dimensional matrix in which it is the moving principle. Materiality, secondary qualities, life, mentality are all emergent modifications of proto-space-time. Mind is the nervous system blossoming out into the capacity of awareness. Contemplative knowledge, where the object is set over against the mind, and the actual being, or experiencing, or enjoying of reality, where there is no inner duplicity of subject and object, constitute the two forms of knowledge. Alexander conceives the deity as the next highest level to be emerged out of any given level. Thus for beings on the level of life mind is deity, but for beings possessing minds there is a nisus or urge toward a still higher quality. To such beings that dimly felt quality is deity. The quality next above any given level is deity to the beings on that level. For men deity has not yet emerged, but there is a nisus towards its emergence. S. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity (1920). -- H.H.
Timon of Phlius: (320-230 B.C.) A sceptic who held that an ultimate knowledge of things was beyond man's capacity. Author of Silloi. See Pyrrho, teacher of Timon. -- M.F.
tolerance ::: n. --> The power or capacity of enduring; the act of enduring; endurance.
The endurance of the presence or actions of objectionable persons, or of the expression of offensive opinions; toleration.
The power possessed or acquired by some persons of bearing doses of medicine which in ordinary cases would prove injurious or fatal.
tolerance ::: the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others.
"To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote "His anger climbed against me in a stream", it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
“To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote ’His anger climbed against me in a stream’, it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
Turing test "artificial intelligence" A criterion proposed by {Alan Turing} in 1950 for deciding whether a computer is intelligent. Turing called it "the Imitation Game" and offered it as a replacement for the question, "Can machines think?" A human holds a written conversation on any topic with an unseen correspondent (nowadays it might be by {electronic mail} or {chat}). If the human believes he is talking to another human when he is really talking to a computer then the computer has passed the Turing test and is deemed to be intelligent. Turing predicted that within 50 years (by the year 2000) technological progress would produce computing machines with a capacity of 10**9 bits, and that with such machinery, a computer program would be able to fool the average questioner for 5 minutes about 70% of the time. The {Loebner Prize} is a competition to find a computer program which can pass an unrestricted Turing test. {Julia (http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/julia.html)} is a program that attempts to pass the Turing test. See also {AI-complete}. {Turing's paper (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000499/00/turing.html)}. (2004-02-17)
udasinata ::: the state of being udasina; the indifference to the udasinata dvandvas or dualities that comes from "being seated above, superior to all physical and mental touches", the second stage of passive / negative samata: "the soul"s impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces", regarding the "passions of the mind as things born of the illusion of the outward mentality or inferior movements unworthy of the calm truth of the single and equal spirit or a vital and emotional disturbance to be rejected by the tranquil observing will and dispassionate intelligence of the sage"; indifference of various other . kinds, due to "either the inattention of the surface desire-soul in its mind, sensations, emotions and cravings to the rasa of things, or its incapacity to receive and respond to it, or its refusal to give any surface response or, again, its driving and crushing down of the pleasure or the pain by the will"; see rajasic udasinata, sattwic udasinata, tamasic udasinata, trigun.atita udasinata.
urn ::: n. --> A vessel of various forms, usually a vase furnished with a foot or pedestal, employed for different purposes, as for holding liquids, for ornamental uses, for preserving the ashes of the dead after cremation, and anciently for holding lots to be drawn.
Fig.: Any place of burial; the grave.
A measure of capacity for liquids, containing about three gallons and a haft, wine measure. It was haft the amphora, and four times the congius.
utthapana ::: (literally) raising, elevating; "the state of not being subutthapana ject to the pressure of physical forces", the second member of the sarira catus.t.aya, called utthapana or levitation because of its third and final stage (tertiary utthapana) in which "gravitation is conquered", but usually referring to either of two earlier stages (primary utthapana and secondary utthapana) in which "the habit by which the bodily nature associates certain forms and degrees of activity with strain, fatigue, incapacity" is rectified, resulting in a great increase in "the power, freedom, swiftness, effectiveness of the work whether physical or mental which can be done with this bodily instrument"; exercise for the development of utthapana (such as walking for primary utthapana). utth utthapana-sakti
variable ::: a. --> Having the capacity of varying or changing; capable of alternation in any manner; changeable; as, variable winds or seasons; a variable quantity.
Liable to vary; too susceptible of change; mutable; fickle; unsteady; inconstant; as, the affections of men are variable; passions are variable. ::: n.
viability ::: n. --> The quality or state of being viable.
The capacity of living after birth.
The capacity of living, or being distributed, over wide geographical limits; as, the viability of a species.
victim cache "architecture" An extension to a {direct mapped cache} that adds a small, secondary, {fully associative cache} to store cache blocks that have been ejected from the main cache due to a capacity or conflict miss. These ejected blocks are likely to be needed again so storing them in the secondary cache should increase performance. Victim caches with as few as five places have been found to reduce conflict misses, especially for small, direct-mapped data caches. E.g. a four-place victim cache removed 20% to 95% (depending on program) of such misses in a 4-KB cache. {(http://www.scism.sbu.ac.uk/ccsv/josephmb/CS-L2-MT/week12.html)}. (2007-02-23)
vigor ::: n. --> Active strength or force of body or mind; capacity for exertion, physically, intellectually, or morally; force; energy.
Strength or force in animal or force in animal or vegetable nature or action; as, a plant grows with vigor.
Strength; efficacy; potency. ::: v. t.
virtue ::: n. --> Manly strength or courage; bravery; daring; spirit; valor.
Active quality or power; capacity or power adequate to the production of a given effect; energy; strength; potency; efficacy; as, the virtue of a medicine.
Energy or influence operating without contact of the material or sensible substance.
Excellence; value; merit; meritoriousness; worth.
Specifically, moral excellence; integrity of character;
volumeter ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring the volumes of gases or liquids by introducing them into a vessel of known capacity.
vyana. ::: the fourth of the five vital airs responsible for the circulation of blood and controlling the capacity for self-expression
vyaya ::: "capacity to spend freely", an attribute of the vaisya.
vyaya ::: [spending, expense]; the capacity to spend freely (without any mean and self-defeating miserliness in the giving) . ::: vyayah [nominative]
warmful ::: a. --> Abounding in capacity to warm; giving warmth; as, a warmful garment.
wavelength division multiplexing "communications" (WDM) {Multiplexing} several {Optical Carrier n} signals on a single {optical fibre} by using different wavelengths (colours) of {laser} light to carry different signals. The device that joins the signals together is known as a {multiplexor}, and the one that splits them apart is a {demultiplexor}. With the right type of fibre you can have a device that does both and that ought to be called a "mudem" but isn't. The first WDM systems combined two signals and appeared around 1985. Modern systems can handle up to 128 signals and can expand a basic 9.6 {Gbps} fibre system to a capacity of over 1000 Gbps. WDM systems are popular with telecommunications companies because they allow them to expand the capacity of their fibre networks without digging up the road again. All they have to do is to upgrade the (de)multiplexors at each end. However these systems are expensive and complicated to run. There is currently no {standard}, which makes it awkward to integrate with older but more standard {SONET} systems. Note that this term applies to an optical {carrier} (which is typically described by its wavelength), whereas {frequency division multiplexing} typically applies to a {radio} carrier (which is more often described by frequency). However, since wavelength and frequency are inversely proportional, and since radio and light are both forms of electromagnetic radiation, the distinction is somewhat arbitrary. See also {time division multiplexing}, {code division multiplexing}. [Is "wave division multiplexing", as in "dense wave division multiplexing" (DWDM) just a trendy abbreviation?] (2002-07-16)
What St. Thomas appears to have insisted on most in thus using Aristotle as a pillar of his own thought was the rehabilitation of man and the universe as stable realities and genuine causes. This insistence has been by some called his naturalism. Against the tendency of thirteenth century Augustinians to disparage the native ability of the human reason to know truth, St. Thomas insisted on the capacity of the reason to act as a genuine and sufficient cause of true knowledge within the natural order. Against the occasionalistic tendencies of Avicennian thought, which reduced both man and the world of change around him to the role of passive spectators of the sole activity of God (i.e., the intellectus agens), St. Thomas asserted the subordinate but autonomous causality of man in the production of knowledge and the genuine causality of sensible realities in the production of change. Ultimately, St. Thomas rests his defense of man and other beings as efficacious causes in their own order on the doctrine of creation; just as he shows that the occasionalism of Avicenna is ultimately based on the Neo-platonic doctrine of emanation.
What we call Ignorance is not really anything else than a power of the one divine Knowledge-Will or Maya; it is the capacity of the One Consciousness similarly to regulate, to hold back, measure, relate in a particular way the action of its Knowledge.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 515
Whence, in the typical Scholastic or medieval notion, intellect is an immaterial faculty of the soul, that is, its operations are performed without a bodily organ, though they depend on the body and its senses for the material from which they receive their first impulse. Nothing is in the intellect that has not been previously in the senses. The impressions received by the external senses are synthesized by the internal sensus communis which forms an image or phantasm; the phantasm is presented to the intellect by imagination, memory and the vis cogitativa co-operating. The internal senses are conceived as being bound to organic functions of the brain. The intellect operates in a twofold manner, but is only one. As active intellect (intellectus agens) it "illuminates" the phantasm, disengaging there from the universal nature; as passive intellect (int. possibilis) it is informed by the result of this abstractive operation and develops the concept. Concepts are united into judgments by combination and division (assertion and negation). Judgments are related to each other in syllogistic reasoning or by the abbreviated form of enthymeme. Aquinas denies to the intellect the capacity of becoming aware of particulars in any direct way. The intellect knows of them (e.g. when asserting: Socrates is a man) only indirectly by reflecting on its own operations and finally on the phantasm which served as starting point. Propositions, however, have no directly corresponding phantasm. Later Scholastics credit the intellect with a direct knowledge of particulars (Suarez). See Abstraction, Faculty. -- R.A.
wireless "networking" A term describing a computer {network} where there is no physical connection (either copper cable or {fibre optics}) between sender and receiver, but instead they are connected by radio. Applications for wireless networks include multi-party {teleconferencing}, distributed work sessions, {personal digital assistants}, and electronic newspapers. They include the transmission of voice, video, {images}, and data, each traffic type with possibly differing {bandwidth} and quality-of-service requirements. The wireless network components of a complete source-destination path requires consideration of mobility, {hand-off}, and varying transmission and {bandwidth} conditions. The wired/wireless network combination provides a severe bandwidth mismatch, as well as vastly different error conditions. The processing capability of fixed vs. mobile terminals may be expected to differ significantly. This then leads to such issues to be addressed in this environment as {admission control}, {capacity assignment} and {hand-off} control in the wireless domain, flow and error control over the complete end-to-end path, dynamic bandwidth control to accommodate bandwidth mismatch and/or varying processing capability. {Usenet} newsgroup {news:comp.std.wireless}. (1995-02-27)
wisdom ::: a. --> The quality of being wise; knowledge, and the capacity to make due use of it; knowledge of the best ends and the best means; discernment and judgment; discretion; sagacity; skill; dexterity.
The results of wise judgments; scientific or practical truth; acquired knowledge; erudition.
writability ::: n. --> Ability or capacity to write.
write-only memory 1. "jargon, humour" (WOM) The obvious antonym to "{read-only memory}" (ROM). Out of frustration with the long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required of component specifications, during which no actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at {Signetics} once created a specification for a write-only memory and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be approved. This inclusion came to the attention of Signetics {management} only when regular customers started calling and asking for pricing information. Signetics published a corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of the "erroneous" ones. Later, around 1974, Signetics bought a double-page spread in "Electronics" magazine's April issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke. Instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 "fully encoded, 9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory" data sheet included diagrams of "bit capacity vs. Temp.", "Iff vs. Vff", "Number of pins remaining vs. number of socket insertions", and "AQL vs. selling price". The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, +/- 2%. 2. {bit bucket}. [{Jargon File}] (2007-03-24)
KEYS (10k)
42 Sri Aurobindo
15 The Mother
3 Saint Thomas Aquinas
2 Ken Wilber
2 Essential Integral
2 Aleister Crowley
1 Wilhelm Reich
1 Stanley Jones
1 Shunryu Suzuki
1 Sam Van Schaik
1 Saint Ambrose
1 Robert Heinlein
1 Robert Anton Wilson
1 Mingyur Rinpoche
1 Mary Shelley
1 Mahatma Gandhi
1 Jordan Peterson
1 Jennifer Aniston
1 Jean Gebser
1 Idries Shah
1 Howard Gardner
1 Franz Kafka
1 Elizabeth Taylor
1 Edward Vernon Rickenbacker
1 Dawna Markova. See: https://bit.ly/3iZwmrI
1 Daniel Goleman
1 Basil the Great
1 Arthur Koestler
1 Alfred North Whitehead
1 Alfred Korzybski
1 Saint Teresa of Avila
1 Saint Augustine of Hippo
1 Heraclitus
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
20 Mahatma Gandhi
13 Sri Aurobindo
11 Idries Shah
11 Anonymous
8 Rollo May
8 Paulo Coelho
8 Carl Jung
7 Doris Lessing
7 Arthur Conan Doyle
6 The Mother
6 Markus Zusak
6 Henry Ford
6 Bessel A van der Kolk
6 Alain de Botton
5 Warren G Bennis
5 Thomas Carlyle
5 Thich Nhat Hanh
5 Nhat Hanh
5 Mark Twain
5 Marianne Williamson
1:Your capacity to say No determines your capacity to say Yes to greater things.
~ Stanley Jones,#KEYS
2:Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #KEYS
3:What is your definition of Greatness? JP: The capacity to utter and abide by beautiful truths. ~ Jordan Peterson, #KEYS
4:All men have the capacity of knowing themselves and acting with moderation. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
5:If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #KEYS
6:Aviation is proof that given, the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible.
~ Edward Vernon Rickenbacker,#KEYS
7:The past cannot bind the future. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
8:Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #KEYS
9:Not recognizing natural mind is simply an example of the mind's unlimited capacity to create whatever it wants. ~ Mingyur Rinpoche, #KEYS
10:It is the essentials alone that matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
11:A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study. ~ Mary Shelley, #KEYS
12:It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time - the greater our capacity for waiting." ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #KEYS
13:Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
~ Franz Kafka,#KEYS
14:Receptivity is the capacity of admitting and retaining the Divine Workings.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
15:The Yogi knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces.~ The Mother, #KEYS
16:Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended. ~ Alfred North Whitehead #KEYS
17:When an institution, organization, or nation loses its capacity to inspire high individual performance, its great days are over.
~ Howard Gardner,#KEYS
18:To each his own difficulties seem enormous and radical. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
19:The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel pain." ~ Jennifer Aniston, (b. 1969) American actress, film producer, and businesswoman, Wikipedia., #KEYS
20:Only a rational creature has the capacity for God because only it can know and love Him explicitly ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DV 22.2ad5), #KEYS
21:To see the very First Truth in Itself so transcends the capacity of human nature that it is proper to God alone ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.147)., #KEYS
22:Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee. ~ Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice, [T3], #KEYS
23:One ought not to settle down into a fixed idea of one's own incapacity or allow it to become an obsession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
24:The Purusha has that capacity; for the spirit within can always change and perfect the working of its nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS
25:In the discourse I am seeing questions about what acceptance we Catholics owe to actions of the Church ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (specifically pope/bishops in their official capacity)., #KEYS
26:By virtue alone man cannot attain to the highest, but by virtue he can develop a first capacity for attaining to it, adhikāra. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
27:By interiorizing its awareness, it is no longer merely buffeted by the immediate fluctuations in the environment: its relative autonomy-its capacity to remain stable in the midst of shifting circumstances-increases. ~ Ken Wilber, SES, #KEYS
28:Kindness is twice blessed. It blesses the one who gives it with a sense of his or her own capacity to love, and the person who receives it with a sense of the beneficence of the universe." ~ Dawna Markova. See: https://bit.ly/3iZwmrI, #KEYS
29:There is only one logic in spiritual things: when a demand is there for the Divine, a sincere call, it is bound one day to have its fulfilment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
30:Not all can attain to the perfection of wisdom as Solomon or Daniel did, but the spirit of wisdom is poured out on all according to their capacity, that is, on all the faithful. If you believe, you have the spirit of wisdom. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
31:Where there is a soul that has once become awake, there is surely a capacity within that can outweigh all surface defects and can in the end conquer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
32:By readiness I did not mean capacity but willingness. If there is the will within to face all difficulties and go through, no matter how long it takes, then the path can be taken. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
33:Enlightened individual power: limited in its action but of a very high capacity.
*
Mentalised power: power becomes utilisable.
*
Dynamic power: indispensable for progress. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
34:It is by the Grace of the Divine and the aid of a Force greater than your own, not by personal capacity and worth that you can attain the goal of the sadhana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
35:It is not one's personal fitness and worthiness that makes one succeed, but the Mother's grace and power and the consent of the soul to her grace and the workings of her Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
36:True time does not curve space; it is open and opens space through its capacity of rendering it transparent, and thereby supersedes nihilistic "emptiness," re-attaining openness in an intensified consciousness structure spoken of in Part I of our inquiry. ~ Jean Gebser, #KEYS
37:Man has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead." ~ Idries Shah, (1924-1996) author and teacher in the Sufi tradition, Wikipedia., #KEYS
38:We have already received from God the ability to fulfil all his commands. We have then no reason to resent them, as if something beyond our capacity were being asked of us. We have no reason either to be angry, as if we had to pay back more than we had received. ~ Basil the Great, #KEYS
39:They who have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, 'You shall not kill.' ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
40:Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.
~ Robert Anton Wilson,#KEYS
41:There is an old, old story about a theologian who was asked to reconcile the Doctrine of Divine Mercy with the doctrine of infant damnation. 'The Almighty,' he explained, 'finds it necessary to do things in His official and public capacity which in His private and personal capacity He deplores.
~ Robert Heinlein, Methuselah's Children.,#KEYS
42:Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action. ~ Daniel Goleman, #KEYS
43:The goal of yoga is always hard to reach, but this one is more difficult than any other, and it is only for those who have the call, the capacity, the willingness to face everything and every risk, even the risk of failure, and the will to progress towards an entire selflessness, desirelessness and surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
44:As individual egos we dwell in the Ignorance and judge everything by a broken, partial and personal standard of knowledge; we experience everything according to the capacity of a limited consciousness and force and are therefore unable to give a divine response or set the true value upon any part of cosmic experience.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 396, [T3],#KEYS
45:Have I the capacity and are there potentialities in me to follow this path?
This is not the question, the question is whether you have the necessary aspiration, determination and perseverance and whether you can by the intensity and persistence of your aspiration make all the parts of your being answer to the call and become one in the consecration.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
46:The basis of internal peace is samata, the capacity of receiving with a calm and equal mind all the attacks and appearances of outward things, whether pleasant or unpleasant, ill-fortune and good-fortune, pleasure and pain, honour and ill-repute, praise and blame, friendship and enmity, sinner and saint, or, physically, heat and cold etc. There are two forms of samata, passive and active, samata in reception of the things of the outward world and samata in reaction to them.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Record Of Yoga,#KEYS
47:When you only have sensations, perceptions, and impulses, the world is archaic. When you add the capacity for images and symbols, the world appears magical. When you add concepts, rules, and roles, the world becomes mythic. When formal-reflexive capacities emergy, the rational world comes into view. With vision-logic, the existential world stands forth. When the subtle emerges, the world becomes divine. When the causal emerges, the self becomes divine. When the nondual emerges, world and self are realized to be one Spirit.
~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, 119,#KEYS
48:So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
49:It is the foundation of the pure spiritual consciousness that is the first object in the evolution of the spiritual man, and it is this and the urge of that consciousness towards contact with the Reality, the Self or the Divine Being that must be the first and foremost or even, till it is perfectly accomplished, the sole preoccupation of the spiritual seeker. It is the one thing needful that has to be done by each on whatever line is possible to him, by each according to the spiritual capacity developed in his nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 892 [T1],#KEYS
50:What is needed is perseverance-to go on without discouragement, recognising that the process of the nature and the action of the Mother's force is working through the difficulty even and will do all that is needed. Our incapacity does not matter-there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable-but the Divine Force is also there. If one puts one's trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
51:And in a recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
52:8. Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, #KEYS
53:There are only three fundamental obstacles that can stand in the way: (1) Absence of faith or insufficient faith. (2) Egoism - the mind clinging to its own ideas, the vital preferring its own desires to a true surrender, the physical adhering to its own habits. (3) Some inertia or fundamental resistance in the consciousness, not willing to change because it is too much of an effort or because it does not want to believe in its own capacity or the power of the Divine - or for some other more subconscient reason. You have to see for yourself which of these it is.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path,#KEYS
54:It is said that the faculty of concentrated attention is at the source of all successful activity. Indeed the capacity and value of a man can be measured by his capacity of concentrated attention.[2]
In order to obtain this concentration, it is generally recommended to reduce one's activities, to make a choice and confine oneself to this choice alone, so as not to disperse one's energy and attention. For the normal man, this method is good, sometimes even indispensable. But one can imagine something better.
[2] Generally it comes through interest and a special attraction for a subject - Mother's note.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T4],#KEYS
55:But his most important capacity is that of developing the powers of the higher principles in himself, a greater power of life, a purer light of mind, the illumination of supermind, the infinite being, consciousness and delight of spirit. By an ascending movement he can develop his human imperfection towards that greater perfection. But whatever his aim, however exalted his aspiration, he has to begin from the law of his present imperfection, to take full account of it and see how it can be converted to the law of a possible perfection. This present law of his being starts from the inconscience of the material universe, an involution of the soul in form and subjection to material nature; and
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology Of Perfection,#KEYS
56:But, apart from all these necessities, there is the one fundamental necessity of the nature and object of embodied life itself, which is to seek infinite experience on a finite basis; and since the form, the basis by its very organisation limits the possibility of experience, this can only be done by dissolving it and seeking new forms. For the soul, having once limited itself by concentrating on the moment and the field, is driven to seek its infinity again by the principle of succession, by adding moment to moment and thus storing up a Time-experience which it calls its past; in that Time it moves through successive fields, successive experiences or lives, successive accumulations of knowledge, capacity, enjoyment, and all this it holds in subconscious or superconscious memory as its fund of past acquisition in Time.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
57:The heaven-hints that invade our earthly lives,
The dire imaginations dreamed by Hell,
Which if enacted and experienced here
Our dulled capacity soon would cease to feel
Or our mortal frailty could not long endure,
Were set in their sublime proportions there.
There lived out in their self-born atmosphere,
They resumed their topless pitch and native power;
Their fortifying stress upon the soul
Bit deep into the ground of consciousness
The passion and purity of their extremes,
The absoluteness of their single cry
And the sovereign sweetness or violent poetry
Of their beautiful or terrible delight.
All thought can know or widest sight perceive
And all that thought and sight can never know,
All things occult and rare, remote and strange
Were near to heart's contact, felt by spirit-sense.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
58:Every human acheivement, be it a scientific discovery, a picture, a statue, a temple, a home or a bridge, has to be conceived in the mind first-the plan thought out-before it can be made a reality, and when anything is to be attempted that involves any number of individuals-methods of coordination have to be considered-the methods have to be the best suited for such undertakings are engineering methods-the engineering of an idea towards a complete realization. Every engineer has to know the materials with which he has to work and the natural laws of these materials, as discovered by observation and experiment and formulated by mathematics and mechanics else he can not calculate the forces at his disposal; he can not compute the resistance of his materials; he can not determine the capacity and requirements of his power plant; in short, he can not make the most profitable use of his resources. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
59:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.
This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,#KEYS
60:Four Powers Of The Mother
In talking about the four powers of the Mother, it helps to know that in India, traditionally, the evolutionary principle of creation is approached, and adored, as the great Mother. Sri Aurobindo distinguishes four main powers and personalities through which this evolutionary force manifests.
Maheshwari - One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness.
Mahakali - Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force.
Mahalakshmi - A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace.
Mahasaraswati - The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things.
~ ?, https://www.auroville.com/silver-ring-mother-s-symbol.html,#KEYS
61:witness and non-dual states ::: The Witness and Non-Dual states are everpresent capacities which hold the special relationship to the other states. The Witness state, or Witnessing, is the capacity to observe, see or witness phenomenon arising in the other states. Meaning for example, its the capacity to hold unbroken attention in the gross states, and the capacity to witness the entire relative world of form arise as object viewed by the pure witness, the pure subject that is never itself a seen object but always the pure seer or pure Self, that is actually no-self. Next we have Non-Dual which refers to both the suchness and is-ness of reality right now. It is the not-two-ness or everpresent unity of subject and object, form and emptiness, heaven and earth, relative and absolute. When the Witness dissolves and pure seer and all that is seen become not seperate or not two, the Non-Duality of absolute emptiness and relative form or the luminous identity of unqualifiable spirit and all of its manifestations appear as play of radiant natural and spontaneous and present love. Absolute and relative are already always not-two but nor are they one, nor both nor neither. ~ Essential Integral, L5-18, #KEYS
62:But for the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gita in one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Purified Understanding, 302,#KEYS
63:My sweet mother, The more I look into myself, the more discouraged I am, and I don't know whether there is any chance of my making any progress. It seems that all the obscurities and falsehoods are rising up on every side, inside and outside, and want to swallow me up. There are times when I cannot distinguish truth from falsehood and I am then on the verge of losing my mind.
Still, there is something in me which says very weakly that all will be well; but this voice is so feeble that I cannot rely on it.1
My faults are so numerous and so great that I think I shall fail. On the other hand, I have neither the inclination nor the capacity for the ordinary life. And I know that I shall never be able to leave this life. This is my situation right now. The struggle is getting more and more acute, and worst of all I cannot lie to you. What should I do?
Do not torment yourself, my child, and remain as quiet as you can; do not yield to the temptation to give up the struggle and let yourself fall into darkness. Persist, and one day you will realise that I am close to you to console you and help you, and then the hardest part will be over. With all my love and blessings. 25 September 1947
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#KEYS
64:All advance in thought is made by collecting the greatest possible number of facts, classifying them, and grouping them.
The philologist, though perhaps he only speaks one language, has a much higher type of mind than the linguist who speaks twenty.
This Tree of Thought is exactly paralleled by the tree of nervous structure.
Very many people go about nowadays who are exceedingly "well-informed," but who have not the slightest idea of the meaning of the facts they know. They have not developed the necessary higher part of the brain. Induction is impossible to them.
This capacity for storing away facts is compatible with actual imbecility. Some imbeciles have been able to store their memories with more knowledge than perhaps any sane man could hope to acquire.
This is the great fault of modern education - a child is stuffed with facts, and no attempt is made to explain their connection and bearing. The result is that even the facts themselves are soon forgotten.
Any first-rate mind is insulted and irritated by such treatment, and any first-rate memory is in danger of being spoilt by it.
No two ideas have any real meaning until they are harmonized in a third, and the operation is only perfect when these ideas are contradictory. This is the essence of the Hegelian logic.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, The Cup,#KEYS
65:In terms of energy - there are three characteristic ways in which the energy manifests - Dang, Rolpa, and rTsal (gDang, rol pa, and rTsal). Dang is the energy in which 'internal' and 'external' are not divided from that which manifests. It is symbolised by the crystal sphere which becomes the colour of whatever it is placed upon. Rolpa is the energy which manifests internally as vision. It is symbolised by the mirror. The image of the reflection always appears as if it is inside the mirror. rTsal is externally manifested energy which radiates. It is symbolised by the refractive capacity of the faceted crystal. For a realised being, this energy is inseparable in its manifestation from the dimension of manifest reality. Dang, Rolpa, and rTsal are not divided.
Dang, Rolpa and rTsal are not divided and neither are the ku-sum (sKu gSum - the trikaya) the three spheres of being. Cho-ku (chos sKu - Dharmakaya), the sphere of unconditioned potentiality, is the creative space from which the essence of the elements arises as long-ku (longs sKu - Sambhogakaya) the sphere of intangible appearances - light and rays, non material forms only perceivable by those with visionary clarity. Trülku (sPrul sKu - Nirmanakaya), the sphere of realised manifestation, is the level of matter in apparently solid material forms. The primordial base manifests these three distinct yet indivisible modes. ~ Sam Van Schaik, Approaching the Great Perfection: Simultaneous and Gradual Methods of Dzogchen Practice in the Longchen Nyingtig,#KEYS
66:
Mother, aren't these entities afraid of you?
Ah, my child, terribly afraid! (Laughter) All those which are ill-willed try to hide, and usually do you know what they do? They gather together behind the head of the one who comes (laughter) in order not to be seen. But this is useless, because, just think, I have the capacity to see through. (Laughter) Otherwise - they always do this, instinctively. When they can manage to get in, they try to get in. But then... I intervene with greater force, because that is nasty. These are people who have the instinct to hide, you see. So I pursue them, there inside. With others very little is needed, very little; but there are some - there are such people, you know, they themselves have told me - when they are about to come to me, it is as though there were something which pulled them back, which told them: "No, no, no, it's not worthwhile, why go there? There are so many people for Mother to see, why add one more?" And they draw back, like that, so that they don't come. So I always tell them what it is: 'It would be better not to listen to that, for it's not something with a very good conscience.' Some people cannot bear it. There have been instances like this, of people who were obliged to run away, because they themselves were too attached to their own formations and did not want to get rid of them. Naturally there is only one way, to run away!
There we are! We shall stop now for today.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS
67:Concentrating the Attention:
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 the concentration with a presistent 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 - thats not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate. And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensble. 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,#KEYS
68:the second aid, the need for effort and aspiration, utsaha :::
The development of the experience in its rapidity, its amplitude, the intensity and power of its results, depends primarily, in the beginning of the path and long after, on the aspiration and personal effort of the sadhaka. The process of Yoga is a turning of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things to a higher state in which the Transcendent and Universal can pour itself into the individiual mould and transform it. The first determining element in the siddhi is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the soul inward. The power of aspiration of the heart, the force of the will, the concentration of the mind, the perseverance and determination of the applied energy are the measure of that intensity. The ideal sadhaka should be able to say in the Biblical phrase, 'My zeal for the Lord has eaten me up.' It is this zeal for the Lord, -utsaha, the zeal of the whole nature for its divine results, vyakulata, the heart's eagerness for the attainment of the Divine, - that devours the ego and breaks up the petty limitations ...
So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#KEYS
69:But this is only one side of the force that works for perfection. The process of the integral Yoga has three stages, not indeed sharply distinguished or separate, but in a certain measure successive. There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine; next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being; last, the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the world. So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga. In the end his own will and force become one with the higher Power; he merges them in the divineWill and its transcendent and universal Force. He finds it thenceforward presiding over the necessary transformation of his mental, vital and physical being with an impartial wisdom and provident effectivity of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth's spiritual progression or its transformation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T2],#KEYS
70:Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo is speaking about occult endeavour here and says that those who don't have the capacity must wait till it is given to them. Can't they get it through practice?
No. That is, if it is latent in someone, it can be developed by practice. But if one doesn't have occult power, he may try for fifty years, he won't get anywhere. Everybody cannot have occult power. It is as though you were asking whether everybody could be a musician, everybody could be a painter, everybody could... Some can, some can't. It is a question of temperament.
What is the difference between occultism and mysticism?
They are not at all the same thing.
Mysticism is a more or less emotive relation with what one senses to be a divine power - that kind of highly emotional, affective, very intense relation with something invisible which is or is taken for the Divine. That is mysticism.
Occultism is exactly what he has said: it is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science. It is altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry, for it is the same kind of knowledge as the knowledge of chemistry for material things. It is a knowledge of invisible forces, their different vibrations, their interrelations, the combinations which can be made by bringing them together and the power one can exercise over them. It is absolutely scientific; and it ought to be learnt like a science; that is, one cannot practise occultism as something emotional or something vague and imprecise. You must work at it as you would do at chemistry, and learn all the rules or find them if there is nobody to teach you. But it is at some risk to yourself that you can find them. There are combinations here as explosive as certain chemical combinations. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS
71:middle vision logic or paradigmatic ::: (1:25) Cognition is described as middle-vision logic, or paradigmatic in that it is capable of co-ordinating the relations between systems of systems, unifying them into principled frameworks or paradigms. This is an operation on meta-systems and allows for the view described above, a view of human development itself. Self-sense at teal is called Autonomous or Strategist and is characterized by the emergent capacity to acknowledge and cope with inner conflicts in needs, ... and values. All of which are part of a multifacted and complex world. Teal sees our need for autonomy and autonomy itself as limited because emotional interdependence is inevitable. The contradictory aspects of self are weaved into an identity that is whole, integrated and commited to generating a fulfilling life.
Additionally, Teal allows individuals to link theory and practice, perceive dynamic systems interactions, recognize and strive for higher principles, understand the social construction of reality, handle paradox and complexity, create positive-sum games and seek feedback from others as a vital source for growth. Values embrace magnificence of existence, flexibility, spontaneioty, functionality, the integration of differences into interdependent systems and complimenting natural egalitarianism with natural ranking. Needs shift to self-actualization, and morality is in both terms of universal ethical principles and recognition of the developmental relativity of those universals. Teal is the first wave that is truly able to see the limitations of orange and green morality, it is able to uphold the paradox of universalism and relativism. Teal in its decision making process is able to see ... deep and surface features of morality and is able to take into consideration both those values when engaging in moral action. Currently Teal is quite rare, embraced by 2-5% of the north american and european population according to sociological research. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-53, Middle Vision Logic,#KEYS
72:The capacity for visions, when it is sincere and spontaneous, can put you in touch with events which you are not capable of knowing in your outer consciousness.... There is a very interesting fact, it is that somewhere in the terrestrial mind, somewhere in the terrestrial vital, somewhere in the subtle physical, one can find an exact, perfect, automatic recording of everything that happens. It is the most formidable memory one could imagine, which misses nothing, forgets nothing, records all. And if you are able to enter into it, you can go backward, you can go forward, and in all directions, and you will have the "memory" of all things - not only of things of the past, but of things to come. For everything is recorded there.
In the mental world, for instance, there is a domain of the physical mind which is related to physical things and keeps the memory of physical happenings upon earth. It is as though you were entering into innumerable vaults, one following another indefinitely, and these vaults are filled with small pigeon-holes, one above another, one above another, with tiny doors. Then if you want to know something and if you are conscious, you look, and you see something like a small point - a shining point; you find that this is what you wish to know and you have only to concentrate there and it opens; and when it opens, there is a sort of an unrolling of something like extremely subtle manuscripts, but if your concentration is sufficiently strong you begin to read as though from a book. And you have the whole story in all its details. There are thousands of these little holes, you know; when you go for a walk there, it is as though you were walking in infinity. And in this way you can find the exact facts about whatever you want to know. But I must tell you that what you find is never what has been reported in history - histories are always planned out; I have never come across a single "historical" fact which is like history.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951, 109 [T7],#KEYS
73:Many Blows are Needed:
Mother, even when one tries to think that one is powerless, there is something which believes one is powerful. So?
Ah, yes, ah yes! Ah, it is very difficult to be sincere.... That is why blows multiply and sometimes become terrible, because that's the only thing which breaks your stupidity. This is the justification of calamities. Only when you are in an acutely painful situation and indeed before something that affects you deeply, then that makes the stupidity melt away a little. But as you say, even when there is something that melts, there is still a little something which remains inside. And that is why it lasts so long... How many blows are needed in life for one to know to the very depths that one is nothing, that one can do nothing, that one does not exist, that one is nothing, that there is no entity without the divine Consciousness and the Grace. From the moment one knows it, it is over; all difficulties have gone. When one knows it integrally and there is nothing which resists... but till that moment... And it takes very long.
Why doesn't the blow come all at once?
Because that would kill you. For if the blow is strong enough to cure you, it would simply crush you, it would reduce you to pulp. It is only by proceeding little by little, little by little, very gradually, that you can continue to exist. Naturally this depends on the inner strength, the inner sincerity, and on the capacity for progress, for profiting by experience and, as I said a while ago, on not forgetting. If one is lucky enough not to forget, then one goes much faster. One can go very fast. And if at the same time one has that inner moral strength which, when the red-hot iron is at hand, does not extinguish it by trying to pour water over it, but instead goes to the very core of the abscess, then in this case things go very fast also. But not many people are strong enough for this. On the contrary, they very quickly do this (gesture), like this, like this, in order to hide, to hide from themselves. How many pretty little explanations one gives oneself, how many excuses one piles up for all the foolishnesses one has committed.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS
74:formal-operational ::: The orange altitude emerged a few hundred years ago with the European Rennisance. Its modern, rational view grew in prominance through the Age of Enlightenment and came to its fullest expression during the Industrial Revolution.
Fueling this age of reason and science was the emergence of formal operational cognition, or the ability to operate on thoughts themselves. No longer limited to reflection on concrete objects, cognition moves from representations to abstractions and can now operate on a range of non-tangiable propositions that may not reflect the concrete world. This is the basis of scientific reasoning through hypothesis. Orange also brings multiplistic thinking, or the realization that there are several possible ways of approaching a situation, even though one is still considered most right. Self-sense at orange features two shifts, first to expert and then to achiever, these moves feature an increase in self-awareness and appreciation for multiple possibilities in a given situation. Recognition that one doesnt always live up to idealized social expectations is fueled by an awareness that begins to penetrate the inner world of subjectivity. This is the beginning of introspection. An objectifiable self-sense and the capacity to take a third person perspective. Needs shift from belonging to self-esteem. And values land on pragmatic utiliarian approaches to life that rely on ... and thinking to earn progress, prosperity and self-reliance. Morality at orange sees right defined by universal ethical principles. The emergence of formal operational thinking at orange enables a world-centric care for universal human rights and the right of each individual for autonomy and the pursuit of happiness. A desire for individual dignity and self-respect are also driving forces behind orange morality. A significant number of the founding fathers of the United States harbored orange values. ...
Faith at orange is called Individual Reflective and so far as identity and world-view are differentiated from others, and faith takes on an essence of critical thought. Demythologizing symbols into conceptual meanings. At orange we see the emergence of rational deism and secularism. ~ Essential Integral, 4.1-51, Formal Operational,#KEYS
75:If we analyse the classes of life, we readily find that there are three cardinal classes which are radically distinct in function. A short analysis will disclose to us that, though minerals have various activities, they are not "living." The plants have a very definite and well known function-the transformation of solar energy into organic chemical energy. They are a class of life which appropriates one kind of energy, converts it into another kind and stores it up; in that sense they are a kind of storage battery for the solar energy; and so I define THE PLANTS AS THE CHEMISTRY-BINDING class of life.
The animals use the highly dynamic products of the chemistry-binding class-the plants-as food, and those products-the results of plant-transformation-undergo in animals a further transformation into yet higher forms; and the animals are correspondingly a more dynamic class of life; their energy is kinetic; they have a remarkable freedom and power which the plants do not possess-I mean the freedom and faculty to move about in space; and so I define ANIMALS AS THE SPACE-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE.
And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them-I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,#KEYS
76:This is the real sense and drive of what we see as evolution: the multiplication and variation of forms is only the means of its process. Each gradation contains the possibility and the certainty of the grades beyond it: the emergence of more and more developed forms and powers points to more perfected forms and greater powers beyond them, and each emergence of consciousness and the conscious beings proper to it enables the rise to a greater consciousness beyond and the greater order of beings up to the ultimate godheads of which Nature is striving and is destined to show herself capable. Matter developed its organised forms until it became capable of embodying living organisms; then life rose from the subconscience of the plant into conscious animal formations and through them to the thinking life of man. Mind founded in life developed intellect, developed its types of knowledge and ignorance, truth and error till it reached the spiritual perception and illumination and now can see as in a glass dimly the possibility of supermind and a truthconscious existence. In this inevitable ascent the mind of Light is a gradation, an inevitable stage. As an evolving principle it will mark a stage in the human ascent and evolve a new type of human being; this development must carry in it an ascending gradation of its own powers and types of an ascending humanity which will embody more and more the turn towards spirituality, capacity for Light, a climb towards a divinised manhood and the divine life.
In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very nature of the evolutionary process as it is at present, two stages. In the first, we can see the mind of Light gathering itself out of the Ignorance, assembling its constituent elements, building up its shapes and types, however imperfect at first, and pushing them towards perfection till it can cross the border of the Ignorance and appear in the Light, in its own Light. In the second stage we can see it developing itself in that greater natural light, taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind and lives as its subordinate portion or its delegate.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, Mind of Light, 587,#KEYS
77:... one of the major personality traits was neuroticism, the tendency to feel negative emotion. He [Jung] never formalized that idea in his thinking. Its a great oversight in some sense because the capacity to experience negative emotion, when thats exaggerated that seems to be the core feature of everything we that we regard as psychopathology. Psychiatric and psychological illness. Not the only thing but its the primary factor. So.
Q: What is the best way to avoid falling back into nihilistic behaviours and thinking?
JBP:Well, a large part of that I would say is habit. The development and maintainance of good practices. Habits. If you find yourself desolute, neurotic, if your thought tends in the nihilistic direction and you tend to fall apart, organizing your life across multiple dimensions is a good antidote its not exactly thinking.
Do you have an intimate relationship? If not then well probably you could use one.
Do you have contact with close family members, siblings, children, parents, or even people who are more distantly related. If not, you probably need that.
Do you see your friends a couple of times a week? And do something social with them?
Do you have a way of productively using your time outside of employment?
Are you employed?
Do you have a good job? Or at least a job that is practically sufficient and enables you to work with people who you like working with? Even if the job itself is mundane or repetitive or difficult sometimes the relationships you establish in an employment situation like that can make the job worthwhile.
Have you regulated your response to temptations? Pornography, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, is that under control?
I would say differentiate the problem. Theres multiple dimensions of attainment, ambition, pleasure, responsibility all of that that make up a life, and to the degree that is it possible you want to optimize your functioning on as many of those dimensions as possible.
You might also organize your schedule to the degree that you have that capacity for discipline.
Do you get enough sleep?
Do you go to bed at a regular time?
Do you get up at a regular time?
Do you eat regularly and appropriately and enought and not too much?
Are your days and your weeks and your months characterized by some tolerable, repeatable structure? That helps you meet your responsibilities but also shields you from uncertainly and chaos and provides you with multiple sources of reward?
Those are all the questions decompose the problem into, the best way of avoiding falling into nihilistic behaviours and thinking. ~ Jordan B. Peterson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-geMoCsNAw,#KEYS
78:What is the difference between meditation and concentration?
Meditation is a purely mental activity, it interests only the mental being. One can concentrate while meditating but this is a mental concentration; one can get a silence but it is a purely mental silence, and the other parts of the being are kept immobile and inactive so as not to disturb the meditation. You may pass twenty hours of the day in meditation and for the remaining four hours you will be an altogether ordinary man because only the mind has been occupied-the rest of the being, the vital and the physical, is kept under pressure so that it may not disturb. In meditation nothing is directly done for the other parts of the being.
Certainly this indirect action can have an effect, but... I have known in my life people whose capacity for meditation was remarkable but who, when not in meditation, were quite ordinary men, even at times ill-natured people, who would become furious if their meditation was disturbed. For they had learnt to master only their mind, not the rest of their being.
Concentration is a more active state. You may concentrate mentally, you may concentrate vitally, psychically, physically, and you may concentrate integrally. Concentration or the capacity to gather oneself at one point is more difficult than meditation. You may gather together one portion of your being or consciousness or you may gather together the whole of your consciousness or even fragments of it, that is, the concentration may be partial, total or integral, and in each case the result will be different.
If you have the capacity to concentrate, your meditation will be more interesting and easieR But one can meditate without concentrating. Many follow a chain of ideas in their meditation - it is meditation, not concentration.
Is it possible to distinguish the moment when one attains perfect concentration from the moment when, starting from this concentration, one opens oneself to the universal Energy?
Yes. You concentrate on something or simply you gather yourself together as much as is possible for you and when you attain a kind of perfection in concentration, if you can sustain this perfection for a sufficiently long time, then a door opens and you pass beyond the limit of your ordinary consciousness-you enter into a deeper and higher knowledge. Or you go within. Then you may experience a kind of dazzling light, an inner wonder, a beatitude, a complete knowledge, a total silence. There are, of course, many possibilities but the phenomenon is always the same.
To have this experience all depends upon your capacity to maintain your concentration sufficiently long at its highest point of perfection. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
79:The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, clear state of mind and heart is established.
This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalini, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 36,#KEYS
80:the process of unification, the perfecting our one's instrumental being, the help one needs to reach the goal :::
If we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavor.
As you pursue this labor of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. ... It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us [the psychic being], to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perfection and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realize. This discovery and realization should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
~ The Mother, On Education, [T1],#KEYS
81:Our culture, the laws of our culture, are predicated on the idea that people are conscious. People have experience; people make decisions, and can be held responsible for them. There's a free will element to it. You can debate all that philosophically, and fine, but the point is that that is how we act, and that is the idea that our legal system is predicated on. There's something deep about it, because you're subject to the law, but the law is also limited by you, which is to say that in a well-functioning, properly-grounded democratic system, you have intrinsic value. That's the source of your rights. Even if you're a murderer, we have to say the law can only go so far because there's something about you that's divine.
Well, what does that mean? Partly it means that there's something about you that's conscious and capable of communicating, like you're a whole world unto yourself. You have that to contribute to everyone else, and that's valuable. You can learn new things, transform the structure of society, and invent a new way of dealing with the world. You're capable of all that. It's an intrinsic part of you, and that's associated with the idea that there's something about the logos that is necessary for the absolute chaos of the reality beyond experience to manifest itself as reality. That's an amazing idea because it gives consciousness a constitutive role in the cosmos. You can debate that, but you can't just bloody well brush it off. First of all, we are the most complicated things there are, that we know of, by a massive amount. We're so complicated that it's unbelievable. So there's a lot of cosmos out there, but there's a lot of cosmos in here, too, and which one is greater is by no means obvious, unless you use something trivial, like relative size, which really isn't a very sophisticated approach.
Whatever it is that is you has this capacity to experience reality and to transform it, which is a very strange thing. You can conceptualize the future in your imagination, and then you can work and make that manifest-participate in the process of creation. That's one way of thinking about it. That's why I think Genesis 1 relates the idea that human beings are made in the image of the divine-men and women, which is interesting, because feminists are always criticizing Christianity as being inexorably patriarchal. Of course, they criticize everything like that, so it's hardly a stroke of bloody brilliance. But I think it's an absolute miracle that right at the beginning of the document it says straightforwardly, with no hesitation whatsoever, that the divine spark which we're associating with the word, that brings forth Being, is manifest in men and women equally. That's a very cool thing. You got to think, like I said, do you actually take that seriously? Well, what you got to ask is what happens if you don't take it seriously, right? Read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. That's the best investigation into that tactic that's ever been produced. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,#KEYS
82:Sweet Mother, here it is written: "It is part of the foundation of Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge." Are these forces different for each person?
Yes. The composition is completely different, otherwise everybody would be the same. There are not two beings with an identical combination; between the different parts of the being and the composition of these parts the proportion is different in each individual. There are people, primitive men, people like the yet undeveloped races or the degenerated ones whose combinations are fairly simple; they are still complicated, but comparatively simple. And there are people absolutely at the top of the human ladder, the e ́lite of humanity; their combinations become so complicated that a very special discernment is needed to find the relations between all these things.
There are beings who carry in themselves thousands of different personalities, and then each one has its own rhythm and alternation, and there is a kind of combination; sometimes there are inner conflicts, and there is a play of activities which are rhythmic and with alternations of certain parts which come to the front and then go back and again come to the front. But when one takes all that, it makes such complicated combinations that some people truly find it difficult to understand what is going on in themselves; and yet these are the ones most capable of a complete, coordinated, conscious, organised action; but their organisation is infinitely more complicated than that of primitive or undeveloped men who have two or three impulses and four or five ideas, and who can arrange all this very easily in themselves and seem to be very co-ordinated and logical because there is not very much to organise. But there are people truly like a multitude, and so that gives them a plasticity, a fluidity of action and an extraordinary complexity of perception, and these people are capable of understanding a considerable number of things, as though they had at their disposal a veritable army which they move according to circumstance and need; and all this is inside them. So when these people, with the help of yoga, the discipline of yoga, succeed in centralising all these beings around the central light of the divine Presence, they become powerful entities, precisely because of their complexity. So long as this is not organised they often give the impression of an incoherence, they are almost incomprehensible, one can't manage to understand why they are like that, they are so complex. But when they have organised all these beings, that is, put each one in its place around the divine centre, then truly they are terrific, for they have the capacity of understanding almost everything and doing almost everything because of the multitude of entities they contain, of which they are constituted. And the nearer one is to the top of the ladder, the more it is like that, and consequently the more difficult it is to organise one's being; because when you have about a dozen elements, you can quickly compass and organise them, but when you have thousands of them, it is difficult. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 215-216,#KEYS
83:Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDS)
In the last chapter we talked about strategies for inducing lucid dreams by carrying an idea from the waking world into the dream, such as an intention to comprehend the dream state, a habit of critical state testing, or the recognition of a dreamsign. These strategies are intended to stimulate a dreamer to become lucid within a dream.
This chapter presents a completely different set of approaches to the world of lucid dreaming based on the idea of falling asleep consciously. This involves retaining consciousness while wakefulness is lost and allows direct entry into the lucid dream state without any loss of reflective consciousness. The basic idea has many variations.
While falling asleep, you can focus on hypnagogic (sleep onset) imagery, deliberate visualizations, your breath or heartbeat, the sensations in your body, your sense of self, and so on. If you keep the mind sufficiently active while the tendency to enter REM sleep is strong, you feel your body fall asleep, but you, that is to say, your consciousness, remains awake. The next thing you know, you will find yourself in the dream world, fully lucid.
These two different strategies for inducing lucidity result in two distinct types of lucid dreams. Experiences in which people consciously enter dreaming sleep are referred to as wake-initiated lucid dreams (WILDs), in contrast to dream-initiated lucid dreams (DILDs), in which people become lucid after having fallen asleep unconsciously. 1 The two kinds of lucid dreams differ in a number of ways. WILDs always happen in association with brief awakenings (sometimes only one or two seconds long) from and immediate return to REM sleep. The sleeper has a subjective impression of having been awake. This is not true of DILDs. Although both kinds of lucid dream are more likely to occur later in the night, the proportion of WILDs also increases with time of night. In other words, WILDs are most likely to occur the late morning hours or in afternoon naps. This is strikingly evident in my own record of lucid dreams. Of thirty-three lucid dreams from the first REM period of the night, only one (3 percent) was a WILD, compared with thirteen out of thirty-two (41 percent) lucid dreams from afternoon naps. 2 Generally speaking, WILDs are less frequent than DILDs; in a laboratory study of seventy-six lucid dreams, 72 percent were DILDs compared with 28 percent WILDs. 3 The proportion of WILDs observed in the laboratory seems, by my experience, to be considerably higher than the proportion of WILDs reported at home.
To take a specific example, WILDs account for only 5 percent of my home record of lucid dreams, but for 40 percent of my first fifteen lucid dreams in the laboratory. 4 Ibelieve there are two reasons for this highly significant difference: whenever I spentthe night in the sleep laboratory, I was highly conscious of every time I awakened andI made extraordinary efforts not to move more than necessary in order to minimizeinterference with the physiological recordings.
Thus, my awakenings from REM in the lab were more likely to lead toconscious returns to REM than awakenings at home when I was sleeping with neitherheightened consciousness of my environment and self nor any particular intent not tomove. This suggests that WILD induction techniques might be highly effective underthe proper conditions.
Paul Tholey notes that, while techniques for direct entry to the dream staterequire considerable practice in the beginning, they offer correspondingly greatrewards. 5 When mastered, these techniques (like MILD) can confer the capacity toinduce lucid dreams virtually at will. ~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, 4 - Falling Asleep Consciously,#KEYS
84:Allow the Lord to Do Everything :::
Now, when I start looking like this (Mother closes her eyes), two things are there at the same time: this smile, this joy, this laughter are there, and such peace! Such full, luminous, total peace, in which there are no more conflicts, no more contradictions. There are no more conflicts. It is one single luminous harmony - and yet everything we call error, suffering, misery, everything is there. It eliminates nothing. It is another way of seeing.
(long silence)
There can be no doubt that if you sincerely want to get out of it, it is not so difficult after all: you have nothing to do, you only have to allow the Lord to do everything. And He does everything. He does everything. It is so wonderful, so wonderful!
He takes anything, even what we call a very ordinary intelligence and he simply teaches you to put this intelligence aside, to rest: "There, be quiet, don't stir, don't bother me, I don't need you." Then a door opens - you don't even feel that you have to open it; it is wide open, you are tkane over to the other side. All that is done by Someone else, not you. And then the other way becomes impossible.
All this... oh, this tremendous labour of hte mind striving to understand, toiling and giving itself headaches!... It is absolutely useless, absolutely useless, no use at all, it merely increases the confusion.
You are faced with a so-called problem: what should you say, what should you do, how should you act? There is nothing to do, nothing, you only have to say to the Lord, "There, You see, it is like that" - that's all. And then you stay very quiet. And then quite spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflection, without calculation, nothing, nothing, without the slightest effect - you do what has to be done. That is to say, the Lord does it, it is no longer you. He does it. He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words into your mouth or your pen - He does everything, everything, everything, everything; you have nothing more to do but allow yourself to live blissfully.
I am more and more convinced that people do not really want it.
But clearing the ground is difficult, the work of clearing the ground before hand.
But you don't even need to do it! He does it for you.
But they are constantly breaking in: the old consciousness, the old thoughts....
Yes, they try to come in again, by habit. You only have to say, "Lord, You see, You see, You see, it is like that" - that's all. "Lord, You see, You see this, You see that, You see this fool" - and it is all over immediately. And it changes automatically, my child, without the slightest effort. Simply to be sincere, that is to say, to truly want everything to be right. You are perfectly conscious that you can do nothing about it, that you have no capacity.... But there is always something that wants to do it by itself; that's the trouble, otherwise...
No, you may be full of an excellent goodwill and then you want to do it. That's what complicated everything. Or else you don't have faith, you believe that the Lord will not be able to do it and that you must do it yourself, because He does not know! (Mother laughs.) This, this kind of stupidity is very common. "How can He see things? We live in a world of Falsehood, how can He see Falsehood and see..." But He sees the thing as it is! Exactly!
I am not speaking of people of no intelligence, I am speaking of people who are intelligent and try - there is a kind of conviction, like that, somewhere, even in people who know that we live in a world of Ignorance and Falsehood and that there is a Lord who is All-Truth. They say, "Precisely because He is All-Truth, He does not understand. (Mother laughs.) He does not understand our falsehood, I must deal with it myself." That is very strong, very common.
Ah! we make complications for nothing. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
85:I have never been able to share your constantly recurring doubts about your capacity or the despair that arises in you so violently when there are these attacks, nor is their persistent recurrence a valid ground for believing that they can never be overcome. Such a persistent recurrence has been a feature in the sadhana of many who have finally emerged and reached the goal; even the sadhana of very great Yogis has not been exempt from such violent and constant recurrences; they have sometimes been special objects of such persistent assaults, as I have indeed indicated in Savitri in more places than one - and that was indeed founded on my own experience. In the nature of these recurrences there is usually a constant return of the same adverse experiences, the same adverse resistance, thoughts destructive of all belief and faith and confidence in the future of the sadhana, frustrating doubts of what one has known as the truth, voices of despondency and despair, urgings to abandonment of the Yoga or to suicide or else other disastrous counsels of déchéance. The course taken by the attacks is not indeed the same for all, but still they have strong family resemblance. One can eventually overcome if one begins to realise the nature and source of these assaults and acquires the faculty of observing them, bearing, without being involved or absorbed into their gulf, finally becoming the witness of their phenomena and understanding them and refusing the mind's sanction even when the vital is still tossed in the whirl or the most outward physical mind still reflects the adverse suggestions. In the end these attacks lose their power and fall away from the nature; the recurrence becomes feeble or has no power to last: even, if the detachment is strong enough, they can be cut out very soon or at once. The strongest attitude to take is to regard these things as what they really are, incursions of dark forces from outside taking advantage of certain openings in the physical mind or the vital part, but not a real part of oneself or spontaneous creation in one's own nature. To create a confusion and darkness in the physical mind and throw into it or awake in it mistaken ideas, dark thoughts, false impressions is a favourite method of these assailants, and if they can get the support of this mind from over-confidence in its own correctness or the natural rightness of its impressions and inferences, then they can have a field day until the true mind reasserts itself and blows the clouds away. Another device of theirs is to awake some hurt or rankling sense of grievance in the lower vital parts and keep them hurt or rankling as long as possible. In that case one has to discover these openings in one's nature and learn to close them permanently to such attacks or else to throw out intruders at once or as soon as possible. The recurrence is no proof of a fundamental incapacity; if one takes the right inner attitude, it can and will be overcome. The idea of suicide ought never to be accepted; there is no real ground for it and in any case it cannot be a remedy or a real escape: at most it can only be postponement of difficulties and the necessity for their solution under no better circumstances in another life. One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time he conceals himself, and then in his own right time he will reveal his Presence.
I have tried to dispel all the misconceptions, explain things as they are and meet all the points at issue. It is not that you really cannot make progress or have not made any progress; on the contrary, you yourself have admitted that you have made a good advance in many directions and there is no reason why, if you persevere, the rest should not come. You have always believed in the Guruvada: I would ask you then to put your faith in the Guru and the guidance and rely on the Ishwara for the fulfilment, to have faith in my abiding love and affection, in the affection and divine goodwill and loving kindness of the Mother, stand firm against all attacks and go forward perseveringly towards the spiritual goal and the all-fulfilling and all-satisfying touch of the All-Blissful, the Ishwara.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
86:Although a devout student of the Bible, Paracelsus instinctively adopted the broad patterns of essential learning, as these had been clarified by Pythagoras of Samos and Plato of Athens. Being by nature a mystic as well as a scientist, he also revealed a deep regard for the Neoplatonic philosophy as expounded by Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Neoplatonism is therefore an invaluable aid to the interpretation of the Paracelsian doctrine.
Paracelsus held that true knowledge is attained in two ways, or rather that the pursuit of knowledge is advanced by a two-fold method, the elements of which are completely interdependent. In our present terminology, we can say that these two parts of method are intuition and experience. To Paracelsus, these could never be divided from each other.
The purpose of intuition is to reveal certain basic ideas which must then be tested and proven by experience. Experience, in turn, not only justifies intuition, but contributes certain additional knowledge by which the impulse to further growth is strengthened and developed. Paracelsus regarded the separation of intuition and experience to be a disaster, leading inevitably to greater error and further disaster. Intuition without experience allows the mind to fall into an abyss of speculation without adequate censorship by practical means. Experience without intuition could never be fruitful because fruitfulness comes not merely from the doing of things, but from the overtones which stimulate creative thought. Further, experience is meaningless unless there is within man the power capable of evaluating happenings and occurrences. The absence of this evaluating factor allows the individual to pass through many kinds of experiences, either misinterpreting them or not inter preting them at all. So Paracelsus attempted to explain intuition and how man is able to apprehend that which is not obvious or apparent. Is it possible to prove beyond doubt that the human being is capable of an inward realization of truths or facts without the assistance of the so-called rational faculty?
According to Paracelsus, intuition was possible because of the existence in nature of a mysterious substance or essence-a universal life force. He gave this many names, but for our purposes, the simplest term will be appropriate. He compared it to light, further reasoning that there are two kinds of light: a visible radiance, which he called brightness, and an invisible radiance, which he called darkness. There is no essential difference between light and darkness. There is a dark light, which appears luminous to the soul but cannot be sensed by the body. There is a visible radiance which seems bright to the senses, but may appear dark to the soul. We must recognize that Paracelsus considered light as pertaining to the nature of being, the total existence from which all separate existences arise. Light not only contains the energy needed to support visible creatures, and the whole broad expanse of creation, but the invisible part of light supports the secret powers and functions of man, particularly intuition. Intuition, therefore, relates to the capacity of the individual to become attuned to the hidden side of life. By light, then, Paracelsus implies much more than the radiance that comes from the sun, a lantern, or a candle. To him, light is the perfect symbol, emblem, or figure of total well-being. Light is the cause of health. Invisible light, no less real if unseen, is the cause of wisdom. As the light of the body gives strength and energy, sustaining growth and development, so the light of the soul bestows understanding, the light of the mind makes wisdom possible, and the light of the spirit confers truth. Therefore, truth, wisdom, understanding, and health are all manifesta tions or revelations ot one virtue or power. What health is to the body, morality is to the emotions, virtue to the soul, wisdom to the mind, and reality to the spirit. This total content of living values is contained in every ray of visible light. This ray is only a manifestation upon one level or plane of the total mystery of life. Therefore, when we look at a thing, we either see its objective, physical form, or we apprehend its inner light Everything that lives, lives in light; everything that has an existence, radiates light. All things derive their life from light, and this light, in its root, is life itself. This, indeed, is the light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world. ~ Manly P Hall, Paracelsus,#KEYS
87:The ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient Egyptians had some very interesting, dramatic ideas about that. For example-very briefly-there was a deity known as Marduk. Marduk was a Mesopotamian deity, and imagine this is sort of what happened. As an empire grew out of the post-ice age-15,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago-all these tribes came together. These tribes each had their own deity-their own image of the ideal. But then they started to occupy the same territory. One tribe had God A, and one tribe had God B, and one could wipe the other one out, and then it would just be God A, who wins. That's not so good, because maybe you want to trade with those people, or maybe you don't want to lose half your population in a war. So then you have to have an argument about whose God is going to take priority-which ideal is going to take priority.
What seems to happen is represented in mythology as a battle of the gods in celestial space. From a practical perspective, it's more like an ongoing dialog. You believe this; I believe this. You believe that; I believe this. How are we going to meld that together? You take God A, and you take God B, and maybe what you do is extract God C from them, and you say, 'God C now has the attributes of A and B.' And then some other tribes come in, and C takes them over, too. Take Marduk, for example. He has 50 different names, at least in part, of the subordinate gods-that represented the tribes that came together to make the civilization. That's part of the process by which that abstracted ideal is abstracted. You think, 'this is important, and it works, because your tribe is alive, and so we'll take the best of both, if we can manage it, and extract out something, that's even more abstract, that covers both of us.'
I'll give you a couple of Marduk's interesting features. He has eyes all the way around his head. He's elected by all the other gods to be king God. That's the first thing. That's quite cool. They elect him because they're facing a terrible threat-sort of like a flood and a monster combined. Marduk basically says that, if they elect him top God, he'll go out and stop the flood monster, and they won't all get wiped out. It's a serious threat. It's chaos itself making its comeback. All the gods agree, and Marduk is the new manifestation. He's got eyes all the way around his head, and he speaks magic words. When he fights, he fights this deity called Tiamat. We need to know that, because the word 'Tiamat' is associated with the word 'tehom.' Tehom is the chaos that God makes order out of at the beginning of time in Genesis, so it's linked very tightly to this story. Marduk, with his eyes and his capacity to speak magic words, goes out and confronts Tiamat, who's like this watery sea dragon. It's a classic Saint George story: go out and wreak havoc on the dragon. He cuts her into pieces, and he makes the world out of her pieces. That's the world that human beings live in.
The Mesopotamian emperor acted out Marduk. He was allowed to be emperor insofar as he was a good Marduk. That meant that he had eyes all the way around his head, and he could speak magic; he could speak properly. We are starting to understand, at that point, the essence of leadership. Because what's leadership? It's the capacity to see what the hell's in front of your face, and maybe in every direction, and maybe the capacity to use your language properly to transform chaos into order. God only knows how long it took the Mesopotamians to figure that out. The best they could do was dramatize it, but it's staggeringly brilliant. It's by no means obvious, and this chaos is a very strange thing. This is a chaos that God wrestled with at the beginning of time.
Chaos is half psychological and half real. There's no other way to really describe it. Chaos is what you encounter when you're blown into pieces and thrown into deep confusion-when your world falls apart, when your dreams die, when you're betrayed. It's the chaos that emerges, and the chaos is everything it wants, and it's too much for you. That's for sure. It pulls you down into the underworld, and that's where the dragons are. All you've got at that point is your capacity to bloody well keep your eyes open, and to speak as carefully and as clearly as you can. Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get through it that way and come out the other side. It's taken people a very long time to figure that out, and it looks, to me, that the idea is erected on the platform of our ancient ancestors, maybe tens of millions of years ago, because we seem to represent that which disturbs us deeply using the same system that we used to represent serpentile, or other, carnivorous predators. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,#KEYS
88:
Mother, when one imagines something, does it not exist?
When you imagine something, it means that you make a mental formation which may be close to the truth or far from the truth - it also depends upon the quality of your formation. You make a mental formation and there are people who have such a power of formation that they succeed in making what they imagine real. There are not many of these but there are some. They imagine something and their formation is so well made and so powerful that it succeeds in being realised. These are creators; there are not many of them but there are some.
If one thinks of someone who doesn't exist or who is dead?
Ah! What do you mean? What have you just said? Someone who doesn't exist or someone who is dead? These are two absolutely different things.
I mean someone who is dead.
Someone who is dead!
If this person has remained in the mental domain, you can find him immediately. Naturally if he is no longer in the mental domain, if he is in the psychic domain, to think of him is not enough. You must know how to go into the psychic domain to find him. But if he has remained in the mental domain and you think of him, you can find him immediately, and not only that, but you can have a mental contact with him and a kind of mental vision of his existence.
The mind has a capacity of vision of its own and it is not the same vision as with these eyes, but it is a vision, it is a perception in forms. But this is not imagination. It has nothing to do with imagination.
Imagination, for instance, is when you begin to picture to yourself an ideal being to whom you apply all your conceptions, and when you tell yourself, "Why, it should be like this, like that, its form should be like this, its thought like that, its character like that," when you see all the details and build up the being. Now, writers do this all the time because when they write a novel, they imagine. There are those who take things from life but there are those who are imaginative, creators; they create a character, a personage and then put him in their book later. This is to imagine. To imagine, for example, a whole concurrence of circumstances, a set of events, this is what I call telling a story to oneself. But it can be put down on paper, and then one becomes a novelist. There are very different kinds of writers. Some imagine everything, some gather all sorts of observations from life and construct their book with them. There are a hundred ways of writing a book. But indeed some writers imagine everything from beginning to end. It all comes out of their head and they construct even their whole story without any support in things physically observed. This truly is imagination. But as I say, if they are very powerful and have a considerable capacity for creation, it is possible that one day or other there will be a physical human being who realises their creation. This too is true.
What do you suppose imagination is, eh? Have you never imagined anything, you?
And what happens?
All that one imagines.
You mean that you imagine something and it happens like that, eh? Or it is in a dream...
What is the function, the use of the imagination?
If one knows how to use it, as I said, one can create for oneself his own inner and outer life; one can build his own existence with his imagination, if one knows how to use it and has a power. In fact it is an elementary way of creating, of forming things in the world. I have always felt that if one didn't have the capacity of imagination he would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you want to be, don't you, and this goes ahead, then you follow, then it continues to go ahead and you follow. Imagination opens for you the path of realisation. People who are not imaginative - it is very difficult to make them move; they see just what is there before their nose, they feel just what they are moment by moment and they cannot go forward because they are clamped by the immediate thing. It depends a good deal on what one calls imagination. However...
Men of science must be having imagination!
A lot. Otherwise they would never discover anything. In fact, what is called imagination is a capacity to project oneself outside realised things and towards things realisable, and then to draw them by the projection. One can obviously have progressive and regressive imaginations. There are people who always imagine all the catastrophes possible, and unfortunately they also have the power of making them come. It's like the antennae going into a world that's not yet realised, catching something there and drawing it here. Then naturally it is an addition to the earth atmosphere and these things tend towards manifestation. It is an instrument which can be disciplined, can be used at will; one can discipline it, direct it, orientate it. It is one of the faculties one can develop in himself and render serviceable, that is, use it for definite purposes.
Sweet Mother, can one imagine the Divine and have the contact?
Certainly if you succeed in imagining the Divine you have the contact, and you can have the contact with what you imagine, in any case. In fact it is absolutely impossible to imagine something which doesn't exist somewhere. You cannot imagine anything at all which doesn't exist somewhere. It is possible that it doesn't exist on the earth, it is possible that it's elsewhere, but it is impossible for you to imagine something which is not already contained in principle in the universe; otherwise it could not occur.
Then, Sweet Mother, this means that in the created universe nothing new is added?
In the created universe? Yes. The universe is progressive; we said that constantly things manifest, more and more. But for your imagination to be able to go and seek beyond the manifestation something which will be manifested, well, it may happen, in fact it does - I was going to tell you that it is in this way that some beings can cause considerable progress to be made in the world, because they have the capacity of imagining something that's not yet manifested. But there are not many. One must first be capable of going beyond the manifested universe to be able to imagine something which is not there. There are already many things which can be imagined.
What is our terrestrial world in the universe? A very small thing. Simply to have the capacity of imagining something which does not exist in the terrestrial manifestation is already very difficult, very difficult. For how many billions of years hasn't it existed, this little earth? And there have been no two identical things. That's much. It is very difficult to go out from the earth atmosphere with one's mind; one can, but it is very difficult. And then if one wants to go out, not only from the earth atmosphere but from the universal life!
To be able simply to enter into contact with the life of the earth in its totality from the formation of the earth until now, what can this mean? And then to go beyond this and enter into contact with universal life from its beginnings up to now... and then again to be able to bring something new into the universe, one must go still farther beyond.
Not easy!
That's all?
(To the child) Convinced?
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, [T1],#KEYS
89: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,#KEYS
90:
Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?
Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi.
But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.
If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder.
Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter.
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.
Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together.
When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?
The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 93?
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91:
The whole question.
The whole question? And now, do you understand?... Not quite? I told you that you did not understand because it was muddled up; in one question three different ideas were included. So naturally it created a confusion. But taken separately they are what I explained to you just now, most probably; that is to say, one has this altogether ignorant and obliterated consciousness and is convinced that he is the cause and effect, the origin and result of himself, separate from all others, separate with a limited power to act upon others and a little greater capacity to be set in movement by others or to react to others' influence. That is how people think usually, something like that, isn't that so? How do you feel, you? What effect do you have upon yourself? And you? And you?... You have never thought about it? You have never looked into yourself to see what effect you exercise upon yourself? Never thought over it? No? How do you feel? Nobody will tell me? Come, you tell me that. Never tried to understand how you feel? Yes? No? How strange! Never sought to understand how, for example, decisions take place in you? From where do they come? What makes you decide one thing rather than another? And what is the relation between a decision of yours and your action? And to what extent do you have the freedom of choice between one thing and another? And how far do you feel you are able to, you are free to do this or that or that other or nothing at all?... You have pondered over that? Yes? Is there any one among the students who has thought over it? No? Nobody put the question to himself? You? You?...
Even if one thinks over it, perhaps one is not able to answer!
One cannot explain?
No.
It is difficult to explain? Even this simple little thing, to see where in your consciousness the wills that come from outside meet your will (which you call yours, which comes from within), at what place the two join together and to what extent the one from outside acts upon that from within and the one from within acts upon that from outside? You have never tried to find this out? It has never seemed to you unbearable that a will from outside should have an action upon your will? No?
I do not know.
Oh! I am putting very difficult problems! But, my children, I was preoccupied with that when I was a child of five!... So I thought you must have been preoccupied with it since a long time. In oneself, there are contradictory wills. Yes, many. That is one of the very first discoveries. There is one part which wants things this way; and then at another moment, another way, and a third time, one wants still another thing! Besides, there is even this: something that wants and another which says no. So? But it is exactly that which has to be found if you wish in the least to organise yourself. Why not project yourself upon a screen, as in the cinema, and then look at yourself moving on it? How interesting it is!
This is the first step.
You project yourself on the screen and then observe and see all that is moving there and how it moves and what happens. You make a little diagram, it becomes so interesting then. And then, after a while, when you are quite accustomed to seeing, you can go one step further and take a decision. Or even a still greater step: you organise - arrange, take up all that, put each thing in its place, organise in such a way that you begin to have a straight movement with an inner meaning. And then you become conscious of your direction and are able to say: "Very well, it will be thus; my life will develop in that way, because that is the logic of my being. Now, I have arranged all that within me, each thing has been put in its place, and so naturally a central orientation is forming. I am following this orientation. One step more and I know what will happen to me for I myself am deciding it...." I do not know, I am telling you this; to me it seemed terribly interesting, the most interesting thing in the world. There was nothing, no other thing that interested me more than that.
This happened to me.... I was five or six or seven years old (at seven the thing became quite serious) and I had a father who loved the circus, and he came and told me: "Come with me, I am going to the circus on Sunday." I said: "No, I am doing something much more interesting than going to the circus!" Or again, young friends invited me to attend a meeting where we were to play together, enjoy together: "No, I enjoy here much more...." And it was quite sincere. It was not a pose: for me, it was like this, it was true. There was nothing in the world more enjoyable than that.
And I am so convinced that anybody who does it in that way, with the same freshness and sincerity, will obtain most interesting results.... To put all that on a screen in front of yourself and look at what is happening. And the first step is to know all that is happening and then you must not try to shut your eyes when something does not appear pleasant to you! You must keep them wide open and put each thing in that way before the screen. Then you make quite an interesting discovery. And then the next step is to start telling yourself: "Since all that is happening within me, why should I not put this thing in this way and then that thing in that way and then this other in this way and thus wouldn't I be doing something logical that has a meaning? Why should I not remove that thing which stands obstructing the way, these conflicting wills? Why? And what does that represent in the being? Why is it there? If it were put there, would it not help instead of harming me?" And so on.
And little by little, little by little, you see clearer and then you see why you are made like that, what is the thing you have got to do - that for which you are born. And then, quite naturally, since all is organised for this thing to happen, the path becomes straight and you can say beforehand: "It is in this way that it will happen." And when things come from outside to try and upset all that, you are able to say: "No, I accept this, for it helps; I reject that, for that harms." And then, after a few years, you curb yourself as you curb a horse: you do whatever you like, in the way you like and you go wherever you like.
It seems to me this is worth the trouble. I believe it is the most interesting thing.
...
You must have a great deal of sincerity, a little courage and perseverance and then a sort of mental curiosity, you understand, curious, seeking to know, interested, wanting to learn. To love to learn: that, one must have in one's nature. To find it impossible to stand before something grey, all hazy, in which nothing is seen clearly and which gives you quite an unpleasant feeling, for you do not know where you begin and where you end, what is yours and what is not yours and what is settled and what is not settled - what is this pulp-like thing you call yourself in which things get intermingled and act upon one another without even your being aware of it? You ask yourself: "But why have I done this?" You know nothing about it. "And why have I felt that?" You don't know that, either. And then, you are thrown into a world outside that is only fog and you are thrown into a world inside that is also for you another kind of fog, still more impenetrable, in which you live, like a cork thrown upon the waters and the waves carry it away or cast it into the air, and it drops and rolls on. That is quite an unpleasant state. I do not know, but to me it appears unpleasant.
To see clearly, to see one's way, where one is going, why one is going there, how one is to go there and what one is going to do and what is the kind of relation with others... But that is a problem so wonderfully interesting - it is interesting - and you can always discover things every minute! One's work is never finished.
There is a time, there is a certain state of consciousness when you have the feeling that you are in that condition with all the weight of the world lying heavy upon you and besides you are going in blinkers and do not know where you are going, but there is something which is pushing you. And that is truly a very unpleasant condition. And there is another moment when one draws oneself up and is able to see what is there above, and one becomes it; then one looks at the world as though from the top of a very very high mountain and one sees all that is happening below; then one can choose one's way and follow it. That is a more pleasant condition. This then is truly the truth, you are upon earth for that, surely. All individual beings and all the little concentrations of consciousness were created to do this work. It is the very reason for existence: to be able to become fully conscious of a certain sum of vibrations representing an individual being and put order there and find one's way and follow it.
And so, as men do not know it and do not do it, life comes and gives them a blow here: "Oh! that hurts", then a blow there: "Ah! that's hurting me." And the thing goes on like that and all the time it is like that. And all the time they are getting pain somewhere. They suffer, they cry, they groan. But it is simply due to that reason, there is no other: it is that they have not done that little work. If, when they were quite young, there had been someone to teach them to do the work and they had done it without losing time, they could have gone through life gloriously and instead of suffering they would have been all-powerful masters of their destiny.
This is not to say that necessarily all things would become pleasant. It is not at all that. But your reaction towards things becomes the true reaction and instead of suffering, you learn; instead of being miserable, you go forward and progress. After all, I believe it is for this that you are here - so that there is someone who can tell you: "There, well, try that. It is worth trying." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 199,#KEYS
92:[The Gods and Their Worlds]
[...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.
This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.
There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.
All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.
One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.
Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.
But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.
When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.
Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!
I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.
Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!
These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.
In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.
If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.
If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
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93:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. 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 perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
94:Mental Education
OF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants.
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Kids don't lack capacity, only teachers. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 2:All souls have the capacity to be great souls. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 3:Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 4:Genius is the capacity of avoiding hard work. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 5:Capacity for joy Admits temptation. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 6:Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 7:A dim capacity for wings demeans the dress I wear. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 8:Envy, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 9:God's unique capacity is too surprising to surprise. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 10:I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 11:Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 12:We've got more productive capacity now than we ever have. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 13:Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 14:Genius: The capacity to see and to express what is simple, simply! ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 15:You must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 16:The truth of the Christian faith surpasses the capacity of reason. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 17:The truth of the Christian faith surpasses the capacity of reason. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 18:Nature has created us with the capacity to know God, to experience God. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 19:God has blessed me with the capacity to meditate even while I am talking. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 20:All men have the capacity of knowing themselves and acting with moderation. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 21:Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 22:Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 23:The more people one has to love, the more one's capacity to love stretches. ~ quentin-crisp, @wisdomtrove 24:He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 25:Frenchmen have an unlimited capacity for gallantry and indulge it on every occasion. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 26:... I doubt the capacity of the human animal for being dignified in ceremony. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 27:Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 28:Having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 29:The human being is born with an incurable capacity for making the best of things. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 30:& 31:Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 32:Real happiness in life comes from the mental capacity to adapt to any situation. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 33:Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 34:I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 35:There's a capacity for appetite... that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 36:A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 37:The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 38:The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 39:& 40:When you say "I" and "my" too much, you lose the capacity to understand the "we" and "our". ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 41:That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 42:Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 43:Our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 44:Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 45:Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 46:God desires to reveal to us that His capacity to forgive is bigger than our capacity to sin. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 47:Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 48:Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 49:It never hurts a fool to appear before an audience, for his capacity is not a capacity for feeling. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 50:The widest thing in the universe is not space, it is the potential capacity of the human heart ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 51:I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 52:One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 53:Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 54:Only a deep attention to the whole of our life can bring us the capacity to love well and live freely. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 55:People have the natural capacity to affirm and embrace life in the most difficult of circumstances. ~ rachel-naomi-remen, @wisdomtrove 56:The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 57:My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 58:The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 59:Intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 60:Science of happiness lies in our understanding. The secrets of happiness lie in our capacity to expand our heart. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 61:The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.' ~ leo-babauta, @wisdomtrove 62:The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 63:Power includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 64:We as human beings have the amazing capacity to be reborn at breakfast everyday and say, This is a new day.‚ù ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 65:Your struggles have not been a waste. They've come to strengthen you. And grow your capacity to lead - and win. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 66:The attitude of other people affects each of us and the attitude of each of us has the capacity to affect all of us. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 67:A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 68:The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 69:Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 70:The capacity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful is astonishingly sturdy and survives amidst the harshest distractions. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 71:Civilization merely develops man's capacity for a greater variety of sensations, and ... absolutely nothing else. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 72:One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 73:Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing what others have not seen. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 74:The slender capacity of man's heart cannot comprehend the unfathomable depth and burning zeal of God's love toward us. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 75:When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 76:True encounter with Christ liberates something within us, a power we did not know we had, a capacity to grow and change. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 77:We are here to change. We are here to grow, develop and unfold. We are progressive beings that have infinite capacity ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 78:If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 79:Men who reach decisions promptly usually have the capacity to move with definiteness of purpose in other circumstances. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 80:The best stories have many meanings; their meaning changes as our capacity to understand and appreciate meaning grows. ~ rachel-naomi-remen, @wisdomtrove 81:I'm challenging everybody on every side of every divide to be more who they are, to cultivate their capacity for awareness. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 82:While doing work if the mind continues to be active let it be so, but there must be at the same time a capacity for silence. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 83:Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don't yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 84:Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 85:Let each man take the path according to his capacity, understanding and temperament. His true guru will meet him along that path. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 86:Love is based on our capacity to trust in a reality beyond fear, to trust a timeless truth bigger than all our difficulties. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 87:Popularity& 88:An organization which just perpetuates today's level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 89:Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 90:Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 91:The best way to receive divine love is to give it away, and the more we pass on the more we increase our capacity to receive. ~ thomas-keating, @wisdomtrove 92:Every organization of men, be it social or political, ultimately relies on man's capacity for making promises and keeping them. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 93:The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism . . . ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 94:If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 95:Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 96:Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 97:Persisting through lesser difficulties builds your capacity to persist through greater difficulties, and achieve even greater things. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 98:We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 99:What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 100:The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 101:There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 102:We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 103:Anything that threatens, hinders, obstructs, denies, delays your capacity to stand fully up for yourself, within yourself, take it down. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 104:I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of - of American capitalism. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 105:An empowering mission statement is the fulfilment of your own unique gifts. It’s the expression of your unique capacity to contribute. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 106:I believe it is within our capacity that by the year 2051 that 51 percent of the human population will be flourishing. That is my charge. ~ martin-seligman, @wisdomtrove 107:Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove 108:Feeling vulnerable, imperfect, and afraid is human. It's when we lose our capacity to hold space for these struggles that we become dangerous. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 109:There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 110:Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 111:A blow that would kill a civilized man soon heals on a savage. The higher we go in the scale of life, the greater is the capacity for suffering. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 112:Do to your capacity. Always strive to extend your capacity. Ten minutes today, after a few days, twelve minutes. Master that, then again extend. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 113:Each of us has a huge capacity to learn and to achieve. Being ever alert makes the task of becoming all we are capable of becoming so much easier. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 114:People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 115:The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started. ~ norman-cousins, @wisdomtrove 116:Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 117:Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 118:Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives. ~ tony-robbins, @wisdomtrove 119:There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 120:What's right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity - intellect and resources - to do some thing about them. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 121:I have an infamously low capacity for visualizing relationships, which made the study of geometry and all subjects derived from it impossible for me. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 122:No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 123:You can increase your capacity to absorb the mystical kundalini. I have 3 or 4 students who are on the path of mysticism, they can absorb more of it. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 124:A small politician, of low capacity and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile tool of men worse than himself but also stronger and abler. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 125:The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 126:Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 127:It's not about the breath, it's about the awareness and the breath is simply a skillful means for befriending this deep capacity of the heart and mind. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 128:We are an arrogant species, full of terrible potential, but we also have a great capacity for love, friendship, generosity, kindness, faith, hope, and joy. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 129:So vast, so limitless in capacity is man's imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 130:To each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment or fortune; to each by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum capacity. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 131:Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 132:Something sacred, that's it. We ought to be able to say that such and such a painting is as it is, with its capacity for power, because it is "touched by God." ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove 133:The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 134:The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 135:The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove 136:The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter. ~ giordano-bruno, @wisdomtrove 137:... (I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 138:The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing, the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its own capacity. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 139:Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 140:Some people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy. ~ abraham-maslow, @wisdomtrove 141:God has given each normal person a capacity to achieve some end. True, some are endowed with more talent than others, but God has left none of us talentless. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 142:If your Lord Supreme requests you to do something, rest assured he has already given you the capacity - even more than necessary - long before you actually need it. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 143:There is no human being on earth who does not have the capacity to offer the message of peace to the world at large. But what is needed now is the soulful willingness. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 144:Your mind has some clearness and capacity for right thinking; it opens towards the heights, but for its own sake, - to receive light from above for its own activity. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 145:I am inclined by nature to be optimistic about the capacity of a person to rise higher than he or she has thought possible once interest and ambition are aroused. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 146:No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 147:So there was not an "I" anymore - not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect - save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 148:When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 149:The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 150:You must know that there are different tastes. There are also different powers of digestion... different temperaments... differences in the capacity to comprehend. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 151:The chief purpose of life, for any of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 152:When you lose your capacity to care what other people think, you've lost your ability to connect. But when you're defined by it, you've lost your ability to be vulnerable. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 153:Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 154:What will happen in your life if you accept the invitation to stillness cannot be known ... what can be known is you will have a larger capacity to truly meet whatever appears. ~ gangaji, @wisdomtrove 155:When you are right, everything around you is right, for the beautiful flow that is inside your heart has the capacity to spread its fragrance of oneness-light all around you. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 156:We've seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do, you'll join me as an unbridled optimist about America's future. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 157:In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 158:Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 159:If men were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking, they would lose the capacity for asking all the unanswerable questions upon which every civilization is founded. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 160:Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 161:Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Each person is created in God’s image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and to be loved. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove 162:The buddha called suffering a holy truth, because our suffering has the capacity of showing us the path to liberation. Embrace your suffering and let it reveal to you the way to peace. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 163:You are the infinite potentiality; the inexhaustible possibility. Because you are, all can be. The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 164:The more the capacity to concentrate is developed, the more often the profound tranquility in work is achieved, then the clearer will be the manifestation of discipline within the child. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 165:We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 166:Many aspects of life cannot be explained through logic or reason. The reasoning part of the mind simply doesn't have the capacity to understand the many whys and how's of being and non-being. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 167:That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 168:Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 169:He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 170:There seems almost a general wish of descrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 171:The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 172:There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state. The construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 173:The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 174:When you look deeply into your anger, you will see that the person you call your enemy is also suffering. As soon as you see that, the capacity of accepting and having compassion for them is there. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 175:Cigars served me for precisely fifty years as protection and a weapon in the combat of life... I owe to the cigar a great intensification of my capacity to work and a facilitation of my self-control. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 176:From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the other of small value. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 177:The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 178:Anyone who stops learning is old ‚Äî whether this happens at twenty or at eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young but becomes constantly more valuable ‚Äî regardless of physical capacity. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 179:Altogether, the task of estimating the length of human life is beyond our capacity, for directly we say that it is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 180:... it's important to have the right monetary policy. It's important for, to have the right fiscal policy. But it's nowhere near as important as just the normal regenerative capacity of American capitalism. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 181:Their demeanor is invariably morose, sullen, clownish and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity for enjoyment. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 182:I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms that we can't conceive. And there could, of course, be forms of intelligence beyond human capacity-beyond as much as we are beyond a chimpanzee. ~ martin-rees, @wisdomtrove 183:Science has the capacity to show mankind the full development of the mental life. Spirituality has the capacity to show mankind the possibility and inevitability of the life beyond the mind, the supramental life. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 184:So long as we believe in our heart of hearts that our capacity is limited and we grow anxious and unhappy, we are lacking in faith. One who truly trusts in God has no right to be anxious about anything. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 185:The realised man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 186:No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 187:The mind is not only capable of knowing [innate ideas], but further of finding them in itself; and if it had only the simple capacity to receive knowledge…it would not be the source of necessary truths… ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove 188:He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 189:Joy is a return to the deep harmony of body, mind, and spirit that was yours at birth and that can be yours again. That openness to love, that capacity for wholeness with the world around you, is still within you. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 190:The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 191:The unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 192:We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence. ~ fred-rogers, @wisdomtrove 193:The darkest moments of our lives are not to be buried and forgotten, rather they are a memory to be called upon for inspiration to remind us of the unrelenting human spirit and our capacity to overcome the intolerable ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 194:Wise guidance never violates people's Free Will. A superior who demands obedience of his subordinates should show respect for their capacity to understand, and also for their Innate Right to their own Free Will. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 195:I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders - Parkinson's and Alzheimer's - because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral function when it has been damaged. ~ oliver-sacks, @wisdomtrove 196:Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 197:Enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy... your entire education has has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 198:Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 199:Most persons have but a very moderate capacity of happiness. Expecting... in marriage a far greater degree of happiness than they commonly find, and knowing not that the fault is in their own scanty capability of happiness. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 200:As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 201:Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 202:You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 203:The root-word "buddha" means to wake up, to know, to understand; and he or she who wakes up and understands is call a Buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 204:Intelligence is the capacity to be in the present. The more you are in the past or are in the future, the less intelligent you are. Intelligence is the capacity to be here-now, to be in this moment and nowhere else. Then you are awake. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 205:The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 206:The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 207:The more various our artificial necessities, the wider is our circle of pleasure; for all pleasure consists in obviating necessities as they rise; luxury, therefore, as it increases our wants, increases our capacity for happiness ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 208:She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 209:To become mindful ‚¶ present ‚¶ is really the invitation to work with the joys and the sorrows of the world, and to do so with this gift, this capacity of loving awareness, of attention that actually can be present for the whole dance. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 210:Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it. Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 211:The brain has a wonderful capacity to simulate experiences, but there´s a price: the simulator pulls you out of the moment, plus it sets you chasing pleasures that aren´t that great and resisting pains that are exaggerated or not even real ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove 212:The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 213:Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 214:The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence must recover. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 215:Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable... . A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 216:Never before has man had such a great capacity to control his own environment, to end hunger, poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and human misery. We have the power to make the best generation of mankind in the history of the world. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 217:The mind's capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 218:Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 219:[C]ontinence is a very important part of yoga. If a handful of people come forward with strong wills, nothing is impossible. One Buddha changed half the globe; one Jesus, three quarters of the world. We all have that capacity. ~ swami-satchidananda-saraswati, @wisdomtrove 220:Sometimes our body is willing, but our mind is weak. Sometimes our mind is willing, but our body is weak. Do not be afraid. Strive to extend your capacity but do not be disappointed with yourself. What does not challenge us, cannot change us. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 221:To preserve an unclouded capacity for the enjoyment of life is an unusual moral and psychological achievement. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the prerogative of mindlessness, but the exact opposite: It is the reward of self-esteem. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 222:True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 223:Encouragement is awesome. Think about it. It has the capacity to lift a man's or a woman's shoulders. To breathe fresh air into the fading embers of a smoldering dream. To actually change the course of another human being's day, week, or life. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 224:Reflection is not the evil; but a reflective condition and the deadlock which it involves, by transforming the capacity for action into a means of escape from action, is both corrupt and dangerous, and leads in the end to a retrograde movement. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 225:Robots do not love. God created us with the capacity to love. Love is based upon one's right to choose to love. We cannot force others to love us. We can make them serve us or obey us. But true love is founded upon one's freedom to choose to respond. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 226:Remember, no matter what you background is and what your current circumstances are, you have the capacity to take action. This is one of the golden threads of humanity - we all have the power to act in a way that will improve the quality of our lives. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 227:Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invaria. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 228:The heart can bear it all. No matter what your history is, no matter what your circumstances are, no matter how many lies you have told or covered up, in this moment, you have the capacity to come back to yourself and discover the complete truth of your being. ~ gangaji, @wisdomtrove 229:I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 230:I respect everything in change and the solemn beauty of life and death... and therefore, while man is amidst the immense beauty of objective bodies, he must possess the capacity of self-perfection and must observe and represent his world with full confidence. ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 231:Thought ... is still possible, and no doubt actual, wherever men live under the conditions of political freedom. Unfortunately ... no other human capacity is so vulnerable, and it is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 232:Healing is a different type of pain. It’s the pain of becoming aware of the power of one’s strength and weakness, of one’s capacity to love or do damage to oneself and to others, and of how the most challenging person to control in life is ultimately yourself. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 233:In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 234:Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God's heart has become one with ours. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 235:We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 236:Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 237:So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And, as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 238:Leadership rests not only upon ability, not only upon capacity; having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it. His leadership is then based on truth and character. There must be truth in the purpose and will power in the character. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 239:True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 240:A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the yet unsolved ones. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 241:Healing is a different type of pain. It’s the pain of becoming aware of the power of one’s strength and weakness, of one’s capacity to love or do damage to oneself and to others, and of how the most challenging person to control in life is ultimately yourself. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 242:Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 243:A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 244:The secret to happiness is happiness itself. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, the wonder of our breathing. We don't have to travel anywhere else to do so. We can be in touch with these things right now. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 245:The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 246:I experienced in myself a certain capacity for judging which I have doubtless received from God, like all the other things that I possess; and as He could not desire to deceive me, it is clear that He has not given me a faculty that will lead me to err if I use it aright. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove 247:Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 248:Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 249:For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 250:Man’s strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step toward the heights. And that is all he can do. To reach heaven and remain there is beyond his powers: Even Moses had to return to earth. Is it the same for evil? ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 251:“Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 252:Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 253:It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 254:Hard work pays off. When someone tells you otherwise, beware the sales pitch for something "fast and easy" that's about to come next. The greater your capacity for hard work, the more rewards fall within your grasp. The deeper you can dig, the more treasure you can potentially find. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove 255:The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men , but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 256:I've always believed in God. I also think that's the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you're in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 257:We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you... .Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 258:Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 259:Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 260:The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make & 261:Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 262:I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man's capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 263:Recent research shows that many children without enough to eat wind up with diminished capacity to understand and learn (‚Äúcognitive impairment‚Äù ). Children don't have to be starving for this to happen. Even mild undernourishment ‚Äî the kind most common among poor people in America ‚Äî can do it. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 264:In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 265:Memory is not like a container that gradually fills up, it is more like a tree growing hooks onto which memories are hung. Everything you remember is another set of hooks on which more new memories can be attached. So the capacity of memory keeps on growing. The more you know, the more you can know. ~ peter-russell, @wisdomtrove 266:Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 267:Character is just another word for having a perfectly disciplined and educated will. A person can make his own character by blending these elements with an intense desire to achieve excellence. Everyone is different in what I will call magnitude, but the capacity to achieve character is still the same. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 268:Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives. ~ fred-rogers, @wisdomtrove 269:The purpose of spiritual life is not to create some special state of mind. A state of mind is always temporary. The purpose is to work directly with the most primary elements of our body and our mind, to see the ways we get trapped by our fears, desires, and anger, to learn directly our capacity for freedom. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 270:Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 271:We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 272:A man or a race either if he's any good can survive his past without even needing to escape from it and not because of the high quite often only too rhetorical rhetoric of humanity but for the simple indubitable practical reason of his future: that capacity to survive and absorb and endure and still be steadfast. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 273:Masters of one art have mastered all because they have mastered themselves. With dominion over both mind and muscle, they demonstrate power, serenity, and spirit. They not only have talent for their sport, they have an expanded capacity for life. The experts shine in the competitive arena; the masters shine everywhere. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 274:Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American's capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 275:You are not here to please other people or to live your lives their way. You can only live it your own way and walk your own pathway. You have come [here] to fulfill yourself and express love on the deepest level. You are here to learn and grow... When you leave the planet... the only thing you take is your capacity to love! ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 276:If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into a kind of energy that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us. By the work of mindful observation, our unpleasant feelings can illuminate so much for us, offering us insight and understanding into ourselves and society. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 277:I do not compete with anybody else; I compete only with myself. You saw my capacity a few minutes ago. Now I am competing with myself. When I do weightlifting, my body is my world. If I can improve myself, if I can go beyond my previous achievements, then that is my goal. My own previous record is always what I am competing with. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 278:If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 279:The widest thing in the universe is not space; it is the potential capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of God, it is capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions. And one of the world's greatest tragedies is that we allow our hearts to shrink until there is room in them for little besides ourselves. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 280:If the economy of today were operating close to capacity levels with little unemployment, or if a sudden change in our military requirements should cause a scramble for men and resources, then I would oppose tax reductions as irresponsible and inflationary; and I would not hesitate to recommend a tax increase if that were necessary. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 281:Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full of zest and affection. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded. It does not know evil nor ugliness, it hopes, it trusts, it loves. You people do not know how much you miss by not knowing your own true self. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 282:Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering... since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 283:Divinity reveals herself in all things. Everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being. ~ giordano-bruno, @wisdomtrove 284:Fortunately for us and our world, youth is not easily discouraged. Youth with its clear vista and boundless faith and optimism is uninhibited by the thousands of considerations that always bedevil man in his progress. The hopes of the world rest on the flexibility, vigor, capacity for new thought, and the fresh outlook of the young. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 285:So long as freedom from hunger is only half achieved, so long as two thirds of the nations have food deficits, no citizen, no nation can afford to be satisfied. We have the ability, as members of the human race, we have the means, we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the earth in our lifetime. We only need the will. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 286:Whether it & 287:The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 288:When an artist is in the strict sense working, he of course takes into account the existing tastes, interests and capacity of his audience. These no less than the language , the marble, the paint, are part of his aw material.; to be used, tamed, sublimated, not ignored or defied. Haughty indifference to them is not genius, it is laziness and incompetence. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 289:In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 290:Each child represents either a potential addition to the protective capacity and enlightened citizenship of the nation or, if allowed to suffer from neglect, a potential addition to the destructive forces of a community. . . . The interests of the nation are involved in the welfare of this array of children no less than in our great material affairs. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 291:I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers... Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 292:In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 293:There are indications because of new inventions, that 10, 15, or 20 nations will have a nuclear capacity, including Red China, by the end of the Presidential office in 1964. This is extremely serious. . . I think the fate not only of our own civilization, but I think the fate of world and the future of the human race, is involved in preventing a nuclear war. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 294:Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling: By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel." "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 295: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 296:The glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past. For example, the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights, once a source of disunity and civil war, is now a point of pride for all Americans. We must never go back. There is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 297:While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 298:However, community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another. Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own. The question, therefore, is not & 299:We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 300:The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 301:When certain unmarried men, who had lost their capacity to sin, sat indoors, breathing bad air, and passed resolutions about what was right and what wrong, making rules for the guidance of the people, instead of trusting to the natural, happy instincts of the individual, they ushered in the Dark Ages. These are the gentlemen who blocked human evolution absolutely for a thousand years. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 302:In any activity, we have to know what to expect, how to reach our objectives and what capacity we possess for the proposed task. The only people who can say they have renounced the fruit are those who, thus equipped, feel no desire for the results of the conquest, and remain absorbed in combat. You can renounce the fruit, but this renunciation does not mean indifference toward the result. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 303:Compassion arises naturally as the quivering of the heart in the face of pain, ours and another's. True compassion is not limited by the separateness of pity, nor by the fear of being overwhelmed. When we come to rest in the great heart of compassion, we discover a capacity to bear witness to, suffer with, and hold dear with our own vulnerable heart the sorrows and beauties of the world. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 304:Gratitude, like faith, is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it grows, and the more power you have to use it on your behalf. If you do not practice gratefulness, its benefaction will go unnoticed, and your capacity to draw on its gifts will be diminished. To be grateful is to find blessings in everything, This is the most powerful attitude to adopt, for there are blessings in everything. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 305:Angels are God's messengers whose chief business is to carry out his orders in the world. He has given them an ambassadorial charge. He has designated and empowered them as holy deputies to perform works of righteousness. In this way they assist him as their creator while he sovereignly controls the universe. So he has given them the capacity to bring holy enterprises to a successful conclusion. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 306:The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit‚îfor gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 307:The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 308:The moment we use the term & 309:The books remind us that way down deep in our hearts, part of us knows that we are creatures of light and we cannot be touched or destroyed by anything made out of atoms or destroyed at all - that light is indestructible. And we may reflect that and express that in multiple trillions of discrete ways, but nevertheless, that indestructible sense of joyful capacity to express life and express love is always there. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 310:God's love has a width, length, height, and depth, but we will never reach the end of it. Our capacity to experience God's love will be exhausted long before God's capacity to give it is strained. The picture of having Christ dwell inside us by faith presents us with compelling and comforting possibilities. What Christ does in us and through us will always be & 311:Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 312:M: Without a centre of perception where would be the manifested? Unperceived, the manifested is as good as the unmanifested. And you are the perceiving point, the non-dimensional source of all dimensions. Know yourself as the total. Q: How can a point contain a universe? M: There is enough space in a point for an infinity of universes. There is no lack of capacity. Self-limitation is the only problem. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 313:This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties-for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler-men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 314:Do to us what you will, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. But we assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 315:Whenever you make a mistake or get knocked down by life, don't look back at it too long. Mistakes are life's way of teaching you. Your capacity for occasional blunders is inseparable from your capacity to reach your goals. No one wins them all, and your failures, when they happen, are just part of your growth. Shake off your blunders. How will you know your limits without an occasional failure? Never quit. Your turn will come. ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 316:Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when it is committed by & 317:When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems. By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional resources. The challenge... is to refine our capacity to love others as well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 318:On the theory of the soul's mortality, the inferiority of women's capacity is easily accounted for: Their domestic life requires no higher faculties either of mind or body. This circumstance vanishes and becomes absolutely insignificant, on the religious theory: The one sex has an equal task to perform as the other: Their powers of reason and resolution ought also to have been equal, and both of them infinitely greater than at present. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 319:A conditioned mind may be inventive; it may think up new ideas, new phrases, new gadgets; it may build a dam, plan a new society, and all the rest of it; but that is not creativity. Creativity is something much more than the mere capacity to acquire a technique. It is because this extraordinary thing called creativity is not in most of us that we are so shallow, empty, insufficient. And only the mind that is free can be creative. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 320:Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generatng that kind of energy toward yourself - if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself - it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 321:I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 322:In all the known history of Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result no culture of greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 323:Listening is a very deep practice. You have to empty yourself. You have to leave space in order to listen especially to people we think are our enemies - the ones we believe are making our situation worse. When you have shown your capacity for listening and understanding, the other person will begin to listen to you, and you have a change to tell him or her of your pain, and it's your turn to be healed. This is the practice of peace. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 324:When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems. By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional resources. The challenge... is to refine our capacity to love others as well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 325:I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can't conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can't understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains They could be staring us in the face and we just Don't recognise them. The problem is that we-re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology. ~ martin-rees, @wisdomtrove 326:The function of our Government is to insure to all its citizens, now and hereafter, their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we of this generation destroy the resources from which our children would otherwise derive their livelihood, we reduce the capacity of our land to support a population, and so either degrade the standard of living or deprive the coming generations of their fight to life on this continent. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 327:There is only one rule by which to judge if God is near us or is far away - the rule that God's word is giving us today: everyone concerned for the hungry, the naked, the poor, for those who have vanished in police custody, for the tortured, for prisoners, for all flesh that suffers, has God close at hand. We have the ability, we have the means, and we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the earth. We need only the will. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 328:It is through solving problems correctly that we grow spiritually. We are never given a burden unless we have the capacity to overcome it. If a great problem is set before you, this merely indicates that you have the great inner strength to solve a great problem. There is never really anything to be discouraged about, because difficulties are opportunities for inner growth, and the greater the difficulty the greater the opportunity for growth. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 329:Positive self-esteem operates as, in effect, the immune system of the consciousness, providing resistance, strength, and a capacity for regeneration. When self-esteem is low, our resilience in the face of life's adversities is diminished. We crumble before vicissitudes that a healthier sense of self could vanquish. We tend to be more influenced by the desire to avoid pain than to experience joy. Negatives have more power over us than positives. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 330:If people lacked the capacity to receive the thoughts of the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts. And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people would be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from and more hostile to one another. Therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 331:Death is not earnest in the same way the eternal is. To the earnestness of death belongs precisely that remarkable capacity for awakening, that resonance of a profound mockery which, detached from the thought of the eternal, is an empty and often brash jest, but together with the thought of the eternal is just what it should be, utterly different from the insipid solemness which least of all captures and holds a thought with tension like that of death. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 332:There is a lot of sixties-bashing going on these days that I don't agree with at all. I feel that extremely important ideals were brought to the forefront of the collective consciousness at that time. Granted, drug use was so pervasive that our generation did not as a group have the capacity to manifest our ideals to any great extent. But many of the people who were young in the sixties and who were most touched by that collective ethos are still touched. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 333:A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 334:Unless Spirit, or Universal Mind, is conceived as having and using this mental creative power of ideation and imagination, we cannot conceive it as creating at all. If we deprive it of this possibility and capacity, we deprive it of all power of expression, manifestation, and activity. Moreover, the conception of this ideative and imaging power, raised to infinity, gives us the best and only adequate conception of the nature of Creation and the creation of Nature. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 335:In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 336:For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 337:I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown people who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 338:When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable. If we dismiss all the criticism, we lose out on important feedback, but if we subject ourselves to the hatefulness, our spirits gets crushed. It's a tightrope, shame resilience is the balance bar, and the safety net below is the one or two people in our lives who can help us reality-check the criticism and cynicism. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 339:The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 340:I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 341:People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can't know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do -after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world's anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 342:Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. The relationship between the soundness of the body and the activities of the mind is subtle and complex. Much is not yet understood. But we do know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound gods. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 343:One thing about this face was very strange and startling. You could not look upon it in its most cheerful mood without feeling that it had some extraordinary capacity of expressing terror. It was not on the surface. It was in no one feature that it lingered. You could not take the eyes or mouth, or lines upon the cheek, and say, if this or that were otherwise, it would not be so. Yet there it always lurked-something for ever dimly seen, but ever there, and never absent for a moment. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 344:There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 345:Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don’t you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching, I mean you got zapped, kiddo. But that love you felt, that’s just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That’s just limited little rinky-dink mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, Groceries‚ you have the capacity to someday love the whole world. It’s your destiny. Don’t laugh. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 346:Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it? No, we just enjoy it. Each second, each minute of our lives can be like this. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, even the sensation of our breathing. We don't need to go to China to enjoy the blue sky. We don't have to travel into the future to enjoy our breathing. We can be in touch with these things right now. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 347:Facilitative attitudes (and skills) can help a therapist gain entry into the group Freedom from a desire to control the outcome, and respect for the capacity of the group, and skills in releasing individual expression Openness to all attitudes no matter how extreme or unrealistic they may seem Acceptance of the problems experienced by the group where they are clearly defined as issues Allowance of the freedom of choices in direction, either for the group or individuals particularly in the near future ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 348:The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being... Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations... . May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 349:It is difficult for some people to accept that love is a choice. This seems to run counter to the generally accepted theory of romantic love which expounds that love is inborn and as such requires no more than to accept it. This theory believes that love is a magical force which frees us from all suffering and solves every problem, that it is an end unto itself. To a limited extent, there may be some truths to each of these beliefs, but having the capacity to love is not the same as having the ability to love. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 350:We lump together all things that are beyond the capacity of all of us collectively to understand-and one name we give to all those things together is God. Therefore, God is the creative force, the sustaining power, that which motivates toward constant change, the overall intelligence which governs the universe by physical and spiritual law, truth, love, goodness, kindness, beauty, the ever-present, all-pervading essence or spirit, which binds everything in the universe together and gives to everything in the universe.. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 351:Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them." "Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it." "Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization." "The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 352:After all, I quite naturally want to live in order to fulfill my whole capacity for living, and not in order to fulfill my reasoning capacity alone, which is no more than some one-twentieth of my capacity for living. What does reason know? It knows only what it has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 353:Incapacity to appreciate certain types of beauty may be the condition sine qua non for the appreciation of another kind; the greatest capacity both for enjoyment and creation is highly specialized and exclusive, and hence the greatest ages of art have often been strangely intolerant. The invectives of one school against another, perverse as they are philosophically, are artistically often signs of health, because they indicate a vital appreciation of certain kinds of beauty, a love of them that has grown into a jealous passion. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 354:The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of contemporary violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activity neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 355:My brethren, let me say, be like Christ at all times. Imitate him in "public." Most of us live in some sort of public capacity-many of us are called to work before our fellow-men every day. We are watched; our words are caught; our lives are examined-taken to pieces. The eagle-eyed, argus-eyed world observes everything we do, and sharp critics are upon us. Let us live the life of Christ in public. Let us take care that we exhibit our Master, and not ourselves-so that we can say, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me." ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 356:With a full century of contrary proof in our possession and despite our demonstrated capacity for cooperative teamwork, some among us seem to accept the shibboleth of an unbridgeable gap between those who hire and those who are employed. We miserably fail to challenge the lie that what is good for management is necessarily bad for labor; that for one side to profit, the other must be depressed. Such distorted doctrine is false and foreign to the American scene where common ideals and purpose permit us a common approach toward the common good. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 357:Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 358:All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 359:We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, & 360:It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 361:And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 362:When I directly view, say, a great Van Gogh, I am reminded of what all superior art has in common: the capacity to simply take your breath away. To literally, actually, make you inwardly gasp, at least for that second or two when the art first hits you, or more accurately, first enters your being: you swoon a little bit, you are slightly stunned, you are open to perceptions that you had not seen before. Sometimes, of course, it is much quieter than that: the work seeps into your pores gently, and yet you are changed somehow, maybe just a little, maybe a lot; but you are changed. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 363:The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person& 364:Spirit, or Universal Mind, cannot be conceived as having memory or as being dependent upon it. On the contrary, it must be conceived as having the infinite power, possibility, and capacity of Original Creation by ideation and imagination of Universal Mind. Dependence upon memory or past experience would condition and limit the Infinite and Absolute, which idea is contrary to reason. Moreover, if Creation were dependent upon past experience there would never have been original Creation. Creation must be conceived of as Eternally Original. Memory belongs to phenomenal created things; original creation by ideation and imagination belongs to Universal Mind alone, which is SPIRIT. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 365:But where is this true possession of God, whereby we really possess him, to be found? This real possession of God is to be found in the heart, in an inner motion of the spirit towards him and striving for him, and not just in thinking about him always and in the same way. For that would be beyond the capacity of our nature and would be very difficult to achieve and would not even be the best thing to do. We should not content ourselves with the God of thoughts for, when the thoughts come to an end, so too shall God. Rather, we should have a living God who is beyond the thoughts of all people and all creatures. That kind of God will not leave us, unless we ourselves choose to turn away from him. ~ meister-eckhart, @wisdomtrove 366:Perhaps, the good and the beautiful are the same, and must be investigated by one and the same process; and in like manner the base and the evil. And in the first rank we must place the beautiful, and consider it as the same with the good; from which immediately emanates intellect as beautiful. Next to this, we must consider the soul receiving its beauty from intellect, and every inferior beauty deriving its origin from the forming power of the soul, whether conversant in fair actions and offices, or sciences and arts. Lastly, bodies themselves participate of beauty from the soul, which, as something divine, and a portion of the beautiful itself, renders whatever it supervenes and subdues, beautiful as far as its natural capacity will admit. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 367:We’re in the same position as any scientist. All we have to go on is experiential evidence. And sooner or later we have to trust our own experience, because that’s all we really have. Otherwise it’s a vicious circle. If I fundamentally distrust my experience, then I must distrust even my capacity to distrust, since that is also an experience. So sooner or later I have no choice but to trust, trust my experience, trust that the universe is not fundamentally and persistently going to lie to me. Of course we can be mistaken, and sometimes experiences are misleading, but on balance we have no choice but to follow them. It’s a type of phenomenological imperative. And especially mystical experiences—if anything, as you say, they are more real, not less real, than other experiences. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:and the intellectual capacity ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
2:Kids don't lack capacity, only teachers. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
3:I have an abnormal capacity for passion. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
4:None meets harm who knows his capacity. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
5:Yoga is your mind control capacity. ~ K Pattabhi Jois, #NFDB
6:The five C's of expanding your capacity. ~ Sheila Heen, #NFDB
7:Ambition is the capacity for unhappiness. ~ Manu Joseph, #NFDB
8:Every human has the capacity to love, ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
9:Every one of us has the capacity to lead. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
10:I admire your capacity for admiring. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
11:Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
12:Used every man according to his capacity. ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
13:Genius is a capacity for taking trouble. ~ Leslie Stephen, #NFDB
14:Genius is an infinite capacity for pain. ~ Thomas M Disch, #NFDB
15:I've never lost my capacity to be shocked. ~ Kathy Reichs, #NFDB
16:Prayer begins where human capacity ends. ~ Marian Anderson, #NFDB
17:As is our confidence, so is our capacity. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
18:Cunning proceeds from want of capacity. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
19:Women have a greater verbal capacity. ~ Geoffrey S Fletcher, #NFDB
20:Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
21:Revelation is always measured by capacity. ~ Margaret Barber, #NFDB
22:Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
23:Never underestimate your own capacity to care. ~ Neil Strauss, #NFDB
24:Every child has the capacity to be everything. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
25:Genius is the capacity of avoiding hard work. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
26:I see your capacity for addition has improved, ~ John Flanagan, #NFDB
27:It's nice to be wanted in almost any capacity. ~ Kevin Costner, #NFDB
28:One's capacity to forget absolutely is immense. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
29:The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine ~ George Sand, #NFDB
30:The human capacity for self-delusion is limitless ~ Sarah Fine, #NFDB
31:Consciousness allows you the capacity to plan. ~ Gerald Edelman, #NFDB
32:She doesn’t have the capacity to undo metaphors. ~ Amber Sparks, #NFDB
33:You have the emotional capacity of a garden gnome. ~ Lex Martin, #NFDB
34:You know you can set fire to the capacity to say. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
35:Your greatest power is your capacity to choose. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
36:Capacity for joy Admits temptation. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, #NFDB
37:Long live imagined animals, the need, the capacity. ~ Max Porter, #NFDB
38:Never underestimate your own capacity to care. “I ~ Neil Strauss, #NFDB
39:No one tells me what to do -- in any capacity. ~ Chelsea Handler, #NFDB
40:Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion. ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
41:The capacity for passion is both cruel and divine. ~ George Sand, #NFDB
42:Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity ~ Garrett Hardin, #NFDB
43:Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
44:Our ordeals never exceed our capacity of resistance. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
45:Promise is the capacity for letting people down. ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
46:Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion. ~ John le Carre, #NFDB
47:Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you. ~ John Oliver, #NFDB
48:Love, though added emotion, is substracted capacity ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
49:Never underestimate the human capacity for delusion. ~ Roger Cohen, #NFDB
50:capacity, and bandwidth) of information technologies ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
51:Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
52:Man’s noblest endowment is his capacity to change. ~ Scott Ginsberg, #NFDB
53:Our capacity to forgive is our superpower." pg. 172 ~ Mirabai Starr, #NFDB
54:Pressure is God's way of increasing your capacity. ~ Andrena Sawyer, #NFDB
55:A dim capacity for wings demeans the dress I wear. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
56:A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
57:Comes off like she’s got the mental capacity of broccoli, ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
58:Face a challenge and find joy in the capacity to meet it. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
59:Is the capacity for cruelty inherent in all of us? ~ Soledad O Brien, #NFDB
60:Ive always wanted to serve my country in some capacity. ~ Pete Coors, #NFDB
61:Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited. ~ Nicolas Chamfort, #NFDB
62:No one has the capacity to judge the value of human life. ~ R S Grey, #NFDB
63:The capacity to be intrinsic and vulgar is American. ~ Stan Brakhage, #NFDB
64:The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation. I ~ Bruce D Perry, #NFDB
65:Develop a capacity to wince but not to pounce. ~ Julie Lythcott Haims, #NFDB
66:genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
67:That tv box has a tremendous capacity to reach people. ~ Clint Walker, #NFDB
68:The capacity of a human community to shape it's future. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
69:Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
70:God's unique capacity is too surprising to surprise. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
71:I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. ~ Harold Ramis, #NFDB
72:Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
73:Music has the capacity to create a greater reality. ~ Daniel Barenboim, #NFDB
74:Never underestimate the human capacity for betrayal. ~ Roshani Chokshi, #NFDB
75:Power is the capacity to generate relationships. ~ Margaret J Wheatley, #NFDB
76:Sometimes her capacity for self-deception disturbed her. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
77:The capacity for affection is the best part of humankind. ~ Jan Siegel, #NFDB
78:Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
79:I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
80:I think we all have the capacity of evil in us. ~ Nikolaj Coster Waldau, #NFDB
81:Leadership is evoking in others the capacity to dream. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
82:television wears away the capacity to be astonished’. ~ Theodore Zeldin, #NFDB
83:Your capacity for missing the obvious is astonishing. ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
84:Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
85:a politician's capacity to ignore contradictory evidence ~ Reginald Hill, #NFDB
86:Genius is merely the capacity for taking infinite pains. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
87:Old age is but the reduced capacity of a failing machine. ~ Mick Jackson, #NFDB
88:You lack the capacity to decipher this particular puzzle. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
89:The magic of you is in your capacity to shape change. ~ Julian Pencilliah, #NFDB
90:Worldwide, Google has the capacity to store 15 exabytes. ~ Bruce Schneier, #NFDB
91:You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
92:Your capacity to receive is based on your hunger to pursue. ~ Mike Bickle, #NFDB
93:We've got more productive capacity now than we ever have. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
94:Mental attitude is more important than mental capacity. ~ Walter Dill Scott, #NFDB
95:The elimination of toxins awakens the capacity for renewal. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
96:The more we give love, the greater our capacity to do so. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
97:"We must recognize the great capacity we all have within." ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
98:Faith is the inborn capacity to see God behind everything. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
99:I had only ordinary capacity but extraordinary persistency. ~ Maria Mitchell, #NFDB
100:intellectual capacity is no guarantee against being dead wrong. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
101:Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
102:Proximity to calamity released the human capacity for love. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
103:The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
104:We, as human beings, have the capacity for extreme cruelty. ~ Lupita Nyong o, #NFDB
105:Within us there is the capacity of being anyone or anything ~ Tom Hiddleston, #NFDB
106:Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing. ~ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, #NFDB
107:Within us there is the capacity of being anyone or anything. ~ Tom Hiddleston, #NFDB
108:At this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
109:Genius: The capacity to see and to express what is simple, simply! ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
110:I can see the immense capacity of business to give leadership. ~ Mary Robinson, #NFDB
111:Is not our capacity to laugh and cry the measure of our humanity? ~ Paul Scott, #NFDB
112:Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
113:...Our beauty lies in this extended capacity for convolution. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
114:Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment. ~ Thaddeus Stevens, #NFDB
115:The nobility of a being is measured by its capacity of gratitude. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
116:In a work capacity I'm only interested in acting and producing ~ Charlie Hunnam, #NFDB
117:She had underestimated the human capacity for self-destruction. ~ Robert Repino, #NFDB
118:We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
119:Genius is the capacity for receiving and improving by discipline. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
120:The capacity for total wonder is the very substance of awakening. ~ Daniel Odier, #NFDB
121:'The nobility of a being is measured by its capacity of gratitude.' ~ The Mother, #NFDB
122:What I had that others didn't was a capacity for sticking to it. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
123:What replaces fear? A capacity to trust the abundance of life. ~ Frederic Laloux, #NFDB
124:You must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
125:you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
126:Building capacity dissolves differences. It irons out inequalities. ~ Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
127:I had rather mistrust my own capacity than God's justice. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
128:leadership as the building of the adaptive capacity of a people. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
129:Mindfulness improves your capacity for self-discovery and empowerment. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
130:My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it, ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
131:My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it. ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
132:People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
133:Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity. ~ William James, #NFDB
134:The capacity of mankind to misunderstand the world is without limit. ~ Bill James, #NFDB
135:The night has a capacity for terror that the day can never match. ~ David Gemmell, #NFDB
136:A capacity for going overboard is a requisite for a full-grown mind. ~ Dawn Powell, #NFDB
137:If a can opener no longer has the capacity to open cans, what is it? ~ Alan Hirsch, #NFDB
138:Not what you do but how you do it, is the test of your capacity. ~ Mary Engelbreit, #NFDB
139:One’s capacity for hearing about ghastly doings lessens with age. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
140:Scoutmasters need the capacity to enjoy the out-of-doors. ~ Baden Powell de Aquino, #NFDB
141:The capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
142:The capacity for tears is the last demonstration of greatness. ~ G Campbell Morgan, #NFDB
143:What is enlightenment?—the capacity to see oneself as one really is. ~ Osho, #NFDB
144:Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
145:Cunning and treachery proceed from want of capacity. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
146:Language was a huge expansion of that capacity to deal with information. ~ Dee Hock, #NFDB
147:The result of the educative process is capacity for further education. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
148:They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
149:We do not learn by experience, but by our capacity for experience. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
150:women have a tremendous capacity to forgive the idiots they love.” My ~ Lauren Rowe, #NFDB
151:You can’t compare one person’s coping capacity to another, hon. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
152:An enriched capacity for rejoicing is an expanded capacity for worship. ~ Max Anders, #NFDB
153:FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES' ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
154:chose executives on the basis of “runway,” their capacity for growth. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
155:I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change. ~ Leonard Bernstein, #NFDB
156:In every person there is the capacity to do something really special. ~ Colm O Rourke, #NFDB
157:Love- however doomed, had the capacity to attach bouys to the soul. ~ Ariana Franklin, #NFDB
158:Love with no boundaries. Your future depends on your capacity to love. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
159:On those days, I feel like a balloon blown to capacity, ready to burst. ~ Lisa Genova, #NFDB
160:The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task. ~ Andr Gide, #NFDB
161:we have less intelligence capacity in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks; ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
162:Beyond the feeble capacity of words. Defying the banality of description. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
163:He had no faith in love's capacity to cause him anything but pain. ~ Kristen Roupenian, #NFDB
164:If you have the capacity to love, you have the capacity to love anyone. ~ Paula Patton, #NFDB
165:Imagination is the capacity to think of things as if they could be otherwise. ~ Maxine, #NFDB
166:Nature has created us with the capacity to know God, to experience God. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
167:One's capacity for metaphor is one's capacity for a full life. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce, #NFDB
168:Only people who have known great pain have the capacity to learn magic. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
169:The best way to avoid danger is to be in a capacity to withstand it.”45 ~ Lynne Cheney, #NFDB
170:The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
171:The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The ~ Brian Herbert, #NFDB
172:Within you is the divine capacity to manifest and attract all you desire. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
173:Capacity for survival may be the ability to be changed by environment. ~ Robyn Davidson, #NFDB
174:God has blessed me with the capacity to meditate even while I am talking. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
175:Our capacity for violence is greater, but not necessarily our desire. ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
176:The capacity to admire others is not my most fully developed trait. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
177:there were times when man’s arrogance ruined his capacity for creation. ~ Chris Dietzel, #NFDB
178:Trauma when left untreated has the capacity to make a villain out of you. ~ Nikita Gill, #NFDB
179:Your capacity to keep your vow will depend on the purity of your life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
180:All men have the capacity of knowing themselves and acting with moderation. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
181:Attainment is a poor measure of capacity, and ignorance no proof of defect. ~ Cyril Burt, #NFDB
182:Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
183:In His tender mercies, God has an incredible capacity to love the unlovely. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
184:Memories beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
185:One detects creative power by its capacity to conquer one's detachment. ~ Marianne Moore, #NFDB
186:Was I a fool to trust, or a wiser person finding the capacity to forgive? ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
187:We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization. ~ Charles Colson, #NFDB
188:All men have the capacity of knowing themselves and acting with moderation. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
189:Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
190:I feel blessed that I get to be part of entertaining people in any capacity. ~ J J Abrams, #NFDB
191:Make yourself a "capacity" and I will make myself a "torrent." ~ Saint Catherine of Siena, #NFDB
192:Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
193:The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families. ~ Jay McInerney, #NFDB
194:the greater the capacity to love, the greater the capacity to feel the pain. ~ N A Alcorn, #NFDB
195:The truth of the Christian faith surpasses the capacity of reason. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
196:We have to build the capacity of our institutions, employees and workers. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
197:We live on a planet that more or less has an infinite capacity to surprise. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
198:Americans have no capacity for abstract thought, and make bad coffee. ~ Georges Clemenceau, #NFDB
199:Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none. ~ William James, #NFDB
200:It is a human tendency "to measure truth and error by our capacity." ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
201:It is only your capacity for wickedness that makes selflessness possible. ~ Danielle Paige, #NFDB
202:My insides feel dead, my capacity to care for much of anything seems lost ~ Sawyer Bennett, #NFDB
203:Sobriety is concern for one's health - or limited capacity. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
204:The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
205:What is possible for you in Christ Jesus depends on your capacity to believe. ~ T B Joshua, #NFDB
206:After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
207:But there is no limit to a proud and beautiful maiden’s capacity for cruelty. ~ Osamu Dazai, #NFDB
208:In their capacity to feel pain and fear, a pig is a dog is a bear is a boy. ~ Philip Wollen, #NFDB
209:Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
210:The feat of surviving is directly related to the capacity of the survivor. ~ Claire Cameron, #NFDB
211:The more people one has to love, the more one's capacity to love stretches. ~ Quentin Crisp, #NFDB
212:The object of battle was the destruction of the enemy’s capacity to resist. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
213:Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
214:Develop a capacity for things like purpose, love, wonder, courage, and grace. ~ John Jantsch, #NFDB
215:'Genius' which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
216:He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
217:My mother's capacity for happiness was a small soup bone salting a large pot. ~ Lorrie Moore, #NFDB
218:Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
219:Having a soul means having the capacity to love something more than yourself. ~ David Simpson, #NFDB
220:History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless. ~ Chalmers Johnson, #NFDB
221:It's not really about the material. It's about our capacity to shape things. ~ Theaster Gates, #NFDB
222:I wish my capacity for reason would always translate into action, but it doesn't. ~ Joe Sacco, #NFDB
223:Leo Durocher is a man with an infinite capacity for making a bad thing worse. ~ Branch Rickey, #NFDB
224:The ascetic is often a sensualist who has reached the limit of his capacity. ~ Jacques Barzun, #NFDB
225:"We do not learn by experience,but by our capacity for experience." ~ Teachings of the Buddha, #NFDB
226:We fear the monster's capacity for evil because we recognize it in human hearts. ~ Nick Sagan, #NFDB
227:What matters most is not the idea, but the capacity to believe in it completely. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
228:Frenchmen have an unlimited capacity for gallantry and indulge it on every occasion. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
229:human capacity for arrogance was only exceeded by its capacity for ignorance. ~ Ashok K Banker, #NFDB
230:Ibsen: “Education is the capacity to confront the situations posed by life. ~ Jon Lee Anderson, #NFDB
231:... I doubt the capacity of the human animal for being dignified in ceremony. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
232:It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive! ~ Alison Bechdel, #NFDB
233:Never underestimate the capacity for romance, no matter what the circumstance. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
234:The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each students. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson, #NFDB
235:The male capacity for turning the negative into a compliment is really alarming. ~ Lena Dunham, #NFDB
236:The measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
237:Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
238:Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death. ~ Max Allan Collins, #NFDB
239:Grace came when your capacity to forgive was challenged and you offered it anyway. ~ Holly Hall, #NFDB
240:Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
241:I have only a second rate brain, but I think I have a capacity for action. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
242:Limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser therefrom. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
243:Never underestimate the capacity for romance, no matter what the circumstances. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
244:Some people have an enormous capacity for feeling guilt, deserved or otherwise. ~ Scott Hawkins, #NFDB
245:We are losing our own capacity because we are poisoned in one way or another. ~ Jean Luc Godard, #NFDB
246:We can discover the capacity of the mind to be aware, to love, to begin again ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
247:Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain? ~ Marian Keyes, #NFDB
248:Without wilderness, we will eventually lose the capacity to understand America. ~ Harvey Broome, #NFDB
249:Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
250:Capacity without education is deplorable, and education without capacity is thrown away. ~ Saadi, #NFDB
251:Fate (or whatever it is) delights to produce a great capacity and then frustrate it. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
252:... it is one thing to desire, another to be in capacity fit for what we desire. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
253:It's always cool to meet people who can do things that you have no capacity to do. ~ Kevin James, #NFDB
254:My personal feeling is that human beings have this incredible capacity for denial. ~ David Byrne, #NFDB
255:only peer production has the capacity to extend as far as the Long Tail can go. ~ Chris Anderson, #NFDB
256:the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning —Mahatma Gandhi ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
257:The capacity to still feel wonder is essential to the creative process. ~ Donald Woods Winnicott, #NFDB
258:The human being is born with an incurable capacity for making the best of things. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
259:There is no other art with as great a democratic capacity as photography. ~ Manuel Alvarez Bravo, #NFDB
260:"The things that obscure have an inherent capacity to reveal as well." ~ Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, #NFDB
261:What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change. ~ Madeleine K Albright, #NFDB
262:Without wilderness, we will eventually lose the capacity to understand America. ~ Harvey Broome, #NFDB
263:Faith is a capacity of the spirit. It is like talent: you have to be born with it ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
264:Forgiveness has a great capacity to heal even in the most difficult of situations. ~ John Nicholl, #NFDB
265:Having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it. ~ Vince Lombardi, #NFDB
266:I am privileged to be able to work for the people of Hawaii in whatever capacity. ~ Tulsi Gabbard, #NFDB
267:Let us not paralyze our capacity for good by brooding of man's capacity for evil. ~ David Sarnoff, #NFDB
268:Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
269:My children inspire me with their innocence and enormous capacity to love. ~ Maria Canals Barrera, #NFDB
270:Narrow minds think nothing right that is above their own capacity. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
271:One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity. ~ Pierre Auguste Renoir, #NFDB
272:Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. ~ Tarrin P Lupo, #NFDB
273:The challenge is that the demand in our lives increasingly exceeds our capacity. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
274:The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain. ~ Jennifer Aniston, #NFDB
275:There are those who have a desire to love, but do not have the capacity to love ~ Giovanni Papini, #NFDB
276:Your capacity to say No determines your capacity to say Yes to greater things.
~ Stanley Jones,#NFDB
277:Faith is a capacity of the spirit. It is like talent: you have to be born with it. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
278:Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
279:Her capacity for detail was astounding, if not highly annoying during arguments. ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
280:I don't have the capacity to write stuff consciously. When I do, it's really awful. ~ Bradford Cox, #NFDB
281:I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance. ~ Pablo Casals, #NFDB
282:Indeed, the capacity to tolerate uncertainty is a prerequisite for the profession. ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
283:one of the magical effects of tidying is confidence in your decision-making capacity. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
284:Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
285:The past cannot bind the future. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #NFDB
286:There are those who have a desire to love, but do not have the capacity to love. ~ Giovanni Papini, #NFDB
287:Confidence in the human capacity for problem solving, for invention, for innovation. ~ George Takei, #NFDB
288:Everyone has a capacity for cruelty. Not everyone gets the chance to exercise it. ~ Deanna Raybourn, #NFDB
289:Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present. ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
290:no one tells you this, how having children multiplies your capacity for suffering. ~ Marcel Theroux, #NFDB
291:Physical fitness is a three-legged stool: strength, aerobic capacity, and flexibility. ~ Jane Fonda, #NFDB
292:Remember, you have the capacity to choose. Choose life! Choose love! Choose health! ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
293:The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant. ~ Denis Dutton, #NFDB
294:The factors left out of the Ricardian equation are falling wages and idle capacity. ~ David Ricardo, #NFDB
295:The man of least capacity is the one who shows himself incapable of self-correction. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
296:We are the Captains of Spaceship Earth...we have the capacity to overcome our limits. ~ Jason Silva, #NFDB
297:We’re on the hook for a huge number of projects. So, let’s look at what our capacity is. ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
298:Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
299:A shriveled humanity has a shrunken capacity for receiving the rays of God’s love. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
300:Faith is the capacity of the soul to perceive the abiding, the invisible in the visible. ~ Leo Baeck, #NFDB
301:Humanity . . . lies in man's capacity to question the known and imagine the unknown. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
302:I always look upon the capacity to save money as little short of miraculous. ~ Christopher Isherwood, #NFDB
303:I have no role models. Many heroes. I have an enormous capacity for hero worship. ~ Daniel Day Lewis, #NFDB
304:It’s said that great sorrow is no more than a reflection of one’s capacity for great joy. ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
305:Never underestimate the human capacity for stupid, illogical, and petty behaviour. ~ Raymond E Feist, #NFDB
306:No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
307:People always underestimate the ability of earth to increase its carrying capacity. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
308:Swaraj means even under dominion status a capacity to declare independence at will. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
309:The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
310:The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
311:The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good. ~ William Godwin, #NFDB
312:To know shame is to be human. And to have the capacity for empathy is also to be human. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
313:We have to use our reasoning capacity and set long-term goals based on our deepest values. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
314:You make money when you get visitors to go through the entrance at capacity. ~ Michael J Silverstein, #NFDB
315:Your capacity to say "No" determines your capacity to say "Yes" to greater things. ~ E Stanley Jones, #NFDB
316:After all, I was dressed in linen and so retained a certain capacity for nonchalance. ~ Joanna Ruocco, #NFDB
317:I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
318:If you have the capacity to be more than one thing , do everything that's inside of you. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
319:I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's sanitarium ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
320:I suppose we never know what we have the capacity to forgive until we're truly tested. ~ Elise Broach, #NFDB
321:It's love and the capacity for love that distinguishes one human being from another. ~ Jennifer Stone, #NFDB
322:No one has the capacity to judge God. We are drops in that limitless ocean of mercy. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
323:Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence is his capacity for making a summary. ~ Lytton Strachey, #NFDB
324:Success depends on the capacity to manipulate the obvious with calculated precision. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
325:The capacity to develop close and enduring relationships is one mark of a leader. ~ George Kohlrieser, #NFDB
326:The capacity to transfer production elsewhere is a weapon against the Western workers. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
327:While we all have a great capacity to love, very few of us will love the proper way. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
328:As we grow older, our capacity for enjoyment shrinks, but not our appetite for it. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
329:Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person. ~ Heinz Kohut, #NFDB
330:"Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads." ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
331:human beings have an almost infinite capacity for adapting to the expectations around ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
332:I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
333:I just believe that our most redeeming feature as a species is our capacity for love. ~ Amanda McBroom, #NFDB
334:I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre. ~ Ben Lerner, #NFDB
335:I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity. ~ Stefan Molyneux, #NFDB
336:Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity In least speak most, to my capacity. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
337:"No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now." ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
338:"Our lack of insight [into our own shadow] deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
339:Our lives become trivial. And our capacity for magnificent causes and great worship dies. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
340:The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy. ~ Mary Catherine Bateson, #NFDB
341:the infinite capacity of humans to wound one another without meaning or wanting to ~ Margaret Laurence, #NFDB
342:The way to expand your joy is by expanding your capacity for discomfort and failure. ~ Johnny B Truant, #NFDB
343:This woman had a loving heart and a capacity to understand another fallible human being. ~ Lydia Davis, #NFDB
344:What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination ~ Jean Francois Lyotard, #NFDB
345:You will never exploit your full technical capacity if your fitness remains a weak link. ~ Steve House, #NFDB
346:After a series of traumas, one can lose the capacity to feel fear appropriately. (xiii) ~ Jessica Stern, #NFDB
347:All of us have the capacity to attract to ourselves what seems to be missing in our lives. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
348:If your education, talent and capacity can do nothing; your body can do lots of things. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
349:Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
350:Real happiness in life comes from the mental capacity to adapt to any situation. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
351:The capacity to suffer varies more than anything that I have observed in human nature. ~ Margot Asquith, #NFDB
352:There's a capacity for appetite... that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
353:Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
354:I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
355:I'm looking for a lot of men with an infinite capacity for not knowing what cannot be done. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
356:Regardless of the shape he took, Cal had a nearly endless capacity for worrywarting. ~ Caitlin Kittredge, #NFDB
357:The human capacity for unhappiness is so enormous that the entire world cannot fill it. ~ Diogenes Allen, #NFDB
358:took a look at the bookstore lot, filled to capacity with the exception of a few slots ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
359:Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
360:By seeing ourselves honestly, we have the capacity to understand others more deeply. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt, #NFDB
361:I am looking for a lot of men who have and infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
362:In the ideal state a leader ensures that each man is effective in just the right capacity. ~ Timur Vermes, #NFDB
363:It is the essentials alone that matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #NFDB
364:Magic is an expression of the unlimited capacity of mystery and wonder in the world. ~ Melissa de la Cruz, #NFDB
365:"Mindfulness is the capacity of being aware of what is going on in the present moment." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
366:most men, and this one especially, have an infinite capacity to feel sorry for themselves. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
367:political correctness jeopardizes more than it should the human capacity to speak the truth, ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
368:The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second. ~ Daniel Levitin, #NFDB
369:The twentieth century had a wonderful capacity for seeing nothing as the sum of everything. ~ Louis Dudek, #NFDB
370:We have the capacity to receive messages from the stars and the songs of the night winds. ~ Ruth St Denis, #NFDB
371:You need to be careful not to over-reach and also assess the capacity you have to work with. ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
372:A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
373:As the freeway approaches 100% capacity, it ceases being a freeway. It becomes a parking lot. ~ Jim Benson, #NFDB
374:Capacity is a state of mind. How much we can do depends on how much we think we can do. ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
375:God's grace is so powerful that it has the capacity to overcome our natural resistance to it. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
376:Is that, in the end - that capacity to hurt - the most essential ingredient for a ruler? ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
377:I think it's probably a good thing to be considered stable, but with a capacity for madness. ~ Wayne Coyne, #NFDB
378:Love is a living capacity within us that is always present, even when we don’t sense it. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
379:No one should dogmatize about the capacity of human nature for degradation or exaltation. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
380:Our capacity to love is an unstoppable essence that when nurtured can expand without limit. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
381:The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
382:the soul’s infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God’s infinite capacity to give. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
383:This capacity to isolate part of one's mind, indeed, is a valuable characteristic. P. 8 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
384:You already have the capacity to travel through time. Simply wait for the future to arrive. ~ Pete Hautman, #NFDB
385:He had the intellectual capacity of a louse, but shone in cooking up new ways to be cruel. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
386:I think that both musicals and opera have a capacity to get to an inner emotional landscape. ~ Julie Taymor, #NFDB
387:I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
388:Our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
389:The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
390:The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second. ~ Daniel J Levitin, #NFDB
391:The success of a sportsman rests on his (or her) capacity to suffer, even to enjoy suffering. ~ Parul Sheth, #NFDB
392:To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
393:A pretty sight; it would have surprised me, if my capacity for surprise wasn't flattened. ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
394:Few people are lacking in capacity, but they fail because they are lacking in application. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
395:Honesty, capacity, and industry are nowhere more indispensable than in public employment. ~ William McKinley, #NFDB
396:I think that kids have a greater capacity for processing things than we give them credit for. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
397:I would like to work with Pat [ Leonard] in any capacity. I would love to hear his versions. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
398:No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living fully now. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
399:The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
400:The more open you are within, the more capacity you will have to know, to see, and to love. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
401:There is no time limit for a satyagrahi nor is there a limit to his capacity for suffering. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
402:The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
403:Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
404:we human beings have the blessed creative capacity to do so much better. So why don’t we?” 2. ~ Jane Roberts, #NFDB
405:When you say "I" and "my" too much, you lose the capacity to understand the "we" and "our". ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
406:Wisdom is not increased by acquiring more information, but by increasing the capacity of seeing. ~ Belsebuub, #NFDB
407:And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn? ~ Ann Druyan, #NFDB
408:Everyone must find a capacity in which they can serve, because we all benefit from society. ~ Kathleen Turner, #NFDB
409:Hekate leads the way with her torches aloft in her capacity as the preceder and follower[252] ~ Sorita d Este, #NFDB
410:I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question. -Spock ~ Lani Lynn Vale, #NFDB
411:In the 21st Century, the capacity to communicate will almost certainly be a key human right. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
412:I think it's the human spirit inside of all of us that has an enormous capacity to survive. ~ Amanda Lindhout, #NFDB
413:I think you underestimate my capacity for taking normal human interaction and making it awkward. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
414:Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
415:When it comes to their capacity to screw things up, computers are becoming more human every day. ~ Seth Lloyd, #NFDB
416:Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
417:I think a state should not be in the capacity of killing anyone with the exception of warfare. ~ Werner Herzog, #NFDB
418:That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
419:The biggest asset you have is your earning capacity, and that depends entirely on your attitude. ~ Ben Feldman, #NFDB
420:The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
421:They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
422:They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,” he remarked with a smile. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
423:Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer from it that increases. ~ Fran oise Sagan, #NFDB
424:If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
425:Joy is found when you focus your energy on improving human dignity, human capacity and human values. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
426:Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
427:Political power means the capacity to regulate national life through national representatives. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
428:Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. —MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Scott Jurek, #NFDB
429:The great poets are full of bullshit. Love has nothing on hatred's capacity to give a man purpose. ~ Luke Scull, #NFDB
430:Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald, #NFDB
431:Well, the capacity of French intellectuals to understand a Texan way of thinking is finite. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
432:Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
433:Am I melancholy? I certainly have moments. I like to think there's a capacity for joy as well. ~ Stephen Dillane, #NFDB
434:Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
435:Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
436:No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society. ~ John Rawls, #NFDB
437:One's capacity for friendship, which can be developed, is basic to one's capacity for happiness. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
438:Our capacity for wholeheartednes s can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. ~ Brene Brown, #NFDB
439:Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
440:The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
441:We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity. ~ William Godwin, #NFDB
442:We carry with us as human beings not just the capacity to be kind but the very choice of kindness. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
443:American’s capacity for real estate improvement; build yourself a house, grow fat in it, and die. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
444:And as her love revived, so did her capacity for suffering. Life, more important, grew more bitter. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
445:Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
446:Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
447:I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero. ~ Scott Adams, #NFDB
448:In the course of general acceleration and hyperactivity we are also losing the capacity for rage ~ Byung Chul Han, #NFDB
449:Man has an infinite capacity to rationalize - especially when it comes to what he wants to eat. ~ Cleveland Amory, #NFDB
450:Many people want to serve God,’ said the sign outside the church, ‘but only in an advisory capacity. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
451:Mastery of creative tension brings out the capacity for perseverance and patience. Time is an ally. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
452:Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression ~ John Foster Dulles, #NFDB
453:Our greater capacity for learning is often offset by our greater capacity for magical thinking. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
454:Personnel and their capacity for work on their exact jobs is the basic key to income and success. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
455:The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
456:The NATO forces will, to the extent that they have capacity, assist the war crimes tribunal. ~ Warren Christopher, #NFDB
457:The nature of faith, I think, is based so much on one's capacity for hope for those whom you love. ~ Dolores Hart, #NFDB
458:A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
459:Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
460:Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
461:human beings have a great capacity for sticking to false beliefs with great passion and tenacity, ~ Bruce H Lipton, #NFDB
462:Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
463:I think it is in our nature to be selfish, and in our capacity to do a great many evil things. ~ Danielle L Jensen, #NFDB
464:It was Nathaniel's boundless capacity for stating the obvious that made him so charmingly human. ~ Jonathan Stroud, #NFDB
465:Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past. ~ Ivy Compton Burnett, #NFDB
466:“Psychological or spiritual development always requires a greater capacity for anxiety and ambiguity.” ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
467:The capacity of women to make unsuitable marriages must be considered as the cornerstone of society. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
468:We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems, if only we can find the political will. ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
469:When you lose the capacity to dream, you lose the capacity to love, and the energy to love is lost. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
470:Women have the capacity to lead us to a more peaceful world with compassion, affection, and kindness. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
471:a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
472:Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
473:Hitler has always had the capacity to reflect whatever phobia afflicts the person who stares at him ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
474:I have the capacity to express what I feel needs to be expressed. And I try to do what I believe in. ~ Danny Glover, #NFDB
475:I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
476:I thought I had always loved him to capacity, but that capacity continued to constantly expand. ~ Lacey Weatherford, #NFDB
477:It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
478:It never hurts a fool to appear before an audience, for his capacity is not a capacity for feeling. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
479:it’s been estimated that the brain has the storage capacity of three million hours of TV shows (7). ~ Daniel G Amen, #NFDB
480:It was her own capacity for story telling that made her see her own hand in what happened around her. ~ Rachel Cusk, #NFDB
481:Lincoln had a tremendous capacity for personal growth - more than any other American President. ~ Henry Louis Gates, #NFDB
482:Man has the lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end up destroying the earth. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
483:Mastery of creative tension brings out the capacity for perseverance and patience. Time is an ally. ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
484:Maybe we all have a monster inside. Maybe we all have the same capacity for evil as we do for good. I ~ Ethan Cross, #NFDB
485:No, it's not a 'corpse thing.' I feel I lack the emotional capacity to deal with those in mourning. ~ Jen Lancaster, #NFDB
486:Receptivity is the capacity of admitting and retaining the Divine Workings.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
487:The biggest gift I received as a martial artist is without a question the capacity to be in peace. ~ Rickson Gracie, #NFDB
488:The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all. ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
489:The most tragic thing for a person is to have a very limited capacity in the matters of dream! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
490:There's a capacity for apetite," Samuel said, "that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
491:We carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
492:We have the capacity to build happiness into our lives with humor, concern for others, and gratitude. ~ Mary Pipher, #NFDB
493:Your capacity for self-justification and rationalization.” “If it were an Olympic sport, I’d medal. ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
494:A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
495:If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
496:Life improves the closed system’s capacity to sustain life. Life—all life—is in the service of life. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
497:Music has the capacity to touch the innermost reaches of the soul and music gives flight to the imagination. ~ Plato, #NFDB
498:Only art with the capacity to stir dislike and hate truly contains the potential to be loved. It’s ~ Johnny B Truant, #NFDB
499:Reason is the power or capacity whereby we see or detect logical relationships among propositions. ~ Alvin Plantinga, #NFDB
500:The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
501:The human mind’s capacity to persuade itself of things it wants to believe is damn near limitless. ~ Greta Christina, #NFDB
502:The individual who has become a stranger to himself has lost the capacity for genuine self-renewal. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB
503:There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
504:The Yogi knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces.~ The Mother, #NFDB
505:Though they have not the capacity to reply, I refuse to believe that our pets have no comprehension ~ Robert Masello, #NFDB
506:...Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
507:I don't believe much in luck. I believe more in work, in convincing, in stubbornness and in capacity. ~ Diego Simeone, #NFDB
508:If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
509:I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
510:In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. ~ Lou Gerstner, #NFDB
511:it’s not that people don’t love you, it’s that they don’t have the same capacity to love as you do. ~ Brittney Cooper, #NFDB
512:No, it's not a 'corpse thing.' I feel I lack the emotional capacity to deal with those in mourning... ~ Jen Lancaster, #NFDB
513:One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
514:People’s capacity for turning dogmatic stupidity into political movements never ceased to amaze me. ~ Dennis E Taylor, #NFDB
515:Remember, you have the capacity to choose. Choose life! Choose love! Choose health! Choose happiness! ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
516:So I resolved to remain alive in an unofficial capacity, which of course annoys them all immensely. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
517:There's a capacity for appetite,' Samuel said, 'that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
518:There’s a capacity for appetite,” Samuel said, “that a whole heaven and earth of cake can’t satisfy. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
519:To attain his dream, the warrior of light needs a strong will and an enormous capacity for acceptance. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
520:We have nearly lost our capacity to think ihcologicafly about public issues and public problems. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
521:Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
522:Whatever the capacity for human suffering, the church has a greater capacity for healing and wholeness. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
523:Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty. ~ Fidel Castro, #NFDB
524:Don’t rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
525:If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me. ~ Paula Scher, #NFDB
526:It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
527:It never hurts a fool to appear before an
audience, for his capacity is not a capacity for feeling. ~ Dale Carnegie,#NFDB
528:My capacity for happiness,” he added, “you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
529:My capacity for vanishing into whatever shadows happen to be around is a hard-won and precious skill. ~ John Darnielle, #NFDB
530:The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
531:"The human capacity for eternal transformation is the antidote to unbearable suffering and tragedy." ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
532:Until you become a parent, you can't begin to discover your capacity for strength, love and fatigue. ~ Peter Gallagher, #NFDB
533:William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others. ~ Dick Cavett, #NFDB
534:Your soul has a resiliency and a capacity to endure suffering that is beyond anything you can imagine. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
535:Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”31 ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
536:Aviation is proof that given, the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible.
~ Edward Vernon Rickenbacker,#NFDB
537:Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.” —Omar Bradley ~ Bathroom Readers Institute, #NFDB
538:Each man is a good education to himself, provided he has the capacity to spy on himself from close up. ~ Sarah Bakewell, #NFDB
539:I think stress is anything going on in our lives that impinges on our capacity to have optimum well being. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
540:I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism. ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
541:Music is a thing that changes people's lives. It has the capacity to make young people's lives better. ~ Noel Gallagher, #NFDB
542:No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will. ~ B H Liddell Hart, #NFDB
543:No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. —Alan Watts1 When ~ Emma Sepp l, #NFDB
544:Only a deep attention to the whole of our life can bring us the capacity to love well and live freely. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
545:Science gives you an understanding of the physical world, and it increases the capacity for fascination. ~ Reggie Watts, #NFDB
546:Sometimes I dislike women I dislike us all because of our capacity for not thinking when it suits us... ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
547:The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
548:The one thing that's missing to create a fundamental shift in work capacity: courage. Leadership courage. ~ Bill Jensen, #NFDB
549:The timelessness of art is its capacity to represent the transformation of endless becoming into being. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
550:You are never too young to lead and you should never doubt your capacity to triumph where others have not. ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
551:A broad and joined-up approach is needed if we are to match human demands with the capacity of the planet ~ Tony Juniper, #NFDB
552:Almost more than talent you need tenacity, and an infinite capacity for rejection, if you are to succeed. ~ Larry Kramer, #NFDB
553:And remember as in all of us, it is only your capacity for wickedness that makes selflessness possible. ~ Danielle Paige, #NFDB
554:I'm not very big on politics. I'm a comedian and not that smart. I don't have the mind capacity for it. ~ Bobby Moynihan, #NFDB
555:Jesus astonishes his contemporaries by his capacity to see and act beyond conventional assumptions. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
556:Nature has endowed each of us with a capacity for kindly feelings: let us not squander them on others. ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB
557:One thing I like about getting older is things, your spectrum widens, your capacity for compassion widens. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
558:People have the natural capacity to affirm and embrace life in the most difficult of circumstances. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen, #NFDB
559:Physical circumstances have very little to do with either our capacity to love or to attract love. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
560:Summer cooking implies a sense of immediacy, a capacity to capture the essence of the fleeting moment. ~ Elizabeth David, #NFDB
561:testament to the human capacity to adapt (or, less charitably, to our ability to operate in ignorance). ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB
562:The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas. ~ Ralph Ellison, #NFDB
563:The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
564:The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
565:The fate of the world hangs, precariously, on the capacity to encompass the "other" and dialogue with it. ~ James Hollis, #NFDB
566:The human capacity for burden is like bamboo - far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
567:The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
568:"The human capacity for eternal transformation is the antidote to unbearable suffering and tragedy." ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
569:The rewards of life and devotion to God are love and inner rapture, and the capacity to receive the light of God. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
570:The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
571:The truth is, the soul’s infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God’s infinite capacity to give. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
572:We firmly believe in Trafiguras unparalleled capacity to extract the full value of the Sudeste Superport. ~ Eike Batista, #NFDB
573:WE HAVE WITHIN US AN EXTRAORDINARY CAPACITY FOR LOVE, JOY, AND UNSHAKABLE FREEDOM. JACK KORNFIELD, AUTHOR ~ Mike Robbins, #NFDB
574:...we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
575:Yet my confusion must be this: though her body is old, her capacity for betrayal is still young and fresh. ~ Lydia Davis, #NFDB
576:Agentic capacity is now seen as differentially distributed across a wider range of ontological types. This ~ Jane Bennett, #NFDB
577:A learning organization is an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
578:As we all have an infinite capacity to make mistakes, we all have an infinite capacity for forgiveness. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
579:But never underestimate the American bourgeoisie’s capacity to embrace fascism under the name of populism. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
580:Christ imparts the capacity of conquest to our lives every single day that we are willing to believe Him. ~ Walter Martin, #NFDB
581:Everything French is amazing, especially creme brulee, but then burnt sugar works for me in any capacity. ~ Rashida Jones, #NFDB
582:Failure or success in business is primarily not determined by mental capacity but by MENTAL ATTITUDES ~ Walter Dill Scott, #NFDB
583:How can there be love without a true choice? Would you suggest that man be stripped of the capacity to love? ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
584:I think people have the capacity to be many different things and many seemingly contradictory behaviors. ~ Richard Ayoade, #NFDB
585:My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
586:Nothing remains great without a capacity to change and to accommodate the conditions of a changing world. ~ John Ashcroft, #NFDB
587:overcome ingrained patterns of submission is to restore a physical capacity to engage and defend. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
588:Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
589:Sinn Fein has the potential and capacity to become the vehicle for the attainment of republican objectives. ~ Gerry Adams, #NFDB
590:The capacity for erroneous belief is very great, especially where it coincides with convenience. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
591:The capacity of young people to persevere, even under the most adverse conditions, never ceases to amaze me. ~ Jane Fonda, #NFDB
592:The human capacity for burden is like a bamboo - far more flexible than youd ever believe at first glance. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
593:The Lord's capacity to forgive a person who is truly repentant is without limit, without qualification ~ Elizabeth Camden, #NFDB
594:The modern world is devoted to vanishing species, vanishing weather and vanishing capacity for wonder. ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
595:The safest way to success is to write according to the capacity of the stupidest member of the audience. ~ Natasha Pulley, #NFDB
596:To each his own difficulties seem enormous and radical. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #NFDB
597:We can conserve energy and tread more lightly on the Earth while we expand our culture's capacity for joy. ~ Richard Louv, #NFDB
598:While every human being has a capacity for love, its realization is one of the most difficult achievements. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
599:But the capacity of women to shame men and render them self-conscious is still a primal force of nature. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
600:Every day in every way, I am increasing my mental and physical capacity. I am reversing my biological age. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
601:... face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
602:It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain must have something in it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
603:It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have something in it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
604:My capacity for happiness,’ he added, ‘you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
605:there is no such thing as a rational person. We are emotional creatures with some token capacity for reason. ~ Jed McKenna, #NFDB
606:True Time does not curve space; it is open and opens space through its capacity of rendering it transparent. ~ Jean Gebser, #NFDB
607:We need to strengthen our analytic capacity in Washington, we need to centralize the anti-terrorism effort ~ John Ashcroft, #NFDB
608:When you get too many competitors with too much capacity, there’s just not enough growth to sustain everybody, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
609:A capacity for hating the object of desire is, perhaps, the best cure for love in cases of disappointment. ~ Norm MacDonald, #NFDB
610:Alas! in nature, as in art, we gain only according to our capacity. You cannot put an ocean in a pint pot. ~ Flora Thompson, #NFDB
611:Civil disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering, without the intoxicating excitement of killing. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
612:The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The
willingness to learn is a choice. ~ Brian Herbert,#NFDB
613:The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
614:—Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
615:The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. ~ Dan Millman, #NFDB
616:This capacity to go beyond the factors of conditioning is one of the obvious advantages of the human person. ~ Paulo Freire, #NFDB
617:Trying to force a system to work beyond its capacity invariably causes turbulence and slows things down. ~ Mary Poppendieck, #NFDB
618:You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
619:A major criterion for judging the anxiety level of any society is the loss of its capacity to be playful. ~ Edwin H Friedman, #NFDB
620:But the capacity of women to shame men and render them self-conscious is still a primal force of nature. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
621:Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
622:Democracy is always an unfinished experiment, testing the capacity of each generation to live freedom nobly. ~ George Weigel, #NFDB
623:Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks.10 ~ James Clear, #NFDB
624:He had always been irreproachable in his conduct, and as a consequence, his capacity for empathy was small. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
625:If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom. ~ Leo Strauss, #NFDB
626:I had a hollow leg. I could drink everyone under the table and not get drunk. My capacity was terrifying. ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #NFDB
627:Intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
628:Science of happiness lies in our understanding. The secrets of happiness lie in our capacity to expand our heart. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
629:The only way to persevere is to have the capacity to calmly separate yourself from what is being done to you. ~ Brian Grazer, #NFDB
630:True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
631:All have not the same capacity. I would allow a man of intellect to earn more, I would not cramp his talent. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
632:Far too much horrific wast of human capacity is disguised as order, predictability, and minimizing uncertainty. ~ Bill Jensen, #NFDB
633:Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. ~ Storm Jameson, #NFDB
634:If we don't harness their potential for good, their societies will continue to reap their capacity for evil. ~ Rom o Dallaire, #NFDB
635:In knowing ourselves to be unique, we possess the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then! ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
636:I think all married couples tend to run things by each other in every capacity and we're not different to them. ~ Isla Fisher, #NFDB
637:Not your eyes but the capacity of your mind determines how well you see the things happening around you! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
638:Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
639:Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020. ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
640:The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
641:The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock—shock is a worn-out word—but astonish. ~ Terry Southern, #NFDB
642:Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
643:i'm not sure either of them had a great capacity for love, that was all. it's funny - mine feels bottomless. ~ Elizabeth Noble, #NFDB
644:The body is precious and the body is always going to speak through its own capacity for communication and love. ~ Dolores Hart, #NFDB
645:The majesty of God in itself goes beyond the capacity of human understanding and cannot be comprehended by it.. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
646:There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed- ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
647:The very fact that you have a desire or a dream means that you have the corresponding capacity to realize it. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
648:To make a great dream come true, the first requirement is a great capacity to dream; the second is persistence. ~ Cesar Chavez, #NFDB
649:We as human beings have the amazing capacity to be reborn at breakfast everyday and say, “This is a new day.” ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
650:We should learn and reflect to the best of our capacity, but when we reach a point where we are unable to make ~ Baal Shem Tov, #NFDB
651:[...]while we all have the capacity to do harder things, we also have the desire to do exactly the opposite. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
652:Your struggles have not been a waste. They've come to strengthen you. And grow your capacity to lead - and win. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
653:A person's identity is not to be found in behavior...but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going ~ Anthony Giddens, #NFDB
654:Energy is simply the capacity to do work. Our most fundamental need as human beings is to spend and recover energy. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
655:Hope is ever the greatest luxury of the helpless, the capacity to suppose knowledge that circumstances denied. ~ R Scott Bakker, #NFDB
656:If you don't have the capacity to change yourself and your own attitudes, then nothing around you can be changed. ~ Anwar Sadat, #NFDB
657:In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
658:Men who had the capacity to apologize—and who knew the right words with which to do it—were few and far between. ~ Faith Hunter, #NFDB
659:Myron remembered something his father once told him: People have an amazing capacity to mess up their own lives. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
660:O, God of wonder, enlarge my capacity to be amazed at what is amazing, and end my attraction to the insignificant. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
661:Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
662:Our capacity for production and enjoyment is a function, in the last analysis, of our character, our integrity. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
663:parents should understand their own capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry and deceitful. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
664:The attitude of other people affects each of us and the attitude of each of us has the capacity to affect all of us. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
665:The human brain has a marvelous capacity to screen and sort experience, protecting itself against the unbearable. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
666:There is an inanimate object which has a capacity to exasperate which no human being will ever attain: a piano. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
667:There speaks again the sceptic; but I shall never be so intoxicated as to lose my capacity of observation. ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz, #NFDB
668:[A]ny being with the supposed capacity to create the logically impossible must himself be logically impossible. ~ George H Smith, #NFDB
669:A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
670:But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
671:Freedom is not the capacity to do whatever we please; freedom is the capacity to make intelligent choices. ~ Frances Moore Lappe, #NFDB
672:Human language falls short of expressing all that He is, even as a thimble lacks capacity to hold Niagara Falls. ~ Blake Western, #NFDB
673:If you want joy and happiness in life, focus your energy on improving human dignity, human capacity and human values. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
674:I'm afraid the workings of J.J. Abrams' mind falls outside the predictive capacity of any coherent theory. ~ Antony Garrett Lisi, #NFDB
675:In Buddhism, the term hungry ghost refers to the person whose appetite exceeds their capacity for satisfaction. ~ Chloe Caldwell, #NFDB
676:It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
677:Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
678:The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
679:The best way to describe your total creative capacity is to say that for all practical purposes it is infinite. ~ George Leonard, #NFDB
680:The eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror... if it has only the capacity to reflect. ~ Andre Breton, #NFDB
681:...there was no spell to cure a broken heart that did not also destroy that heart's capacity for love forever. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
682:We humans have the capacity to wreak horrors on each other. But we also have the capacity to survive those horrors. ~ Barry Lyga, #NFDB
683:All things resist destruction, according to their capacity. Rocks, pebbles, diamonds. Unity is instinctive to being. ~ Jan Siegel, #NFDB
684:And remember as in all of us, it is only your capacity for wickedness that makes selflessness possible" -Lurline ~ Danielle Paige, #NFDB
685:And there are the very special people in our lives who have the endless capacity to love us for all of our flaws. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
686:Branch Rickey once said of me that I was a man with an infinite capacity for immediately making a bad thing worse. ~ Leo Durocher, #NFDB
687:Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition. ~ Max Ernst, #NFDB
688:For every twenty-four hours awake, Belenky told me, people lose 25 percent of their capacity for useful mental work. ~ Mary Roach, #NFDB
689:For the first time in human history, society has the capacity, the knowledge and the resources to eradicate poverty ~ Thabo Mbeki, #NFDB
690:If I had the money and the drinking capacity, I'd probably live at a roulette table and let my life go to hell. ~ Michael Ventura, #NFDB
691:In truth, the only restrictions on our capacity to astonish ourselves and each other are imposed by our own minds. ~ David Blaine, #NFDB
692:Never underestimate the capacity of noble young men to do incredibly foolish things for perfectly good reasons. ~ Jennifer Fallon, #NFDB
693:Nobody has a maximum amount of storage for fat, and it’s unlikely that we have a maximum capacity for knowledge. ~ Clay A Johnson, #NFDB
694:one of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
695:parents should understand their own capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry and deceitful. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
696:Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
697:Theater has an incredible capacity to move people to social change, to address issues, to inspire social revolution. ~ Eve Ensler, #NFDB
698:The basis of leadership is the capacity of the leader to change the mindset, the framework of the other person. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
699:The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish. ~ Terry Southern, #NFDB
700:There's a lot of life on the planet that needs love, wants love, deserves love, in whatever capacity we are able. ~ Bellamy Young, #NFDB
701:To gain India's freedom, the capacity for suffering must go hand in hand with the capacity for ceaseless labour. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
702:Your trade becomes very much impacted by the quality of your life experiences and your capacity to process them. ~ Natasha Lyonne, #NFDB
703:Intelligence is the capacity to know what we are doing and instinct is just instinct. The results are about the same. ~ Will Cuppy, #NFDB
704:The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go. ~ Peter Singer, #NFDB
705:There seems to be endless capacity for strife in your system.” “Of course there is. Doesn’t that fit human nature? ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
706:The tragedy of growing up is not that we put aside childishness, but that we lose the capacity for childlike wonder. ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
707:Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture. ~ Charles Horton Cooley, #NFDB
708:And over time, I think, as Iraqi security capacity builds, you'll see American and coalition presence there decline. ~ John Abizaid, #NFDB
709:[A]ny being with the
supposed capacity to create the logically impossible must himself be logically impossible. ~ George H Smith,#NFDB
710:Anyone who displays a capacity for double-dealing must forever be suspected of being capable of displaying it again. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
711:Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way. ~ Joan Halifax, #NFDB
712:For freedom is not the capacity to do whatever we please; freedom is the capacity to make intelligent choices. ~ Frances Moore Lapp, #NFDB
713:It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting. ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #NFDB
714:Jefferson had a remarkable capacity to marshal ideas and to move men, to balance the inspirational and the pragmatic. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
715:Terrible, dreadful, blasted awful kids. They've all got a darkness inside them. They've all got the capacity of evil. ~ Lisa Jewell, #NFDB
716:the capacity to work feeds on itself and has its own course of development. This is what artists have going for them. ~ Anne Truitt, #NFDB
717:The fact is that if one tries beyond one's capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
718:There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
719:The seed of Buddhahood, the capacity to wake up and understand things as they are, is also present in each of us. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
720:Welcome to the Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona that is packed to capacity... with some patches of seats left empty. ~ George Hamilton, #NFDB
721:Wherever we are we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other and the wonder of our breathing. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
722:You don't have problems, only a capacity for feeling anxious about them, which shifts and jostles but doesn't change. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
723:Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
724:Be determined that you will let every dream of yours be released to the fullest capacity. Brighten your picture! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
725:If we are not using our brains' capacity for challenge it feels to me as though it atrophies like an unused muscle. ~ Philippa Perry, #NFDB
726:Mother India has 250 crore arms, majority of which are of the youth, who have the capacity to fulfil India's dreams! ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
727:Our capacity to love and forgive—to accept fallibilities in another and in ourselves—is our greatest strength. ~ Laura Lynne Jackson, #NFDB
728:The fate of the world rests on this one thing: our capacity to actualize our spiritual potential, and quickly. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
729:The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
730:What determines success in industrial policy is not the ability to pick winners but the capacity to let the losers go. ~ Dani Rodrik, #NFDB
731:A capacity to change is indispensable. Equally indispensable is the capacity to hold fast to that which is good. ~ John Foster Dulles, #NFDB
732:Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one's own way and not the way one was taught. ~ Eric Berne, #NFDB
733:But every great and overpowering grief must take away the capacity to choose words, since it often stifles the voice itself. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
734:Capacity for love in its higher forms seems to be peculiarly human although even in humans it is still peculiar. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
735:Civilization merely develops man's capacity for a greater variety of sensations, and ... absolutely nothing else. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
736:Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
737:Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion. ~ Annie Lennox, #NFDB
738:I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy. ~ Patricia Highsmith, #NFDB
739:Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock. ~ Alvin Toffler, #NFDB
740:Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
741:Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
742:Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it's just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it. ~ Dave Grohl, #NFDB
743:The capacity to be either happy or unhappy is determined by the manner in which you react to whatever happens. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
744:The capacity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful is astonishingly sturdy and survives amidst the harshest distractions. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
745:... we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness. (Mr. Tushman) ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
746:What can one do with levels of gloom and guilt, fear and disbelief, of bewilderment above one's capacity to register? ~ Darin Strauss, #NFDB
747:Aggressiveness is not the main trouble with the human species, but rather an excess capacity for fanatical devotion. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
748:A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study. ~ Mary Shelley, #NFDB
749:I was a degenerate, with an insatiable capacity for perversion. Incapable of change. I could do anything except not drink. ~ Dan Fante, #NFDB
750:Liberal soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax in the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
751:Most US corporations today are over-managed and under-led. They need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
752:No matter how much you love someone—the capacity of that love is meaningless if it outweighs your capacity to forgive ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
753:One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
754:Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing what others have not seen. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
755:Teaching for creativity aims to encourage self-confidence, independence of mind, and the capacity to think for oneself. ~ Ken Robinson, #NFDB
756:The expansion of your own consciousness, love capacity, humility and compassion - this is the path; this is the way. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
757:The slender capacity of man's heart cannot comprehend the unfathomable depth and burning zeal of God's love toward us. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
758:To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity! ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
759:What you have learned is that the capacity of the plant is equal to the capacity of its bottlenecks,” says Jonah. ~ Eliyahu M Goldratt, #NFDB
760:You have the infinite capacity to do anything you want. You compare yourself to others—that’s why you feel so limited. ~ Garr Reynolds, #NFDB
761:You have to have the capacity and the ability to take what people did, and how they did it, and forgive them and move on. ~ John Lewis, #NFDB
762:Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
~ Franz Kafka,#NFDB
763:Although his heart was pumping and his adrenal gland was firing at full capacity, he could not muster any more speed. ~ Andrew J Morgan, #NFDB
764:Every unkind remark or crude gesture by others is a blessing, an opportunity to exercise our own capacity to forgive. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
765:Help me to withstand your beauty as it stands out of reach. Give me the capacity to forget ever having felt your touch. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
766:Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
767:Never forget that our capacity and capability in spiritual matters is measured by, and based on, the promises of God. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
768:No, I pull in other resources as needed, I've never used more than seven percent of my capacity so far since I met you. ~ Craig Alanson, #NFDB
769:No matter how much you love someone—the capacity of that love is meaningless if it outweighs your capacity to forgive. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
770:"Our innate capacity to love is like a seed in the soil. What do we need to do to activate that seed and make it blossom?" ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
771:The capacity of Iraq's security forces has improved, and Iraq's leaders have made strides toward political accommodation ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
772:The first job of a leader is to define a vision for the organization...the capacity to translate vision into reality. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
773:The fruit of liberal education is not learning, but the capacity and desire to learn, not knowledge, but power. ~ Charles William Eliot, #NFDB
774:The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less." - Socrates ~ Leo Babauta, #NFDB
775:The Sun can be found not only in the heavens but as gold in the earth, and as the human heart, and as the capacity to love ~ Liz Greene, #NFDB
776:We aren't robots. What makes us exceptional as humans, is that we have the capacity to feel as many emotions all at once. ~ Demi Lovato, #NFDB
777:When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
778:A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves. ~ Dan Savage, #NFDB
779:A leader has the capacity of vision, the ability to see where things are headed before people in general see those things. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
780:Capacity never lacks opportunity. It cannot remain undiscovered because it is sought by too many anxious to use it. ~ Jacqueline Cochran, #NFDB
781:[Donald] Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people.He is becoming ISIS's best recruiter. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
782:For the first time, he considered that utter indifference might inspire not inner peace but a limitless capacity for evil. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
783:I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals. And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig, is a bear...is a boy. ~ Philip Wollen, #NFDB
784:"Intimacy is the capacity to engage full vulnerability with another human being and simultaneously not abandon yourself" ~ Robert Ohotto, #NFDB
785:One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy. ~ Quintilian, #NFDB
786:Our own ways of mourning may be unique, but the human capacity to grieve deeply is something we share with other animals. ~ Deborah Blum, #NFDB
787:Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
788:running an organization as close to maximum capacity as possible for as long as possible is a recipe for a scaling disaster. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
789:Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
790:The act of giving expands one's entire life experience because nothing is more fulfilling than one's capacity to give. ~ Phylicia Rashad, #NFDB
791:We are here to change. We are here to grow, develop and unfold. We are progressive beings that have infinite capacity ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
792:We tend to select top men for their character and capacity, then overload them according to their willingness. ~ Clarence Benjamin Jones, #NFDB
793:A compassionate open home is part of Christian responsibility, and should be practiced up to the level of capacity. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
794:At each level of gratitude our soul's capacity deepens, starting with contentment to meaningfulness, and finally, to pure joy. ~ M J Ryan, #NFDB
795:I always wanted to perform in some capacity since I was a kid - I was a ballerina, then a singer before acting. ~ Mary Elizabeth Winstead, #NFDB
796:I believe that anybody with Mandela's capacity to endure hardship and then forgive is a born leader and example to us all. ~ Rory McIlroy, #NFDB
797:If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, #NFDB
798:I think my capacity to change has given me tremendous happiness, because who I am today I am completely content to be. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis, #NFDB
799:It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting. ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #NFDB
800:Men who reach decisions promptly usually have the capacity to move with definiteness of purpose in other circumstances. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
801:No matter how much you love someone – the capacity of that love is meaningless if it outweighs your capacity to forgive. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
802:Not bragging too much, but I had to be careful never to smile while I drove: It had the capacity to blind oncoming traffic. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
803:Not recognizing natural mind is simply an example of the mind's unlimited capacity to create whatever it wants. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
804:Research points to the fact that being born without trauma is the foundation for having an intact capacity to love and trust. ~ Robin Lim, #NFDB
805:The heart is a wellspring. It has infinite capacity to manufacture love. The only barriers are the ones we put in the way. ~ Lisa Wingate, #NFDB
806:The unlimited capacity of the plant world to sustain man at his highest is a region as yet unexplored by modern science. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
807:Trump, one guest noted, always more salesman than politician, seemed to have the capacity to focus only on the good news. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
808:We can look around and see that a person who lives with happiness and compassion has the capacity to make others happy. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
809:What I seek to accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and justice, at the risk of pleasing no one. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
810:Whenever a new president comes in, people that are used to the previous president wonder if he has the same capacity. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
811:When we give ourselves the chance to let go of all our tension, the body's natural capacity to heal itself can begin to work. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
812:You can live in your total potential creative capacity in an instant-with your heart open to give and receive love. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
813:As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
814:Clearly the Old One had the capacity to kill - or easily deliver some sort of final ending that sounded remarkably like death. ~ Garth Nix, #NFDB
815:Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller. ~ Kevin Spacey, #NFDB
816:I note at the age of ten a fully developed ability not quite to enjoy myself, a capacity I have retained intact ever since. ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
817:In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
818:Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss. ~ Emile Durkheim, #NFDB
819:Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss. ~ mile Durkheim, #NFDB
820:Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
821:leaders’ work as teachers often starts with their recognition of an important capacity that is lacking in an organization. ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
822:Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
823:scientists are learning that people have more capacity for lifelong learning and brain development than they ever thought. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
824:The capacity of any conqueror is more likely than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
825:The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
826:Denying that art is mere expression, the later myth rather relates art to the mind’s need or capacity for self-estrangement. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
827:Each and every one of you has the power, the will and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live in ~ Harry Belafonte, #NFDB
828:Everyone knew that women had not the capacity for abstract thought; in this, as in so much, men dictated and women followed. ~ Jane Johnson, #NFDB
829:I dont believe you need high capacity magazines to go hunt. If you have to use 100 rounds to shoot a deer, youre in trouble. ~ Bob Menendez, #NFDB
830:I realized then that if something is at stake, the human mind gets ignited and working capacity gets enhanced manifold. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
831:I stood and walked around the desk so I could stand over him. Menacingly. Like Darth Vader, only with better lung capacity. ~ Darynda Jones, #NFDB
832:One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm. ~ Ella Maillart, #NFDB
833:Photography has the capacity to provide images of man and his environment that are both works of art and moments in history. ~ Cornell Capa, #NFDB
834:Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
835:The term “counselor” refers to the exercise of governance, the capacity to administer, to plan, and to execute policy. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
836:This world has few redeeming features, and one is the capacity for people to love one another with great, enduring passion. ~ David Gemmell, #NFDB
837:As if one's capacity for pain had anything to do with life's apportionment of agonies, Mr. Kimmelbrod thought. Such idiocy. ~ Ayelet Waldman, #NFDB
838:For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see. ~ Adrienne Rich, #NFDB
839:I always stayed. I can’t say I chose to stay as I felt quite without traction, without capacity to find myself or anything. ~ China Mi ville, #NFDB
840:In this business, if you don`t have the capacity to step back and have some sort of relativity about things, you're screwed. ~ Leonor Varela, #NFDB
841:Love was love; there was no spell to cure a broken heart that did not also destroy that heart's capacity for love forever. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
842:She did not know then that the price of allowing false opinions was the gradual loss of one's capacity for forming true ones. ~ Muriel Spark, #NFDB
843:The strength of patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours ~ John Piper, #NFDB
844:While doing work if the mind continues to be active let it be so, but there must be at the same time a capacity for silence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
845:Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don't yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
846:A record 449 million barrels of oil are being stored in the U.S. Shrinking storage capacity might lead to another drop in prices. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
847:Every skill, every talent, every capacity, and every ability of the mind are really the Soul-action made visibly tangible. ~ Joel S Goldsmith, #NFDB
848:Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
849:Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing.” ~ William Paul YoungSarayu ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
850:I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
851:I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
852:Let each man take the path according to his capacity, understanding and temperament. His true guru will meet him along that path. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
853:Love is based on our capacity to trust in a reality beyond fear, to trust a timeless truth bigger than all our difficulties. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
854:My body hums in reply, and I fight the seductive lethargy threatening to consume both my anger, and my capacity for logic. ~ Lisa Renee Jones, #NFDB
855:Negative visualization is therefore a wonderful way to regain our appreciation of life and with it our capacity for joy. T ~ William B Irvine, #NFDB
856:Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
857:Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public. ~ George McGovern, #NFDB
858:Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
859:Some have more capacity. Some proceed a few steps along the way. But Christ seemed to love all men. He desired all to be saved. ~ Dorothy Day, #NFDB
860:The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's own convictions - not obstinately or defiantly ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
861:The strength of patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
862:The taking of vows that are not feasible or that are beyond one's capacity would betray thoughtlessness and want of balance. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
863:The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Artistic productivity is the capacity for being voluntarily involuntary. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
864:To be happy, one must rid oneself of prejudice, be virtuous, healthy, and have a capacity for enjoyment and for passion. ~ Emilie du Chatelet, #NFDB
865:We are taught to understand, correctly, that courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity for action despite our fears. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
866:We need to help younger people recognize their own capacity to do good, and help them discover the rewards of generosity. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
867:We need to increase the capacity; we need to improve performance so that we are more effective at lending that kind of support. ~ Thabo Mbeki, #NFDB
868:When you are forced to think, you expand your mental capacity. When you expand your mental capacity, your wealth increases. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
869:An organization which just perpetuates today's level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
870:Complaining is an attitude choice that if left unchecked will wither my capacity to experience joy and genuine thankfulness. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
871:dawning of compassion, the awakening of an inborn capacity to identify with and understand the experience of others. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
872:He knows that the test of organization is not genius. It is its capacity to make common people achieve uncommon performance. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
873:Incredible how rapidly the best relationship, if it is stressed beyond its capacity, wears thin and finally exhausts itself. ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
874:Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
875:Insight into soul-action, ability to discriminate the genuine from the sham and capacity to further one and discourage the other. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
876:Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
877:The human capacity to ignore facts and believe what they wanted to believe was a continued source of amazement and frustration ~ Craig Alanson, #NFDB
878:The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations--and absolutely nothing more. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
879:To me, freedom means having the power, the inherent right, the capacity and the ability to make choices that honour who I am. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
880:Clay, they discovered, has two basic properties essential to life: the capacity to store and the ability to transfer energy. ~ Zecharia Sitchin, #NFDB
881:Do you have any idea who you have the capacity to become? If you were not bound by the confines of your mind, who might you become? ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
882:Every organization of men, be it social or political, ultimately relies on man's capacity for making promises and keeping them. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
883:I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else. ~ Daniel Day Lewis, #NFDB
884:Like many things in space—oxygen, water, food—trash removal capacity is a resource, and our two countries trade it like currency. ~ Scott Kelly, #NFDB
885:Neurogenesis continues throughout life and we have the capacity to establish new neural pathways and strengthen existing ones. ~ Philippa Perry, #NFDB
886:...now I know my capacity for awe
is infinite: this thirst is permanent,
the well bottomless, my good fortune vast. ~ Elizabeth Alexander,#NFDB
887:Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing. ~ Lawrence Bossidy, #NFDB
888:She had this amazing capacity to turn sadness into anger and anger into action, which meant nothing ever kept her down for long. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
889:That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy. ~ Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Bk. III, ch. 4, #NFDB
890:The most tragic form of loss isn't the loss of security; it's the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different. ~ Ernst Bloch, #NFDB
891:The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism . . . ~ George Washington, #NFDB
892:the obscurity of the theory is not the fault of quantum mechanics but is rather due to the limited capacity of our imagination. ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
893:The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations - and absolutely nothing more. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
894:There is no such thing as talent. What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous work in the right way. ~ Winslow Homer, #NFDB
895:To like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, just as to like Shakespeare is a test of general mental capacity. ~ George Gissing, #NFDB
896:[U]nable to integrate their traumatic memories, they seem to lose their capacity to assimilate new experiences as well. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
897:Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not. ~ Lawrence Block, #NFDB
898:don’t know about yours, but my reality goes with me wherever I go and leaves behind its capacity to reinvent itself, to develop. ~ Sof a Segovia, #NFDB
899:Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to ignore risks that threaten their livelihood, as though this will make them go away. ~ Nate Silver, #NFDB
900:If humanity has one majestic talent, it’s an almost infinite capacity to get used to the Next Big Thing … then take it for granted. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
901:If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
902:If you have the capacity to tremble with indignation every time that an injustice is committed in the world, then we are comrades. ~ Che Guevara, #NFDB
903:If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music]. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas, #NFDB
904:Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world. ~ Margaret Chan, #NFDB
905:It may be that loving children, radically and beyond reason, expands our capacity to love others, particularly our own mothers. ~ Kelly Corrigan, #NFDB
906:I've become more empathetic, and my capacity to understand and be patient - to give people a break - has enlarged over the years. ~ Stephen Lang, #NFDB
907:Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
908:Nowadays when you buy music its like you're donating to that cause, because you most likely could hear it in some capacity for free. ~ Girl Talk, #NFDB
909:Perfect” is that person we imbue with the capacity to enliven and support our vision or the person we believe in and want to help. ~ Gail Sheehy, #NFDB
910:Spiritual practice is the capacity to offer your love even when you feel hurt, closed down, tense, angry, misunderstood, or hated. ~ David Deida, #NFDB
911:The capacity for leadership is one of the greatest gifts in the universe. But it brings with it a heavy burden. Never forget that. ~ Peter David, #NFDB
912:The only way to enhance one’s power in the world is by increasing one’s integrity, understanding, and capacity for compassion. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
913:two constraints on growth: an economy’s capacity and willingness to take risk and to find properly trained and motivated talent. ~ Satya Nadella, #NFDB
914:Your capacity to experience the fullness of life is directly proportionate to your capacity to experience the fullness of love. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
915:He had lost the capacity of personal suffering, or he thought he had, and could only be hurt truly by what happened to others. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
916:Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
917:Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man's origin, capacity and responsibility. ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
918:Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment. ~ Herbert Simon, #NFDB
919:never underestimate the American bourgeoisie’s capacity to embrace fascism under the name of populism. Or the power of television. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
920:Obey the voice within - it commands us to give of ourselves and help others. As long as we have the capacity to give, we are alive ~ Kirk Douglas, #NFDB
921:Our splinter selves…are fractal energy systems, & therefore have the capacity to act independently of our conscious intention. ~ James Hollis, #NFDB
922:“The capacity for directed thinking I call intellect; the capacity for passive or undirected thinking I call intellectual intuition.” ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
923:Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
924:Your pleasures lessen in intensity the more the are repeated. Yet your capacity to experience ever more agony--is inexhaustible. ~ Grant Morrison, #NFDB
925:Am reading the life of Mozart and cannot help thinking that one's capacity for suffering is in direct proportion to one's greatness. ~ Lily Koppel, #NFDB
926:God designed the covenant of marriage to increase the capacity of both partners to carry out their purpose for advancing His kingdom. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
927:If you still use the word "I" to identify and represent yourself,
that explains why you still use less than 20% of brain capacity. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
928:Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. —REINHOLD NIEBUHR ~ James Comey, #NFDB
929:Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
930:That was an all-purpose IBM 3070. It took up half a room and still did not have enough capacity to do all the jobs demanded of it. ~ Frederik Pohl, #NFDB
931:To the composition of novels and romances, nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them. ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
932:What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
933:Your pleasures lessen in intensity the more they are repeated. Yet your capacity to experience ever more agony--is inexhaustible. ~ Grant Morrison, #NFDB
934:Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
935:A state of the soul is either (1) an emotion, (2) a capacity, or (3) a disposition; virtue therefore must be one of these three things. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
936:Capacity building originally meant helping people to help themselves. Now it means required training to deliver imposed policies. ~ Andy Hargreaves, #NFDB
937:I believe that the capacity that any organization needs is for leadership to appear anywhere it is needed, when it is needed. ~ Margaret J Wheatley, #NFDB
938:If a person doesn't have the capacity that we all want that person to have, I suspect hope is in the far distant future, if at all. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
939:I have a huge rib cage, which is why I can hold a note out until I'm blue in the face... because I have such a big lung capacity. ~ Jessica Simpson, #NFDB
940:I imagine a world in which all humans are born with an intact capacity to love, and I am willing to devote my life to making it happen. ~ Robin Lim, #NFDB
941:Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
942:Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
943:It is by extending oneself, by exercising some capacity previously unused that you come to a better knowledge of your own potential. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
944:I wish I'd been born with your capacity for wonder. I wouldn't mind living a shorter life if my short life could be as vivid as yours. ~ Sara Baume, #NFDB
945:Let no one think he can be totally indifferent to God in this life and suddenly develop a capacity for Him at the moment of death. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
946:Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
947:Out of this sorrowful experience I understand more fully all human strivings, thwarted ambitions, and the infinite capacity of hope. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
948:Porges coined the word “neuroception” to describe the capacity to evaluate relative danger and safety in one’s environment. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
949:The capacity for loyalty is stretched too thin when it tries to attach itself to the hypothetical solidarity of the human race. ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
950:The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time. ~ Robert Fripp, #NFDB
951:The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation. ~ Bruce D Perry, #NFDB
952:We all have that capacity, to be two things. And after all I was named for both the devil and the angel. Demonio y angel. Dem-y-an. ~ Demian Bichir, #NFDB
953:We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
954:What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
955:All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
956:A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
957:Architectural and product designs have a narrative capacity - you can start to tell a story about them and imagine a lot of things. ~ Michael Graves, #NFDB
958:Cause I rely on my illusions, to keep me warm at night. I've denied in my capacity to love, and I am willing to give up this fight ~ Sarah McLachlan, #NFDB
959:Every great, successful person I know shares the capacity to remain centered, clear, and powerful in the midst of emotional 'storms'. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
960:For one person who is blessed with the power of invention, many will always be found who have the capacity of applying principles. ~ Charles Babbage, #NFDB
961:I believe there is nothing we endure in life that you can't recover from. Failure is not fatal. Everyone has the capacity to fail up. ~ Tavis Smiley, #NFDB
962:I've certainly never helped anybody save the day, in any capacity. If anybody is going to understand making a few mistakes, it's me. ~ Mehcad Brooks, #NFDB
963:Measure the hate you feel now, and the shame. That quantity is your capacity also to love and to feel joy and to have compassion. ~ Joanne Greenberg, #NFDB
964:Our happiness, success, and safety can be measured by our genuine capacity to tune in to the loving vibration of the universe. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein, #NFDB
965:Science is a powerful force, but it will never be stronger than mankind’s capacity to be afraid of what we do not yet fully understand. ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
966:Ships capacity: 1,463
Passengers on board: 10,573
Lifeboats: 22
But then I remembered.
Ten of the lifeboats were missing ~ Ruta Sepetys,#NFDB
967:The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
968:The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
969:There was... her capacity to believe. There was as well her capacity to be deceived, since you can't have one without the other... ~ Alice McDermott, #NFDB
970:Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
971:We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
972:When an institution, organization, or nation loses its capacity to inspire high individual performance, its great days are over.
~ Howard Gardner,#NFDB
973:Working memory capacity is really the ability to hold and manipulate information while you're actively trying to block out distraction. ~ Amishi Jha, #NFDB
974:But never underestimate the American bourgeoisie’s capacity to embrace fascism under the name of populism. Or the power of television. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
975:Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith. ~ William James, #NFDB
976:humans have an evolved capacity to engage in self-deception in order to navigate through life in a delusional state of blissful ignorance. ~ Gad Saad, #NFDB
977:Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future. ~ Edwin H Friedman, #NFDB
978:Money is nothing more than a reflection of your creativity, your capacity to focus, and your ability to add value and receive back. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
979:People lost the capacity of using their brain. It's all about the label. Not about the labels showing but subtlety of the labels. ~ Barbara Hulanicki, #NFDB
980:Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
981:That proverbial glass of water that contains fifty percent of its capacity is either half full or half empty, depending on your attitude. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
982:The NSA has the capacity to keep track of everything we do on the phone and on the internet.[Barack] Obama has done nothing about that. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
983:The True Self is not our creation, but God's. It is the self we are in our depths. It is our capacity for divinity and transcendence. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
984:The warrior fills many roles, and the capacity to do so requires an intelligence that ordinary soldiers are not trained to possess. ~ Rachel E Carter, #NFDB
985:When I was seventeen I went to college to escape my father’s impotent rage and my mother’s infinite capacity for forgiveness. ~ Christina Baker Kline, #NFDB
986:In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
987:I think that literary forms are losing their capacity to connect people to issues, to the experiences that feel most meaningful to them. ~ Ayad Akhtar, #NFDB
988:It's always a shock to the people who run studios when a movie that is for women is a hit. They have an infinite capacity to be shocked. ~ Nora Ephron, #NFDB
989:Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
990:Our capacity for love is our greatest advantage. It’s what propels our species forward and guarantees that we won’t destroy ourselves. ~ David Simpson, #NFDB
991:The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” —Hannah Arendt I ~ Milo Yiannopoulos, #NFDB
992:There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
993:The thing which makes one man greater than another, the quality by which we ought to measure greatness, is a man's capacity for loving. ~ Arthur Helps, #NFDB
994:The wise have a solid sense of silence and the ability to keep a storehouse of secrets. Their capacity and character are respected. ~ Baltasar Gracian, #NFDB
995:To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality. ~ Indira Gandhi, #NFDB
996:To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
997:We hide from ourselves our self-centered capacity for acts of evil, but situations arise that act as a “potion,” and out they come. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
998:We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
999:. . . as people serve, they grow in capacity. The time and effort is not a sacrifice because there is returned more than is given. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
1000:Children coming forth today have a greater capacity to deal with, the greater variety of information that is coming forth, than you did. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1001:In general, I think, U.S. policies remain constant, going back to the Second World War. But the capacity to implement them is declining. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1002:Let each man take the path according to his capacity, understanding and temperament. His true guru will meet him along that path. ~ Sivananda Saraswati, #NFDB
1003:My idea of society is that while we are born equal, meaning that we have a right to equal opportunity, all have not the same capacity. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1004:Nature has an incredible capacity for regeneration and growth, but we can't experience it if we stay fearful and focused on lack. ~ Frances Moore Lappe, #NFDB
1005:Society evolves not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
1006:Superior experience and knowledge will be made available to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth, capacity and earning of it ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
1007:There has to be a force on the horizon that can come very quickly. But the way we run and fund peacekeeping, this capacity is unavailable. ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
1008:The sense itself was I. I felt no dross or matter in my soul, no brims or borders, such as in a bowl we see. My essence was capacity. ~ Thomas Traherne, #NFDB
1009:We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1010:You have the capacity to change the plotline of your life, even if you've been acting from the same script since before you can remember. ~ David Simon, #NFDB
1011:A low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1012:Bacon identified in relation to the natural sciences: the mismatch between the complexity of the world and our capacity to understand it. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
1013:East Asia confirms the superior capacity of industrial capitalism in raising the material standard of living of large masses of people. ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
1014:In a competition for mates a well developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage. The same is true in politics and and other contexts ~ John Gray, #NFDB
1015:In a competition for mates, a well developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage, The same is true in politics and other contexts. ~ John N Gray, #NFDB
1016:Life should begin with age and it's privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and it's capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1017:No creature on Earth ever has organized themselves in ways that we have, with the capacity to alter the nature of nature the way we have. ~ Sylvia Earle, #NFDB
1018:On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single body to ask fertile questions of it. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1019:Our capacity for fulfillment can come only through faith and feelings. But our capacity for survival must come from reason and knowledge. ~ Heinz Pagels, #NFDB
1020:The heart has no limits. Its capacity to love goes beyond all human comprehension. Hearts full of love never burst, they just keep taking, ~ Eden Butler, #NFDB
1021:We must stop destroying human capacity. Now.
Too many of today’s leaders are holding back the future because it comes wrapped in risks. ~ Bill Jensen,#NFDB
1022:Anything that threatens, hinders, obstructs, denies, delays your capacity to stand fully up for yourself, within yourself, take it down. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
1023:at least the higher animals have souls, and they are inevitably saved. Only man, who has the capacity for good and evil, can be damned. ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
1024:Every time you take a risk or move out of your comfort zone, you have a great opportunity to learn more about yourself and your capacity. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
1025:Flying fosters fantasies of childhood, of omnipotence, rapid shifts of being, miraculous moments; it stirs our capacity for dreaming. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
1026:Generativity is a system's capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences. ~ Jonathan Zittrain, #NFDB
1027:Happiness, then, comprises four elements: individual moral purpose, individual capacity, collective moral purpose, and collective capacity. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
1028:Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth. ~ R D Laing, #NFDB
1029:I'm investigating people who sacrifice trained killers to dark gods.
Perfect, it will keep him occupied.
In what capacity?
Bait. ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB
1030:I think everyone has the capacity to do great things, to rise above their everyday lives; they just need a little push now and then. ~ Michael J Sullivan, #NFDB
1031:My father will be filled with frank astonishment that I should be proving myself capable of earning a living in any capacity whatsoever. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
1032:Power in organizations is the capacity generated by relationships. It is an energy that comes into existence through relationships. ~ Margaret J Wheatley, #NFDB
1033:Q4: Man is no more than the sum of his experience and his capacity to express these experiences to fellow man. Discuss. (500 words)
Pg8 ~ Claire North,#NFDB
1034:scarcity directly reduces bandwidth—not a person’s inherent capacity but how much of that capacity is currently available for use. ~ Sendhil Mullainathan, #NFDB
1035:Subjectivity is an ability, the capacity to use a new inner mode of presenting the fact that you currently know something to yourself. ~ Thomas Metzinger, #NFDB
1036:There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-she had reached that point. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
1037:There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed—she had reached that point. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
1038:A warrior lives on his wars, whether offensive or defensive. And he suffers a collapse if he finds that his warring capacity is unwanted. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1039:A well-tempered sword combines the capacity to judge with an ability to feel. The capacity to cut is tempered with the feeling to protect. ~ Michael Meade, #NFDB
1040:Every person has the inherent capacity to spark massive changes that can lead to the tranquility, harmony, and peace that are our heritage. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1041:God . . . endowed [the human race] with capacity to attain to the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good and behold it face to face . . . ~ Pope Paul III, #NFDB
1042:If you deceive someone, you lose one of life's greatest treasures, you lose the capacity to trust. Because without trust, love is not possible. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1043:I'm sorry to say that far worse things have happened and the literature of the Holocaust is a witness to the capacity of the novel as a form. ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
1044:I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of - of American capitalism. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1045:It matches the capacity of evil to inflict suffering with an even more enduring capacity to absorb evil, all the while persisting in love. ~ Taylor Branch, #NFDB
1046:Man is an idea, and a precious small idea, once he turns his back on love. And that's my point; we -mankind- haelost the capacity for love. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1047:My old friend looked at me with a new respect. He was discovering in me a capacity for hypocrisy that he had never credited me with before. ~ A J Liebling, #NFDB
1048:Promoting the human capacity to reason and make decisions: that is the purpose of whistle-blowing, of activism, of political journalism. ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
1049:Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee. ~ Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice, [T3], #NFDB
1050:Sufis hold that the superior experience and knowledge comes to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth,capacity,and earning of it. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
1051:The last time I was in Japan as President of Russia was 11 years ago, if memory serves. I later visited in my capacity as Prime Minister. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
1052:The medievalist has the capacity, and the desire, to harmonize. He believes the planets sing in harmony; why cannot technology also sing? ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1053:The most profound security threat we face today is global warming....climate change has the capacity to change the way all of us live. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
1054:The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God’s vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
1055:To live greatly, we must develop the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility. ~ Thomas S Monson, #NFDB
1056:Two brains are better than one. You've twice the brain capacity and you have two sets of experiences and genes to bring to any challenge. ~ Philippa Perry, #NFDB
1057:Whatever you love is beautiful; love comes first, beauty follows. The greater your capacity for love, the more beauty you find in the world. ~ Jane Smiley, #NFDB
1058:Compassion is ethical intelligence: it is the capacity to make connections and the consequent urge to act to relieve the suffering of others. ~ Will Tuttle, #NFDB
1059:Frankl discovered that a human being’s fundamental dignity lies in his capacity to choose his response to any situation—his response-ability. ~ Fred Kofman, #NFDB
1060:Heaven is not a club we enter. Heaven is a state we attain, in accordance with our “capacity to receive” a blessed and sanctified nature. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
1061:I believe we are powerful but we don't use our minds to full capacity. Your mind is powerful enough to help you attain whatever you want. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
1062:I know I have the mental capacity of a thousand bloggers, but because of that, my obligation to serve God is also that of a thousand bloggers ~ Mickey Kaus, #NFDB
1063:In my experience of women, women have a greater capacity. Maybe women, even very pragmatic ones, are less guarded about showing emotions. ~ David Bezmozgis, #NFDB
1064:I want to return to the NBA this season, and help any team that wants me, in any capacity that they feel that I can help. I'm disappointed. ~ Allen Iverson, #NFDB
1065:organ (VNO), thought to be specialized for detecting scents from other dogs and therefore to function in some capacity for social signaling ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
1066:Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
1067:The capacity for trust and learning can make life seem less chaotic and mysterious, and democratic politics more plausible and attractive. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
1068:The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity. ~ Betty Friedan, #NFDB
1069:The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering. ~ Ben Okri, #NFDB
1070:We all have the capacity to find the will to do what must be done - even when that which we must do terrifies us most. Remember this. ~ Jessica Shirvington, #NFDB
1071:We have the capacity to build almost anything we can imagine. The big question of our time is not Can it be built? but Should it be built? This ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
1072:You only communicate to pass the time, or to express the emotions. Your tongue has to develop [the capacity] to speak consciousness. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
1073:Courage is the capacity to conduct oneself with restraint in times of prosperity and with courage and tenacity when things do not go well. ~ James Forrestal, #NFDB
1074:Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, #NFDB
1075:Feeling vulnerable, imperfect, and afraid is human. It's when we lose our capacity to hold space for these struggles that we become dangerous. ~ Brene Brown, #NFDB
1076:I believe we are powerful, but we don't use our minds to full capacity. Your mind is powerful enough to help you attain whatever you want. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
1077:“The capacity for betrayal burns bright
within all men. The heart must
extinguish the flame.”
-THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE ~ Fiona Paul,#NFDB
1078:…It seems impossible to overestimate their capacity for irrationality. Somewhere in this world, with every blink of the eye, a fool is born. ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
1079:Sex that’s limited to perfunctory foreplay and then a race down the express track to orgasm is an insult to the human capacity for pleasure. ~ Dossie Easton, #NFDB
1080:The best way to help Israel deal with Iran's growing nuclear capacity is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
1081:The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1082:The finest quality of our characters do not come from trying but from the mysterious and yet most effective capacity to be inspired. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick, #NFDB
1083:The greatest gift God has given me is the capacity of love for people. I have so many faults, but caring about people is not one of them. ~ Barbara Mandrell, #NFDB
1084:The human capacity to ignore facts and believe what they wanted to believe was a continued source of amazement and frustration to Marcellus. ~ Craig Alanson, #NFDB
1085:... The soundness of the best investments must rest not upon legal rights or remedies but upon ample financial capacity of the enterprise. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
1086:the theory is this: if I develop a great capacity for feeling pain, then I am also developing a great capacity for feeling happiness. ~ Benjamin Alire S enz, #NFDB
1087:We are on the path toward becoming the Sparta of the 21st century, armed to the teeth and without the capacity to care for our own people. ~ Dennis Kucinich, #NFDB
1088:...and before I can stop it I find myself almost dazzled and moved that I might have the capacity to accept, though not return, her love. ~ Bret Easton Ellis, #NFDB
1089:Community leadership is the courage, creativity and capacity to inspire participation, development and sustainability for strong communities. ~ Gustav Nossal, #NFDB
1090:human body possessed an enormous capacity to take care of itself as long as we took care of it by feeding it well and not putting toxins in it. ~ Scott Jurek, #NFDB
1091:I am impressed with America's capacity for change, and their ability to bring someone as inspirational as Barack Obama into the White House. ~ Giorgio Armani, #NFDB
1092:I was raised with the capacity to believe in something that I can't see and always have questions about, but have no doubt is absolutely real. ~ Kennedy Ryan, #NFDB
1093:Mediocrity is perhaps due not so much to lack of imagination as to lack of faith in the imagination, lack of the capacity for this abandon. ~ Denise Levertov, #NFDB
1094:Meditation develops the capacity to question your mind. Without it, you are at the mercy of every thought, every desire, every wave of emotion. ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
1095:network tools are distracting us from work that requires unbroken concentration, while simultaneously degrading our capacity to remain focused. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1096:Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
1097:The competitive nation-state system, with all its capacity for good and evil, is spreading in the Third World and is transforming that world. ~ Robert Gilpin, #NFDB
1098:There is a limit to one's capacity for rows, you know. There comes a time when you're only too ready to sacrifice something for a quiet life. ~ Josephine Tey, #NFDB
1099:There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1100:Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of our nation. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
1101:Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of the nation. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
1102:As you acquire a sense of reverence, you develop a capacity to think more deeply about the value of Life before you commit your energy to action. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
1103:Creativity is on the side of health - it isn't the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1104:Creativity is on the side of health – it isn’t the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1105:He then creates Man and Woman in His Image, imbuing them with the capacity to do the same—to create order from chaos, and continue His work. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1106:Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1107:I've always wanted to serve my country in some capacity. But many years ago, my father said he wanted me to run the brewery and he'd do politics. ~ Pete Coors, #NFDB
1108:jobs are fundamentally linked to time. Whether you make $500k per year or $8 per hour, your earning capacity at a job is linked to your time. ~ Taylor Pearson, #NFDB
1109:Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1110:Negotiation only works if you’re dealing with someone who has values similar to your own. They must already possess the capacity to respect you. ~ Lee Dunning, #NFDB
1111:No matter where you go, poor people have the capacity to endure. Some people even compliment us on it, as if endurance is all we can achieve. ~ Victor LaValle, #NFDB
1112:Sorry,” said Mik. “I think you neutralized our capacity for surprise. You should have started with that, and *then* told us you raise the dead. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1113:The animal has no intellectual capacity to justify or to find reasons to exist. An animal just exists because it's the natural thing to do. ~ Steven Spielberg, #NFDB
1114:A broad and far-sighted policy rests on capacity for development; on the inner forces that, once awakened, will sooner or later reveal their power. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1115:Courage is not the absence of fear or despair; it is the capacity to continue on despite them, no matter how great or overwhelming they become. ~ Robert Fanney, #NFDB
1116:Dinosaur Jr. in their live capacity are a band that put me in a state of such overwhelming rock that it often takes quite a while to come down. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
1117:…hearts wrung with anguish, the anguish of having children, a vulnerability as astonishing as the capacity for love that parenthood brings. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
1118:He didn’t know if his capacity to love had been stunted, buried beneath the need for survival for so long it had forgotten how to breathe.... ~ Brooke McKinley, #NFDB
1119:It was quite possible that she had lost the capacity to love and care anymore and that this is how she was going to be for the rest of her life. ~ Maeve Binchy, #NFDB
1120:Though surnamed the Wise, he was not immune from the occupational disease of rulers: overestimation of their capacity to control events. No ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
1121:We humans should never forget our capacity to connect with the collective spirit of animals. Their energy is essential to our future growth. ~ Shirley MacLaine, #NFDB
1122:Whereas sympathy is by definition positive, empathy doesn’t need to be, especially if the capacity to understand others is turned against them. ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB
1123:A blow that would kill a civilized man soon heals on a savage. The higher we go in the scale of life, the greater is the capacity for suffering. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1124:Do to your capacity. Always strive to extend your capacity. Ten minutes today, after a few days, twelve minutes. Master that, then again extend. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
1125:He sat there thinking of Man's capacity for the wiping out of species--sometimes in hate or fear, at other times for the simple love of gain. ~ Clifford D Simak, #NFDB
1126:He then creates Man and Woman in His Image, imbuing them with the capacity to do the same—to create order from chaos, and continue His work. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1127:In the medium and long term. Spain is solvent and able to pay its high debts. In the short-term, we have the capacity to meet our obligations. ~ Luis de Guindos, #NFDB
1128:I was far from understanding that the capacity of men interested in power is not necessarily expressed in the brilliance of their conversation. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
1129:Manic people’s minds work very quickly, and they may have increased creative capacity. They will have complex ideas that they’ve never had before. ~ Ken Dickson, #NFDB
1130:People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
1131:People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so in fact. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1132:The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started. ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
1133:The capacity to creatively improvise is an important factor that differentiates successful companies - or teams - from those that are not successful. ~ John Kao, #NFDB
1134:The only things that separates us from the brute, with which we have so much in common, is the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1135:Usually when I go to the Summer Exhibition, I think every room is too much the same, and I loose my capacity to look at individual works. ~ Michael Craig Martin, #NFDB
1136:Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1137:[A]t the end of the day, art's capacity to change the world is profoundly limited. But what it can do is change the way we see things individually. ~ Ayad Akhtar, #NFDB
1138:Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1139:Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1140:if you therefore want to depress and minimise man's capacity for pain, well, you must also depress and minimise his capacity for enjoyment. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1141:In the corridors of diplomacy people gradually tend to lose their capacity to distinguish between what is important and what isn't. ~ Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, #NFDB
1142:Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. —Bernard Montgomery, ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1143:Mindfulness is the capacity to shine the light of awareness onto what’s going on here and now. Mindfulness is the heart of meditation practice. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1144:People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1145:Repression, a degree of restraint, and a little dedication to self-editing belong to love just as surely as a capacity for explicit confession. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1146:Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
1147:The claims of no people, according to established policy and usage, are respected by any nation, until they are presented in a national capacity. ~ Martin Delany, #NFDB
1148:The employee is regarded by the employer merely in the light of his value as an operative. His productive capacity alone is taken into account. ~ Leland Stanford, #NFDB
1149:To flee forever is beyond the capacity of most: at some point even a hunted animal will stop, exhausted, and awaits its fate, if only for a while. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
1150:You can rescue yourself. No matter how you feel, no matter what you believe about your worth or your capacity to love and be loved, you can change. ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
1151:Certain actions take place outside the normal course of things so unexpectedly that they seem to paralyse ordinary capacity for feeling surprise; ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
1152:Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
1153:Creativity is on the side of health – it isn’t the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness. The ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1154:Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit. ~ William Godwin, #NFDB
1155:How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it. ~ Janet Fitch, #NFDB
1156:I think being able to identify with young people and...their capacity to change the world and shake things up. I think that's the greatest strength. ~ Nate Powell, #NFDB
1157:Man is an idea, and a precious small
idea, once he turns his back on love. And
that's my point; we, mankind, have lost the capacity for love. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1158:Such technological tools ... are helping us now in the hot war against terrorists who would bomb this theater if they had the capacity to do so. ~ Alan Dershowitz, #NFDB
1159:Thank you, Josh. Thank you for ruining my capacity to trust so that any guy that comes after you will automatically have the cards stacked against him. ~ R S Grey, #NFDB
1160:You have your own difficulties. We watch, with friendly confidence in your capacity to merge differences in the grand dream of Canadian design. ~ Lyndon B Johnson, #NFDB
1161:Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius. ~ Jean de la Bruyere, #NFDB
1162:No conclusion can be more agreable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limites of human reason and capacity ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1163:[The] arresting of time is photography's unique capacity, and the decision of when to click the shutter is the photographer's chief responsibility. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
1164:The intensive reading she had done throughout her adolescence produced an impressive depth of knowledge and a capacity for observation and judgment. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
1165:There is enough information capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it, three or four times over. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1166:We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself can be exploited in a new and vital art form ~ John Grierson, #NFDB
1167:What I like in pictures whether by an old director or a young director is when I have the feeling he or she is really using the capacity of film. ~ Jean Luc Godard, #NFDB
1168:A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this capacity to think autonomously for itself. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
1169:Everybody has a capacity for a happy life. All these talks about how difficult times we live in, that's just a clever way to justify fear and laziness. ~ Lev Landau, #NFDB
1170:If one does not develop, one goes down. In life, in ordinary conditions everything goes down, or one capacity may develop at the expense of another. ~ P D Ouspensky, #NFDB
1171:Is a man who deals with the absolute not necessarily claiming to be the thinking organ with the capacity to do so, and thus the absolute himself? ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
1172:Kids love me because I write stories that tell them about their capacity for evil. I'm one of the few writers who lets you cleanse yourself that way. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1173:Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1174:Pretending can be a bold form of experimentation and inventiveness. In pretending joy or happiness, we may discover or enhance our capacity for it. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
1175:The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education — or that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
1176:There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
1177:There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1178:What's right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity - intellect and resources - to do some thing about them. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
1179:You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1180:You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives. ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
1181:An atmosphere of trust, love, and humor can nourish extraordinary human capacity. One key is authenticity: parents acting as people, not as roles. ~ Marilyn Ferguson, #NFDB
1182:As we mature spiritually, we exhibit a growing capacity to care for and appreciate one another in the body of Christ, regardless of our differences. ~ Joseph Stowell, #NFDB
1183:But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most... he saw fireflies where there were none. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
1184:But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most... he saw fireflies where there were none. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB
1185:Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act. The ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1186:He had the restraint that came from training and the capacity for reciprocal affection that in animals—perhaps in people as well—grew from being loved. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1187:I'd known that I had the capacity to love, that I enjoyed seeing other people be happy, that I had a real awe and wonder about the beauty of this world. ~ Tara Brach, #NFDB
1188:I have an infamously low capacity for visualizing relationships, which made the study of geometry and all subjects derived from it impossible for me. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
1189:No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1190:Thanks to our capacity to adapt to ever greater fame and fortune, yesterday’s luxuries can soon become today’s necessities and tomorrow’s relics.”6 ~ Richard Wiseman, #NFDB
1191:The causal body is the most ancient and timeless part of a person. It has the capacity to know and do things that the physical mind and body cannot. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1192:... the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul. ~ Josef Pieper, #NFDB
1193:The state of relaxation of the mouth and jaw is directly correlated to the ability of the cervix, the vagina, and the anus to open to full capacity. ~ Ina May Gaskin, #NFDB
1194:The vitality of a culture is in its capacity to assimilate foreign influences. The culture that's defensive and closed condemns itself to decadence. ~ Juan Goytisolo, #NFDB
1195:You become visibly stressed because you are working hard to pay for a standard of living so robust that it overwhelms your capacity to consume it. ~ William Thorsell, #NFDB
1196:Capacity for violence, Rincewind had heard, was unisexual. He wasn't certain what unisex was, but expected that it was what he normally experienced. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1197:I am still stunned by my capacity to spin Scripture, see what I wanted, ignore what I didn’t, and use the Word to defend my life rather than define it. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
1198:The gap between most people’s capacity to conjure beauty from scratch and to merely recognize it when they see it is the width of the Atlantic Ocean. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
1199:The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1200:Then Pasquale himself began to be silent, defeated by Lila’s capacity to link one thing to another in a chain that tightened around you on all sides. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
1201:You can increase your capacity to absorb the mystical kundalini. I have 3 or 4 students who are on the path of mysticism, they can absorb more of it. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1202:A small politician, of low capacity and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile tool of men worse than himself but also stronger and abler. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
1203:Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing -- faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
1204:How did the world get like this? How did the one creative intellect in the known universe lose its capacity for respect, compassion, and love? Everywhere ~ Dan Skinner, #NFDB
1205:I was hazy with wine, hazy with Nick. I nestled into my seat and marveled at his endlessness, only inches away, his infinite capacity to shelter me. ~ Beatriz Williams, #NFDB
1206:Reason and faith cannot be separated without diminishing the capacity of men and women to know themselves, the world and God in an appropriate way. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1207:That is the definition of a true murderer. One that considers his actions, has the mental capacity to understand the consequences, and chooses to kill. ~ Destiny Booze, #NFDB
1208:The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living. ~ Maria Popova, #NFDB
1209:The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
1210:There’s this human capacity for joy and endurance, even when things are at their worst. A joy that occurs not despite our suffering, but within it. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1211:True effectiveness is a function of two things: that which is produced (the golden eggs), and the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose). ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1212:Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1213:As an actor in these movies you get to fill up something so much, to its capacity, and once you get there you're like a horse running onto the racetrack. ~ Parker Posey, #NFDB
1214:empowerment: moving decisions to the lowest possible level in an organization while developing the capacity of those people to make decisions wisely. ~ Mary Poppendieck, #NFDB
1215:he cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living... ~ Maria Popova, #NFDB
1216:Here's the thing about broken hearts. You can always survive them. Always. No matter how deep the hurt, the capacity to heal and move on is even stronger. ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
1217:Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1218:Humans, even with our powerful brains and capacity for abstract thought, are still slaves to our emotions, which dogs will pick up on and resonate with. ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
1219:I don't think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1220:I'm always talking about how the poems I am most obsessed with are like people: complex and unknowable and with a huge capacity for many different emotions. ~ Ada Limon, #NFDB
1221:in an increasingly digital world, it only makes sense that we have digital commodities, such as computer power, storage capacity and network bandwidth. ~ Chris Burniske, #NFDB
1222:Our most important financial asset is our own capacity to earn. If we don’t continually invest in improving our own PC, we severely limit our options. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1223:Sisterhood - that is, primary and bonding love from women - is, like motherhood, a capacity, not a destiny. It must be chosen, exercised by acts of will. ~ Olga Broumas, #NFDB
1224:The childhood capacity for empathy progresses from feeling someone’s pain because you are them, to feeling for the other person, to feeling as them. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
1225:The latin word responsibility reveals its true meaning: the capacity to respond, to act. - Over-anxiety ultimately banishes every trace of joy from life. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1226:There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return. ~ James Bamford, #NFDB
1227:A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
1228:For Leopardi the ancients and orality, uniquely endowed with the capacity to keep memory alive, were in fact one and the same thing (Z 4270 and note 2 ~ Giacomo Leopardi, #NFDB
1229:I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sandcastles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1230:I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sandcastles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1231:People seem to have an impressive capacity to change themselves if you believe in them, if you tell them they can and give them some help in doing so. ~ William R Miller, #NFDB
1232:The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
1233:The brain is not a shoebox that 'gets full,' but rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1234:The point is that by exercising your capacity for forethought and planning, you strengthen your prefrontal cortex and its connection to the ventral striatum. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1235:We are an arrogant species, full of terrible potential, but we also have a great capacity for love, friendship, generosity, kindness, faith, hope, and joy. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1236:Why don't we teach our children in school what they are? We should say to them, 'You are unique... you have the capacity for anything. You are a marvel'. ~ Charles Handy, #NFDB
1237:Women seem to have almost unlimited capacity for forgiveness. (Since it is usually a man who needs forgiveness, this must be a racial survival trait. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1238:A bird is like an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is in the capacity of man to reproduce such an instrument," Leonardo da Vinci ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1239:A life alert to simple pleasures, with perception cultivated and attuned to beauty, and a large capacity for friendship can serve us well come what may. ~ Stephanie Mills, #NFDB
1240:Fluid intelligence doesn't look much like the capacity to memorise and recite facts, the skills that people have traditionally associated with brainpower. ~ Jamais Cascio, #NFDB
1241:Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. ~ Dee Hock, #NFDB
1242:I don't think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1243:I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1244:In different places, survival requires different things, based on the environment. Capacity for survival may be the ability to be changed by environment. ~ Robyn Davidson, #NFDB
1245:I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
1246:Poems build our capacity for imaginative thinking, create a tolerance for ambiguity, and foster an appreciation for the role of the unknown in human life. ~ Tony Hoagland, #NFDB
1247:You normally have to let go of the old and go through a stage of unknowing or confusion, before you can move to another level of awareness or new capacity. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1248:He ordained that His creatures should have the capacity for evil. He did not force them to exercise that capacity, but He knew that they would exercise it. At ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1249:How can there be love without a true choice? Would you suggest that man be stripped of the capacity to love?” This was the Great Romance. To love at any cost. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
1250:If man's capacity for the fantastic took up as much of his imagination as his capacity for cruelty, the worlds, seen and unseen, might be very different. ~ G Willow Wilson, #NFDB
1251:If my artist life didn't work or if I needed to work in some capacity part-time in something, I knew I'd have a real life skill [become a therapist]. ~ Kelly Carlin McCall, #NFDB
1252:If the entire divinity and domain of God sits in the heart of a person, and his longing becomes timeless, then man can develop the capacity to love. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
1253:I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1254:It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1255:So vast, so limitless in capacity is man's imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream. ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
1256:The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable—from table tapping to the superiority of their children—has never been plumbed. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1257:The latin word responsibility reveals its true meaning: the capacity to respond, to act.
- Over-anxiety ultimately banishes every trace of joy from life. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
1258:The paradox of identity liberalism is that it paralyzes the capacity to think and act in a way that would actually accomplish the things it professes to want. ~ Mark Lilla, #NFDB
1259:We often get so busy "sawing" (producing results) that we forget to "sharpen our saw" (maintain or increase our capacity to produce results in the future). ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
1260:We’re all just a collection of wires pulled tight, charged beyond capacity—a tangle of plugs and valves, waiting for a surge to take down the whole system. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
1261:What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at all. You have to stick at it. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
1262:[Democrats] have lost the capacity to speak to the vast middle of America, an America that is, in large part, white, very religious and not highly educated. ~ Steve Inskeep, #NFDB
1263:Every man or woman is a potential poet or artist. Everyone has the capacity to bring to their work the dignity, purposefulness, and presence of the artist. ~ Laurence Boldt, #NFDB
1264:Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1265:If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them. ~ Michael Haneke, #NFDB
1266:It is ironic that it doesn't matter how successful I am in any other capacity. Ultimately, my parents marker is do you have a wife? And do you have children? ~ Aasif Mandvi, #NFDB
1267:Life is the name of all things that have shells separating them from the outside, the ability to sustain and reproduce themselves, and the capacity to evolve. ~ K ji Suzuki, #NFDB
1268:Morality is not a large, constructed *thing* you have or have not, but simply a capacity. Something you carry with you in your brain and in your hands. ~ Barbara Kingsolver, #NFDB
1269:No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
1270:One ought not to settle down into a fixed idea of one’s own incapacity or allow it to become an obsession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #NFDB
1271:The brain is not a shoebox that “gets full,” but is rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1272:The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
1273:The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1274:To each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment or fortune; to each by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum capacity. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
1275:What is it in the human condition that tries to impose our own view onto others, without the ability, capacity, propensity, to receive somebody else's openly? ~ Wim Wenders, #NFDB
1276:When a felon s not engaged in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest mans. ~ W S Gilbert, #NFDB
1277:When men lie to women, presenting a false self, the terrible price they pay to maintain "power over" us is the loss of their capacity to give and receive love. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1278:When we stop caring what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. But when we are defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1279:With the capacity to represent the world in signs and symbols comes the capacity to change it, which, as it happens, is also the capacity to destroy it. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert, #NFDB
1280:Your job is to facilitate and improve your capacity so that when an idea comes you can facilitate it. That's your job as a human being, in my opinion anyway. ~ Kate Tempest, #NFDB
1281:All human beings are born entrepreneurs. Some get a chance to unleash that capacity. Some never got the chance, never knew that he or she has that capacity. ~ Muhammad Yunus, #NFDB
1282:Compassion may be defined as the capacity to be attentive to the experience of others, to wish the best for others, and to sense what will truly serve others. ~ Joan Halifax, #NFDB
1283:it. I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sandcastles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1284:Most of us did not learn when we were young that our capacity to be self-loving would be shaped by the work we do and whether that work enhances our well-being. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
1285:Recovery from trauma involves the restoration of executive functioning and, with it, self-confidence and the capacity for playfulness and creativity. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
1286:The act of voting is one opportunity for us to remember that our whole way of life is predicated on the capacity of ordinary people to judge carefully and well. ~ Alan Keyes, #NFDB
1287:The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable- from table tapping to the superiority of their children- has never been plumbed. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1288:The huge capacity to purchase submission that goes with any large sum of money, well, this we have. This is a power of which we should all be aware. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
1289:The most interesting thing about babies is that they are so enormously interested; the most wonderful thing about them is their infinite capacity for wonder. ~ Alison Gopnik, #NFDB
1290:There is a concept in cognitive psychology called the channel capacity, which refers to the amount of space in our brain for certain kinds of information. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
1291:This suffering, this unspeakable capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what has to be overcome in this world if anyone is to reach God. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
1292:This was their third bar since Piccadilly and they were both agreed that the two of them were very drunk but had the capacity to get a good deal drunker yet. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
1293:Those who indulge themselves in sense stimulation throughout their lives often end up exhausted, with an enfeebled will and little capacity to love others. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
1294:We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1295:Whatever capacity she possesses to supernaturally beguile a human soul—and she possesses many—she liked his clear-sightedness too well, to blind him that way. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
1296:You have to take ownership and leadership of tomorrow. For that to be possible, you have to strengthen your capacity and widen your vision as a global citizen. ~ Ban Ki moon, #NFDB
1297:Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly. ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
1298:Altruism itself depends on a recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many. ~ Thomas Nagel, #NFDB
1299:Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality. ~ John Twelve Hawks, #NFDB
1300:Humans perpetually fight, LeBlanc says, because they always outstrip the carrying capacity of their natural environment and then have to fight over resources. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
1301:I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate. The ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1302:It makes me happy that an arm of the US government has, in some official capacity, issued an opinion on the subject of firing nuclear missiles at hurricanes. ~ Randall Munroe, #NFDB
1303:My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul. ~ Karel Capek, #NFDB
1304:Soil is a living ecosystem and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil. ~ Howard Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1305:Believe it or not, we will actually be better and happier workers if we are allowed to be better parents. We might even rediscover our capacity for fun. ~ Anne Marie Slaughter, #NFDB
1306:He worked as one of the two servants allowed Milbourne in his capacity as ship’s carpenter: ‘servant’ in this context meaning an apprentice under training. Both ~ Linda Colley, #NFDB
1307:I am a mean hungry sorehead.
Do I have the capacity for grace??
To arise one smoking spring
& find one's youth has taken off
for greener parts. ~ Amiri Baraka,#NFDB
1308:If I wasn't a trader, I would probably be in the film business in some capacity and writing in some other form. I went to NYU Film School and London Film School. ~ Jeff Cooper, #NFDB
1309:If you go back to the first single-cell form of life, it clearly possessed the capacity to receive, to utilize, to store, to transform, and to transmit information. ~ Dee Hock, #NFDB
1310:If you have character, endeavor, personality, courage and the capacity for concentrated labor, you will do what is your destiny – and, perhaps, even do it well. ~ Ariel Durant, #NFDB
1311:I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.” May 19, 1962 ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1312:...(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
1313:In effect, the huge productivity increases made possible by modern management and technology have created more productive capacity than firms know what to do with. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
1314:It is the large brain capacity which allows man to live as a human being, enjoy taxes, canned salmon, television, and the atomic bomb. ~ Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, #NFDB
1315:Once intelligent beings achieve technology and the capacity for self-destruction of their species, the selective advantage of intelligence becomes more uncertain. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1316:Schools breed conformity. They socialise children in a particular way, make them into cooperative team players with limited capacity to think for themselves. ~ Sarah Singleton, #NFDB
1317:Something sacred, that's it. We ought to be able to say that such and such a painting is as it is, with its capacity for power, because it is "touched by God." ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
1318:The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
1319:The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter. ~ Giordano Bruno, #NFDB
1320:The Islamic ethic is that if God has given you the capacity or good fortune to be a privileged individual in society, you have a moral responsibility to society. ~ Aga Khan IV, #NFDB
1321:Where a man has a passion for meditating without the capacity of thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
1322:Americans have been remarkably devoted to the capacity for belief, to idealism. That's why we get into trouble all the time. We're always viewed as naive. ~ A Bartlett Giamatti, #NFDB
1323:Buddhism teaches us that we are not so much isolated individuals as we are overlapping environments, and that we have the capacity to know ourselves in this way. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
1324:for a teacher, there is no greater joy than finding a student with the willingness to learn, the capacity to do great things, and the natural ability to succeed. ~ Gina LaManna, #NFDB
1325:For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
1326:I got swirling eyes and the capacity to shatter windows with my bare voice. Tod got teleportation and invisibility. The supernatural world is so far from fair. ~ Rachel Vincent, #NFDB
1327:Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1328:It’s unlikely to happen,” de Mohrenschildt corrected. “But never underestimate the American bourgeoisie’s capacity to embrace fascism under the name of populism. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1329:money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic—and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene. The ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
1330:One of the magical effects of tidying is confidence in your decision-making capacity... People who lack confidence in their judgment lack confidence in themselves. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
1331:The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1332:The knowledge of that unchanging rule produces a (grand) capacity and forbearance, and that capacity and forbearance lead to a community (of feeling with all things). ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
1333:The plotting he’d had to do to come to this point had exhausted Kidman’s capacity for calculation; his natural, impulsive violence was regaining the upper hand. ~ Philip Caputo, #NFDB
1334:They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1335:We are sitting on a cornucopia of knowing that we had no way to access as a democracy. We couldn't get the democratization of the human capacity before our time. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
1336:Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
1337:When possible, the brain makes a behavior into a habit, which saves effort and therefore gives us more capacity to deal with complex, novel, or urgent matters. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
1338:Your life you are living now is a creation of your mind, but if you search deep down you will discover the capacity to create an even better life ... try it! ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
1339:anger instead of love, is our wall. Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don’t yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1340:Good design, like good painting, cooking, architecture or whatever you like, is a manifestation of the capacity of the human spirit to transcend its limitations. ~ George Nelson, #NFDB
1341:If you do a practice and train your attention to hover in the present, then you will build the internal capacity to do that as needed - at will and voluntarily. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
1342:In the second of Road’s main innovations, Vogt summed up the relationship between humanity and this global environment with a single concept: carrying capacity. ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB
1343:I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.
-Imagination & Community ~ Marilynne Robinson,#NFDB
1344:Knowledge is not enough. It never is. It's the capacity to do something with that knowledge. To do it perfectly. Absolute timing. With devastating consequences. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1345:My life is devoted to self-delusion - and I have a great capacity for that - but it's the thing that gives me the most pleasure, so I can't complain about it. ~ Daniel Day Lewis, #NFDB
1346:Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
1347:Real love is to expand our own capacity for tolerance and caring, to actively seek another’s well-being. All else is simply a charade of self-interest. Zeke ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
1348:Statistical analysis showed that about half of each person’s ability to improve their aerobic capacity with training was determined exclusively by their parents. ~ David Epstein, #NFDB
1349:The price for being intelligent enough to be the first species to be fully aware of the cosmos might just be a capacity to feel a whole universe’s worth of darkness. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
1350:We have been endowed with the capacity and the power to create desirable pictures within and to find them automatically in the outer world of our environment. ~ John D MacDonald, #NFDB
1351:Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1352:Behind the contained and orderly lives we lead as members of the respectable middle class there's a terrible human capacity that may one day overwhelm any of us. ~ Diana Trilling, #NFDB
1353:But if dogs have more capacity for social cognition than we previously thought, then we must reevaluate where they belong on the spectrum of animal consciousness. ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
1354:If your Lord Supreme requests you to do something, rest assured he has already given you the capacity - even more than necessary - long before you actually need it. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1355:Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
1356:Sometimes the measure of friendship isn't your ability to not harm but your capacity to forgive the things done to you and ask forgiveness for your own mistakes. ~ R K Milholland, #NFDB
1357:The author likens crisis, and particularly war, to stop motion photography in its capacity to make changes plain that are ordinarily too gradual to be seen. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1358:The hero archetype is present in us all. It is the inherent capacity to mobilize the energies which serve life, to overthrown the demons of despair and depression. ~ James Hollis, #NFDB
1359:Their hearts were wrung with anguish, the anguish of having children, a vulnerability as astonishing as the capacity for love that parenthood brings ... [426] ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
1360:Trust isn't a black and white thing... Everyone has the capacity to let you down at one time or another... [but] if you can't trust, you can't love (pg. 215). ~ Amy Kathleen Ryan, #NFDB
1361:You know, you try to move the Brussels bureaucracy, and unless you have some capacity to really break it, you can't move it. It just sits there and stares at you. ~ Newt Gingrich, #NFDB
1362:2. In his kitchen: “Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought.” 3. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1363:A calm mind releases the most precious capacity a human being can have: the capacity to turn anger into compassion, fear into fearlessness, and hatred into love. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
1364:Each human being has been granted a virtue: the capacity to choose. For he who does not use this virtue, it becomes a curse - and others will always choose for him. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1365:(Some people) have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy. ~ Abraham Maslow, #NFDB
1366:The feeling of being happy or unhappy rarely depends on our absolute state, but on our perception of the situation, on our capacity to be satisfied with what we have. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1367:The Purusha has that capacity; for the spirit within can always change and perfect the working of its nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #NFDB
1368:They need to know we grow up; we don’t grow perfect, and no matter how old we get, we never lose our need, or our capacity, for compassion and forgiveness. ~ Barbara Taylor Sissel, #NFDB
1369:True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one's true character, to be altogether one's self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion. ~ Corliss Lamont, #NFDB
1370:We receive love — from our children as well as others — not in proportion to our demands or sacrifices or needs, but roughly in proportion to our own capacity to love. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1371:When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by women in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings. ~ Julia Ward Howe, #NFDB
1372:All leadership is appreciative leadership. It's the capacity to see the best in the world around us, in our colleagues, and in the groups we are trying to lead. ~ David Cooperrider, #NFDB
1373:Another characteristic of human nature—perhaps the one that makes us most human—is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
1374:Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
1375:Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
1376:I still sing every day - in the shower or on the set all day. I'm sure everyone will tell you that I never shut up. But it's not in the capacity that I would like to. ~ Aaron Tveit, #NFDB
1377:The ultimate role of photography as a contemporary language of visual communication consists of its capacity to slow down our fast and chaotic way of reading images. ~ Luigi Ghirri, #NFDB
1378:We have to view darkness with greater respect and learn to appreciate not only its capacity for destruction but its capacity for vitality, growth, and transformation. ~ David Tacey, #NFDB
1379:According to the Office of Technology Assessment, 3 Minuteman missiles and 7 Poseidon missiles could destroy 73 percent of oil-refining capacity in the Soviet Union. ~ James Fallows, #NFDB
1380:But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity. ~ John Abizaid, #NFDB
1381:Giving is a universal opportunity. Regardless of your age, profession, religion, income bracket, and background, you have the capacity to create change. ~ Laura Arrillaga Andreessen, #NFDB
1382:God has given each normal person a capacity to achieve some end. True, some are endowed with more talent than others, but God has left none of us talentless. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1383:intent. Additionally, if executives don’t design the planning process correctly, it can end up using a lot of the organization’s capacity without providing much value. ~ Gary Gruver, #NFDB
1384:Science has radically changed the conditions of human life on earth. It has expanded our knowledge and our power, but not our capacity to use them with wisdom. ~ J William Fulbright, #NFDB
1385:Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
1386:The human mind is something very unique and precious. Possessing an unusual elasticity and capacity for wisdom, it can evolve at a rate found in no other life-form. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1387:There is no human being on earth who does not have the capacity to offer the message of peace to the world at large. But what is needed now is the soulful willingness. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1388:When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1389:You must know that there are different tastes. There are also different powers of digestion... different temperaments... differences in the capacity to comprehend. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1390:Your mind has some clearness and capacity for right thinking; it opens towards the heights, but for its own sake, - to receive light from above for its own activity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1391:You were afraid of shooting people?" "No," I say. "I was afraid of my considerable capacity to kill." How many young men fear that there is a monster inside of them? ~ Veronica Roth, #NFDB
1392:Congress needs strong parties, but it also needs the capacity to deal with budget and entitlement challenges that are likely beyond the reach of pure partisan exertion. ~ David Price, #NFDB
1393:Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness--they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1394:However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1395:I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.”
May 19, 1962 ~ Flannery O Connor,#NFDB
1396:I have already remarked in passing that the capacity for individual life and happiness is, in any case, less developed among the Germans than among other peoples. ~ Sebastian Haffner, #NFDB
1397:In our early period we pretty much survived or perished on our capacity to reach people, and on getting into the pattern of having no money and playing lots of shows. ~ Peter Garrett, #NFDB
1398:I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn't exist. ~ Berkeley Breathed, #NFDB
1399:Mindfulness allows us to shift the angle on our story and to remember that we have the capacity to learn and change in ways that are productive, not self-defeating. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
1400:No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
1401:Our Lord wanted us to be Christ-like. Christ-like doesn't mean not having faults. It means that you do actually have a capacity to draw out the good that is in others. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
1402:Sometimes I dislike women, I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to think when we are reaching our for happiness. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
1403:Sometimes I dislike women, I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to think when we are reaching out for happiness. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
1404:So there was not an "I" anymore - not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect - save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1405:there really is no such thing as ‘the future’, singular. There are only multiple, unforeseeable futures, which will never lose their capacity to take us by surprise. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
1406:Two movements in human life are important: (a) deep reluctance to let loose of a world that has passed away, and (b) capacity to embrace a new world being given. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
1407:What could be worse than losing part of your life?
Losing the capacity for passion and hope, being left alive but with no emotions other than bitterness and despair. ~ Dean Koontz,#NFDB
1408:Education today does not impart to the students the capacity or grit to face the challenges of daily life. The educational field has become the playing ground of ignorance. ~ Sai Baba, #NFDB
1409:If each and everyone endeavours to cooperate and work in as much as his capacity permits, our faith rests upon the Almighty God that he would bless the results for us ~ Haile Selassie, #NFDB
1410:Let youth pass, and no matter what opportunities presented themselves, the capacity to build the broad base required to support the structure of learning was gone. ~ Catherine Cookson, #NFDB
1411:Love is not a dish of tharid, Muhammad had told me once—meaning I didn’t need to be greedy because the human capacity for love is limitless.
~ Sherry JonesAi’sha ~ Sherry Jones,#NFDB
1412:One of the consequences of covetousness is that it destroys the capacity to discern sufficiency. It distorts our thinking to the point where: Enough is never enough. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
1413:One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
1414:Patchway had the enviable countryman's capacity, which is shared only by great actors, of standing by and saying nothing, and yet existing, large, present, and at ease. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
1415:please don't carry my love for you with you forever. but don't let that be all. our capacity to love is vast - all of us. my daughters taught me that. there is room. ~ Elizabeth Noble, #NFDB
1416:The human capacity for subjective victimhood is apparently limitless, and people who believe that they are victims can be motivated to perform acts of great violence. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
1417:The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
1418:The traditional measures of STM capacity range from five to seven, but from a practical point of view, it is best to think of it as holding only three to five items. ~ Donald A Norman, #NFDB
1419:But as the story shows, true effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose). ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1420:Climate change is fast, much faster than it seems we have the capacity to recognize and acknowledge; but it is also long, almost longer than we can truly imagine. ~ David Wallace Wells, #NFDB
1421:has become increasingly clear to me that one’s capacity for risk-bearing depends importantly upon one’s age and ability to earn income from noninvestment sources. It ~ Burton G Malkiel, #NFDB
1422:I am inclined by nature to be optimistic about the capacity of a person to rise higher than he or she has thought possible once interest and ambition are aroused. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
1423:If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for. ~ Vaclav Havel, #NFDB
1424:If there were but one thing I could hope for from the reader of the remainder of this book, it would be that he or she possesses the capacity to perceive the miraculous. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
1425:It’s about loving someone and seeing them as a part of your family. I think some people have the capacity to see different people as part of their family and some don’t. ~ Hal Schrieve, #NFDB
1426:No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1427:The ability to shift from reacting against the past to leaning into and presencing an emerging future is probably the single most important leadership capacity today. ~ C Otto Scharmer, #NFDB
1428:The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1429:The history of government has been defined by two arcs: the development of our capacity to tolerate theft, and our awareness that we deserve to live without being robbed. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
1430:The human capacity for suffering was like that for joy. It could only have the greatest impact in small doses. After that, mind and body could no longer take it in. ~ Kristen Heitzmann, #NFDB
1431:The strength of democratic societies relies on their capacity to know how to stand firm against extremism while respecting justice in the means used to fight terrorism. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
1432:By relentless and constant experimentation in their daily work, they were able to continually increase capacity, often without adding any new equipment or hiring more people. ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
1433:I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our concept of the richness in human capacity. ~ Ken Robinson, #NFDB
1434:In a knowledge economy, natural selection favors organizations that can most effectively harness and coordinate collective intellectual energy and creative capacity. ~ Justin Rosenstein, #NFDB
1435:No longer associated simply with objects and appearances, design is increasingly understood in a much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes. ~ Bruce Mau, #NFDB
1436:Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
1437:The attitude and capacity of the factory, the old metal table and the new ideas of the wooden furniture quickly and naturally suggested the possibility of metal furniture. ~ Donald Judd, #NFDB
1438:The capacity for fear and for happiness are the same, the unrestricted openness to experience amounting to self-abandonment in which the vanquished rediscovers himself. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
1439:The chief purpose of life, for any of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
1440:The County Jail looked like a tall, forbidding elementary school. Seven stories of dirty brown brick, one hundred years old and now operating at 330 percent of capacity. ~ Richard Price, #NFDB
1441:The modern mind has lost all capacity to wonder. It has lost all capacity to look into the mysterious, into the miraculous - because of knowledge, because it thinks it knows. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1442:There's no doubt that Mexican men and women - full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work - are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States. ~ Vicente Fox, #NFDB
1443:We have to surrender ourselves completely to the Lord with faith and devotion in Him, serve others to the best of our capacity, and never be a source of sorrow to anybody. ~ Sarada Devi, #NFDB
1444:You know the incredible thing about hearts is their unbelievable capacity for forgiveness. You’d be amazed what people will overlook when they love someone. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1445:And once you're unafraid with death, I think your capacity for violence is immediately increased. Once you're unafraid of death, you are a very, very dangerous adversary ~ Cillian Murphy, #NFDB
1446:For all my bravado, when I fell, I fell hard. I fell fast. I fell stupid. I invested too much too soon. My capacity for giving was matched only by their capacity for taking. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
1447:Humans make mistakes. Fortunately, to compensate for this failing, they also have the capacity to keep secrets and to lie. It’s beautiful, really, if you think about it. ~ Mil Millington, #NFDB
1448:I have not lost the hope that the masses will refuse to bow to the Moloch of war but they will rely upon their own capacity for suffering to save their country's honour. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1449:I never quite understand the way society decides who is beautiful and who is not. But an open face and a capacity for kindness always feel like reliable signifiers to me. ~ Tilda Swinton, #NFDB
1450:I shall confess at the outset that it was only shortly after the beginning of this century that I entered active life - with a somewhat precocious capacity for involvement. ~ Rene Cassin, #NFDB
1451:It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all. ~ George Gissing, #NFDB
1452:Marital discord, she decided, was like some sort of low-grade fever that threw the whole system just slightly out of whack so you couldn’t manage to function at full capacity. ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
1453:The capacity for emotional sobriety belongs to everybody in the human family and leads to a fully human response to the adventure and goodness of the gift of human life. ~ Thomas Keating, #NFDB
1454:Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1455:What the Father gives is the capacity to be a self, freedom, and thus autonomy, but an autonomy which can be understood only as a surrender of self to the other. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
1456:What will happen in your life if you accept the invitation to stillness cannot be known ... what can be known is you will have a larger capacity to truly meet whatever appears. ~ Gangaji, #NFDB
1457:You have to have a very strong cash flow for a film to really stay in theaters. You have to have the advertising capacity to sustain and follow the kind of press coverage. ~ Haile Gerima, #NFDB
1458:His words were frightening enough, but the blind obedience of people I had known all my life was even more disturbing. They had lost any capacity to think for themselves. ~ Carolyn Jessop, #NFDB
1459:[Industrialism's soon diminishing] capacity to supply human needs could be prevented if men exercised any restraint or foresight in their present frenzied exploitation. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1460:One of the effects of being crazily, obsessively in love is that it dulls your senses, your capacity for perception, till you no longer notice what is happening around you. ~ Mar a Due as, #NFDB
1461:Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1462:The few Americans he had encountered in his lifetime had all seemed flat to him, as if freedom weakened one's capacity for intense emotion by demanding too little of it. ~ G Willow Wilson, #NFDB
1463:There is a space that people hold for you, within themselves. Every person has a space for every person they met - sometimes the capacity is deep, sometimes it is shallow. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
1464:The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought. ~ Lewis H Lapham, #NFDB
1465:What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1466:You overrate my capacity of love. I don't posess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
1467:am unacquainted with His designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than His justice. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
1468:Fate (or whatever it is) delights to produce a great capacity and then frustrate it. Beethoven went deaf. By our standards a mean joke; the monkey trick of a spiteful imbecile. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1469:I think there are very few people who have a capacity to see the future. So it can be difficult when you are talking about something where nothing about it exists yet. ~ Jessica Livingston, #NFDB
1470:Only those who have the great capacity of genuine trust can enter this realm [the realm of the buddhas]. Those who have no trust are unable to accept it, however much they hear it. ~ D gen, #NFDB
1471:Rather than turning away from the staggering scale and depth of misery caused by war, we must strive to develop our capacity to empathize and feel the sufferings of others. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
1472:The essence of wealth is the capacity to control the forces of nature, and the extent of wealth depends upon the level of technology and the ability to create new knowledge. ~ Julian Simon, #NFDB
1473:There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1474:When you are right, everything around you is right, for the beautiful flow that is inside your heart has the capacity to spread its fragrance of oneness-light all around you. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1475:But isn’t potential someone’s capacity to develop their skills with effort over time? And that’s just the point. How can we know where effort and time will take someone? Who ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
1476:General Taylor is, I have no doubt, a well-meaning old man. He is, however, uneducated, exceedingly ignorant of public affairs, and I should judge, of very ordinary capacity. ~ James K Polk, #NFDB
1477:I am unacquainted with His designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than His justice ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
1478:Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems. ~ Gordon W Allport, #NFDB
1479:It's not leadership by position that allows people to succeed; it's the capacity to influence the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, and the actions of other human beings. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1480:Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible,” the theologian and thinker Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in 1944, “but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1481:Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible. ~ Daniel Dennett, #NFDB
1482:Not the absorption capacity of the land, but the creative ability of a people, is the true yardstick with which we can measure the immigration potentialities of the land. ~ David Ben Gurion, #NFDB
1483:Our dreaming capacity gives us a peep into the glorious realities that await us further on. Dreams are true while they last, And do not we live in dreams? – TENNYSON. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1484:The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
1485:The internet, wrote Nicholas Carr in The Shallows, his book about brain science and screen time, steadily chips away at one’s “capacity for concentration and contemplation. ~ Michael Finkel, #NFDB
1486:Well-fed people can enhance their dignity, their health and their learning capacity. Putting resources into social programs is not expenditure. It is investment. ~ Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, #NFDB
1487:When in situations of stress we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capacity perfectly, placed us here to succeed ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
1488:An economy oriented toward production for market exchange provides the optimal conditions for long-lasting and ever-expanding productive capacity based on modern technology. ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
1489:Developed countries and advanced developing countries must open their markets for products from the developing world, and support in developing their export and import capacity. ~ Anna Lindh, #NFDB
1490:Every hammer has the innate capacity to strike a nail. Every human mind has the innate capacity for greatness. But not every hammer is properly used, nor is every human mind. ~ Brian Herbert, #NFDB
1491:Humans alone are created as rational beings in the image of God, capable of a relationship with God and given by him the capacity to understand the universe in which they live. ~ John Lennox, #NFDB
1492:I am proud, and more than a little excited, to be asked to work with Faber in an editorial capacity. It is my dearest hope that we will produce some fantastic books together. ~ Jarvis Cocker, #NFDB
1493:I'm not going to Wall Street [after the presidency]. The amount of time that I'll be investing in issues is going to be high. But it'll be necessarily in a different capacity. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1494:In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
1495:Our actions are not simply links in a closed chain of causally connected physical events. We have the capacity to be first causes, starting a new chain of cause and effect. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1496:Our dependence on smell is revealed every time we have a cold; once the nose becomes stuffed up, we lose the capacity to taste anything, simply because we cannot smell it. ~ John A McDougall, #NFDB
1497:The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
1498:There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1499:The vitality of art is its capacity for infinite expansion. One form doesn't preclude another any more than the existence of Mozart makes the existence of Bach superfluous. ~ Lloyd Alexander, #NFDB
1500:We've seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do, you'll join me as an unbridled optimist about America's future. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
517 Integral Yoga
38 Christianity
37 Occultism
30 Philosophy
17 Yoga
17 Psychology
14 Education
9 Integral Theory
8 Fiction
6 Theosophy
6 Poetry
5 Science
5 Islam
4 Hinduism
4 Baha i Faith
3 Kabbalah
3 Cybernetics
1 Sufism
1 Alchemy
294 The Mother
262 Sri Aurobindo
142 Satprem
119 Nolini Kanta Gupta
16 Saint Augustine of Hippo
15 A B Purani
14 Carl Jung
14 Aleister Crowley
13 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
11 Swami Krishnananda
9 Plotinus
8 Rudolf Steiner
8 James George Frazer
8 H P Lovecraft
8 Aldous Huxley
6 Jordan Peterson
5 Muhammad
5 George Van Vrekhem
5 Friedrich Nietzsche
4 Swami Vivekananda
4 Plato
4 Franz Bardon
4 Baha u llah
3 Sri Ramakrishna
3 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
3 Norbert Wiener
3 Nirodbaran
3 Ken Wilber
3 Aristotle
2 Vyasa
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Saint John of Climacus
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Edgar Allan Poe
65 The Synthesis Of Yoga
38 The Life Divine
29 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
29 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
27 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
23 Questions And Answers 1953
22 Letters On Yoga IV
21 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
19 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
19 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
19 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
18 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
17 Questions And Answers 1956
17 Letters On Yoga II
17 Agenda Vol 04
16 Record of Yoga
16 Questions And Answers 1954
15 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
14 Questions And Answers 1955
14 Agenda Vol 01
13 The Human Cycle
13 Agenda Vol 10
12 On Education
12 Essays Divine And Human
12 City of God
11 The Study and Practice of Yoga
10 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
10 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
10 Agenda Vol 13
10 Agenda Vol 08
10 Agenda Vol 03
9 Agenda Vol 12
8 The Perennial Philosophy
8 The Golden Bough
8 Some Answers From The Mother
8 Lovecraft - Poems
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
8 Agenda Vol 11
8 Agenda Vol 09
7 The Phenomenon of Man
7 Mysterium Coniunctionis
7 Magick Without Tears
7 Liber ABA
7 Letters On Yoga III
7 Agenda Vol 07
7 Agenda Vol 06
7 Agenda Vol 02
6 Words Of The Mother II
6 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
6 On the Way to Supermanhood
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Agenda Vol 05
5 Vedic and Philological Studies
5 The Secret Doctrine
5 Theosophy
5 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
5 Quran
5 Preparing for the Miraculous
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
4 Twilight of the Idols
4 The Future of Man
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Talks
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
4 Letters On Yoga I
4 Isha Upanishad
3 Words Of The Mother III
3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Poetics
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
3 Letters On Poetry And Art
3 General Principles of Kabbalah
3 Essays On The Gita
3 Cybernetics
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
3 Aion
3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 Words Of Long Ago
2 Vishnu Purana
2 The Secret Of The Veda
2 The Practice of Magical Evocation
2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
2 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Book of Certitude
2 Savitri
2 Raja-Yoga
2 Prayers And Meditations
2 Poe - Poems
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
2 Initiation Into Hermetics
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If, however, we have to speak of these other worlds, then, since we can speak only in the terms of this world, we have to use them in a different sense from those they usually bear; we must employ them as figures and symbols. Even then they may prove inadequate and misleading; so there are Mystics who are averse to all speech and expression they are mauni; in silence they experience the inexpressible and in silence they communicate it to the few who have the capacity to receive in silence.
But those who do speak, how do they choose their figures and symbols? What is their methodology? For it might be said, since the unseen and the seen differ out and out, it does not matter what forms or signs are taken from the latter; for any meaning and significance could be put into anything. But in reality, it does not so happen. For, although there is a great divergence between figures and symbols on the one hand and the things figured and symbolised on the other, still there is also some link, some common measure. And that is why we see not unoften the same or similar figures and symbols representing an identical experience in ages and countries far apart from each other.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
now converts the ever-increasing work capacity per pound of materials invested
primarily to yield monetary profits for the government-subsidized private-enterprise
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
should look closely at man in order to increase our capacity to
live.
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
beyond my capacity.
I am afraid it is a lack of affinity in the vital and even in the
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
to this conclusion that mental life, far from being a recent appearance in man, is the swift repetition in him of a previous achievement from which the Energy in the race had undergone one of her deplorable recoils. The savage is perhaps not so much the first forefa ther of civilised man as the degenerate descendant of a previous civilisation. For if the actuality of intellectual achievement is unevenly distributed, the capacity is spread everywhere. It has been seen that in individual cases even the racial type considered by us the lowest, the negro fresh from the perennial barbarism of Central Africa, is capable, without admixture of blood, without waiting for future generations, of the intellectual culture, if not yet of the intellectual accomplishment of the dominant European. Even in the mass men seem to need, in favourable circumstances, only a few generations to cover ground that ought apparently to be measured in the terms of millenniums. Either, then, man by his privilege as a mental being is exempt from the full burden of the tardy laws of evolution or else he already represents and with helpful conditions and in the right stimulating atmosphere can always display a high level of material capacity for the activities of the intellectual life.
It is not mental in capacity, but the long rejection or seclusion from opportunity and withdrawal of the awakening impulse that creates the savage. Barbarism is an intermediate sleep, not an original darkness.
Moreover the whole trend of modern thought and modern endeavour reveals itself to the observant eye as a large conscious effort of Nature in man to effect a general level of intellectual equipment, capacity and farther possibility by universalising the opportunities which modern civilisation affords for the mental life. Even the preoccupation of the European intellect, the protagonist of this tendency, with material Nature and the externalities of existence is a necessary part of the effort. It seeks to prepare a sufficient basis in man's physical being and vital energies and in his material environment for his full mental possibilities. By the spread of education, by the advance of the backward races, by the elevation of depressed classes, by the multiplication of labour-saving appliances, by the movement
The Three Steps of Nature
towards ideal social and economic conditions, by the labour of Science towards an improved health, longevity and sound physique in civilised humanity, the sense and drift of this vast movement translates itself in easily intelligible signs. The right or at least the ultimate means may not always be employed, but their aim is the right preliminary aim, - a sound individual and social body and the satisfaction of the legitimate needs and demands of the material mind, sufficient ease, leisure, equal opportunity, so that the whole of mankind and no longer only the favoured race, class or individual may be free to develop the emotional and intellectual being to its full capacity. At present the material and economic aim may predominate, but always, behind, there works or there waits in reserve the higher and major impulse.
And when the preliminary conditions are satisfied, when the great endeavour has found its base, what will be the nature of that farther possibility which the activities of the intellectual life must serve? If Mind is indeed Nature's highest term, then the entire development of the rational and imaginative intellect and the harmonious satisfaction of the emotions and sensibilities must be to themselves sufficient. But if, on the contrary, man is more than a reasoning and emotional animal, if beyond that which is being evolved, there is something that has to be evolved, then it may well be that the fullness of the mental life, the suppleness, flexibility and wide capacity of the intellect, the ordered richness of emotion and sensibility may be only a passage towards the development of a higher life and of more powerful faculties which are yet to manifest and to take possession of the lower instrument, just as mind itself has so taken possession of the body that the physical being no longer lives only for its own satisfaction but provides the foundation and the materials for a superior activity.
The assertion of a higher than the mental life is the whole foundation of Indian philosophy and its acquisition and organisation is the veritable object served by the methods of Yoga.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then the work must be proceeding very fast. You have a marvellous capacity for work, my dear little child.
18 January 1934
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoyment of physical living have been carried out on an abnormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and difficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. If in return for this loss we gain another life in another world within, the mental, the dynamic, these results could have been acquired through other systems, through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less laborious methods and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the common life, for their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the world's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose.
Rajayoga takes a higher flight. It aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the citta, that stuff of mental consciousness in which all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise. The normal state of man is a condition of trouble and disorder, a kingdom either at war with itself or badly governed; for the lord, the Purusha, is subjected to his ministers, the faculties, subjected even to his subjects, the instruments of sensation, emotion, action, enjoyment. Swarajya, self-rule, must be substituted for this subjection.
--
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on
The Systems of Yoga
its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. For the ancient system of
Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For you I want consciousness, knowledge, artistic capacity, selfmastery in peace and perfect equality, and the happiness that is
the result of spiritual realisation. Is this too grand and vast a
--
says that there is no doubt about your poetic capacity. Today's
poem is very good. But when you try to write every day, it
--
I shall fail. On the other hand, I have neither the inclination nor the capacity for the ordinary life. And I
know that I shall never be able to leave this life. This is
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Hathayoga and Rajayoga are thus successively practised. And in a recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. To know, be and possess
The Conditions of the Synthesis
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
consciousness, the Power and capacity in us. It is to Him that
we must entrust ourselves, give ourselves without reserve, and it
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
The Dhammapada, I. 1
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It may be answered that Reason is a faculty which gives us progressive knowledge of the reality, but as a knowing instrument it is perfect, at least it is the only instrument at our disposal; even if it gives a false, incomplete or blurred image of the reality, it has the means and capacity of correcting and completing itself. It offers theories, no doubt; but what are theories? They are simply the gradually increasing adaptation of the knowing subject to the object to be known, the evolving revelation of reality to our perception of it. Reason is the power which carries on that process of adaptation and revelation; we can safely rely upon Reason and trust It to carry on its work with increasing success.
But in knowledge it is precisely finality that we seek for and no mere progressive, asymptotic, rapprochement ad infinitum. No less than the Practical Reason, the Theoretical Reason also demands a categorical imperative, a clean affirmation or denial. If Reason cannot do that, it must be regarded as inefficient. It is poor consolation to man that Reason is gradually finding out the truth or that it is trying to grapple with the problems of God, Soul and Immortality and will one day pronounce its verdict. Whether we have or have not any other instrument of knowledge is a different question altogether. But in the meanwhile Reason stands condemned by the evidence of its own limitation.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is the artist the supreme artist, when he is a genius, that is to sayconscious in his creation or is he unconscious? Two quite opposite views have been taken of the problem by the best of intelligences. On the one hand, it is said that genius is genius precisely because it acts unconsciously, and on the other it is asserted with equal emphasis that genius is the capacity of taking infinite pains, which means it is absolutely a self conscious activity.
We take a third view of the matter and say that genius is neither unconscious or conscious but superconscious. And when one is superconscious, one can be in appearance either conscious or unconscious. Let us at the outset try to explain a little this psychological riddle.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The interest of the students is proportionate to the true capacity
of the teacher.
--
your capacity as a captain, you did wrong, for the captains
have a uniform which they should wear when they are acting as
--
loss for human society if persons endowed with an exceptional capacity to serve mankind, such as a gifted
doctor or barrister, come to stay here in the Ashram
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns for responsive love. There are divine as well as human passions and therefore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.
Eastern spirituality does not view sorrow and sufferingevilas an integral part of the Divine Consciousness. It is born out of the Divine, no doubt, as nothing can be outside the Divine, but it is a local and temporal formation; it is a disposition consequent upon certain conditions and with the absence or elimination of those conditions, this disposition too disappears. God and the Divine Consciousness can only be purity, light, immortality and delight. The compassion that a Buddha feels for the suffering humanity is not at all a feeling of suffering; pain or any such normal human reaction does not enter into its composition; it is the movement of a transcendent consciousness which is beyond and purified of the normal reactions, yet overarching them and entering into them as a soothing and illumining and vivifying presence. The healer knows and understands the pain and suffering of his patient but is not touched by them; he need not contract the illness of his patient in order to be in sympathy with him. The Divine the Soulcan be in flesh and yet not smirched with its mire; the flesh is not essentially or irrevocably the ooze it is under certain given conditions. The divine physical body is composed of radiant matter and one can speak of it even as of the soul that weapons cannot pierce it nor can fire burn it.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You give everything we need, but my capacity to receive
is very limited since it takes me a long time to assimilate
--
But the capacity to perceive and receive it and the habit of
distorting it differ with each one.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
body to do a little better than my actual capacity. I would
like to know how I can force it. But, Sweet Mother, is it
--
to do what it could not do before. But its capacity for progress
is much slower than the vital desire for progress and the mental
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother, is it possible to develop in oneself the capacity
to heal?
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Individually, each ones goal was to make himself ready, to enter into a more or less intimate individual relationship with this Force, so as to help the process; or else, if he could not help, at least be ready to recognize and be open to the Force when it would manifest. Then instead of being an alien element in a world in which your OWN inner capacity remains unmanifest, you suddenly become THAT, you enter directly, fully, into the very atmosphere: the Force is there, all around you, permeating you.
If you had had a little inner contact, you would have recognized it immediately, dont you think so?
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I came back, along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the supramental world was permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a missing link is needed to allow the consciousness and the substance to connectand it is this link that is being built. At that time, my impression (an impression which remained rather long, almost the whole day) was of an extreme relativityno, not exactly that, but an impression that the relationship between this world and the other completely changes the criterion by which things are to be evaluated or judged. This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ability to express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things! I recall one little thing that we usually consider bad actually how funny it was to see that it is something excellent! And other things that we consider important were really quite unimportant there! Whether it was like this or like that made no difference. What is very obvious is that our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is incorrect. I even laughed at certain things Our usual feeling about what is anti-divine seems artificial, based upon something untrue, unliving (besides, what we call life here appeared lifeless in comparison with that world); in any event, this feeling should be based upon our relationship between the two worlds and according to whether things make this relationship easier or more difficult. This would thus completely change our evaluation of what brings us nearer to the Divine or what takes us away from Him. With people, too, I saw that what helps them or prevents them from becoming supramental is very different from what our ordinary moral notions imagine. I felt just how ridiculous we are.
(Then Mother speaks to the children)
0 1958-02-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The only thing in the world that still appears intolerable to me now is all physical deterioration, physical suffering, the ugliness the powerlessness to express this capacity of beauty inherent in every being. But this, too, will be conquered one day. Here, too the power will come one day to shift the needle a little. Only, one has to climb higher in consciousness: the deeper into matter you want to descend, the higher must you ascend in consciousness.
It will take time. Sri Aurobindo was surely right when he spoke of a few centuries.
0 1958-07-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Thats it: the capacity to be an ABSOLUTELY receptive passivitylike thatin TOTAL silence and surrender, and at the same time here, there, an IRREDUCIBLE, OMNIPOTENT will with a total power to effectuate, shattering all resistances. Both simultaneously without one inhibiting the other, in the same joy that is the GREAT secret! The harmonization of opposites, in joy and plenitude, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, for all problems: that is the great secret.
In regard to the Ashram's financial difficulties.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
You see, the human species is a part of Nature, but as Sri Aurobindo has explained, from the moment mind expressed itself in man, it put him into a relationship with Nature very different from the relationship all the lower species have with her. All the lower species right up to man are completely under the rule of Nature; she makes them do whatever she wants, and they can do nothing without her consent. Whereas man begins to act and to live as an equal; not as an equal in terms of power, but from the standpoint of consciousness (he is beginning to do so since he has the capacity to study and to find out Natures secrets). He is not superior to her, far from it, but he is on an equal footing. And so he has acquiredthis is a fac the has acquired a certain power of independence that he immediately used to put himself under the influence of the hostile forces, which are not terrestrial but extra-terrestrial.
I am speaking of terrestrial Nature. Through their mental power, men had the choice and the freedom to make pacts with these extraterrestrial vital forces. There is a whole vital world that has nothing to do with the earth, it is entirely independent or prior to earths existence, it is self-existentwell, they have brought that down here! They have made what we see! And such being the case This is what terrestrial Nature told me: It is beyond my control.
0 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The gods are faultless, for they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint; it is their godly way. But if one looks at it from a higher point of view, if one has a higher vision, a vision of the whole, they have fewer qualities than man. In this film, it was proved that through their capacity for love and self-giving, men can have as much power as the gods, and even morewhen they are not egoists, when they can overcome their egoism.
Certainly man is nearer the Supreme than the gods. Provided he fulfills the necessary conditions, he can be nearerhe isnt so automatically, but he can be, he has the power, the potentiality to be.
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The difficultyits not even a difficulty, its just a kind of precaution that is taken (automatically, in fact) in order to For example, the volume of Force that was to be expressed in the voice was too great for the speech organ. So I had to be a little attentive that is, there had to be a kind of filtering in the outermost expression, otherwise the voice would have cracked. But this isnt done through the will and reason, its automatic. Yet I feel that the capacity of Matter to contain and express is increasing with phenomenal speed. But its progressive, it cant be done instantly. There have often been people whose outer form broke because the Force was too strong; well, I clearly see that it is being dosed out. After all, this is exclusively the concern of the Supreme Lord, I dont bother about itits not my concern and I dont bother about itHe makes the necessary adjustments. Thus it comes progressively, little by little, so that no fundamental disequilibrium occurs. It gives the impression that ones head is swelling so tremendously it will burst! But then if there is a moment of stillness, it adapts; gradually, it adapts.
Only, one must be careful to keep the sense of the Unmanifest sufficiently present so that the various things the elements, the cells and all thathave time to adapt. The sense of the Unmanifest, or in other words, to step back into the Unmanifest.6 This is what all those who have had experiences have done; they always believed that there was no possibility of adaptation, so they left their bodies and went off.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
She is a portrait of the ideal woman according to the Hindu conception, the woman who worships her husb and as a god, which means that she sees the Supreme in her husband. And so this woman was much more powerful than all the gods of the Puranas precisely because she had this psychic capacity for total self-giving; and her faith in the Supremes presence in her husb and gave her a much greater power than that of all the gods.
The story narrated in the film went like this: Narada, as usual, was having fun. (Narada is a demigod with a divine position that is, he can communicate with man and with the gods as he pleases, and he serves as an intermediary, but then he likes to have fun!) So he was quarrelling with one of the goddesses, I no longer recall which one, and he told her (Ah, yes! The quarrel was with Saraswati.) Saraswati was telling him that knowledge is much greater than love (much greater in that it is much more powerful than love), and he replied to her, You dont know what youre talking about! (Mother laughs) Love is much more powerful than knowledge. So she challenged him, saying, Well then, prove it to me.I shall prove it to you, he replied. And the whole story starts there. He began creating a whole imbroglio on earth just to prove his point.
--
All these regions, all these realms are filled with beings who exist separately in their own realms, and if you are awake and conscious on a given plane for example, if while going out of a more material body you awaken on some higher planeyou can have the same relationship with the things and people of that plane as with the things and people of the material world. In other words, there exists an entirely objective relationship that has nothing to do with your own idea of things. Naturally, the resemblance becomes greater and greater as you draw nearer the physical world, the material world, and there is even a moment when one region can act directly upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the kingdoms of the overmind, you find a concrete reality entirely independent of your personal experience; whenever you come back to it, you again find the same things, with some differences that may have occurred DURING YOUR ABSENCE. And your relationships with the beings there are identical to those you have with physical beings, except that they are more flexible, more supple and more direct (for example, there is a capacity to change the outer form, the visible form, according to your inner state), but you can make an appointment with someone, come to the meeting and again find the same being, with only certain differences that may have occurred during your absence but it is absolutely concrete, with absolutely concrete results.
However, you must have at least a little experience of these things to understand them. Otherwise, if you are convinced that all this is just human fancy or mental formations, if you believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have imagined them to be like that, or that they have such and such defects or qualities because men have envisioned it that wayas with all those who say God is created in the image of man and exists only in human thoughtall such people wont understand, it will seem absolutely ridiculous to them, a kind of madness. You must live a little, touch the subject a little to know how concrete it is.
--
In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion of the Supreme in man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a special capacity or grace of human beings on earth.
The film on August 5.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Later, Mother explained: 'I don't mean an autonomous will (it is the being that has gone out which has the power to make the body move), it has only acquired, through training, the capacity to express the will of the being with which it has kept a relationship through this link of the body-spirit which is broken only at death.'
Original English.
0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What is neededwhat is needed is simply endurance, the capacity to hold on, which means to stay still within. Not to yield to not to yield when you feel within yourself, I cant bear it.
And it seems to me that its relatively easier than when you have to confront the thing all alone.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At that point, sometimes a great courage is needed, sometimes a great endurance is needed, sometimes a true love is enough, sometimes, oh! if only faith were there, one thing, one tiny little thing is enough, and everything can be swept away. I have done it often; there are times when I have failed. But more often than not I have been able to remove it. But then, what is needed is a great, stoical courage or a capacity to endure and to SEE IT THROUGH. The resistance (especially in cases of former suicide), the resistance to the temptation of renewing this stupidity creates a terrible formation. Or else this habit of fleeing when suffering comes: flee, flee, instead of absorbing the difficulty, holding on.
But just this, a faith in the Grace, or an awareness of the Grace, or the intensity of the call, or else naturally the response the response, the thing that opens, that breaks the response to this marvelous love of the Grace.
It is difficult without a strong will; and above all, above all the capacity to resist the temptation, which was the fatal temptation throughout all ones livesbecause its power builds up. Each defeat gives it renewed force. But a tiny victory can dissolve it.
Oh, the most terrible of all is when one does not have the strength, the courage, something indomitable! How many times do they come to tell me, I want to die, I want to flee, I want to die.I say, But die, then, die to yourself! No one is asking you to let your ego survive! Die to yourself since you want to die! Have that courage, the true courage, to die to your egoism.
--
As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen, but rather something very superficial which would not be of much use. And when I received your letters and saw that you were in difficulty, I did something. There are places that are favorable for occult experiences. Benares is one of these places, the atmosphere there is filled with vibrations of occult forces, and if one has the slightest capacity, it spontaneously develops there, in the same way that a spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one lands in India. These are Graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout its history, and because India has always been turned much more towards the heights and the inner depths than towards the outer world. Now, it is in the process of losing all that and wallowing in the mud, but thats another story it was like that and it is still like that. And in fact, when you returned from Rameswaram with your robes, I saw with much satisfaction that there was still a GREAT dignity and a GREAT sincerity in this endeavor of the Sannyasis towards the higher life and in the self-giving of a certain number of people to realize this higher life. When you returned, it had become a very concrete and a very real thing that immediately commanded respect. Before, I had seen only a copy, an imitation, an hypocrisy, a pretentionnothing that was really lived. But then, I saw that it was true, that it was lived, that it was real and that it was still Indias great heritage. I dont believe it is very prevalent now, but in any case, it is still there, and as I told you, it commands respect. And then, as I felt you in difficulty and as the outer conditions were not only veiling but spoiling the inner, well, on that day I wrote you a short note I no longer recall when it was exactly, but I wrote you just a word or two, which I put in an envelope and sent you I concentrated very strongly upon those few words and sent you something. I didnt note the date, I dont remember when it was, but its likely that it happened as I wished when you were in Benares; and then you had this experience.
But when you returned the second time, from the Himalayas, you didnt have the same flame as when you returned the first time. And I understood that this kind of difficult karma still clung to you, that it had not been dissolved. I had hoped that your contact with the mountains but in a true solitude (I dont mean that your body had to be all alone, but there should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It remains to be seen if all this has first to be mastered before there is even the possibility of holding the Supramental, of FIXING it in the manifestation. That is the great difference. For example, those with the power to materialize forces or beings lack the capacity to fix them, for these are fluid things which act and are then dissolved. That is the difference with the physical world where it is this condensation of energy that makes things (Mother strikes the arms of her chair) stable. All the things in the extraphysical realms are not stable, they are fluidfluid and consequently uncertain.3
The disciple's tantric guru.
0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
If there is one fundamental necessity, it is humility. To be humble. Not humble as it is normally understood, such as merely saying, I am so small, Im nothing at allno, something else Because the pitfalls are innumerable, and the further you progress in yoga, the more subtle they become, and the more the ego masks itself behind marvelous and saintly appearances. So when somebody says, I no longer want to rely on anything but Him. I want to close my eyes and rest in Him alone, this comfortable Him, which is exactly what you want him to be, is the egoor a formidable Asura, or a Titan (depending on each ones capacity). Theyre all over the earth, the earth is their domain. So the first thing to do is to pocket your egonot preserve it, but get rid of it as soon as possible!
You can be sure that the God youve created is a God of the ego whenever something within you insists, This is what I feel, this is what I think, this is what I see; its my way, my very ownits my way of being, my way of understanding, my relationship with the Divine, etc.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This interests me, for these things do not at all enter through the mind (he doesnt receive a thing there, hes closed there). So in his letter he says that this thing or that is necessary (he describes it in his own words), and he adds, This is why we must be so grateful to have among us the the great Mother7 (as he puts it), the great Mother who knows these things.Good! I said to myself. (It had to do with something specific concerning the capacity for discrimination in the outside world, the different qualities and different functions of different beings, all of which depends on ones inner construction, as it were.) So I see that even this, even these physical experiences, is received (and yet I hadnt tried, I had never tried to make him receive it); it merely works like this, you see (gesture of a widespread diffusion), and the experience is veryhow should I say?drastic, with a kind of (power of radiation). Imperative.
Original English.
0 1961-01-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
51When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at mans capacity for self-deception.
What do you have to say?
--
I would like to ask you a question in turnbecause there are two ways of understanding your question. It can be taken in the same ironic or humorous tone that Sri Aurobindo has used in his aphorism when he wonders at mans capacity for self-deception. That is, you are putting yourself in the place of the self-deceiver and saying, But I am of good faith! I always want the welfare of others the interests of humanity, to serve the Divine (of course!). Then how can I be deceiving myself?
But actually, there are really two quite different forms of self-deception. One can be very shocked by certain things, not for personal reasons but precisely because of ones goodwill and ardor to serve the Divine, when one sees people misconducting themselves, being egoistical, unfaithful, treacherous. There comes a stage when one has mastered these things and doesnt permit them to manifest IN ONESELF; but to the extent that one is in contact with ordinary consciousness, ordinary viewpoints, ordinary life and thought, their possibility is still there, latent, because they are the inverse of the qualities one is striving for. And this opposition always exists until one has risen above and no longer has either the quality or the defect. As long as one has virtue, one always has its latent opposite. The opposition disappears only when one is beyond virtue and sin.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, I am going on with the work, and what I would recommend to all those with the capacity and possibility to follow me is to remain very calm, dont fret, dont be troubled. And if you feel a little depressed, dont pay any attention to it; live quietly from minute to minute, without worrying about anythingit will pass. It will pass.
Naturally, the more calm and confident you are, the more quickly it will pass. Thats all.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You can easily make a speech using flowers and I have noticed that this can effectively replace the old Vedic images, for instance, which no longer hold meaning for us, or the ambiguous phraseology of the ancient initiations. Flower language is much better because it contains the Force and is extremely plasticsince its not formulated in words, each one is free to arrange and receive it according to his own capacity. You can make long speeches using flowers!
I have nothing more to say now, except that the same situation prevails.
--
Almost (I say almost because the body hasnt had every experience), but almost all pains can be reduced to something absolutely negligible. (Of course, some pains it hasnt had, but it has had a sufficient number!) Its this anxiety resulting from a semi-mental vibration (the first stirrings of Mind) that complicates everything, everything! For example, take this difficulty I mentioned of climbing the stairs: in the doctors consciousness or anyone elses, pain causes it. According to their ordinary reasoning, pain is what tenses the nerves and muscles so one can no longer walk but this is absolutely FALSE. Pain does not prevent my body from doing anything at all. Pain isnt a factor, or rather its a factor that can be easily dealt with. Its not that: it is Matter; Matter (probably cellular matter, or) losing its capacity to respond to the will, to will-power. But why? I dont know! It depends upon the particular disorganization; but why is it like that? I dont know. Now each time I climb the stairs, I am trying to find the means of infusing Will in such a way that this lack of response doesnt last but I still havent found it. Although theres all this accumulated force and power and will (a tremendous accumulation, I am BATHED in it, the whole body is bathed in it!), yet for some reason it doesnt respond. Here and there, groups of cells fail to respond, and the Force cannot act. So what must be found is.
(silence)
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion of the Supreme in man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a capacity or grace particular to human beings on earth.
Experience of July 24, 1959.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, as I was saying at the beginning, the bodys formation has a very minimal, a quite subordinate importance for a saint or a sage. But for this supramental work, the way the body is formed has an almost crucial importance, and not at all in relation to spiritual elements nor even to mental power: these aspects have no importance AT ALL. The capacity to endure, to last is the important thing.
Well, in that respect, it is absolutely undeniable that my body has an infinitely greater capacity than Sri Aurobindos had.
That was the basic problembecause the identification of the two [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] was almost childs play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasnt difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that (there were many other things, too, but this isnt the time to speak of them) the prevailing conditions were such that I told him I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought. And he also replied to me in words: Your body is indispensable for the Work. Without your body the Work cannot be done. After that, I said no more. It was no longer my concern, and that was the end of it.
0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I wonder, after all, if there arent many revelations in your book which MUST NOT be explained; then its left up to each ones capacity to muse over it, to fill in the gaps with his imagination.
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!
0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But truly, EVERYTHING was changed at that moment: something was achieved. It was the perception of Power the Power that comes from Love (what Love is to the Supreme Consciousness, which has nothing to do with what we usually mean by the word love). And it was it was simple! None of those complications resulting from thought, intellect, understandingall that was gone, all gone. A formidable Power! And it made me understand one thing, that the state I had been put in (by the Lord of Yoga, in fact) was for obtaining the particular power that comes through an identity with all material things, a power possessed by certain personsnot always yogis, certain mediums, for instance. I saw it with Madame Theon: she would will a thing to come to her instead of going to the thing herself; instead of going to get her sandals when she wanted them, she made the sandals come to her. She did this through a capacity to radiate her mattershe exercised a will over her matterher central will acted upon matter anywhere, since she WAS THERE. With her, then, I saw this power in a methodical, organized way, not as something accidental or spasmodic (as it is with mediums), but as an organization of Matter. And so I began to understand: With this comes the power to put each thing in its place! provided one is universal enough.
Well, I have understood. And now I know where I stand.
--
And if to this material capacity of identification, of exercising the will, is added that Something which was there during my experience and is truly the expression. I dont know if its the supreme expression, but for the time being its certainly the highest I know of. (Its far superior to pure Knowledge through identity, to knowing the thing because one IS itits infinitely more powerful than that.) its something formidable! It has the power to change everything and how!
One IS simply Thatone vibration of THAT.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And so I looked. Is it something particular to this body? I wondered. To everyone who has lived closely with it, my body gives the impression of two things: a very concentrated, very stubborn will, and such endurance! Sri Aurobindo used to tell me he had never dreamed a body could have such endurance. And thats probably why. But I dont want to curtail this ability in any way, because it is a CELLULAR will, and a cellular endurance toowhich is quite intriguing. Its not a central will and central endurance (thats something else altogether)its cellular. Thats why Sri Aurobindo used to tell me this body had been specially prepared and chosen for the Workbecause of its capacity for obstinate endurance and will. But thats no reason to exercise this ability uselessly! So I am making sure it relaxes now; I tell it constantly, Now, now! Just let go! Relax, have some fun, wheres the harm in it? I have to tell it to be quiet, very quiet. And its very surprised to hear that: Ah! Can I live that way? I dont have to hurry? I can live that way?
So thats why I am resting. Am I better or not? Things are always the same. Were I to start doing what I was doing before, which I KNEW all along was absolutely unreasonable. Its not that I didnt know it; I did know and I wasnt happy about it, because I knew I was doing something I shouldnt. I have no intention of starting again, but if I had said, I am withdrawing for good, it would have been. If you knew how MANY things have gone slack [in the Ashram]! And how many people I am telling off: Well, you wouldnt have done that a week ago! Oh, thats an experience in itselfto see what peoples so-called faithfulness depends on.
--
This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ABILITY to express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things!
Yes.
--
So what I wanted to ask you was: if its not a matter of moral notions, then what capacity or quality DOES help us on the way towards the Supermind? What is this totally different criterion?
All this is exactly what I have been observing and studying these past few days. I will tell you about it next time.
0 1962-01-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
capacity for indefinite
expansion of consciousness
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And, over and above this, for the realization to be total, there are two other conditions, which arent easy either. Intellectually, theyre not too difficult; in fact, for someone who has practiced yoga, followed a discipline (I am not speaking here of just anyone), theyre relatively easy. Psychologically too, given this equality, theres no great difficulty. But as soon as you come to the material plane the physical plane and then to the body, it isnt easy. These two conditions are first, the power to expand, to widen almost indefinitely, enabling you to widen to the dimensions of the supramental consciousness which is total. The supramental consciousness is the consciousness of the Supreme in his totality. By totality, I mean the Supreme in his aspect of Manifestation. Naturally, from a higher point of view, from the viewpoint of the essence the essence of that which in Manifestation becomes the Supermindwhats necessary is a capacity for total identification with the Supreme, not only in his aspect of Manifestation, but in his static or nirvanic aspect, outside of the Manifestation: Nonbeing. But in addition, one must be capable of identifying with the Supreme in the Becoming. And that implies both these things: an expansion that is nothing less than indefinite, and that should simultaneously be a total plasticity enabling one to follow the Supreme in his Becoming. You dont merely have to be as vast as the universe at one point in time, but indefinitely in the Becoming. These are the two conditions. They must be potentially present.
Down to the vital, we are still in the realm of things that are more than feasible they are done. But on the material level it results in my misadventures of the other day.2
But even accepting all these misadventures a priori, things remain difficult because theres a double movement: both a cellular transformation and a capacity for something that could replace expansion with readjustment, a constant intercellular reorganization.3 The way they are now, of course, our bodies are rigid and heavyits unspeakable, actually; if it werent for that we would never grow old. For instance, my vital being is more full of energy, and thus full of youth and power to grow, than when I was twenty. Theres really no comparison. The power is INFINITELY greater yet the body is going to piecesits really something unspeakable. So a way has to be found to bridge this gap between the vital and the material being.
Not that the problem hasnt been partially solved: hatha yogis have solved it, partiallyprovided you do nothing else (thats the trouble). Yet having the knowledge, we should have the power to do whats necessary without making it our exclusive preoccupation. At any rate, this possibility is certainly not altogether unknown; for the first few months after I retired to my room,4 when I had cut all contact with the outside, it was working very well even extraordinarily so! Lots of disorders in my body were surmounted, and I had many fairly precise indications that if I continued like that long enough I would regain everything that had been lost, and with an even better equilibrium. I mean that the functional equilibrium was far superior. Only when I came back into contact with the world did it all come to a halt and begin to deteriorateall the more so as it was aggravated by this discipline of expansion making me constantlyCONSTANTLYabsorb mountains of difficulties to be resolved. And so.
--
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.
Another thing I didnt mention to you when I related the experience was that the ship had no engine. Everything was set in motion through will powerpeople, things (even the clothes people wore were a result of their will). And this gave all things and every persons shape a great suppleness, because there was an awareness of this willwhich is not a mental will but a will of the Self, what could be called a spiritual will or a soul-will (to give the word soul that particular meaning). I have that experience right here when theres an absolute spontaneity in action, I mean when the action for instance, an utterance or a movementis not determined by the mind, and not even (not to mention thought or intellect), not even by the mind that usually sets us in motion. Generally, when we do something, we can perceive in ourselves a will to do it; when you watch yourself, you see this: there is always (it can happen in a flash) the will to do. When you are conscious and watch yourself doing something, you see in yourself the will to do itthis is where the mind intervenes, its normal intervention, the established order in which things happen. But the supramental action is decided by a leap over the mind. The action is direct, with no need to go through the mind. Something enters directly into contact with the vital centers and activates them without going through the mindyet in full consciousness. The consciousness doesnt function in the usual sequence, it functions from the center of spiritual will straight to matter.
--
Then that suppleness. It means a capacity for decrystallizing oneself; the whole span of life given over to self-individualization is a period of conscious, willed crystallization, which then has to be undone. To become a conscious, individualized being there has to be a constant, constant, willed crystallization, in everything; and afterwards, again constantly, the opposite movement has to be madewith an even greater will. But at the same time, the consciousness must not lose the benefit of what has been acquired through individualization.
It is difficult, I must say.
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some people also have the faculty of predicting things already existing on earth but at a distance, far from physical eyestheyre generally those who have the capacity to expand and extend their consciousness. Their vision is slightly more subtle than physical vision, and depends on an organ subtler than its purely material counterpart (what could be called the life of this organ). So, by projecting their consciousness, and having the will to see, they can clearly see things that already exist but are beyond our ordinary field of vision. Those who have this capacitysincere people who tell what they see, not blufferssee with perfect precision and exactness.
Ultimately, absolute sincerity is the great deciding factor for those who predict or foresee. Unfortunately, because of peoples curiosity, their insistence and the pressure they exert (which very few can resist), an almost involuntary mechanism of inner imagination comes to add just that small missing element to something not seen with precision or exactness. Thats what causes flaws in prediction. Very few have the courage to say, Ah no, I dont know this, I dont see that, this eludes me. They dont even have the courage to say it to themselves! So then, with a tiny drop of imagination, which acts almost subconsciously, the vision or information gets rounded outit can turn out to be anything at all! Very few people can resist this tendency. I have known many, many psychics, many extraordinarily gifted beings, and only a handful were able to stop just at the point where their knowledge stopped. Or else they embellish. Thats what gives these faculties their slightly dubious quality. One would have to be a great saint, a great sage, and completely free from other peoples influences (I dont speak of those who seek fame: they fall into the most flagrant traps); because even goodwillwanting to satisfy people, please them, help themis enough to distort the vision.
0 1962-06-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It all practically comes down to a capacity to spread the experience, or to INCLUDE things in the experience (its the same thing). You really have to forget this business of one person and then another, one thing and then another. Even if you cant realize it concretely, at least imagine that there is but ONE thing, excessively complex, and (depending on the case) one experience taking place in one spot, or spreading out like oil on water, or embracing everything. This is all very approximate, but its the only way the thing can be understood. And the sole explanation for contagion is in that Oneness.
And power is what makes the difference. The greater the power, you might say (these words are all very clumsy), the farther the experience spreads. How great the power is depends on its starting point. If its starting point is the Origin, the power is lets say universal (we wont consider more than one universe for the moment); it is universal. As this Power manifests from plane to plane, it becomes more concrete and limited; on each plane, the field of action becomes more limited. If your power is vital (or pranic, as its called here in India), the field of action is terrestrial, and sometimes limited to just a few individuals, sometimes its a power capable of acting on just one small being. But originally its the SAME power, acting on the SAME substance I cant express it, words are impossible; but I sense very clearly what I mean.
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There has never been too great an attachment to this form. There was never any attachment (even in so-called full Ignorance) to anything but consciousness yes, something set great store by this consciousness, wouldnt let it be destroyed, saying, This is something precious. But the body. Its not even too good an instrument; simply modest, plastic, self-effacing, and molding itself to every necessity. An ability to mold itself to all points of view and to realize every ideal it deemed worthy of realizingthis very suppleness was its one virtue. And extremely modest, never wanting to impose itself on anything or anyone. Fully conscious of its in capacity, but capable of doing anything, of realizing anything. It was consciously formed with this make-up, because thats what was necessary. And nothing is too great or overwhelming, since there isnt the resistance put up by a small personality with the sense of its own smallness. No, none of that mattersCONSCIOUSNESS matters; consciousness vast as the universe, even vaster. And along with consciousness, the capacity to adaptto adapt and mold itself to every necessity.
Even now, my one feeling about this form is that its too rigid. Those stupendous inner revelations, those great movements of creative consciousness are constantly hampered by this. Its trying, its trying its best, but it is still governed by such appallingly rigid laws! Appalling. How long will it take to overcome this?
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can see it takes an EXTRAORDINARY capacity and solidity to bear That without exploding and this capacity is slowly being prepared.
We mustnt be in a hurry.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know very well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not the real transformation. However this too was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old yogas and exhausting their samskaras [old habitual tendencies], extracting their essence and with it fertilizing the soil. At first it was the time of VedantaAdwaita, Sannyasa, Shankaras Maya and the rest. It is now the turn of Vaishnava DharmaLila, love, the intoxication of emotional experience. All this is very old, unfitted for the new age and will not endure for such excitement has no capacity to last. But the merit of the Vaishnava Bhava [emotional enthusiasm] is that it keeps a connexion between God and the world and gives a meaning to life; but since it is a partial bhava the whole connexion, the full meaning is not there. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. The nature of the mind is to take a part and call it the whole and exclude all other parts. The Siddha [illuminated being] who brings the bhava, although he leans on its partial aspect, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral whole, even though he may not be able to give it form. But his disciples do not get that knowledge precisely because it is not in a form. They are tying up their little bundles, let them. The bundles will open of themselves when God manifests himself fully. These things are the signs of incompleteness and immaturity. I am not disturbed by them. Let the force of spirituality play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or the embryonic condition of the new age. It is a first hint, not even the beginning.
The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
--
In Bengal this weakness has gone to the extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is foremost in India in all these qualities. All of them are necessary but they do not suffice. If to these there were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labor, the Bengali might be a leader not only of India, but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without thinking, the fruits without labor, siddhi by an easy sadhana [discipline]. His stock is the excitement of the emotional mind. But excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of the malady. In the end it brings about fatigue and inertia. The country has been constantly and gradually going down. The life-power has ebbed away. What has the Bengali come to in his own country? He cannot get enough food to eat or clothes to wear, there is lamentation on all sides, his wealth, his trade and commerce, his lands, his very agriculture have begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the sadhana of Love, but where Knowledge and Shakti are not, there Love does not remain, there narrowness and littleness come, and in a little and narrow mind there is no place for Love. Where is Love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there than anywhere else even in India which is so much afflicted by division.
In the noble heroic age of the Aryan people4 there was not so much shouting and gesticulating, but the endeavor they undertook remained steadfast through many centuries. The Bengalis endeavor lasts only for a day or two.
0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, the subtle physical seems to DOSE OUT its power and light and capacity of consciousness according to the amount of receptivity in the purely physical vibration. Thats why the effects stretch over a long period of time. Its being done very, very gradually. But its an almost continuous work. Only when theres some bodily activity and the consciousness must turn outwards (not in the same way as before, thats impossible, but still in a way that seems like a continuation of the old consciousness), then, if the work continues at all, its invisible and maybe it doesnt continue. I dont know. But as soon as all activity stops and the body is concentrated or immobileperhaps no more than simply passive that penetration is perceptible: its visible. Visible. And its not like something more subtle penetrating something less subtle without altering it; the essential point is that this penetration actually changes the composition. Its not merely a degree of subtlety, its a change in the internal composition. Ultimately, this action probably has an effect on the atomic level. And thats how the practical possibility of transformation can be accounted for.
Its an experience I have all the time.
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Higher up, there is a fourth zone, a zone of colored lights, plays of colored lights. Thats the order: first form, then sound, then ideas, then colored lights. But that zone is already more distant from humanity; it is a zone of forces, a zone which appears as colored lights. No formscolored lights representing forces. And one can combine these forces so that they work in the terrestrial atmosphere and bring about certain events. Its a zone of action, independent of form, sound and thought; it is above all that. A zone of active power and might you can use for a particular purposeif you have the capacity to do so.
Thats the highest zone.
0 1963-03-13, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So you came (you see, its the answer) to manifest (its very good, I like this answer very much), to manifest the bliss above. You understand? He goes beyond all past attempts to unite with the Supreme, because none of them satisfies himhe aspires for something more. So when everything is annulled, he enters a Nothingness, then comes out of it with the capacity to unite with the new Bliss.
Thats it, its good!
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!
--
Its the same with people who get cured. That I know, to some extent: the Power acts so forcefully that it is almost miraculousat a distance. The Power I am very conscious of the Power. But, I must say, I find it doesnt act here so well as it does far away. On government or national matters, on the terrestrial atmosphere, on great movements, also as inspirations on the level of thought (in certain people, to realize certain things), the Power is very clear. Also to save people or cure themit acts very strongly. But much more at a distance than here! (Although the receptivity has increased since I withdrew because, necessarily, it gave people the urge to find inside something they no longer had outside.) But here, the response is very erratic. And to distinguish between the proportion that comes from faith, sincerity, simplicity, and what comes from the Power Some people I am able to save (naturally, in my view, its because they COULD be saved), this is something that for a very long time I have been able to foresee. But now I dont try to know: it comes like this (gesture like a flash). If, for instance, I am told, So and so has fallen ill, well, immediately I know if he will recover (first if its nothing, some passing trouble), if he will recover, if it will take some time and struggle and difficulties, or if its fatalautomatically. And without trying to know, without even trying: the two things come together.2 This capacity has developed, first because I have more peace, and because, having more peace, things follow a more normal course. But there were two or three little instances where I said to the Lord (gesture of presenting something, palms open upward), I asked Him to do a certain thing, and then (not very often, it doesnt happen to me often; at times it comes as a necessity, a necessity to present the thing with a commentfrom morning to evening and evening to morning I present everything constantly, thats my movement [same gesture of presenting something] but here, there is a comment, as if I were asking, Couldnt this be done?), and then the result: yes, immediately. But I am not the one who presents the thing, you see: its just the way it is, it just happens that way, like everything else.3 So my conclusion is that its part of the Plan, I mean, a certain vibration is necessary, enters [into Mother], intervenes, and No stories to tell, mon petit! Nothing to fill people with enthusiasm or give them trust, nothing.
Three or four days ago, a very nice man, whom I like a lot, who has been very useful, fell ill. (He has in fact been ill for a long time, and he is struggling; for all sorts of reasons of family, milieu, activities and so on, he isnt taken care of the way he should be, he doesnt take care of his body the way he should.) He had a first attack and I saw him afterwards. But I saw him full of life: his body was full of life and of will to live. So I said, No need to worry. Then after some time, maybe not even a month, another attack, caused not by the same thing but by its consequences. I receive a letter in which I am informed that he has been taken to the hospital. I was surprised, I said, But no! He has in himself the will to live, so why? Why has this happened? The moment I was informed and made the contact, he recovered with fantastic speed! Almost in a few hours. He had been rushed to the hospital, they thought it was most serious, and two days later he was back home. The hospital doctor said, Why, he has received a new life! But thats not correct: I had put him back in contact with his bodys will, which, for some reason or other, he had forgotten. Things like that, yes, theyre very clear, they take place very consciously but anyway, nothing worth talking about!
0 1963-04-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Which means the body has got its own difficulties (no aggregate of cells is free from difficulties in the present conditions of life), and I think that its capacity to keep still (to an extent) is its only safeguard but that doesnt reduce the difficulties at all, since the contact doesnt even depend on the physical presence!1 But then what tremendous, prodigious power has to be EMBODIED in the physical cells to withstand all that!
But there too, a shift is taking place (what I told you once: those abrupt experiences that do not settle in but are first contacts2). After the lesson was drawn from this story, suddenly something arose in the body consciousness which isnt ONE bodys consciousness but a general body consciousnessan aspiration, something so pure, so sweet so sweet something like an entreaty that Truth and Light may at last be manifested here, in this. Not here in this (Mother touches her own body): it was everywhere.
0 1963-04-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is always a vibration subtler than his vibration of peace, and that one must remain free, without getting enclosed in the other. For example, if something pulls and causes a mental tension in the head, just keep in contact with that peace (oh, he does have a capacity of mental immobility), and let it penetrate you, but without concentrating all your being on it: allow the rest of your activity to unfold as usual in an infinity. Its only the vibrations of the physical mind that you should keep in that stability.
Its difficult to put it into words. But if you are able to do that, it could do you good, it could be restful.
0 1963-04-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In my case, I found out I had that capacity because it made me prone to faintingnot too often, but off and on it happened. When I was a child and didnt know a thing, I fainted a couple of times; the fainting, as it happened, wasnt unconsciousit was consciousand after a bit of practice (not the practice of fainting!), of occult practice, when I fainted I would see myself. Even before that, I had seen myself but without knowing what it all meant, I couldnt make head or tail of it. But I would see myself. And afterwards, whenever I would faint, the first thing I did was to see my body lying down in a ridiculous position. So I would rush back into it vigorously, and it would be all over.
Of course, I was probably born with some abilities! (laughter)
0 1963-05-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had been told that even in the College of Cardinals, things were only suggested, and each one was left to understand more or less deeply, according to his capacity. Its quite likely. But who has kept the tradition intact? We cant say.
Anyway, put like this, it makes sense.
0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I suppose people without solid heads become unhinged. Although truly, there is a remarkable Grace, because people are given a dose of experiences exactly according to their capacity. But this morning there was an hour an hour when I was absolutely conscious, absolutely conscious, and conscious of one single thing: the powerlessness the powerlessness to get out of Ignorance. The will to get out of Ignorance and the powerlessness to do so. It gave me a whole hour of tension.
When I woke up, the tension was such that my head was like a boiling kettle; so immediately, I said, Lord, its Your concern, not mine; its not my business. And naturally, everything calmed down instantly.
0 1963-06-22, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is somewhere a sort of capacity for acute discernment, which can very easily turn into a censor (its still there; probably it serves a purpose), and thats what demands certainties. The major part of the being says, Its not my concern. I am here because You want me to be here. If You didnt want me to be here, I wouldnt be here. There is nothing like an attachment or a desire. (That went away quite a while ago! But now it has become an almost cellular condition.) And since You keep me here, it means I am doing something here, and if I am doing something here, thats all I need, thats why You keep me here. It comes full circle, of course.
How long will it last? Thats not my concern. Maybe something would be a bit frightened if it were told the time it will take (we cant say, we cant foresee the reaction). So its best to keep quiet. But theres nothing of interest. Nothing to make interesting literaturenothing, nothing at all absolutely nothing.
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Not spiritual! Not spiritual: power. Powerwhich means a somewhat higher mental capacity along with a vital realization. Hes a man who, were he not the Pope, would have no scruples. But he happens (laughing) to be obliged at least to appear good!
I get a sense of hardness.
0 1963-07-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if you have the power within yourself and read the book, you will get the force! (Mother laughs) Whats required is the capacity to feel and make contact.
Ultimately, what does the guru do? He connects (gesture of junction), he is nothing but a link. Its not his power he gives you (thats what he thinks, but its not true): he is the link. He brings you into contact with the Powera contact you dont have without him. But those who dont need a guru will make contact WITHOUT a guru.
--
Thats what I saw when I spoke to you the other day about what I called a bath of the Lord. The atmosphere was full, really chockfull of a Presence (you cant even call it a vibration, its much more than a vibration: its a Presence), but when people enter it, they dont feel anything! Or if they do, they dont even understand, it doesnt correspond to anything in their consciousness. But if I concentrate a particular vibration on their consciousness, I bring them into contact with it. And all of a sudden they feel something, with the impression that its a new thingits nothing new! Whats new is their capacity to perceive the thing.
In a general way, thats how it works: the Lord is everywhere, His vibration is everywhere, but whats new is the capacity to feel Him or be conscious of Him. From all eternity He has been there, for all eternity He shall be there.
And the experience I have constantlyconstantlyisnt that I go in search of something thats not there and bring it where it wasnt! When I tell the Lord, Manifest Yourself, I dont mean He hasnt manifested! I mean: Give us the power to feel Your manifestation. We should say: Become manifest. Grant that we may grow conscious of Your Presence.
0 1963-07-17, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some time ago I made a discovery of that kind: someone asked me if there was any difference between Ananda and Love; I said, No. Then he said to me, But then how is it that some people feel Ananda while others feel Love? I answered him, Yes! Those who feel Ananda are those who like to receive, who have the capacity to receive, and those who feel Love are those who have the capacity to give. But its the same thing: you receive it as Ananda, you give it as Love.
So, probably, someone more on the receiving side would call that Vibration Anandamaybe thats what people call the joy of life, I dont know. It has absolutely nothing to do with what human beings call joy. Its really the feeling of something full rather than emptylife as people live it, as I see them live it, is something hollow, empty, dry. Hollow. Hard and hollow together. And empty. So when I do that work, as I told you, all thats around me, all the work and everything is yes, it gives an impression of being dry and hollow; while when the other thing is there, you instantly get an impression of full-full-full-fullfull! Overflowing, you know, no more bounds. So full that all, but all bounds are swept away, erased, gone and there remains only That, that Something. Thats why the cells remain held togetherits because of That, for That, by That. For no other reason.
0 1963-07-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, as I had worked hard for the elimination, the battle was quite formidablewhen it exceeds a certain measure, the heart has trouble, and then I need to rest. Thats how it happened. But it was so clear, so obvious! And the entire process was SEEN from the beginning, every single step of it, its a marvel! A marvel of consciousness, of measure, of dosage, to allow the purification and transformation to take place without disrupting the balance, so that dissolution does not occur. Its based on the capacity to endure and withstand (naturally, if the body were unable to endure, that work couldnt be done).
And now the body KNOWS (in the beginning it didnt, it thought it was attacks from the outside, adverse forces; and it can always be explained like that, it was true in a certain way, but it wasnt the true truth, the deepest truth), now the body KNOWS where it all comes from, and its so marvelous! A marvel of wisdom. It puts everything in its place, it makes you REALIZE that all that play of the adverse forces is a way of seeing things (a necessary way at a given time, maybeby necessary, I mean practical), but its still an illusion; illnesses are a necessary way of seeing things to enable you to resist properly, to fight properly, but its still an illusion. And now, the BODY itself knows all thisas long as it was only the mind that knew it, it was a remote notion in the realm of ideas, but now the body itself knows it. And it is full not only of goodwill but also of an infinite gratitudeit always wonders (thats its first movement), Do I have the capacity? And it always gets the same answer, It isnt YOUR capacity. Will I have the strength?It isnt YOUR strength. Even that sense of infirmity disappears in the joy of infinite gratitude the thing is done with such goodness, such insight, such thoughtfulness, such care to maintain, as far as possible, a progressive balance.
It came with a certitude, an OBVIOUSNESS: this is the process of transformation.
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its true that the doctor himself said ([laughing], the doctor1 symbolizes Doubt with a capital D) that if you teach your body to bear pain, it grows more and more enduring and doesnt get disrupted so fast thats a concrete result. People who know how not to be thoroughly upset as soon as they have a pain here or there, who are able to bear quietly and keep their balance, it seems that in their case the bodys capacity to bear disorder without breaking down increases. Thats very important. You remember, in a previous Agenda I asked myself the question from a purely practical and physical point of view, and it does seem to be true. Inwardly, I have been told many a timetold and shown with all sorts of little experiences that the body can bear far more than people think, provided they dont add fear or anxiety to the pain; if you can get rid of that mental factor, the body, left to itself, without either fear or fright or anxiety for what will happenwithout anguishcan bear a great deal.
The second step is that once the body has decided to bear pain (it really takes the decision to do so), instantly the acuteness, the acute sensation in the pain vanishes. I am speaking on an absolutely material level.
--
The last one is probably not within everybodys reach (!) but the first three are quite obvious I know it works like that. The only point that bothered me (I told you once) is that it isnt a purely psychological experience and that enduring pain causes wear and tear in the body. But I inquired with the doctor (I casually made him talk), and he told me that if the body is taught very young to bear pain, its capacity to bear increases so much that it can effectively withstand illnesses, which means that the illness doesnt follow its course, it aborts. Thats precious.
The last experience (which Ive had these last few days), in which apparently there was a hitch (it wasnt really one) was a sort of demonstration. I told you what it was, you remember: its like a purge of all the vibrations that are false vibrations, that arent the pure and simple response to the supreme Influence (all that in the cells still responds to the vibrations of falsehood, either from habit or from the people around or the food takenfifty thousand things). Then, with an aspiration or a decision, almost a prayer for purification coming from the body, something happens which, naturally, upsets the balance; the imbalance in turn brings about a general discomfort. The form discomfort takes is habitually the same: first, pains and all kinds of sensations I need not describe; if that state goes on developing, if it is allowed to assume its full proportions, it results in the past it resulted in a faint. But this time, I followed the process for about two hours from the moment I got up: the struggle between the new balance, the new Influence that was getting established, and the resistance of all the existing elements forced to go away. That created a sort of conflict. The consciousness remained very clear the consciousness of the BODY remained very clear, very quiet, perfectly trusting. So for two hours I was able to follow the process (while going on with all my usual activities, without changing anything), until I felt, or rather was told sufficiently clearly that the Lord wanted my body to be completely immobile for a while so that He might complete His work. But I am not all alone: there are other people here to help me and watch over everything (but I dont say or explain anything to them, those are things I dont talk about I dont say what goes on, I dont say anything), so I sat there wondering, Is it really and truly indispensable? (Mother laughs) Then I felt the Lord exert a little more pressure, which heightened the intensity of the conflict, so that I had all the signs of fainting I understood (!) I stood up, let my body moan a little to make it plain it didnt feel too well (!) and I stretched out. Then I was immobile, and in that immobility, I saw the work that was being donea work that cannot be done if you go on moving about. I saw the work. It took nearly half an hour; in half an hour it was over. Which means there is really there is a fact I cannot doubt, even if all the surrounding thoughts and forces contradict it: I cannot doubt that the consciousness is increasing more and more the consciousness in the body. It is growing more and more precise, luminous, exactQUIETvery peaceful. Yet very conscious of a TREMENDOUS battle against millennial habits. Do you follow?
0 1963-09-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And that gives them a very special capacity of consciousness.
Could this be what gave you that sense of death? But you say it has been there for a long time. While, for me, its recent (it was perhaps ten days ago), my study is recent. It was very interesting. I can still see them now, they were as if located in certain parts of your body.
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, I know those things, I have seen thousands of them! Only, as it happens, for more than half a century I have sensed the difference in a most sharp way. I think I told you already that when I returned here from Japan, there were difficulties: once, I was in danger and I called Sri Aurobindo; he appeared, and the danger went away2he appeared, meaning, he came, something from him came, an EMANATION of him came, living, absolutely concrete. The next day (or rather later the same day), I told him my experience and how I saw him; that worried him (it was an unceasing danger, you see), and he very strongly thought that he should concentrate on me to protect me. And the next day, I saw him but it was an image, a mental formation! I told him, Yes, you came in a mental formation, it wasnt the same thing. Then he told me that this capacity of discernment is an extremely rare thing. But I always had it, even when I was small. Its a sensitiveness in the perception. And indeed I believe that very few people can sense the difference. So with X, my first impression was, My goodness, to do this to me! Well, really, I have some experience of the world, I cant be so easily made to believe that the moon is made of green cheese!
And yesterday, it was all very peaceful: X was there all the time with nobody in front of him, not pretending anything. But the first time, as he expected some result, he stayed on for ten minutesprobably he was expecting some reaction (I never told him that Sri Aurobindo is with me all the time, that we talk to each other every night). Anyhow, he was probably expecting some enthusiasm on my part (!) There you are.
0 1963-11-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But were so totally enslaved to very small things the very small things of the body: its needs (or supposed needs). I see all the entreaties that come from everywhere, and it all revolves around the same thing (even those who think theyve understood that the consciousness must be generalnot collective, but terrestrial theyre slaves to the reactions of their body), it all revolves around two things: sleep-food-sleep-food-sleep (Mother draws a circle). Even with those who profess that they have no interest in those things, they still have the power to cause reactions in their consciousness: a sleepless night or poor digestion, or an upset digestive system there you are. It has the power to weigh down on their faith and to take away its capacity of action. Its a kind of attachmentan involuntary and mechanical attachmentto that need for sleep and that need for food. And I dont mean people who love to eat or lazy people who like to sleep I dont even mean that, which is all the way down, thats not it: I mean those who arent interested in food and would really like to replace sleep with something else, something more interesting, even thoseall, all, all of them.
And even this body, which has been worked on and kneaded for years Its in the subconscient of the body. And so that was the answer, it was said to the body:
0 1963-12-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, the fact of no longer having the physical support of Sri Aurobindos presence was a blow that might have been mortal (I prevented it from being mortal by closing a door, because he had asked me to continue and I decided to continue), but it made certain things rather difficult because it became necessary to have a constant perception of what has to be done and a constant effort to change what is into what should be. Probably its a period of work that must be completed now, and he was asking of me the capacity to live in the positive side. The trouble is, the body is itself a kind of contradiction but it was suggested to me that those contradictions of the body arise from the fact that I admit in the consciousness all the contradictions, and that consequently they are there in the body, too. Instead of looking at the body and saying, Oh, this (this limitation, that narrowness) is still here, I should look only at WHAT SHOULD BE, and the body would be forced to follow.
This seems to be the preparation of the program for next yeara long, long way to go yet. But anyway, there are still a few days left (!)
0 1964-03-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday again, the experience was quite concrete and powerful: it isnt necessary to move, or to move anything, for this Truth-Consciousness to replace the consciousness of deformation or distortion. In other words, the capacity to live in and be this true Vibrationessential and trueseems to have the power to SUBSTITUTE this Vibration for the vibration of Falsehood and Distortion, to such an extent that For instance, the outcome of Distortion or of the vibration of distortion should naturally have been an accident or catastrophe, but if, within those vibrations, there is a consciousness that has the power to become aware of the Vibration of Truth and therefore manifest the Vibration of Truth, it canit mustcancel the other vibration. Which would be translated, in the external phenomenon, by an intervention that would stop the catastrophe.
There is a growing feeling that the True is the only way to change the world; that all the other processes of slow transformation are always at a tangent (you draw nearer and nearer but you never arrive), and that the last step must be this the substitution of the true Vibration.
0 1964-07-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats the method exactly: to broaden your receptivity indefinitely and depend on the forces that circulate constantly in the world, so that only the most physical materiality is dependent on food and sleep. Because even what you eat feeds you differently according to your receptivity, your inner attitude; there is a capacity for extracting the Force from things, which can be gained from a broadening of the receptivity.
He CAN do that, he can.
--
He has quite a considerable vital capacity. But the true solution lies in the psychic development. Besides, thats how doctors cure people, much more than through medicinesmuch more. With some doctors, when the patient comes into contact with them, he feels supported, helped.
(silence)
0 1964-07-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I called you Satprem, thats what I meant: you must certainly have the capacity to come into contact with That.
And That is I dont know if this world (I am not talking of the earth alone, but of the present universe), if this world will be followed by others or if it will itself go on, or if but That, which I am talking about and calling Love, is the Master of this world.
0 1964-09-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, there could be only one solution: to lose the mental consciousness that gives you the perception or sensation that you are telling a lie or a truth; and you can obtain that only when you get to the higher state in which our notion of falsehood and truth disappears. Because when we speak from the ordinary mental consciousness, even when we are convinced that we are telling the whole truth, we are not doing so; and even when we think we are telling a lie, sometimes it isnt one. We do not have the capacity to discern whats true and what isntbecause we live in a false consciousness.
But there is a state in which, first, you no longer make personal decisions, and then you are like a mirror reflecting the exact NEED, the true (spiritual, that is) need of the patient, for instance, and exactly what he needs to know so that the rest of his life (whatever time he has left to live) brings him the maximum possibilities of progress.
--
will recover the reading capacity,
I will recover.
0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then (Mother points to her own body), this seems to be the lesson for these aggregates (bodies, you know, seem to me to be simply aggregates). And as long as there is, behind, a will to keep this together for some reason or other, it stays together, but These last few days (yesterday or the day before), there was this: a sort of completely decentralized consciousness (I am always referring to the physical consciousness, of course, not at all to the higher consciousness), a decentralized consciousness that happened to be here, there, there, in this body, that body (in what people call this person and that person, but that notion doesnt quite exist anymore), and then there was a kind of intervention of a universal consciousness in the cells, as though it were asking these cells what their reason was for wanting to retain this combination (if we may say so) or this aggregate while in fact making them understand or feel the difficulties that come, for example, from the number of years, wear and tear, external difficultiesfrom all the deterioration caused by friction, wear and tear. But they seemed to be perfectly indifferent to that! The response of the cells was interesting enough, in the sense that they seemed to attach importance ONLY TO THE capacity TO REMAIN IN CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH THE HIGHER FORCE. It was like an aspiration (not formulated in words, naturally), and like a what in English they call yearning, a longing for that Contact with the divine Force, the Force of Harmony, the Force of Truth and the Force of Love, and [the cells response was] that because of that, they valued the present combination.
It was an altogether different point of view.
0 1964-11-12, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And all of a sudden, I saw thats not it at all! When they have the experience, at the time of the experience, it is the thing ITSELF, the perfection ITSELF that has been reached, and they are in a state of perfection; and it is because they COME OUT of it that they feel they have to slowly prepare themselves for the result. I dont know if I am expressing myself clearly, but my notation was like this: perfection is there, always, coexisting with imperfectionperfection and imperfection are coexistent, always, and not only simultaneous, but in the SAME PLACE (Mother presses her two hands together), I dont know how to put itcoexistent. Which means that at any second and in any conditions, you can attain perfection: it isnt something that has to be gained little by little, through successive progress; perfection is THERE, and YOU change states, from the state of imperfection to the state of perfection; and it is the capacity to remain in that state of perfection that grows for some reason or other and gives you the feeling that you must prepare yourself or transform yourself.
That was very real and very concrete.
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 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For instance, Ive had the opportunity of studying this: For me, circumstances, characters, all events and all beings move about according to certain laws, if I may say so, which arent rigid, but which I perceive and because of which I can see: This will lead to that, and that will lead there, and this person being like that, such-and-such a thing is going to happen to him, and Its growing increasingly precise. I could, if it were necessary, make predictions based on that. But the relation of cause and effect in that domain is, for me, absolutely obvious and corroborated by facts. While for them, who do not have that vision and that consciousness of the soul, as Sri Aurobindo says, circumstances unfold according to other, superficial laws, which they consider to be the natural consequences of things; quite superficial laws that do not stand up to a deeper analysis, but they dont have the inner capacity, so that doesnt bother them, they find it obvious.
I mean that this inner knowledge doesnt have the power to convince them, thats an experience I have almost every day. So that when, concerning some event or other, I see, Oh, but its perfectly, perfectly obvious (for me): I saw the Lords Force act there, I saw such-and-such a thing happen, and so, quite naturally, this is what must take place, for me, its as obvious as could be, but I dont tell what I know, because it doesnt correspond to anything in their experience, so to them its raving or pretension. Which means that when you havent had the experience yourself, anothers experience isnt convincing, it cannot convince you.
--
And precisely because they have acquired the capacity to explain, they explain for themselves the inner phenomena, so that they remain in their negation of inner phenomena: they say they are like extensions of what they have studied.
Only, owing to mans very constitution (because there is so to speak no human being who doesnt have at least a reflection or a hint or a beginning of relationship with his subtle, inner being, his soul), owing to that, there is always a flaw in their negation; but they consider it a weaknessand its their only strength!
0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I may express it in this way: the capacity to fall silent and to intervene only on the Impulse from above.
To intervene only when set in motion by the supreme Wisdom, for every action to be done.
0 1965-08-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He [C.] must have something, but I dont feel anything! (Mother makes a gesture as thin as cigarette paper.) Its something without force. But K., too, when she was in America, was quite under his thumb. And she said she had marvelous meditations with him! But I wrote to K., because he gave her advice on her life and on what she should and should not do; so she wrote to ask me, How much am I to believe? I answered, Nothing! He had forbidden her to come to the Ashram; he had told her that it wasnt the place for her, that she was much too grown-up to come here! The Ashram is good for those who have nothing in them, who need to be kept well in hand, while someone with a capacity must live independently.
Thats how he catches them.
0 1965-09-15a, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems, according to astrologers, that the combination of stars for the month of September is very bad for the earth. Naturally, this is always something to be cautious about, because it depends on peoples intuition, on their capacity to interpret, whether their vision is broad enough and so on, but it seems that all the signs are undeniable and indicate that things are bad (thats vague, of course), catastrophic. I was told this before, they said it in July. Only, I never attach too much importance to their conclusions, because they are always And also, they say some very vague things that contradict each other. Personally, I dont know the first thing about all that, I am not trying to seein fact I NEVER try to see (what came last night came very spontaneously, without my trying to see). The work, of course, is devoid of thought, of verbal expression, and constant; but it has been constant for a long time: the first time was at the beginning of the year, I think, at least six months ago. The second time, I told you I had one night an experience [the pressure of the Supreme] before anything really serious had taken place. Well, the first experience I had, of the consciousness hurling a fantastic power on the earth, which was necessarily going to shake things up, was at least six months before that second experience. And for those six months, it was constant: as soon as I came into contact with the earth consciousness, it was there, and constant, constant. Then came that indication: the pressure of the supreme Lord. And the third step was yesterday evening.
Well see.
0 1965-10-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must shake that up, mon petit! You must. In your being you have been and still are somewhere in full Light. I told you it was a sort of close collaboration between the Light which is in Sri Aurobindo and your capacity of expression. One has no right to forget that.
I dont forget that.
0 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I clearly see that when the work is done as I am made to do it, it becomes that way very spontaneously. For instance, one of the very concrete things, which shows the problem clearly: humanity has the sex impulse quite naturally, spontaneously and, I may say, legitimately. This impulse will naturally and spontaneously disappear along with animality (a lot of other things will disappear, such as for instance the need to eat, perhaps also the need to sleep the way we do), but the most conscious impulse in a higher humanity, and which has remained as a source of bliss is a big word, but of joy, of delight, is certainly the sexual activity, which will have absolutely no more reason to exist in the functions of nature when the need to create in that way no longer exists. Therefore the capacity to come into contact with the joy in life will go up one rung or will orient itself differently. But what the spiritual aspirants of old had attempted on principlesexual negationis an absurd thing, because it must exist only in those who have gone beyond that stage and no longer have any animality in them. And it must fall off naturally, effortlessly, without struggle, just like that. Making it a focus of conflict, struggle and effort is ridiculous. To be sure, my experience with the Ashram has absolutely proved that to me, because I have seen all the stages and that all the ideas and prohibitions are absolutely useless, that its only when the consciousness stops being human that it falls off quite naturally. There is a transition there that may be somewhat difficult because transitional beings are always in a precarious balance, but inside oneself there is a sort of flame or need thanks to which the transition isnt painfulits not a painful effort, its something that can be done with a smile. But to want to impose that on those who arent ready for that transition is absurd. I have been much reproached for encouraging certain people to marry; there are lots of these children to whom I say, Get married, get married! I am told, What! You encourage them?its common sense.
Its common sense. They are human, but let them not pretend they arent.
0 1966-01-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All discoveries are always graceswonderful graces. When you discover that you cant do anything, when you discover that you are a fool, when you discover that you have no capacity, when you discover that you are so petty and mean and stupid, well Oh, Lord, I thank You so much, how good You are to show me all this! And then, its over. Because the minute you discover it, you say, Now this is up to You. You will do what has to be done for all this to change. And the best part of it is that it does change! It does change. When you do like this (gesture of offering to the Heights), sincerely: Oh, take it, take it, take it, rid me of it, let me be only You
Its wonderful.
0 1966-03-04, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had the perception of this manifestationa pulsatory manifestation, I might saywhich opens out, shrivels up, opens out, shrivels up again and there comes a point when the opening out is such, the fluidity, the plasticity, the capacity for change are such that there is no need anymore to reabsorb in order to shape anew, and there will be a progressive transformation. Thon used to say (I think Ive already told you about it) that this is the seventh universal creation, that there have been six pralayas1 before and this is the seventh creation, but that it will be possible for this one to be transformed without being reabsorbedwhich obviously is perfectly unimportant because, the moment you have the eternal consciousness, whether things go this way or that way doesnt matter in the least. Its for the limited human consciousness that there is a sort of ambition or need for something that doesnt end, because, within, there is what we might call the memory of eternity and that memory of eternity aspires for the manifestation to partake of that eternity. But if the sense of eternity is active and present, you dont lamentyou dont lament if you discard a worn-out garment, do you? (You may be attached, but anyway you dont lament.) Its the same thing: if a universe disappears, it means it has wholly fulfilled its function, it has reached the limit of its possibilities, and another must replace it.
I followed the curve. When you are very small in your consciousness and development, you feel a great need for the earth not to disappear, for it to be perpetuated (while being transformed as much as one likes, but always with the earth being perpetuated). A little further on, when you are a little more mature, you attach much less importance to it. And when you are in constant communion with the sense of eternity, it becomes a mere question of choice; its not a need anymore, because its something that doesnt affect the active consciousness. A few days ago (I dont remember when, but quite lately), for a whole morning I lived in that Consciousness and I saw that, in the curve of the beings development, that sort of need, a seemingly intimate need, for the prolongation of the earths life the indefinite prolongation of the earths life I saw that that need is objectified, so to say, its not so intimate anymore; its like watching a performance and judging whether it should be like this or like that. Its interesting as a change of standpoint.
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So, if for some reason or other there is a disorganization (but I think the reason is one of teaching), one must have the capacity to go like this (Mother brings her two hands down in a gesture that immobilizes everything) and to stop all that instantly. But the capacity has been there for a long time, a long time (it hasnt always been used, but it has been there): the Power. And its the same with EVERYTHING: world events or natural or human upheavals, earthquakes and tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, floods, or else wars, revolutions, people killing each other without even knowing whyas they are doing at the moment: everywhere something pushes them on. Behind this quiver, there is a will for disorder that tries to prevent Harmony from being established. Its there in the individual, in the collectivity, and in Nature. And then, its such a painstaking, persistent teaching, which forgets nothing and is repeated every time something isnt totally understood, and is repeated in greater detail for you to better understand the working: the working in the hands, in the activity, in the Force going through [Mother] like this, in the use of vibrationsand which teaches the great Lesson: learning how to manifest the divine Force.
Its absolutely wonderful.
0 1966-04-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats why that realization [the Void] isnt the goal, thats exactly why. A conviction that it isnt the goal. Its an absolute necessity, but not the goal. The goal is something the capacity to keep That here.
When will that come? I dont know.
0 1966-06-25, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This cottage industry produces things that arent very pretty. So she would like to know if you want her to go and work there or to do something on her own. I feel she has a capacity for handicraft that could be used.
Pavitra read me her letter. I spontaneously answered him, Oh, this woman is too perfect for me. You know, I can do this, I can do that, I do this so well, I do that so perfectly. There were pages of it, mon petit! So in the end I said, She is too perfect for me.
0 1966-07-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, a few days ago the consciousness was under attack. All that is petty, sordid, ugly, oh poor, helpless, all thatit was such an avalanche! This poor body, it cried over its in capacity to express anything superior. And then, the answer was very simpleit was very clear, very strong and the experience came: the only solution the only way out of the difficulty is to BECOME divine Love. And the experience was there at the same time for a few moments (it lasted long enough, maybe more than half an hour). Then you understand that everything you have to go through, all these ordeals, all this suffering, all these miseries, is nothing in comparison with the experience of what will be (and what is). But we are still incapable, meaning that the cells havent the strength yet. They are beginning to have the capacity to be, but not the strength to keep ThatThat cannot stay yet.
And That has such an extraordinary power to transform what is! All our notions (and this had become visible), our notions of miracle, of marvelous change, all the stories of miracles that have been told, all of it becomes a childs prattleits nothing! Nothing. All that we try to have, all that we aspire to have, all that is childishness.
0 1966-09-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No! I am speaking of the countries collaboration in CREATING something. Its not when Auroville has been completed: its the nations collaboration in creating something but creating something founded on the Truth instead of a rivalry in Falsehoods creation. Its not when Auroville is readywhen Auroville is ready, it will be one town among all other towns and its only its own capacity of truth that will have power, but that remains to be seen.
No, the point is a combined interest in building something founded on the Truth. They have had a combined interest (combined without any mutual liking, of course) in creating a power of destruction built on Falsehood; well, Auroville means diverting a little of that force (the quantity is minor, but the quality is superior). Its truly a hopeits founded on a hopeof doing something that can be the beginning of a harmony.
0 1967-01-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems to me to be the legacy of primordial habits the habits of Matter. This Matter, of course, comes from total unconsciousness, and throughout the ages and all the ways of being, it returns to total consciousness it goes from one extreme to the other; well, its these habits of static immobility that give this need for trance. It shouldnt be necessary. Only (how can I explain?), logically, as things are, it depends on the balance between the bodys capacity of receptivity and its external activity: its obviously far more receptive when it is immobile, because its energies are occupied with the transformation.
There is also another thing which could change the course of events: its that the vital is becoming more and more receptive and collaborative. This whole vital zone, which was the zone of revolt and deliberate opposition to the divine transformation, is becoming more and more collaborative, and with its collaboration (because this vital zone is the zone of movement, action, energy put to use), with its conscious collaboration, the methods of transformation may become different (its something I have been studying these last few days). It may change the methods. But thats a whole world to be learned.
0 1967-02-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The nature (of Mother) was rather shy, and as a matter of fact, there wasnt much confidence in the personal capacity (although there was the sense of being able to do anything, if the need arose). Till the age of twenty or twenty-one I spoke very little, and never, never anything like a speech. I wouldnt take part in conversations: I would listen, but speak very little. Then I was put in touch with Abdul Baha (the Bahai), who was then in Paris, and a sort of intimacy grew between us. I used to go to his gatherings because I was interested. And one day (when I was in his room), he said to me, I am sick, I cant speak; go and speak for me. I said, Me! But I dont speak. He replied, You just have to go there, sit quietly and concentrate, and what you have to say will come to you. Go and do it, you will see. Well then (laughing), I did as he said. There were some thirty or forty people. I went and sat in their midst, stayed very still, and then I sat like that, without a thought, nothing, and suddenly I started speaking. I spoke to them for half an hour (I dont even know what I told them), and when it was over everybody was quite pleased. I went to find Abdul Baha, who told me, You spoke admirably. I said, It wasnt me! And from that day (I had got the knack from him, you understand!), I would stay like that, very still, and everything would come. Its especially the sense of the I that must be lost thats the great art in everything, for everything, for everything you do: for painting, for (I did painting, sculpture, architecture even, I did music), for everything, but everything, if you are able to lose the sense of the I, then you open yourself to to the knowledge of the thing (sculpture, painting, etc.). Its not necessarily beings, but the spirit of the thing that uses you.
Well, I think it should be the same thing with language. One should be tuned in to someone in that way, or through that someone to something still higher: the Origin. And then, very, very passive. But not inertly passive: vibrantly passive, receptive, like that, attentive, letting that come in and be expressed. The result would be there to see. As I said, we are limited by what we know, but that may be because were still too much of a person; if we could be perfectly plastic it might be different: there have been instances of people speaking in a language they didnt know, consequently
0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It would be interesting to formulate or work out a new method of teaching for the children, taking them very young. Very young, its easy. We need people (oh, we would need remarkable teachers) who have, first of all, sufficient documentation on what is known to be able to answer any question; and at the same time, at least the knowledge, if not the experience (the experience would be better) of the true intuitive intellectual attitude, and (naturally, the capacity would be still preferable) but in any case the knowledge that the true way to know is mental silence: an attentive silence turned towards the truer Consciousness, and the capacity to receive what comes from there. The best would be to have that capacity; in any case, it should be explained that its the true thing, a kind of demonstration, and that it works not only with regard to what must be learned, the whole field of knowledge, but also with regard to the whole field of what must be done: the capacity to receive the exact indication of HOW to do it, and as one progresses, it turns into a very clear perception of what must be done, and the precise indication of WHEN it must be done. At the very least, as soon as the children have the capacity to reflect (it begins at seven, but around fourteen or fifteen its very clear), they should be given some first hints at the age of seven, and a complete explanation at fourteen, of how to do it and that its the sole means of being in contact with the deeper truth of things; that all the rest is a more or less clumsy mental approximation of something you can know directly.
The conclusion is that the teachers themselves should have at least a sincere beginning of discipline and experience: it is not a question of piling up books and of repeating them like that. Thats not the way to be a teacher the whole earth is like that, let it be like that outside if it makes them happy! As for us, we arent propagandists, we simply want to show what can be done and try to prove that it MUST be done.
0 1967-05-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the body is conscious enough to be convinced that it has no right to demand the change (I mean a certain change) in the Whole so as to enable its own change. Because, that it knows very well: Then what use am I? If I am like the others, I am useless I MUST have the capacity to emerge into the Light, whatever the people or difficulties around me. It knows that, its under no illusions. But still, there is a little friction.
(silence)
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, there was a sort of capacity or possibility, a state in which one was able to understand all languages; that is, every language was understood because of its connection with that region (gesture to the heights, at the origin of sounds). There didnt seem to be any difficulty in understanding any language. There was a sort of almost graphic explanation (same sinuous descending line branching out) showing how the sound had been distorted to express this or that or
Its a whole field of observation thats part of the study of vibrations: how essential vibrations are distorted as they spread out, and produce the different stateson the psychological level, on the level of thought, on the level of action, and also of languages, of expression.
--
I have, for instance, an impression (a strong impression) that in the Assyrian age they had a means, they had found a means to record and preserve sound. It must have been destroyed, it disappeared. But its a very strong impression, linked to certain memories and (psychic) impressions like the ones I said: they arent ideas, but [vibrations]. There was a capacity to make the invisible speak, you understand. They had a machine. It must have been destroyed with the rest?
The oldest memory that exists is the first Chinese attempts. Its in China that a machine to reproduce sound, to preserve and reproduce sound, was first found.
0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards I had to be busy with other things, but its there. And the question was, Why? Why isnt there in this brain the capacity to perceive and transcribe things as he had it?
And so the conclusion. Ive always heard it said (I dont know if its true) that men think in a certain way and women in another. On an external level, the difference is not visible, but the attitude the mental attitudeis perhaps different. The mental attitude on the Prakriti side is always action, always action; the mental attitude on the Purusha3 side is conception: conception, overall vision, and also observation, as though it observed what the Prakriti had done and saw how it was done. Now I understand that. Thats how it is. Naturally, no man (here on earth) is exclusively masculine and no woman is exclusively feminine, because it has all been mixed together again and again. Similarly, I dont think any one race is absolutely pure: all that is over, its been mingled together (it is another way to re-create Oneness). But there have been TENDENCIES; Its like that note about Israelites and Muslims, its just a manner of speaking; if I were told, This is what you said, I would reply, Yes, I said that, but I can also say something else and many other things! Its a way of selecting certain things and bringing them to the fore with an action in view (its always with an action in view). But for the moment, everything is like that, everywhere mixed and mingled together with a view to general unificationno one nationality is pure and separate from the others, that no longer exists. But to a certain vision, each thing has its essential role, its raison dtre, its place in universal history. Its like that very strong impression that the Chinese are lunar, that when the moon grew cold, some beings managed to come to the earth, and those beings are at the origin of the Chinese nation; but now there only remains a tracea trace which is the memory of that distinctiveness. And its everywhere the same thing: if you look at the individuals of every nation, you find in every nation that everything is there, but with the memory the memory of a specificness which has been its raison dtre in the great terrestrial unfolding.
0 1967-08-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, behind this whole earth evolution, there is, more or less consciously (its an unexpressed need rather than a precise consciousness), the need to live the Divineor to put it differently, the need to live divinely. And it is clear that what was expressed as different religions were solutions found individually (found, and perhaps partially lived); and here [in India], there was this solution: in order to really become the Divine again, there should be no more creation. That was the Nirvanic solution. And instinctivelyinstinctivelymankind felt death to be the negation of the Divine. But like all negation, it had the capacity to lead and open the way. The solution of Christianity wasnt completely new, it was the adaptation of an ancient solution: a life in other worldswhich was expressed by that quite childish conception of paradise. But that was a conception for public use: a life in the presence of the Divine, exclusively taken up with the Divine, and so one sang and Touchingly simple. Anyway, they conceived of a world (not a material one) in which a divine life had been realized. In the ancient Indian traditions, there had also been a first hint of already divine worlds, as a sort of reaction to that Nirvanismif we want to be divine, we must stop being, or if the Divine wants to be pure, he must stop manifesting! So they were all somewhat clumsy attempts to find the means, and perhaps at the same time inner preparations, to make people capable of really making contact with the Divine. Then there was that great reaction of the cult of Matter, which has been VERY useful to knead it and make it less unconscious of itself: it has forcibly brought consciousness back into Matter. So perhaps all that has sufficiently prepared the moment of the coming of Total Manifestation (gesture of descent).
This morning, during the experience, the body felt the whole bliss of the condition, but it was very conscious of its in capacity to manifest and very conscious in such a perfect peace, like this (gesture with the palms of the hands open upward), in which there wasnt even the intensity of the need. It was simply a vision of how things were, how the condition was. And it was something like this: the conditions of the earth are such, the conditions of the substance are such that a local and momentary manifestation, as an example, is not impossible, but the transformation that would make possible the new Manifestation of the supramental being and not just as an isolated case, but with its place and role in earth lifedoes not appear to be immediate. That was the impression.
0 1967-10-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All degrees are there, of course. When its refusal or in capacity, then the person HIMSELF flees, saying, Theyre fools, they are trying to do something impossible and unrealizable. (I know many such people, they think they have superior intelligence.) But even to place themselves, its they themselves who do it. She came with the idea of a hierarchy. I said yes, everything is always according to hierarchy, especially all conscious individuals, but there is no arbitrary will that classes them: its the people themselves who spontaneously take their place without knowing it, the place they must have. Its not, I told her, its not a decision, we dont want categories: this category, that category, and so this person will go here, that person will go thereall that I said, is mental constructions, its worthless! The true thing is that NATURALLY, according to his receptivity, his capacity, his inner mission, everyone takes up the post which in the hierarchy he truly and spontaneously occupies, spontaneously without any decision.
What can be done to facilitate the organization is a sort of plan or general map, so that everyone need not build his position but will find it all ready for him thats all.
0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These material cells had to gain the capacity to receive and manifest the consciousness; and what permits a radical transformation is that instead of an ascent which is so to speak eternal and indefinite, there is the appearance of a new typea descent from above. The previous descent was a mental one, while this is what Sri Aurobindo calls a supramental descent; the impression is, a descent of the supreme Consciousness infusing itself into something capable of receiving and manifesting it. Then, out of that, once it has been thoroughly kneaded (theres no knowing how much time it will take), a new form will be born, which will be the form Sri Aurobindo called supramentalit will be no matter what, I dont know what those beings will be called.
What will be their mode of expression? How will they make themselves understood and so on? In man, it developed very slowly. Only, mind has done a lot of kneading and, after all, has made things advance fasten.
--
But once that has been done (this is something Sri Aurobindo had said), once ONE body has done it, it has the capacity of passing it on to others; and I tell you, there is now (I am not saying in its totality and in detail, probably not), but here and there (scattered gesture to show various points on earth) people suddenly get one experience or another. Some of them (the majority) get frightened, so naturally it goes away that is because they werent prepared enough within (if its not the little routine of every minute, always the same, they get frightened), and once they get frightened its over, it means they will need years of preparation for the experience to recur. But still, some arent; frightened; suddenly, an experience: Ah! something wholly new, wholly unexpected, which they had never thought of.
Its contagious. That I know. And its the only hope, because if everyone had to go through the same experience again Well, I am ninety nowat the age of ninety people are tired, theyve had enough of life. To do this work one must feel as young as a small child.
0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So thats understood: there will be no taxes of any kind, but everyone will have to contri bute to the collective welfare through his work, in kind or with money. Those who have nothing other than money will give money. But to tell the truth, the work may be an inner work (but that cant be said, because people arent honest enough). The work may be an occult work, a completely inner work, but of course, for that to be, it must be absolutely sincere and true, and with the capacity: no pretence. But its not necessarily a material work.
Sections like Industries which participate actively will contri bute part of their income towards the development of the township. Or if they produce something (like foodstuff) useful for the citizens, they will contri bute in kind to the township which is responsible for the feeding of the citizens.
--
Its a kind of adaptation of the Communist system, but not in a spirit of levelling: according to everyones capacity, his position (not a psychological or intellectual one), his INNER position.
In democracies and with the Communists, theres a levelling down: everyone is pulled down to the same level.
--
Its an extremely interesting experience: how the same actions, the same work, the same observations, the same relationship with the people around (near or far), how they take place in the mind, through intelligence, and how they take place in the consciousness, by experience. And thats what this body is now learningto replace the mental government of intelligence by the spiritual government of the consciousness. And it makes (it looks like nothing, one may not notice it), it makes a tremendous difference, to the point of multiplying the bodys possibilities a hundredfold. When the body is subjected to rules, even if they are broad, even if they are comprehensive, it is a slave to those rules and its possibilities are limited by them. But when its governed by the Spirit and the Consciousness that gives it an incomparable possibility and flexibility! And thats what will give it the capacity to prolong its life, to last longer: its by replacing the mental, intellectual government by the government of the Spirit, of the Consciousness THE Consciousness. Outwardly, it doesnt seem to make much difference, but My experience is like this (because now my body no longer obeys the mind or the intelligence at all, not any moreit doesnt even understand how that can be done), and more and more, and better and better, it follows the direction and impulsion of the Consciousness. But then, it sees, almost at each minute, the tremendous difference that it makes. For instance, time has lost its value (its rigid value): you can do exactly the same thing in very little time or in much time. Necessities have lost their authority: you can adapt yourself this way, adapt yourself that way. All the lawsthose laws that were laws of Naturehave lost all their despotism, we may say: it no longer works that way. All you have to do is always, always be supple, attentive, and responsive (if any such thing can be!) to the influence of the Consciousness the Consciousness in its all-powerfulnessso as to go through all this with extraordinary suppleness.
That is the discovery being made more and more.
0 1968-01-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its an explanation, the beginning of an explanation. Because there [in the message for February 21], I say, Serve the Truth and you will hasten the coming of Divine Love.2Ah, what does that mean? So here I say, Truth alone can give the world the capacity to receive and so on.
Now I have to make a decent copy of it (Mother stops and puts the palms of her hands on her eyes as though she was tired).
0 1968-02-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first is (one more English word) a reliance that is, it should lean on the Divine ALONE for support, for the source of its strength, its health, its capacity; it means that all material rules and laws are rejected and must cease to have any importance.
Thats the bodys experience almost every minute.
0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the conflict is between what we might call opposing proprietors. And the truth is that money belongs to no one. This idea of possession of money is what has perverted everything. Money shouldnt be a possession: its a means of action, which is given to you just like a power, but you have to use it according to what we might call the Donors will, that is, impersonally and with foresight. If you are a good instrument in the spread and use of money, then it comes to you, and it does so in proportion to your capacity of using it in the right way. Thats the true working.
I see these people [of the jute factory]: no choice needs to be made, the man didnt say spontaneously (or anyway, with feeling), This money is at the disposal of divine forces for the actionnot at all, thats a thousand miles away from his thought. Its I quite simply want to take POSSESSION again of something he claims to own. So thats why (Mother shakes her head) it may be this or that, this way or that wayit hardly makes any difference.
--
The first thing, to begin with (this is elementary), is to have no sense of possession Its mine, what does that mean? What does it mean? I cant really understand it now. Why do people want it to be theirs?To be able to use it as they wish, do with it what they wish and handle it according to their own idea. Thats how it is. Otherwise, yes, there are people who love to keep it in a pile somewhere But thats a disease. To be sure of always having money, they heap it up. But if people understood that one must be like a receiver-transmitter set; that the vaster the set (just the contrary of personal), the more impersonal and generous and vast the set is, and the more forces it can contain (forces, that is, to translate materially, banknotes or money). And that power to contain is in proportion to the best capacity of utilization the best, that is, from the standpoint of general progress: the broadest vision, the broadest understanding and the most enlightened, exact, true utilization, not according to the egos falsified needs, but according to the earths general need in its evolution and development. In other words, the broadest vision should have the broadest capacity.
Behind all false movements, there is a true one: there is a joy in being able to direct, utilize, organize things so as to keep wastage to a minimum while having a maximum of results. (Thats a very interesting vision to have.) And that must be the true side in those who want to amass: a capacity of utilization on a very large scale.
As this vision grows clearer Its a long, long time, years and years, since the sense of possession went away; thats childishness, its nothingits so silly! Will you tell me what pleasure a man can take in keeping heaps of papers in a box or in his wall! A real pleasure he cant have. The height of pleasure is that of the miser who goes and opens his box to look at it thats not much! Some people love to spend, they love to possess and spend; thats different, they are generous natures, but unregulated, unorganized. But the joy of enabling all TRUE needs, all NECESSITIES to express themselves, thats good. Its like the joy of turning an illness into good health, a falsehood into truth, a suffering into joy, its the same thing: turning an artificial and stupid need, which doesnt correspond to anything natural, into a possibility which becomes something quite naturala need for so much money to do this and that which needs to be done, to set right here, repair there, build here, organize there thats good. And I understand one may enjoy being the transmitting channel for all that and bring money just where its needed. It must be the true movement in people who enjoy (thats when it becomes stupid selfishness) who need to hoard.
--
And its not something you can pretend to have; a being cant pretend to have it: either he has it or he doesnt, because (laughing) if its a pretense, life will use the slightest opportunity to make it obvious! And moreover, it wont give you any material powerhere also, Thon said something in this regard, he said, Those who are all the way up (he was referring to the TRUE hierarchy, the hierarchy based precisely on each ones power of consciousness), one who is all the way up (one or those) necessarily has the least amount of needs; his material needs decrease as his capacity of material vision increases. And its perfectly true. Its automatic and spontaneous; its not the result of an effort: the vaster the consciousness and the more things and realities it embraces, the smaller the material needs becomeautomatically sobecause they lose all their importance and value. Its reduced to a minimal need of material necessities, which will itself change with the progressive development of Matter.
And thats easily recognizable, of course. Its difficult to feign.
0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For perhaps a long time yet, or at any rate for some time, P.L. must be the intermediary, but a somewhat conscious onenot active. He acts as an intermediary, as a link (gesture as of a bridge between Mother and the Vatican), but he shouldnt He doesnt have the capacity to resist those peoples tremendous power. He should remain very stillvery still, very peacefulhe should let himself live happily, then he will fulfill his function.
See conversation of April 3, 1968.
0 1968-07-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In one of those parts, the Divine, or the Supreme, is a formless, undefined, vast thing which I do not really know, but aspire to know, and that is what my thought and love turn to when no other part or circumstance interferes. That is what I find in the depths. In it, I find the explanation and raison dtre of all things, and each day allows me, to the extent of my small capacity, to discover a new aspect of it. There are no problems or difficulties there, everything is peaceful and happy.
In another, more complex part, there is the everyday life and the ordinary personality. There, things are completely different. The central pole of that part has so far been love, but love as I understand it here, that is, not something subtle that rises but something concrete which is lived and exchanged, and which in order to exist needs the presence of the physical being, the living with, otherwise it has no raison dtre, having no base or concrete form. That is probably why you told me I loved love and not individuals. Its very true, because to me, individuals are only an occasion to live love, or what I call love.
--
1) Is what I call the Supreme, which I turn to within, a reality to the extent of my small capacity? And is my movement towards that a true thing, or an imagining and a flight from another reality which I refuse to recognize?
Thats easy!
0 1968-09-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at mans capacity for self-deception.
Wonderful!
--
Yes, when we regard the higher part of our mind as the judge of our action, thats how we can deceive ourselves in good faith. In other words, the mind is incapable of seeing the truth and it judges according to its own limited capacitynot only limited but unconscious of the truth; so then, as far as its concerned, the mind is in good faith, it does the best it can. Its like that.
Naturally, those who are fully conscious of their psychic cannot possibly deceive themselves, because if they refer their problem to the psychic, they can find the divine answer there. But even for those who are in contact with their psychic, the answer doesnt have the same character as the mental answer, which is precise, categorical, absolute, and imposes itself the psychic answer is more a TENDENCY than an assertion. Its something that can still have different interpretations in the mind.
0 1968-11-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this notion of the descending Supermind, of a permeating Consciousness, is OUR translation. The experience came as the experience of an eternal fact: not at all something just now taking place. That its all the result of states of consciousness is certain (whether there is something beyond, I do not know, but at any rate I have the positive experience of that). Its movements of consciousness. Why, how? I dont know. But looking at it from the other side, the fact that something belonging to this terrestrial region as it is has become conscious, is what gives the impression that something has taken place. I dont know if I can make myself understood. I mean that this body is just the same as all the rest of the earth, but for some reason or other, it happens to have become conscious in the other way; well, that normally should be expressed in the earth consciousness as a coming, a descent, a beginning. But is it a beginning? What has come? You understand, theres NOTHING but the Lord (I call it the Lord for the convenience of language, because otherwise), theres nothing but the Lord, not anything elsenothing else exists. Everything takes place within Him, consciously. And we are like grains of sand in this Infinity; only, we are the Lord with the capacity of being conscious of the Lords consciousness. Thats exactly it.
(silence)
0 1968-12-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I saw Z just before. She was in full revolt, because long ago I had told her something she didnt understand regarding films [shown at the Ashram] (its not exactly that, but anyway), and she slipped into a hole. So she was here (I was holding her hand), and this body felt it was all the same kind of matterthis sort of commonality and identity and it was at once amused and very sweet. And then, there was here, like that, such an awesome Power, mon petit; the body was conscious That could crush a being to a pulp. And It remained like that (gesture of a quiet witness), not acting. The Power, which has the capacity to manifest with the vital power (It dominates the vital and has the capacity to use it), and which can dissolve things in perfect stillness. Its extraordinary.
But the body isnt mistaken, it knows what it is. It knows what it is. And it knows one thing, that its only when (and because) it can be absolutely peacefulpeaceful like something completely transparent and still that this Power can act. The body knows. It knows the only thing asked of it is that total, transparent stillness.
--
But the brain cannot understand. The Mind can speculate on anything, but this is something else, the mind isnt there. The brain, its capacity (Mother remains gazing).
No later than this morning, the whole morning, there was (what should I call it?) it has the nature of wonderment, but not the joy of wonderment, and it doesnt have the stupidity of bewilderment, its something a state, yes. The body notes the way life is (or at least the way life is for our outer, active consciousness), the way life is, the way it APPEARS to be and its very hard for it not to say, Why, why, why? WHY?.. And then, when it sits looking like that, it becomes sad, sad, so very sad; then it feels thats not the thing. And whats that sadness? It must be it must be the door that leads to something else which it doesnt yet understand.
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This mornings experience was very curious. All of a sudden, it awakened the memory of something that took place in my childhood when I was about eight or ten (which I had completely forgotten). On Sundays (I suppose so, or anyway on holidays), I used to go and play with my first cousins, the children of a brother of my father. I would go and play with them. I remember their house, I can still see it. We would usually spend our time playing scenes or enacting a story in tableaux. And today, it showed me something I had really forgotten. Theres a story of Bluebeard, isnt there? (Bluebeard I forget, I only know what I remembered this morning.) One day, we did a tableau vivant, in several tableaux, with the story of Bluebeard who cut off his wives heads. (To Satprem:) Thats how the story went, isnt it? (Laughter) I only remember this morning, I dont recall the story. Now, we played in a big room, a sort of enclosed verandahin Paris, a big long room. We had stood (our playmates were little boys and girls), we had stood a certain number of girls against the wall: we had stuck them to the wall, with their hair strung above their heads (Mother laughs), and we had put a sheet in front to cover the rest of their bodies the sheet reached down to the floor so that we couldnt see their bodies, only their heads! I am saying that because I saw it this morning, otherwise I didnt remember in the least. I saw this scene, I saw the memory of that room and how it was all arranged. And at the same time there came You see, we found it quite natural, just a story we had read; I remembered my impression at the time: there was no sense of horror! We didnt find it monstrous (laughing), we were having great fun! So the experience came, and it remained for OVER AN HOUR to make me understand very deeply where this memory came from, how it acted and why we were in that state. And all of it not at all from a personal standpoint, not at all: from the general standpoint of the earth and humanity in general. It was exceedingly interesting! And then, at the same time, a vision showing how, with what swift movement, the universal consciousness moves (arrowlike gesture) in a progression towards the Divine the TRUE Divine, I mean, not religions, of coursetowards the TRUE Divine through all that. And with the consciousness of the WHOLEthe whole and nuances (Sade and all that line), from the highest to the lowest. For one hour I saw a whole stage of humanitya stage towards the late 1800s, the second half of the 1800sand how it moved on and progressed (gesture like a great curve). And thats I have no words or capacity to describe it, but its extraordinarily interesting. The vision of the human collectivity on earth, with all its stages, gradations, nuances, and how it all followed a movement (same arrowlike gesture). And this story (story this VISION, rather, because it wasnt a story: I didnt see what we said or anything, only the vision of what we did), this story came as the illustration of a certain state of mind of those times, and how children were given stories of that kind to readwe found it quite natural! (Mother laughs) And those things are so dreadful.
As soon as I am not busy talking or listening to people or doing a work, it goes on and on: certain samples, as it were, of this bodys life are taken up again, and through those samples, the whole is shown. A wonderful education! Never, never does any human education as its conceived resemble this, because its a vision of the whole, in which everything hangs together; youre shown everything together.
0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One morning, with this Consciousness I had that experience of power (the true power): how, when it goes through a perfectly static, still, peaceful consciousness, theres no distortion; and how, going through it, it awakens in the individual a sense of power and the collaboration of the individual will. If it is (I saw the two things at the same time), if its a yogic consciousness with the calm and IMPERSONALITY (that is, without any desire and any preference), then its STILL MORE POWERFUL, because its directed towards a precise spot instead of working in a general wayits directed towards a precise spot, and the action is multiplied. But if, in the consciousness through which the force is to act, there is the LEAST desire, the LEAST preference, or the least recoil everything is spoilt. Everything is spoilt: it goes like this (gesture of trepidation), and its over. I saw that, with examples to back it up; not narrated examples, theres nothing mental: everything shownshown with vibrations. And thats really interesting. It means that in the superman consciousness, with the full impersonalization (that is, no preference, no desire, no refusal, nothingyou are like this [gesture of an immobile Witness]), there will be the capacity to direct the Power for it to act on a PRECISE POINT, and then it will be multiplied in Matter. A multiplication of power, that is, an intensification of power in Matter.
That explains (its the body which is learning all that, its really very happy), that very clearly explains to the body why there have been individuals and their purpose in the whole but those individuals must lose all that was necessary to form them; they must go beyond that and become divine again. Then then the result will be extraordinary.
0 1969-03-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This Consciousness has a fantastic imagination! It makes me see all kinds of fantastic possibilities regarding what will happen in the future. Like, for instance, for a woman, instead of dying, to be born again in her own child. Things would be different from what they are now, there would be a capacity to form the child, not with a material complement, but with a spiritual complement (spiritual is a manner of speaking: the complement of an invisible force), and instead of dying and entering another body, one would oneself be able to form, with the most developed cells of ones body, the being in which one will live again. Quite an idea, isnt it!
It came very early this morning (its always at that time), and with all the details, and an extraordinary INTENSITY of life! You see, in the body certain cells are developing as much as they can, growing increasingly conscious, and instead of disintegrating when the whole becomes inadequate to express the fullness of life, its INWARDLY that all those cells would gather to form a new body with a matter superior to ordinary matter.
0 1969-03-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was it was really amusing! And the objections of age, possibility, capacity, no longer existed. If this intermediary method is considered useful (I mean, practical), the possibility is there; this Consciousness was showing the body that the possibility is there. Foroh, for hours and hoursit insisted, it didnt want to go! It insisted until the body had completely understood. And there is no need of a material intervention: it can be done (thats known, there have been fully recognized cases), the physical intervention wasnt necessary, it was replaced by an intervention in the subtle physical, which was sufficient. All that in every detail, with every explanation and everything. Then, when it was thoroughly done, it was over, the chapter was closed. But it was really unexpected, I had never thought of such a thing! And the way it was presented! It was so concrete and so simpleso simple, so concrete and all objections were resolved.
So the body said, Very well, we shall see. (Mother laughs) Well see.
0 1969-04-02, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The two states are like this (Mother puts one hand tightly against the other). As for this body itself, it constantly has the experience of an almost miraculous state, but there still remains (is it the memory or habit, or really a mixture?), there still remains the capacity to suffer physically, materially. So it means a lot remains to be done.
There is (for me, everything is now a question of vibrations), there is a certain vibration, which I find it hard to describe because there are no words, but which has to do, as I said, with compassion (I dont know what to call it, but its very, very intense, those perceptions are very intense), and when it comes, it really has extraordinary power, but it doesnt seem to have the possibility (Mother suddenly tips over two fingers) of an abrupt change. In some cases, people have been completely quite relieved, but not cured.
0 1969-04-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At any rate, it was one more decisive turning point in this bodys development. It once again felt that all it knew, all it thought it knew, all that was rubbish, as they say in English, and that unless you are in this absolutely luminous and tranquil and allcontaining Consciousness [you cannot understand]. Containing still gives the impression of a limit; its not all-containing, its vaster than anything existing. This Consciousness is vaster than the manifested world; theres almost a sort of sensation that theres a vaster Consciousness: the manifested world takes up a certain place in this Consciousness (how can I explain?), its not the WHOLE Consciousness. (Thats probably the bodys difficulty in being completely receptive, yet its for IT to understand.) And that seems to be the attitude to be kept. Is it an attitude?Its a way of being. A way of being. First, there are no limits (but thats an old experience the body has had for a long time), no limits: theres a sort of capacity to identify with things; but thats a consequence, as it were, of the impelling Will (this central Will, if I may say so, which impels to action). And the body is like that (outspread gesture). Its become so acute, this impression of The two things (two absolutely contradictory things) have become so intense: one is an absolute in capacity to understand anything about anything, the realization that the thing anyhow eludes understanding; and at the same time, the experience that the limits of power are progressively lessening, fading, receding. This Power it has become fantastic! Fantastic, this Power.
At the same time, it showed (oh, its constantly, constantly teaching something), it showed how with people who still have the sense of ego, when they receive a little bit of this Power (that is, when this Power uses them), that causes a sort of panic, and it showed why: the ego becomes tremendous. And that was to show, to make the body clearly understand the necessity of its present state: it has almost no more sense of its existence, as little as possible; that mostly comes back with things that still grate quite materially. But if, at such times, the body can, or has the time to, or knows how to go into this state of then the difficulty vanishes as if by miracle, in a trice. There was even something to show how, this way (Mother presses her two index fingers together, then slightly lowers the index finger of her right hand), there is sufferingthis way, theres suffering and when its like that (Mother raises slightly the index finger of her left hand), it no longer exists. (Mother does the same gesture again): This way, suffering; that way, it no longer exists. So the body may know exactly in which position suffering no longer exists.
0 1969-05-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a question of intensity of faith, or of the power to bear that faith gives. All depends on the capacity to go through the necessary experiences.
In any case, all the old notions, all the old ways of understanding things, all that is quite over, its past.
0 1969-06-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you know, this little S.U. (Ive never said this; I forget when it wasyears ago, she was big as a boot), when your famous Sannyasin3 came here, he wanted to do a worship to the Mother,4 and he did one thing which isnt regarded as very charitable (that individual had a certain capacity): he put into this child an emanation of a higher spirit (which he thought was an emanation of the Mother), he carried out the ceremony, and afterwards (it was infinitely too powerful for the child), he came to me and told me, Ill send her to you for you to take out the emanation, we cant keep that!
So he sent me the child.
0 1969-09-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Human beings have the sense of their limitation, and they are under the impression that in order to grow, to increase, even to live on, they need to take from outside, because they live in the consciousness of their personal limitation. So, for them, what they give leaves a hole which they must fill by receiving something. Naturally, that is wrong. And in truth, if, instead of being shut up within the narrow limits of their little person, they were able to broaden their consciousness to the point of not only identifying with others within their narrow limits, but also to break out of those limits, to go beyond, spread out everywhere, unite with the one Consciousness and become all things, then, at that point, the narrow limits would vanish but not before. As long as you have a sense of narrow limits you want to take, because you are afraid to lose. You spend, and you want to get back. Thats why, my child! Because if you were spread out in all things, if all the vibrations that come in or go out expressed the need to merge in everything, to broaden, to grow, not remaining in our limits but breaking out of them, eventually identifying with the whole, you would have nothing to lose anymore, because you would have everything. Only, you dont know, so you cannot do it. You try to take, to accumulate and accumulate, but its impossible, you cannot accumulate: you must identify. And you want to get back the little you have: you give out a good thought, and expect some gratefulness; you give out a little of your affection, and expect to be given some. Because you do not have the capacity to be the good thought in everything, do not have the capacity to be the affection, the tenderness in everything. You feel like that, all cut off and limited, and you are afraid of losing everything, afraid of losing what you have because you would be diminished. While if you are capable of identifying, you no longer need to draw to yourself. The more you spread out, the more you have. The more you identify, the more you become. And then, instead of taking, you give. And the more you give, the more you grow.
What year was it?
0 1969-09-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. Then the woman died the day after giving birth, and the child is now seventeen, I think. He told me, Thats how it is: there is NO power, it doesnt existthere is That, the Harmony; everyone has the capacity to call this Harmony, and It acts. And It acts in a second, instantly. But then, he told me, Here is my question (as far as I can express what he said). Basically, he is aware of quite an extraordinary Powerthough I should say I didnt feel a shadow of ego in this man, theres no trace of ego. He read my book, but that didnt teach him things, it only confirmed some experiences. This man spoke to me for more than three hours, and apart from you and Sri Aurobindo, I have heard no one speak like him. It was a sage who spoke, a living experience that sprang forth, there wasnt one thing he said you wouldnt subscribe to: those great Forces of Harmony that must be embodied on earth, brought down on earth It was really a sage who spoke, and those were your words, Sri Aurobindos words.
Thats what A. told me; the first day when he received him, he told me, I thought I was listening to you or to Sri Aurobindo!
0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It doesnt ask any questions, but now and then, its conscious of its state of mediocrity, and so, quite naturally, it wonders how it happens to have been chosen to do this work? And it clearly appears to be a sort of goodwill arising from its sense of insignificance. The least sense of capacity and worth takes away all endurance. But it doesnt have that at all, so that enables it to go on.
Did I tell you the story of that child who came here? That child came, holding this (Mother points to a small yellow bird on her table); he thought it was a swan: its a goose, of course, but he thought it was a swan, and he gave it to me very nicely, saying, Its You. I saw in his thought that he was convinced it was a swan, that is to say, the soul. But then, I saw with my own eyes that it was a goose (Mother laughs), and I said, Yes, its true! (Laughter) and that was precisely Oh, Im keeping it, its precisely thata goose (Mother laughs).
0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It must be that. There are innumerable layers of consciousness. The development (the universal development) has progressively enabled us to become conscious of each layer; the more developed one is, the more one perceives the differences between layers. And its only when one is conscious of ALL the layers of consciousness and when they form nothing but a unity (but a unity conscious of its multiplicity), its only then that whats in the deepest depths the Supreme Consciousness can manifest fully. And in bodies, there are still layers that arent fully conscious; there are still layers that remain as a residue of all that preceded: the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, all that. So the whole fully conscious part of the cells is fully illumined, but Besides, one just has to see (Mother shows the skin of her hands, visibly untransformed). It has become EXTREMELY sensitive, the slightest shock causes a It has become extremely sensitive. It appears not to have the same density but the appearance is exactly the same. Those who have an inner vision see something [another form of Mother], but thats only because they have the capacity of inner vision. So thats it [i.e., the residue]. You understand, in the consciousness of the cells, there is the consciousness which is internal to the cells, so to speak, and which is fully, fully conscious, but theres something that remains like this (Mother gestures to show a crust-like covering the residue). So then, that work a man like A.R. hasnt done, you see: its a sort of hazy general consciousness. He himself is conscious of something stronger than his body, and which uses his body, it seems to me. In the world, its very useful and can give birth to all sorts of things. But he isnt ready for the transformation, you understandhimself, his body. He has a sort of inner certitude that it CAN be, but I dont know unless the Lord wants it to take place that way; that would be amusingreally, I would find it very amusing!
Because he speaks of a work of transformation of the cells.
0 1969-12-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, certainly! And he would have the capacity to convince people, I think.
(silence)
0 1970-01-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Similarly, that sort of thing (Sri Aurobindo too calls it perception), that perception which replaces vision and all the rest is very strong at night. Its hard to say. You have an impression of it when you wake up, but not the capacity; the full capacity is not there.
(silence)
0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, logically you are right, because the healing capacity is there; so if one has the healing capacity, there is the capacity to remedy wear and tear. Obviously.
But all possibilities are there! Its only the question of Matter having to adapt to the infiltration of another force.
0 1970-04-29, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"I used to hate and avoid pain and resent its infliction; but now I find that had I not so suffered, I would not now possess, trained and perfected, this infinitely and multitudinously sensible capacity of delight in my mind, heart and body. God justifies himself in the end even when He has masked Himself as a bully and a tyrant."
Mother commented it thus:
0 1970-05-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, ordinary sightgone; ordinary hearinggone; capacity to work (Mother makes a gesture of writing)gone. And it can ONLY come back in the true way, when But Ive had the proof that EVERYTHING can come back WONDERFULLY. The question is
I have understood, the body has understoodit has understood, it has had the experience. What will come next? Well see.
0 1970-06-13, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like a capacity of directing (gesture of concentrating the Force through a channel), and something that has the power to sweep away resistances.
Thats why they didnt let him go with the Pope, they would have done something together.3
0 1970-06-27, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres really nothing there (Mother touches her head), it doesnt go through there, theres nothing there. Its something something without a precise form, which has an INNUMERABLE experience at the same time, with a capacity of expression that has remained as it is, that is to say, incapable.
(silence)
0 1970-09-02, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, the little body the little body is like a point, but its impression is of being the expression of an AWESOME power, and its like this: no capacity, no expression, nothing and rather rather miserable. And yet its like a condensationcondensationlike the condensation of an AWESOME power! At times, it even has difficulty bearing it, you understand.
All experiences are as if multiplied a hundred times. Only, it has difficulty learning.
0 1970-10-14, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If, for any reason, this body becomes unusable, the universal Mother will again start manifesting in hundreds of individualities according to their capacity and receptivity, each one being a partial manifestation of the Universal Consciousness.
Thats important.
0 1971-01-16, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I tried every possible remedy: changing pain into pleasure, suppressing the capacity to feel, thinking about something else. I tried all the tricksnot a single one worked. There is something in the physical world as it is which is not (how can I put it?) which still is not open to the Divine Vibration. And that something is what causes absolutely all the trouble. The Divine Consciousness is not perceived. And so there are lots of imaginary things (but very real to the sensation) that exist, while that, the only thing thats true, is not perceived. But its better now. Its better.
Its really interesting. I think something has been achieved from a general standpoint (Mother makes a grinding gesture); it wasnt just the difficulty of one body or one person: I think something was achieved in terms of preparing Matter to receive in the right way, correctlyits as if it had been received incorrectly before, and it has learned to receive in the true way.
0 1971-03-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The solution is in the capacity for oneness. But how? (Mother shakes her head)
(long silence)
0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, you have completely confused the psychic and the spiritual. The psychic, the soul, the Fire within, Agni, does not belong to the mental bubble or to any bubble: it is the Divine in matter. It is that little Fire which opens the door to the great solar Fire of the New Consciousness. It is the instrument of the yoga of the superman (when I speak of turning on the psychic switch, I am there taking the word in the vulgar and ridiculous sense of people seeking visionary and occult experiencesnot in the true sense). Others in every age have had the experience of the psychic, of the inner Fire, but aside from the Rishis, no one used it to transform matter; the religions have made a purely devotional and mystical thing out of it. As for the spiritual, that includes all the planes of consciousness above the ordinary mind. It is the path of ascent. And that is where I repeatedly and emphatically, and from experience, say that those great Experiences, which have to be turned into spiritual summits, are part of the mental bubble (including the overmind): they are the rarefied summits on which the being thins out into a marvelous whiteness, immense, royal, without a ripple of trouble, in an eternal peacewhich can last for millenniums without its changing the world one iota, by definition. But the spiritual is not the supramental, and when one touches the supramental, it seems to be almost a whole other Spirit, it is so compact, warm, powerful, present, embodied and radiantly solid in broad daylight. That is the Radiance which Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to bring down on earththey said over and over that their yoga was new, new, newand it is through the simple little fire inside us that we can enter into direct contact with That, without sitting in the lotus position or leaving life. When one touches That, the spiritual heights seem pale. That is all I have to say. So we do not at all need to be superyogis to have this contact, and those who have found Nirvana, or what have you, have not advanced one inch toward That, because the clue to That is not up there at all or outside, but in your own small capacity of flame.
So if instead of splitting hairs, you set out boldly on the road, afire, you would perhaps discover that we are indeed at the Hour of God and that a single spark of sincere effort, at ones own level, opens doors which have been closed for millenniums.
0 1971-06-12, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for sadhana, it is not that you have no capacity, but what has happened to many has happened to you the physical consciousness has risen up and veiled the psychic which was about to come forward. It has risen up with the insistence on the value of its own small ignorant ideas and feelings and refusing to let them go. When the psychic comes forward, all larger and more enlightened movements replace them. But usually before that happens, these things rise up and control the consciousness for a while. This state need not be a permanent condition and if one sees clearly and rejects them consciously, then it can be got over quickly but even if it lasts a long period, it can in the end be overcome and that is happening to many now. Naturally, the physical consciousness persuades the mind that it is everlasting and cannot be got over; but that is not true.
May 21, 1937
0 1971-10-02, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The problem is deeper, of course, as you well know. What is at stake at the end of the present mental cycle is the creation of a new man that is what we are trying to do here with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Great Forces are at work here, in a humble way. And I am happy that Supermanhood did not leave you insensitive. Indeed, its cry needs you and your capacity to grasp the profound Sense of our human crisis.
May the Force of Sri Aurobindo and Mother be with you.
0 1971-10-06, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It all depends (Mother touches her hands) on the proportion of what needs to be eliminated, you see. And the capacity for transformation.
But, Mother, I think it depends even more on its necessity for the worldon the necessity of your transformation for the world.
0 1971-10-16, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, for instance, the capacity Madame Thon had to absorb vitality, etc.you remember, when she put a grapefruit on her chest?
Yes.
0 1971-10-30, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, right now I am having a whole series of experiences concerning the latent power of creation of the individual consciousness, I mean the capacity we have of knowing thingsknowing or wanting them, as we sayin the individual consciousness before they take place. We say I want this, but thats merely an intermediary device, its actually the consciousness on the way to something and having at once the vision of what is to be and the capacity to realize it.
Thats the next stage. Afterwards.
0 1971-12-04, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I could say that my physical capacity has been greatly diminished by age, but I see why thats so, why it had to wait for this advanced age.
Yes, that I too understand, because had it happened to you at thirty, say, no one would have understood the physical ordeal you are going throughbecause its as if the body had to die in order to get to the other side.
0 1972-01-12, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To a child, you could say that the Supreme unfolds himself before his own consciousness, like someone unreeling an endless film. He projects what is here (gesture pointing within, at heart level), in front of him, like that. And since the supramental being would have the capacity to be consciously one with the Divine, he would at once be the seer and the seen.
There are just no words to say it.
0 1972-01-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it possible to develop in oneself a capacity for healing?
By consciously uniting with the Divine Force, all is possible in principle. But a procedure has to be found, depending on the case and the individual.
0 1972-03-29b, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But many yogisat least somehad the capacity to absorb energy directly, Mother, without eating. There are many such stories from the past.
Yes, but I dont know if theyre true.
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 1972-07-19, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We must. (To Satprem) You have the capacity to (Mother drives her fist down into Matter). Defeatism belongs to the subconscientit MUST change, it must. Defeatism is anti-divine.
(silence)
0 1972-07-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, one does in higher regions. Sri Aurobindo insisted, he said you were ready to get the supermans consciousness not superman: supramental, the supramental consciousness. And thats what he wanted to give you. He wanted he insisted that you should be preoccupied with THAT, concentrated on that, because you have the capacity. In this domain the numbers are VERY small, so its important that all those who can do it do it. Thats how I saw things.
I understand.
0 1972-08-09, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The interesting thing in man is that materially speaking, he is a mere nothing, a second lost in eternitya tangled web of weaknesses but in terms of consciousness, he has the capacity to understand. His consciousness is capable of contacting the supreme Consciousness. So naturally there are all those who wanted to merge back into that Consciousness, but Sri Aurobindo said: the point is not to merge back into it but to make the world capable of manifesting that supreme Consciousness.
Basically, its that.
0 1972-09-13, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How can I say it? I dont want to be too specific. I mean I want each one to understand according to his capacityyou follow? Do you follow what I mean?
Yes, yes, Mother!
0 1973-01-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The possibility of suffering, for examplesuffering from pain, suffering a purely physical fact (all the nonphysical things are: Mother makes an immutable and peaceful gesture to indicate the inner states), but something purely physical: really, the capacity for suffering must disappear. Not that I dont want to suffer, but it isnt a nice gift to give people!
Five years.
0 1973-01-20, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One can govern without taking sides. That is the mistake of all the governments; they reduce their capacity tremendously.
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?
02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our dulled capacity soon would cease to feel
Or our mortal frailty could not long endure,
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Here also in the vital three ranges can be distinguished the lower becoming more and more turbid and turbulent and fierce or more and more self-centred and selfish. These levels can best be seen by their impact on our vital being and formations there. The first, the highest one, the meeting or confluence of the Mind and the Vital is the Heart, the centre of emotion, the knot of the external or instrumental vehicle, of the frontal consciousness, behind which is born and hides the true individualised consciousness, the psyche. The mid-region is the Higher Vital consisting of larger (egoistic) dynamisms, such as high ambition, great enterprise, heroic courage, capacity for work, adventure, masterfulness, also such movements as sweeping violences, mighty hungers, and intense arrogances. The physical seat of this movement is, as perhaps the Tantras would say, the domain ranging between the heart and the navel. Lower down ranges the Lower Vital which consists of small desires, petty hankerings, blind cravingsall urges and impulses that are more or less linked up with the body and move to gross physical satisfactions.
But always the Consciousness is driving towards a yet greater disintegration and fragmentation, obscuration and condensation of self-oblivion. The last step in the process of transmutation or involution is Matter where consciousness has wiped itself out or buried itself within so completely and thoroughly that it has become in its outward form totally dark, dense, hard, pulverised into mutually exclusive grains. The supreme luminous Will of Consciousness in its gradual descent and self obliteration finally ends in a rigid process of mere mechanised drive.
--
Now this imprisoned consciousness in Matter forces Matter to be conscious again when driven on the upward gradient. This tension creates a fire, as it were, in the heart of Matter, a mighty combustion and whorl in the core of things, of which the blazing sun is an image and a symbol. All this pressure and heat and concussion and explosion mean a mighty struggle in Matter to give birth to that which is within. Consciousness that is latent must be made patent; it must reveal itself in Matter and through Matter, making Matter its vehicle and embodiment. This is the mystery of the birth of Life, the first sprouting of consciousness in Matter. Life is half-awakened consciousness, consciousness yet in a dream state. Its earliest and most rudimentary manifestation is embodied in the plant or vegetable world. The submerged consciousness strives to come still further up, to express itself to a greater degree and in a clearer mode, to become more free and plastic in its movements; hence the appearance of the animal as the next higher formulation. Here consciousness delivers itself as a psyche, a rudimentary one, no doubt, a being of feeling and sensation, and elementary mentality playing in a field of vitalised Matter. Even then it is not satisfied with itself, it asks for a still more free and clear articulation: it is not satisfied, for it has not yet found its own level. Hence after the animal, arrives man with a full-fledged Mind, with intelligence and self-consciousness and capacity for self-determination.
Thus we see that evolution, the unfolding of consciousness follows exactly the line of its involution, only the other way round: the mounting consciousness re-ascends step by step the same gradient, retraces the same path along which it had descended. The descending steps are broadly speaking (I) Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, (2) Supermind and its secondary form Overmind, (3) Mind(i) mind proper and (ii) the intermediary psyche, (4) Life, (5) Matter. The ascending consciousness starting from Matter rises into Life, passes on through Life and Psyche into Mind, driving towards the Supermind and Sachchidananda. At the present stage of evolution, consciousness has arrived at the higher levels of Mind; it is now striving to cross it altogether and enter the Overmind and the Supermind. It will not rest content until it arrives at the organisation in and through the Supermind: for that is the drive and purpose of Nature in the next cycle of evolution.
02.05 - Robert Graves, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
However the poet says that as the toadstool is born in the midst of thunder and lightning, his strength and capacity are of the nature of thunderenduring and hard and powerful. Born thus it spreads everywhere and lasts through all time. From the beginning of creation this god has sprouted up everywhere, as giver of pleasure and ecstasy and intoxication. To worship him is to worship earth, to worship Dionysus himself. But one needs to worship this god in the right way, to give oneself away wholly to him. Once upon a time the demons for some selfish interest wanted to capture and imprison him. The result was disastroushe thought of depriving them of their power of movement and drowning them into the ocean. On the contrary, to the devoted which world does he reveal, which delight bring? Let us listen to the poet:
Lead us with your song, tall Queen of earth!
02.09 - The Paradise of the Life-Gods, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Of an untired capacity for bliss,
A might that could explore its own infinite
02.10 - Independence and its Sanction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The lead Sri Aurobindo gave in this connection has not, sad to say, sufficiently attracted the attention of our people. Indeed what he suggested was exactly, under the circumstances, the best way to acquire the necessary fitness, organised strength, capacity, the might and consequently the rightjust the sanction, in other words, that can uphold a demand. We are always ignoring the broad fact that we have not the wherewithal to fight the British, even if it is found necessary to do so for our purpose. A revolution, meaning a chaos and confusion, is not the best means to drive out the "die-hard Imperialism" as we choose to call it. Nor can cunning or expediency or legal jugglery be of any avail, nor work that is perfunctory, desultory, scampy. The force that can compel a change in the British has got to be of a different character: neither emotional excitement nor anger nor spite nor a philosophical or moral vindication of our cause can be an adequate lever. We declare it is a war: well then, we will have to arm ourselves as in war. That is to say, we must comm and a strength that is calm, collected, poised, organisedobjectively acquired and marshalled, not simply subjectively thought out or taken for granted. That alone can be the imperative sanction to all our claims and demands, our wishes and aspirations.
Precisely, the present war brings to our door the opportunity most suited to the acquisition and development of this power and strength. The very things the Indian temperament once had in abundance but now lacks most and has to recoverdiscipline, organization, impersonality and objectivity in work, hard and patient labour, skill of execution in minute detailsqualities by virtue of which power is not only acquired, but maintained and fosteredare now made more easily available. These qualities cannot be mastered and developed with such facility and swiftness as under the pressure of the demands of a war. This does not mean that we have got to be militarists. But the world is such that if we wish to live and prosper we must know how to make use of the materials and conditions that are given to us. Many good things are imbedded among bad ones, and wisdom and commonsense do not advise us to throw out the baby with the bath-water. That is another matter, however.
02.11 - New World-Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We do not doubt that it is the deliberate policy of these 'vampires' to keep us Indians down eternally as their serfs and slaves. But whatever be the truth of the fact in the past, it is a pity we do not see that things have changed a good deal and are changing steadily and profoundly and inexorably. It is not, as it is so often demanded, that there has been a change of, heart, in the sense that one has become saintly, self-forgetful, self-sacrificing, altruistic. We, on our part, have not become so and it is idle to expect of others to be so. What has happened is a physical change, a change, almost a revolution in the external conditions of life in the world, in the geographical and economic conditions, for example. The geographical revolution is this that all the nations and peoples of the earth have been thrown together to intermingle, have been forced to come into close and inextricable communion with one another: all barriers of distance and physical inaccessibility have been removed and practically eliminated. The universe may be expanding, but the earth has shrunk and has become very small indeed. A signal example of the kind of blunder that one could commit in this respect was that of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who said, not knowing what he said on the eve of the present war, that Czechoslovakia was a far-off foreign country whose fate is of no concern or consequence to the British. Well, Time-Spirit must have had a hearty laughter over the wisdom of the statesman: it did not take long for the British to see that Czechoslovakia is dangerously near, indeed, it touches the very frontier of the British Isles. We have flown over the mighty "humps" that separated countries and continents and levelled them and made of the earth one even continuous plain, as it were. Neither the Poles nor the peaks of the Himalayas can hide any longer their millennial secrets from man's newly acquired Argus eye. The span and accuracy of our flying capacity have left no corner of the earth to lie in quiet and splendid isolation.
The geographical revolution has led inevitably to the economic revolution which is not less momentous, pregnant with prophecies of brave new things. We all know that the modern world was ushered in with the industrial revolution. As a result of this new dispensation, world and society gradually divided into two camps: on one side, the industrialists and on the other the agriculturists, or, in a general way, the possessors of raw materials. The Imperialists formed the first group, while the latter, dominated by these, belonged to the Colonies. The "backward" countries and people who could not take to industry, but continued the old system became a helpless prey to the industrial nations. Africa and Asia and the South American countries came under the domination of European nations, rather the West European Nations: they became the suppliers of raw materials and also the market for finished products. Also within the same country occupying the imperial status, there came a division, a class division, as it is called. A few industrial magnates or trusts (France had its famous Two-Hundred Families) monopolised all the wealth, became the top-dog, the "Haves", the others were mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, serfs and slaves, the "Have-Nots". Exploitation was-the motto of the age. The "exploiters" and the "exploited", this trenchant duality was the whole truth of the social scheme and that summed up the entire malady of the collective life. Then came the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution which brought to a head the great crisis and initiated the change-over to new conditions. The French Revolution called up from the rear of social ranks and set in front the Third Estate and gradually formed and crystallised, with the aid of the Industrial Revolution, what is known as the Bourgeoisie. The Russian Revolution went a step farther. It dislodged the bourgeoisie and installed the Fourth Estate, the proletariate, as the head and front of society, its centre of power and governmental authority. In the meantime there was developing in the bourgeois society, too, a kind of socialism which aimed at the uplift and remoulding of the working class into a total social power. But the process could not, go far enough. The Industrial League, no doubt, began to release some of its monopolies, delegate some of its power and authority to the Proletariate and sought an armistice and entente; but still it is they who wielded the real power and gave to society the tone and impress of their characteristic authority. The Russian experiment made a bold departure and attempted to build up a new society from the very bottom: the manual labourers, they who produce with the sweat of their brow and make a society living and prosperous must also be its rulers. Now whatever the success or failure in regard to the perfect ideal, the thing achieved is solid; certain forces have been released that are working inexorably in and through even contrary appearances, they have come to stay and cannot be negatived. The urge, for example, towards a more equitable distribution of wealth and wealth-producing implements; an even balancing of economic values has been growing and gathering strength: it has become an asset of the body social. Instead of an unfettered competition between rival agencies, the mad drive for a jealous and closely guarded appropriation (rather, mis-appropriation) by private cartels, there has arisen an inevitable need for a unitary or co-operative control under a common direction, whether it be that of the state or some other body equally representing the common interest. In other words, the principle of co-operation has now become a living reality, a thing of practical politics. All effort towards progress and amelioration, cure of social ills and regaining of health and strength must lie in that direction: anything going the contrary way shall perforce be out of tune with the Time-Spirit and can cause only confusion, bring in stagnation or even regression.
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The economic status is not the only or even the chief or real status of man in the society. This should be an obvious truth. To reform or rebuild the society it is not enough to find a new economic basis, however more equitable and efficient. A man's value does not depend upon his wages nor even upon his wage earning capacity. A man's worth is not the function of his labour. To equate the two has been the capital error of "Das Kapital". That is not the Copernican revolution that is needed in the social body today.
Money was always a power and those who had money were always powerful in all ages and countries. Poverty annuls the entire host of good qualities you may have, says the Sanskrit proverb. Only this money power has been shifted from class to class or section to section in a society. In the modern age the demand and tendency is that those who are the first and immediate agents in the chain of the production of wealth should be given all the profit and all the advantage (barring of course the State itself which has the prior and major claim so long as it exists). The rest are considered as mere parasites. Those who do not thus directly produce or help in producing wealth are a burden upon the society and they have no justifiable place there: either they should change their vocation, declass themselves and become labourers or they must go to the wall, subsist somewhere somehow till they finally pass out of existence.
This theory of money power, in spite of its factual or practical truth, is not the whole truth. This is, I should say, the very old I Ptolemaic social system, in a new garb, which turns round man as an economic and physicalbeing. The Copernican system would view man chiefly as a psychological centre. A truly rational economic system can be based upon such an inner view of the situation. A merely economic view would take man as nothing more than a wage-earning machine and that will give the society and its government a mechanistic pattern. It will forget this simple truism that a man's worth is not and need not be always commensurate with his wage-earning capacity or even his usefulness as a citizen (in the way the atom-bomb Scientists are proving useful today).
Personal value will mean then not productive value, but creative value, that is to say, the capacity to create values, that means the consideration of the psychological and moral makeup of the individual.
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.
03.01 - The Malady of the Century, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ours is an age of hungerhunger for knowledge, for power, for enjoyment. But we do not know, nor care to know, the conditions under which alone such hunger can really be appeased. First of all, we think that to satisfy our hunger we have simply to go straight and pounce upon the object; we do not consider it at all necessary to look beforeh and to our assimilative nature and capacity. Our hunger serves only to multiply the objects of hunger; and the objects of hunger again multiply our hunger; this is the vicious circle in which we are entrapped. We hungered for progress, but what we have succeeded in getting is change and movement, speed and restlessness; we yearned for light, we have found only information; we looked for power, we have mastered a few tricks or clever manipulations; we aspired for happiness, we have stopped with stray pleasures and hence with dissatisfaction.
To relieve life of this mingled strain and tension, to lift it out of this ambiguity and uncertainty, to free it from this gravitational force that drives it towards what is superficial and externalto endow it with its real worth, we must find and possess life at a higher level, at its unspoilt source; we must first draw back and re-establish, this time consciously and integrally, the lost connection with our soul, the Divine in our being.
03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Hence the Mother gives the direction that though external lapses may be natural to our external nature, now that our inner consciousness has awakened, the vision and the earnestness to see and recognise our mistakes have developedassuming that this much of development has taken place in uswe must awake to the situation and be on the alert, we must bring such control to bear upon our vital impulses, upon our nervous centres as will prevent, for good and all, errors and stupidities from upsurging again and invading our physical self and our field of action. When we have reached this stage, we have acquired the capacity to ascend to another level of consciousness. It is then that we can lay the foundations of a new order in the worldit is then that along with the purification, the achievement will begin to take on a material form.
II
03.02 - Aspects of Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is this pluralisation which has resulted in a necessary polarisation in the human consciousness. We have gained a power which was not only rare but perhaps totally absent in the old world, at least in the general mind; we have reached in a novel way that very wideness or wholeness which was at the outset negatived by the urge towards separativeness and parcellation. Thus the modern mind can take in more view-points than oneeven contrary onesat the same time. The individual has acquired the capacityto put it in popular languageto enter into another's skin, not to be confined to its own outlook, limited within its linear groove, but to be able, with ease and grace to look through the eyes of others, even though they be on the other side of the arena. A wide and supple, large and subtle perception that goes round the entire contour of the observed object, not a perspective but a global view, is a characteristic capacity of the modern mind. We can see the same thing from all angles and distances; we can turn our gaze upon ourselves; we can see ourselves not only with our own way of looking but also as others see us, with equal detachment and impartiality. At least this is the character of the cultured, the representative man of today. Modern art too has sought in some of its significant expressions to demonstrate this protean nature of truth and reality, to bring out the simultaneity of its multiple modes, to give a living sense of its tangled dynamism.
We spoke of the extreme atomism of modern Science that has thrown into the background the solid unity of creation and is laying emphasis for the moment more upon the division and scattering of forces than upon the cohesiveness and identity of the substratum; still that unity has not been abrogated but has been maintained on the whole, even if as an underlying note. Not only so, the reign of multiplicity, by a curious detour, is working towards a discovery of enhanced unity. The plurality of the modern consciousness is moving towards a richer and intenser unity; it is not a static, but a dynamic unitya unity that does not suppress or merely transcend the diversity and disparity of its components but holds them together as an immanent force, and brings forth out of each its fullness of individuality. In the same way the present-day movement towards internationalism or supra-nationalism has produced a rebound towards regionalism or infra-nationalism. And the voice of anarchism tends to be as insistent as that of collectivism.
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the practice of Yoga a condition precedent is usually laid down: it is called adhikra, aptitude, fitness or capacity. Everybody does not possess this aptitude, it is urged, and; cannot take to a life of Yoga at one's sweet will. There must be a preparation, certain rules and regulations must be observed, some discipline must be followed and one must acquire certain qualities or qualifications, must reach a particular stage and degree, rise to a particular level of life and consciousness before one can successfully face the spiritual problem. It is not everyone that has a laisser-passer, a free pass to enter the city or citadel of the spirit.
The Upanishad gives the warning in most emphatic terms: This Atman is not to be gained by the weakling1 and again it declared:
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Shankara, at the very outset of his commentary on the Sutras, in explaining the very first words, speaks of a fourfold sadhana to acquire fitnessfitness, we may take it, for understanding the Sutras and the commentary and naturally for attaining the Brahman. It seems therefore to be an absolute condition that one must first acquire fitness, develop the right and adequate capacity before one should think of spiritual initiation.
The question, however, can be raised the moderns do raise it and naturally in the present age of science and universal educationwhy should not all men equally have the right to spiritual sadhana? If spirituality is the highest truth for man, his greatest good, his supreme ideal, then to deny it to anyone on the ground, for example, of his not being of the right caste, class, creed, or sex, to keep anyone at a distance on such or similar grounds is unreasonable, unjust, reprehensible. These notions, however, are born of a sentimental or idealistic or charitable disposition, but unfortunately they do not stand the impact of the realities of life. If you simply claim a thing or even if you possess a lawful right to a worthy object, you do not acquire thereby the capacity to enjoy it. Were it so, there would be no such thing as mal-assimilation. In the domain of spiritual sadhana there are any number of cases of defective metabolism. Those that have fallen, strayed from the Path, become deranged or even have had to leave the body, make up a casualty list that is not small. They were misfits, they came by their fate, because they encroached upon a thing they were not actually entitled to, they were dragged into a secret, a mystery to which their being was insensible.
In a general way we may perhaps say, without gross error, that every man has the right to become a poet, a scientist or a politician. But when the question rises in respect of a particular person, then it has to be seen whether that person has a natural ability, an inherent tendency or aptitude for the special training so necessary for the end in view. One cannot, at will, develop into a poet by sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible forces, beings of other worlds and you do not know how to deal with them. You raise ghosts and spirits, demons and godsFrankenstein monsters that are easily called up but not so easily laid. You break down under their impact, unless your adhr has already been prepared, purified and streng thened. Now, in secular matters, when, for example, you have the ambition to be a poet, you can try and fail, fail with impunity. But if you undertake the spiritual life and fail, then you lose both here and hereafter. That is why the Vedic Rishis used to say that the ear then vessel meant to hold the Soma must be properly baked and made perfectly sound. It was for this reason again that among the ancients, in all climes and in all disciplines, definite rules and regulations were laid down to test the aptitude or fitness of an aspirant. These tests were of different kinds, varying according to the age, the country and the Path followedfrom the capacity for gross physical labour to that for subtle perception. A familiar instance of such a test is found in the story of the aspirant who was asked again and again, for years together, by his Teacher to go and graze cows. A modern mind stares at the irrelevancy of the procedure; for what on earth, he would question, has spiritual sadhana to do with cow-grazing? In defence we need not go into any esoteric significance, but simply suggest that this was perhaps a test for obedience and endurance. These two are fundamental and indispensable conditions in sadhana; without them there is no spiritual practice, one cannot advance a step. It is absolutely necessary that one should carry out the directions of the Guru without question or complaint, with full happiness and alacrity: even if there comes no immediate gain one must continue with the same zeal, not giving way to impatience or depression. In ancient Egypt among certain religious orders there was another kind of test. The aspirant was kept confined in a solitary room, sitting in front of a design or diagram, a mystic symbol (cakra) drawn on the wall. He had to concentrate and meditate on that figure hour after hour, day after day till he could discover its meaning. If he failed he was declared unfit.
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.
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The inner soul the psychicvery often undergoes a secret preparation, develops and comes forward but just waits, as it were, behind the thin though opaque screen; and because of that it gives no objective indication of its growth and readiness. We see no patent sign of what is usually known as fitness or aptitude or capacity. Otherwise how to explain the conversion of a profligate and dilettante like Augustine, or of a rebel like Paul, or of scamps like Jagai-Madhai. Often the purest gold hides in the basest ore, the diamond is coal turned, as it were, inside out. This, one would say, is the Divine Grace that blows where it listsmakes of the dumb a prattler, of the lame a mountain-climber. Yet, but what is this Divine Grace and how does it move and act? It does not act on all and sundry, it does not act on all equally. What is the reason? Appearances often belie the reality: a contrary mask is put on, it would appear, deliberately, with a set purpose. The: sense and significance of this mystery? The hard, obscure, obstinate, rebel outer crust may continue long but it is corroded from within and one day, all on a sudden, it crumbles and dissolves and becomes in a new avatar the vehicle and receptacle of the very thing it opposed and denied.
Virtues are not indications of the fire of the inner soul, nor are vices irremediable obstacles to its growth. The inner soul, we have said, feeds upon allit is indeed fire, the omnivorous, sarvabhuk,virtues and vices and everything else and gather strength from everywhere. The mystery of miracles, of a sudden change or reversal or revolution in consciousness and way of life lies in the omnipotency of the psychic being. The psychic being has the power of making the apparently impossible, for this reason that it is a portion of the almighty Divine, it is the supreme Conscious-Power crystallised and canalised in a centre for the sake of manifestation. It is a particle from the Being, a spark of the Consciousness, a ripple from the Delight cast into the fastnesses of Matter and the, material body. Now, it is the irresistible urge of this particle, this spark, this ripple to grow and expand, to become in the end the Vast the Ocean and the Sun and the sphere of Infinityto become that not merely in an essential status but in a dynamic and apparent becoming also. The little soul, originally no bigger than a thumb, goes forward through one life after another enlarging and intensifying itself till it recovers and establishes its parent reality in this material body here below, till it unveils what is latent within itself, what is its own, what is itself,its integral self-fulfilment, the Divine integrality.
Here in his inner being, as part and parcel of the Divine, man is absolutely free, has infinite capacity and unbounded aptitude; for here he is master, not slave of Nature, and it is slavery to Nature, that limits and baulks and stultifies man. So does the Upanishad declare in a magnificent and supreme utterance:
It is he in whom the soul, sunk in the impenetrable cavern of the body, darkened by dualities, has awakened and become vigilant, he it is who is the master of the universe and the master of all, yea, his is this world, he is this world.5
In the practice of Yoga the fitness or capacity that the inner being thus lends is the only real capacity that a sadhaka possesses; and the natural, spontaneous, self-sufficing initiation deriving from the inner being is the only initiation that is valid and fruitful. Initiation does not mean necessarily an external rite or ceremony, a mantra, an auspicious day or moment: all these things are useless and irrelevant once we take our stand on the au thentic self-competence of the soul. The moment the inner being has taken the decision that this time, in this life, in this very body, it will manifest itself, take possession of the body and life and mind and wait no more, at that moment itself all mantra has been uttered and all initiation taken. The disciple has made the final and definitive offering of his heart to his Guru the psychic Guruand sought refuge in him and the Guru too has definitely accepted him.
Mantra or initiation, in its essence, is nothing else than contacting the inner being. In our Path, at least, there is no other rite or rule, injunction or ceremony. The only thing needed is to awake to the consciousness of the psychic being, to hear its callto live and move and act every moment of our life under the eye of this indwelling Guide, in accordance with its direction and impulsion. Our initiation is not therefore a one-time affair only; but at every moment, at each step, it has to be taken again and again, it must be renewed, revitalised, furthered and streng thened constantly and unceasingly; for it means that at each step and at every moment we have to maintain the contact of our external consciousness with the inner being; at each step and every moment we have to undergo the test of our sincerity and loyalty the test whether we are tending to our inner being, moving in its stream or, on the contrary, walking the way of our external animal nature, whether the movements in the mind and life and body are controlled by their habitual inferior nature or are open to and unified with their hidden divine source. This recurrent and continuous initiation is at the secret basis of all spiritual disciplinein the Integral Yoga this is the one and all-important principle.
03.03 - Arjuna or the Ideal Disciple, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such was Arjuna's capacity; herein lay his strength, his spiritual superiority. It was because he could be so intimate with the Divine as to call him his friend and companion and playmate and speak to him in familiar and homely termseven though he felt contrition for having in this way perhaps slighted the Lord and not paid sufficient regard towards him. Yet this turn of his soul and nature points to the straightness and simplicity and candidness that were there and it was this that helped to call in the Divine and the Divine choice to fall upon him.
Yudhishthira may have been and is greatgreater perhaps than Arjunain many ways. But the Divine is no respecter of greatness: he looks only for the little thing no larger than the thumb secreted within the heart, what is the quality, how it rings. We might recall in this connection that the first anthropoid ape who evolved into man or showed the definite turn towards humanity could not have been a mighty ape, great in the qualities of its species; rather the probability is that it was a very commonplace, unpretentious, inglorious ape in whom the first ray of human reason dawned, and perhaps with his frail and delicate physical frame he was at a great disadvantage in the struggle for existence with his big and burly and great comrades. And yet it was such a one who surmounted apehood. Similarly, a great man, great in the human qualities need not necessarily be the most eligible for the spiritual realisation. Na medhay na bahunsrutena1.
03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not quite so, certainly. The consciousness (rather, the self-consciousness) that man has gained in place of the unconsciousness or semi-consciousness, characteristic of the general mass in the past, and the growing sense of individuality and personal worth, which is an expression of that consciousness, are his assets, the hall-mark of his present-day nature and outlook and activity. The consciousness may not have always been used wisely, but still it is a light that has illumined him, brought him an awareness of himself and of things, that is new and in a special way close and intimate and revealing. The light is perhaps not of the kind that comes direct from high altitudesit is, as it were, a transverse ray cutting aslant; nonetheless, through its grace a self-revelation and a self-valuation have been possible in spheres hitherto unsurveyed and lost in darkness, and on a scale equally unprecedented. Life has found a self-light. It is indeed as yet a glare, lurid and uncertain, but it has the capacity to develop into, and call in, the white and tranquil effulgence of the Soul-light and the Supreme Light of which it is the image and precursor.
Another similar cycle can be traced farther back in the past. The classicism of Grco-Latin culture dominated by mind and reasonalthough it was a kind of higher mind and intuitive reasonwas supplanted by the heart movement that Christ and the Christian cult initiated.
03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is man's great privilege that, unlike the animal, he can surpass himself (the capacity, we may note, upon which the whole Nietzschean conception of humanity was based). Man is not bound to his human nature, to his anthropomorphism, he can rise above and beyond it, become what is (apparently) non-human. Therefore the Gita teaches: By thy self upraise thy self, lower not thy self by thy self. Indeed, as we have said, man means the whole gamut of existence. All the worlds and all the beings in all the worlds are also within his frame; he has only to switch or focus his consciousness on to a particular point or direction and he becomes a particular type in life. Man can be the very supreme godhead or at the other extreme a mere brute or any other intermediary creature in the hierarchy extending between the two.
The Divine means the All: whatever there is (manifest or beyond) is within Him and is Himself. Man too who is within that Divine is the Divine in a special way; for he is a replica or epitome of the Divine containing or embodying the threefold status and movement of the Divine the Transcendent, the Cosmic and the Individual. He is co-extensive with the Divine. Only, the Divine is conscious, supremely conscious, while Man is unconscious or at best half-conscious. God has made himself the world and its creatures, the transcendental has become the material cosmos, true; but God has made himself Man in a special sense and for a special purpose. Man is not a fabrication of the Lower Maya, a formation thrown up in the evolutionary course by a temporary idea in the Cosmic Mind and developed through the play of forces; on the other hand, it is a typal reality, a Real-Ideaa formation of the original truth-consciousness, the Divine's own transcendental existence. Man is the figure of the Divine Person. The Impersonal become or viewed as the Personal takes up the human aspect, the human, that is to say, as its original prototype in the superconscience.
03.07 - Brahmacharya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Modern education means storage of information, knowledge of thingsas much knowledge of as many things as it is possible for the brain to contain. The older ideal, however, was not so much knowledge, that is to say, packet of knowings, but capacity, first capacity in a general way, and then as its application, the capacity of knowledge. The problem was to locate, that is to say, find out the source of energy then master it, increase it, harness it and utilise it. The physico-vital energy is the most elementary and elemental energy that is nearest to us and most easily available. It is the basic energy; man starts his life with that, a child possesses it abundantly. The first problem is how to store it; evidently it is most liable to be thrown or frittered away. The first form of the discipline in the preparatory stage of early life is regularity in habits, methodical physical exercises; even a fixed routine sometimes helps much. Next comes self-control, continence, physical purity. This is Brahmacharya proper. It means the exercise of conscious will.
We do not speak of Brahmacharya in relation to a child. The discipline can be taken up only when the body and the consciousness have attained a certain degree of growth and development. A child grows in the full free play of its life movements: the care or attention of others should weigh upon it as lightly as possible, maintaining only an atmosphere of happy influence and protection. The transition from the stage of free play to conscious control is marked in Indian society by the ceremony of upanayana, the first approach or initiation: it is the beginning of the life of Brahmacharya.
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The energy that one stores by continence, regular habits and self-discipline increases also in that way. Sometimes special methodskriyaare adopted to help the process, Asana or Pranayama, for example. But an inner and a more psychological procedure is needed, a concentration of will and consciousnessa kind of dhyana, in other wordsin order to be able to take the next step in discipline. For after the storage and increase of energy comes the sublimation of energy, that is to say, the physico-vital energy transmuted into the energy of mental substance, medh. Sublimation means also the increase of brain-power, an enhancement in the degree and quality of its capacity. This has nothing to do with the volume of knowledge enclosed (the mass of information to which we referred before) the growth is with regard to the very stuff of the mind from within, the natural strength of intelligence that can be applied to any field of knowledge with equal success and felicity.
The basis and the immediate aim of education according to the ancient system was to develop this fundamental mental capacity: the brain's power to think clearly, consistently and deeply, to undergo labour without tiring easily and also a general strength and steadiness in the nerves. The transference of nervous energy into brain energy is also a secret of the process of sublimation. It is precisely this aspect of education that has been most neglected in modern times. We give no thought to this fundamental: we leave the brain to develop as it may (or may not), it is made to grow under pressuremore to inflate than to growby forcing into it masses of information. The result at best is that it is sharpened, made acute superficially or is overgrown in a certain portion of it in respect of a narrow and very specialised function, losing thereby a healthy harmony and homogeneity in the total movement. The intellectual's nervous instability is a very common phenomenon among us.
In recent times, however, we have begun to view children's education in a different light. It is being more and more realised that things are not to be instilled into the child from outside, but that the child should be allowed to grow and imbibe naturally. The teacher is only a companion and a guide: he is to let the child move according to its own inclinations, follow its own line of curiosity; he can open up and present new vistas of curiosity, seek to evoke new interests. Sympathy and encouragement on his side giving scope to freedom and autonomous development for the childthis is the watchword and motto for the ideal teacher.
03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All art is based upon this peculiar virtue of the mind that naturally and spontaneously transforms or distorts the objective world presented to its purview. The question, then, is only of the degree to which the metamorphosis has been carried. At the one end, there is the art of photography, in which the degree of metamorphosis is at its minimum; at the other, there seems to be no limit, for the mind's capacity to dissolve and recreate the world of sense-perception is infinite and many modern schools of European art have gone even beyond the limit that the "unnatural" Indian art did not consider it necessary to transgress. Now, the classical artist selects a position as close as he can to the photographer, tries to give the mind's view of Nature and creation, as far as possible, in the style and norm of the sense-perceptions. He takes his stand upon these and from there reaches out towards whatever imaginative reconstructions are justified within the bounds laid out by them. The general ground-plan is, almost rigorously, the form given by the physical eye. The art of the East, and even, to a large extent, the art of mediaeval Europe, followed a different line. Here the scheme of the sense-perceptions was rejected, the artist sought to build on other foundations. His procedure was, first, to get a focus within the mind, to discover a psychological standpoint, and from there and in accordance with the subtler laws and conventions of an inner vision create a world that is unique and stands by itself. The aim was always to build from within, at the most, from within outwards, but not from without, not even from without inwards. This inner world has its own laws and they differ from the laws of optics which govern the physical sight; but there is no reason why it should be called unnatural. It is unnatural only in the sense that it does not copy physical Nature; it is quite natural in the 1 sense that it is a faithful reproduction of another, a psychological Nature.
Indian art is pre-eminently and par excellence the art of this inner re-formation and revaluation. It has thrown down completely and clearly the rigid scaffolding of the physical vision. We take here a sudden leap, as it were, into another world, and sometimes the feeling is that everything is reversed; it is not exactly that we feel ourselves standing on our heads, but it is, as if, in the Vedic phrase, the foundations were above and all the rest branched out from them downwards. The artist sees with an eye, and constructs upon a plan that conveys the merest excuse of an actual visible world. There are other schools in the East which have also moved very far away from the naturalistic view; yet they have kept, if not the form, at least, the feeling of actuality in their composition. Thus a Chinese, a Japanese, or a Persian masterpiece cannot be said to be "natural" in the sense in which a Tintoretto, or even a Raphael is natural; yet a sense of naturalness persists, though the appearance is not naturalistic. What Indian art gives is not the feeling of actuality or this sense of naturalness, but a feeling of truth, a sense of realityof the deepest reality.
03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This disillusionment is the crisis at which the soul has arrivedthis tearing down of the painted arras that hid the naked horror of man's beastly nature and the ugly vanity and stagy show that the world is. The revelation was so sudden and stunning to the innocent and aspiring soul that it lost for the moment all its bearings, its natural strength and capacity and will, and fell from its high status into the slough of dark and despondent impotency.
Another personLaertesplaced in an analogous situation but not worried by the promptings of idealism and the sense of discrepancy between the ideal and the real, takes the world as it is, considers it all right and moves straight to his purpose; he is not a divided being, but in full and integral possession of himself and of his instruments of actioneven though this solid pragmatism does not avail him much in the end.
03.11 - The Language Problem and India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Even then, even though French has been ousted from the market-place, it holds still a place of honour in the cultural world, among the lite and the intelligentsia. I have said French rules the continent of Europe. Indeed even now an intellectual on the ,continent feels more at ease in French and would prefer to have the French version of a theme or work rather than the English. Indeed we may say in fact that the two languages appeal to two types of mentality, each expressing a characteristically different version of the same original truth or fact or statement. If you wish to have your ideas on a subject clear, rational and unambiguous, you must go to French. French is the language par excellence of law and logic. Mental presentation, as neat and transparent as possibly can be is the special aid French language brings to you. But precisely because it is intellectually so clear, and neat, it has often to avoid or leave out certain shades and nuances or even themes which do not go easily into its logical frame. English is marvellous in this respect, that being an illogical language it is more supple and pliant and rich and through its structural ambiguities can catch and reflect or indicate ideas and realities, rhythms and tones that are supra-rational. French, as it has been pointed out by French writers themselves, is less rich in synonyms than English. There each word has a very definite and limited (or limiting) connotation, and words cannot be readily interchanged. English, on the other hand, has a richer, almost a luxuriant vocabulary, not only in respect of the number of words, but also in the matter of variation in the meaning a given word conveys. Of course, double entendre or suggestiveness is a quality or capacity that all languages that claim a status must possess; it is necessary to express something of the human consciousness. Still, in French that quality has a limited, if judicious and artistic application; in English it is a wild growth.
French expresses better human psychology, while meta-physical realities find a more congenial home in the English language. This is not to say that the English are born meta-physicians and that the French are in the same manner natural psychologists. This is merely to indicate a general trait or possible capacity of the respective languages. The English or the English language can hold no candle to the German race or the German language in the matter of metaphysical abstruseness. German is rigid, ponderous, if recondite. English is more flexible and has been used and can be used with great felicity by the mystic and the metaphysician. The insular English with regard to his language and letters have been more open to external influences; they have benefited by their wide contact with other peoples and races and cultures.
The stamp of mental clarity and neat psychological or introspective analysis in the French language has been its asset and a characteristic capacity from the time of Descartesthrough Malebranche and Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists right down to Bergson. The English are not by nature metaphysicians, in spite of the Metaphysicals: but greatness has been thrust upon them. The strain of Celtic mysticism and contact with Indian spiritual lore have given the language a higher tension, a deeper and longer breath, a greater expressive capacity in that direction.
But French seems to have made ample amends for this deficiency (in the matter of variety of experiences especially in the supra-rational religions) by developing a quality which is peculiar to its turn of psychological curiosity and secular understandinga refined sensibility, a subtle sensitiveness, an alert and vibrant perception that puts it in contact with the inner (even though not so much the higher) almost the hidden and occult movements of life. That is how mysticismla mystiquecomes by a back door as it were into the French language.
03.11 - True Humility, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not by repeating mea culpa ad infinitum that one can show one's true humility. In owning too much and too often one's sins, one may be just on the wrong side of virtue. There lurks a strain of vanity in self-maceration: the sinner in an overdose of self-pity almost feels himself saintly. Certainly, one must stand before oneself face to face, not hide or minimise or explain away one's errors and lapses, all one's omissions and commissions. But one need not brood over them, merely repenting and repining. One sees steadily, without flinching, what one actually is and then resolutely and sincerely takes to the ways and means of changing it, becoming what one has to be. A fall, the discovery of a new frailty should be an occasion not to chastise and punish yourself, thus to depress yourself and harden your nature, but to enthuse you with a fresh resolution, to rekindle your aspiration so that you may take another step forward. And, naturally, this you must do not with the sense that you can succeed or move forward by any inherent capacity of yoursyour failures are there always as standing eye-openers to you. No, it is not your self but the Divine Self that will come to your succour and lift you up tameva ea vute tanum swam to him alone it unveils its own body. That is the humility to be learnt. But it does not mean that you are to remain merely passive, inert you cannot but be that if you are only a weeping willow a dead-weight upon the force of Grace that would carry you up. Rather you should throw your weight, whatever it is, on the side of the Divine. An atmosphere of alacrity and happiness and goodwill goes a long way to the redemption and regeneration of the consciousness. This is demanded of you; the rest is the work of the Divine. It is under such conditions that the Divine's help becomes all the more speedy and effective. Otherwise, mere contrition and lamentation and self-torture mean, as I have said, a ballast, a burden upon the force of progress and purification; as Sri Krishna says in the Gita, by oppressing oneself one oppresses only the Divine within. Humility, in order to be true and sincere, need not be sour and dour in appearance or go about in sack-cloth and ashes. On the contrary, it can be smiling and buoyant: and it is so, because it is at ease, knowing that things will be donesome things naturally will be undone tooquietly, quickly, if necessary, and inevitably, provided the right consciousness, the right will within is maintained. The humble consciousness does not, of course, take credit for what is being done for it, nor does it concentrate wholly or chiefly on its utter futility and smallness. It feels small or helpless not in the sense as when one one feels weak and miserable and almost undone, but as a child feels, naturally and innocently, in the lap of it mother: only I perhaps it is more awake and self-conscious than the child mentality.
Humility is unreservedly humble, as it envisages the immensity of the labour the Divine has undertaken, sees the Grace, infinite and inscrutable, working miracles every moment: and it is full of gratitude and thanksgiving and quiet trust and hopefulness. Certainly, it means self-forgetfulness and selflessness, as it cannot co-exist with the sense of personal worth and merit, with any appreciation of one's own tapasya and achievement, even as it thrives ill upon self-abasement and self-denigration, for if one is rajasic, the other is tamasic egoismegoism, in any case. Absolute nullity of the egoistic self is the condition needed, but anything less than that, any lowering of the consciousness beyond this zero point means reaffirming the ego in a wrong direction. True humility has an unostentatious quietness, as it has a living and secret contact with the divine consciousness.
03.12 - Communism: What does it Mean?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Whatever the immediate necessity of such drastic negative procedures, true and abiding social welfare depends upon a deeper and wider planning. The aim should not be merely to look for grievances and deal with them piecemeal, but to create conditions in which such grievances do not arise at all, or are reduced to a minimum. For the economic well-being of the society, a just and equitable distribution of wealth is a sound policy, no doubt, but before that one must have wealth and enough of it. The stress should therefore be on increased production, "grow-more-food". The workers must consider themselves ministers to the goddess Lakshmi. To bring prosperity to the commonwealth, to discover and marshal the resources, increase the output and thus help to raise the standard of life that is the true role of loyal workers. But as it is, in the way they behave and act, at present they are consumers more than producers. To concentrate all attention and energy upon solely decreasing the hours of work and increasing the wages can have no other meaning. Leisure, rest, recreation are necessary, but that should not mean laziness, unwillingness to work, dissipation. One should be decently paid for one's labour, one must not be overworked, yes, but one must look to the other side also, one must bear in mind the capacity of the payer and the needs of the others in the society. Necessity is one thing, greed or selfishness is another. The greed to possess all the golden eggs at once sometimes leads to a disastrous procedure.
The farmer proprietor, the bourgeois, the capitalist in a modern society, whatever charges of exploitation may be brought against them, are, each in his own way, precisely centres of production, of wealth increment. They are not merely and not always blood-suckers, and heartless profiteers. One need not rob, burn, kill them in a mad rush; they too can be utilised, their services placed at the disposal of the commonwealth. These are names which we may not like because of unhappy associations in the past, but the realities, the types of forces they represent are, many of them, permanent features of Nature's economy. They come up in other forms and names. They have suppressed bourgeois bureaucracy in Russia, but it has reappeared in what is termed nowadays as the "managerial" system.
03.12 - TagorePoet and Seer, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Modernism implies a natural broadening of the mind and life, a greater capacity to understand and endorse and appreciate divergent and even contrary and contradictory experiences and stand-points. Thus, brotherhood to the mediaeval man meant bringing together mankind under the dominion of one cult or creedit is the extension of a tribal feeling. Brotherhood in a modern consciousness would mean an inner union and commensurability that can subsist even in the midst of a great diversity of taste and feeling and experience.
Tagore is modern in respect of all these higher aptitudes that man has gained today. He has the brilliance and curiosity of an alert and strong intelligence, the refined sensibility of a pagan and scientific intellect, he has an infinite sense of irony and humour and, above all, he has that in him,a genial plasticity and sympathy and a warm sense of wide commonalty,which makes him easily a citizen of the world, feeling absolutely at home all over the world.
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The modernist does not ask: is it good? is it beautiful? He asks: is it effective? is it expressive? And by effectivity and expressiveness he means something nervous and physical. Expressiveness to him would mean the capacity to tear off the veil over what once was considered not worth the while or decent to uncover. A strange recklessness and shamelessness, an unhealthy and perverse curiosity, characteristic of the Asura and the Pisacha, of the beings of the underworld, mark the movement of the modernist. But I forget. The Modernist is not always an anarchist, for he too seeks to establish a New Order; indeed he arrogates to himself that mission and declares it to be his and his alone. Obviously it is not the order of the higher gods of Olympus: these have been ousted and dethroned. We are being led back to the mysteries of an earlier race, reverting to an infra-evolutionary status, into the arcana of Thor and Odin, godlings of an elemental Nature.
In such a world Tagore is a voice and a beacon from over the heights of the old world declaring and revealing the verities that are eternal and never die. They who seek to kill them do so at their peril. Tagore is a great poet: as such he is close to the heart of Bengal. He is a great Seer: as such humanity will claim him as its own.
03.12 - The Spirit of Tapasya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Tapasya (Asceticism) is usually understood to mean the capacity to undergo physical discomfort and suffering. We are familiar with various types of Tapasya: sitting in summer with blazing fire all around and the fiery noonday sun overhead (Panchagnivrata), exposing one's bare limbs to the cold biting blasts among the eternal snows, lying down on a bed of sharp nails, betaking oneself to sack-cloth and ashes, fasting even to the point of death: there is no end to the variety of ways and means which man's ingenuity has invented to torture himself. Somehow the feeling has grown among spiritual, religious and even moral aspirants as well that the body is the devil that has to be curbed and controlled with bit and bridle and whip. Indeed the popular view measures the greatness of a saint by the amount of his physical privations.
One seems not to know that the devil cannot be so easily checkmated or beguiled. For, indeed, it is easy for the body to take punishment, to submit to all kinds of rigours, yet feel as if it was making ample amends and atonement in that way rather than really give up its aboriginal instincts and impulses. Often one deceives oneself, succeeds in hiding, in secretly preserving one's unsaintliness behind a smoke-screen of the utmost physical tapasya.
03.13 - Human Destiny, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A certain plasticity, a good deal of it, a little less finality with regard to structure and function, youthfulness, in one word, is the basic condition of life and life's progress. Hence even an immaturity, a certain slowness in pubescence, a longer adolescence signifies a more enduring plasticity, that is to say, the capacity for change and progress. A quick leap into old age and fixity, as is the rule with the lower animals, means arrest of all growth and sooner or later decay and dissolution. Even if such a life-form continues to exist, the existence is only death in life; a fossil exists for millions of years: it is not a significant existence.
If man has maintained a longer and greater youthfulness than his animal forbears, it means he has greater possibilities and through longer vistas of time. But leaving aside the animal creation, if we consider man himself and his prospect, certain conclusions forcibly present themselves which we shall try to clarify.
04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the second degree of self-consciousness to which we referred is the scientific consciousness par excellence. It can be described also as the spirit and power of experimentation, or more precisely, of scientific experimentation: it involves generically the process with which we are familiar in the domain of industry and is termed synthetic, that is to say, it means the skill and capacity to create the conditions under which a given phenomenon can be repeated at will. Hence it means a perfect knowledge of the process of thingswhich again is a dual knowledge: (1) the knowledge of the steps gradually leading to the result and (2) the knowledge that has the power to resolve the result into its antecedent conditions. Thus the knowledge of the mechanism, the detailed working of things, is scientific knowledge, and therefore scientific knowledge can be truly said to be mechanistic knowledge, in the best sense of the term. Now the knowledge of the ends and the knowledge of the means (to use a phrase of Aldous Huxley) and the conscious control over either have given humanity a new degree of self-consciousness.
It can be mentioned here that there can be a knowledge of ends without a corresponding knowledge of means, even there can be a control over ends without a preliminary control over meansperhaps not to perfection, but to a sufficient degree of practical utility. Much of the knowledgeespecially secular and scientificin ancient times was of this order; what we mean to say is that the knowledge was more instinctive or intuitive than rational or intellectual. In that knowledge the result only, the end that it to say, was the chief aim and concern, the means for attaining the end was, one cannot perhaps say, ignored, but slurred or slipped over as it were: the process was thus involved or understood, not expressed or detailed out. Thus we know of some mathematical problems to which correct solutions were given of which the process is not extant or lost as some say. Our suggestion is that there was in fact very little of the process as we know it now the solution was reached per saltum, that is to say, somehow, in the same manner as we find it happening even today in child prodigies.
04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The East does not consider the individual in his social behaviour in terms of freedom and liberty but of service and obligation, not in terms of rights but of duties. The Indian term for right and duty is the sameadhikar. The word originally and usually meant duty, one's sphere of work or service, capacity: the meaning of "right" was secondary and only latterly, probably as a result of the impact from the West, has gained predominance. The West measures human progress by the amount of rights gained for the individual or for the group. It does not seem to have any other standard: submission, obedience, any diminution of the sense of separate individuality meant slavery and loss of human value and dignity. It was the Greek perhaps, with Socrates as the great pioneer, who first declared the supremacy of the individual reason (although he himself obeyed in all things his guardian angel, the Daemon). In India, generally in the East, the value of the individual is estimated in another way. So long as he is in the society, the individual is bound by its demands: he has to serve it according to his best capacity. That is the dharma the Law that one has to observe conscientiously. But if he chooses, he can break the bonds forthwith, come out, come out of the society altogether and be free absolutely that is the only meaning of freedom. In the West the individual is taught to remain in the world and with the society, maintain his individuality and independence and gradually enlarge them in and through the natural fetters and bondages that a collective life and efficient organisation demands and inevitably imposes. The East, on the contrary, asks the individual never to protest and assert his individuality, which is in their view only another name for Ignorant egoism, but to know his position in the social scheme and fulfil the duties and obligations of that position. But the individual has the freedom not to enter into the social frame at all. If he chooses freedom as his ideal, it is the supreme freedom that he must choose, out of the chain of a terrestrial life. He can become the spiritual "outlaw", the sanysi, the word means one who has abandoned everything totally and absolutely.
The contrast points to a synthesis parallel to or an extension of the one we spoke of earlier. The first thing to note is that the individual is the source of all progress; the individual has the right, as it is also his duty to maintain himself and fulfil himself, grow to his largest and highest dimensions! Secondly, the individual has to take cognisance of the others, the whole humanity, in fact, even for the sake of his own progress. The individual is not an isolated entity, a freak product in Nature, but is integrated into it, a part and parcel of its texture and composition. Indeed the individual has a double role to perform, first to increase himself and secondly to increase others. Using the terms which the Sartrian view of existence has put into vogue, we can say, the individual en soi (in himself) is the individual in commonalty with others, living and moving in and through every other person; and then there is the individual pour soi (for himself), that is to say, existing for himself, apart and away from others, in his own inner absolute autonomy. The individual is individualised, i.e. raises and lifts himself and then becomes the spearhead breaking through the level where Nature stands fixed, leading others to follow and raise themselves. The individual is the power of organised self-consciousness; the growth of the individual means the growth of this power of organised consciousness. And growth means ascension or evolution from level to level. The individual starts from the organic cell, that is the lower end, it progresses through various gradations of the vital and mental worlds till he reaches the culmination of its growth in the Spirit as tman. But this vertical growth must be reflected in a horizontal growth too. There is a solidarity among the individuals forming the collective humanity so that the progress of one means the progress of others in the same direction, at least a chance and possibility opened for an advance. On the other hand, it may be noted that unless the collectivity rises to a certain level the individual too cannot go very far from it. A higher lift in the individual presupposes a corresponding or some minimum lift in others. There cannot or should not be too great a rift between the individual and the collective.
04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the cause of this strange longevity or stability that India or China enjoys? Whence this capacity to renew life, to rejuvenate the past that survives and persists? Before dealing with this question let us turn for a while to another curious phenomenon : which is allied to it and may throw some light upon it.
It is about the life-span of peoples. The life-span of peoples is not uniform: it differs with different peoples and differs considerably. The Spanish or Portuguese hegemony in modern Europe was after all rather briefa matter of one century or twoin comparison with the lease enjoyed by Rome or Greece. Indeed it might seem that the older the nation the longer it lived. Take, for example, the oldest nation recognized as such in history, Egypt; her life-span is to be measured not by centuries but by millenniums. The Hellenic civilisation that succeeded the Egyptian did not last as long and yet it lasted more than its own successor, the Roman, did. How was it then the more ancient people resisted more successfully the forces of decline and disintegration? What was it that made the later and younger nations less successful in the battle of life?
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The truth then is this: the stronger the inner life a nation builds up and organises, the longer it lives and the greater the power it acquires to revive when it falls for a time into decline. Naturally, a good deal depends upon the nature and quality of this inner life. There are certain types of inner life which mean the very source of life, there are others that are only secondary sources. Ancient Greece or even modern France has had a well-developed inner life, but this inner life was very strongly wedded to and welded into the outer life, it lay at least at one remove farther from the true source of life. Ancient Egypt less intellectual, less mentally cultivated, was in contact with the occult, the subliminal base of life, more potent and dynamic springs of consciousness. This was the cause of Egypt's greater longevity and some capacity of renewal. The older people generally lived in, or at least, were in living contact with principles of existence more fundamental and therefore more enduring. The gods of the mind and of the inner vital enjoy a longer immortality than the deities that rule man's outer life and body.
Viewed from this standpoint India stands as a case sui generis. She did not stop short satisfied with the lesser gods. She aspired for the highest One, the supreme spiritual reality and it was her mission, her destiny, to foster it and keep guard over it for the sake of humanity. Whatever the outer vicissitudes, she maintained throughout the inner continuity of her spiritual life and realisation. That is where she drank of the nectar of immortality and that is how she could always revive and renew herself after a period of decline and almost disintegration, because she possessed the mystery of the self. Other peoples were busy about many other things important or unimportant in some measure, but here was a race that never forgot the one thing needful. India of today, we repeat, is fundamentally and essentially the India of the Vedas, even in a more literal sense than that China of Mao-tse- Tung (or Sun-yat-Sen) is the China of Lao-tse.
04.09 - Values Higher and Lower, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That man is not the term of evolution, that intellect is not the supreme expression of human capacity, that this mortal being shall acquire new faculties and powers and become a higher species with a good deal of his present limitations removed are some of the views regarding human destiny held today. At one end are religious and devout people or those who follow a faith and spiritual discipline and at the other end are hard-headed scientific people who go by the evidence of downright facts and figures. There are a considerable number among both the groups and also among all the gradations lying in-between who subscribe, although in various ways, to this television we speak of. Catholics who believe in the coming of the Messiah and physicists who believe in re-creation of Matter and Energy, not merely its disintegration, have been equally enthusiastic in upholding this New Faith. There is Berdyaev who is a Christian, there is Gerald Heard who is called a Neo-Brahmin and there is Lecomte du Noy, the eminent French biophysicist.
We see the movement accepted and advanced (if not even initiated) more in the West than in the East. That the world is a progressive and progressing phenomenon comes easily and naturally to the European mind. The East has been habituated to a static view of things: if there is dynamism, it is mostly considered as a movement in a circle. The spiritual East with its obsessing experience of the Infinite and Eternal and Permanent, the Transcendent, found it unnecessary to attach that importance to the impermanent and finite which would give it a meaning and purpose and direction. Therefore we see in India those who advocate this new view are considered Europeanised and not following the au thentic spiritual tradition of India.
05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man possesses characters that mark him as an entity sui generis and give him the value that is his. First, toil and suffering and more failures than success have given him the quality of endurance and patience, of humility and quietness. That is the quality of earth-natureearth is always spoken of by the poets and seers as all-bearing and all-forgiving. She never protests under any load put upon her, never rises in revolt, never in a hurry or in worry, she goes on with her appointed labour silently, steadily, calmly, unflinchingly. Human consciousness can take infinite pains, go through the infinite details of execution, through countless repetitions and mazes: patience and perseverance are the very badge and blazon of the tribe. Ribhus, the artisans of immortalitychildren of Mahasaraswatiwere originally men, men who have laboured into godhood. Human nature knows to wait, wait infinitely, as it has all the eternity before it and can afford and is prepared to continue and persist life after life. I do not say that all men can do it and are of this nature; but there is this essential capacity in human nature. The gods, who are usually described as the very embodiment of calmness and firmness, of a serene and concentrated will to achieve, nevertheless suffer ill any delay or hindrance to their work. Man has not perhaps the even tenor, the steadiness of their movement, even though intense and fast flowing; but what man possesses is persistence through ups and downshis path is rugged with rise and fall, as the poet says. The steadiness or the staying power of the gods contains something of the nature of indifference, something hard in its grain, not unlike a crystal or a diamond. But human patience, when it has formed and taken shape, possesses a mellowness, an understanding, a sweet reasonableness and a resilience all its own. And because of its intimacy with the tears of things, because of its long travail and calvary, human consciousness is suffused with a quality that is peculiarly human and humane that of sympathy, compassion, comprehension, the psychic feeling of closeness and oneness. The gods are, after all, egoistic; unless in their supreme supramental status where they are one and identical with the Divine himself; on the lower levels, in their own domains, they are separate, more or less immiscible entities, as it were; greater stress is laid here upon their individual functioning and fulfilment than upon their solidarity. Even if they have not the egoism of the Asuras that sets itself in revolt and antagonism to the Divine, still they have to the fullest extent the sense of a separate mission that each has to fulfil, which none else can fulfil and so each is bound rigidly to its own orbit of activity. There is no mixture in their workingsna me thate, as the Vedas say; the conflict of the later gods, the apple of discord that drove each to establish his hegemony over the rest, as narrated in the mythologies and popular legends, carry the difference to a degree natural to the human level and human modes and reactions. The egoism of the gods may have the gait of aristocracy about it, it has the aloofness and indifference and calm nonchalance that go often with nobility: it has a family likeness to the egoism of an ascetic, of a saintit is sttwic; still it is egoism. It may prove even more difficult to break and dissolve than the violent and ebullient rjasicpride of a vital being. Human failings in this respect are generally more complex and contain all shades and rhythms. And yet that is not the whole or dominant mystery of man's nature. His egoism is thwarted at every stepfrom outside, by, the force of circumstances, the force of counter-egoisms, and from inside, for there is there the thin little voice that always cuts across egoism's play and takes away from it something of its elemental blind momentum. The gods know not of this division in their nature, this schizophrenia, as the malady is termed nowadays, which is the source of the eternal strain of melancholy in human nature of which Matthew Arnold speaks, of the Shelleyan saddest thoughts: Nietzsche need not have gone elsewhere in his quest for the origin and birth of Tragedy. A Socrates discontented, the Christ as the Man of Sorrows, and Amitabha, the soul of pity and compassion are peculiarly human phenomena. They are not merely human weaknesses and failings that are to be brushed aside with a godlike disdain; but they contain and yield a deeper sap of life and out of them a richer fulfilment is being elaborated.
Human understanding, we know, is a tangled skein of light and shademore shade perhaps than lightof knowledge and ignorance, of ignorance straining towards knowledge. And yet this limited and earthly frame that mind is has something to give which even the overmind of the gods does not possess and needs. It is indeed a frame, even though perhaps a steel frame, to hold and fix the pattern of knowledge, that arranges, classifies, consolidates effective ideas, as they are translated into facts and events. It has not the initiative, the creative power of the vision of a god, but it is an indispensable aid, a precious instrument for the canalisation and expression of that vision, for the intimate application of the divine inspiration to physical life and external conduct. If nothing else, it is a sort of blue print which an engineer of life cannot forego if he has to execute his work of building a new life accurately and beautifully and perfectly.
--
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
05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Each man is given his little domain within him and he is master of that domain. Nobody is given more (or less even) than what he can successfully manage: the charge is accurately measured according to capacity. One can be indeed a roi fainant, if one chooses to be so; but that is not man's inevitable destiny; he can truly be the ruling king and exercise, to the full, his authority. It is a simple truth that man has a will and can wield it. This will he can consciously develop, increase and enlarge, make it an extremely powerful, if not invincible, instrument for action.
Will is a twofold power: it is energy and it is light. True will, will in essential purity, that is to say, when one is perfectly sincere and determined to follow up one's sincerity, impels rightly and impels infallibly. The consciousness is there of the right thing to do and the energy is also there inherent in that consciousness to work it out inevitably. There is a will be longing to a lower level, to the mind which is only a variant of wish, and in reference to that only it is said that even if the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. This will is a light, but without the fire that vivifies: and that is because there is a division in the consciousness, one can love and yet one can betray, in the words of a famous novelist.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The principle of indeterminacy carries two revolutionary implications. First, that it is not possible to determine the movement of the ultimate particles of matter individually and severally, it is not possible even theoretically to follow up the chain of modulations of an electron from its birth to its dissolution (if such is the curve of its destiny), as Laplace considered it quite possible for his super-mathematician. One cannot trace the complete evolution of each and every or even one particular particle, not because of a limitation in the human capacity, but because of an inherent impossibility in the nature of things. In radioactive substances, for example, there is no ground or data from which one can determine which particle will go off or not, whether it will go off the chance that seems to reign here. In radiation too, there is no formula, and no formula can be framed for determining the course of a photon in relation to a half-reflecting surface, whether it will pass through or be reflected. In this field of infinitesimals what we know is the total behaviour of an assemblage of particles, and the laws of nature are only laws of average computation. Statistics has ousted the more exact and rigid arithmetics. And statistics, we know, is a precarious science: the knowledge it gives is contingent, contingent upon the particular way of arranging and classifying the data. However, the certainty of classical mechanistic knowledge is gone, gone too the principle of uniformity of nature.
The second element brought in in the indeterminacy picture is the restoration of the "subject" to its honoured or even more than the honoured place it had in the Mediaeval Ages, and from which it was pulled down by young arrogant Science. A fundamental question is now raised in the very methodology of the scientific apparatus. For Science, needless to say, is first and foremost observation. Now it is observed that the very fact of observation affects and changes the observed fact. The path of an electron, for example, has to be observed; one has then to throw a ray of lighthurl a photonupon it: the impact is sufficient to deflect the electron from the original path. If it is suggested that by correction and computation, by a backward calculation we can deduce the previous position, that too is not possible. For we cannot fix any position or point that is not vitiated by the observer's interference. How to feel or note the consistency of a thing, if the touch itself, the temperature of the finger, were sufficient to change the consistency? The trouble is, as the popular Indian saying goes, the very amulet that is to exorcise the ghost is possessed by the ghost itself.
05.07 - Man and Superman, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When we speak of the superman we refer to a new racealmost a new species that will appear on earth as the inevitable result of Nature's evolution. The new race will be developed out of the present humanity, there seems to be no doubt about that; it does not mean however that the whole of humanity will be so changed. As a matter of fact, humanity in general does not ask for such a catastrophic change in itself or for itself. But Supermanhood does mean a very radical change: it means giving up altogether many and some very basic human qualities and attributes. It does not aim merely at a moral uplift, that is to say, a shedding of the bad qualities, what are considered, for example, as predominantly animal and brutish in man; it signifies also a shedding of some at least of the good qualities or what are considered as such. The superman is not a purified moralised man, even as he is not a magnified glorified animal man; he is a man of a different type, qualitatively different. Let us take an analogy. What was the situation at the crisis when man was about to come out of (or be superimposed upon) an ape race? We can imagine a good part of that old race quite unwilling to go in for the new type that would appear to them queer, outlandish, even if not inferior on the whole or in some respects at least. They would not envisage with equanimity the disappearance of many of their cherished characteristics and powers: the glory of the tail, for example, the infinite capacity to swing and jump, the strength to crack a nut with the sheer force of the jaws. And who knows whether they would not consider their intelligence sharper and more efficacious than the type of reason, dull and slow, displayed before them by man! They would lose much to gain little. That would most probably be the general verdict.
Even so mankind, at the crucial parting of the ways, would very naturally look askance at the diminished value of many of its qualities and attri butes in the new status to come. First of all, as it has been pointed out, the intellect and reasoning power will have to surrender and abdicate. The very power by which man has attained his present high status and maintains it in the world has to be sacrificed for something else called intuition or revelation whose value and efficacy are unknown and have to be rigorously tested. Anyhow, is not the known devil by far and large preferable to the unknown entity? And then the zest of life, peculiar to man, that works through contradictionsdelight and suffering, victory and defeat, war and peace, doubt and knowledge, all the play of light and shade, the spirit of adventure, of combat and struggle and heroic effort, will have to go and give place to something, peaceful and harmonious perhaps but monotonous, insipid, unprogressive. The very character of human life is its passion to battle through, even if it is not always through. For it is often said that the end or goal does not matter, the goal is always something uncertain; it is the way, the means, the immediate action that is of supreme consequence: for it is that that tests man's manhood, gives him the value he may have. And above all man is asked to give up the very thing which he has laboured to build up through millenniums of his terrestrial life, his individuality, his personality, for the demand is that he must lose his ego in order to attain the superhuman status.
05.08 - An Age of Revolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Well, it is now found that they do not do so. However same or similar constitutionally, each unit is sui generisand its movement cannot be predicted. That movement does not depend upon its mass or store of energy or its position in a pattern, as a wholly mechanistic conception would demand: it is something incalculable, one should say even, erratic. In a radioactive substance, the particle that is shot out, becomes active, cannot be predetermined by any calculation, even if that is due to a definitely and precisely arranged bombardment. So we have come to posit a principle of uncertainty, as a very fundamental law of Nature. It practically declares that the ultimate particle is an autonomou unit, it is an' individual, almost a personality, and seems to have a will of its own. A material unit acts very much like a biological unit: it does not obey mechanically, answer mechanically as an automaton, but seems to possess a capacity for choice, for assent or refusal, for a free determination. The mechanistic view presented is due to an average functioning. The phenomenon has been explained by a very apt image. It is like an army. A group of soldiers, when they are on parade, look all similar and geometrically patterned: each is just like another and all move and march in the same identical manner. But that' is when you look at the whole, the collectivity, but looked individually, each one regains his separate distinct personality, each having his own nature and character, his own unique history: there no two are alike, each is non pareil and behaves differently, incalculably.
That is how we have been led almost to the threshold of a will, of a life principle, of a consciousness, however rudimentary, imbedded in the heart of Matter. All the facts that are now cropping up, the new discoveries that are being made and which we have to take into cognisance lead inevitably towards such a conclusion. Without such a conclusion a rational co-ordination of all the data of experience is hardly possible. A physical scientist may not feel justified to go beyond the purely physical data, but the implications of even such data, the demand for a fair hypothesis that can harmonise and synthesise them are compelling even a physicist to become a psychologist and a metaphysician.
05.11 - The Place of Reason, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In Sri Aurobindo, Reason and Intuition possess a dual relation of mutual negation and mutual affirmation, of exclusiveness and inclusiveness, as indeed is the relation of Brahman and the World. One negates the other in the sphere of ignorance but in knowledge one affirms the other. That is to say, Reason or mental logic, so long as it is dominated by the senses, by the external impressions from things and by its analytic or exclusively separative method of procedure, is a denial of Intuition and a bar to spiritual experience. But Reason can be purified, relieved of its dross, illumined (sam-buddha)sublimated and uplifted then it comes to its own, becomes what it really is and should bea frame to give body to what is beyond and unembodied, a mirror in conceptual terms to what is supra-conceptual. It loses its hard rigidity and becomes supple, loses its obscurity, density and becomes transparent: it attains a new rhythm and gait and capacity. Many of the Upanishadic mantras, a good part of the Gita, do that. And Sri Aurobindo's own exposition is a miracle in that style. "Reason was a helper, Reason is the bar"and, we can add, Reason will again be an aid. The world, as it is, is anything but Divine; and yet it is nothing but the Divine essentially and fundamentally; it can and will attain the divine figure apparently and externally too. Even so with regard to man's mind and reason and all his other limbs.
Calcutta Review, January 1949.
05.11 - The Soul of a Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When however the soul withdraws, when a nation in a particular cycle of its soul manifestation has fulfilled its role and mission, the body of the nation falls gradually into decadence. The elements that composed the organic reality, the living consistency of national life disintegrate, lose their energy and cohesive capacity; they die out and are dispersed or persist for a time as a confused mixture of disconnected and mechanically moving cells. But it may happen too that in an apparently dying or dead nation, the soul that retired comes back' again, not in its old form and mode of life for that cannot beEgypt, if it lives again today cannot repeat the ages of the Pharaohs and the Pyramids-but in a new personality, with a fresh life purpose, In such a case what happens is truly a national resurrectiona Lazarus coming back to life at the touch of the Divine.
We do not believe that India was ever completely dead or hopelessly moribund: her soul, although not always in front, was ever present as a living force, presiding over and guiding her destiny. That is why there is a perennial capacity for renewal in her and the capacity to go through dire ordeals. And to live up to her genius, she too must know how to march with the time, that is to say, not to cling to old and past formsto be faithful to the ancient soul does not mean eternising the external frames and formulas that expressed that soul one time or another. Indeed the soul becomes alive and vigorous when it finds a new disposition of the life plan which can embody and translate a fresh creative activity, a new fulfilment emanating from the depths of the soul.
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05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The psychic being is a packet of gathered power, a charged battery, as it were; when it comes down upon earth, it calls round itself elements of mind and vital and even subtle physical needed for the purpose of the particular life experience, and even those that would go to constitute the physical body. The psychic being usually picks up these elements of mind and life and body out of the universal store-house of earth's atmosphere as it needs them, in the same way as it returns them there on the journey back after death. But as I have already said, there are beings who have developed well-formed personalities of mind and life and even of the physical consciousness. These formations are not mere loose accretions, temporary arrangements for a life experience, but are welded, organised, given a more or less permanent shape, as the proper instrument of the psychic being, as its own expression. In such cases, the outer personality too continues to exist as an essential mode or vibration in and with the psychic consciousness itself and when the soul descends upon earth, is in contact with the earth's atmosphere, it projects out of I itself the external personality and formation. This does not I mean certainly that the personality remains something fixed and rigid, but that it has attained an essential fullness of form and yet retains the capacity for further change and growth through further growth of the psychic being in other life experiences.
Now the time and occasion for a particular birth of the soul depends naturally on the inner need of that being. But it must be notedas it is a fact in the occult world that the souls are not so many absolutely separate unrelated autonomous self-sufficient entities, each one coming and going as and when it chooses and likes: on the contrary, the souls form groups or families according to some secret affinity. And when they come down, they do so not unoften in company. A call goes, a bell is rung as it were intimating that the hour is come and they rush down. And it may even happen that in rushing down a psychic being is not too careful or fastidious about the instrument, the vehicle he chooses to inhabit; whatever is handy and nearest and on the whole suitable to his purpose he takes up and goes forward. He takes it all as an adventure and has the joy of battle and the warrior spirit that can taste of victory only when hard fought and won. That is how we meet not unoften a considerable discrepancy between the inner being of a man and his earthly tenement, his soul and his external character and physical nature. There is a meaning in the choice, a significance in the utilisation of unfavourable conditions: there is a method in the madness.
05.18 - Man to be Surpassed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Yes, man's true humanity, says Kahler, almost echoing Nietzcshe, consists precisely in his capacity to surpass himself. The animal is wholly engrossed in its natural nature and activities; but man is capable of standing back, can separate from his biological self, observe, control and direct. For him "existence" truly means (as the Existentialist declares today) ex+sistere or ex+stare, to stay or stand outside. That is the surpassing enjoyed by him and demanded of himgoing beyond one's natural or normal self. But there is a danger here. For there can be a too much surpassing, a going away altogether, as religion or spirituality usually enjoins. Christianity, for example, which is in many senses a movement contrary to the Greek spirit, taught a transcendence that was for luring or driving the human soul away from the world and men towards an extra-terrestrial summum bonum.
That is a false light, a wrong lead. Surpassing should not mean going beyondup and away: it means rather coming out of one's self and going abroad, finding one's kinship and unity with others, with the world around. The individualisation of the selfgiven by the Greek culturewas the first step; the next step in evolution is the "collectivisation" of the self. It is not in the Nazi or Bolshevic sense that we have to understand the word: it does not equate with totalitarianism. The peril is there, no doubt.
05.27 - The Nature of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Perfection is often understood to mean the highest or the utmost possible development, even if it be in one particular line or direction. That, however, can better be called success or achievement. True perfection is not an extreme growth, however great or commendable it may be: it is the harmony of an all-round growth, the expression of the unified total being. And yet this does not involve a stultification of any limb or a forced diminution of any capacity. Perfection does not consist either in the harmonisation of the utmost possible development of each and every capacity, attribute or power of being. First of all, it is not a possible ideal, given the conditions of existence and manifestation. Secondly, it is not necessary: perfection can be realised even otherwise.
How is the harmony to be brought about in the human system composed of so many different and discordant factors, forms and forces of consciousness? It is not possible if one tries to make them accommodate each other, tone down the individual acuities and angularities, blunt or cut out the extreme expressions and effect some sort of a compromise or a pact of goodwill. It is not the Greek ideal of the golden mean nor is it akin to the modern democratic ideal which lays down that each element is freeto grow and possessto the extent that it allows the same freedom to every other element. No, for true harmony one has to go behind and beyond the apparent divergences to a secret being or status of consciousness, the bed-rock of existence where all divergences are resolved and find their inherent and inalienable unity, their single origin and basis. If one gets there and takes one's stand upon that absolute oneness, then and then only the perfect harmony of all the diversities that naturally rise out of it as its self-expression becomes possible, not only possible but inevitable.
06.10 - Fatigue and Work, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
How to do it? How to find interest in anything or all things? Is there not a work that conforms to your nature, adapted to your character and capacity? And are there not works that are against the grain with you that lie outside your scope and province?
The question is not about your scope and capacity. All depends upon your attitude, the consciousness with which you approach a work, especially when you are a sadhak. When a work comes to you or when you have to do a work, you must take it up as a thing worth doing. Whatever the value given to it normally or you often put upon it, you should not neglect or merely tolerate it, but welcome it and set about it with the utmost conscientiousness possible. Even if it were a trifling insignificant thing, a menial affair, for example, do not consider it as mean or beneath your dignity. Directly you begin to do a thing in the right spirit, you will find it becoming miraculously interesting. Try to bring perfection even in that bit of insignificance. Do it with a goodwill, even if it is scrubbing the floor, telling yourself: I must do it as best I can, that is to say, this too I shall do even better than a servant, I shall make the floor look really neat and clean and beautiful. That is the crux of the matter. You should try to bring out the best in you and put it into your work. In other words, the work becomes an instrument of progress. The goodwill, attention, concentration, self-forgetfulness and the control over yourself, over your organs and nerves the smaller the work the more detailed is the control gainedall which are involved in doing a work perfectly, with as much perfection as it is possible for you to command, are elements called forth in you and help to make you a better man. Indeed a work for which you have no preferential bias, to which you are not emotionally attached, even indifferent normally, may be of especial help, for you will be able to do it with less nervous disturbance, with a large amount of detachment and disinterestedness.
Man usually chooses his work or is made to choose a work because of a vital preference, a prejudice or notion that it is the kind in which he can shine or succeed. This egoistic vanity or opportunism may be necessary or unavoidable in ordinary life; but when one wishes to go beyond the ordinary life and aspires for the true life, this attachment or personal choice is more an impediment than a help to progress, towards finding the way to the true life. The Yogic attitude to work therefore is that of absolute detachment, not to have any choice, but to accept and do whatever is given to you, whatever comes to you in your normal course of life and do it with the utmost perfection possible. It is in that way and that way alone that all work becomes supremely interesting, and all life a miracle of delight.
06.11 - The Steps of the Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The human individual is a very complex being: he is com-posed of innumerable elements, each one of which is an independent entity and has almost a personality. Not only so, the most contradictory elements are housed together. If there is a particular quality or capacity present, the very opposite of it, annulling it, as it were, will be also found along with it and embracing it.. I have seen a man brave, courageous, heroic to the extreme, flinching from no danger, facing unperturbed the utmost peril, the bravest of the brave, truly; and yet I have seen the same man cowering in abject terror, like the last of poltroons, in the presence of certain circumstances. I have seen a most generous man, giving away largely, freely, not counting any expenditure or sacrifice, without the least care or reservation; the same person I have also found to be the vilest of misers in respect of certain other considerations. I have seen again the most intelligent person, with a clear mind, full of light and understanding, easily comprehending the logic and implication of a topic and yet I have seen him betraying the utmost stupidity of which even an ordinary man without education or intelligence would be incapable. These are not theoretical examples, but I have come across such persons actually in life.
The complexity arises not only in extension, but also in depth. Man does not live on a single plane but on many planes at the same time. There is a scale of gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on planes above and beyond, there will be accordingly differences in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of the individual personality. The higher one stands the richer the personality, because it lives not only on its own normal level, but also on all that are below and which it has transcended. The complete or integral man, some occultists say, possesses 365 personalities; indeed it may be much more. (The Vedas speak of the three and thirty-three and thirty-three hundred and thirty-three thousand gods that may be housed in the human vehicle the basic three being evidently the triple status or world of Body, Life and Mind).
What is the meaning of this self-contradiction, this division in man? To understand that we must know and remember that each person represents a certain quality or capacity, a particular achievement to be embodied. How best can it be done? What is the way by which one can acquire a quality at its purest, and highest and most perfect? It is by setting an opposition to it. That is how a power is increased and streng thenedby fighting against and overcoming all that weakens and contradicts it. The deficiencies in respect of a particular quality show you where you are to mend and reinforce and in what way to improve in order to make it perfectly perfect. It is the hammer that beats the weak and soft iron to transform it into hard steel. The preliminary discord is useful and necessary to be utilised for a higher harmony. This is the secret of self-conflict in man. You are weakest precisely in that element which is destined to be your greatest asset.
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.
For that you must be absolutely sincere and impartial. You must observe yourself as if you were observing and criticising a third person. You must not start with an idea that this is your life's mission, such is your particular capacity, you are to do this or you are to do that, in this lies your talent or genius etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that other, this is not for me. Neither vanity or arrogance nor self-depreciation or false modesty should move you. As I said, you must be absolutely impartial and unconcerned. You should be like a mirror that reflects the truth and does not judge.
If you are able to keep such an attitude, if you have this repose and quiet trust in your being and wait for what may be revealed to you, then something like this happens: you are, as it were, in the woods, dark and noiseless; you see in front of you just a sheet of water dark ,and still, hardly visible-a bit of a pond imbedded in the obscurity, and slowly upon it a moonbeam is cast and in the cool dim light emerges the calm liquid surface. That is how your secret truth of being will appear and present itself to you at your first contact with it: there you will see gradually reflected the true qualities of your being, the traits of your divine personality, what you really are and what you are meant to be.
06.15 - Ever Green, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Whenever you go inside and seek your poise, do not look for your old acquaintances, the familiar experiences, do not carry upon your back the load of the past, but go ahead, as if through a virgin tract, making quite new discoveries, and opening unexpected vistas at each step. You can make an experiment even on your physical body, i.e. take the physical consciousness too to share in your adventure of ever new discovery. Thus you may, for example, forget your habit of eating or even walking, truly forget and try to learn over again, even as you did for the first time as a child. You have to acquire consciously a capacity of the body that has become an almost unconscious reflex action. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience. Naturally you cannot repeat too often or carry too far an experiment of this kind on the physical plane. But you can freely deal with your inner life and consciousness. You can make your mind and your vital a clean slate, as much as you like: not once in your life, but every moment of your life. And then see how the world impinges upon your consciousness, what fresh discoveries and awakenings come to you endlessly! You can always rid yourself of the accustomed vibrations on the normal levels of your existence, the physical, vital and mental; and even you can go beyond your psychic formation and be the wide, the vast, the limitless, the Infinite itself, void of all name and form. And then with that virgin consciousness drop straight into the world of material life and form, into your body and bodily reactions. The world will give itself up to you in its pristine purity, its original beauty and truth, always luminous and glorious. This experience has to be the normal mode of your living, not simply the culmination or acme of your being, a fixed and stagnant status, even if considered the highest, the summum bonum. That is how you can keep yourself and the world around you ever fresh and young and new.
The preacher who speaks of the truth and delivers it to his hearers is usually effective for the first time or for a first few occasions only, when he feels the truth of his truth and is sincere while delivering. But as time wears on, his truth too wears out, for it becomes stereotyped, a matter of mere habit. The experience is no longer lived, but mechanically doled out. You are sincere only when the experience is new and fresh and living, it should be made so every moment, otherwise it is dead letter, letter that killeth.
06.18 - Value of Gymnastics, Mental or Other, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Intellectual activity is a kind of gymnastics. What is the value of physical gymnastics? It develops the muscles, makes them strong, supple and agile. But simply to develop them, to make them grow as much as possible or to take delight in a mere muscle-bound body is not the ideal; it rather frustrates the very object of gymnastics. The object is to develop, streng then, shape all the limbs of the body and organise and harmonise them into a beautiful and capable whole. A particular exercise is not to be indulged in for its own sake: all the energy of the body turned to that alone and the whole attention devoted to that one thing. An exclusive concentration upon a single physical feat does not bring out the full capacity of the body. It is to that end, the fullness of the body potential, that the culture of the bodily limbs is to be directed. In the same way, mental culture the power of thinking, reasoning, arguinghas its value in its relation to the total culture of the mind and consciousness. There are higher regions of consciousness beyond the reach of the intellect; and you have to stop all intellectual activity, make your mind a total blank before you can hope to reach there. And indulgence even in so-called higher or philosophical speculations can only block the way to the true consciousness and knowledge. And yet you cannot leave the intellectual faculties uncared for or undeveloped on the plea that something higher is needed. In the physical body it need not be your ideal to become a muscle man; but neither would you like to have frail, ill-grown, rickety limbs that are weak and unshapely. With regard to your mental body too it would not serve any purpose to have a mind or intellect that is unable to think powerfully, cogently, closely.
It is harmful when you take to mental gymnastics only for its own sake, to exclusive intellectual acrobaticsdiscussions, disputations, verbal quibbles, etc., etc.; in that case the result attained is a disproportionate growth. But the development of the mind, even of the logical mind, can be and must be made part of the integral development, it must attain its true form, stature and strength, as a help towards and finally as an expression in its own field of the divinity, the highest and richest consciousness in man, even as the body too is to express and make concrete the supreme beauty and vigour of the perfect being.
06.35 - Second Sight, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is interesting to note that animals in the wild state maintain intact their instinctive capacity, their second sight, but begin to lose it when they live with men, come under the influence of human mind and reason, become domesticated. A cow habituated to free grazing in the fields will never touch the poisonous grass, will always avoid it and take only the harm-less and healthy variety; but kept within the stable, accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets confused, does not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong food, being always given ready-made things by the master.
Human contact has thus a harmful effect upon the animal's instinctive life. But in another way it may have an uplifting influence too. Some of the refined human sentimentssympathy, gratitude, faithfulness, self-sacrificein a pronounced human way find expression in animals that are domesticated and live close to man and within the human atmosphere. It is true many of these feelings are not totally absent in the animal kingdom (especially in the higher strata) in its natural or wild state, but they belong to the level of pure feeling or impulse and have not risen to the level of sentiments which have a mental element infused into their vital stuff. Indeed a strong mental element, a reasoning capacity sometimes very clearly develops in the domestic animal.
The animal acts by instinct, we say; that is to say, it goes straight to the thing to be done: in order to do a thing it does not make a choice between possibilities, there is no selective process in its consciousness. It is the human consciousness alone that says, this is not to be done, but that to be done, not this but that or puts the question, which one, to be or not to be? This is what we mean by discrimination or deliberation. Normally, this faculty is absent in the animal. We have said of refined feelings in man; refined here need not mean always ennobled or morally elevated; it may mean also more subtle, more complicated and be applied to some baseracutely perversefeelings which are perhaps peculiarly human. Domestic animals sometimes contract them from men: jealousy, spitefulness, vengeance, vindictiveness of an extreme degree are likely to be found more among animals living with men than those that are in the wild state. We have heard of elephants brooding over a hurt or even an insult for long months and taking revenge when occasion presents itself. And we have heard of a cat jumping out of a window into the street below and killing itself simply because it thought its mistress showed more love towards another cat.
06.36 - The Mother on Herself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are two things that should not be confused with each other, namely, what one is and what one does, what one is essentially and what one does in the outside world. They are very different. I know what I am. And what others think or say or whatever happens in the world, that truth remains unaffected, unaltered, a fact. It is real to itself and the world's denial or affirmation does not increase or diminish that reality. But being what I am, what I do actually is altogether a different question: that will depend upon the conditions and circumstances in which things are and in and through which I am to work. I know the truth I bring, but how much of it finds expression in the world depends upon the world itself. What I bring, the world must have the capacity and the will to accept: otherwise even if I bring with me the highest and the most imperative truth, it will be, absolutely as it were, non-existent for a consciousness that does not recognise or receive it: the being with that consciousness will not profit a jot by it.
You will say if the truth I bring is supreme and omnipotent, why does it not compel the world to accept it, why can it not break the world's resistance, force man to accept the good it refuses? But that is not the way in which the world was created nor the manner in which it moves and develops. The origin of creation is freedom: it is a free choice in the consciousness that has projected itself as the objective world. This freedom is the very character of its fundamental nature. If the world denies its supreme truth, its highest good, it does so in the delight of its free choice; and if it is to turn back and recognise that truth and that good, it must do so in the same delight of free choice. If the erring world was ordered to turn right and immediately did so, if things were done in a trice, through miracles, there would be then no point in creating a world. Creation means a play of growth: it is a journey, a movement in time and space through graded steps and stages. It is a movement awayaway from its source and a movement towards: that is the principle or plan on which it stands. In this plan there is no compulsion on any of the elements composing the world to forswear its natural movement, to obey to a dictate from outside: such compulsion would break the rhythm of creation.
07.07 - Freedom and Destiny, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This addition comes from the aspiration for the supreme consciousness. There is nothing to wonder at the phenomenon. There is an aspiration acting in the world, moving with a certain end in view; the purpose is to bring back the fallen and obscured consciousness to its original and normal state of the divine consciousness. Each time that this aspiring consciousness meets an obstacle in its working, a new resistance to conquer or to transform, it calls for a new Force. And this new Force is a kind of new creation. In the human being, too, there are different domains in obedience to a law of correspondence; in each there is for him a different destiny and each is absolute in its line. But there is also in him, through his aspiration, a capacity to enter into relation with a domain higher than where he happens to be and bring down an action of this higher domain into the lower determinism. So we can say that there is a horizontal determinism in each domain, absolute in its normal working; but there is also a vertical intervention from other higher domains or even from the highest and then the lower determinism is changed completely. Thus every human being is at once a sum of various determinisms, absolute in their way, and there is also an absolute liberty that can intervene by bringing down other forces into the apparently rigid frame of destiny of the lower worlds and alter it. That is how things in the world give the impression of the unforeseen, the incalculable, the miraculous.
You may call this intervention Grace; for without the Divine Grace this could not happen. There is a consciousness and a vision of things where all are brought back to this single source; Grace only exists, nothing else is there. That does everything. But as you have not risen to that summit, not have had that extreme realisation, you have to take into account your own person, your personal aspiration, the thing that calls for the Grace and to which the Grace responds. The two are needed here. Both are ultimately ways of viewing the same truth. The mind, however, finds it difficult to conceive both in a simultaneous movement. The rigid distinctions it makes take away much from the supple and subtle and integral truth of a total experience.
07.10 - Diseases and Accidents, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When an accident happens there is in it a critical moment. For example, you slip and you fall. Now between the moment when you slip and the moment when you fall, there is just a fraction of a second when you are, as it were, given the choice. It can either be nothing or something very serious. Only to make the choice you must have a perfectly awakened consciousness and your being must be constantly in contact with the psychic. There is no time to bring in the contact, one must already be in contact. So, just between the slip and the fall, if the mental and psychic formation is sufficient, you come out unscathed. If, on the contrary, the body thinks, as it is its habit, Oh, I have slipped and becomes apprehensiveit is, as I say, a matter of a fraction of a second, even less then the catastrophe happens. You have the capacity to prevent an accident happening, you are given the choice at a momentary moment. But for that you must learn to be wide awake, to be fully conscious. When you are in that condition you can prevent an accident, you can stop an illness coming into you. But it is just the matter of a split second and you must not miss it.
And yet there is still another moment. When you have fallen and are already hurt, you have still now the open chance whether it will turn well or ill, whether it will stop at being just a mishap or become something really serious or as serious as possible. I do not know if you have noticed that there are certain people who do not seem to miss any occasion for an accident. Every time there is a possibility, they have it. And the accident is never slight, it tends to be serious and often very serious. People say, what an unlucky fellow! Chance is never on his side! etc., etc. But all that is sheer ignorance. Everything depends absolutely upon the working of the consciousness. I could cite any number of instances and such striking ones. There are people who might have been killed but came out of the accident safe and sound. There are others for whom what was quite harmless in the beginning turns worse and worse and proves in the end, perhaps, fatal.
07.22 - Mysticism and Occultism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All that signifies that occultism is not a joke or a mere play; you cannot take to it simply to amuse yourself. It must be done as it ought to be done, under proper conditions and with great care. The one thing absolutely essential is, I repeat once more, to be totally fearless. If you happen to meet in your dreams terrible scenes and are frightened, then you must not approach occultism. If, on the contrary, you can remain perfectly tranquil in the face of the most frightful menaces, they simply amuse you; if you can handle such situations safely and successfully, that would show that you have some capacity and then you can try seriously. There are people who are real fighters in their sleep; if they meet an enemy they can face him, they can not only defend themselves, but can attack and conquer.
***
07.28 - Personal Effort and Will, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In personal effort there is a feeling of effort, of tension: the effort is felt as personal i.e. you rely upon yourself and you have the impression that if you do not do at each step what is to be done all will be lost. Will is different. It is the capacity to concentrate upon what one does so that it may be done well and to continue to do so till the thing is done.
Supposing under given circumstances a work has come upon you. Take an artist, for example, a painter. He has an inspiration and has decided to do a painting. He knows very well that if he has not the inspiration he will not be able to do anything good, the painting would be nothing more than a daub. If he were simply passive, with neither effort nor will, he would tell the Divine: Here I leave the palette, the brush and the canvas, you will do the painting now. But the Divine does not act in that way. The painter himself must arrange everything, concentrate upon his subject, put all his will upon a perfect execution. On the other hand, if he has not the inspiration, he may take all the trouble and yet the result be nothing more than a work like other thousands of examples. You must feel what your painting is to express and know or find out how to express it. A great painter often gets a very exact vision of the painting he is to do. He has the vision and he sets himself to work out the vision. He labours day by day, with a will and consciousness, to reproduce as exactly as possible what he sees clearly with his inner sight. He works for the Divine; his surrender is active and dynamic. For the poet too it is the same thing. Anyone who wants to do something for the Divine, it is the same.
07.30 - Sincerity is Victory, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And it is not an easy thing. To be sincere in a part, to be sincere on the whole, to be sincere at moments is easy enough; everybody can have or achieve that much. It is within the capacity of any human being with normal good will, to be sincere in his psychic movements, even if these are rare. But to be sincere in every cell of your physical body is a still rarer and arduous achievement. To make the body cells so one-pointed that they too feel they cannot live but for the Divine and in and through the Divine. That is true sincerity and that is what you must have.
First you must observe that there is not a day in your life, not an hour, not even a minute when you have not got to rectify or intensify your sincerity. I do not say that you deceive the Divine. None can deceive the divine, not even the greatest of the Asuras. When you have understood that, still then you will always find moments in your everyday life when you try to deceive yourself. Almost automatically you bring forward reasons in favour of whatever you do. I do not speak of grosser things as when you have quarrelled with a person, for example, and in your anger throw the whole blame upon him. I knew a child who gave a good blow to the door, because it thought the door was at fault. It is always the other party who is in the wrong. But even when you have passed beyond this baby stage, when you are supposed to be a little more reasonable, you do the stupidest of things and produce reasons in self-justification. The real test of sincerity, the very minimum of true sincerity lies here; in your reaction to a given situation whether you can take automatically the right attitude and do exactly the thing to be done. When, for example, one speaks angrily to you, do you catch the contagion and become angry on your side also or are you able to maintain an unshakable calm and lucidity, see the other man's point or behave as one should?
07.35 - The Force of Body-Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is a state of consciousness in which you perceive that the effect of things, circumstances, movements, all the activities of life upon yourself depends almost exclusively upon your attitude towards them. You become then conscious, conscious to the extent of realising that things in themselves are neither good nor bad, they are so only in relation to ourselves: their effect, I say, depends entirely upon the way in which we regard these things. If we take, for example, a circumstance as a gift from God, as a divine Grace, as an outcome of the total harmony, it will help us to become more conscious and truer and stronger. The same identical circumstance, if we take it differently, as a blow of Fate, as a bad force wishing us harm, becomes, on the contrary, a damper on our consciousness, it saps our strength, brings obscurity, creates disharmony. And yet in either case it is altogether the same circumstance. I would like you to have the experience and make the experiment. For your ideal is to be master of yourselves. But not that only. You should not only be master of your own selves, but master of the circumstances of your life, the circumstances, at least, that immediately surround you and concern you. You must note further that it is an experience that is not confined to the mind alone: it need not happen in your head only, it may and indeed must continue into the body. Certainly, this is a realisation needing great labour, much concentration and self-mastery: you have to force the consciousness into the body, into dense Matter. It is the attitude of the body that will in the end determine everything: shocks and contacts of the outside world will change its nature according to the way in which they are received by the body. And if you attain perfection in that line, you can become even master of accidents. Such a thing is possible, not only possible, but it is bound to happen, for it is a forward step in man's progress. First of all, you have to realise the power in your mind to the extent that it can act upon circumstances and change their effect upon you. Then the power can descend into Matter, into the substance, the cells of your body and endow the body with this capacity of control over things outside and around you.
There is nothing impossible in the world. We ourselves put the bar: always we say, this is possible, that is impossible, one can do this, one cannot do that. Sometimes we admit a thing to be possible but ask who would do it, so it is impossible and so on. Like slaves, like prisoners we bind ourselves to our limits. You call it common sense, but it is a stupid, narrow and ignorant sense; it does not truly know the laws of life. The laws of life are not what we think them to be, what our mind or intellect conceives them to be; they are quite otherwise.
07.36 - The Body and the Psychic, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That depends. There is a kind of progress sometimes. There are, for example, writers, musicians, artists, people who lived on a high mental level, who feel that they have yet something to do upon earth, they did not finish their work, fulfil their mission, reach the goal they set before themselves. So they wish to remain in the earth's atmosphere as much as possible, retain as much cohesion of their being as needed and seek to manifest themselves and progress through other living human forms. I have seen many such cases: I shall tell you the very interesting case of a musician, a pianist, a pianist of a very high order; he had hands that had become something marvellous, full of skill, accuracy, precision, force, swiftness; it was truly remarkable. The man died comparatively young and with the feeling that had he lived he would have gone on advancing in his musical self-expression. Such was the intensity of his aspiration that his subtle hands retained their form without getting dissolved and wherever there was someone passive and receptive and at the same time a good musician the hands of the dead man would enter into the living hands that played. In the case that I saw the man used to play well enough normally but quite in the ordinary way; he became, however, as he continued to play all on a sudden not only a virtuoso, but a marvellous artist; it was the hands of the other person who made use of him. The same thing may happen with regard to a painter; in his case too, the hands are the instrument. For certain writers also a like thing may happen; but here it is the brain of the dead man that retains its formation and it is this that enters the brain of the living writer which must be receptive enough to allow the formation in all its precision. I have seen a writer who was nothing extraordinary in his normal capacity, but used to write things much more beautiful in those moments than he was capable of doing or was doing usually. I know the case of a musical composer, not executor like the one I referred to before, which was particularly remarkable. In the case of the composer, like the writer, it is the brain that serves him; for the executor the hands are the chief instrument. Beethoven, Bach, Cesar Franck were great composers, although the last one was an executor also. The composition of music is a cerebral activity. Now the brain of a great musician used to enter in contact with that of the composer and made him compose marvellous pieces. The man was writing a musical opera. You must remember what a complicated thing an opera music is. It is a complex whole in which roles are distributed to a very large number of performers each playing differently on different instruments and they must all of them together and severally express the idea and the theme the composer has in his mind. Now, this man I am speaking of, when he sat down with the blank paper in front, used to receive the musical formation in his brain and wrote down continuously as if he was recording something ready-made placed before him. I saw him filling up a whole page from top to bottom with all the details of orchestration. He had no need to hear any instrument, he did it all on paper; and the distribution was perfect. He himself was not very unconscious, he used to feel that something entered into him and helped him to bring out the music.
You must note here that when I speak of a formation entering into a living person, the formation does not mean the man himself who is dead, that is to say, his soul or psychic being. I say that it is only a special faculty which continues to remain in the earth atmosphere, even after the death of the man to whom the faculty belonged: it was so well developed, well formed that it continues to retain its independent identity. The soul, the true being of the man is no longer there; I have told you often that after death it goes away as soon as possible to the psychic world, its own world, for rest, assimilation and preparation. Not that it cannot happen otherwise. A soul incarnating as a great musician may incarnate again in or as a great musician, although I said in another connection that a soul usually prefers to vary, even to contrast and contradict its incarnations with each other. Take for example, the great violinist, Isai; he was a Belgian and the most marvellous violinist of his century. I knew him and I am sure he was an incarnation, at least, an emanation, of the soul that was the great Beethoven. It may not have been the whole psychic being that so reincarnated, but the soul in its musical capacity. He had the same appearance, the same head. When I saw him first appearing on the stage I was greatly surprised, I said to myself, he looks so like Beethoven, the very portrait of that great genius. And then he stood, the bow poised, one stroke and there were in it three or four notes only, but three or four supreme notes, full of power, greatness and grandeur; the entire hall was charged with an atmosphere marvellous and unique. I could recognise very well the musical genius of Beethoven behind. It may be possible here too the soul of Beethoven in its entirety the whole psychic beingwas not present; the central psychic might have been elsewhere gathering more modest, commonplace experiences, as a shoemaker, for example. But what was left and what manifested itself was something very characteristic of the great musician. He had disciplined his mental and vital being and even his physical being in view of his musical capacity and this formation remained firm and sought to reincarnate. The musical being was originally organised and fashioned around the psychic consciousness and therefore it acquired its peculiar power and its force of persistence, almost an immortality. Such formations, though not themselves the psychic being, have a psychic quality, are independent beings, possess their own life and seek their fulfilment by manifesting and incarnating themselves whenever the occasion presents itself.
Can a Psychic Being take two bodies at the same time?
The matter is not so simple. I have told you often that the psychic being is the result of an evolution, that is to say, it is the expression of the divine consciousness that has entered and spread itself into Matter and slowly raises Matter and develops it so that it may return to the Divine. The psychic being is formed progressively by the divine centre through many lives or incarnations. There comes a time when it attains a kind of perfection, the perfection of its growth and formation. It has then often an aspiration towards greater realisation, a further progress to manifest better or further the Divine. As the result of this pull, it generally draws towards itself a being of a higher order, from a higher plane, from the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, a being of involution who incarnates in the psychic being. These overmental entities are termed gods and divinities by men. Now when the fusion takes place, of a god into a psychic being, the latter naturally increases in stature and partakes of the nature of the god and acquires also the capacity to produce emanations; that is to say it throws out of itself a part which possesses an independent existence and can incarnate in others. In this way there may be not only two but several emanations or projections of the same original being. In other words, there may be a single psycho-divine origin but many personalities coming out of it. That is how it happens sometimes that different people feel a sort of affinity and even identity, and with reason, because they carry within them the same deity, out of which they, that is, their psychic being came. It is not the same thing as the doubling of the personality where in throwing oneself out of oneself one loses a portion, as when you cut a body into two: there are only two halves. Here the projection is a whole and independent personality. If you emanate a being out of you, you remain whole and entire without losing anything of yourself and the emanation too is a being whole and entire living its independent life.
II
07.37 - The Psychic Being, Some Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are two kinds of progress in the psychic and they are very different. One consists in its formation and building and organisation; for the psychic begins by being only a little divine spark hidden in the inner person and out of this spark comes and gradually develops an independent conscious person who has his own will and activity. As I say, the psychic being is originally like a spark from the divine consciousness: it grows into a conscious individuality through the experiences of successive lives. This progress then is like the progress of the growing child. It is a thing in formation and it remains so for a long time in most human beings. It is not a fully individualised being there, not fully conscious and master of itself; it needs many births, one after another, to build itself and become fully conscious. In the end, however, there does come a time when it is a completed personality, fully individualised, fully conscious of itself and its destiny. When such a psychic being incarnates in a human being, it makes a great difference. For the man is born free, so to say, he is not bound to his circumstances, his surroundings or his origin or atavism, like ordinary people. When he comes upon earth, he feels he has a work to do in the world, he has a mission to fulfil. To that extent then his cycle of progress is completed, that is to say, he has no more need to take birth in a body to make further progress. Till then rebirth is a necessity, it is compulsory; for it is through reincarnation i.e. by taking up a new body that he progresses, develops and grows. It is in the physical life and in the physical body that the soul slowly builds itself until it becomes a fully conscious being. But once it is fully formed, it is free either to take birth or not to do so at will. There then one kind of progress comes to an end. But if the fully formed being now wishes to become an instrument for the work of the Divine, if it chooses to be a worker upon earth to help in the fulfilment of the cosmic purpose of the Divine, instead of going away and resting in the psychic bliss of its own world, then he has to make a new kind of progress, a progress towards capacity to work, to organise and execute the work, to express and embody the will of the Divine. As long as the world continues, as long as he chooses to work for the Divine, he will continue to progress. But if he wishes to withdraw into the psychic world and gives up or refuses to work for the divine Plan, then he can remain in the static state beyond the range of progress. For, as I have said, progress exists only upon earth in the physical world. You cannot progress everywhere. In the psychic world there is a kind of blissful repose. You remain what and where you are without moving.
Everything upon earth progresses, has to progress. All men, without exception, even those who have no sense of the psychic, whether they wish it or not, must progress. The psychic progresses in them in spite of themselves and they have to follow the curve of its growth and development. That is to say, man ascends in the scale of life and grows, grows exactly as a child does. In the process of growth there comes a time when one reaches the summit and one changes the direction or the plane of progress. At the outset there is the purely physical progress, like that of the child; then there comes the mental progress, later on the psychic progress and the spiritual progress, so that unless progress changes it direction, when it has reached its limit on a particular level, one has to come down the curve, that is to say, instead of progression there will be retrogression, which means in the end disintegration and decomposition. Precisely because in the purely physical world there cannot be a perpetual and constant progress, there is in this domain this curve of growth, apogee, decline and decomposition. All that does not advance must recede. This is exactly what happens in the domain of matter. Matter does not know how to progress indefinitely, it has not learnt it; so after a time it is tired of progressing or growing. Given this constitution, one cannot go beyond a limit. But there is in man side by side with his physical growth, a vital growth and a mental growth as well. The mental especially can progress long after the body has ceased to progress. The body does not grow; even when it is declining, the mind still can continue to grow, to rise to higher heights. There is a mental ascension contrariwise to the physical descent. But they who do Yoga, who become conscious of their psychic being and are identified with it, who live with its life, never cease to progress, they move upward till the last breath of their life; even when they die their progress does not stop. The body is on the decline, because it cannot keep pace with the inner march forward, it cannot transform itself and mould itself into the rhythm of the inner consciousness. The discrepancy increases so much between the two, that there is a snap at the end and that is death. However, on the purely spiritual level too there is no progress. The domain of the pure spirit means a static condition; there is no progressive movement there, for it is beyond the field of progress, beyond all manifestation. For when you are merged in the Spirit, you have come out of creation and there is no question of progress, or even of any movement.
07.43 - Music Its Origin and Nature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Music, you must remember, like any other art, is a means for expressing somethingsome idea, some feeling, some emotion, a certain aspiration and so on. There is even a domain where all these movements exist and from where they are brought down under a musical form. A good composer with some inspiration would produce good music; he is then called a good musician. A bad musician can have also a good inspiration, he can receive something from the higher domain, but possessing no musical capacity, he would produce only what is very commonplace, very ordinary and uninteresting. However, if you go beyond, precisely over to this place where lies the origin of music, get to the idea, the emotion, the inspiration behind, you can then taste of these things without being held back by the form. Still this musical form can be joined on to what is behind or beyond the form; for it is that which originally inspired the musician to compose. Of course, there are instances where no inspiration exists, where the source is only a kind of sound mechanics, which is not, in any case, always interesting. What I mean is this that there is an inner state in which the outer form is not the most important thing: there lies the origin of music, the inspiration that is beyond. It is trite to say, but one often forgets that it is not sound that makes music, the sound has to express something.
There is a music that is quite mechanical and has no inspiration. There are musicians who play with great virtuosity, that is to say, they have mastered the technique and execute faultlessly the most complicated and rapid movements. It is music perhaps, but it expresses nothing; it is like a machine. It is clever, there is much skill, but it is uninteresting, soulless. The most important thing, not only in music, but in all human creations, in all that man does even, is, I repeat, the inspiration behind. The execution naturally is expected to be on a par with the inspiration; but to express truly well, one must have truly great things to express. It is not to say that technique is not necessary; on the contrary, one must possess a very good technique; it is even indispensable. Only it is not the one thing indispensable, not is it as important as the inspiration. For the essential quality of music comes from the region where it has its source.
07.45 - Specialisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You must extend, enlarge, enrich your mind. It must be full of thoughts and ideas. It must be stored with the results of your observation and study. It must not be a poor mind, a mind, that is to say, that has not many ideas nor the capacity of reasoning and argument. Your mind must be capable of thinking of many different things, gathering knowledge of different kinds, considering a problem from many different sides, not following only a single line or track: it must be somewhat like a Japanese fan opening out full circle in all directions.
You have, for example, several subjects to learn at school. Well, learn as many as possible. If you study at home, read as many varieties as possible. I know you are usually asked and advised to follow a different way. You are to take as few subjects as possible and specialise. Yes, that is the general ideal: specialisation, to be an expert in one thing. If you wish to be a good philosopher, read philosophy only; if you wish to be a good chemist, do only chemistry; and even you should concentrate upon only one problem or thesis in philosophy or chemistry. In sports you are asked to do the same. Choose one item and fix your attention upon that alone. If you want to be a good tennis player, think of tennis alone. However, I am not of that opinion. My experience is different. I believe, there are general faculties in man which he should acquire and cultivate more than specialise himself. Of course, if it is your ambition to be a Monsieur or Madame Curie who wanted to discover one particular thing, to find out a new mystery of a definite kind, then you have to concentrate upon the one thing in view. But even then, once the object is gained, you can turn very well to other things. Besides, it is not an impossibility in the midst of the one-pointed pursuit to find occasions and opportunities to be interested in other pursuits.
08.02 - Order and Discipline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Hence, to know a man's character you need not spend your time in talking to him, you just go and open a drawer of his or open his almirah, you will know. But I may speak of someone I shall tell you presently who it iswho used to live in the midst of heaps of books and papers. You enter into his room, you find piles of them everywhere. But if by chance, you were, to your misfortune, to displace a single sheet of paper, he would know perfectly well and would ask immediately who was it that had disturbed the papers. There were masses of things, on your entering you would not find your way. But each thing had its placenotes, letters, books, all in order and you could not mishandle them without his knowing it. Well, it was Sri Aurobindo. In other words, you must not confuse orderliness with poverty. Naturally if you have a few thingsa dozen books and a limited number of objectsit is easier to have them properly arranged. But what is to be aimed at is a logical order, a conscious intelligent order among a multiplicity of objects. That requires a capacity for organisation. It is a capacity which every one must acquire and possess, unless of course you are physically disabledwhen one is ill or sickly or maimed and has not the required strength: even then there is a limit. I know of sick people who could tell you: "Open me that drawer, you will find on the right or on the left or at the bottom such and such a thing." They could not themselves move and handle the things but knew where they were. Apart from such cases, the ideal must be one of order, organisation, like that of a library for example, where you have thousands and thousands of books that are yet all arranged, classified, docketed and you have only to name a title and in a few minutes the book is in your hand of course, it is not the work of a single person; even then, the pattern is there as an example to follow.
You too must organise your affairs in the same way. You need not follow another's method or system. You have your own rule, that which is convenient and true for you but it must be well planned and properly laid out.
08.05 - Will and Desire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When you have the will, it means you have the capacity of the stained effort for a definite end. A desire, on the contrary, is something violent, passionate and momentary; it is very rarely a durable thing. It has not the stuff, the substance and organisation of a sustained effort. When desire gets hold of you, it can make you do anything, but in a fit of impulse, not in a methodical and consistent manner.
Why do children have the habit of always asking for thingsmaterial objects, I mean?
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Many hold this last idea all their life. When they are told to overcome their desires, they answer, "The best way of overcoming them is to satisfy them." But what is needed is not merely to change the object of desire, but change the impulse, the movement itself. For that purpose, a good deal of knowledge and understanding and experience are required. That you cannot expect of young children. First of all, they do not possess the capacity for reasoning and you cannot explain the matter to them, they will not understand, your reasons. It is why the parents have normally no other way except to cut them short, saying: "Stop, you bother us". That is how they get out of the difficulty.
It is not a solution. The task is hard, demanding sustained effort and unshakable patience. There are people, a good many, who, although no longer children, yet continue to be so all their life: they too do not understand reason. If you tell them, they are not reasonable and that it is not possible to be continually satisfying their desires, they simply think: "These people are quite unpleasant, they are not amiable." That is all.
08.10 - Are Not Dogs More Faithful Than Men?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Yes, for it is their nature to be faithful and they have not man's mental complications. What prevents men from becoming faithful is the complexes of their mind. Most men are not faithful because they are afraid of being dupes, afraid of being cheated, exploited. Also behind the faithfulness they have there is always a large dose of egoism hidden, there is a bargaining more or less conscious, a give and take: 'I am faithful to you. You too must be faithful to me, in other words, you must be nice to me, must not exploit me etc. Dogs do not have these complexities, for they have a very rudimentary mind. They have not this marvellous capacity of reasoning which drives man to commit such follies. But, of course, we cannot go back to the dog state. What we have to do is to rise higher, to become a superman, to have the dog's quality on a higher level, if I am allowed to say so, i.e. instead of being faithful instinctively, blindly, half-consciously, through a kind of binding need, it must be a conscious, willing, deliberate faithfulness, above all, free from egoism. There is a point where all the virtues meet: it is the point that is beyond egoism. If we take faithfulness or devotion or love or the will to serve,all these when they are above the level of egoism are similar to one another in the sense that they give themselves and ask no return. And if you get up a step higher, you see they are done not through the sense of duty or abnegation but out of an intense joy that carries its own reward, which needs nothing in exchange, for it is joy itself. But for that you should have risen very high where there is no longer any turn-back on oneself, these movements that draw you down that kind of sympathy for oneself, the self-pity that one feels for oneself and says "Poor me I" This is a most degrading sentiment and it pulls you immediately into a dark hole.
You must leave that far behind if you will have the joy of faithfulness, the joy of self-giving, that does not notice at all whether it is properly received or not, whether there is a response or not. Never to wait for a return in exchange for what one does, wait for nothing, not through asceticism or the sense of sacrifice, but because of the joy of being in that consciousness: that is sufficient, that is much more that what one can receive from anything outside.
08.13 - Thought and Imagination, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You can make use of imagination for a high purpose. With its help you can recreate your inner and outer life. You can wholly build your life if you know how to use it and have the power. As a matter of fact, it is the most ordinary and primary way of creating and forming things in the world. I had always the impression that if one had not the capacity of imagination, one would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you would like to become that comes first, the prevision, and then you follow it up; you continue to imagine and realise, realise and imagine. Imagination opens the way to realisation." It is very difficult to move unimaginative people. They see only what is just in front of their nose, they feel only what is there at a given moment. They cannot advance, they are blocked by the immediate present. It is imagination that makes the whole difference.
Men of science also have and should have a great power of imagination; otherwise they would discover nothing. Imagination, is in reality, the capacity to project oneself out of realised things towards things realisable and pull them in by the very power of projection. It is true there is a progressive and there is a regressive imagination. There are people who always imagine all possible catastrophes and have the power even to make them come. However, imagination has its good use. It sends out, as it were, antennae into a world that is not yet realised, and they catch hold of something there and draw it here. Naturally, it means an addition to earth's atmosphere, addition of things that tend towards manifestation. Imagination then is an instrument that one can train and discipline and use at will. It is one of the principal faculties that should be developed and made serviceable.
Even, you can imagine the Divine and come into contact with Him. You do in fact come into contact with that which you imagine. Do you know you cannot imagine anything that is not somewhere? It may not exist here upon earth, but it is and must be elsewhere. As I say, it is impossible to imagine anything that is not contained in the universe in principle at least. Otherwise it would not be there even as an idea.
08.15 - Divine Living, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We always give the name "Divine" to all that we are not and want to become, all that seems infinitely higher than not only everything we have done but everything we can possibly do, all that is beyond our present capacity and conception.
I am perfectly sure that if we went back into the past a few thousands of years, we would find that when one spoke of the Divine it was of a being somewhat like one of the "overmental" gods. But now, the way of living proper to these overmental divinities who governed the earth and created many things upon earth for a very long time, seems to us very inferior to what we conceive as the Supramental. This Supramental again which we now call the Divine and which we seek to bring down upon earth will have the same effect upon us a few thousand years hence as the Overmental has upon us now.
08.24 - On Food, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not like your stomach which can digest only a limited quantity of food and this food again can give out only a portiona very small portionof its energy. For after the energy spent in swallowing, masticating, digesting, etc. how much of it still remains available? If, on the other hand, you learnyou learn instinctively, it is a kind of instinctto draw from the universal energy which is freely available in the world and in any quantity, you can take it in and absorb as much as you are capable of doing. Thus, as I have said, when there is not the support from below coming from food, the body makes an automatic movement to get the needed energy from the environment. It gets at times, more than enough, even an overdose and that puts you in a state of tension or stimulation. And if your body is strong and can remain without food for some time, then you can maintain your poise and utilise the energies in all waysto make inner progress, for example, to become more conscious, to change your nature. But if your body does not have much reserve, it gets easily weakened by fast, then there occurs a disharmony between the intensity of the energies you absorb and the capacity of the body to hold them and that upsets you. You lose your poise, the equilibrium of the forces is broken and anything can happen. In any case, if such a thing happens, you lose a good deal of self-control, you get excited and this unnatural excitement you consider as a higher state of consciousness. But it is an inner unbalance, nothing more. Otherwise, in that state your senses get refined and receptive. Thus when you fast and do not draw energy from below, if you smell a flower, you feel nourished, the perfume you brea the in serves as food, it gives you energy and this you would not have known but for the fasting.
In this condition certain faculties become intensified and that is taken as a spiritual effect. But in reality it has very little to do with spirituality. However, instead of thinking all the while about food, how to get it and eat it, if one were to take to fasting for the sake of freeing oneself from the bondage of food preoccupation, rising a little in the scale of consciousness, it would be a good thing. If you have the faith it will do you good, it will purify you, make you progress a little. In that way it is all right: it will not do any harm to your body except making it a little slimmer. But if you fast and then continuously turn back to it and think of the food that you might have eaten or are likely to eat after the fasting, well, such fasting is worse than feasting.
08.32 - The Surrender of an Inner Warrior, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It means the vital when it is converted. The converted vital is for the Divine like a warrior. The vital in man is the region of power and it is that which drives him to fight, to fight and conquer. It is the most difficult element to deal with: for it is this capacity to fight that also produces in the vital the spirit of revolt and independence, the will to follow its own will. But when the vital understands and is converted, if it is truly surrendered to the Divine Will, then its fighting capacity turns against anti-divine forces, the forces of obscurity that prevent the transformation: the powers of the vital are strong enough to conquer the enemies. The anti-divine forces are in the vital world: from there they spread upon the physical. But their own seat is in the vital and it is the converted vital that can effectively deal with them. But the conversion is difficult.
The higher vital finds it much less difficult to surrender, for it is under the influence of the mind and sometimes even of the psychic; it understands them more easily. It is less difficult than the lower vital, for the latter is essentially the stronghold of desires and blind impulsions. The lower vital, even when it surrenders, when it does what it is asked to do, is not wholly happy, it suffers and only pushes down the impulse to revolt, it obeys unwillingly and does not collaborate. Unless it collaborates in joy and true love, nothing can be done, the transformation cannot come.
08.35 - Love Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"The intensity of Divine Love does not produce any perturbation in any part of the being".1 Why should it? If there is a perturbation, it is more likely that a different kind of love was in question. If it is Divine Love, there can be no perturbation, for each one receives it according to his capacity.
Divine Love is there in its full intensity, as a tremendous force. But most people, ninety-nine out of a hundred, feel nothing at all. What they feel is exactly in proportion to what they are, what they can receive and hold. Indeed, you are always bathed in an atmosphere vibrant with Divine Love. Sometimes, on rare occasions, for a few seconds perhaps, there is all on a sudden just the impression of something, and you say: "there, the Divine Love came to me!" Well, it is a way of saying: the true fact being that for some reason or other you happened to be just a little open and you had the perception of the thing that is always with you. The Love is there, the divine consciousness, too, is there in the same way. They are one, after all. They are there all the while; only you do not feel it or do so only spasmodically. Once in a way you find yourself, without any rhyme or reason as it were, in that happy state and you declare that the Divine Love has at last turned towards you! But, as I say, the matter is not like that. There came about an opening in you, perhaps no more than a pinpoint, and that was sufficient for the thing to rush in; for the atmosphere is surcharged with it and wherever there is a possibility of its being received, it is received. The same is true of all things divine. They are there: you do not receive or perceive them, because you are closed, shut off, blocked up. You are occupied, most of the time with other things. You are full of yourself, packed with it, and there is no room for anything else. You are not merely passively filled with yourself, but very actively, you are furiously busy with yourself. How can you notice then the marvellous things that are about you, around you? You get a glimpse unawares, perhaps when you are asleep; but it fades away soon. Man's ego is a formidable thing; the whole universe, to him, is a mere function of the ego. You are the centre and the entire creation revolves around you. Such is your vision of the universe. You do not see it as it is; you see only yourself when you look at it.
09.04 - The Divine Grace, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Whatever may be the faith and the trust you have in the Divine Grace, whatever your capacity of seeing it at work in all circumstances, at every moment and at all points of life, you can never fully understand the marvellous immensity of its action and the precision and the exactitude with which it works. Never shall one grasp in what degree the Grace does everything, is behind everything, organises everything in order that the advance towards the divine realisation may be as swift, as complete, as total as it can be under the given circumstances of the world.
As soon as you come in contact with it, you find that there is not a second in time, not a point in space which does not show in a signal manner this ceaseless work of the Grace, its constant intervention. And once you have seen that, you feel you are never up to the mark. For you must never forget that you must not have fear or anguish or regret or recoil or even suffering. If you were in union with this Grace, if you saw it everywhere, you would begin to live a life of exultation, all power and infinite happiness. And that would be the best possible collaboration in the Divine Work.
09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When you see a rose opening out to the sun, it is as if it were for the need of giving away its beauty. For us it is unintelligible, for flowers do not think out what they do. A human being always associates with what he does the capacity to see what he does, to think what he does. But flowers I are not, so to say, conscious at all, theirs is a spontaneous movement. It is a mighty Force that is at work through all this, the great universal Consciousness, the great force of universal Love that makes all things flower in beauty.
It is said the tiger's need to devour is one of the first expressions of love in the world. What is likely to prove that this is not quite false is that when a tiger or a serpent catches its victim, the victim usually gives himself up in a kind of delight of being eaten. A testimony comes in the experience of a man in the following true story. He happened to be in the midst of bushes with his comrades. He was a little behind, away from others and a tiger caught hold of him. The others returned when they noticed that he had disappeared. They found and followed the traces and arrived just in time to save him from the jaws of the tiger. When he had recovered a little, he was asked what a terrible experience he must have had! He replied that it was nothing of the kind: "Just imagine, I don't know what happened to me, but as soon as the tiger seized me and began to drag me along the ground, I felt an intense love for him and a great desire that he should eat me up." This is, I say, a true story.
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Radha consciousness is essentially the way in which the individual answers to the divine call. Sri Aurobindo describes it as the capacity to find Ananda in all things through identification with the one divine Presence and through total self-giving to this Presence. That has the power of changing everything into perpetual ecstasy. Instead of seeing things in their apparent discord, you see the Presence alone, the Will and the Grace in all things. And every event, every element, every circumstance, every form changes into a way, a detail through which you can approach more intimately and more profoundly the Divine. The discordances disappear, the uglinesses vanish, there remains only the splendour of the divine presence in the Love that radiates in all things.
III
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To pass throughyes, pass through and see what is behind, not to stop short at the appearance, not to rest satisfied with the external form, but to look for the principle that is behind the love, not to be satisfied until you have found the source of the feeling in you. Then the external form will fall away of itself and you will be in contact with the Divine Love that is behind everything. That is the best way. To try to reject one to find the other is very difficult, almost impossible. Because human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if you want to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings feel it, if you force yourself towards rejecting that, then generally you reject even the capacity to feel love and you become as it were a stone. Then sometimes you have to wait for years or even centuries for the capacity of receiving and manifesting love to reawaken in you.
Therefore the best means is, when love comes in any form whatsoever, to try to pierce through its external appearance, to find out the divine principle that is behind and that is the cause of its existence. Naturally it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is the most effective. In other words, instead of ceasing to love, because you love in the wrong way, you must cease to love in the wrong way and try to love in the right way. For example, the love between human creatures, in all its forms, the love of the parents for their children, of the children for their parents, the love between brothers, between lovers, all are tainted with ignorance and egoism and every other fault that is the common human fault. So, instead of ceasing altogether to love, which is besides very difficult, as it will simply dry up the heart and therefore serve no purpose, you must learn to love with devotion and self-giving and self-abnegation, you are to fight not against love itself but against its deformities. All forms of appropriation, the sense of possession, jealousy, all other feelings that accompany and support these root feelings are to be rejected. Instead you must not seek to possess, dominate, impose your will or caprice or desire, must not be eager to take and receive, but to give. Do not demand a return from the other, but be satisfied with your own love; do not seek your interest, your personal pleasure, the fulfilment of your own desire but rest content with your love and affection, do not ask for a response, but remain happy with loving only, nothing more.
09.12 - The True Teaching, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
On other occasions, the question posed and the subject chosen are conveyed by the mind to the higher Consciousness. The mind receives a response from that Consciousness and conveys it through the word. This is what generally happens in all teachings, provided that the one who teaches has the capacity to pass the question on to the higher Consciousnessa capacity not always present.
I should tell you that the second method does not interest me much. Very often, when the question or the subject fails to give me the possibility of entering into a state of consciousness that interests me, I far prefer to keep silent. And it is, as it were, a sense of duty that makes me talk.
09.13 - On Teachers and Teaching, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To master something, a movement, for example, means, by your simple presence, without any word, any explanation, to replace a bad vibration by the true one. By means of the word, by means of explanation and discussion, even a certain emanation of force, you exert an influence upon another, but you do not master the movement. Mastery over a movement is the capacity to set against the vibration of the movement a stronger, truer vibration that can stop the other vibration. An example can be easily given.
Two persons are quarrelling in your presence; not only are they quarrelling, they are about to come to blows. Then you approach and explain to them that it is not a desirable thing and you give good reasons so that they refrain from it in the, end. You exercise an influence over them in this way. But if, on the other hand, you simply stand before them, look at them and send out a vibration of peace and calm and quietness without uttering a word, without any explanation whatsoever, and if as a result the other vibration does not stand but dies down by itself, that is mastery.
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But when did I say that a student is free to come and go as he likes? You must not confuse matters. I said and I repeat that if a student feels that a particular subject is foreign to him, if for example, he has a capacity for literature and poetry and a disgust or even dislike for mathematics, in that case, if the student comes and tells me, "I prefer not to follow the course of mathematics", I cannot answer him, "No, you must absolutely do it". But once a student has decided to follow a class, it is quite an elementary discipline for him to follow the class, to attend it regularly, to behave decently while he is there. Otherwise it is not becoming of him to go to the school at all. I have never encouraged people to loiter about during class hours or to come one day and be absent the next day, never, for, to begin with, if you are not able to submit yourself to this very elementary discipline, you will never succeed in having the least control over yourself; you will be always the slave of every impulse and fancy of yours.
If you do not want to pursue a certain line of knowledge, it it is all right, you are not obliged to do so. But if you decide to do a thing in life, whatever it is, you must do it honestly in a disciplined, regular and methodical manner, without allowing yourself to be fanciful. I have never approved of a person being the plaything of his impulses and caprices. You can never get sanction for that out of me, for you are then no longer a human being but an animal.
10.01 - Cycles of Creation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present cycle, the great cycle that is to say, has, as I have said, for its ultimate motive and purpose the advent and reign of the Supermind. But this proceeds through stages, each stage forming a minor or lesser cycle. The stages of these cycles are the different degrees of what is called evolution. The evolution starts upon the basis of an apparently simple substance and goes on unfolding gradually an inherent complexity. As we know, the different cycles of evolution in the past were at the outset a purely material universe of inorganic elements, then came the cycle of organic combinations, then the manifestation of life and next the mind and at present the mind at its peak capacity, which means the advent of the strange creature that has a miraculous destiny to accomplish. And that is to bring forth out of him the achievement and fulfilment of the next cycle. For the mind is there to bring forth, to usher in the Supermind and man is there as the laboratory and the vanguard as well of the Supermind.
At the present time the human consciousness in general has been so prepared and its dwelling and playfield the earth consciousness made ready to such a degree that it has been possible for the still secreted higher perfection to enter into the arena. The evolution, the growth has been a gradual expression and revelation of the light, the consciousness in a higher and higher degree of purity and potency through an encasement hard and resistant at first but gradually yielding to the impact of the higher status and even transforming itself so as to become its instrument and embodiment. We speak of the present situation, we are concerned with man and what he is to grow into or bring out of himself. Here also there seem to be stages or cycles of creation leading to the final achievement. The whole burden of the present endeavour is how to transcend, transform or modify the animalhood which is the basis of humanity even now and in and through which man is growing and seeking to manifest and incarnate his superior potencies. Man's supramental destiny means that he totally outgrows the animal, outgrows even his manhood in so far as it is merely human; for he has to incorporate the principle of the supramental which wholly transcends the mental.
1.001 - The Aim of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
All knowledge gathered through observations, whether through a microscope or telescope, in laboratories, etc., is ultimately invalid because it presupposes the static existence of the observer himself, the scientist's capacity to impartially observe and to unconditionally understand the conditions of what he observes very strange indeed, really. How does the scientist take for granted or imagine that he is an unconditioned observer and everything that he observes is conditioned? It is not true, because the observing scientist is as much conditioned by factors as the object that he observes. So, who is to observe the conditions of his own observing apparatus: his body, his senses the eyes, for example, and even the mind, which is connected to the body? Inasmuch as the observing scientist the observing individual, the knowing person is as much conditioned and limited as the object that is observed or seen, it is not possible to have ultimately valid knowledge in this world.
All our knowledge is insufficient, inadequate, temporal, empirical ultimately useless. It does not touch the core of life. Therefore, we will find that any learned person, whatever be the depth of his learning, whatever be the greatness of his scholarship, is miserable in the end. The reason is that life is different from this kind of knowledge. It is an all-comprehensive organic being in which the knowing individual is unfortunately included, a fact which misses the attention of every person. It is not possible for anyone to observe or see or know anything, inasmuch as the conditions which describe the object of observation also condition the subject of observation. The Veda points this out in a mystical formula:tam eva viditv atimtyum eti nnya panth vidyate ayanya. Now, when it is said, by knowing 'That', every problem is solved, the Veda does not mean knowing this object or that object, or this person or that person, or this thing or that thing, or this subject or that subject it is nothing of that kind. It is a 'That' with a capital 'T', which means to say, the true object of knowledge. The true object of knowledge is to be known, and when 'That' is known, all problems are solved.
What are problems? A problem is a situation that has arisen on account of the irreconcilability of one person, or one thing, with the status and condition of another person, or another thing. I cannot reconcile my position with your position; this is a problem. You cannot reconcile your position with mine; this is a problem. Why should there be such a condition? How is it that it is not possible for me to reconcile myself with you? It is not possible because there is no clear perception of my relationship with you. I have a misconceived idea of my relationship with you and, therefore, there is a misconceived adjustment of my personality with yours, and a misconception cannot solve a problem. The problem is nothing but this misconception nothing else. The irreconcilability of one thing with another arises on account of the basic difficulty I mentioned, that the person who wishes to bring about this reconciliation, or establish a proper relationship, misses the point of one's own vital connection underline the word 'vital' with the object or the person with which, or with whom, this reconciliation is to be effected. Inasmuch as this kind of knowledge is beyond the purview or capacity of the ordinary human intellect, the knowledge of the Veda is regarded as supernormal, superhuman: apaurusheya not created or manufactured by an individual. This is not knowledge that has come out of reading books. This is not ordinary educational knowledge. It is a knowledge which is vitally and organically related to the fact of life. I am as much connected with the fact of life as you are, and so in my observation and study and understanding of you, in my relationship with you, I cannot forget this fact. The moment I disconnect myself from this fact of life which is unanimously present in you as well as in me, I miss the point, and my effort becomes purposeless.
We are gradually led by this proclamation of the Veda into a tremendous vision of life which requires of us to have a superhuman power of will to grasp the interrelationship of things. This difficulty of grasping the meaning of the interrelationship of things is obviated systematically, stage by stage, gradually, by methods of practice. These methods are called yoga the practice of yoga. I have placed before you, perhaps, a very terrible picture of yoga; it is not as simple as one imagines. It is not a simple circus-master's feat, either of the body or the mind, but a superhuman demand of our total being. Mark this definition of mine: a superhuman demand which is made of our total being not an ordinary human demand of a part of our being, but of our total being. From that, a demand is made by the entire structure of life. The total structure of life requires of our total being to be united with it in a practical demonstration of thought, speech and action this is yoga. If this could be missed, and of course it can easily be missed as it is being done every day, then every effort, from the smallest to the biggest, becomes a failure. All our effort ends in no success, because it would be like decorating a corpse without a soul in it. The whole of life would look like a beautiful corpse with nicely dressed features, but it has no vitality, essence or living principle within it. Likewise, all our activities would look wonderful, beautiful, magnificent, but lifeless; and lifeless beauty is no beauty. There must be life in it only then has it a meaning. Life is not something dead; it is quite opposite of what is dead. We can bring vitality and life into our activity only by the introduction of the principle of yoga.
1.002 - The Heifer, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
233. Mothers may nurse their infants for two whole years, for those who desire to complete the nursing-period. It is the duty of the father to provide for them and clothe them in a proper manner. No soul shall be burdened beyond its capacity. No mother shall be harmed on account of her child, and no father shall be harmed on account of his child. The same duty rests upon the heir. If the couple desire weaning, by mutual consent and consultation, they commit no error by doing so. You commit no error by hiring nursing-mothers, as long as you pay them fairly. And be wary of God, and know that God is Seeing of what you do.
234. As for those among you who die and leave widows behind, their widows shall wait by themselves for four months and ten days. When they have reached their term, there is no blame on you regarding what they might honorably do with themselves. God is fully acquainted with what you do.
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286. God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity. To its credit is what it earns, and against it is what it commits. “Our Lord, do not condemn us if we forget or make a mistake. Our Lord, do not burden us as You have burdened those before us. Our Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear; and pardon us, and forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our Lord and Master, so help us against the disbelieving people.”
1.006 - Livestock, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
152. And do not come near the property of the orphan, except with the best intentions, until he reaches maturity. And give full weight and full measure, equitably. We do not burden any soul beyond its capacity. And when you speak, be fair, even if it concerns a close relative. And fulfill your covenant with God. All this He has enjoined upon you, so that you may take heed.
153. This is My path, straight, so follow it. And do not follow the other paths, lest they divert you from His path. All this He has enjoined upon you, that you may refrain from wrongdoing.
1.007 - The Elevations, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
42. As for those who believe and do righteous works—We never burden any soul beyond its capacity—these are the inhabitants of the Garden; abiding therein eternally.
43. We will remove whatever rancor is in their hearts. Rivers will flow beneath them. And they will say, “Praise be to God, who has guided us to this. Had God not guided us, we would never be guided. The messengers of our Lord did come with the truth.” And it will be proclaimed to them, “This is the Garden you are made to inherit, on account of what you used to do.”
1.009 - Perception and Reality, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The reason behind our feeling a solidity, concreteness, hardness, etc. of an object and a shape perceived by the eyes, is because the condition of the senses which perceive and that of the mind behind the senses are on the same level as the constitution of the object. That is why we can see this world and not the heavens, for example. We cannot say that heavens do not exist; but why do we not see them? Because the constitution of the objects of the heaven is subtler than, less dense than, the constitution of our present individuality the two are not commensurate with each other. Or, to give a more concrete example, why don't we hear the music when the radio is not switched on? Somebody must be singing at the radio station now, but our ears are unable to hear; they can't hear anything because the constitution, the structure, the frequency, the wavelength of the electrical message that is sent by the broadcasting station is subtler than the constitution and the structure of the eardrum. It is not possible for the eardrum to catch it because it is gross. But if you talk, I can hear, because the sound that you make by talking is of the same level or degree of density as the capacity of the eardrum. I can hear your sound, but not the sounds of radio waves, music, or the message, because of the dissimilarity of the structure of frequency, wavelength or density of structure.
So, the world need not be real merely because of the fact that we are seeing it. It only shows that we are as much fools as the things are. We are in the same level or degree of reality as the atmosphere around us. This is not a great proof for the reality of the world. If I agree with you, it does not mean that our agreement is based on any judicious judgement. Suppose you have an opinion and I agree with that opinion; it does not mean that this opinion is correct. Merely because I agree with you, it need not be correct. It shows that my way of thinking is similar to your way of thinking, that is all. But it does not mean that it is a correct opinion; a third person may not agree with it.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Still, it would be kind of you to go through a page or so with me, and tell me where the shoe pinches. Of course I have realized the difficulty long ago; but I don't know the solution or if there is a solution. I did think of calling Magick "Magick Without Tears"; and I did try having my work cross-examined as I went on by minds of very inferior education or capacity. In fact, Parts I and II of Book 4 were thus tested.
What about applying the Dedekindian cut to this letter? I am sure you would not wish it to develop into a Goclenian Sorites, especially as I fear that I may already have deviated from the Hapaxlegomenon.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
b. The Grand Man of the Heavens. The seven Heavenly Men are the seven centres in the body of the Logos, bearing to Him a relationship identical with that borne by the Masters and Their affiliated groups, to some planetary Logos. Systemic kundalini goes forward to the vivification of these centres, and at this stage of development certain centres are more closely allied than others. Just as in connection with our planetary Logos, the three etheric planets of our chainEarth, Mercury and Mars [lxxix]77form a triangle of rare importance, so it may be here said that at the present point in evolution of the logoic centres, Venus, Earth and Saturn form one triangle of great interest. It is a triangle that is at this time undergoing vivification [182] through the action of kundalini; it is consequently increasing the vibratory capacity of the centres, which are becoming slowly fourth-dimensional. It is not yet permissible to point out others of the great triangles, but as regards the centres, we may here give two hints:
First. Venus corresponds to the heart centre in the body logoic, and has an inter-relationship therefore with all the other centres in the solar system wherein the heart aspect is the one of greater prominence.
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d. Tasting. He tastes then finally and discriminates, for taste is the great sense that begins to hold sway during the discriminating process that takes place when the illusory nature of matter is in process of realisation. Discrimination is the educatory process to which the Self subjects itself in the process of developing intuition that faculty whereby the Self recognises its own essence in and under all forms. Discrimination concerns the duality of nature, the Self and the not-self, and is the means of their differentiation in the process of abstraction; the intuition concerns unity and is the capacity of the Self to contact other selves, and is not a faculty whereby the not-self is contacted. Hence, its rarity these days owing to the intense individualisation of the Ego, and its identification with the forma necessary identification at this particular time. As the sense of taste on the higher planes is developed, it leads one to ever finer distinctions till one is finally led through the form, right to the heart of one's nature.
e. Smelling is the faculty of keen perception that eventually brings a man back to the source from whence he came, the archetypal plane, the plane where his true home is to be found. A perception of difference has been cultivated that has caused a divine discontent within the [202] heart of the Pilgrim in the far country; the prodigal son draws comparisons; he has developed the other four senses, and he utilises them. Now comes in the faculty of vibratory recognition of the home vibration, if it might be so expressed. It is the spiritual counterpart of that sense which in the animal, the pigeon and other birds, leads them back unerringly to the familiar spot from whence they originally came. It is the apprehension of the vibration of the Self, and a swift return by means of that instinct to the originating source.
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d. The centres at initiation receive a fresh access of [209] vibratory capacity and of power, and this results, in the exoteric life, as:
First. A sensitiveness and refinement of the vehicles which may result, at first, in much suffering to the initiate, but which produces a capacity to respond to contacts that far outweighs the incidental pain.
Second. A development of psychic faculty that again may lead to temporary distress, but which eventually causes a recognition of the one Self in all selves, which is the goal of endeavor.
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First. The Rod of Initiation used for the first two initiations and wielded by the Great Lord, the Christ, the World Teacher. It is magnetised by application of the "Flaming Diamond"the magnetisation being repeated when each new world Teacher takes office. There is a wonderful ceremony performed at the time that a new World Teacher takes up His work. During the ceremony He receives His Rod of Power the same Rod as used since the foundation of our planetary Hierarchy and holds it forth to the Lord of the World, Who touches it [211] with His own mighty Rod, causing a fresh re-charging of its electric capacity. This ceremony takes place at Shamballa. [xci]89, [xcii]90
Second. The Rod of Initiation known as the "Flaming Diamond" and used by Sanat Kumara, the One Initiator, called in the Bible, the Ancient of Days. This Rod lies hidden "in the East" and holds the fire latent which irradiates the Wisdom Religion. This Rod was brought by the Lord of the World when He took form and came to our planet eighteen million years ago.
1.00 - PREFACE, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
even more so. Finally, the value of an experience is measured by its capacity to transform life; otherwise, it is simply an empty dream or an hallucination.
Sri Aurobindo leads us to a twofold discovery, which we so urgently need if we want to find an intelligible meaning to the suffocating chaos we live in, as well as a key for transforming our world. By following him step by step in his prodigious exploration,
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
I have been trying ever since then to make sense of the human capacity, my capacity, for evil
particularly for those evils associated with belief. I started by trying to make sense of my dreams. I couldnt
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longer manifest itself. This restriction of adaptive capacity dramatically increases the probability of
social aggression and chaos.
1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
To sum up, we assert a secret source of energy which explains the phenomenon of Genius. 1 We do not believe in any supernatural explanations, but insist that this source may be reached by the following out of definite rules, the degree of success depending upon the capacity of the seeker, and not upon the favour of any Divine Being. We assert that the critical phenomenon which determines success is an occurrence in the brain characterized essentially be the uniting of subject and object. We propose to discuss this phenomenon, analyse its nature, determine accurately the physical, mental and moral conditions which are favourable to it, to ascertain its cause, and thus to produce it in ourselves, so that we may adequately study its effects.
1 We have dealt in this preliminary sketch only with examples of religious genius.
1.010 - Self-Control - The Alpha and Omega of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Can we look upon anything, any person, any object for the matter of that, as something which is to be utilised as a kind of instrument in perception or cognition, or has it a status of its own? What we mean by a status of one's own is a capacity to exist by oneself, independent of external relations and dependence on others; this is the nature of subjectivity. Everyone, you and I included, has a status of one's own. It is this status that gets distorted later on into what they call egoism, pride, etc., what is called ijjat in Hindi a kind of stupid form which it has taken, though originally it was a spiritual status. Our status as pure subjects is incapable of objectification, and it is not intended to be used as a tool for another's activity or satisfaction. It is not in the nature of things to subject themselves into objects as vehicles of action and satisfaction for somebody else, because every individual, judged from its own real status, enjoys subjectivity. It is an end in itself, and not a means.
That is why everyone is egoistic, and everyone wants satisfaction for one's own self. When we analyse all our actions, we will find that there is no such thing as unselfish action, finally. Every action is selfish, if we very closely define the principle of selfishness. The element of self is present in every act, every perception, every cognition and every effort, because when the self is isolated, all things lose their meaning the whole world looks empty. What we call unselfishness is only the presence of a higher type of self as an element in our act of perception, cognition, etc. It does not mean that the Self is absolutely absent that is not possible. We only mean that a higher, more expansive kind of self is present rather than a lower self. What we call selfishness is nothing but the interference of the lower self in our actions, and what we call unselfishness is the presence in the same way of a higher form of self, but Self is there it cannot be absent. There is nothing in this world where the Self is absent. The whole universe is invaded by the Self. It is present in everything, and nothing can exist without it, because that is the only existence.
1.013 - Thunder, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
17. He sends down water from the sky, and riverbeds flow according to their capacity. The current carries swelling froth. And from what they heat in fire of ornaments or utensils comes a similar froth. Thus God exemplifies truth and falsehood. As for the froth, it is swept away, but what benefits the people remains in the ground. Thus God presents the analogies.
18. For those who respond to their Lord is the best. But as for those who do not respond to Him, even if they possessed everything on earth, and twice as much, they could not redeem themselves with it. Those will have the worst reckoning; and their home is Hell—a miserable destination.
10.17 - Miracles: Their True Significance, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Miracles are happenings where we see the result only without the process that leads to the result. It is like a mathematical problem where the solution only is given and not the gradual steps leading to the solution. The steps may be shortened or altogether suppressed, in the latter case it looks like a puzzle or a riddle or a paradox. We know of mathematical prodigies, we marvel at the capacity they show in performing formidable calculations for which an ordinary mind would need sheets of paper and considerable amount of time. But the prodigy can do it in the twinkling of an eye. He has a consciousness that can contain the whole process in a simultaneous grasp or speed through it like a lightning flash. Therefore the whole thing has the look of a miracle.
Usually, the name 'miracle' is given to something that seems to us "unnatural", that is to say, something that does not, conform to the laws of nature or what we think to be the laws of nature. A man standing in the air without any support or squatting on the waterfeats familiar to the yogisare termed veritable miracles. The famous rope trick is a legendary miracle. Some of these miracles done by yogis are au thentic facts. They apparently seem to violate the prevailing so-called laws of nature, but if we knew the process, the mechanism behind the event because it is not apparent to the external logical mind, if we had a slightly different perception, the whole glamour of a miracle would fall to the ground.
1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
whose evolutionary capacity is concentrated upon and confined to the hu-
man soul The question of whether the Universe is still developing
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knowledge: in our growing capacity to situate ourselves in space and
time, to the point of becoming conscious of our place and responsi-
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The capacity to maintain explicit belief in religious fact, however, has been severely undermined in
the last few centuries first in the West, and then everywhere else. A succession of great scientists and
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belief intellectually. We have become trapped by our own capacity for abstraction: it provides us with
accurate descriptive information, but serves to undermine our belief in the utility and meaning of existence.
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constant cross-cultural interchanges and our capacity for critical reasoning has undermined our faith in the
traditions of our forebears perhaps for good reason. However, the individual cannot live without belief
1.01 - Necessity for knowledge of the whole human being for a genuine education., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
In earlier times, people had a sense of inner empathy with the spirit and soul of other human beings, which gave them an intui- tive impression of the souls inner experiences; it made sense that what one knew about the inner spirit and soul life would explain external physical manifestations. Now, we do just the opposite. People experiment with external aspects and processes very effec- tively, since all contemporary natural science is effective. The only thing that has been demonstrated, however, is that, given our modern views of life, we take seriously only what is sense- perceptible and what the intellect can comprehend with the help of the senses. Consequently, we have come to a point where we no longer have the capacity to really observe the inner human being; we are often content to observe its outer shell. We are further removed from the human being. Indeed, the very methods that have so eagerly illuminated life in the outer world the work- ing of naturehave robbed us of the most basic access between souls. Our wonderfully productive civilization has brought us very close to certain natural phenomena, but it has also driven us away from human nature. It should be obvious that the aspect of our culture most harmed by this situation is educationevery- thing related to human development and teaching children. Once we can understand those we are to shape, we will be able to educate and teach, just as painters must understand the nature and quality of colors before they can paint, and sculptors must first understand their materials before they can create, and so on. If this is true of the arts that deal with physical materials, isnt it all the more true of an art that works with the noblest of all materials, the material that only the human being can work withhuman life, human nature and human development?
These issues remind us that all education and all teaching must spring from the fountain of real knowledge of human nature. In the Waldorf schools, we are attempting to create such an art of education, solidly based on true understanding of the human being, and this educational conference is about the educational methods of Waldorf education.
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In our adult interactions, we use our knowledge of other people so unconsciously that we are unaware of it, but we nevertheless act according to it. In our capacity as teachers, however, the relationship between our human soul as teacher and the childs human soul must be much more conscious, so that we have a formative effect on the child. But we also must become aware of our own teachers soul so that we experience whats necessary to establish the right mood, the right teaching artistry, and the right empathy with the childs soul. All of these things are necessary to perform our educa- tional and teaching task adequately. Were immediately reminded that the most important aspect in education and teaching is what occurs between the teachers soul and the childs soul.
Lets start with this knowledge of human nature; its knowl- edge with soft edges. It lacks sharp contours to the extent that its not related to any one person. Rather, over the course of the educational relationship it hovers, as it were, weaving here and there between what happens in the teachers soul and in the childs soul. In certain ways, its difficult to be sure of whats happening, since its all very subtle. When we teach, something is present that flows like a stream, constantly changing. Its necessary to develop an eye, an inner faculty that can grasp the fleeting, subtle influ- ences that pass from soul to soul. Only then, perhaps; only when we have the ability to comprehend the intimate, spiritual inter- play between two human beings, are we able to understand each individual.
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If a teacher gives in to a melancholic temperament, it can lead to breathing and circulatory problems for the children in later life. Teachers shouldnt educate with only childhood in mind. And doc- tors should look beyond the specific onset of disease to a particu- lar age, with a capacity to observe human life as one connected whole. In this way, people can see that many cases of heart trouble between forty and forty-five began with the whole mood generated by the uncontrolled melancholic temperament of a teacher.
Obviously, when we observe the spiritual and psychic imponder- ables that play between the teachers soul and that of the child, were compelled to ask: How should teachers and educational profession- als work upon themselves inwardly regarding the various tempera- ments? We can understand that its not enough for the teacher to say, I was born with my temperament; I cant help myself. First12 of all, this is untrue, and even if it were true, the human race would have died out long ago due to pedagogical malpractice.
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Things like this enable us to look deep into human nature and we shall see how this is deepened in the presence of true human wisdom. We come to realize contrary to what has often been thought that we dont recognize someone as a teacher by examining what the person knows after going through college. That would show us only a capacity for lecturing on some sub- ject, perhaps something suitable for students between fourteen and twenty. As far as earlier stages are concerned, what the teacher does in this sense has no relevance whatever. The qualities neces- sary for these early periods need to be assessed on a very different basis.
Thus, we see that a fundamental issue in teaching and educa- tion is the question of who the teacher is. What must really live in the children, what must vibrate and well up into their very hearts, wills, and eventually into their intellect, lives initially in the teach- ers. It arises simply through who they are, through their unique nature, character, and attitude of soul, and through what they bring the children out of their own self-development. So we can see how it is only a true knowledge of human nature, cultivated comprehensively, that can serve as the foundation for a true art of teaching and fulfill the living needs of education. Im eager to pursue these matters further in the lectures that follow.
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
be called forth by another knowledge. Although the capacity
to know is inside us, it must be called out, and that calling out
1.01 - Seeing, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
crease our capacity to live.
23
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the typal passes naturally into the conventional stage. The conventional stage of human society is born when the external supports, the outward expressions of the spirit or the ideal become more important than the ideal, the body or even the clothes more important than the person. Thus in the evolution of caste, the outward supports of the ethical fourfold order,birth, economic function, religious ritual and sacrament, family custom,each began to exaggerate enormously its proportions and its importance in the scheme. At first, birth does not seem to have been of the first importance in the social order, for faculty and capacity prevailed; but afterwards, as the type fixed itself, its maintenance by education and tradition became necessary and education and tradition naturally fixed themselves in a hereditary groove. Thus the son of a Brahmin came always to be looked upon conventionally as a Brahmin; birth and profession were together the double bond of the hereditary convention at the time when it was most firm and faithful to its own character. This rigidity once established, the maintenance of the ethical type passed from the first place to a secondary or even a quite tertiary importance. Once the very basis of the system, it came now to be a not indispensable crown or pendent tassel, insisted upon indeed by the thinker and the ideal code-maker but not by the actual rule of society or its practice. Once ceasing to be indispensable, it came inevitably to be dispensed with except as an ornamental fiction. Finally, even the economic basis began to disintegrate; birth, family custom and remnants, deformations, new accretions of meaningless or fanciful religious sign and ritual, the very scarecrow and caricature of the old profound symbolism, became the riveting links of the system of caste in the iron age of the old society. In the full economic period of caste the priest and the Pundit masquerade under the name of the Brahmin, the aristocrat and feudal baron under the name of the Kshatriya, the trader and money-getter under the name of the Vaishya, the half-fed labourer and economic serf under the name of the Shudra. When the economic basis also breaks down, then the unclean and diseased decrepitude of the old system has begun; it has become a name, a shell, a sham and must either be dissolved in the crucible of an individualist period of society or else fatally affect with weakness and falsehood the system of life that clings to it. That in visible fact is the last and present state of the caste system in India.
The tendency of the conventional age of society is to fix, to arrange firmly, to formalise, to erect a system of rigid grades and hierarchies, to stereotype religion, to bind education and training to a traditional and unchangeable form, to subject thought to infallible authorities, to cast a stamp of finality on what seems to it the finished life of man. The conventional period of society has its golden age when the spirit and thought that inspired its forms are confined but yet living, not yet altogether walled in, not yet stifled to death and petrified by the growing hardness of the structure in which they are cased. That golden age is often very beautiful and attractive to the distant view of posterity by its precise order, symmetry, fine social architecture, the admirable subordination of its parts to a general and noble plan. Thus at one time the modern litterateur, artist or thinker looked back often with admiration and with something like longing to the mediaeval age of Europe; he forgot in its distant appearance of poetry, nobility, spirituality the much folly, ignorance, iniquity, cruelty and oppression of those harsh ages, the suffering and revolt that simmered below these fine surfaces, the misery and squalor that was hidden behind that splendid faade. So too the Hindu orthodox idealist looks back to a perfectly regulated society devoutly obedient to the wise yoke of the Shastra, and that is his golden age,a nobler one than the European in which the apparent gold was mostly hard burnished copper with a thin gold-leaf covering it, but still of an alloyed metal, not the true Satya Yuga. In these conventional periods of society there is much indeed that is really fine and sound and helpful to human progress, but still they are its copper age and not the true golden; they are the age when the Truth we strive to arrive at is not realised, not accomplished,4 but the exiguity of it eked out or its full appearance imitated by an artistic form, and what we have of the reality has begun to fossilise and is doomed to be lost in a hard mass of rule and order and convention.
1.01 - The First Steps, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
After one has learned to have a firm erect seat, one has to perform, according to certain schools, a practice called the purifying of the nerves. This part has been rejected by some as not belonging to Raja-Yoga, but as so great an authority as the commentator Shankarchrya advises it, I think fit that it should be mentioned, and I will quote his own directions from his commentary on the Shvetshvatara Upanishad: "The mind whose dross has been cleared away by Pranayama, becomes fixed in Brahman; therefore Pranayama is declared. First the nerves are to be purified, then comes the power to practice Pranayama. Stopping the right nostril with the thumb, through the left nostril fill in air, according to capacity; then, without any interval, throw the air out through the right nostril, closing the left one. Again inhaling through the right nostril eject through the left, according to capacity; practicing this three or five times at four hours of the day, before dawn, during midday, in the evening, and at midnight, in fifteen days or a month purity of the nerves is attained; then begins Pranayama."
Practice is absolutely necessary. You may sit down and listen to me by the hour every day, but if you do not practice, you will not get one step further. It all depends on practice. We never understand these things until we experience them. We will have to see and feel them for ourselves. Simply listening to explanations and theories will not do. There are several obstructions to practice. The first obstruction is an unhealthy body: if the body is not in a fit state, the practice will be obstructed. Therefore we have to keep the body in good health; we have to take care of what we eat and drink, and what we do. Always use a mental effort, what is usually called "Christian Science," to keep the body strong. That is all nothing further of the body. We must not forget that health is only a means to an end. If health were the end, we would be like animals; animals rarely become unhealthy.
1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
14:But this is only one side of the force that works for perfection. The process of the integral Yoga has three stages, not indeed sharply distinguished or separate, but in a certain measure successive. There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine; next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being; last, the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the world. So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujga, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the Sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga. In the end his own will and force become one with the higher Power; he merges them in the divine Will and its transcendent and universal Force. He finds it thenceforward presiding over the necessary transformation of his mental, vital and physical being with an impartial wisdom and provident effectivity of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth's spiritual progression or its transformation.
15:Always indeed it is the higher Power that acts. Our sense of personal effort and aspiration comes from the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force. It persists in applying to experience on a supernormal plane the ordinary terms of mentality which it applies to its normal experiences in the world. In the world we act with the sense of egoism; we claim the universal forces that work in us as our own; we claim as the effect of our personal will, wisdom, force, virtue the selective, formative, progressive action of the Transcendent in this frame of mind, life and body. Enlightenment brings to us the knowledge that the ego is only an instrument; we begin to perceive and feel that these things are our own in the sense that they belong to our supreme and integral Self, one with the Transcendent, not to the instrumental ego. Our limitations and distortions are our contri bution to the working; the true power in it is the Divine's. When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant's groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we are so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. The self-abnegation of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.
1.01 - The Mental Fortress, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But its use is not as the mind imagines in the arrogance of its knowledge and discoveries, for the mind always mistakes the instrument for the Master. We thought that the mental tool was both end and means, and that that end was an increasing, ever more triumphant and rigorous mastery over the mental field, which it has colonized with marvelous cities and less marvelous suburbs. But that is only a secondary end, a turbulent by-product, and it turns out that the major effect of the Mind in man has not been to make him more intelligent (intelligent with respect to what? The mouse in its hole has the perfect intelligence for its own terrain), but to individualize him within his own species and endow him with the power to change while the other species were invariable and only individualized as a general type and finally to make him capable of casting a look at what exceeds his own condition. With this individualization and power of variation began the errors of man, his sins, his afflicting dualities; yet his capacity for error is also a secret capacity for progress, which is why all our moralities based on right or wrong and all our flawless heavens have failed and will forever fail if we were flawless and irreproachable, we would be a stagnant and infallible species, like the shellfish or the opossum. In other words, the Mind is an instrument of accelerated evolution, an evolver. In fifty years of scientific development, man has progressed more than during all the prescientific milleniums. But progress in what sense? To be sure, not in the sense of the fallacious mastery, nor in the quality of life or the degree of comfort, but in the sense of the mental saturation of the species. One cannot leave a circle unless one has individually and collectively exhausted the circle. One cannot step alone onto the other side; either everybody does it (or is capable of doing it) or nobody does it; the whole species goes together, because there is but one human Body. Instead of a handful of initiates scattered among a semianimal and ignorant human mass, the entire species is now undergoing its initiation or, in evolutionary terms, its supreme variation. We have not passed through the mental circle for the sake of sending rockets to the moon, but in order to be individually, innumerably and voluntarily capable of effecting the passage to the next higher circle. The breaking of the circle is the great organic Fact of our times. All the dualities and opposite poles, the sins of virtue and the virtues of sin, all this dazzling chaos were the instruments of the Work, the tensors, we could say, bending us to the breaking point against a wall of iron which is a wall of illusion. But the illusion falls only when one decides to see it.
That is where we are. The illusion is not dead; it even rages with unprecedented violence, equipped with all the arms we have so obligingly polished up for it. But these are the last convulsions of a colossus with feet of clay which is actually a gnome, an oversized, overoutfitted gnome. The ancient sages of India knew it well. They divided human evolution into four concentric circles: that of the men of knowledge (Brahmins), who lived at the beginning of humanity, in the age of truth; that of the nobles and warriors (Kshatriya), when only three fourths of the truth was left; that of the merchants and middle class (Vaishya), who had only half of the truth; and finally ours, the age of the little men, the Shudra, the servants (of the machine, of the ego, of desire), the great proletariat of regimented liberties the Dark Age, Kali Yuga, when no truth is left at all. But because this circle is the most extreme, because all the truths have been tried and exhausted, and all possible roads explored, we are nearing the right solution, the true solution, the emergence of a new age of truth, the supramental age Sri Aurobindo spoke of, like the buttercup breaking its last envelope to free its golden fruit. If the parallel holds true between the collective body and our human body, we could say that the center governing the age of the sages was located at the level of the forehead, while that of the age of the nobles was at the level of the heart, that of the age of the merchants, at the stomach, and the one governing our age is at the level of sex and matter. The descent is complete. But that descent has a meaning a meaning for matter. Had we stayed forever at the forehead level of the divine truths of the mind, this earth and body would never have been changed, and we would have probably ended up escaping into some spiritual heaven or nirvana. Now, everything must be transformed, even the body and matter, since we are right in it. Ironically, this is the greatest service this dark, materialistic and scientific age may have rendered us: to compel such a plunge of the spirit into matter that it had either to lose itself in it or to be transformed with it. Absolute darkness is but the shadow of a greater Sun, which digs its abysses in order to raise up a more stable beauty, founded on the purified base of our earthly subconscious and seated erect in truth down to the very cells of our bodies.
1.01 - The Science of Living, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and
the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and
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only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation
and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and
1.01 - THE STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
precise formulation of a capacity for action or, more exactly, for
interaction. Energy is the measure of that which passes from one
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global capacity for action of which we find the partial resultant in
each one of us. Thus we find ourselves led on to envisage and
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
21. There is no limit to the extent of the relations of any man with the Universe in essence; for as soon as man makes himself one with any idea, the means of measurement cease to exist. But his power to utilize that force is limited by his mental power and capacity, and by the circumstances of his human environment.
(Illustration: When a man falls in love, the whole world becomes, to him, nothing but love boundless and immanent; but his mystical state is not contagious; his fellow-men are either amused or annoyed. He can only extend to others the effect which his love has had upon himself by means of his mental and physical qualities. Thus, Catullus, Dante, and Swinburne made their love a mighty mover of mankind by virtue of their power to put their thoughts on the subject in musical and eloquent language. Again, Cleopatra and other people in authority moulded the fortunes of many other people by allowing love to influence their political actions. The Magician, however well he succeeds in making contact with the secret sources of energy in nature, can only use them to the extent permitted by his intellectual and moral qualities. Mohammed's intercourse with Gabriel was only effective because of his statesmanship, soldiership, and the sublimity of his comm and of Arabic. Hertz's discovery of the rays which we now use for wireless telegraphy was sterile until reflected through the minds and wills of the people who could take his truth, and transmit it to the world of action by means of mechanical and economic instruments.)
1.02.3.2 - Knowledge and Ignorance, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
certain limited capacity of force of consciousness which has to
bear all the impact of what the soul does not regard as itself but
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But by the very definition of the ego its capacity is limited. It
accepts as itself a form made of the movement of Nature which
1.02.3.3 - Birth and Non-Birth, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
soul returns to the capacity of Knowledge and enjoys by the
Knowledge Immortality.
10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I then thought of all those who were watching over the ship to safeguard and protect our route, and in gratitude, I willed that Thy peace should be born and live in their hearts; then I thought of all those who, confident and carefree, slept the sleep of inconscience and, with solicitude for their miseries, pity for their latent suffering which would awake in them in their own waking, I willed that a little of Thy Peace might dwell in their hearts and bring to birth in them the life of the Spirit, the light which dispels ignorance. I then thought of the dwellers of this vast sea, visible and invisible, and I willed that over them might be extended Thy Peace. I thought next of those whom we had left far away and whose affection is with us, and with a great tenderness I willed for them Thy conscious and lasting Peace, the plenitude of Thy Peace proportioned to their capacity to receive it. Then I thought of all those to whom we are going, who are restless with childish preoccupations and fight for mean competitions of interest in ignorance and egoism and ardently, in a great aspiration for them I asked for the plenty light of Thy Peace. I next thought of all those whom we know, of all those whom we do not know, of all the life that is working itself out, of all that has changed its form and all that is not yet in form, and for all that, and also for all of which I cannot think, for all that is present to my memory and for all that I forget, in a great eg ingathering and mute adoration, I implored Thy Peace.
What I willed for them, with Thy will, at the moments when I could be in a true communion with Thee, grant that they may have received it on the day when, striving to forget external contingencies, they turned towards their noblest thought, towards their best feelings.
1.023 - The Believers, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
62. We never burden any soul beyond its capacity. And with Us is a record that tells the truth, and they will not be wronged.
63. But their hearts are puzzled because of this; and they have deeds that do not conform to this, which they continue to perpetrate.
10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is true his survey of the universe, his knowledge of boundless Nature and the inexhaustible multiplicities of creation have given him a sense of the endless and the infinite but he has not the necessary light or capacity to follow those lines of infinity, on the contrary, there is a shrinking in him at the touch of such vastnesses; his small humanity makes him desperately earth-bound, his aspiration follows the lines of least resistance:
Our smallness saves us from the Infinite.||124.60||
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The more we practise sadhana, the stronger we become and the greater is our capacity to understand, to enlarge our perspective of thinking and to contact reality in deeper profundity. Many factors operate in spiritual practice. The good deeds that we did in the past is one factor. The other factors are the associations that we have established in society with wise people in this present birth, the practical experience that we gain by living in this world, the initiation that we receive from the Guru, and the wisdom that we acquire from the Guru. Finally, the most mysterious, of course, is the grace of God Himself, which is perennially operating, perpetually working, and infinitely and most abundantly contri buting to the onward march of the soul towards its goal.
The practice of yoga is nothing but a conscious participation in the universal working of nature itself and, therefore, it is the most natural thing that we can do, and the most natural thing that we can conceive. There can be nothing more natural than to participate consciously in the evolutionary work of the universe, which is the attempt of the cosmos to become Self-conscious in the Absolute. Evolution is nothing but a movement of the whole universe towards Self-awareness this is called God-realisation. Our every activity from the cup of tea that we take, to the breath that we breathe, from even the sneeze that we jet forth, to the least action that we perform, from even a single thought which occurs in the mind everything is a part of this cosmic operation which is the evolution of the universe towards Self-realisation. Therefore, the practice of yoga is the most natural thing that we can think of and the most necessary duty of a human being. Nothing can be more obligatory on our part than this duty. It is from this point of view, perhaps, that Lord Krishna proclaims, towards the end of the Bhagavadgita, sarvadharmnparityajya mmeka araa vraja (B.G. XVIII.66): Renounce every other duty and come to Me for rescue which means to say, take resort in the law of the Absolute. This is the practice of yoga, and every other dharma is subsumed under it and included within it, as every drop and every river is in the ocean. In this supreme duty, every other duty is included. There is no need to think of every individual, discrete and isolated duty, because all duties are included in this one duty, which is the mother of all duties.
10.28 - Love and Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Science in a practical way through material means tries to prolong life as far as possible, as for us, we are not limited to that necessity. What we have to do is to clean the energy which is now obscure in the material cell, make it luminous. The way is the way of consciousness. Every human being has in him the possibility, the capacity of making his own consciousness come forth, pure, transparent, luminous and then in and through that pure light charge the body too with a transfiguring force or energy. This material body of man has the marvellous advantage of being united, of being able to unite itself with the Supreme Consciousness. Indeed as through his consciousness man has the privilege of ascending to the supreme consciousness, even so in and through the same consciousness, the physical cell also has the privilege of establishing a contact with the Supreme Substance. What is true of man's mind and life is true also of the material cell. Even as life impulses and mental knowings can be uplifted and transfigured, these physical cells too may achieve the same transfiguration because in man all these elements share equally in the Divine Substance lodged there. Of the animal, the lower creation, we cannot say the same thing for it does not possess overtly the Divine element that dwells in man. This Divine Element is what we call the psychic consciousness, the Divine himself formed secretly or framed in matter. It is that which comes in contact with the human mental and the human vital and the human body, and succeeds in remoulding them in the Supreme Nature.
Of course, there was always in the ancient days also, in some disciplines or others, an aspiration, an urge to immortalise the body, but the means they adopted, the instruments they chose for the operation were indirect and secondary. It was either through the force of a luminous mind influencing the body or through the pressure of concentrated vital force making the body an obedient and docile instrument. The former was the process followed by the Vaishnavas who envisaged a luminous body, the second was the aim of the Tantriks who sought to rejuvenate the body, possess it youthful and vigorous indefinitely. The Hatha yogis also in their turn through physico-vital exercises attempted to acquire a new body changing the modalities of the old. The ancient alchemists tried more material means, the use of alchemic substances for cleansing the body making it free from disease and, if possible, death. But the secret power lies in the body itself, that is, in the very self of the body, not anywhere else. The hidden consciousness lodged in the cell, the material cell, that is the key to the problem, that secret consciousness and its energy asleep in the cell, has to be awakened and brought into play. When the physical cell itself awakes and declares its purpose, the thing is done.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
irrelevant). The presence of capacity for such creative exploration and knowledge generation may be
regarded as the third, and final, permanent constituent element of human experience (in addition to the
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adaptation, this capacity for resolution, catastrophe can rejuvenate. It can also destroy.
The more ignored inconveniences in a given catastrophe, the more likely it will destroy.
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that is, affect-laden; it is the capacity to construct hypothetical or abstract end points, such as b and to
contrast them against the present that makes human beings capable of using their cognitive systems to
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current environment, re-evaluated literally: revalued. This capacity for complete revaluation, in the light
of new information, is even more particularly human than the aforementioned capability for exploration of
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greater capacity for detail, makes such pictures explicit and verbal. Thus the exploratory capacity of the
brain builds the world of the familiar (of the known), from the world of the unfamiliar (the unknown).
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The infinite human capacity for error means that encounter with the unknown is inevitable, in the course of
human experience; means that the likelihood of such encounter is as certain, regardless of place and time of
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behavioral versatility and breadth of experience, both actual and potential, and underlies our capacity to
formulate plans and intentions, organize them into programs of action, and regulate their execution.93
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currently understood, with the ideal future, as currently imagined. The capacity to generate such a contrast
appears dependent upon operations undertaken deep within the comparatively ancient central portion of the
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It is well established that emotionally neutral stimuli can acquire the capacity to evoke striking
emotional reaction following temporal pairing with an aversive event. Conditioning does not create new
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disturbing stimulation as on a lowered sensitivity [to fear-producing stimuli]. [T]he capacity for
emotional breakdown may [well] be self-concealing, leading [animals and human beings] to find or
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anything of determinate interest to a rat, and it explores, to the best of its capacity, to make that judgment.
It is not primarily interested in the objective nature of the new circumstances a rat cannot actually
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unknown, of course which constantly supersedes the capacity for representation).
It is not too much to say that the animal elicits the properties of the object, sensory and affective, (or
even brings them into being) through its capacity for creative investigation. 132 Animals that are relatively
simple compared, say, to higher-order primates, including man are limited in the behaviors they
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detail and does not in addition have the visual capacity to focus intensely on the kinds of tiny features we
can perceive. Higher-order nonhuman primates have a more developed grip, however, which enables more
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investigation in the absence of actual movement, which means the capacity to learn from the observation of
others and through consideration of potential actions before they emerge in behavior. This means
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concrete and abstract, is therefore linked in a direct sense to being. Increased capacity for exploration
means existence in a qualitatively different even new world. This entire argument implies, of course,
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manipulate and explore characteristics of objects, large and small restricted as a general capacity to the
highest of primates sets the stage for elicitation of an increased range of their properties, for their
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Human beings enjoy capacity for investigation, classification and consequent communication, which is
qualitatively different from that characterizing any other animal. The material structure of Homo sapiens is
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characterized by the innate capacity to take true pleasure in such activity. Our physical attri butes what we
are (the abilities of the hand, in combination with the other physiological specializations of man) define
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possibility limited only by the capacity for exploratory genius exhibited at any particular moment). Simple
animals perform simple operations, and inhabit a world whose properties are equally constrained (a world
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with far more facility than any other creature. Furthermore, our capacity for communication both verbal
and nonverbal has meant almost unbelievable facilitation of exploration, and subsequent diversity of
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Thinking might in many cases be regarded as the abstracted form of exploration as the capacity to
investigate, without the necessity of direct motoric action. Abstract analysis (verbal and nonverbal) of the
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This capacity for exploration, verbal elaboration and communication of such in turn dramatically heightens
our capacity for exploration (as we have access to all communicated strategies and interpretive schemas,
accumulated over time, generated in the course of the creative activity of others). In terms of normal
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enables differentiated thought, and dramatically heightens the capacity for exploratory maneuvering. The
world of human experience is constantly transformed and renewed as a consequence of such exploration. In
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The capacity to create novel behaviors and categories of interpretation in response to the emergence of
the unknown might be regarded as the primary hallmark of human consciousness indeed, of human being.
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their importance to us, to give them new, more desirable value. The capacity for dextrous manipulation is
particularly human, and has enabled us to radically alter the nature of our experience. Equally particular,
however, is our capacity for abstract exploration, which is thought about action (and its consequences), in
the absence of action (and its consequences). The manner in which we conduct our abstracted exploration
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hemispheres capacity for inhibition and extinction of behavior (for inducing caution during exploration,
for governing flight, for producing negative affect) ensures that due respect is granted the inexplicable (and
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what cannot yet be understood, but which undeniably exists. It uses its capacity for massive generalization
and comprehension of imagery to place the novel stimulus in an initially meaningful context, which is the a
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expanded in some ways, beyond our own comprehension by our capacity for verbal and non-verbal
(primarily mimetic158) communication. We can mimic and learn from everyone who surrounds us, and
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intermediation of narrative and dramatic art forms). Furthermore, our capacity for copying for mimesis
means that we are capable of doing things that we do not necessarily understand (that is, cannot describe
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psychoanalytic god is our capacity for the implicit storage of information about the nature and valence of
things. This information is generated in the course of active exploration, and modified often
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greatest possible degree). The story appears generated, in its initial stages, by the capacity for imagery and
pattern recognition characteristic of the right hemisphere, which is integrally involved in narrative
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relationships), and the capacity to comprehend imagery, metaphor, and analogy.162 The left-hemisphere
linguistic systems finish the story: adding logic, proper temporal order, internal consistency, verbal
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that is, that improve our capacity to regulate our own emotions (to turn the current world into the desired
world, to say it differently) qualify as valid. It is in this manner that we verify the accuracy of our
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simultaneously, serve as the focal point of inquiry for those images. Our capacity for creative action frees
us, constantly, from the ever-shifting demands of the environment. The ability to represent creative
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duplicate their actions. In this manner, we obtain the skills of others. Our capacity for abstraction allows us
to take our facility for imitation one step farther, however: we can learn to imitate not only the precise
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inventing) oft ill-defined heroic qualities themselves. The capacity for imitation surfaces in more abstract
guise in the human tendency to act as-if174 to identify with another to become another, in fantasy
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ability to adopt someone elses goal, as if it were yours.175) The capacity to act as if expresses itself in
admiration (ranging in intensity from the simple respect accorded a competent other, to abject worship)
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the capacity to observe that another has obtained a goal that is also valued by the observer (that observation
provides the necessary motivation), and the skill to duplicate the procedures observed to lead to such
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(and transmitted through imitation) may become dramatically restricted, or even reversed. The capacity for
abstraction of imitation which is, in the initial stages, capability for dramatic play overcomes the
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our capacity to play. As the process of abstraction continues and information vital for survival is
represented evermore simply and efficiently what is represented transforms from the particulars of any
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given moment, our attention only occupies one level of that structure. This capacity for restricted
attention gives us the capability to make provisional but necessary judgments about the valence and utility
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We have to decide, yet retain the capacity to alter our decisions. Our prefrontal cortex critical to goaldirected action189 appears to allow us this freedom: it does so, by temporally sequencing events and
actions,190 by considering contextual information and using that consideration to govern behavior,191 and
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Our capacity for abstraction allows us to derive the constituent elements of successful adaptation
itself, from observation of behavioral patterns that are constantly played out in the world as it actually
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all of the others. This capacity makes sense, since all of the objects in a given category are by definition
regarded as equivalent, in some non-trivial sense (most generally, in terms of implication for action). The
human capacity for metaphor, aesthetic appreciation, and allusion seems integrally related to the capacity
for metonymic reasoning, and the use of richly meaningful cognitive models.
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own emotions, and the nature of our true being; to understand our capacity for great acts of evil and great
acts of good and our motivations for participating in them.
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nontrivial capacity. Since the unknown constitutes an ineradicable component of the environment, so to
speak, we have to know what it is, what it signifies; have to understand its implication for behavior and its
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narrative form. capacity for such representation emerges as the consequence of a complex and lengthy
process of development, originating in action, culminating in production of capacity for abstract cognition.
The episodic system, which generates representations of the experiential world, contains an elaborate
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water; dragon is feminine, masculine and subject simultaneously. This capacity for meanings to shift is not
illogical, it is just not proper.214 Meaning transforms itself endlessly with shift in interpretive context is
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being likewise defies his own capacity for understanding. The interplay between these ultimately
incomprehensible forces nonetheless constitutes the world in which we act, to which we must adapt. We
--
The mythic tale of Marduk and Tiamat refers to the capacity of the individual to explore, voluntarily,
and to bring things into being, as a consequence. The hero cuts the world of the unpredictable unexplored
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most significant feature the capacity to transform chaos into order. The killing of an all-embracing monster,
and the construction of the universe from its body parts, is symbolic (metaphorical) representation of the
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hard-won wisdom of the past (that is, of the dead) with the adaptive capacity of the present (that is, of the
living). The (re)establishment and improvement of the domain of order is schematically represented in
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Marduk creates order from chaos. That capacity which is theoretically embodied in the form of the
Mesopotamian emperor lends temporal authority its rightful power. The same idea, elaborated
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The Mesopotamian culture-hero/deity Marduk represents the capacity of the process of exploration (of
the unknown, eternally promising and threatening) to generate the world of experience; the Egyptian gods
Horus-Osiris represent the extended version of that capacity, which means not only generation of the world
from the unknown, but transformation of the pattern of adaptation which constitutes the known, when such
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form, function, or capacity to induce affect and compel behavior. A mandrake root, for example, has the
nature of a man, symbolically speaking, because it has the shape of a man; Mars is a warlike planet because
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emergence of the capacity for experience. This potential has been represented as the self-devouring dragon
(most commonly) because this image (portrayed in Figure 29: The Uroboros Precosmogonic Dragon of
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uroboros has the capacity to shed its skin to be reborn. Thus, it also represents the possibility of
transformation, and stands for the knower, who can transform chaos into order, and order into chaos. The
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constitutes our capacity to know and not know. It is the mystery that constantly emerges when solutions
to old problems cause new problems; is the sea of chaos surrounding mans island of knowledge and the
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threat, as his action patterns and beliefs have the capacity to upset society itself have the capacity to
dissolve and flood the world, and reinstitute the dominion of the uroboros.
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impossible, at first glance immensely further our capacity to behave, successfully, in the face of our
mysterious experience, and to communicate and broaden that capacity.
If an error in judgment, interpretation or behavior occurs, and something unexpected appears, that
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experience has two aspects: mysterium tremendum, which is capacity to invoke trembling and fear; and
mysterium fascinans capacity to powerfully attract, fascinate, and compel. This numinous power, divine
125
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consequence of the constant expansion of human adaptive capacity, and have become broken down into
less complex, more determinate aspects of experience. In their original form, however, these
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semi-conscious state. In the dream, as well, she had lost her capacity for self-control. Her genital region
was exposed, dimly; it had the appearance of a thick mat of hair. She was stroking herself, absentmindedly. She walked over to me, with a handful of pubic hair, compacted into something resembling a
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occurs because primal generative capacity characterizes both the source of all things and the
exploratory/hopeful attitudes and actions that make of that source determinate things. We would only
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themselves; our capacity to tell stories reflects our ability to describe ourselves. It has been said that Freud
merely recapitulated Shakespeare. But it was Freuds genius, despite his manifold errors, to bring what
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locale by the current social mores, products of historical forces). Then comes the capacity to imagine the
end towards which behavior should be directed. Information generated from the observation of behavior
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will not occur without capacity to engage in open conflict (to exchange information, realistically speaking)
or without the courage to voluntarily submit to the experience of negative emotion [including anxiety, guilt,
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routines, rather than in verbal or imagistic battles (rather than through argument). It is the capacity to
symbolically capitulate and to symbolically destroy that in large part underlies the ability of individual
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equivalent, might be considered reasonably measured by its capacity to inhibit competing impulses
especially those motivated by fear. Dominance displays in groups of primates and other complex higherorder social animals provide a useful example of this. Most dominance disputes are settled before
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strength of beliefs of this type can be determined, accurately, through challenge (since the capacity to
withstand challenge is dependent upon that strength). This means that the ability of those who hold an idea
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identity) means heightened capacity to predict behavior of self and other and, therefore, capacity to
regulate emotion through the ebb and flow of life. Much potential unpredictability remains constrained
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as progenitor of the hero. The protective capacity of benevolent tradition, embodied in the form of political
order, constitutes a common mythological/narrative theme. This may be illustrated for our purposes
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(poor in outward appearance, humble, willing to take risks, helpful and kind), he has the capacity to
become King. He journeys to a town threatened by a deluge (by chaos, in the guise of return of the
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powerful, protective, revitalizing capacity, no matter where they are applied.
The brothers continue homeward, but the older two deceive the younger on the voyage, exchanging the
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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 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
kara Siva. The Viṣṇu who is the subject of our text is the supreme being in all these three divinities or hypostases, in his different characters of creator, preserver and destroyer. Thus in the Mārkaṇḍeya: 'Accordingly, as the primal all-pervading spirit is distinguished by attributes in creation and the rest, so he obtains the denomination of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva. In the capacity of Brahmā he creates the worlds; in that of Rudra he destroys them; in that of Viṣṇu he is quiescent. These are the three Avasthās (ht. hypostases) of the self-born. Brahmā is the quality of activity; Rudra that of darkness; Viṣṇu, the lord of the world, is goodness: so, therefore, the three gods are the three qualities. They are ever combined with, and dependent upon one another; and they are never for an instant separate; they never quit each other.' The notion is one common to all antiquity, although less philosophically conceived, or perhaps less distinctly expressed, in the passages which have come down to us. The τρεῖς ἀρχικὰς ὑποστάσεις of Plato are said by Cudworth (I. 111), upon the authority of Plotinus, to be an ancient doctrine, παλαιὰ δόξα: and he also observes, "Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato have all of them asserted a trinity of divine hypostases; and as they unquestionably derived much of their doctrine from the Egyptians, it may reasonably be suspected that the Egyptians did the like before them." As however the Grecian accounts, and those of the Egyptians, are much more perplexed and unsatisfactory than those of the Hindus, it is most probable that we find amongst them the doctrine in its most original as well as most methodical and significant form.
[2]: This address to Viṣṇu pursues the notion that he, as the supreme being, is one, whilst he is all: he is Avikāra, not subject to change; Sadaikarūpa, one invariable nature: he is the liberator (tāra), or he who bears mortals across the ocean of existence: he is both single and manifold (ekānekarūpa): and he is the indiscrete (avyakta) cause of the world, as well as the discrete (vyakta) effect; or the invisible cause, and visible creation.
1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
13:But for the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga this inner or this outer solitude can only be incidents or periods in his spiritual progress. Accepting life, he has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others'; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe.
14:Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of the heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual and internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of all this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling discords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and with each other, -- integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. All exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
But as the story shows, true effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose).
If you adopt a pattern of life that focuses on golden eggs and neglects the goose, you will soon be without the asset that produces golden eggs. On the other hand, if you only take care of the goose with no aim toward the golden eggs, you soon won't have the wherewithal to feed yourself or the goose.
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A few years ago, I purchased a physical asset -- a power lawn mower. I used it over and over again without doing anything to maintain it. The mower worked well for two seasons, but then it began to break down. When I tried to revive it with service and sharpening, I discovered the engine had lost over half its original power capacity. It was essentially worthless.
Had I invested in PC -- in preserving and maintaining the asset -- I would still be enjoying its P -- the mowed lawn. As it was, I had to spend far more time and money replacing the mower than I ever would have spent, had I maintained it. It simply wasn't effective.
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Our most important financial asset is our own capacity to earn. If we don't continually invest in improving our own PC, we severely limit our options. We're locked into our present situation, running scared of our corporation or our boss's opinion of us, economically dependent and defensive.
Again, it simply isn't effective.
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-- will be significantly increased self-confidence. You will come to know yourself in a deeper, more meaningful way -- your nature, your deepest values and your unique contri bution capacity. As you live your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control, and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by people's opinions or by comparisons to others. "Wrong" and "right" will have little to do with being found out.
Ironically, you'll find that as you care less about what others think of you; you will care more about what others think of themselves and their worlds, including their relationship with you. You'll no longer build your emotional life on other people's weaknesses. In addition, you'll find it easier and more desirable to change because there is something -- some core deep within -- that is essentially changeless.
1.02 - The Age of Individualism and Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For this discovery by individual free-thought of universal laws of which the individual is almost a by-product and by which he must necessarily be governed, this attempt actually to govern the social life of humanity in conscious accordance with the mechanism of these laws seems to lead logically to the suppression of that very individual freedom which made the discovery and the attempt at all possible. In seeking the truth and law of his own being the individual seems to have discovered a truth and law which is not of his own individual being at all, but of the collectivity, the pack, the hive, the mass. The result to which this points and to which it still seems irresistibly to be driving us is a new ordering of society by a rigid economic or governmental Socialism in which the individual, deprived again of his freedom in his own interest and that of humanity, must have his whole life and action determined for him at every step and in every point from birth to old age by the well-ordered mechanism of the State.1 We might then have a curious new version, with very important differences, of the old Asiatic or even of the old Indian order of society. In place of the religio-ethical sanction there will be a scientific and rational or naturalistic motive and rule; instead of the Brahmin Shastrakara the scientific, administrative and economic expert. In the place of the King himself observing the law and compelling with the aid and consent of the society all to tread without deviation the line marked out for them, the line of the Dharma, there will stand the collectivist State similarly guided and empowered. Instead of a hierarchical arrangement of classes each with its powers, privileges and duties there will be established an initial equality of education and opportunity, ultimately perhaps with a subsequent determination of function by experts who shall know us better than ourselves and choose for us our work and quality. Marriage, generation and the education of the child may be fixed by the scientific State as of old by the Shastra. For each man there will be a long stage of work for the State superintended by collectivist authorities and perhaps in the end a period of liberation, not for action but for enjoyment of leisure and personal self-improvement, answering to the Vanaprastha and Sannyasa Asramas of the old Aryan society. The rigidity of such a social state would greatly surpass that of its Asiatic forerunner; for there at least there were for the rebel, the innovator two important concessions. There was for the individual the freedom of an early Sannyasa, a renunciation of the social for the free spiritual life, and there was for the group the liberty to form a sub-society governed by new conceptions like the Sikh or the Vaishnava. But neither of these violent departures from the norm could be tolerated by a strictly economic and rigorously scientific and unitarian society. Obviously, too, there would grow up a fixed system of social morality and custom and a body of socialistic doctrine which one could not be allowed to question practically, and perhaps not even intellectually, since that would soon shatter or else undermine the system. Thus we should have a new typal order based upon purely economic capacity and function, guakarma, and rapidly petrifying by the inhibition of individual liberty into a system of rationalistic conventions. And quite certainly this static order would at long last be broken by a new individualist age of revolt, led probably by the principles of an extreme philosophical Anarchism.
On the other hand, there are in operation forces which seem likely to frustrate or modify this development before it can reach its menaced consummation. In the first place, rationalistic and physical Science has overpassed itself and must before long be overtaken by a mounting flood of psychological and psychic knowledge which cannot fail to compel quite a new view of the human being and open a new vista before mankind. At the same time the Age of Reason is visibly drawing to an end; novel ideas are sweeping over the world and are being accepted with a significant rapidity, ideas inevitably subversive of any premature typal order of economic rationalism, dynamic ideas such as Nietzsches Will-to-live, Bergsons exaltation of Intuition above intellect or the latest German philosophical tendency to acknowledge a suprarational faculty and a suprarational order of truths. Already another mental poise is beginning to settle and conceptions are on the way to apply themselves in the field of practice which promise to give the succession of the individualistic age of society not to a new typal order, but to a subjective age which may well be a great and momentous passage to a very different goal. It may be doubted whether we are not already in the morning twilight of a new period of the human cycle.
1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
This is also true of spiritual facts. When we speak of the material nature of plants, animals, minerals, or the human physical body, we need to prove our statements through experiment and sense observation. This kind of proof, like the example mentioned, suggests that an object must be supported. In the free realm of the spirit, however, truths support one another. The only validation required is their mutual support. Thus, in representing spiritual reality, every idea needs to be placed clearly within the whole, just as Earth or any other heavenly body moves freely in cosmic space. Truths must support one another. Anyone who tries to understand the spiritual realm must first examine truths coming from other directions, and how they support the one truth through the free activity of their gravitational force of proof, as it were. In this way, that single truth is kept free in the cosmos, just as a heavenly body is supported freely in the cosmos by the countering forces of gravity. We need to develop the capacity to think the spiritual as a fundamental, inner disposition; otherwise, though we may be able to understand and educate the human soul, well remain unable to grasp, cultivate, and educate the spirit that also lives and moves within us as human beings.
The Individuals Entry into the World
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We can hold a balance between the two by what happens in the soul when we allow the will to pass gently into the childs own activity and by toning down the intellect so that feelings are cultivated in a way that doesnt suppress the breathing, but culti- vates feelings that turn toward imagery and express the buoyant capacity I described. When this is done, the childs development is supported between the change of teeth and puberty.34
Thus, from week to week, month to month, year to year, a true knowledge of human nature will help us read the develop- ing child like a book that tells us what needs to be done in our teaching. The curriculum needs to reproduce what we read in the evolutionary process of the human being. Specific ways that we can do this will be addressed in coming lectures.
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
ed the necessary capacity of attention. In the years to come,
and up to 1973 when she laid down what she had called
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 Human Soul, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
8.: Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it.
9.: A soul which gives itself to prayer, either much or little, should on no account be kept within narrow bounds. Since God has given it such great dignity, permit it to wander at will through the rooms of the castle, from the lowest to the highest. Let it not force itself to remain for very long in the same mansion, even that of self-knowledge. Mark well, however, that self-knowledge is indispensable, even for those whom God takes to dwell in the same mansion with Himself. Nothing else, however elevated, perfects the soul which must never seek to forget its own nothingness. Let humility be always at work, like the bee at the honeycomb, or all will be lost. But, remember, the bee leaves its hive to fly in search of flowers and the soul should sometimes cease thinking of itself to rise in meditation on the grandeur and majesty of its God. It will learn its own baseness better thus than by self-contemplation, and will be freer from the reptiles which enter the first room where self-knowledge is acquired. The palmito here referred to is not a palm, but a shrub about four feet high and very dense with leaves, resembling palm leaves. The poorer classes and principally children dig it up by the roots, which they peel of its many layers until a sort of kernel is disclosed, which is eaten, not without relish, and is somewhat like a filbert in taste. See St. John of the Cross, Accent of Mount Carmel, bk. ii. ch, xiv, 3. Although it is a great grace from God to practise self-examination, yet 'too much is as bad as too little,' as they say; believe me, by God's help, we shall advance more by contemplating the Divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves, poor creatures of earth that we are.
1.02 - The Magic Circle, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The magician will realize the more extensive his reading, the greater his intellectual capacity and the larger his store of knowledge happens to be, the more complicated his ritual and magic circle will be in order to furnish sufficient support for his spiritual consciousness, which then will make possible an easier connection of the microcosm and the macrocosm in the centre of the circle.
As for the circles themselves, they may be drawn in various ways to suit the circumstances, the prevailing situation, the purpose, the possibilities, no matter whether they are simple ones or whether they follow a complicated hierarchial system.
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Such, very baldly and briefly, are the most important things we know about mind in regard to its capacity to influence matter. From this modest knowledge about ourselves, what are we entitled to conclude in regard to the divine object of our nearly total ignorance?
First, as to creation: if a human mind can directly influence matter not merely within, but even outside its body, then a divine mind, immanent in the universe or transcendent to it, may be presumed to be capable of imposing forms upon a pre-existing chaos of formless matter, or even, perhaps, of thinking substance as well as forms into existence.
10.30 - India, the World and the Ashram, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man carries the burden of his own sins, in a way; but in a truer sense he carries the burden of all. It is one single burden that lies equally upon everybody everywhere. Thus the burden of the universal movement is shared by all collectively in equal measure.1 This is true of mankind in general; but it becomes dynamically true here among us where there is a conscious effort on the part of individuals to uplift and change the human consciousness. It is however the privilege of each individual to deal with one's share in the whole in one's own way, that is to say, the individual has been given the freedom and the capacity to make the burden light or let it remain or grow more heavy. It must be remembered that behind the individual a greater conscious personality has emerged and taken its place to help, to guide and fulfil the individual's divine destiny: even so, behind the universal effort there is a divine helping hand growing more and more powerful and effective in its manipulation of earthly forces and events. The solution of the difficulties will come from there and that can be the only solution.
We, who are here, living under the very eye of the supreme transfiguring force and consciousness that is working out inexorably the destinies of the individual being, the national being and the being of humanity to their divine fulfilment, we who have the privilege of not merely witnessing but collaborating in the mighty labour, however little it may be in our way, we can only bow down in thankfulness and gratefulness in the silence of our hearts.
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The capacity to abide by social rules, regardless of the specifics of the discipline, can therefore be
regarded as a necessary transitional stage in the movement from childhood to adulthood.
--
natural environment is therefore viewed in light of its capacity to arbitrarily inflict suffering and death.
The protective and sheltering capacity of society is therefore understood in light of its potent tendency to
tyranny and the elimination of necessary diversity. The heroic aspect of the individual is regarded in light
--
adaptive capacity, in the beginning. It is only the transmission of historically determined behavioral
patterns and, secondarily, their concomitant descriptions that enables survival in youth. These patterns
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maturation of creative exploratory capacity which constitutes the basis for mature self-reliance appears
dependent for its proper genesis upon the manifestation of maternal solicitude: upon love, balanced
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of capacity to predict the behavior of objects, other people and the self. The sum total of accurate
behaviorally-linked representation of the world as forum for action constitutes the structure which reduces
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A society works to the degree that it provides its members with the capacity to predict and control the
events in their experiential field works, insofar as it provides a barrier, protection from the unknown or
--
to their capacity to further movement away from the unbearable present towards the ideal future; likewise,
moral behavior is seen as furthering and immoral behavior as impeding or undermining such movement. Of
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but also eliminates necessary potential and the capacity for adaptive transformation. The suboptimal
solution to the problem of authoritarian or totalitarian danger, in turn, is denigration of the role of society,
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incarnation of the hero. This means that the individuals capacity for cultural imitation that is, his
capacity for subservience to traditional order has been rendered subordinate to his capacity to function as
the process that mediates between order and chaos. Each properly-socialized individaul therefore comes
1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
The mind's capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are
inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: His vital being has some strength and also there is a certain psychic capacity in him. But his intellect is not fine and subtle and elastic. He has perhaps intellectual vanity and a sense of self-sufficiency which may be a great obstacle in his Yoga.
He was asked to practise the preliminary step of separating Purusha and Prakriti the witness Self and the active Nature.
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I can't give you my Yoga as I do not find the necessary capacity in your nature. But, if you like, I can give you something that may prepare you for this Yoga.
Vyas: Very well.
--
In this Yoga also we want to bring down that divine Sun to govern not only the mind but the vital and the physical being also. It is a very difficult effort. All cannot bear the Light of the Sun when it comes down. Gayatri chooses the Divine Light of the Truth asking it to come down and govern the mind. It is the capacity to bear the Light that constitutes the fitness for this Yoga.
You can meditate on this Mantra, keeping in mind the meaning, and you can aspire also to become fit for this Yoga. When you are able to fix your mind you may remember any one of the forms of the Godhead. You can pray to your Ishta-Devata that he may make you fit for this Yoga and that he may come and work in you.
Really speaking, this Yoga is not done by the power of man; it is done by the Divine Power and so it can bring about every change in the capacity of the sadhak.
You should direct the aspiration towards the Supreme. When you have succeeded in doing it, you should watch all your inner activities and see what they are. Irrespective of whatever you find there you must stay calm. This calm you must go on deepening so much so that you should feel quiet, wide, large in consciousness. If you can establish this calm you will be able to do this Yoga.
1.03 - On exile or pilgrimage, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
It is impossible to hide the fact that our mind, which is the organ of knowledge, is extremely imperfect and full of all kinds of ignorance. The palate distinguishes different foods, the hearing discerns thoughts, the sun reveals the weakness of the eyes, and words betray a souls ignorance. But the law of love is an incentive to attempt things that are beyond our capacity. And so I think (but I do not dogmatize) that after a chapter on exile, or rather in this very chapter, something should be inserted about dreams, so that we may not be in the dark concerning this trickery of our wily foes.
A dream is a movement of the mind while the body is at rest. A phantasy is an illusion of the eyes when the intellect is asleep. A phantasy is an ecstasy of the mind when the body is awake. A phantasy is the appearance of something which does not exist in reality.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The separate creaturely life, as opposed to life in union with God, is only a life of various appetites, hungers and wants, and cannot possibly be anything else. God Himself cannot make a creature to be in itself, or in its own nature, anything else but a state of emptiness. The highest life that is natural and creaturely can go no higher than this; it can only be a bare capacity for goodness and cannot possibly be a good and happy life but by the life of God dwelling in and in union with it. And this is the twofold life that, of all necessity, must be united in every good and perfect and happy creature.
William Law
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
to live a great many years to come, a part of her capacity to live
long must surely pass into the clothes, and thus stave off for many
--
the capacity of prolonging life in an unusually high degree. Amongst
the clothes there is one robe in particular on which special pains
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The individualistic age is, then, a radical attempt of mankind to discover the truth and law both of the individual being and of the world to which the individual belongs. It may begin, as it began in Europe, with the endeavour to get back, more especially in the sphere of religion, to the original truth which convention has overlaid, defaced or distorted; but from that first step it must proceed to others and in the end to a general questioning of the foundations of thought and practice in all the spheres of human life and action. A revolutionary reconstruction of religion, philosophy, science, art and society is the last inevitable outcome. It proceeds at first by the light of the individual mind and reason, by its demand on life and its experience of life; but it must go from the individual to the universal. For the effort of the individual soon shows him that he cannot securely discover the truth and law of his own being without discovering some universal law and truth to which he can relate it. Of the universe he is a part; in all but his deepest spirit he is its subject, a small cell in that tremendous organic mass: his substance is drawn from its substance and by the law of its life the law of his life is determined and governed. From a new view and knowledge of the world must proceed his new view and knowledge of him self, of his power and capacity and limitations, of his claim on existence and the high road and the distant or immediate goal of his individual and social destiny.
In Europe and in modern times this has taken the form of a clear and potent physical Science: it has proceeded by the discovery of the laws of the physical universe and the economic and sociological conditions of human life as determined by the physical being of man, his environment, his evolutionary history, his physical and vital, his individual and collective need. But after a time it must become apparent that the knowledge of the physical world is not the whole of knowledge; it must appear that man is a mental as well as a physical and vital being and even much more essentially mental than physical or vital. Even though his psychology is strongly affected and limited by his physical being and environment, it is not at its roots determined by them, but constantly reacts, subtly determines their action, effects even their new-shaping by the force of his psychological demand on life. His economic state and social institutions are themselves governed by his psychological demand on the possibilities, circumstances, tendencies created by the relation between the mind and soul of humanity and its life and body. Therefore to find the truth of things and the law of his being in relation to that truth he must go deeper and fathom the subjective secret of himself and things as well as their objective forms and surroundings.
--
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.
1.03 - The Gods, Superior Beings and Adverse Forces, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In order to make myself more clear, I repeat what I wanted to say; in a year like this one when the adverse forces have decided to attack at the utmost of their capacity, it is required from all those who have decided to fight for the Divine Realisation, to avoid carefully all fear.
When I spoke at the beginning of the year I insisted on the necessity of being especially vigilant because when times are bad whatever mistake one makes brings immediately its full consequences, the action of the Grace being hampered by the intensity of the adverse attack; the faith must be more total, the vigilance more constant, the trust in the Divine more absolute.
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
In this latter capacity, the Egyptian jackal-headed Anubis is similar, since he was the patron of the dead, and is depicted as leading the soul into the judgment of Osiris in Amennti. It will help the student not a little if he remembers that the sphere of Hod represents on a very much lower plane similar qualities to those obtaining in
Chokmah.
1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation, and self-
knowledge.
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
13:Entering into that Consciousness, we may continue to dwell, like It, upon universal existence. Then we become aware, - for all our terms of consciousness and even our sensational experience begin to change, - of Matter as one existence and of bodies as its formations in which the one existence separates itself physically in the single body from itself in all others and again by physical means establishes communication between these multitudinous points of its being. Mind we experience similarly, and Life also, as the same existence one in its multiplicity, separating and reuniting itself in each domain by means appropriate to that movement. And, if we choose, we can proceed farther and, after passing through many linking stages, become aware of a supermind whose universal operation is the key to all lesser activities. Nor do we become merely conscious of this cosmic existence, but likewise conscious in it, receiving it in sensation, but also entering into it in awareness. In it we live as we lived before in the ego-sense, active, more and more in contact, even unified more and more with other minds, other lives, other bodies than the organism we call ourselves, producing effects not only on our own moral and mental being and on the subjective being of others, but even on the physical world and its events by means nearer to the divine than those possible to our egoistic capacity.
14:Real then to the man who has had contact with it or lives in it, is this cosmic consciousness, with a greater than the physical reality; real in itself, real in its effects and works. And as it is thus real to the world which is its own total expression, so is the world real to it; but not as an independent existence. For in that higher and less hampered experience we perceive that consciousness and being are not different from each other, but all being is a supreme consciousness, all consciousness is selfexistence, eternal in itself, real in its works and neither a dream nor an evolution. The world is real precisely because it exists only in consciousness; for it is a Conscious Energy one with Being that creates it. It is the existence of material form in its own right apart from the self-illumined energy which assumes the form, that would be a contradiction of the truth of things, a phantasmagoria, a nightmare, an impossible falsehood.
1.03 - Time Series, Information, and Communication, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
with high resonance very generally have an abnormal capacity
for storing both energy and information, and such a storage cer-
1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
"Observe the manner in which a clear-eyed teacher like Chen Tsun-su was able unequivocally to affirm Lin-chi: 'Your practice is pure and genuine!' That purity and that genuineness of practice are extremely difficult to attain, even if a student devotes an entire lifetime to Zen training. However, once you attain it, you are, without any doubt, a tiger that has sprouted wings.l You should never doubt that you yourself have such a capacity.
"Yet Lin-chi went three times to ask Huang-po about the cardinal meaning of the Buddha Dharma.
--
Then one day he suddenly grabbed the master and hurried him to a secluded spot at the rear of the temple. He seated the master on the ground, spread out his prostration cloth before him, and performed three bows. 'I appeal to your great mercy and compassion,' he said. 'Please teach me the principles of Zen. Guide me to sudden enlightenment.' The master ignored him, enraging the monk, who flew into a fit of passion, sprang to his feet and, eyes red with anger, broke off a large branch from a nearby tree. Brandishing it, he stood in front of the master glaring scornfully at him. 'Priest!' he cried. 'If you don't tell me what you know, I am going to club you to death, cast your body down the cliff, and leave this place for good.' 'If you want to beat me to death, go ahead,' replied the master. 'I'm not going to teach you any Zen.' What a pity. This monk was obviously gifted with special capacity and spiritual strength. He had what it takes to penetrate the truth and perish into the great death. But notice what great caution and infinite care these ancient teachers exercised when leading students to self-awakening.
"Zen Master Tao-wu responded to a monk with the words, 'I won't say living. I won't say dead.'
1.040 - Re-Educating the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It is not true that our inward life is the same as our outward life. They are two different things altogether, and this is perhaps the case in 99.9% of people. For various reasons, psychological as well as social, it becomes difficult for the individual to express his real nature outwardly. Whatever the reason behind it, the fact is there the outward relationships and inward characters do not coincide with each other; therefore there is irreconcilability, obviously. So, there is no friendship. Friendship is not a matter of writing a letter or speaking a word, but a matter of feeling. This feeling is impossible unless there is the capacity to appreciate the condition or circumstance of the person or the object with whom we are related, or with which we are related, and finally, to enter into the very feeling of that very person and the being of that object which is alone, ultimately speaking, real fraternity of feeling or friendship.
We have a subtle distractedness in our mind on account of the presence of an absence of friendliness with things. This will cut at the root of all the yogic practice, because yoga is the attempt to contact Ultimate Reality. It is not a mere social contact that we are trying here, but a contact of utter being the basic reality that is in everything. So there is a requisition for a complete transformation of our personality, inwardly as well as outwardly, even on the unconscious level not merely outwardly so that we get attuned to the structure of anything and everything in the world, under every condition.
1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
There is a class of foolish people, O inquirer after the divine mysteries, who have neither capacity for knowledge, or sound judgment to be able to understand anything of themselves, and who have remained doubting and speculating about the nature of the future state, till they have become bewildered. Finally, as the lusts of the world harmonized with their natures, they have yielded to the whisperings of Satan, and deny that there is any future state. They pretend that the only need there is of speaking of heaven and hell, is for the sake of correcting and guiding the conduct of the people, and they regard as folly the course of those who follow the law and are constant in their devotions.
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1.04 - Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the wood-side; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. _Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!_ sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks.
Then_that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!_ echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and_bor-r-r-r-n!_ comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The capacity to abstract that is, to code morality in image and word has facilitated the
communication, comprehension and development of behavior and behavioral interaction. However, the
--
also easier to casually criticize and discard. This capacity for easy modification is very dangerous, in that
the explicit and statable moral rules that characterize a given culture tend to exist for reasons that are still
implicit and fundamental. The capacity to abstract which has facilitated the communication of very
complex and only partially understood ideas is therefore also the capacity to undermine the very
structure that lends predictability to action, and which constrains the a priori meaning of things and
situations. Our capacity for abstraction is capable of disrupting our unconscious that is, imagistic and
procedural social identity, upsetting our emotional stability, and undermining our integrity (that is, the
--
The ever-expanding human capacity for abstraction central to human consciousness has enabled
us to produce self-models sufficiently complex and extended to take into account the temporal boundaries
--
emergence of this representational capacity, in the guise of a historical event. The consequence of this
event that is, the development of self-consciousness is capacity to represent death, and to
understand that the possibility of death is part of the unknown. This contamination of anomaly with the
--
explicit, however, perhaps we could develop greater intrapsychic and social integrity. The capacity to
develop such understanding might help us use our capacity for reason to support, rather than destroy, the
moral systems that discipline and protect us.
--
what is, but to description of the cumulative affective relevance, or meaning, of what is. The capacity to
determine the motivational relevance of an object or situation is dependent, in turn, upon representation of
--
arose as a consequence of human activity, limited in its domain by past behavioral capacity. Two hundred
years ago, we did not know how to act concretely, or think abstractly, in a manner that would produce some
--
knowledge that the creative capacity of the individual must be regarded as supremely important
divine.]
--
anything outside shares the capacity to frighten (or enlighten) anything inside. Challenges posed to the
highest levels of order are clearly the most profound, and are likely to engender the most thorough
--
Anomalous events share capacity to threaten the integrity of the known share ability to disrupt the
familiar and explored. Such events, while differing in their specific details and manner of manifestation,
--
response pattern, however, is that the upsetting capacity of the anomalous is simultaneously the vital
source of interest, meaning and individual strength. Furthermore, the ability to upset ourselves to
--
least in potential and for the prediction of the behaviors of others [which is a capacity integrally linked to
the development of self-consciousness (how would I behave in a situation like that?)]. In addition,
--
The capacity to abstract has not come without price, however. The incautious, imaginative (and
resentful) can easily use their gift of socially-constructed intelligence to undermine moral principles that
--
The socially-mediated capacity to abstract to reason and represent, in behavior, imagination and word
means that an ill-chosen action, fantasy or thought may have devastating consequences. This is true in
--
element). It has this capacity in part because it is capable of referring to phenomena outside its domain, in
order to make itself understood (this is use of metaphor). The word brings to mind events and actions,
--
dangerously one-sided), when viewed in terms of its potential destructive capacity, from within the strict
confines of the historically-determined social-psychological adaptive structure. It is only within the domain
--
knowledge hard-won in the physical battle for survival, and consequent capacity for immmediate
communication of that knowledge, in the absence of direct demonstration. Furthermore, it means potential
--
real world. Acquisition of such ability the capacity for abstract creative thought, and social exchange
thereof means tremendous heightening of adaptive ability, as concepts constructed purely semantically
attain the capacity for alteration of episodic representation and procedure itself. Once the nature of morality
is coded semantically once the implicit hierarchically-structured presuppositions of behavior have been
--
It is the essential flexibility of the human brain, its very capacity to learn, and therefore to unlearn, that
renders Homo sapiens so appallingly susceptible to group and intrapsychic conflict. An animals behavioral
--
European cognitive process, had the capacity to undermine the most fundamental presuppositions of
Russian culture (as it had undermined those of the West):
--
flexibility, supporting capacity to adapt to the strange, and streng thening ability to resist domination by
one-sided and murderous ideologies.
. The idea that we have superseded such thinking is a prime example of the capacity of the semantic
system to partially represent, and to thoroughly criticize. This is wrong, arrogant, and dangerous.
--
predicated. This capacity which should make him a welcome figure in every community is exceedingly
threatening to those completely encapsulated by the status quo, and who are unable or unwilling to see
--
psychological transmutation a psychobiologically-grounded human capacity. Shamanic rituals are
therefore not merely anachronistic, without modern relevance, except as curiosity dictates but prime
--
single pattern of action, a single mode of apprehension in the absence of capacity to reconfigure present
conceptualizations of morality (morality: description of unbearable present, ideal future, and means of
--
unknown). Biologically-determined capacity for such dissolution and for its satisfactory resolution
provides the necessary precondition for the existence of human capacity for qualitative alteration in
adaptation. Resolution of crisis symbolic rebirth follows attendant upon initiatory dissolution,
--
has provided that rapidly developing biological capacity with data whose sophistication and breadth is
increasing exponentially. This means that the human mind increasingly manifests the capacity to upset
itself to produce revelations, so to speak, that knock gaping holes in the previously-sufficient adaptive
--
The ever-expanding human capacity for abstraction has enabled us as a species, and as individuals
to produce self-models that include the temporal boundaries of existence. We have become able to imagine
--
we encounter. Emergence of such capacity which re-occurs with the maturation of every new human
being introduces the most intractable anomaly imaginable into the developmental course of every life.
--
characteristic of the development of consciousness, of the capacity to act and represent which is regarded
from the mythic perspective as akin to the creation of the world.
--
world-tree is the innate capacity of the mind, its ability to generate revelatory thought, its capacity to
disrupt the stable cosmos and to extend the domain of consciousness. It was unconscious (imagistic)
--
will not give up that destabilizing capacity for return to the unconscious source. This is, I suppose, part of
the pride of man, that serves as predestiny for the fall but is, as well, part of another unconscious
--
permanently undermines capacity for faith in blind instinctual action:
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and
--
sophisticated self-consciousness, which is (innate) capacity for self-reference, provided with content
through action of culture. Construction of self-consciousness requires elaboration of a self-model;
--
conceptual representation of the self. The capacity for such objective description arose as a consequence of
the communication of disembodied or abstracted thought from person to person, through processes ranging
--
for action, in a given situation means capacity for conceptualization of alternative ideals, towards which
behavior can be devoted. The animal, guided purely by its individual, biologically-determined perceptual
--
from has no basis for comparison, no expanded repertoire of adaptive behavior, no capacity for
fantasizing about what could be and no cultural experience to flesh out that capacity. Animal perception
and action animal experience has not been made subject to historically-predicated self-conscious
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The master word of the address to the Aswins is the verb chanasyatam, take your delight. The Aswins, as I understand them, are the masters of strength, youth, joy, swiftness, pleasure, rapture, the pride and glory of existence, and may almost be described as the twin gods of youth and joy. All the epithets applied to them here support this view. They are dravatpani subhaspati, the swift-footed masters of weal, of happiness and good fortune; they are purubhuja, much enjoying; their office is to take and give delight, chanasyatam. So runs the first verse, Aswin yajwaririsho dravatpani subhaspati, Purubhuja chanasyatam. O Aswins, cries Madhuchchhanda, I am in the full rush, the full ecstasy of the sacrificial action, O swift-footed, much-enjoying masters of happiness, take in me your delight. Again they are purudansasa, wide-distributing, nara, strong. O strong wide-distributing Aswins, continues the singer, with your bright-flashing (or brilliantly-forceful) understanding take pleasure in the words (of the mantra) which are now firmly settled (in the mind). Aswina purudansasa nara shaviraya dhiya, Dhishnya vanatam girah. Again we have the stress on things subjective, intellectual and spiritual. The extreme importance of the mantra, the inspired & potent word in the old Vedic religion is known nor has it diminished in later Hinduism. The mantra in Yoga is only effective when it has settled into the mind, is asina, has taken its seat there and become spontaneous; it is then that divine power enters into, takes possession of it and the mantra itself becomes one with the god of the mantra and does his works in the soul and body. This, as every Yogin knows, is one of the fundamental ideas not only in the Rajayogic practice but in almost all paths of spiritual discipline. Here we have the very word that can most appropriately express this settling in of the mantra, dhishnya, combined with the word girah. And we know that the gods in the Veda are called girvanah, those who delight in the mantra; Indra, the god of mental force, is girvahas, he who supports or bears the mantra. Why should Nature gods delight in speech or the god of thunder & rain be the supporter or bearer of any kind of speech? The hymns? But what is meant by bearing the hymns? We have to give unnatural meanings to vanas & vahas, if we wish to avoid this plain indication. In the next verse the epithets are dasra, bountiful, which, like wide-distributing is again an epithet appropriate to the givers of happiness, weal and youth, rudravartani, fierce & impetuous in all their ways, and Nasatya, a word of doubtful meaning which, for philological reasons, I take to mean gods of movement.As the movement indicated by this and kindred words n, (natare), especially meant a gliding, floating, swimming movement, the Aswins came to be especially the protectors of ships & sailors, and it is in this capacity that we find Castor & Polydeuces (Purudansas) acting, their Western counterparts, the brothers of Helen (Sarama), the swift riders of the Roman legend. O givers, O lords of free movement, runs the closing verse of this invocation, come to the outpourings of my nectar, be ye fierce in action;I feel full of youthful vigour, I have prepared the sacred grass,if that indeed be the true & early meaning of barhis. Dasra yuvakavah suta nasatya vriktabarhishah, Ayatam rudravartani. It is an intense rapture of the soul (rudravartani) which Madhuchchhandas asks first from the gods.Therefore his first call is to the Aswins.
Next, it is to Indra that he turns. I have already said that in my view Indra is the master of mental force. Let us see whether there is anything here to contradict the hypothesis. Indra yahi chitrabhano suta ime tu ayavah, Anwibhis tana putasah. Indrayahi dhiyeshito viprajutah sutavatah Upa brahmani vaghatah. Indrayahi tutujana upa brahmani harivah Sute dadhishwa nas chanah. There are several important words here that are doubtful in their sense, anwi, tana, vaghatah, brahmani; but none of them are of importance for our present purpose except brahmani. For reasons I shall give in the proper place I do not accept Brahma in the Veda as meaning speech of any kind, but as either soul or a mantra of the kind afterwards called dhyana, the object of which was meditation and formation in the soul of the divine Power meditated on whether in an image or in his qualities. It is immaterial which sense we take here. Indra, sings the Rishi, arrive, O thou of rich and varied light, here are these life-streams poured forth, purified, with vital powers, with substance. Arrive, O Indra, controlled by the understanding, impelled forward in various directions to my soul faculties, I who am now full of strength and flourishing increase. Arrive, O Indra, with protection to my soul faculties, O dweller in the brilliance, confirm our delight in the nectar poured. It seems to me that the remarkable descriptions dhiyeshito viprajutah are absolutely conclusive, that they prove the presence of a subjective Nature Power, not a god of rain & tempest, & prove especially a mind-god. What is it but mental force which comes controlled by the understanding and is impelled forward by it in various directions? What else is it that at the same time protects by its might the growing & increasing soul faculties from impairing & corrupting attack and confirms, keeps safe & continuous the delight which the Aswins have brought with them? The epithets chitrabhano, harivas become at once intelligible and appropriate; the god of mental force has indeed a rich and varied light, is indeed a dweller in the brilliance. The progress of the thought is clear. Madhuchchhanda, as a result of Yogic practice, is in a state of spiritual & physical exaltation; he has poured out the nectar of vitality; he is full of strength & ecstasy This is the sacrifice he has prepared for the gods. He wishes it to be prolonged, perhaps to be made, if it may now be, permanent. The Aswins are called to give & take the delight, Indra to supply & preserve that mental force which will sustain the delight otherwise in danger of being exhausted & sinking by its own fierceness rapidly consuming its material in the soul faculties. The state and the movement are one of which every Yogin knows.
But he is not content with the inner sacrifice. He wishes to pour out this strength & joy in action on the world, on his fellows, on the peoples, therefore he calls to the Visve Devah to come, A gata!all the gods in general who help man and busy themselves in supporting his multitudinous & manifold action. They are kindly, omasas, they are charshanidhrito, holders or supporters of all our actions, especially actions that require effort, (it is in this sense that I take charshani, again on good philological grounds), they are to distribute this nectar to all or to divide it among themselves for the action,dasvanso may have either force,for Madhuchchhanda wishes not only to possess, but to give, to distribute, he is dashush. Omasas charshanidhrito visve devasa a gata, daswanso dashushah sutam. He goes on, Visve devaso apturah sutam a ganta turnayah Usra iva swasarani. Visve devaso asridha ehimayaso adruhah, Medham jushanta vahnayah. O you all-gods who are energetic in works, come to the nectar distilled, ye swift ones, (or, come swiftly), like calves to their own stalls,(so at least we must translate this last phrase, till we can get the real meaning, for I do not believe this is the real or, at any rate, the only meaning). O you all-gods unfaltering, with wide capacity of strength, ye who harm not, attach yourselves to the offering as its supporters. And then come the lines about Saraswati. For although Indra can sustain for a moment or for a time he is at present a mental, not an ideal force; it is Saraswati full of the vijnana, of mahas, guiding by it the understanding in all its ways who can give to all these gods the supporting knowledge, light and truth which will confirm and uphold the delight, the mental strength & supply inexhaustibly from the Ocean of Mahas the beneficent & joy-giving action,Saraswati, goddess of inspiration, the flowing goddess who is the intermediary & channel by which divine truth, divine joy, divine being descend through the door of knowledge into this human receptacle. In a word, she is our inspirer, our awakener, our lurer towards Immortality. It is immortality that Madhuchchhandas prepares for himself & the people who do sacrifice to Heaven, devayantah. The Soma-streams he speaks of are evidently no intoxicating vegetable juices; he calls them ayavah, life-forces; & elsewhere amritam, nectar of immortality; somasah, wine-draughts of bliss & internal well being. It is the clear Yogic idea of the amritam, the divine nectar which flows into the system at a certain stage of Yogic practice & gives pure health, pure strength & pure physical joy to the body as a basis for a pure mental & spiritual vigour and activity.
We have therefore as a result of a long and careful examination the clear conviction that certainly in this poem of Madhuchchhanda, probably in others of his hymns, perhaps in all we have an invocation to subjective Nature powers, a symbolic sacrifice, a spiritual, moral & subjective effort & purpose. And if many other suktas in this & other Mandalas confirm the evidence of this third hymn of the Rigveda, shall we not say that here we have the true Veda as the Rishis understood it and that this was the reason why all the ancient thinkers looked on the hymns with so deep-seated a reverence that even after they came to be used merely as ceremonial liturgies at a material sacrifice, even after the Buddha impatiently flung them aside, the writer of the Gita had to look beyond them & Shankara respectfully put them on the shelf of neglect as useless for spiritual purposes, even after they have ceased to be used and almost to be read, the most spiritual nation on the face of the earth still tenaciously, by a sort of divine instinct, clings to them as its supreme Scriptures & refers back all its spirituality and higher knowledge to the Vedas? Let us proceed and see whether this is not the truest as well as the noblest reading of the riddle the real root of Gods purpose in maintaining this our ancient faith and millennial tradition.
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But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, the Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in the Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in the vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means the Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchidananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit-shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma the Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purposeya thatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.
Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek . We may also compare the Greek , meaning judgment, opinion etc & , I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,by virtue of his purified discernment.
1.04 - The Origin and Development of Poetry., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.' For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the colouring, or some such other cause.
Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is an integral knowledge that is being sought, an integral force, a total amplitude of union with the All and Infinite behind existence. For the seeker of the integral Yoga no single experience, no one Divine Aspect,however overwhelming to the human mind, sufficient for its capacity, easily accepted as the sole or the ultimate reality,can figure as the exclusive truth of the Eternal. For him the experience of the Divine Oneness carried to its extreme is more deeply embraced and amply fathomed by following out to the full the experience of the Divine Multiplicity. All that is true behind polytheism as well as behind monotheism falls within the scope of his seeking; but he passes beyond their superficial sense to human mind to grasp their mystic truth in the Divine. He sees what is aimed at by the jarring sects and philosophies and accepts each facet of the Reality in its own place, but rejects their narrownesses and errors and proceeds farther till he discovers the One Truth that binds them together. The reproach of anthropomorphism and anthropolatry cannot deter him,for he sees them to be prejudices of the ignorant and arrogant reasoning intelligence, the abstracting mind turning on itself in its own cramped circle. If human relations as practised now by man are full of smallness and perversity and ignorance, yet are they disfigured shadows of something in the Divine and by turning them to the Divine he finds that of which they are a shadow and brings it down for manifestation in life. It is through the human exceeding itself and opening itself to a supreme plenitude that the Divine must manifest itself here, since that comes inevitably in the course and process of the spiritual evolution, and therefore he will not despise or blind himself to the Godhead because it is lodged in a human body, mnu tanum ritam. Beyond the limited human conception of God, he will pass to the one divine Eternal, but also he will meet him in the faces of the Gods, his cosmic personalities supporting the World-Play, detect him behind the mask of the Vibhutis, embodied World-Forces or human Leaders, reverence and obey him in the Guru, worship him in the Avatar. This will be to him his exceeding good fortune if he can meet one who has realised or is becoming That which he seeks for and can by opening to it in this vessel of its manifestation himself realise it. For that is the most palpable sign of the growing fulfilment, the promise of the great mystery of the progressive Descent into Matter which is the secret sense of the material creation and the justification of terrestrial existence.
Thus reveals himself to the seeker in the progress of the sacrifice the Lord of the sacrifice. At any point this revelation can begin; in any aspect the Master of the Work can take up the work in him and more and more press upon him and it for the unfolding of his presence. In time all the Aspects disclose themselves, separate, combine, fuse, are unified together. At the end there shines through it all the supreme integral Reality, unknowable to Mind which is part of the Ignorance, but knowable because self-aware in the light of a spiritual consciousness and a supramental knowledge.
1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
truly the feeling of bathing in the Source. Indeed, this "descending force" is the very Force of the Spirit Shakti. Spiritual Force is not just a word. Ultimately, it will no longer be necessary to close our eyes and withdraw from the surface to feel it; it will be there every second of our life, no matter what we are doing, whether we are eating, reading, or speaking; we will see it take on a greater and greater intensity as our being becomes accustomed to it. It is actually a formidable mass of energy, limited only by the smallness of our receptivity and capacity.
When the disciples speak of their experience with this descending Force, they call it "Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's Force." But they do not mean that this Shakti is the personal property of Sri Aurobindo and Mother; they merely express, unwittingly, the fact that it has no equivalent in any other known yoga. Here, experientially, we touch 36
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a person's anger, or a brother's suffering. The seeker will need only to tune in to that place or person, in the silence, to have a more or less exact perception of the situation, depending upon his own capacity for silence; for in this case, too, the mind jams everything, because it has desires, fears, prejudices, and anything it perceives is instantly distorted by this desire, that fear, or that prejudice (there are other causes of jamming, which we will discuss later). Therefore, it would seem that silencing the mind brings an expansion of consciousness,
which becomes capable of projecting itself at will onto any point of the universal reality and learning there what it needs to know.
1.04 - Vital Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Vital education aims at training the life -force (that normally vibrates in emotions, desires and impulses) in three directions: to discover its real function and to replace its egoistic and ignorant tendency so as to become the master by a willingness and capacity to serve higher principles of the psychological constitution; to subtilise and sublimate its sensitivity which expresses itself through sensuous and aesthetic activities; and to resolve and transcend the dualities and contradictions in the character constituted by the vital seekings, and to achieve the transformation of the character.
The usual methods of dealing with the vital have been those of coercion, suppression, abstinence and asceticism. But these methods do not give lasting results. Besides, they only help in drying up the drive and dynamism of the life-force; and thus the collaboration of the life-force in self-fulfilment is eliminated.
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-
delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves. ...
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is plain that no distinct object whatever that pleases the will can be God; and, for that reason, if the will is to be united with Him, it must empty itself, cast away every disorderly affection of the desire, every satisfaction it may distinctly have, high and low, temporal and spiritual, so that, purified and cleansed from all unruly satisfactions, joys and desires, it may be wholly occupied, with all its affections, in loving God. For if the will can in any way comprehend God and be united with Him, it cannot be through any capacity of the desire, but only by love; and as all the delight, sweetness and joy, of which the will is sensible, is not love, it follows that none of these pleasing impressions can be the adequate means of uniting the will to God. These adequate means consist in an act of the will. And because an act of the will is quite distinct from feeling, it is by an act that the will is united with God and rests in Him; that act is love. This union is never wrought by feeling or exertion of the desire; for these remain in the soul as aims and ends. It is only as motives of love that feelings can be of service, if the will is bent on going onwards, and for nothing else.
He, then, is very unwise who, when sweetness and spiritual delight fail him, thinks for that reason that God has abandoned him; and when he finds them again, rejoices and is glad, thinking that he has in that way come to possess God.
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The distinguishing marks of charity are disinterestedness, tranquillity and humility. But where there is disinterestedness there is neither greed for personal advantage nor fear for personal loss or punishment; where there is tranquillity, there is neither craving nor aversion, but a steady will to conform to the divine Tao or Logos on every level of existence and a steady awareness of the divine Suchness and what should be ones own relations to it; and where there is humility there is no censoriousness and no glorification of the ego or any projected alter-ego at the expense of others, who are recognized as having the same weaknesses and faults, but also the same capacity for transcending them in the unitive knowledge of God, as one has oneself. From all this it follows that charity is the root and substance of morality, and that where there is little charity there will be much avoidable evil. All this has been summed up in Augustines formula: Love, and do what you like. Among the later elaborations of the Augustinian theme we may cite the following from the writings of John Everard, one of those spiritually minded seventeenth-century divines whose teachings fell on the deaf ears of warring factions and, when the revolution and the military dictatorship were at an end, on the even deafer ears of Restoration clergymen and their successors in the Augustan age. (Just how deaf those ears could be we may judge by what Swift wrote of his beloved and morally perfect Houyhnhnms. The subject matter of their conversations, as of their poetry, consisted of such things as friendship and benevolence, the visible operations of nature or ancient traditions; the bounds and limits of virtue, the unerring rules of reason. Never once do the ideas of God, or charity, or deliverance engage their minds. Which shows sufficiently clearly what the Dean of St. Patricks thought of the religion by which he made his money.)
Turn the man loose who has found the living Guide within him, and then let him neglect the outward if he can! Just as you would say to a man who loves his wife with all tenderness, You are at liberty to beat her, hurt her or kill her, if you want to.
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
cipator), \vrpwTT]$ (redeemer), cravpos (cross). In this capacity he is the regulator
and mainstay of the universe, like Jesus. When Sophia was "formless and shape-
1.05 - Computing Machines and the Nervous System, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
the use of machines of smaller capacity. For example, even the
use of machines for computing determinants of moderately
1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
as the plant is absorbed in its photosyn thesis, as our own consciousness can be absorbed in a book or a desire, oblivious to all the other levels of its own reality. All evolutionary progress is ultimately measured by the capacity to extricate and free the element of consciousness from its element of force this is what is meant by "individualization of consciousness." At the spiritual or yogic stage of evolution, consciousness is completely freed, released from its mental,
vital, and physical turmoil; it is its own master and can move through the entire range of vibrations of consciousness, from the atom to the Spirit; the Force has totally become Consciousness, totally remembered Itself. Finally, to remember oneself is to remember everything, because it is the Spirit in us remembering the Spirit in everything.
1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
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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.
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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.
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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
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Mythology envelops the transpersonal capacity for evil characterizing the individual, as such, in the
guise of a personality duplicating its encapsulation of chaos and order. The dark side of the individual is
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permanent aspect of human being. The same is true, precisely, of the adversarial tendency: the capacity
for endless denial, and the desire to make everything suffer for the outrage of its existence, is an
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its misapplication. The capacity for rational thought is a dangerous force, without doubt because a
powerful force and the conditions under which thinking plays a purely destructive role are still not wellcomprehended.
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reasons own capacity for self-recognition and self-admiration means endless capacity for pride, which
is the act of presuming omniscience. It is reasons remarkable ability, and its own recognition of that
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exploration. [Humility it is only constant admission of error and capacity for error (admssion of sinful
and ignorant nature) that allows for recognition of the unknown, and then for update of knowledge and
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standpoint: but information with the capacity to transform, if admitted). The existence of the Muslim, and
the Muslim viewpoint, likewise is not evil, if I am a devout Christian. Evil is instead my presumption of
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of creation and transformation: characterized eternally by the capacity to admit to the unknown and,
therefore, to progress towards the kingdom of heaven. The eternal adversary, by contrast, is incarnation
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intrinsic nature. It is voluntary willingness to do what is known to be wrong, despite the capacity to
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powers, his behavioral capacity expands. He can do more things and, in consequence, experience more
things. The ability to bring heretofore unknown and, therefore, frightening phenomena into being
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adaptive capacity of the individual; this capability, however, comes at an immense price, which is
knowledge of finitude and death. Potent motivation therefore exists to resist such development, when it
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experience that is unique to the self, the capacity for the creation of purely subjective experience also
means acceptance of vulnerability, and mortality. The creative capacity is divine Logos, which in the
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granted the capacity for constant transcendence, as an antidote, but frequently reject that capacity, because
using it means voluntarily exposing ourselves to the unknown. We run away because we are afraid of the
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own strength, because true heroism, regardless of its source, has the capacity to upset the status quo.
Through such denial the absolutist hopes to find protection from his individual vulnerability. In truth,
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full scope of natural phenomena always exceeds the capacity for interpretation. Absolutist application of
the past, motivated by fear of the unknown, transforms the past perforce into tyranny, which does not
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When conservatism destroys the capacity for individual creativity when it becomes tyranny then it
works against life, not for it. The spirit within has withdrawn from the group afraid to develop. An
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justice it would. I, who had not the faintest inkling of a capacity for moral judgment, traipsing around
passing judgment on anyone who dared cross my path. It makes me wonder that I have even one friend
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restriction of anxiety, but damages the capacity of the group (his group, that is) to respond flexibly to
inevitable change. It is as if to use a biological metaphor the fascist strives to force all the genetic
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strength of a personality might be defined, in part, as its breadth of explored territory, its capacity to act
appropriately in the greatest number of circumstances. Such strength is evidently dependent upon prior
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increasingly terrified of change, as each failure to face the truth undermines capacity to face truth in the
future. The man who comes to adopt an inappropriate attitude towards the unknown severs his connection
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constantly exceeds its realm of representation; such capacity for exception must therefore be denied, lest
faith in ideology vanish, and chaos, intolerable chaos, reappear. The ideologue says: anomaly means
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authoritarian demand she has defined her capacity for violence as ethically unsuitable, and will regard it
as something forbidden and evil. This makes aggression something contaminated by the dragon of chaos,
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the actuality of ourselves, in procedure, imaginative capacity, and potential for thought. This lack of
isomorphism, this willful lack of attention to truth, means that behavior and potential thereof exists, which
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question and you do not hasten to answer. Your tongue has lost its flexible capacity for easy oscillation.
Your eyes do not flash with gladness over good tidings, nor do they darken with grief.
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It is capacity to voluntarily face the unknown, and to reconfigure accordingly the propositions that
guided past adaptation, that constitutes the eternal spirit of man, the world-creating Word. The existence
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is the eternal capacity to create and to transform. Niebuhr observes that
... the human spirit has the special capacity of standing continually outside itself in terms of indefinite
regression.... The self knows the world, insofar as it knows the world, because it stands outside both
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This capacity for infinite transcendence, which is the ability to abstract, and then represent the
abstraction, and then abstract from the representation, and so on, without end, does not come without a
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furthermore, our capacity for evil is integrally linked with our ability to overcome boundaries.
Abstract thinking in general, and abstract moral thinking in particular, is play: the game, what if?
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genius, and his capacity to leap beyond the ideologically and easily obvious. Ivan says:
The Grand Inquisitor falls silent and waits for some time for the prisoner to answer. The prisoners
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levels of myth provide man with the capacity to attri bute meaning to or to discover meaning within the
tragedy of each individual human life, forever blessed and cursed by society, forever threatened and
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to absorb a complete individual is, so far, beyond the capacity of any society, including those that call
themselves Christian.553
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to make the leap from infancy to adulthood. The capacity to act in a disciplined manner which means, to
follow the rules is a necessary precondition to adult flexibility, but should not be confused with truly
adult morality, which is the capacity to produce new sets of rules, with (updated) adaptive utility. This is
also not to say, idiotically, that Jewish morality is adolescent, and Christian adult. Examples of
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law also limits capacity for judgment and choice, restricting adaptive flexibility, often dangerously, when
environmental alteration makes such flexibility necessary:
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and become unbending, rigid, and dead in spirit. Live in full recognition of your capacity for error and
your capacity to rectify such error. Advance in confidence and faith; do not shrink back, avoiding
inevitable contact with the terrible unknown, to live in a hole that grows smaller and darker.
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relatively poor capacity for discrimination, produced archaic categories of great generality from the
modern perspective. We can identify many discriminable phenomena within each of these categories, as
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hidden, that could emerge unexpectedly. This unexpected emergence can be regarded as the capacity of
the object to transcend its categorical representation (to become something new) as a consequence of
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reality, because it cannot communicate but equally true with regards to man, whose capacity for
abstraction has blurred the essential nature and purpose of classification. What a thing is is most
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transcending its representation. This capacity for transcendence is a property of the object (a property of
experience, from the phenomenological viewpoint), but can be exploited by the activity of man.
The alchemists regarded the transcendent capacity of the object that is, the capacity of the familiar
and explored in one context to become the unfamiliar and unexplored in another as a spirit, embedded
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then cautiously begin to investigate. The rat will use its capacity for motoric action to interact with the
block smelling it, looking at it, scratching it, perhaps gnawing it to assess the motivational significance
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being. The capacity of human beings to apprehend variable spatial-temporal spans turns the object into
something more complex than its mere present appearance; this increase in complexity is compounded
by the extended active capacity for exploration also typical of our species.
What is an iron block for man? Shaped, a spear, and therefore food and death and security; suspended, a
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finite object; of the endless utility of the object, and its inexhaustible capacity to reveal (become) the
unknown.
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the territory, the representation not the phenomenon. The capacity of the object to escape, at will
referred to the eternal transcendence of the phenomenal world, of its infinite capacity to unexpectedly
supersede its representation, scientific and mythic.
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This dream referred to the capacity of man to (voluntarily) pull the future into the present, so to
speak. The serpent evident only in the form of his tail was the uroboros, embedded implicitly in the
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the spontaneous productions of the exploring mind (and, therefore, means increased capacity to understand
the workings of mind). The entire corpus of alchemy contains seventeen hundred years of fantasy,
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mean the capacity to bear the tragedy of existence, to transcend that tragedy and not to degenerate
instead into something unconsciously desirous of disseminating pain and misery. Jung states:
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chief effect is the training of consciousness, of the capacity for concentration, and of attention and
clarity of thought. The corresponding forms of Yoga have similar effects. But in contrast to these
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The point of our limitations is not suffering; it is existence itself. We have been granted the capacity to
voluntarily bear the terrible weight of our mortality. We turn from that capacity and degrade ourselves
because we are afraid of responsibility. Thus the necessarily tragic preconditions of existence are made
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our central natures. So why should the capacity for evil exist?
I have been teaching my six-year old daughter to play the piano. I am trying to teach her hard lessons
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world to waste and hope to despair? But it is the case. We see our immense capacity for evil, constantly
realized before us, in great things and in small but can never seem to realize our infinite capacity for
good. Who can argue with a Solzhenitsyn when he states: One man who stops lying can bring down a
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capable of participating in the act of creation itself. It is the expression of this capacity for creative action
that makes the tragic conditions of life tolerable, bearable remarkable, miraculous.
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J.A., & Hemsley, D.R. (1992).]). The capacity for LI characterizes a variety of animal species, as well as man; the
phenomena itself can be elicited using a number of different experimental paradigms (using differently valenced
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effectively use the capacity to predict, on the basis of past experience to modulate their affective/psychophysiological
responses to stimuli that intrinsically demand response (to unconditioned stimuli, in the old terminology).
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with its conditional validity, have the capacity to allow meaning to re-emerge, with its awful force unshielded.
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brought to mind explicitly, as a proposition or image. The capacity for declarative memory may be a relatively
recent feat of evolution, appearing early in the vertebrates with the development of the hippocampus, and the
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Just one further explanation in pure mathematics. To interpret X1, X1+1 or X2, and so on, we assume the reference to be to spatial dimensions. Thus suppose X1 to be a line a foot long, X2 will be a plane a foot square, and X3 a cube measuring a foot in each dimension. But what about X4? There are no more spatial dimensions. Modern mathematics has (unfortunately, I think) agreed to consider this fourth dimension as time. Well, and X{5}? To interpret this expression, we may begin to consider other qualities, such as electric capacity, colour, moral attri butes, and so on.[6] But this remark, although necessary, leads us rather away from our main thesis instead of toward it.
P. What happens when we put a minus sign before the index (that small letter up on the right) instead of a plus? Quite simple. x2 = X1+1 = X1 + X1. With a minus, we divide instead of multiplying. Thus, X3-2 = X3 X2 = X1, just as if you had merely subtracted the 2 from the 3 in the index.
1.05 - True and False Subjectivism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
The will to be, the will to power, the will to know are perfectly legitimate, their satisfaction the true law of our existence and to discourage and repress them improperly is to mutilate our being and dry up or diminish the sources of life and growth. But their satisfaction must not be egoistic,not for any other reason moral or religious, but simply because they cannot so be satisfied. The attempt always leads to an eternal struggle with other egoisms, a mutual wounding and hampering, even a mutual destruction in which if we are conquerors today, we are the conquered or the slain tomorrow; for we exhaust ourselves and corrupt ourselves in the dangerous attempt to live by the destruction and exploitation of others. Only that which lives in its own self-existence can endure. And generally, to devour others is to register oneself also as a subject and predestined victim of Death.
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Thirdly, since the survival of the best is the highest good of mankind and the survival of the best is secured by the elimination of the unfit and the assimilation of the less fit, the conquest of the world by German culture is the straight path of human progress. But culture is not, in this view, merely a state of knowledge or a system or cast of ideas and moral and aesthetic tendencies; culture is life governed by ideas, but by ideas based on the truths of life and so organised as to bring it to its highest efficiency. Therefore all life not capable of this culture and this efficiency must be eliminated or trodden down, all life capable of it but not actually reaching to it must be taken up and assimilated. But capacity is always a matter of genus and species and in humanity a matter of race. Logically, then, the Teutonic5 race is alone entirely capable, and therefore all Teutonic races must be taken into Germany and become part of the German collectivity; races less capable but not wholly unfit must be Germanised; others, hopelessly decadent like the Latins of Europe and America or naturally inferior like the vast majority of the Africans and Asiatics, must be replaced where possible, like the Hereros, or, where not possible, dominated, exploited and treated according to their inferiority. So evolution would advance, so the human race grow towards its perfection.6
We need not suppose that all Germany thought in this strenuous fashion, as it was too long represented, or that the majority thought thus consciously; but it is sufficient that an energetic minority of thinkers and strong personalities should seize upon the national life and impress certain tendencies upon it for these to prevail practically or at the least to give a general trend subconsciously even where the thought itself is not actually proposed in the conscious mind. And the actual events of the present hour seem to show that it was this gospel that partly consciously, partly subconsciously or half articulately had taken possession of the collective German mind. It is easy to deride the rigidity of this terrible logic or riddle it with the ideas and truths it has ignored, and it is still easier to abhor, fear, hate and spew at it while practically following its principles in our own action with less openness, thoroughness and courage. But it is more profitable to begin by seeing that behind it there was and is a tremendous sincerity which is the secret of its force, and a sort of perverse honesty in its errors; the sincerity which tries to look straight at ones own conduct and the facts of life and the honesty to proclaim the real principles of that conduct and notexcept as an occasional diplomacyprofess others with the lips while disregarding them in the practice. And if this ideal is to be defeated not merely for a time in the battle-field and in the collective person of the nation or nations professing it, as happened abortively in the War, but in the mind of man and in the life of the human race, an equal sincerity and a less perverse honesty has to be practised by those who have arrived at a better law.
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Well, these long extracts sum up Sri Aurobindo's vision of the War. They embody his active interest and participation by his spiritual Force in it. One wonders what would have been the fate of the world without Sri Aurobindo's actual intervention. I often marvelled at the grasp he showed of military affairs. Once I asked him in my letter whether he had any latent military capacity in him, his reply was, "Not in this life." When somebody asked the Mother why England was meeting reverses in spite of Sri Aurobindo's support, she replied, "If he had not helped Britain, she would have been swallowed up by Hitler long ago." Unfortunately I haven't kept further record of the talks on the War. When America joined the Allies and Hitler attacked Russia there was no doubt that behind both these movements, Sri Aurobindo's divine diplomacy played a great part just as his intervention or what he called the Divine Intervention saved England from invasion by Hitler. In October 1939, Sri Aurobindo wrote a poem on Hitler in which what he predicted came so literally true!
The closing lines are:
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He was carrying with him an urgent appeal by Sri Aurobindo to the Congress Working Committee. Sisir Kumar Mitra reports in The Liberator, "the viewpoints which Sri Aurobindo instructed his envoy to place before the Congress leaders...(1) Japan's imperialism being young and based on industrial and military power and moving westward, was a greater menace to India than the British imperialism which was old, which the country had learnt to deal with and which was on the way to elimination. (2) It would be better to get into the saddle and not be particular about the legal basis of the power. Once the power came into our hands and we occupied seats of power, we could establish our positions and assert ourselves. (3) The proposed Cabinet would provide opportunities for the Congress and the Muslims to understand each other and pull together for the country's good, especially at that time of the crisis. (4) The Hindu Mahasabha also being represented, the Hindus, as such would have a chance of proving their capacity to govern India not only for the benefit of the Hindus but for the whole country. (5) The main problem was to organise the strength of India in order to repel the threatened aggression."
We may remind ourselves of Talthybius's mission to Troy in Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Ilion: Achilles made an offer by which Troy would be saved and the honour of the Greeks would be preserved, a harmonising offer, but it was rejected. Similarly, Duraiswamy went with India's soul in his "frail" hands and brought it back, downhearted, rewarded with ungracious remarks for the gratuitous advice. Sri Aurobindo even sent a telegram to Rajagopalachari and Dr. Munje urging them to accept the Proposals. Dr. Indra Sen writes, "We met the members individually and the sense of the reactions were more or less to this effect: Sri Aurobindo has created difficulties for us by his message to Cripps. He doesn't know the actual situation, we are in it, we know' better... and so on." Cripps flew back a disappointed man but with the consolation and gratified recognition that at least one great man had welcomed the idea. When the rejection was announced, Sri Aurobindo said in a quiet tone, "I knew it would fail." We at once pounced on it and asked him, "Why did you then send Duraiswamy at all?" "For a bit of niskama karma,"[3]was his calm reply, without any bitterness or resentment. The full spirit of the kind of "disinterested work" he meant comes out in an early letter of his (December 1933), which refers to his spiritual work: "I am sure of the results of my work. But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe."
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"She said something to this effect: 'One should leave the matter of the Cripps' offer entirely in the hands of the Divine, with full confidence that the Divine will work everything out. Certainly there were flaws in the offer. Nothing on earth created by man is flawless, because the human mind has a limited capacity. Yet behind this offer there is the Divine Grace directly present. The Grace is now at the door of India, ready to give its help. In the history of a nation such opportunities do not come often. The Grace presents itself at rare moments, after centuries of preparation of that nation. If it is accepted, the nation will survive and get a new birth in the Divine's consciousness. But if it is rejected the Grace will withdraw and then the nation will suffer terribly, calamity will overtake it.
"'Only some months ago, the same Grace presented itself at the door of France, immediately after the fall of Dunkirk, in the form of Churchill's offer to her to have joint nationality with England and fight the enemy. Sri Aurobindo said that it was the right idea, and it would also have helped His work immensely. But France could not raise herself above the ordinary mind, and rejected it. So the Grace withdrew and the Soul of France has gone down. One doesn't know when the real France will be up again.
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 - Agni and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is the obvious sense of the word kavikratuh., he whose active will or power of effectivity is that of the seer, - works, that is to say, with the knowledge which comes by the truth-consciousness and in which there is no misapplication or error. The epithets that follow confirm this interpretation. Agni is satya, true in his being; perfect possession of his own truth and the essential truth of things gives him the power to apply it perfectly in all act and movement of force. He has both the satyam and the r.tam. Moreover, he is citrasravastamah.; from the Ritam there proceeds a fullness of richly luminous and varied inspirations which give the capacity for doing the perfect work. For all these are epithets of Agni as the hotr., the priest of the sacrifice, he who performs the offering. Therefore it is the power of Agni to apply the Truth in the work (karma or apas) symbolised by the sacrifice, that makes him the object of human invocation.
The importance of the sacrificial fire in the outward ritual corresponds to the importance of this inward force of unified Light and Power in the inward rite by which there is communication and interchange between the mortal and the Immortal. Agni is elsewhere frequently described as the envoy, duta, the medium of that communication and interchange.
We see, then, in what capacity Agni is called to the sacrifice.
"Let him come, a god with the gods." The emphasis given to the idea of divinity by this repetition, devo devebhir, becomes intelligible when we recall the standing description of Agni as the god in human beings, the immortal in mortals, the divine guest. We may give the full psychological sense by translating,
1.06 - Incarnate Teachers and Incarnation, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
By our present constitution we are limited and bound to see God as man. If, for instance the buffaloes want to worship God, they will, in keeping with their own nature, see Him as a huge buffalo; if a fish wants to worship God, it will have to form an Idea of Him as a big fish, and man has to think of Him as man. And these various conceptions are not due to morbidly active imagination. Man, the buffalo, and the fish all may be supposed to represent so many different vessels, so to say. All these vessels go to the sea of God to get filled with water, each according to its own shape and capacity; in the man the water takes the shape of man, in the buffalo, the shape of a buffalo and in the fish, the shape of a fish. In each of these vessels there is the same water of the sea of God. When men see Him, they see Him as man, and the animals, if they have any conception of God at all, must see Him as animal each according to its own ideal. So we cannot help seeing God as man, and, therefore, we are bound to worship Him as man. There is no other way.
Two kinds of men do not worship God as man the human brute who has no religion, and the Paramahamsa who has risen beyond all the weaknesses of humanity and has transcended the limits of his own human nature. To him all nature has become his own Self. He alone can worship God as He is.
1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
bestowed for their services in that capacity. Their principal art
was that of rain-making. The chiefs of the Wataturu, another people
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The relationship between moral action and spiritual knowledge is circular, as it were, and reciprocal. Selfless behaviour makes possible an accession of knowledge, and the accession of knowledge makes possible the performance of further and more genuinely selfless actions, which in their turn enhance the agents capacity for knowing. And so on, if all goes well and there is perfect docility and obedience, indefinitely. The process is summed up in a few lines of the Maitrayana Upanishad. A man undertakes right action (which includes, of course, right recollectedness and right meditation), and this enables him to catch a glimpse of the Self that underlies his separate individuality. Having seen his own self as the Self, he becomes selfless (and therefore acts selflessly) and in virtue of selflessness he is to be conceived as unconditioned. This is the highest mystery, betokening emancipation; through selflessness he has no part in pleasure or pain (in other words, he enters a state of non-attachment or holy indifference), but achieves absoluteness (or as Albertus Magnus phrases it, becomes immutable and arrives at that true life which is God Himself).
When mortification is perfect, its most characteristic fruit is simplicity.
1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
but only one who has never tried to make progress would doubt it. As long as we move with the common herd, life is relatively easy, with its moderate ups and downs; but the moment we want to get out of the rut, a thousand forces rise up, suddenly very interested that we should behave "like everyone else," then we realize how well organized the imprisonment is. We even realize that we can go as far downward as we can ascend, that our downward movements are in exact proportion to our capacity of ascent; many scales fall from our eyes. If we are a little honest with ourselves, we see that we are capable of anything,
and that, as Sri Aurobindo says, our virtue is a pretentious impurity.66
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"But what about the 'Heart'?" we may protest. Well, isn't the heart in fact the most ambivalent place of all? It tires easily, too. And this is our third observation: Our capacity for joy is small, as is our capacity for suffering; we soon grow indifferent to the worst calamities. What waters of oblivion have not flowed over our greatest sorrows? We can contain very little of the great Force of Life we cannot withstand the charge, as Mother says; a mere breath beyond the limit, and we cry out with joy or pain, we weep, dance, or faint. It is always the same ambiguous Force that flows, and before long overflows. The Force of Life does not suffer; it is not troubled or exalted, evil or good it just is, flowing serenely, all-encompassing. All the contrary signs it assumes in us are the vestiges of our past evolution, when we were small and separate, when we needed to protect ourselves from this living enormity too intense for our size, and had to distinguish between "useful" and "harmful" vibrations, the ones getting a positive coefficient of pleasure or sympathy or good, the others a negative coefficient of suffering or repulsion or evil. But suffering is only a too great intensity of the same Force, and too intense a pleasure changes into its painful "opposite": They are conventions of our senses,73 says Sri Aurobindo. It only takes a slight shift of the needle of consciousness, says the Mother. To cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience all touches come as joy, Ananda.74 It is the narrowness and deficiency of consciousness that cause all our troubles, moral and even physical, as well as our impotence and the perpetual tragicomedy of our existence. But the remedy is not to starve the vital, as the moralists would have us do; it is to widen it; not to renounce, but to accept more, always more, and to extend one's consciousness. For such is the very sense of evolution.
Basically, the only thing we must renounce is our ignorance and 73
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The seeker will no longer be fooled by the dubious game going on in his surface vital, but for a long time he will keep the habit of responding to the thousands of small biological and emotional vibrations circling around him. The transition takes time, much as the transition from the world-mongering mind to mental silence did, and it is often accompanied by spells of intense fatigue, because our organism loses the habit of renewing its energy at the common superficial source (which soon appears crude and heavy once we have tasted the other type of energy), yet it still lacks the capacity to remain constantly connected to the true source, hence some "gaps." But here again the seeker is helped by the descending Force, which powerfully contri butes to establish a new rhythm in him. He even notices, with ever-renewed astonishment, that if he takes but one small step forward, the Help from above will take ten toward him as if he were expected. It would be quite wrong to believe that the work is only negative, however; naturally the vital likes to think that it is making huge efforts to struggle against itself, which is its skillful way of protecting itself on all fronts, but in practice the seeker does not follow an austere or negative rule; he follows a positive need within his being, because he is truly growing out of yesterday's norms and yesterday's pleasures, which now feel to him like a baby's diet. He is no longer content with all that; he has better things to do, better things to live. This is why it is so difficult to explain the path to one who has never tried it, for he will see only his own current perspective or,
rather, the loss of his perspective. Yet if we only knew how each loss of perspective is a step forward, how greatly life changes when we pass from the stage of closed truths to that of open truths a truth like life itself, too great to be confined within limited perspectives, because it embraces them all and sees the usefulness of each thing at each stage of an infinite development; a truth great enough to deny itself and move endlessly to a higher truth.
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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 Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
do only the works of Love and Knowledge and leave aside the works of will and power, possession and acquisition, production and fruitful expense of capacity, battle and victory and mastery, striking away from us the larger part of life because it seems to be made of the very stuff of desire and ego and therefore doomed to be a field of disharmony and mere conflict and disorder. For the division cannot really be made; or, if attempted, it must fail in its essential purpose, since it would isolate us from the total energies of the World-Power and sterilise an important part of integral Nature, just the one force in it that is a necessary instrument in any world-creative purpose. The Life-Force is an indispensable intermediary, the effectuating element in Nature here; mind needs its alliance if the works of mind are not to remain shining inner formations without a body; the spirit needs it to give an outer force and form to its manifested possibilities and arrive at a complete self-expression incarnated in Matter. If
Life refuses the aid of its intermediary energy to the spirit's other workings or is itself refused, they are likely to be reduced for all the effect they can have here to a static seclusion or a golden impotence; or if anything is done, it will be a partial irradiation of our action more subjective than objective, modifying existence perhaps, but without force to change it. Yet if Life brings its forces to the spirit but unregenerate, a worse result may follow since it is likely to reduce the spiritual action of Love or
1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:Four great Aspects of the Mother four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it is these powers that they bring with them into the world, manifest in a human disguise in their Vibhutis and shall found in the divine degree of their ascension in those who can open their earthly nature to the direct and living influence of the Mother To the four we give the four great names, Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati.
8:Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother s eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The growth of modern Science has meanwhile created new ideas and tendencies, on one side an exaggerated individualism or rather vitalistic egoism, on the other the quite opposite ideal of collectivism. Science investigating life discovered that the root nature of all living is a struggle to take the best advantage of the environment for self-preservation, self-fulfilment, self-aggrandisement. Human thought seizing in its usual arbitrary and trenchant fashion upon this aspect of modern knowledge has founded on it theories of a novel kind which erect into a gospel the right for each to live his own life not merely by utilising others, but even at the expense of others. The first object of life in this view is for the individual to survive as long as he may, to become strong, efficient, powerful, to dominate his environment and his fellows and to raise himself on this strenuous and egoistic line to his full stature of capacity and reap his full measure of enjoyment. Philosophies like Nietzsches, certain forms of Anarchism,not the idealistic Anarchism of the thinker which is rather the old individualism of the ideal reason carried to its logical conclusion,certain forms too of Imperialism have been largely influenced and streng thened by this type of ideas, though not actually created by them.
On the other hand, Science investigating life has equally discovered that not only is the individual life best secured and made efficient by association with others and subjection to a law of communal self-development rather than by aggressive self-affirmation, but that actually what Nature seeks to preserve is not the individual but the type and that in her scale of values the pack, herd, hive or swarm takes precedence over the individual animal or insect and the human group over the individual human being. Therefore in the true law and nature of things the individual should live for all and constantly subordinate and sacrifice himself to the growth, efficiency and progress of the race rather than live for his own self-fulfilment and subordinate the race-life to his own needs. Modern collectivism derives its victorious strength from the impression made upon human thought by this opposite aspect of modern knowledge. We have seen how the German mind took up both these ideas and combined them on the basis of the present facts of human life: it affirmed the entire subordination of the individual to the community, nation or State; it affirmed, on the other hand, with equal force the egoistic self-assertion of the individual nation as against others or against any group or all the groups of nations which constitute the totality of the human race.
1.06 - Wealth and Government, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For, a new Force or Consciousness or Light whatever you call the new element has manifested into the world and the world has now the capacity to become conscious of its own unity.
25 March 1960
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Kya indriya siddhi auddhikayt tapasa (II.43): Austerity purifies the body, purifies the senses, purifies the mind, and endows a person with certain peculiar powers which cannot usually be seen in people. Kya indriya siddhi are the words used. Siddhi is a perfection, an endowment, a power or a capacity, an energy; all these meanings are implied in the term siddhi. These three perfections in respect of the body and the senses arise by the practice of tapas, or austerity. Any attempt which subdues the senses is tapas which, impliedly, involves, of course, the control of the mind, because one depends on the other and one works in connection with the other.
Every act of self-control even if it be only a modicum, only a jot of practice generates new strength in the system, just as even a drop of honey will taste sweet though it is only a drop. It is not much; it is not even half a spoon. Notwithstanding the limitation in the quantity of the practice, the effect of it will be felt. Even the least step that is taken in right directions will produce those advantages mentioned here, and one will feel their presence in the intensity equivalent to the intensity of the self-control.
--
These three methods tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana are really the training of the will, the intellect and the emotion. It requires tremendous will to practise tapas, great understanding or intellectual capacity to probe into the meaning of the scriptures, and emotional purity to love God. These three are emphasised in the canons of tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana. By svadhyaya there is ishtadevata samprayogah,says the sutra; there is union of oneself with the deity of ones worship and adoration by a daily brooding over its characters.
Whatever we think in our mind, that we will become, and that we will get. But, this thinking should not be a shallow thinking; it should be a very deep absorption of oneself in what one expects. The whole of us should be saturated with our longing for the ideal which is in our mind. There should be no other thought except of the qualities, characters and nature of the ideal which is in our mind. Anything and everything can be obtained in this world if only there is a will behind it. If the force of thought is intense enough, there is nothing which is impossible. This is the point made out in this sutra.
1.078 - Kumbhaka and Concentration of Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The prana is different from the breath. This is also a feature that has to be observed. The prana is a very subtle tendency within us. We may say the characteristic of the total energy of the system is the prana. It is not located in any part of the body particularly. Though it has special emphasis laid in different parts of the body, it is equally distributed everywhere. Prana is nothing but the sum total of the energy of the system. Whatever our total capacity is, that is our prana-shakti. But, this capacity is outwardly directed. This is the difficulty. It is not introverted, and it is impossible to draw the prana within. We cannot hold the breath even for a few seconds, such is the strength of this outward tendency of the prana. And, from the force of this outward expression of the prana, we can also infer to what extent we are introverts or extroverts. How far we can withdraw the mind from thinking of objects, etc. can be known to some extent from the way in which this prana is functioning. Concentration is impossible for most people because they are completely sold out to the outside world. We become slaves of conditions and circumstances, and puppets in the hands of these extrovert forces.
This is precisely the thing to be noted in the practice of yoga. This tendency has to be brought back to its original causative condition. Why has this urge arisen? Why are we running like this? Why is this total energy, or sum total of what we are, pressing itself forward? What is the purpose? What is the intention? What does it seek? And, why are we so restless? This subject was studied to some extent in the sutras preceding those which we are studying now. Now we are actually at the point of practice after having a comprehensive understanding of the causes of this urge within us; and the practice consists of a gradual retention of the breath, of the flow of this outward tendency in us, the prana, by the technique called pranayama. We were trying to understand an outline of this process previously.
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
has the capacity to continue developing during its whole
lifetime. Science, on the contrary, held that the enormous
1.07 - Cybernetics and Psychopathology, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
ing the capacity for maintained worry, known in the terminol-
ogy of another profession as the conscience. More genei:ally, it
--- 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
Wikipedia - 1976 Rothmans Sun-7 Series -- A motor racing competition for Touring Cars of under 3 litre capacity
Wikipedia - Agency (philosophy) -- Capacity of an actor to act in a given environment
Wikipedia - Alkalinity -- The capacity of water to resist changes in pH that would make the water more acidic
Wikipedia - Arterial road -- High-capacity urban road
Wikipedia - Autonomy -- Capacity for independence, control, discretion or political self-governance
Wikipedia - Bandwidth management -- Process of measuring and controlling the communications on a network link, to avoid filling the link to capacity or overfilling the link
Wikipedia - Battery balancing -- Techniques that maximize the capacity of a battery pack with multiple cells to make all of the capacity available for use and increase each cell's longevity.
Wikipedia - Bearing capacity -- Capacity of soil to support loads
Wikipedia - Braess's paradox -- paradox related to increasing roadway capacity
Wikipedia - Capacity building -- Process by which individuals and organizations obtain, improve, and retain the skills and knowledge needed to do their jobs competently
Wikipedia - Capacity management
Wikipedia - Capacity planning
Wikipedia - Capacity to be alone
Wikipedia - Capacity utilization
Wikipedia - Carrying capacity -- The maximum population size of the species that the environment can support indefinitely
Wikipedia - Cascais Marina -- Marina with capacity for 650 boats in Cascais, Portugal
Wikipedia - Channel capacity
Wikipedia - Classical capacity
Wikipedia - Compression ratio -- The ratio of the volume of a combustion chamber from its largest capacity to its smallest capacity
Wikipedia - Computer capacity measurements
Wikipedia - Cooling capacity -- Measure of a cooling system's ability to remove heat
Wikipedia - Democide -- Intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity
Wikipedia - Ecological collapse -- A situation where an ecosystem suffers a drastic, possibly permanent, reduction in carrying capacity for all organisms
Wikipedia - Ecological resilience -- Capacity of ecosystems to resist and recover from change
Wikipedia - Electronic specific heat -- Heat capacity of an electron gas
Wikipedia - Empathy -- The capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing
Wikipedia - Entanglement-assisted classical capacity
Wikipedia - Evolvability -- capacity of a system for adaptive evolution
Wikipedia - Extreme clipper -- Clipper ship designed to sacrifice cargo capacity for speed
Wikipedia - Factor of safety -- Factor by which an engineered system's capacity is higher than the expected load to ensure safety in case of error or uncertainty
Wikipedia - Generative systems -- Technologies with the overall capacity to produce unprompted change driven by large, varied, and uncoordinated audiences
Wikipedia - Heat capacity
Wikipedia - Heavy bomber -- Bomber aircraft of the largest size and load carrying capacity
Wikipedia - High-capacity magazine ban -- a law that restricts magazine capacity in firearms
Wikipedia - High Capacity Metro Trains -- Electric trains in use in Melbourne, Australia
Wikipedia - High capacity oceanographic lithium battery pack -- A type of battery pack used by oceanographers
Wikipedia - Human intelligence -- Intellectual capacity of humans
Wikipedia - Human overpopulation -- Condition where human numbers exceed the short or long-term carrying capacity of the environment
Wikipedia - IBM 2361 Large Capacity Storage
Wikipedia - Immune tolerance -- State of unresponsiveness of the immune system to substances or tissue that have the capacity to elicit an immune response
Wikipedia - Incapacity Benefit -- A welfare benefit in the United Kingdom
Wikipedia - Industrial society -- Society driven by the use of technology to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour
Wikipedia - Information capacity of the universe
Wikipedia - Innate linguistic capacity
Wikipedia - King-in-Council -- Constitutional monarch in an executive capacity
Wikipedia - Language -- Capacity to communicate using signs, such as words or gestures
Wikipedia - Line 3 Scarborough -- Medium-capacity rail line in Toronto, Canada
Wikipedia - Link aggregation -- Using multiple network connections in parallel to increase capacity and reliability
Wikipedia - List of African stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Asian stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Australian rugby union stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of closed stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of countries by real population density based on food growing capacity -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of covered stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of cricket grounds by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of English rugby league stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of English rugby union stadiums by capacity -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of European stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of horse racing venues by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of hospitals by capacity -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of ice hockey arenas by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of indoor arenas by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of merchant navy capacity by country -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of motor racing venues by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of North American stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Oceanian stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of rugby league stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of rugby union stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of South American stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of sports venues by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of stadiums in Ireland by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of stadiums in the Nordic countries by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of stadiums in the United Kingdom by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of stadiums in Wales by capacity -- wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of track and field stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of U.S. stadiums by capacity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - Matrioshka brain -- hypothetical megastructure of immense computational capacity
Wikipedia - Media development -- Process of building capacity for media
Wikipedia - Medium-capacity rail system -- Rail transport system with moderate capacity
Wikipedia - Microdrive -- Type of hard drive intended to provide a higher-capacity alternative to memory cards
Wikipedia - Molar heat capacity -- Intensive quantity, heat capacity per amount of substance
Wikipedia - Moore's law -- Observation on the growth of integrated circuit capacity
Wikipedia - Morale -- Capacity of a group's members to maintain belief in an institution or goal
Wikipedia - MultiLevel Recording -- Proposed technology to increase the capacity of optical discs
Wikipedia - MyOcean -- A series of projects granted by the European Commission to set up a pan-European capacity for ocean monitoring and forecasting
Wikipedia - Navigability -- Capacity of a body of water to allow the passage of vessels at a given time
Wikipedia - Net register tonnage -- Unit of volume for the cargo capacity of a ship; 100 cubic feet (2.83 mM-BM-3)
Wikipedia - Nominal capacity
Wikipedia - Nuclear microreactor -- A very small nuclear reactor of 1-20 MW capacity
Wikipedia - Off-Broadway -- Any professional venue in NYC with a seating capacity between 100 and 499
Wikipedia - Omniscience -- Capacity to know everything
Wikipedia - Operating reserve -- Short-term reserve of electricity generating capacity
Wikipedia - Orders of magnitude (specific heat capacity)
Wikipedia - Overconsumption -- resource use exceeds carrying capacity
Wikipedia - Overpopulation -- When a population of a species exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological niche
Wikipedia - Overshoot (population) -- When a population temporarily exceeds the carrying capacity
Wikipedia - Overtraining -- Exercising to a load which exceeds recovery capacity
Wikipedia - Oxygen radical absorbance capacity -- Obsolete method of characterizing antioxidants
Wikipedia - Passenger load factor -- Capacity utilization of public transport
Wikipedia - Passengers per hour per direction -- Measure of capacity of a transportation network
Wikipedia - Payload -- Carrying capacity of a vehicle
Wikipedia - Peerage of Ireland -- Titles of nobility created by the English monarchs in their capacity as Lord or King of Ireland, or later by monarchs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Wikipedia - Police misconduct -- Inappropriate conduct or illegal actions by police in official capacity
Wikipedia - Police power (United States constitutional law) -- Capacity of the states to regulate behavior and enforce order
Wikipedia - Polysemy -- Capacity for a sign to have multiple related meanings
Wikipedia - Prince regent -- Prince who rules in place of a monarch due to incapacity or absence
Wikipedia - Quantum capacity
Wikipedia - Rapid transit -- High-capacity public transport generally used in urban areas
Wikipedia - Reason -- Capacity for consciously making sense of things
Wikipedia - Reflectance -- Capacity of an object to reflect light
Wikipedia - Seating capacity -- Number of people who can be seated in a specific space
Wikipedia - Self-awareness -- Capacity for introspection and individuation as a subject
Wikipedia - Sense -- Physiological capacity of organisms that provides data for perception
Wikipedia - Shannon capacity
Wikipedia - Silt density index -- Measure for the fouling capacity of water in reverse osmosis system
Wikipedia - Skill (labor) -- Measure of the amount of worker's expertise, specialization, wages, and supervisory capacity
Wikipedia - Social intelligence -- Capacity to know oneself and to know others
Wikipedia - Solubility -- Capacity of a substance to dissolve in a solvent in a homogeneous way
Wikipedia - Specific heat capacity -- Heat required to increase temperature of a given unit of mass of a substance
Wikipedia - State capacity
Wikipedia - Task loading -- The relationship between operator capacity and the accumulated activities that must be done
Wikipedia - The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two -- 1956 psychology paper by George Miller on working memory capacity
Wikipedia - Thrashing (computer science) -- Computer constantly exchanging data between memory and storage leaving little capacity for productive processing
Wikipedia - Tonnage -- Measure of the cargo-carrying volumetric capacity of a ship
Wikipedia - Units of information -- Capacity of information storage and communication
Wikipedia - Usability -- Capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying it
Wikipedia - Vitality -- the capacity to live, grow, or develop
Wikipedia - Volumetric heat capacity -- Thermal quality
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10780491-perception-as-a-capacity-for-knowledge
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1177074.Capacity_Planning_for_Web_Services
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14299164-full-capacity
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1592963.Capacity_Planning_for_Web_Performance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1701732.Incapacity
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2222995.Capacity_Planning_and_Performance_Modeling
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34065519-capacity-assessment-and-the-law
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/387720.Building_Community_Capacity
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4286859-capacity-planning-and-performance-modeling
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7817305-parenting-beyond-your-capacity
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9569406-the-international-politics-of-surplus-capacity-routledge-revivals
auromere - dharana-shakti-the-capacity-to-sustain-spiritual-experiences
auromere - synthesis-of-yoga
auromere - physical-culture
selforum - generosity reciprocity capacity
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - decision-capacity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MaximumCapacityOverload
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/BattleCAPacity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/High-capacity_magazine
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/High-capacity_magazine_ban
https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/Carrying_capacity
https://banjokazooie.fandom.com/wiki/AmmoCapacityLow
https://dragonsofatlantis.fandom.com/wiki/March_Capacity
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Carrying_Capacity
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Crown_Lesson:_Riding_Capacity
https://elona.fandom.com/wiki/Magic_Capacity
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Capacity_Points
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Capacity_Ring
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Filled_to_Capacity
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Over_Capacity
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Way_Over_Capacity
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Capacity
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Capacity
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Memory_capacity
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Storage_capacity
https://potbs.fandom.com/wiki/Ship_Overview_by_Capacity
Dokyuu Hentai HxEros -- -- Project No.9 -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Ecchi School Shounen Supernatural -- Dokyuu Hentai HxEros Dokyuu Hentai HxEros -- Five years ago, alien beings known as the "Kiseichuu'' invaded the world. With the species endangered, the Kiseichuu are determined to take over Earth through a deadly plan that would gradually wipe out the human race: take away humanity's sexual drive using various methods, letting them die out. In response to the Kiseichuus' scheme, the HxEros device was developed—a powerful weapon that only those with high levels of erotic energy can utilize at its maximum capacity. -- -- Retto Enjou, a high schooler harboring an immense hatred toward the Kiseichuu, joins a group of HxEros users to fight against them and protect humankind. With their gear reliant on erotic energy as a source of power, the team must work together to maintain high levels of libido to ensure their readiness for combat at any given time. Moreover, as he lives in a house full of lustful girls, Enjou should not expect a shortage of power anytime soon. -- -- 85,308 5.73
Dokyuu Hentai HxEros -- -- Project No.9 -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Ecchi School Shounen Supernatural -- Dokyuu Hentai HxEros Dokyuu Hentai HxEros -- Five years ago, alien beings known as the "Kiseichuu'' invaded the world. With the species endangered, the Kiseichuu are determined to take over Earth through a deadly plan that would gradually wipe out the human race: take away humanity's sexual drive using various methods, letting them die out. In response to the Kiseichuus' scheme, the HxEros device was developed—a powerful weapon that only those with high levels of erotic energy can utilize at its maximum capacity. -- -- Retto Enjou, a high schooler harboring an immense hatred toward the Kiseichuu, joins a group of HxEros users to fight against them and protect humankind. With their gear reliant on erotic energy as a source of power, the team must work together to maintain high levels of libido to ensure their readiness for combat at any given time. Moreover, as he lives in a house full of lustful girls, Enjou should not expect a shortage of power anytime soon. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 85,308 5.73
Elfen Lied -- -- Arms -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Horror Psychological Supernatural Drama Romance Seinen -- Elfen Lied Elfen Lied -- Lucy is a special breed of human referred to as "Diclonius," born with a short pair of horns and invisible telekinetic hands that lands her as a victim of inhumane scientific experimentation by the government. However, once circumstances present her an opportunity to escape, Lucy, corrupted by the confinement and torture, unleashes a torrent of bloodshed as she escapes her captors. -- -- During her breakout, she receives a crippling head injury that leaves her with a split personality: someone with the mentality of a harmless child possessing limited speech capacity. In this state of instability, she stumbles upon two college students, Kouta and his cousin Yuka, who unknowingly take an injured fugitive into their care, unaware of her murderous tendencies. This act of kindness will change their lives, as they soon find themselves dragged into the shadowy world of government secrecy and conspiracy. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- 1,226,770 7.55
Night Head Genesis -- -- Bee Media -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Mystery Psychological Supernatural Drama -- Night Head Genesis Night Head Genesis -- It is said that 70% of the human brain capacity is unused. If humans possess incredible power, it is strongly believed to be lying dormant within this region. This unused 70% brain capacity is known as "Night Head". -- -- The famous work 'NIGHT HEAD' is going to break the silence. They were abandoned by their parents because of the psychic power they possessed. They are the Kirihara brothers, who lived in a laboratory within a barrier-protected forest. They have escaped from the laboratory, and a new wave of 'Revolution' is about to arise. -- -- A new "Night Head" is about to be awakened. -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters -- TV - Jun 17, 2006 -- 26,476 6.77
Night Head Genesis -- -- Bee Media -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Mystery Psychological Supernatural Drama -- Night Head Genesis Night Head Genesis -- It is said that 70% of the human brain capacity is unused. If humans possess incredible power, it is strongly believed to be lying dormant within this region. This unused 70% brain capacity is known as "Night Head". -- -- The famous work 'NIGHT HEAD' is going to break the silence. They were abandoned by their parents because of the psychic power they possessed. They are the Kirihara brothers, who lived in a laboratory within a barrier-protected forest. They have escaped from the laboratory, and a new wave of 'Revolution' is about to arise. -- -- A new "Night Head" is about to be awakened. -- TV - Jun 17, 2006 -- 26,476 6.77
Submarine Super 99 -- -- Vega Entertainment -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Sci-Fi Adventure Shounen -- Submarine Super 99 Submarine Super 99 -- Dr. Oki , the genius scientist who designed a new type of submarine is missing. His son, Susumu, smells an evil scheme of unknown group. He knows everything of his father's submarine called "Super 99" – equipment, weapons, functions and capacity. Susumu thinks that to find his father is to reveal the secret organization, Helmet Party, and stop their conspiracy. With the help of his friends and Marine Corps, he sets out to an underwater quest, not knowing how dangerous his endeavour is… -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Enoki Films -- TV - May 8, 2003 -- 1,458 6.20
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