--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

100

   13 Occultism
   10 Integral Yoga
   8 Yoga
   4 Philosophy
   4 Buddhism
   3 Hinduism
   3 Christianity
   2 Integral Theory
   1 Kabbalah


   37 Sri Aurobindo
   19 Sri Ramakrishna
   13 Aleister Crowley
   12 The Mother
   6 Swami Vivekananda
   5 Satprem
   5 Carl Jung
   4 Bokar Rinpoche
   4 Aldous Huxley
   3 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
   3 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   3 Lewis Carroll
   3 Jorge Luis Borges
   2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   2 Patanjali
   2 Nolini Kanta Gupta


   34 Savitri
   22 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   12 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   12 The Life Divine
   11 The Mothers Agenda
   11 Collected Poems
   9 Magick Without Tears
   9 Liber ABA
   7 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   7 Essays Divine And Human
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 Essays On The Gita
   6 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   5 Words Of Long Ago
   5 The Blue Cliff Records
   5 Talks
   5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   5 Letters On Yoga II
   5 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   5 Aion
   4 Walden
   4 The Perennial Philosophy
   4 Tara - The Feminine Divine
   4 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
   3 Theosophy
   3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   3 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
   3 Raja-Yoga
   3 Letters On Yoga III
   3 Letters On Yoga I
   3 Alice in Wonderland
   2 Words Of The Mother III
   2 Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
   2 Isha Upanishad
   2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   2 Amrita Gita

0.06_-_1956, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   (later, at 1 p.m.)   Won't you at least take a flower?   I wanted to take this little rose ('Tenderness for the Divine'), for I consider it to be the manifestation nearest to divine Love. It's disinterested, spontaneous, intimate.

0.07_-_DARK_NIGHT_OF_THE_SOUL, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity      6. Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone,   There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

01.01_-_The_Symbol_Dawn, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Offered to the daughter of infinity   Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.   In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

01.02_-_The_Issue, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga     Draped in the leaves' vivid emerald monotone     And set with chequered sunbeams and blithe flowers     Immured her destiny's secluded scene.

01.04_-_The_Secret_Knowledge, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   And laid on the spirit the burden of the flesh,   That Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space.   \tEnd of Book I - Canto IV

01.05_-_The_Yoga_of_the_King_The_Yoga_of_the_Spirits_Freedom_and_Greatness, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga     The rapid footsteps of her fantasy,     Amid whose falls wonders like flowers rise,     Are surer than reason, defter than device

02.03_-_The_Glory_and_the_Fall_of_Life, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   And forced delight on earth's insensible frame.   Alive and clad with trees and herbs and flowers   Earth's great brown body smiled towards the skies,

02.04_-_The_Kingdoms_of_the_Little_Life, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   With the childlike pain-forgetting mind of beasts   Or live happy, unmoved, like flowers and trees.   The Might that came upon the earth to bless,   --   It flows in the wind's breath, in the tree's sap,   Its hued magnificence blooms in leaves and flowers.   When life broke through its half-drowse in the plant

02.06_-_The_Kingdoms_and_Godheads_of_the_Greater_Life, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   He found the glow of her golden fruits of bliss   And the beauty of her flowers of dream and muse.   As if a miracle of heart's change by joy   He watched in the alchemist radiance of her suns   The crimson outburst of one secular flower   On the tree-of-sacrifice of spiritual love.

02.07_-_The_Descent_into_Night, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga     He saw her gold sunlight and her far blue sky,     Her green of leaves and hue and scent of flowers     And the charm of children and the love of friends

02.09_-_The_Paradise_of_the_Life-Gods, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Received him in their deathless harmonies.   All things were perfect there that flower in Time;   Beauty was there creation's native mould,

02.11_-_The_Kingdoms_and_Godheads_of_the_Greater_Mind, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Of throbbing new discovery without end.   A new beginning flowers in word and laugh,   A new charm brings back the old extreme delight:

02.12_-_The_Heavens_of_the_Ideal, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   A sudden mystery of secret Grace   flowers goldening our earth of red desire.   All the high gods who hid their visages   --   Our hidden centres of celestial force   Open like flowers to a heavenly atmosphere;   Mind pauses thrilled with the supernal Ray,   --   And grown upon the yearning of her soil   Time's sun-flowers' gaze at gold Eternity:   There are the imperishable beatitudes.   --   They offered to the Traveller at their gates   A quenchless flame or an unfading flower,   Emblem of a high kingdom's privilege.

02.14_-_The_World-Soul, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   And plains and valleys, stretches of soul-joy,   And gardens that were flower-tracts of the spirit,   Its meditations of tinged reverie.   --   A fragrance wandered in a coloured haze   As if the scent and hue of all sweet flowers   Had mingled to copy heaven's atmosphere.

03.04_-_The_Vision_and_the_Boon, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,   Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.   She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,

04.01_-_The_Birth_and_Childhood_of_the_Flame, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   For with a greater Nature she was one.   As from the soil sprang glory of branch and flower,   As from the animal's life rose thinking man,

04.02_-_The_Growth_of_the_Flame, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Her measure they could not reach but bore her touch,   Answering with the flower's answer to the sun   They gave themselves to her and asked no more.   --   She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives   Of animal and bird and flower and tree.   They answered to her with the simple heart.   --   Content in her little garden of the gods   As blooms a flower in an unvisited place.   Earth nursed, unconscious still, the inhabiting flame,

04.04_-_The_Quest, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Plains hushed and happy in the embrace of light,   Alone with the cry of birds and hue of flowers,   And wildernesses of wonder lit by her moons   --   The strife was over, the respite lay in front.   Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers   And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,

05.01_-_The_Destined_Meeting-Place, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Cool-perfumed with slow pleasure-burdened feet   Faint stumbling breezes faltered among flowers.

05.02_-_Satyavan, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Reclined the curve of a sun-held recess;   Groves with strange flowers like eyes of gazing nymphs   Peered from their secrecy into open space,   --   Helping with confident steps her slow great hands   He leaned to her influence like a flower to rain   And, like the flower and tree a natural growth,   Widened with the touches of her shaping hours.   --   Had laid the spell of destiny on his feet   And drawn him to the forest's flowering verge.      --   Impartially to people its treasure-house   Along with sky and flower and hill and star,   Dwelt rather on the bright harmonious scene.   --      Mastered by the honey of a strange flower-mouth,   Drawn to soul-spaces opening round a brow,   --      Love dwells in us like an unopened flower   Awaiting a rapid moment of the soul,

05.03_-_Satyavan_and_Savitri, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Whence hast thou dawned filling my spirit's days,   Brighter than summer, brighter than my flowers,   Into the lonely borders of my life,   --   402   Has flowered at last upon one happy branch?   Why is thy dwelling in the pathless wood   --   Leaves trembling with the passion of the wind,   Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air,   And wandering wings in blue infinity   --   408   Enchanted from the fragrance of the flowers   A moment which all murmurs shall recall   --   A candid garland set with simple forms   Her rapid fingers taught a flower song,   The stanzaed movement of a marriage hymn.   --   A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms   She brought, flower-symbol of her offered life,   Then with raised hands that trembled a little now   --      Adorned with creepers and red climbing flowers   It seemed a sylvan beauty in her dreams

06.01_-_The_Word_of_Fate, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   King Aswapati's palace to the winds   In Madra, flowering up in delicate stone.      --   Thou comest like a silver deer through groves   Of coral flowers and buds of glowing dreams,   Or fleest like a wind-goddess through leaves,   --   Marvellous the moon floats on through wondering skies;   Earth's flowers spring up and laugh at time and death;   The charmed mutations of the enchanter life   --   As grows the great and golden bounteous tree   flowering by Alacananda's murmuring waves,   Where with enamoured speed the waters run

06.02_-_The_Way_of_Fate_and_the_Problem_of_Pain, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   And falsehood lurks in the deep bosom of truth,   Sin poisons with its vivid flowers of joy   Or leaves a red scar burnt across the soul;   --   The seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts,   The flower of Godhead grows on the world-tree:   All shall discover God in self and things.

07.01_-_The_Joy_of_Union;_the_Ordeal_of_the_Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   All was fulfilled the heart of Savitri   flower-sweet and adamant, passionate and calm,   Had chosen and on her strength's unbending road   --   In a broad eve with one red eye of cloud,   Through a narrow opening, a green flowered cleft,   Out of the stare of sky and soil they came   --   An altar of the summer's splendour and fire,   A sky-topped flower-hung palace of the gods   And all its scenes a smile on rapture's lips

07.03_-_The_Entry_into_the_Inner_Countries, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Thought's flight lost not itself in heaven's blue:   It drew upon the skies a patterned flower   Of disciplined beauty and harmonic light.

07.04_-_The_Triple_Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Upon the intellect's hard and rocky soil   Can the tree of Paradise flower on earthly ground   And the Bird of Paradise sit upon life's boughs

07.05_-_The_Finding_of_the_Soul, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      In the flower of the head, in the flower of Matter's base,   In each divine stronghold and Nature-knot

07.06_-_Nirvana_and_the_Discovery_of_the_All-Negating_Absolute, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   The trees' rustling voices told it to the winds,   flowers spoke in ardent hues an unknown joy,   The birds' carolling became a canticle,   --   To the celestial beauty of faith gave form,   As if at flower-prints in a dingy room   Laughed in a golden vase one living rose.   --   539   Invading the small sensitive flower of the throat   They brought their mute unuttered resonances

07.07_-_The_Discovery_of_the_Cosmic_Spirit_and_the_Cosmic_Consciousness, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      She was a subconscient life of tree and flower,   The outbreak of the honied buds of spring;   She burned in the passion and splendour of the rose,   She was the red heart of the passion-flower,   The dream-white of the lotus in its pool.   --      The cosmos flowered in her, she was its bed.

08.03_-_Death_in_the_Forest, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Into the life that he has loved and touch   Herbs he has trod and know the forest flowers   And hear at ease the birds and the scurrying life   --   Because she moved with him through his green haunts:   He showed her all the forest's riches, flowers   Innumerable of every odour and hue

09.02_-_The_Journey_in_Eternal_Night_and_the_Voice_of_the_Darkness, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Out of thy shadow give me back again   Into earth's flowering spaces Satyavan   In the sweet transiency of human limbs

10.02_-_The_Gospel_of_Death_and_Vanity_of_the_Ideal, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   A beast of prey that pauses in its prowl,   It crouches under a bush in splendid flower   To seize a heart and body for its food:   --   The vague spiritual quest which first began   When worlds broke forth like clusters of fire-flowers,   And great burning thoughts voyaged through the sky of mind   --   They have touched me like the soft persuading wind,   They have plucked me like a glad and trembling flower,   And clasped me happily burned in ruthless flame.   --   All else is only its outcome or its phase:   Thy soul is a brief flower by the gardener Mind   Created in thy matter's terrain plot;

10.03_-_The_Debate_of_Love_and_Death, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,   His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;   The blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice   --   He wakes at dawn and calls from every bough,   Lies stunned in the stone and dreams in flower and tree.      --   Joy dares to grow upon forbidden soil,   Its sap runs through the plant and flowers of Pain:   It thrills with the drama of fate and tragic doom,   --   Through the symbol of her pleasure and her pain,   Of the grapes of Heaven and the flowers of the Abyss,   Of the flame-stabs and the torment-craft of Hell   --   O soul, so free? And canst thou gather then   Bright pleasure from my wayside flowering boughs,   Yet falter not from thy hard journey's goal,   --      Earth cannot flower if lonely I return."   Then Death sent forth once more his angry cry,

10.04_-_The_Dream_Twilight_of_the_Earthly_Real, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Its green delight break into emerald leaves   And its laughter of beauty blossom in the flower,   If sense could wake in tissue, nerve and cell   --   And sow in me his bright and proud desires,   If not to achieve, to flower in me, to love,   Carving his human image richly shaped   --   Lodged in the little life-nature's narrow home,   On the body's longings grew heaven-rapture's flower   And made desire a pure celestial flame,

1.00_-_Gospel, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism      The temple garden stands directly on the east bank of the Ganges. The northern section of the land and a portion to the east contain an orchard, flower gardens, and two small reservoirs. The southern section is paved with brick and mortar. The visitor arriving by boat ascends the steps of an imposing bathing-Ght, which leads to the Chndni, a roofed terrace, on either side of which stand in a row six temples of iva. East of the terrace and the iva temples is a large court, paved, rectangular in shape, and running north and south. Two temples stand in the centre of this court, the larger one, to the south and facing south, being dedicated to Kli, and the smaller one, facing the Ganges, to Radhknta, that is, Krishna, the Consort of Rdh. Nine domes with spires surmount the temple of Kli, and before it stands the spacious Natmandir, or music hall, the terrace of which is supported by stately pillars. At the northwest and southwest corners of the temple compound are two Nahabats, or music towers, from which music flows at different times of day, especially at sunup, noon, and sundown, when the worship is performed in the temples. Three sides of the paved courtyard -all except the west - are lined with rooms set apart for kitchens, store-rooms, dining-rooms, and quarters for the temple staff and guests. The chamber in the northwest angle, just beyond the last of the iva temples, is of special interest to us; for here Sri Ramakrishna was to spend a considerable part of his life. To the west of this chamber is a semicircular porch overlooking the river. In front of the porch runs a footpath, north and south, and beyond the path is a large garden and, below the garden, the Ganges. The orchard to the north of the buildings contains the Panchavati, the banyan, and the bel-tree, associated with Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual practices. Outside and to the north of the temple compound proper is the Kuthi, or bungalow, used by members of Rni Rsmani's family visiting the garden. And north of the temple garden, separated from it by a high wall, is a powder-magazine belonging to the British Government.      --      In the twelve iva temples are installed the emblems of the Great God of renunciation in His various aspects, worshipped daily with proper rites. iva requires few articles of worship. White flowers and bel-leaves and a little Ganges water offered with devotion are enough to satisfy the benign Deity and win from Him the boon of liberation.      --      Yet this was only a foretaste of the intense experiences to come. The first glimpse of the Divine Mother made him the more eager for Her uninterrupted vision. He wanted to see Her both in meditation and with eyes open. But the Mother began to play a teasing game of hide-and-seek with him, intensifying both his joy and his suffering. Weeping bitterly during the moments of separation from Her, he would pass into a trance and then find Her standing before him, smiling, talking, consoling, bidding him be of good cheer, and instructing him. During this period of spiritual practice he had many uncommon experiences. When he sat to meditate, he would hear strange clicking sounds in the joints of his legs, as if someone were locking them up, one after the other, to keep him motionless; and at the conclusion of his meditation he would again hear the same sounds, this time unlocking them and leaving him free to move about. He would see flashes like a swarm of fire-flies floating before his eyes, or a sea of deep mist around him, with luminous waves of molten silver. Again, from a sea of translucent mist he would behold the Mother rising, first Her feet, then Her waist, body, face, and head, finally Her whole person; he would feel Her breath and hear Her voice. Worshipping in the temple, sometimes he would become exalted, sometimes he would remain motionless as stone, sometimes he would almost collapse from excessive emotion. Many of his actions, contrary to all tradition, seemed sacrilegious to the people. He would take a flower and touch it to his own head, body, and feet, and then offer it to the Goddess.      --      Mathur had faith in the sincerity of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual zeal, but began now to doubt his sanity. He had watched him jumping about like a monkey. One day, when Rni Rsmani was listening to Sri Ramakrishna's singing in the temple, the young priest abruptly turned and slapped her. Apparently listening to his song, she had actually been thinking of a lawsuit. She accepted the punishment as though the Divine Mother Herself had imposed it; but Mathur was distressed. He begged Sri Ramakrishna to keep his feelings under control and to heed the conventions of society. God Himself, he argued, follows laws. God never permitted, for instance, flowers of two colours to grow on the same stalk. The following day Sri Ramakrishna presented Mathur Bbu with two hibiscus flowers growing on the same stalk, one red and one white.      --      Sri Ramakrishna, much impressed with his devotion, requested Jatdhri to spend a few days at Dakshinewar. Soon Ramll became the favourite companion of Sri Ramakrishna too. Later on he described to the devotees how the little image would dance gracefully before him, jump on his back, insist on being taken in his arms, run to the fields in the sun, pluck flowers from the bushes, and play pranks like a naughty boy.      --      Sri Ramakrishna used to say that when the flower blooms the bees come to it for honey of their own accord. Now many souls began to visit Dakshinewar to satisfy their spiritual hunger. He, the devotee and aspirant, became the Master. Gauri, the great scholar who had been one of the first to proclaim Sri Ramakrishna an Incarnation of God, paid the Master a visit in 1870 and with the Master's blessings renounced the world. Nryan stri, another great pundit, who had mastered the six systems of Hindu philosophy and had been offered a lucrative post by the Maharaja of Jaipur, met the Master and recognized in him one who had realized in life those ideals which he himself had encountered merely in books. Sri Ramakrishna initiated Nryan astri, at his earnest request, into the life of sannys. Pundit Padmalochan, the court pundit of the Maharaja of Burdwan, well known for his scholarship in both the Vednta and the Nyya systems of philosophy, accepted the Master as an Incarnation of God. Krishnakishore, a Vedantist scholar, became devoted to the Master. And there arrived Viwanth Updhyya, who was to become a favourite devotee; Sri Ramakrishna always addressed him as "Captain". He was a high officer of the King of Nepal and had received the title of Colonel in recognition of his merit. A scholar of the Gita, the Bhgavata, and the Vednta philosophy, he daily performed the worship of his Chosen Deity with great devotion. "I have read the Vedas and the other scriptures", he said. "I have also met a good many monks and devotees in different places. But it is in Sri Ramakrishna's presence that my spiritual yearnings have been fulfilled. To me he seems to be the embodiment of the truths of the scriptures."      --      Keshab's sincerity was enough for Sri Ramakrishna. Henceforth the two saw each other frequently, either at Dakshinewar or at the temple of the Brhmo Samj. Whenever the Master was in the temple at the time of divine service, Keshab would request him to speak to the congregation. And Keshab would visit the saint, in his turn, with offerings of flowers and fruits.      --      Yet he was an extraordinary teacher. He stirred his disciples' hearts more by a subtle influence than by actions or words. He never claimed to be the founder of a religion or the organizer of a sect. Yet he was a religious dynamo. He was the verifier of all religions and creeds. He was like an expert gardener, who prepares the soil and removes the weeds, knowing that the plants will grow because of the inherent power of the seeds, producing each its appropriate flowers and fruits. He never thrust his ideas on anybody.      --      Dr. Sarkr arrived the following noon and pronounced that life had departed not more than half an hour before. At five o'clock the Master's body was brought downstairs, laid on a cot, dressed in ochre clothes, and decorated with sandal-past and flowers. A procession was formed. The passers-by wept as the body was taken to the cremation ground at the Brnagore Ght on the Ganges.

1.00_-_Preface, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga      BASED on the versicle in the Song of Songs, " Thy plants are an orchard of Pomegranates ", a book entitled Pardis Rimonim came to be written by Rabbi Moses Cordovero in the sixteenth century. By some authorities this philosopher is considered as the greatest lamp in post-Zoharic days of that spiritual Menorah, the Qabalah, which, with so rare a grace and so profuse an irradiation of the Supernal Light, illuminated the literature and religious philosophy of the Jewish people as well as their immediate and subsequent neighbours in the Dias- pora. The English equivalent of Pardis Rimonim - A Garden of Pomegranates - I have adopted as the title of my own modest work, although I am forced to confess that this latter has but little connection either in actual fact or in historicity with that of Cordovero. In the golden harvest of purely spiritual intimations which the Holy Qabalah brings, I truly feel that a veritable garden of the soul may be builded ; a garden of immense magnitude and lofty significance, wherein may be discovered by each one of us all manner and kind of exotic fruit and gracious flower of exquisite colour. The pomegranate, may I add, has always been for mystics everywhere a favourable object for recon- dite symbolism. The garden or orchard has likewise pro- duced in that book named The Book of Splendour an almost inexhaustible treasury of spiritual imagery of superb and magnificent taste.      --      Should there be those who are so unfortunate as to possess no such sacred sanctuary of their own, one builded with their own hands, I humbly offer this well-tended garden of Pomegranates which has been bequeathed to me. I hope that therein may be gathered a few little shoots, a rare flower or two, or some ripe fruit which may serve as the nucleus or the wherewithal for the planting of such a secret garden of the mind, without which there is no peace, nor joy, nor happiness.

1.00_-_Preliminary_Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   Last, all these things in one oerpowered,   Time that the midnight blossom flowered!   The oneness is. Yet even in this,

1.00_-_The_Constitution_of_the_Human_Being, #Theosophy, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism      Why does the world appear to man in this threefold way? The simplest consideration will explain that. I cross a Meadow covered with flowers. The flowers make their colors known to me through my eyes. That is the fact which I accept as given. I rejoice in the splendor of the colors. Through this I turn the fact into an affair of my own. By means of my feelings I link the flowers with my own    p. 12    existence. A year after I go again over the same meadow. Other flowers are there. New joy arises in me through them. My joy of the former year will appear as a memory. It is in me; the object which aroused it in me is gone. But the flowers which I. now see are of the same species as those I saw the year before; they have grown in accordance with the same laws as did the others. If I have enlightened myself regarding this species and these laws, I find them again in the flowers of this year as I recognized them in those of the former year. And I shall perhaps muse as follows: "The flowers of last year are gone; my joy in them remains only in my remembrance. It is bound up with my existence alone. That, however, which I recognized in the flowers of the former year and recognize again this year, will remain as long as such flowers grow. That is something that revealed itself to me, but which is not dependent on my existence in the same way as my joy is. My feelings of joy remain in me; the laws, the being of the flowers, remain outside of me in the world."      --    p. 13    should not for the time being read anything into this fact, but merely take it as it presents itself. It makes it evident that man has three sides to his nature. This and nothing else will for the present be indicated here by the three words body, soul, and spirit. He who connects any preconceived meanings, or even hypotheses, with these three words will necessarily misunderstand the following explanations. By body is here meant that by which the things in the environment of a man reveal themselves to him, as in the example just cited, the flowers of the meadow. By the word soul is signified that by which he links the things to his own being, through which he experiences pleasure and displeasure, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow. By spirit is meant that which becomes manifest in him when, as Goethe expressed it, he looks at things as "a so-to-speak divine being." In this sense the human being consists of body, soul, and spirit.

1.01_-_DOWN_THE_RABBIT-HOLE, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction   Suddenly she came upon a little table, all made of solid glass. There was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice's first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but, at any rate, it would not open any of them. However, on the second time 'round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high. She tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight, it fitted!   Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole; she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway. "Oh," said Alice, "how I wish I could shut up like a telescope!   I think I could, if I only knew how to begin."

1.01_-_Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy      The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season.      --   Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the _spiritus_ which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire,some precious bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over in the   Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the land,this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable,for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process,and I have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottle-full in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I put any sal soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would seem that I made it according to the recipe which Marcus Porcius   Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, aqu paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu. Which I take to meanMake kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a cover, that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a word about leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a month.   --      I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a mans uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick, serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast-off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. From what southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would redeem? If any thing ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,for that is the seat of sympathy,he forthwith sets about reformingthe world.      --      I read in the Gulistan, or flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that   They asked a wise man, saying; Of the many celebrated trees which the

1.01_-_Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      Elsewhere in the Riks the Vedic Word is described (X.71) as that which is supreme and the topmost height of speech, the best and the most faultless. It is something that is hidden in secrecy and from there comes out and is manifested. It has entered into the truth-seers, the Rishis, and it is found by following the track of their speech. But all cannot enter into its secret meaning. Those who do not know the inner sense are as men who seeing see not, hearing hear not, only to one here and there the Word desiring him like a beautifully robed wife to a husband lays open her body. Others unable to drink steadily of the milk of the Word, the Vedic cow, move with it as with one that gives no milk, to him the Word is a tree without flowers or fruits. This is quite clear and precise; it results from it beyond doubt that even then while the Rig Veda was being written the Riks were regarded as having a secret sense which was not open to all. There was an occult and spiritual knowledge in the sacred hymns and by this knowledge alone, it is said, one can know the truth and rise to a higher existence. This belief was not a later tradition but held, probably, by all and evidently by some of the greatest Rishis such as Dirghatamas and Vamadeva.

1.01_-_How_is_Knowledge_Of_The_Higher_Worlds_Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism      The student is told to set apart moments in his daily life in which to withdraw into himself, quietly and alone. He is not to occupy himself at such moments with the affairs of his own ego. This would result in the contrary of what is intended. He should rather let his experiences and the messages from the outer world re-echo within his own completely silent self. At such silent moments every flower, every animal, every action will unveil to him secrets undreamt of. And thus he will prepare himself to receive quite new impressions of the outer world through quite different eyes. The desire to enjoy impression after impression merely blunts the faculty of cognition; the latter, however, is nurtured and cultivated if the enjoyment once experienced is allowed to reveal its message. Thus the student must accustom himself not merely to let the enjoyment    p. 16

1.01_-_SAMADHI_PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism   mediates; when he meditates he is like a piece of crystal;   before flowers the crystal becomes almost identified with   flowers. If the flower is red, the crystal looks red, or if the   flower is blue, the crystal looks blue.

1.01_-_THAT_ARE_THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy      There is a spirit in the soul, untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, itself wholly spiritual. In this principle is God, ever verdant, ever flowering in all the joy and glory of His actual Self. Sometimes I have called this principle the Tabernacle of the soul, sometimes a spiritual Light, anon I say it is a Spark. But now I say that it is more exalted over this and that than the heavens are exalted above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion It is free of all names and void of all forms. It is one and simple, as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise behold it.

1.01_-_The_First_Steps, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset      Those of you who can afford it will do better to have a room for this practice alone. Do not sleep in that room, it must be kept holy. You must not enter the room until you have bathed, and are perfectly clean in body and mind. Place flowers in that room always; they are the best surroundings for a Yogi; also pictures that are pleasing. Burn incense morning and evening. Have no quarrelling, nor anger, nor unholy thought in that room. Only allow those persons to enter it who are of the same thought as you. Then gradually there will be an atmosphere of holiness in the room, so that when you are miserable, sorrowful, doubtful, or your mind is disturbed, the very fact of entering that room will make you calm. This was the idea of the temple and the church, and in some temples and churches you will find it even now, but in the majority of them the very idea has been lost. The idea is that by keeping holy vibrations there the place becomes and remains illumined. Those who cannot afford to have a room set apart can practice anywhere they like. Sit in a straight posture, and the first thing to do is to send a current of holy thought to all creation. Mentally repeat, "Let all beings be happy; let all beings be peaceful; let all beings be blissful." So do to the east, south, north and west. The more you do that the better you will feel yourself. You will find at last that the easiest way to make ourselves healthy is to see that others are healthy, and the easiest way to make ourselves happy is to see that others are happy. After doing that, those who believe in God should pray not for money, not for health, nor for heaven; pray for knowledge and light; every other prayer is selfish. Then the next thing to do is to think of your own body, and see that it is strong and healthy; it is the best instrument you have. Think of it as being as strong as adamant, and that with the help of this body you will cross the ocean of life. Freedom is never to be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.

1.01_-_The_Highest_Meaning_of_the_Holy_Truths, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen   pounded the Light-Emitting Wisdom Scripture; he experienced   heavenly flowers falling in profusion and the earth turning to   gold. He studied the Path and humbly served the Buddha, issu

1.01_-_The_Path_of_Later_On, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      BY THE wayside, many-coloured flowers delight the eye, red berries gleam on small trees with knotty branches, and in the distance a brilliant sun shines gold upon the ripe corn.      --      The wild grasses around him whisper in his ear, "Later." Later, yes, later. Ah, how pleasant it is to breathe the scented breeze, while the sun warms the air with its fiery rays. Later, later. And the traveller walks on; the path widens. Voices are heard from afar, "Where are you going? Poor fool, don't you see that you are heading for your ruin? You are young; come, come to us, to the beautiful, the good, the true; do not be misled by indolence and weakness; do not fall asleep in the present; come to the future." "Later, later," the traveller answers these unwelcome voices. The flowers smile at him and echo, "Later." The path becomes wider and wider. The sun has reached its zenith; it is a glorious day. The path becomes a road.

1.02_-_SADHANA_PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism   says, can be seen by the Yogi. We do not all see it, but we are   all throwing out these Tanmatras, just as a flower is   continuously emanating these Tanmatras, which enable us to   --   unhappy? By reflection. Just as if be piece of pure crystal be   put on a table and a red flower be put near it, the crystal   appears to be red, so all these appearances of happiness or

1.02_-_Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      26:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature's all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, -- but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at all, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and Tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural successions of the action of the Yoga.

1.02_-_Taras_Tantra, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #Bokar Rinpoche, #Buddhism   tell him. The next morning, he went to the temple and   met the yogini. Havin g offered her some flowers, he   told her. "I was invite d to go to Tibet. Will my

1.02_-_The_Descent._Dante's_Protest_and_Virgil's_Appeal._The_Intercession_of_the_Three_Ladies_Benedight., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity   And so much good my speech doth promise thee?"   Even as the flowerets, by nocturnal chill,   Bowed down and closed, when the sun whitens them,

1.02_-_The_Eternal_Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   gods is also, at the same time, the country of a monolithic faith in Oneness: "One, He presides over all wombs and natures; Himself the womb of all." (Swetaswatara Upanishad V.5) But not everyone can at once merge with the Absolute; there are many degrees in the Ascent,   and one who is ready to understand a little Lalita's childlike face and to bring her his incense and flowers may not be able to address the Eternal Mother in the silence of his heart; still another may prefer to deny all forms and plunge into the contemplation of That which is formless. "Even as men come to Me, so I accept them. It is my path that men follow from all sides," says the Bhagavad Gita (IV,11). 14 As we see, there are so many ways of conceiving of God, in three or three million persons, that we should not dogmatize, lest we eliminate everything, finally leaving nothing but a Cartesian God, one and universal by virtue only of his narrowness. Perhaps we still confuse unity with uniformity. It was in the spirit of that tradition that Sri Aurobindo was soon to write: The perfection of the integral Yoga will come when each man is able to follow his own path of Yoga, pursuing the development of his own nature in its upsurging towards that which transcends the nature. For freedom is the final law and the last consummation.15   Nor does an Indian ever ask: "Do you believe in God?" The question would seem to him as childish as: "Do you believe in CO2?"   --   Although India was also able to appreciate that God is the Eternal Iconoclast in his cosmic march, she did not always have the strength to withstand her own wisdom. The vast invisible that pervades this country was to extract from it a double ransom, both human and spiritual; human, because these people, saturated with the Beyond,   conscious of the Great Cosmic Game and the inner dimensions in which our little surface lives are just points, periodically flowering and soon re-engulfed, came to neglect the material world inertia,   indifference to progress, and resignation often wore the face of wisdom; a spiritual ransom also (this one far more serious), because in that immensity too great for our present little consciousness, the destiny of the earth, our earth, became lost somewhere in the deep confines of the galaxy, or nowhere, reabsorbed in Brahman, whence perhaps it had never emerged after all, except in our dreams

1.02_-_The_Human_Soul, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity      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_Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism      C. G. Jung, the eminent European psycho-analyst, writes in Wilhelm's Secret of the Golden flower: "Therefore, I can only take the reaction which begins in the West against the intellect in favour of intuition, as a mark of cultural advance, a widening of consciousness beyond the too narrow limits set by a tyrannical intellect" (p. 82).

1.02_-_The_Refusal_of_the_Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or "culture," the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.   His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaninglesseven though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown.   Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.

1.02_-_The_Stages_of_Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism    p. 40    moon on the horizon. Both these feelings are forces which, when duly cultivated and developed to ever increasing intensity, lead to the most significant spiritual results. A new world is opened to the student if he systematically and deliberately surrenders himself to such feelings. The soul-world, the so-called astral plane, begins to dawn upon him. Growth and decay are no longer facts which make indefinite impressions on him as of old, but rather they form themselves into spiritual lines and figures of which he had previously suspected nothing. And these lines and figures have, for the different phenomena, different forms. A blooming flower, an animal in the process of growth, a tree that is decaying, evoke in his soul different lines. The soul world (astral plane) broadens out slowly before him. These lines and figures are in no sense arbitrary. Two students who have reached the corresponding stage of development will always see the same lines and figures under the same conditions. Just as a round table will be seen as round by two normal persons, and not as round by one and square by the other, so too, at the sight of a flower, the same spiritual figure is presented to the soul. And just as the    p. 41   --      Anyone having reached this point of spiritual vision is the richer by a great deal, for he can perceive things not only in their present state of being but also in their process of growth and decay. He begins to see in all things the spirit, of which physical eyes can know nothing. And therewith he has taken the first step toward the gradual solution, through personal vision, of the secret of birth and death. For the outer senses a being comes into existence through birth, and passes away through death. This, however, is only because these senses cannot perceive the concealed spirit of the being. For the spirit, birth and death are merely a transformation, just as the unfolding of the flower from the bud is a transformation enacted before our physical eyes. But if we desire to learn this through personal vision we must    p. 67

1.03_-_Invocation_of_Tara, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #Bokar Rinpoche, #Buddhism   imagination, are: water for drinking, water for   cleaning, flowers, incense, light, perfume, food, and   music. Each offering is represented by a mantra and a   --   the practitioners throw rice into the air which   symbolizes the flowers that gods shower on earth.   Other prayers and long life prayers for the teachers

1.03_-_The_Desert, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Fiction      Everything to come was already in images: to find their soul, the ancients went into the desert. 75 This is an image. The ancients lived their symbols, since the world had not yet become real for them. Thus they went into the solitude of the desert to teach us that the place of the soul is a lonely desert. There they found the abundance of visions, the fruits of the desert, the wondrous flowers of the soul. Think diligently about the images that the ancients have      --   77. December 11, 1913   78. In "Commentary on 'The Secret of the Golden flower' "(I929), Jung criticized the Western tendency to turn everything into methods and intentions. The cardinal lesson, as presented by the   Chinese texts and by Meister Eckhart, was that of allowing psychic events to happen of their own accord: "Letting things happen, the action through non-action, the 'letting go of oneself' of

1.03_-_The_Gods,_Superior_Beings_and_Adverse_Forces, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   Do they not come from outside?   Yes, they do come from outside, from some vital entity that is amusing itself by sending them to you to see how you will receive them. I saw the suggestion passing at the time I gave you the flower. I did not attach any importance to it because it was just foolishness but I see that you received it.

1.03_-_The_Human_Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   23    and firm obedience to the best principles of the time and society in which he has lived and the religion and ethics to which he has been brought up. He is egoistic like other men, but with the purer or sattwic egoism which regards the moral law and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his own interests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the Shastra, the moral and social code. The thought which preoccupies him, the standard which he obeys is the dharma, that collective Indian conception of the religious, social and moral rule of conduct, and especially the rule of the station and function to which he belongs, he the Kshatriya, the highminded, self-governed, chivalrous prince and warrior and leader of Aryan men. Following always this rule, conscious of virtue and right dealing he has travelled so far and finds suddenly that it has led him to become the protagonist of a terrific and unparalleled slaughter, a monstrous civil war involving all the cultured Aryan nations which must lead to the complete destruction of the flower of their manhood and threatens their ordered civilisation with chaos and collapse.

1.03_-_The_Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism      Its colour is grey ; its perfume the orchitic Musk, plant the Amaranth, which is the flower of immortality ; and the   Four Twos of the Tarot. Its precious stones are the Star   --      Rose is the flower appurtenant, and Red Sandal is the perfume. It is common knowledge that in some diseases of a venereal ( $ ) origin oils of sandalwood are employed.   Benzoin is a perfume of Venus, too, and its sensuous seduc- tiveness is unmistakable. The Rose is attributed as being harmonious to the character of Aphrodite.

1.03_-_To_Layman_Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #Hakuin Ekaku, #Zen      Some find ways to attract large numbers of people to their temples, believing to the end of their days that this is proof of a successful teaching career. Now it is true that compared to fellows of that stamp, students who reach satori thanks to teachings they hear, or arrive at cessation thanks to advice they receive from a teacher, are indeed wonderful occurrences-as rare as lotus flowers blossoming amid a raging fire. They owe the attainment they achieve to the large store of karmic merit they accumulated in previous existences. Attainment such as theirs is not easy to achieve, it is not insignificant, and it must be valued and deeply respected.      --    e [Wild] fox slobber (koen, or yako-enda) is generally poison, used by Hakuin with a positive connotation for the "turning words" used by Zen teachers. For a recipe for making it, see Hakuin's   Precious Mirror Cave (244). f Hakuin loosely paraphrases a statement in the Comprehensive Records of Yun-men (Yun-men kuang-lu). An early Chinese commentary on this apprises us of the fact that warm excrement produced during the summer months has an especially foul smell. g The Dragon Gate is a three-tiered waterfall cut through the mountains of Lung-men to open up a passage for the Yellow River. It was said that on the third day of the third month, when peach trees are in flower, carp that succeeded in scaling this waterfall turned into dragons. h Compendium of the Five Lamps, ch. 1. Also Case 41 in the Gateless Barrier. i Compendium of the Five Lamps, ch. 3. j Based on lines in a verse by Yuan-wu K'o-ch'in: "I venerate the Sixth Patriarch, an authentic old   Buddha who manifested himself in the human world as a good teacher for eighty lifetimes in order to help others" (cited in Trei's Snake Legs for Kaien-fusetsu, 21v). k The head monk in Huang-po's assembly at this time is not identified in the standard accounts of this episode in Record of Lin-chi and Records of the Lamp. He is given as Chen Tsun-su (Mu-chou Taotsung, n.d.) in some other accounts. In none of the versions does he utter such words directly to Linchi. l A winged tiger would be even more formidable. m In the Record of Lin-chi account (also Blue Cliff Record, Case 11), the head monk in Huang-po's assembly tells Lin-chi to ask Huang-po about the essential meaning of the Buddha Dharma. He goes to

1.04_-_Body,_Soul_and_Spirit, #Theosophy, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism      The "I" flashes forth in the soul, receives the infusion from out the spirit and thereby becomes the bearer of the spirit-man. Through this, man participates in the "three worlds," the physical, the soul, and the spiritual. He takes root in the physical world through his physical body, ether-body, and soul-body and flowers through the spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man up into the spiritual world. The stalk, however, which takes root in the one and flowers in the other, is the soul itself.

1.04_-_GOD_IN_THE_WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy      I watch the leaves fall and the flowers bloom, as the seasons come and go.      --      When one reaches this stage of realization, seeing is no-seeing, hearing is no-hearing, preaching is no-preaching. When hungry one eats, when tired one sleeps. Let the leaves fall, let the flowers bloom as they like. When the leaves fall, I know it is the autumn; when the flowers bloom, I know it is the spring.      --      In the root divine Wisdom is all-Brahman; in the stem she is all-Illusion; in the flower she is all-World; and in the fruit, all-Liberation.      --      St. Bernard speaks in what seems a similar strain. What I know of the divine sciences and Holy Scripture, I learnt in woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. And in another of his letters he says: Listen to a man of experience: thou wilt learn more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach thee more than thou canst acquire from the mouth of a magister. The phrases are similar; but their inner significance is very different. In Augustines language, God alone is to be enjoyed; creatures are not to be enjoyed but usedused with love and compassion and a wondering, detached appreciation, as means to the knowledge of that which may be enjoyed. Wordsworth, like almost all other literary Nature-worshippers, preaches the enjoyment of creatures rather than their use for the attainment of spiritual endsa use which, as we shall see, entails much self-discipline for the user. For Bernard it goes without saying that his correspondents are actively practising this self-discipline and that Nature, though loved and heeded as a teacher, is only being used as a means to God, not enjoyed as though she were God. The beauty of flowers and landscape is not merely to be relished as one wanders lonely as a cloud about the countryside, is not merely to be pleasurably remembered when one is lying in vacant or in pensive mood on the sofa in the library, after tea. The reaction must be a little more strenuous and purposeful. Here, my brothers, says an ancient Buddhist author, are the roots of trees, here are empty places; meditate. The truth is, of course, that the world is only for those who have deserved it; for, in Philos words, even though a man may be incapable of making himself worthy of the creator of the cosmos, yet he ought to try to make himself worthy of the cosmos. He ought to transform himself from being a man into the nature of the cosmos and become, if one may say so, a little cosmos. For those who have not deserved the world, either by making themselves worthy of its creator (that is to say, by non-attachment and a total self-naughting), or, less arduously, by making themselves worthy of the cosmos (by bringing order and a measure of unity to the manifold confusion of undisciplined human personality), the world is, spiritually speaking, a very dangerous place.

1.04_-_Pratyahara, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy   12:However, the main point is to acquire some sort of inhibitory power over the thoughts. Fortunately there is an unfailing method of acquiring this power. It is given in Liber III. If Sections 1 and 2 are practised (if necessary with the assistance of another person to aid your vigilance) you will soon be able to master the final section.   13:In some people this inhibitory power may flower suddenly in very much the same way as occurred with Asana. Quite without any relaxation of vigilance, the mind will suddenly be stilled. There will be a marvellous feeling of peace and rest, quite different from the lethargic feeling which is produced by over-eating. It is difficult to say whether so definite a result would come to all, or even to most people. The matter is one of no very great importance. If you have acquired the power of checking the rise of thought you may proceed to the next stage.

1.04_-_Religion_and_Occultism, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      This morning after Pranam, Thou blest me with four flowers of Sincerity. I feel that there is special significance   36   --    in it, but I am unable to find out the same. May I know it?   When I picked up the flowers to give you, I felt that several were coming and I willed: Let it be the number of the states of the being in which the Sincerity (in the consecration to the Divine) will be definitively established. Four means integrality: the four states of being, mental, psychic, vital, physical.

1.04_-_Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy   As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day.   This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.      --      My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May, the sand-cherry (_Cerasus pumila_,) adorned the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with good sized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. The sumach (_Rhus glabra_,) grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs.

1.04_-_The_Crossing_of_the_First_Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   coming back from his fishing on a rock, towards sunset, chances   to see "a girl with her head bedecked with flowers beckoning to   him from the slope of the cliff up which his path is leading him;   --   water lilies both blue and white, carrying in their hands clusters   of lotus flowers both red and white, chewing the fibrous stalks of   water lilies, streaming with drops of water and mud. And when   --   proaching decked with water lilies both blue and white, with   lotus flowers both red and white in your hands, chewing the   48   --   you came? Are the lakes completely covered with water lilies   both blue and white, and lotus flowers both red and white?"   The ogre: "Do you see that dark green streak of woods? Be   --   the time; the hollows are full of water; everywhere are lakes   completely covered with lotus flowers both red and white." And   then, as the carts passed one after another, he inquired: "What

1.04_-_The_Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism      The colours are Green and Emerald Green. The jewels are the Emerald and Turquoise ; the flowers Myrtle and   Rose ; the birds being the Sparrow and Dove. The magical appurtenance is the Girdle, in view of the legend that whosoever wore Aphrodite's girdle became an object of universal love and desire.   --      The Spear is the weapon appropriate ; the flower Ger- anium, and the jewel Ruby because of its colour.      --   Its sacred animal is the Sphinx, whose expression of enigma combining male, female, and animal qualities is an apt symbol of the Great Work brought to perfection. The   Sepher Yetsirah names Ches " The House of Influence " ; the Lotus is its flower, Onycha its perfume, Maroon its colour, and Amber its jewel.      --      Its animal is, of course, the Lion ; its flower the Sun- flower ; its jewel the Cat's Eye ; and its perfume Olibanum.   Purple is its colour.      Its Tarot card is VIII. - Strength, showing a woman crowned and girdled with flowers, calmly and without apparent effort, closing the jaws of a lion.      --      Its jewel is the Peridot ; its flowers the Snowdrop and   Narcissus, both implying purity and innocence ; and its colour Grey.   --   Ra, Helios, Apollo, and Surya are all gods of the solar disk. Yellow is the colour given to Resh ; Cinnamon and   Olibanum are its perfumes - obviously solar ; the Lion and the Sparrowhawk are its animals. Gold is the appropriate metal ; the Sunflower, Heliotrope, and Laurel being its plants. Crysoleth is its jewel, suggesting the golden colour of the Sun. Its title is " The Collecting Intelligence      --   Qoph. The card depicts a blazing sun above the Crowned and Conquering Child Horns, who rides triumphantly on a   White Horse - the symbol of the Kalki Avatara. In the background of the card are several sunflowers, which again point to the solar nature of the allocation.      --      The Tarot card is XXI. - The World, showing within a flowery wreath a female figure, who has come to be known as the Virgin of the World, giving this Path added significance since it descends upon Malleus, to which the Zohar allocates the final Hdh, the Daughter, who is the reflection below of the Shechinah on high. At the four comers of the cards are the four cherubic animals of the Apocalypse ; the man, the eagle, the bull, and the lion.

1.04_-_The_Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #Bokar Rinpoche, #Buddhism   a metaphor for the lotus; here the stem is gold colored   while the flower is blue.   The two following lines indicate that Tara possesses

1.04_-_THE_RABBIT_SENDS_IN_A_LITTLE_BILL, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction   'What?'"   Alice looked all around her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she could not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself. She stretched herself up on tiptoe and peeped over the edge and her eyes immediately met those of a large blue caterpillar, that was sitting on the top, with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.

1.04_-_The_Sacrifice_the_Triune_Path_and_the_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   But still to the seeker standing at the opposite pole of the   Duality another line of experience appears which justifies an intuition deeply-seated behind the heart and in our very lifeforce, that personality, like consciousness, life, soul, is not a brief-lived stranger in an impersonal Eternity, but contains the very meaning of existence. This fine flower of the cosmic Energy carries in it a forecast of the aim and a hint of the very motive of the universal labour. As an occult vision opens in him, he becomes aware of worlds behind in which consciousness and personality hold an enormous place and assume a premier value; even here in the material world to this occult vision the inconscience of Matter fills with a secret pervading consciousness, its inanimation harbours a vibrant life, its mechanism is the device of an indwelling Intelligence, God and soul are everywhere.      --   The Yoga of Divine Works    the emanation of a One Conscious Being who is their source. A multiple innumerable personality expressing that One is the very sense and central aim of the manifestation and if now personality seems to be narrow, fragmentary, restrictive, it is only because it has not opened to its source or flowered into its own divine truth and fullness packing itself with the universal and the infinite.

1.05_-_Adam_Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism   This apparent obscurity can be clarified considerably. The final He is the Nephesch or subconsciousness. Normally, one's conscious mind, the Vav or Son, is in dire conflict with the subconscious self, and confusion and a disruption of one's total consciousness is the result. One's first object must be to reconcile the conscious ego with the subconscious mind, and set the factor of equilibrium between the two.   (This idea is splendidly elaborated by Jung in his commen- tary to R. Wilhelm's The Secret of the Golden flower.) When this usual source of conflict has disappeared (or, as this old symbolism says, when the Vav and He final have married) one is in a position to obtain Understanding, which is   Binah, the first He, and the Mother. From Understanding, which is Love, Wisdom can arise. Wisdom is Y the Father,

1.05_-_Bhakti_Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism      8. Bhakti grows gradually just as you grow a flower or a tree in a garden. Cultivate Bhakti in the garden of your heart gradually.      --      20. Practise the nine modes of devotion or Nava-vidha Bhakti, viz., Sravana (hearing the Lilas of the Lord), Kirtan (singing His Name), Smarana (His remembrance), Padasevana (service of His Feet), Archana (offering flowers), Vandana (prostrations), Dasyam (servant-Bhava), Sakhya (His friendship), and Atmanivedana (self-surrender).      --      23. Manasic Puja or mental worship is a great help for increasing devotion and attaining concentration. Offer flowers, incense, etc., mentally to the Lord.      --      25. Shall I wash Thy Feet with holy water, O Lord? The very Ganga flows from Thy Feet. Shall I give You seat? Thou art all-pervading. Shall I wave lights for Thee? Sun and Moon are Thy Eyes! Shall I offer flowers to Thee? Thou art the essence of flowersthis is Para Puja.

1.05_-_Buddhism_and_Women, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #Bokar Rinpoche, #Buddhism   the power to become awakened, just like the seed of   a flower contains the virtual color, perfume, and other   characteristics of the future flower. This potentiality is,   therefore, common to all beings without difference in   --   a carnation can effectively become a carnation whereas   a seed of another flower, of a different species, could   not possibly produce a carnation. This third aspect   --   Mandarava was named after the "paradise tree   with red flowers" and was the daughter of the King of   Sahor. When she became Padmasambhava's

1.05_-_Hsueh_Feng's_Grain_of_Rice, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen   lacquer bucket, where is it hard to see?*   When spring arrives, for whom do the hundred flowers bloom?   **Things don't overlap. What a mess! He sticks his head   --   Do ignorant people see? He says more to you: "When spring   arrives, for whom do the hundred flowers bloom?" One could   say he's opening the doors and windows, throwing them wide   --   valleys and wild ravines, in places where there are no people, a   hundred flowers burst forth in profusion. Tell me, who else do   they bloom for?

1.05_-_Solitude, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy      When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe.

1.05_-_Some_Results_of_Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism    p. 134    physical body: the first between the eyes; the second near the larynx; the third in the region of the heart; the fourth in the so-called pit of the stomach; the fifth and sixth are situated in the abdomen. These organs are technically known as wheels, chakrams, or lotus flowers. They are so called on account of their likeness to wheels or flowers, but of course it should be clearly understood that such an expression is not to be applied more literally than is the term "wings" when referring to the two halves of the lungs. Just as there is no question of wings in the case of the lungs, so, too, in the case of the lotus flowers the expression must be taken figuratively. In undeveloped persons these lotus flowers are dark in color, motionless and inert. In the clairvoyant, however, they are luminous, mobile, and of variegated color. Something of this kind applies to the medium, though in a different way; this question, however, need not be pursued here any further.         Now, when the student begins his exercises, the lotus flowers become more luminous; later on they begin to revolve. When this occurs,    p. 135    clairvoyance begins. For these flowers are the sense-organs of the soul, and their revolutions express the fact that the clairvoyant perceives supersensibly. What was said previously concerning spiritual seeing applies equally to these revolutions and even to the lotus flowers themselves. No one can perceive the supersensible until he has developed his astral senses in this way. Thanks to the spiritual organ situated in the vicinity of the larynx, it becomes possible to survey clairvoyantly the thoughts and mentality of other beings, and to obtain a deeper insight into the true laws of natural phenomena. The organ situated near the heart permits of clairvoyant knowledge of the sentiments and disposition of other souls. When developed, this organ also makes it possible to observe certain deeper forces in animals and plants. By means of the organ in the so-called pit of the stomach, knowledge is acquired of the talents and capacities of souls; by its means, too, the part played by animals, plants, stones, metals, atmospheric phenomena and so on in the household of nature becomes apparent.      --      Now certain activities of the soul are connected with the development of these organs, and anyone devoting himself to them in a certain definite way contributes something to the development of the corresponding organs. In the sixteen-petalled lotus, eight of its sixteen petals were developed in the remote past during an earlier stage of human evolution. Man himself contributed nothing to this development; he received them as a gift from nature, at a time when his consciousness was in a dull, dreamy condition. At that stage of human evolution they were in active use, but the manner of their activity was only compatible with that dull state of consciousness. As consciousness became clearer and brighter, the petals became obscured and ceased their activity. Man himself can now develop the remaining eight petals by means of conscious exercises, and thereby the whole lotus flower becomes luminous and mobile. The acquisition of certain faculties depends on the development of each one of the sixteen petals. Yet, as already shown, only    p. 137   --      The development proceeds in the following manner. The student must first apply himself with care and attention to certain functions of the soul hitherto exercised by him in a careless and inattentive manner. There are eight such functions. The first is the way in which ideas and conceptions are acquired. In this respect people usually allow themselves to be led by chance alone. They see or hear one thing or another and form their ideas accordingly. As long as this is the case the sixteen petals of the lotus flower remain ineffective. It is only when the student begins to take his self-education in hand, in this respect, that the petals become effective. His ideas and conceptions must be guarded; each single idea should acquire significance fore him; he should see it in a definite message instructing him concerning the things of the outer world, and he should derive no satisfaction from ideas devoid of such significance. He must govern his mental life so that it becomes a true mirror of the outer world, and direct his effort to the exclusion of incorrect ideas from his soul.      --      Now this lotus flower may be made to develop in another way by following certain other instructions. But all such methods are rejected by true spiritual science, for they lead to the destruction of physical health and to moral ruin.      --      The distorted development of a lotus flower results not only in illusions and fantastic conceptions, should a certain degree of clairvoyance be acquired, but also in errors and instability in ordinary life. Such a development may be the cause of timidity, envy, vanity, haughtiness, willfulness and so on in a person who hitherto was free from these defects. It has already been explained that eight of the sixteen petals of this lotus flower were developed in a remote past, and that these will re-appear of themselves in the course of esoteric development. All the effort and attention of the student must be devoted to the remaining eight. Faulty training may easily result in the re-appearance of the earlier petals alone, while the new petals remain stunted. This will ensue especially if too little logical, rational thinking is employed in the training. It is of supreme importance that the student should be a rational and clear-thinking person, and of further importance that he should practice the greatest    p. 144   --    p. 145    further news which does not tally with the previous information. I am thereby obliged to reverse my previous judgment. The result is an unfavorable influence upon my sixteen-petalled lotus. Quite the contrary would have been the case had I, in the first place, suspended judgment, and remained silent both inwardly in thought and outwardly in word concerning the whole affair, until I had acquired reliable grounds for forming my judgment. Caution in the formation and pronouncement of judgments becomes, by degrees, the special characteristic of the student. On the other hand his receptivity for impressions and experiences increases; he lets them pass over him silently, so as to collect and have the largest possible number of facts at his disposal when the time comes to form his opinions. Bluish-red and reddish-pink shades color the lotus flower as the result of such circumspection, whereas in the opposite case dark red and orange shades appear. (Students will recognize in the conditions attached to the development of the sixteen-petalled lotus the instructions given by the Buddha to his disciples for the Path. Yet there is no question here of teaching Buddhism,    p. 146   --      It must be clearly understood that the perceptions of each single organ of soul or sprit bear a different character. The twelve and sixteen-petalled lotus flowers transmit quite different perceptions. The latter perceives forms. The thoughts and mentality of other beings and the laws governing natural phenomena become manifest, through the sixteen-petalled lotus, as figures, not rigid motionless figures but mobile forms    p. 147    filled with life. The clairvoyant in whom this sense is developed can describe, for every mode of thought and for every law of nature, a form which expresses them. A revengeful thought, for example, assumes an arrow-like, pronged form, while a kindly thought is often formed like an opening flower, and so on. Clear-cut, significant thoughts are regular and symmetrical in form, while confused thoughts have wavy outlines. Quite different perceptions are received through the twelve-petalled lotus. These perceptions may, in a sense, be likened to warmth and cold, as applied to the soul. A clairvoyant equipped with this faculty feels this warmth and cold streaming out from the forms discerned by the sixteen-petalled lotus. Had he developed the sixteen and not the twelve-petalled lotus he would only perceive, in the kindly thought, for instance, the figure described above, while a clairvoyant in whom both senses were developed would also notice what can only be described as soul-warmth, flowing from the thought. It would be noted in passing that esoteric training never develops one organ without the other, so that the above-mentioned example may be regarded as a    p. 148   --      The reader will recognize in the qualities here described the six attributes which the candidate for initiation strives to acquire. The intention has been to show their connection with the spiritual organ known as the twelve-petalled lotus flower. As before, special instructions can be given to bring this lotus flower to fruition, but here again the perfect symmetry of its form depends on the development of the qualities mentioned, the neglect of which results in this organ being formed into a caricature of its proper shape. In this case, should a certain clairvoyance    p. 152   --    p. 153    organs, and instead of perceiving the truth he would be subject to deceptions and illusions. He would attain a certain clairvoyance, but for the most part, be the victim of greater blindness than before. Formerly he at least stood firmly within the physical world; now he looks beyond this physical world and grows confused about it before acquiring a firm footing in a higher world. All power of distinguishing truth from error would then perhaps fail him, and he would entirely lose his way in life. It is just for this reason that patience is so necessary in these matters. It must ever be borne in mind that the instructions given in esoteric training may go no further than is compatible with the willing readiness shown to develop the lotus flowers to their regular shape. Should these flowers be brought to fruition before they have quietly attained their correct form, mere caricatures would be the result. Their maturity can be brought about by the special instructions given in esoteric training, but their form is dependent on the method of life described above.      --    p. 154    ten-petalled lotus flower, for it is now a question of learning consciously to control and dominate the sense-impressions themselves. This is of particular importance in the initial stages of clairvoyance, for it is only by this means that a source of countless illusions and fancies is avoided. People as a rule do not realize by what factors their sudden ideas and memories are dominated, and how they are produced. Consider the following case. Someone is traveling by railway; his mind is busy with one thought; suddenly is thought diverges; he recollects an experience that befell him years ago and interweaves it with his present thought. He did not notice that in looking through the window he had caught sight of a person who resembled another intimately connected with the recollected experience. He remains conscious, not of what he saw, but of the effect it produced, and thus believes that it all came to him of its own accords. How much in life occurs in such a way! How great is the part played in our life by things we hear and learn, without our consciously realizing the connection! Someone, for instance, cannot bear a certain color, but does not realize that this is due    p. 155   --    p. 156    in such associations. It is just this source which must be dammed up by all who seek to develop their ten-petalled lotus flower. Deeply hidden characteristics in other souls can be perceived by this organ, but their truth depends on the attainment of immunity from the above-mentioned illusions. For this purpose it is necessary that the student should control and dominate everything that seeks to influence him from outside. He should reach the point of really receiving no impressions beyond those he wishes to receive. This can only be achieved by the development of a powerful inner life; by an effort of the will he only allows such things to impress him to which his attention is directed, and he actually evades all impressions to which he does not voluntarily respond. If he sees something it is because he wills to see it, and if he does not voluntarily take notice of something it is actually non-existent for him. The greater the energy and inner activity devoted to this work, the more extensively will this faculty be attained. The student must avoid all vacuous gazing and mechanical listening. For him only those things exist to which he turns his eye or his ear. He    p. 157    must practice the power of hearing nothing, even in the greatest disturbance, if he does not will to hear; and he must make his eyes unimpressionable to things of which he does not particularly take notice. He must be shielded as by an inner armor against all unconscious impressions. In this connection the student must devote special care to his thought-life. He singles out a particular thought and endeavors to link with it only such other thoughts as he can himself consciously and voluntarily produce. He rejects all casual ideas and does not connect this thought with another until he has investigated the origin of the latter. He goes still further. If, for instance, he feels a particular antipathy for something, he will combat it and endeavor to establish a conscious relation between himself and the thing in question. In this way the unconscious elements that intrude into his soul will become fewer and fewer. Only by such severe self-discipline can the ten-petalled lotus flower attain its proper form. The student's inner life must become a life of attention, and he must learn really to hold at a distance everything to which he should not or does not wish to direct his attention.      --      If this strict self-discipline be accompanied by meditation as prescribed in esoteric training, the lotus flower in the region of the pit of the stomach comes to maturity in the right way, and light and color of a spiritual kind are now added to the form and warmth perceptible to the organs described above. The talents and faculties of other beings are thereby revealed, also the forces and the hidden attributes of nature. The colored aura of living creatures then becomes visible; all that is around us manifests its spiritual attributes. It must be understood that the very greatest care is necessary at this stage of development, for the play of unconscious memories is here exceedingly active. If this were not the case, many people would possess this inner sense, for it comes almost immediately into evidence when the impressions delivered by the outer senses are held so completely under control that they become dependent on nothing save attention or inattention. This inner sense remains ineffective as long as the powerful outer sense smother and benumb it.         Still greater difficulty attends the development of the six-petalled lotus flower situated in the center of the body, for it can only be achieved as    p. 159   --      The six-petalled lotus flower, when developed,    p. 161    permits intercourse with beings of higher worlds, though only when their existence is manifested in the astral or soul-world. The development of this lotus flower, however, is not advisable unless the student has made great progress on that path of esoteric development which enables him to raise his spirit into a still higher world. This entry into the spiritual world proper must always run parallel with the development of the lotus flowers, otherwise the student will fall into error and confusion. He would undoubtedly be able to see, but he would remain incapable of forming a correct estimate of what he saw. Now, the development of the six-petalled lotus flower itself provides a certain security against confusion and instability, for no one can be easily confused who has attained perfect equilibrium between sense (or body), passion (or soul), and idea (or spirit). And yet, something more than this security is required when, through the development of the six-petalled lotus flower, living beings of independent existence are revealed to his spirit, beings belonging to a world so completely different from the world known to his physical senses. The development    p. 162    of the lotus flowers alone does not assure sufficient security in these higher worlds; still higher organs are necessary. The latter will now be described before the remaining lotus flowers and the further organization of the soul-body are discussed. (This expression-soul-body-although obviously contradictory when taken literally, is used because to clairvoyant perception the impression received spiritually corresponds to the impression received physically when the physical body is perceived.)      The development of the soul-body in the manner described above permits perception in a supersensible world, but anyone wishing to find his way in this world must not remain stationary at this stage of development. The mere mobility of the lotus flowers is not sufficient. The student must acquire the power of regulating and controlling the movement of his spiritual organs independently and with complete consciousness; otherwise he would become a plaything for external forces and powers. To avoid this he must acquire the faculty of hearing what is called the inner world, and this involves the development not only of the soul-body but also of the etheric    p. 163   --      When esoteric development has progressed so far that the lotus flowers begin to stir, much has already been achieved by the student which can result in the formation of certain quite definite currents and movements in his etheric body. The object of this development is the formation of a kind of center in the region of the physical heart, from which radiate currents and movements in the greatest possible variety of colors and forms. The center is in reality not a mere point, but a most complicated structure, a most wonderful organ. It glows and shimmers with every shade of color and displays forms of great symmetry, capable of rapid transformation. Other forms and streams of color radiate from this organ to the other parts of the body, and beyond it to the astral body, completely penetrating and illuminating    p. 166    it. The most important of these currents flow to the lotus flowers. They permeate each petal and regulate its revolutions; then streaming out at the points of the petals, they lose themselves in outer space. The higher the development of a person, the greater the circumference to which these rays extend.         The twelve-petalled lotus flower has a particularly close connection with this central organ. The currents flow directly into it and through it, proceeding on the one side to the sixteen and the two-petalled lotus flowers, and on the other, the lower side, to the flowers of eight, six and four petals. It is for this reason that the very greatest care must be devoted to the development of the twelve-petalled lotus, for an imperfection in the latter would result in irregular formation of the whole structure. The above will give an idea of the delicate and intimate nature of esoteric training, and of the accuracy needed if the development is to be regular and correct. It will also be evident beyond doubt that directions for the development of supersensible faculties can only be the concern of those who have themselves experienced everything which they propose to    p. 167   --    p. 170    as it were spiritually audible in their innermost self, and speak to him of their essential being. The currents described above place him in touch with the inner being of the world to which he belongs. He begins to mingle his life with the life of his environment and can let it reverberate in the movements of his lotus flowers.      --      This is the moment when the two-petalled lotus in the region of the eyes is required. If it now begins to stir, the student finds it possible to bring his higher ego in contact with higher spiritual beings. The currents form this lotus flower flow toward the higher realities in such a way that the movements in question are fully apparent to the individual. Just as the light renders the physical    p. 183   --      Through inward application to the fundamental truths derived from spiritual science the student learns to set in motion and then to direct the currents proceeding form the lotus flower between the eyes.

1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      A wider formula has been provided by the secular mind of mall of which the basis is the ethical sense; for it distinguishes between the emotions sanctioned by the ethical sense and those that are egoistic and selfishly common and mundane. It is the works of altruism, philanthropy, compassion, benevolence, humanitarianism, service, labour for the well-being of man and all creatures that are to be our Ideal; to shuffle off the coil of egoism and grow into a soul of self-abnegation that lives only or mainly for others or for humanity as a whole is the way of man's inner evolution according to this doctrine. Or if this is too secular and mental to satisfy the whole of our being, since there is a deeper religious and spiritual note there that is left out of account by the humanitarian formula, a religio-ethical foundation can be provided for it -and such was indeed its original basis. To the inner worship of the Divine or the Supreme by the devotion of the heart or to the pursuit of the Ineffable by the seeking of a highest knowledge can be added a worship through altruistic works or a preparation through acts of love, of benevolence, of service to mankind or to those around us. It is indeed by the religio-ethical sense that the law of universal goodwill or universal compassion or of love and service to the neighbour, the Vedantic, the Buddhistic, the Christian ideal, was created; only by a sort of secular refrigeration extinguishing the fervour of the religious element in it could the humanitarian ideal disengage itself and become the highest plane of a secular system of mental and moral ethics. For in the religious system this law of works is a means that ceases when its object is accomplished or a side issue; it is a part of the cult by which one adores and seeks the Divinity or it is a penultimate step of the excision of self in the passage to Nirvana. In the secular ideal it is promoted into an object in itself; it becomes a sign of the moral perfection of the human being, or else it is a condition for a happier state of man upon earth, a better society, a more united life of the race. But none of these things satisfy the demand of the soul that is placed before us by the integral Yoga.      Altruism, philanthropy, humanitarianism, service are flowers of the mental consciousness and are at best the mind's cold and pale imitation of the spiritual flame of universal Divine Love. Not truly liberative from ego-sense, they widen it at most and give it higher and larger satisfaction; impotent in practice to change mall's vital life and nature, they only modify and palliate its action and daub over its unchanged egoistic essence. Or if they are intensely followed with an entire sincerity of the will, it is by an exaggerated amplification of one side of our nature; in that exaggeration there can be no clue for the full and perfect divine evolution of the many sides of our individualised being towards the universal and transcendent Eternal. Nor can the religio-ethical ideal be a sufficient guide, -- for this is a compromise or compact of mutual concessions for mutual support between a religious urge which seeks to get a closer hold on earth by taking into itself the higher turns of ordinary human nature and an ethical urge which hopes to elevate itself out of its own mental hardness and dryness by some touch of a religious fervour. In making this compact religion lowers itself to the mental level and inherits the inherent imperfections of mind and its inability to convert and transform life. The mind is the sphere of the dualities and, just as it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute Truth but only truths relative or mixed with error, so it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute good; for moral good exists as a counterpart and corrective to evil and has evil always for its shadow, complement, almost its reason for existence. But the spiritual consciousness belongs to a higher than the mental plane and there the dualities cease; for there falsehood confronted with the truth by which it profited through a usurping falsification of it and evil faced by the good of which it was a perversion or a lurid substitute, are obliged to perish for want of sustenance and to cease. The integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes -- the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and supramental plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance.      It is the very nature of the soul or the psychic being to turn towards the Divine Truth as the sunflower to the sun; it accepts and clings to all that is divine or progressing towards divinity and draws back from all that is a perversion or a denial of it, from all that is false and undivine. Yet the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being, able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being -- "no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers -- and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity and ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature. This soul is obliged to accept the human mental, emotive, sensational life as it is, its relations, its activities, its cherished forms and figures; it has to labour to disengage and increase the divine element in all this relative truth mixed with continual falsifying error, this love turned to the uses of the animal body or the satisfaction of the vital ego, this life of an average manhood shot with rare and pale glimpses of Godhead and the darker luridities of the demon and the brute. Unerring in the essence of its will, it is obliged often under the pressure of its instruments to submit to mistakes of action, wrong placement of feeling, wrong choice of person, errors in the exact form of its will, in the circumstances of its expression of the infallible inner ideal. Yet is there a divination within it which makes it a surer guide than the reason or than even the highest desire, and through apparent errors and stumblings its voice can still lead better than the precise intellect and the considering mental judgment. This voice of the soul is not what we call conscience -- for that is only a mental and often conventional erring substitute; it is a deeper and more seldom heard call; yet to follow it when heard is wisest : even, it is better to wander at the call of one's soul than to go apparently straight with the reason and the outward moral mentor. But It is only when the life turns towards the Divine that the soul can truly come forward and impose its power on the outer members; for, itself a spark of the Divine, to grow in flame towards the Divine is its true life and its very reason of existence.      At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being hidden within and felt only in its rare influences is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. Its action is like a searchlight showing up all that has to be changed in the nature; it has in it a flame of will insistent on perfection, on an alchemic transmutation of all the inner and outer existence. It sees the divine essence everywhere but rejects the mere mask and the disguising figure. It insists on Truth, on will and strength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, but on a Truth of abiding Knowledge that surpasses the mere practical momentary truth of the Ignorance, on an inward joy and not on mere vital pleasure, -- for it prefers rather a purifying suffering and sorrow to degrading satisfactions, -- on love winged upward and not tied to the stake of egoistic craving or with its feet sunk in the mire, on beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternal, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but of the Spirit. Its will is for the divinisation of life, the expression through it of a higher Truth, its dedication to the Divine and the Eternal.

1.06_-_Incarnate_Teachers_and_Incarnation, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism      Wherever His name is spoken, that very place is holy. How much more so is the man who speaks His name, and with what veneration ought we to approach that man out of whom comes to us spiritual truth! Such great teachers of spiritual truth are indeed very few in number in this world, but the world is never altogether without them. They are always the fairest flowers of human life "the ocean of mercy without any motive".

1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendour appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter the image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. Our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.      --      It is possible so to turn life into an act of adoration to the Supreme by the spirit in one's works; for, says the Gita, "He who gives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a cup of water, I take and enjoy that offering of his devotion"; and it is not only any dedicated external gift that can be so offered with love and devotion, but all our thoughts, all our feelings and sensations, all our outward activities and their forms and objects can be such gifts to the Eternal. It is true that the special act or form of action has its importance, even a great importance, but it is the spirit in the act that is the essential factor; the spirit of which it is the symbol or materialised expression gives it its whole value and justifying significance. Or it may be said that a complete act of divine love and worship has in it three parts that are the expressions of a single whole, - a practical worship of the Divine in the act, a symbol of worship in the form of the act expressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, an inner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling of oneness in the heart and soul and spirit. It is so that life can be changed into worship, - by putting behind it the spirit of a transcendent and universal love, the seeking of oneness, the sense of oneness; by making each act a symbol, an expression of Godward emotion or a relation with the Divine; by turning all we do into an act of worship, an act of the soul's communion, the mind's understanding, the life's obedience, the heart's surrender.

1.06_-_The_Four_Powers_of_the_Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      5:The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put out in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds to intervene, to govern, to battle and conquer, to lead and turn their cycles, to direct the total and the individual lines of their forces. These Emanations are the many divine forms and personalities in which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhutis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhutis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence. All the scenes of the earth-play have been like a drama arranged and planned and staged by her with the cosmic Gods for her assistants and herself as a veiled actor.

1.06_-_The_Sign_of_the_Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   or less latent preliminary stage, which would then be followed   by the fructification the flower and the fruit. In Joachim's day   the fruition was still in abeyance, but one could observe far and

1.06_-_The_Transformation_of_Dream_Life, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism    p. 192    spiritual organs we can form none other than the confused conceptions of it described above. It is only in so far present for us as, for instance, the world of sense could be for a being equipped with no more than rudimentary eyes. That is why we can see nothing in this world but counterfeits and reflections of daily life. The latter are perceptible to us because our own soul paints its daily experiences in pictorial form into the substance of which that other world consists. It must be clearly understood that in addition to our ordinary conscious work-a-day life we lead a second, unconscious life in that other world. We engrave in it all our thoughts and perceptions. These tracings only become visible when the lotus flowers are developed. Now, in every human being there are slender rudiments of these lotus flowers. We cannot perceive by means of them during waking consciousness because the impressions made on them are very faint. We cannot see the stars during the daytime for a similar reason: their visibility is extinguished by the mighty glare of the sun. Thus, too, the faint spiritual impressions cannot make themselves felt in the face    p. 193   --      Now, when the gate of the senses is closed during sleep, these other impressions begin to emerge confusedly, and the dreamer becomes aware of experiences in another world. But as already explained, these experiences consist at first merely of pictures engraved in the spiritual world by our mental activity attached to the physical senses. Only developed lotus flowers make it possible for manifestations not derived from the physical world to be imprinted in the same way. And then the etheric body, when developed, brings full knowledge concerning these engraved impressions derived from other worlds.      --      When the student has thus raised himself to a life in the higher ego, or rather during his acquisition of the higher consciousness, he will learn how to stir to life the spiritual perceptive force in the organ of the heart and control it through the currents described in the foregoing chapter. This perceptive force is an element of higher sustainability, which proceeds from the organ in question and flows with beautiful radiance through the moving lotus flowers and the other channels of the developed etheric body. Thence it radiates outward into the surrounding spiritual world rendering it spiritually visible, just as the sunlight falling on the objects of the physical world renders them visible.

1.06_-_Yun_Men's_Every_Day_is_a_Good_Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen   Beneath his feet clouds arise.*   'Round Subhuti's cliff, the flowers make a mess;   **Where is he The stupid fellow! He's   --   "The mists overhang." But even something entirely different   would just be '"Round Subhuti's cliff, the flowers make a   mess." It is still necessary to tum beyond That Side. Haven't   you read how as Subhuti was sitting in silent meditation in a   cliffside cave, the gods showered down flowers to praise him.   The venerable Subhuti said, "flowers are showering down   from the sky in praise; whose doing is this?" A god said, "I am   --   wisdom." And again he caused the earth to tremble, and show   ered down flowers.   Hsueh Tou once made up another verse about this:   --   Subhuti did not know how to sit upon a cliff;   He brought on the heavenly flowers and the shaking   of the earth.   When the king of gods is shaking the earth and raining down   flowers, at this point where else will you go to hide? Hsueh   Tou also said,

1.07_-_A_MAD_TEA-PARTY, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction   "At any rate, I'll never go _there_ again!" said Alice, as she picked her way through the wood. "It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!" Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. "That's very curious!" she thought. "I think I may as well go in at once." And in she went.   Once more she found herself in the long hall and close to the little glass table. Taking the little golden key, she unlocked the door that led into the garden. Then she set to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high; then she walked down the little passage; and _then_--she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.

1.07_-_Hui_Ch'ao_Asks_about_Buddha, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen   The pattern is already showing.*   Deep within the flowers partridges are calling.   **What's the use of this chatter He is   --   this-this is "In the river country the spring wind isn't blow   ing; deep within the flowers partridges are calling." These two   lines are just one line. But say, where is Hsueh Tou's meaning?   --   (They say that) this scene-even if the spring wind doesn't   blow in the river country, still "deep within the flowers par   tridges are calling"-is used to compare the endless haggling   over these words everywhere to the partridges crying deep in   the flowers. But what relevance has this? How far they are from   knowing that these two lines of Hsueh Tou's are but a single   --   "You are Hui Ch'ao." Hsueh Tou says, "In the river country   the spring wind isn't blowing; deep within the flowers par   tridges call." If you can make the grade here, you will be able to

1.07_-_The_Three_Schools_of_Magick_2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy        Yea! I gave her of the flower of my youth.      --        Yet I worshipped her, and gave her of the flower of my youth.

1.08_-_Adhyatma_Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism      32. Behold the Lord in the effulgence of the sun, in the fragrance of flowers, in the brilliance of fire, in the sapidity of water, in the birds, beasts, in the air, ether, in the mind, intellect, in the heart, in the sound, in music.      --      43. Sattvic food helps Yoga Sadhana. Take green gram, spinach, milk, fruits, barley, bread, Lauki, bitter-gourd, plantain stem and flower, and cows ghee. These augment vitality, energy, vigour, health, joy and cheerfulness. They are delicious, bland, substantial and agreeable.

1.08_-_The_Three_Schools_of_Magick_3, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy      There is no good purpose, even were there license, to discuss the nature of the basis of scientific attainment which is the core of the doctrines of the Society. It is only necessary to point out that its correspondence with alchemy is the one genuine fact on the subject which has been allowed to transpire; for the Rosicrucian, as indicated by his central symbol, the barren cross on which he has made a rose to flower, occupies himself primarily with spiritual and physiological alchemy. Taking for "The First Matter of the Work a neutral or inert substance (it is constantly described as the commonest and least valued thing on earth, and may actually connote any substance whatever) he deliberately poisons it, so to speak, bringing it to a stage of transmutation generally called the Black Dragon, and he proceeds to work upon this virulent poison until he obtains the perfection theoretically possible.

1.09_-_Concentration_-_Its_Spiritual_Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset      What results from this constant meditation? We must remember how in a previous aphorism Patanjali went into the various states of meditation, how the first would be the gross, the second the fine, and from them the advance was to still finer objects. The result of these meditations is that we can meditate as easily on the fine as on the gross objects. Here the Yogi sees the three things, the receiver, the received, and the receiving instrument, corresponding to the Soul, external objects, and the mind. There are three objects of meditation given us. First, the gross things, as bodies, or material objects; second, fine things, as the mind, the Chitta; and third, the Purusha qualified, not the Purusha itself, but the Egoism. By practice, the Yogi gets established in all these meditations. Whenever he meditates he can keep out all other thoughts; he becomes identified with that on which he meditates. When he meditates, he is like a piece of crystal. Before flowers the crystal becomes almost identified with the flowers. If the flower is red, the crystal looks red, or if the flower is blue, the crystal looks blue.

11.01_-_The_Eternal_Day_The_Souls_Choice_and_the_Supreme_Consummation, #Savitri, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   A chanting crowd from mountain bosoms slipped   Past branches fragrant with a sigh of flowers   Hurrying through sweetnesses with revel leaps;   --   Nestling for shelter in their emerald sky:   Faery flower-masses looked with laughing eyes.      --      As if the choric calyx of a flower   Aerial, visible on music's waves,   --   Had come to birth in him and taken fire:   The secret whisper of the flower and star   Revealed its meaning in his fathomless look.   --   And lovely is the memory of their feet   Amid the wonder-flowers of Paradise:   A heavier tread is mine, a mightier touch.   --      Faint seeds of light and bliss bear sorrowful flowers,   Faint harmonies caught from a half-heard song   --   The pains of hell shall be to thee my kiss,   The flowers of heaven persuade thee with my touch.      --   She kept within her strong embosoming soul   Like a flower hidden in the heart of spring   The soul of Satyavan drawn down by her

1.1.02_-_Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      Now that is what consciousness is - it is not composed of parts, it is fundamental to being and itself formulates any parts it chooses to manifest - developing them from above downward by a progressive coming down from spiritual levels towards the evolution in matter or formulating them in an upward working in the front by this process that we call evolution. If it chooses to work in you through the sense of ego, you think that it is the clear-cut individual I that does everything; if it begins to release itself from that limited working, then you too either begin to expand your sense of I till it bursts into infinity and no longer exists or to shed it and flower into spiritual wideness. Of course this is not what is spoken of in modern materialistic thought as consciousness, because that thought is governed by science.

1.10_-_Concentration_-_Its_Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset      Now we shall understand the aphorism that the states of the qualities are defined, undefined, indicated only, and signess. By the "defined" are meant the gross elements, which we can sense. By the "undefined" are meant the very fine materials, the Tanmatras, which cannot be sensed by ordinary men. If you practise Yoga, however, says Patanjali, after a while your perceptions will become so fine that you will actually see the Tanmatras. For instance, you have heard how every man has a certain light about him; every living being emits a certain light, and this, he says, can be seen by the Yogi. We do not all see it, but we all throw out these Tanmatras, just as a flower continuously sends out fine particles which enable us to smell it. Every day of our lives we throw out a mass of good or evil, and everywhere we go the atmosphere is full of these materials. That is how there came to the human mind, unconsciously, the idea of building temples and churches. Why should man build churches in which to worship God? Why not worship Him anywhere? Even if he did not know the reason, man found that the place where people worshipped God became full of good Tanmatras. Every day people go there, and the more they go the holier they get, and the holier that place becomes. If any man who has not much Sattva in him goes there, the place will influence him and arouse his Sattva quality. Here, therefore, is the significance of all temples and holy places, but you must remember that their holiness depends on holy people congregating there. The difficulty with man is that he forgets the original meaning, and puts the cart before the horse. It was men who made these places holy, and then the effect became the cause and made men holy. If the wicked only were to go there, it would become as bad as any other place. It is not the building, but the people that make a church, and that is what we always forget. That is why sages and holy persons, who have much of this Sattva quality, can send it out and exert a tremendous influence day and night on their surroundings. A man may become so pure that his purity will become tangible. Whosoever comes in contact with him becomes pure.      --      This is, again, Sankhya philosophy. We have seen from the same philosophy that from the lowest form up to intelligence all is nature; beyond nature are Purushas (souls), which have no qualities. Then how does the soul appear to be happy or unhappy? By reflection. If a red flower is put near a piece of pure crystal, the crystal appears to be red, similarly the appearances of happiness or unhappiness of the soul are but reflections. The soul itself has no colouring. The soul is separate from nature. Nature is one thing, soul another, eternally separate. The Sankhyas say that intelligence is a compound, that it grows and wanes, that it changes, just as the body changes, and that its nature is nearly the same as that of the body. As a finger-nail is to the body, so is body to intelligence. The nail is a part of the body, but it can be pared off hundreds of times, and the body will still last. Similarly, the intelligence lasts aeons, while this body can be "pared off," thrown off. Yet intelligence cannot be immortal because it changes growing and waning. Anything that changes cannot be immortal. Certainly intelligence is manufactured, and that very fact shows us that there must be something beyond that. It cannot be free, everything connected with matter is in nature, and, therefore, bound for ever. Who is free? The free must certainly be beyond cause and effect. If you say that the idea of freedom is a delusion, I shall say that the idea of bondage is also a delusion. Two facts come into our consciousness, and stand or fall with each other. These are our notions of bondage and freedom. If we want to go through a wall, and our head bumps against that wall, we see we are limited by that wall. At the same time we find a willpower, and think we can direct our will everywhere. At every step these contradictory ideas come to us. We have to believe that we are free, yet at every moment we find we are not free. If one idea is a delusion, the other is also a delusion, and if one is true, the other also is true, because both stand upon the same basis consciousness. The Yogi says, both are true; that we are bound so far as intelligence goes, that we are free so far as the soul is concerned. It is the real nature of man, the soul, the Purusha, which is beyond all law of causation. Its freedom is percolating through layers of matter in various forms, intelligence, mind, etc. It is its light which is shining through all. Intelligence has no light of its own. Each organ has a particular centre in the brain; it is not that all the organs have one centre; each organ is separate. Why do all perceptions harmonise? Where do they get their unity? If it were in the brain, it would be necessary for all the organs, the eyes, the nose, the ears, etc., to have one centre only, while we know for certain that there are different centres for each. Both a man can see and hear at the same time, so a unity must be there at the back of intelligence. Intelligence is connected with the brain, but behind intelligence even stands the Purusha, the unit, where all different sensations and perceptions join and become one. The soul itself is the centre where all the different perceptions converge and become unified. That soul is free, and it is its freedom that tells you every moment that you are free. But you mistake, and mingle that freedom every moment with intelligence and mind. You try to attribute that freedom to the intelligence, and immediately find that intelligence is not free; you attribute that freedom to the body, and immediately nature tells you that you are again mistaken. That is why there is this mingled sense of freedom and bondage at the same time. The Yogi analyses both what is free and what is bound, and his ignorance vanishes. He finds that the Purusha is free, is the essence of that knowledge which, coming through the Buddhi, becomes intelligence, and, as such, is bound.

1.11_-_Delight_of_Existence_-_The_Problem, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   16:We must first make it clear to ourselves that just as when we speak of universal consciousness we mean something different from, more essential and wider than the waking mental consciousness of the human being, so also when we speak of universal delight of existence we mean something different from, more essential and wider than the ordinary emotional and sensational pleasure of the individual human creature. Pleasure, joy and delight, as man uses the words, are limited and occasional movements which depend on certain habitual causes and emerge, like their opposites pain and grief which are equally limited and occasional movements, from a background other than themselves. Delight of being is universal, illimitable and self-existent, not dependent on particular causes, the background of all backgrounds, from which pleasure, pain and other more neutral experiences emerge. When delight of being seeks to realise itself as delight of becoming, it moves in the movement of force and itself takes different forms of movement of which pleasure and pain are positive and negative currents. Subconscient in Matter, superconscient beyond Mind this delight seeks in Mind and Life to realise itself by emergence in the becoming, in the increasing self-consciousness of the movement. Its first phenomena are dual and impure, move between the poles of pleasure and pain, but it aims at its self-revelation in the purity of a supreme delight of being which is self-existent and independent of objects and causes. Just as Sachchidananda moves towards the realisation of the universal existence in the individual and of the form-exceeding consciousness in the form of body and mind, so it moves towards the realisation of universal, self-existent and objectless delight in the flux of particular experiences and objects. Those objects we now seek as stimulating causes of a transient pleasure and satisfaction; free, possessed of self, we shall not seek but shall possess them as reflectors rather than causes of a delight which eternally exists.   17:In the egoistic human being, the mental person emergent out of the dim shell of matter, delight of existence is neutral, semilatent, still in the shadow of the subconscious, hardly more than a concealed soil of plenty covered by desire with a luxuriant growth of poisonous weeds and hardly less poisonous flowers, the pains and pleasures of our egoistic existence. When the divine conscious-force working secretly in us has devoured these growths of desire, when in the image of the Rig Veda the fire of God has burnt up the shoots of earth, that which is concealed at the roots of these pains and pleasures, their cause and secret being, the sap of delight in them, will emerge in new forms not of desire, but of self-existent satisfaction which will replace mortal pleasure by the Immortal's ecstasy. And this transformation is possible because these growths of sensation and emotion are in their essential being, the pains no less than the pleasures, that delight of existence which they seek but fail to reveal, - fail because of division, ignorance of self and egoism.

1.11_-_Higher_Laws, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy      If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist.      --      We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. That in which men differ from brute beasts, says Mencius, is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully. Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. A command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the minds approximation to God. Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.

1.11_-_Oneness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga   Feeling itself one with That, it wants to be as vast as That, as universal as That, and to rediscover its innate Totality. To be and to be fully is Nature's aim in us . . . and to be fully is to be all that is. 150 We need totality because we are the Totality. The ideal that beckons us, the goal that guides our steps, is not really in front; it does not draw us,   but pushes us; it is behind as well as in front and inside. Evolution is the eternal blossoming of a flower that was always a flower. Without this seed in the depths nothing would move, because nothing would need anything. This is the world's Need this is our eternal being.   This is our brother of light, who sometimes emerges when all seems lost, the sunlit memory that churns us again and again and will not leave us in peace until we have recovered all our Sun. This is our cosmic center, as the psychic was our individual center. But this central being is not located in a particular point; it is in all points,

1.11_-_The_Master_of_the_Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      For there is yet a third intensely close and personal aspect of the Master of Works which is a key to his sublimest hidden mystery and ecstasy; for he detaches from the secret of the hidden Transcendence and the ambiguous display of the cosmic Movement an, individual Power of the Divine that can mediate between the two and bridge our passage from the one to the other.. In this aspect the transcendent and universal person of the Divine conforms itself to our individualised personality and accepts a personal relation with us, at once identified with us as our supreme Self and yet close and different as our Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher, our Father and our Mother our Playmate in the great world-game who has disguised himself throughout as friend and enemy, helper and opponent and, in all relations and in all workings that affect us, has led our steps towards our perfection and our release. It is through this more personal manifestation that we are admitted to some possibility of the complete transcendental experience; for in him we meet the One not merely in a liberated calm and peace, not merely with a passive or active submission in our works or through the mystery of union with a universal Knowledge and Power filling and guiding us, but with an ecstasy of divine Love and divine Delight that shoots up beyond silent Witness and active World-Power to some positive divination of a greater beatific secret. For it is riot so much knowledge leading to some ineffable Absolute, not so much works lifting us beyond world-process to the originating supreme Knower and Master, but rather this thing most intimate to us, yet at present most obscure, which keeps for us wrapt in its passionate yell the deep and rapturous secret of the transcendent Godhead and some absolute positiveness of its perfect Being, its all-concentrating Bliss, its mystic Ananda.      But the individual relation with the Divine does not always or from the beginning bring into force a widest enlargement or a highest self-exceeding. At first this Godhead close to our being or immanent within us can be felt fully only in the scope of our personal nature and experience, a Leader and Master, a Guide and Teacher, a Friend and Lover, or else a Spirit, Power or Presence, constituting and uplifting our upward and enlarging movement by the force of his intimate reality inhabiting the heart or presiding over our nature from above even our highest intelligence. It is our personal evolution that is his preoccupation, a personal relation that is our joy and fulfilment, the building of our nature into his divine image that is our self-finding and perfection. The outside world seems to exist only as a field for this growth and a provider of materials or of helping and opposing forces for its successive stages. Our works done in that world are his works, but even when they serve some temporary universal end, their main purpose for us is to make outwardly dynamic or give inward power to our relations with this immanent Divine. Many seekers ask for no more or see the continuation and fulfilment of this spiritual flowering only in heavens beyond; the union is consummated and made perpetual in an eternal dwelling-place of his perfection, joy and beauty. But this is not enough for the integral seeker; however intense and beautiful, a personal isolated achievement cannot be his whole aim or his entire existence. A time must come when the personal opens out to the universal; our very individuality, spiritual, mental, vital, physical even, becomes universalised: it is seen as a power of his universal force and cosmic spirit, or else it contains the universe m that ineffable wideness which comes to the individual consciousness when it breaks its bonds and flows upward towards the Transcendent and on every side into the Infinite.

1.1.2_-_Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   there the real man, the Purusha: here are gods, there is the Divine:   here is the attempt to exist, Life flowering out of an all-devouring   death, there Existence itself and a dateless immortality.

1.12_-_The_Left-Hand_Path_.The_Black_Brothers., #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy        So we enter the earth, and there is a veiled figure, in absolute darkness. Yet it is perfectly possible to see in it, so that the minutest details do not escape us. And upon the root of one flower he pours acid so that the root writhes as if in torture. And another he cuts, and the shriek is like the shriek of a Mandrake, torn up by the roots. And another he sears with fire, and yet another he anoints with oil.      --        And he says: I tell thee not. Thou tellest thyself, for thou hast pondered thereupon for many days, and hast not found light. And now that thou art called NEMO, the answer to every riddle that thou hast not found shall spring up in thy mind, unsought. Who can tell upon what day a flower shall bloom?      --        All these words are heard by everyone that is called NEMO. And with that doth he apply himself to understanding. And he must understand the virtue of the waters of death, and he must understand the virtue of the sun and of the wind, and of the worm that turneth the earth, and of the stars that roof in the garden. And he must understand the separate nature and property of every flower, or how shall he tend his garden?      --        And whoso passeth into the outermost Abyss, except he be of them that understand, holdeth out his hands, and boweth his neck, unto the Chains of Choronzon. And as a devil he walketh about the earth, immortal, and be blasteth the flowers of the earth, and he corrupteth the fresh air, and he maketh poisonous the water; and the fire that is the friend of man, and the pledge of his aspiration, seeing that it mounteth ever up- ward as a Pyramid, and seeing that man stole it in a hollow tube from Heaven, even that fire he turneth into ruin, and madness, and fever, and destruction. And thou, that art an heap of dry dust in the city of the Pyramids, must understand these things.