KEYS (10k)
158 Sri Aurobindo
119 The Mother
14 Sri Ramana Maharshi
12 Aleister Crowley
9 Anonymous
8 Joseph Campbell
6 Sri Ramakrishna
6 Manly P Hall
6 Ken Wilber
5 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
5 Peter J Carroll
4 Georg C Lichtenberg
4 Chamtrul Rinpoche
3 Saint Augustine of Hippo
3 Plato
3 Patrul Rinpoche
3 Jorge Luis Borges
3 Jordan Peterson
3 James S A Corey
3 Jalaluddin Rumi
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
3 Epictetus
3 C S Lewis
3 Bertrand Russell
3 Alfred Korzybski
3 Albert Einstein
2 Thomas Keating
2 Swami Vivekananda
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Robert Heinlein
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 Rabindranath Tagore
2 Oscar Wilde
2 M Alan Kazlev
2 Ibn Arabi
2 Gary Gygax
1 Zoroaster
1 Yogani
1 Yiddish Proverb
1 Yamamoto Tsunetomo
1 Winston Churchill
1 William Faulkner
1 William Allen White
1 Waking Life
1 Viktor Frankl
1 Vikings
1 Venerable Bede
1 T S Eliot
1 Thomas Moore
1 Thomas Merton
1 Thich Nhat Hanh
1 The Sophia of Jesus (excerpt)
1 Terry Pratchett
1 Tenzin Deva
1 Tecumseh
1 Swami Sivananda
1 Swami Satyananda Saraswati
1 Stephen LaBerge
1 Stephen Hawkings
1 Sri Chinmoy
1 Simone de Beauvoir
1 Shakespeare
1 Seraphim of Sarov
1 Saul Williams
1 Sanjay
1 Saint Thomas Aquinas
1 Saint Luke
1 Saint John of the Cross
1 Saint John Climacus
1 Saint Benedict of Nursia
1 Saint Augustine
1 Saichō
1 Rosch
1 Robert Kegan
1 Richard P Feynman
1 Richard Dawkins
1 René Guénon
1 Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch?
1 Proverbs
1 Proclus
1 Plotinus
1 Philip K Dick
1 P D Ouspensky
1 Paulo Coelho
1 Paramahansa Yogananda
1 Owen Barfield
1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
1 Nirodbaran
1 Niels Bohr
1 Nichiren
1 Nelson Mandela
1 Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche
1 Mother Teresa
1 Mortimer J Adler
1 Monty Oum
1 Michio Kaku
1 Meister Eckhart
1 Martin Luther King Jr.
1 Mark Twain
1 Marcus Tullius Cicero
1 Marcus Aurelius
1 Manly P Hall (Resurrection 1964
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 Longchenpa
1 Lewis Carroll
1 Lewis B Smedes
1 Larry Wall
1 Lao Tzu
1 Koran
1 Ken Wilber?
1 Karen Blixen
1 Kahlil Gibran
1 Kabir
1 Julian Huxley
1 JohnyTex
1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 Jiddu Krishnamurti
1 Jean Piaget
1 JB
1 James V. Schall
1 James George Frazer
1 James Clerk Maxwell
1 Italo Calvino
1 Israel Regardie
1 Isaac Asimov
1 Integral Yoga; Sri Aurobindo's Teaching and Method of Practice
1 Imam al-Ghazali
1 Howard Gardner
1 Homer
1 Hippocrates
1 Hermann Hesse
1 Henry David Thoreau
1 Henepola Gunaratana
1 Hazrat Inayat Khan
1 Hayao Miyazaki
1 Haruki Murakami
1 Gyatrul Rinpoche
1 Guy Steele
1 G Santayana
1 George Carlin
1 George Bernard Shaw
1 Fyodor Dostoevsky
1 Friedrich Schiller
1 Francis Bacon
1 Eugene Paul Wigner
1 Essential Integral
1 Ernest Becker
1 Emerald Tablet
1 Eliphas Levi
1 Edward Vernon Rickenbacker
1 Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
1 Dzogchen Rinpoche III
1 Dr Alok Pandey
1 Dion Fortune
1 Daniel C Matt
1 Dalai Lama
1 Claudio Naranjo
1 Charles Haddon Spurgeon
1 Carl Jung
1 Buddhist Proverb
1 Brian Tracy
1 Brandon Sanderson
1 Bodhidharma
1 Blessed Cardinal Newman
1 Ayn Rand
1 Augustus De Morgan
1 Arthur Schopenhauer
1 Amir Khusrau
1 Aldous Huxley
1 Albert Camus
1 Advanced Integral
1 Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri
1 Abraham Maslow
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
16 Anonymous
7 Rumi
5 William Shakespeare
5 Johnny Hunt
4 Mahatma Gandhi
4 J K Rowling
4 Horace
4 George Herbert
4 Aesop
3 Winston S Churchill
3 Wayne W Dyer
3 Toba Beta
3 Plato
3 Ovid
3 Mitch Albom
3 Homer
3 Ellen Hopkins
3 Cassandra Clare
3 Adolf Hitler
2 Winston Churchill
| 1:What we give to the poor, we lend to God. ~ Homer, #KEYS |
| 2:Give your weakness to one who helps. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS |
| 3:True love gives rise to the eyes of clarity. ~ Tenzin Deva, #KEYS |
| 4:I am yours. Don't give myself back to me. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS |
| 5:Give me chastity and continence, but not yet. ~ Saint Augustine, #KEYS |
| 6:Surrender everything at His feet and give Him the general power of attorney. Let Him do what He considers best for you. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS |
7:You've taken away my looks, my identity, by just a glance.
By making me drink the wine of love-potion,
You've intoxicated me by just a glance;
My fair, delicate wrists with green bangles in them,
Have been held tightly by you with just a glance.
I give my life to you, Oh my cloth-dyer,
You've dyed me in yourself, by just a glance.
I give my whole life to you Oh, Nijam,
You've made me your bride, by just a glance. ~ Amir Khusrau,#KEYS |
8:What is to give light must endure the burning.
~ Viktor Frankl,#KEYS |
9:Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realize.
~ Swami Sivananda,#KEYS |
| 10:Give the mind to studies and the heart to God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS |
| 11:Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. ~ Oscar Wilde, #KEYS |
| 12:If you want to give God a good laugh, tell Him your plans. ~ Yiddish Proverb, #KEYS |
13:Forgiveness is the perfume which flowers give when trampled upon.
~ Mark Twain,#KEYS |
| 14:Give up your thirst for books, so that you do not die a grouch. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #KEYS |
| 15:Quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. ~ Winston Churchill, #KEYS |
| 16:Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden, #KEYS |
17:Alone the Divine can give us a perfect safety.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
| 18:If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence. ~ Lao Tzu, #KEYS |
19:Give Me a moment of your life, I shall take care of your all lives.
~ Sanjay, The Mother,#KEYS |
| 20:Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS |
| 21:The greatest gift that you can give your teacher is doing your practice. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS |
| 22:To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.~ Lewis B Smedes, #KEYS |
| 23:Why read? Because we are given more than we are. ~ James V. Schall, Another Sort of Learning, #KEYS |
24:Don't give up. Normally it is the last key on the ring which opens the door.
~ Paulo Coelho,#KEYS |
| 25:Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #KEYS |
| 26:Faith is a dark night for man, but in this very way it gives him light. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #KEYS |
| 27:I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All. ~ Plotinus, #KEYS |
28:Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
~ William Faulkner,#KEYS |
| 29:Before you heal someone, ask him if he's willing to give up the things that made him sick. ~ Hippocrates, #KEYS |
| 30:You become what you give your attention to. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS |
| 31:Act well your given part; the choice rests not with you. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS |
| 32:This therefore is Mathematics: She reminds you of the invisible forms of the soul; She gives life to her own discoveraies; She awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; She brings light to our intrinsic ideas; She abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth. ~ Proclus, #KEYS |
| 33:Only law can give us freedom. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #KEYS |
| 34:I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much. ~ Mother Teresa, #KEYS |
| 35:I never give answers. I lead on from one question to another. That is my leadership. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #KEYS |
36:Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer,#KEYS |
37:To every man is given a key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.
~ Buddhist Proverb,#KEYS |
38:His soul was freed and given to her alone.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother, [T5],#KEYS |
39:He who to some gives victory, joy and good,
To some gives rest. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To R.,#KEYS |
| 40:If you give someone Fortran, he has Fortran. If you give someone Lisp, he has any language he pleases ~ Guy Steele, #KEYS |
41:And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
~ Nelson Mandela,#KEYS |
| 42:The gods cannot, if they would, give themselves unasked. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #KEYS |
43:Whoever gives nothing, has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.
~ Albert Camus,#KEYS |
| 44:Only the one who can give everything, enjoys the Divine All everywhere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T3], #KEYS |
45:Aviation is proof that given, the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible.
~ Edward Vernon Rickenbacker,#KEYS |
46:Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom.
~ Henepola Gunaratana,#KEYS |
47:Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
~ Anonymous, The Bible, Matthew 11:28,#KEYS |
| 48:A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power. ~ Brian Tracy, #KEYS |
| 49:In all created things discern the providence and wisdom of God, and in all things give Him thanks. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #KEYS |
50:Alike ‘tis heaven,
Rule or obedience to the one heart given. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Khaled of the Sea,#KEYS |
| 51:Nothing can be done by the weak and so nothing is given to the weak. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Bhawanipur Speech, #KEYS |
| 52:Our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circumstance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS |
| 53:Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life. ~ Terry Pratchett, Jingo, #KEYS |
| 54:Love, joy and happiness come from the psychic. The Self gives peace or a universal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS |
55:We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
~ Plato,#KEYS |
| 56:If they give it to the rich they call it a subsidy; if they give it to the poor they call it a hand-out. ~ Martin Luther King Jr., #KEYS |
57:Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest.
~ Sri Chinmoy,#KEYS |
| 58:The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS |
| 59:Two works of mercy set a person free: Forgive and you will be forgiven, and give and you will receive. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS |
| 60:The future is in the hands of those who can give tomorrow's generations valid reasons to live and hope. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS |
61:That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.
~ Simone de Beauvoir,#KEYS |
| 62:That which you give to another will become your own sustenance; if you light a lamp for another, your own way will be lit. ~ Nichiren, #KEYS |
63:I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.
~ Anonymous, The Bible, John 14:16, [T0],#KEYS |
64:Let us give ourselves without reserve to the Divine, so best shall we receive the Divine Grace.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
| 65:The guru is always ready to give what can be given, if the disciple can receive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Guru, #KEYS |
| 66:What gives the force and joy of the work is however not physical but vital. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Work and Yoga, #KEYS |
67:Every symbol was a reality
And brought the presence which had given it life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS |
| 68:The true quiet is within and no other will give you the condition you want. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Quiet and Calm, #KEYS |
| 69:To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #KEYS |
70:Always joyfully accept what is given you by the Divine.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Gratitude and Faithfulness, GRATITUDE [155],#KEYS |
| 71:Death is just a concept. Reinterpret it. Give it a more magical sense. Accept the disappearance towards a transformation. ~ Claudio Naranjo, #KEYS |
| 72:A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans. ~ Italo Calvino, #KEYS |
73:For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.
~ Anonymous, The Bible?,#KEYS |
| 74:The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. ~ Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, #KEYS |
75:Let us give joy to all, for joy is ours.
For not for ourselves alone our spirits came ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Return to Earth,#KEYS |
| 76:One can give not only one’s soul, but all one’s powers to the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Consecration and Offering, #KEYS |
77:The Lord gives wisdom (sophia), from his face come knowledge (gnosis) and understanding (sunesis)
~ Anonymous, The Bible, Proverbs 2.6, [T5],#KEYS |
78:Our mind perhaps deceives us with its words
And gives the name of doom to our own choice; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS |
| 79:The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, #KEYS |
| 80:Love does not grow on trees or brought in the market, but if one wants to be "loved" one must first know how to give unconditional love. ~ Kabir, #KEYS |
| 81:Whenever I meet someone I try to look for their positive qualities, which immediately gives me a feeling of connectedness with them ~ Dalai Lama, #KEYS |
82:Lord, Thou hast told us: Do not give way, hold tight. It is when everything seems lost that all is saved.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS |
| 83:Beware! Don't allow yourself to do what you know is wrong, relying on the thought, Later I will repent and ask God's forgiveness. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS |
84:Give all that you have, this is the beginning; give all that you do, this is the way; give all that you are, this is the fulfilment.
~ The Mother,#KEYS |
| 85:That which refuses to give itself, is still the food of the cosmic Powers ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Agni, the Illumined Will, #KEYS |
| 86:This is our special duty, that if anyone specially needs our help, we should give him such help to the utmost of our power. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #KEYS |
87:We shouldn't stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination.
~ Hayao Miyazaki,#KEYS |
88:I give peace to the humble and the great,
And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS |
89:Progress: to be ready, at every minute, to give up all one is and all one has in order to advance on the way.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS |
| 90:Reason only gives to Force the plan of its action and a system to administer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Curve of the Rational Age, #KEYS |
91:Authors of earth’s high change, to you it is given
To cross the dangerous spaces of the soul ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest,#KEYS |
| 92:If you already have a person's love no sacrifice can be too much to give for it; but any sacrifice is too great to buy it for you. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #KEYS |
| 93:Love is in its nature the desire to give oneself to others and to receive others in exchange. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Ascent of Life, #KEYS |
| 94:Any proposition containing the word "is" creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies. ~ Alfred Korzybski, #KEYS |
| 95:Complete surrender does require that you have no desire of your own. You must be satisfied with whatever God gives you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, By As You Are, #KEYS |
| 96:After all it is the will in the being that gives to circumstances their value. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, “Is India Civilised?” - III, #KEYS |
| 97:By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals. And, of course, mere mortals have never really forgiven LISP for not catering to them. ~ Larry Wall, #KEYS |
| 98:Action in the world is given us first as a means for our self-development and self-fulfilment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work, #KEYS |
| 99:Every society represents a collective being and he owes to it all that he can give it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason, #KEYS |
100:I give order to those who are perfectly and totally surrendered, as these orders cannot be discussed or disobeyed.
~ The Mother, More Answers From The Mother,#KEYS |
| 101:The creative operation of God does not simply mold us like soft clay. It is a Fire that animates all it touches...that gives life. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS |
| 102:We must know how to give our life and also our death, our happiness and also our suffering. With my blessings. ~ The Mother, Mantras of the Mother, 28 December, #KEYS |
103:Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.
~ Albert Einstein, Einstein and the Poet,#KEYS |
104:The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS |
| 105:The sot drinks, and is drunken: the coward drinks not, and shivers: the wise man, brave and free, drinks, and gives glory to the Most High God. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS |
106:It has joined its hunger to the hunger of earth,
It has given the law of craving to our lives, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms of the Little Life,#KEYS |
| 107:The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been kindness, beauty, and truth ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS |
| 108:Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question.[A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.] ~ Niels Bohr, #KEYS |
| 109:He was no fool or Utopian who wished to be the maker of songs for his country rather than its law giver. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Work and Ideal, #KEYS |
110:All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise, express the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Good, 148,#KEYS |
111:The mighty daemon lies unshaped within,
To evoke, to give it form is Nature’s task. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS |
112:To be receptive is to feel the urge to give and the joy of giving to the Divine's Work all one has, all one is, all one does.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
| 113:All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise, express the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Good, #KEYS |
| 114:All life is the play of universal forces. The individual gives a personal form to these universal forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #KEYS |
115:We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS |
| 116:A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS |
117:Life and treasure and fame to cast on the wings of a moment,
Fiercer joy than this the gods have not given to mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS |
| 118:The dayspring from on high has visited us, to give light to them that sit in the darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace. ~ Saint Luke, #KEYS |
| 119:It is often the experience that when one gives up the insistence of desire for a thing, then the thing itself comes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS |
| 120:Physical science may give clues of process, but cannot lay hold on the reality of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Rebirth and Soul Evolution, #KEYS |
| 121:The nature of art is to strive after a nobler beauty and more sustained perfection than life can give. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I, #KEYS |
| 122:Equality of soul created by the surrender to the universal Wisdom gives us a supreme peace and calm. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Agni, the Illumined Will, #KEYS |
123:Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;
Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS |
124:Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;
Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS |
125:For man, below the god, above the brute,
Is given the calm reason as his guide;
He is not driven by an unthinking will ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS |
| 126:Knowledge is still incomplete if it gives us only an idea and cannot verify it in experience; ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Realisation of Sachchidananda, #KEYS |
127:Thy acts are thy helpers, all events are signs,
Waking and sleep are opportunities
Given to thee by an immortal Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS |
128:I am the giver of the bowl of rice,
I am the worshipped Angel of the House.
I am in all that suffers and that cries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS |
129:For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit,
~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians 12:8,#KEYS |
130:The most precious gift that you could ever give to somebody is the Dharma.
The most precious gift that you could ever give to yourself is the practice of it. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS |
131:For all who think of him with faith
The Buddha is there in front of them
And will give empowerments and blessings.
~ Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher, [T5],#KEYS |
| 132:How dare you talk of helping the world? God alone can do that. First you must be made free from all sense of self; then the Divine Mother will give you a task to do. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS |
133:It is only the Divine's Grace that can give peace, happiness, power, light, knowledge, beatitude and love in their essence and their truth.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T5],#KEYS |
| 134:Science gives us the objective truth of existence and the superficial knowledge of our physical and vital being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Lower Triple Purusha, #KEYS |
135:Human thought creates what it imagines; the phantoms of superstition project their deformities on the astral light, and live upon the same terrors which give them birth.
~ Eliphas Levi,#KEYS |
136:What is Consciousness?
When the Lord becomes conscious of Himself, the world is created. Consciousness is the breath that gives life to all.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS |
| 137:The indefinable Oneness accepts all that climb to it, but offers no help of relation and gives no foothold to the climber. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Way and the Bhakta, #KEYS |
| 138:Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game. ~ Gary Gygax, #KEYS |
139:Easy is the love that lasts
Only with favours in the shopman heart!
Who, smitten, takes and gives the kiss, he loves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,#KEYS |
| 140:Say: "O my Servants who have transgressed against their souls! Despair not of the Mercy of Allah: for Allah forgives all sins: for He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. ~ Koran, 39:53 (Yusuf Ali), #KEYS |
141:Some people are like an open grave:
You give it the thing you love most
And then get nothing in return. ~ Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri, Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster: Three Abbasid Poets,#KEYS |
142:Trivial amusements stimulate and waste
The energy given to him to grow and be.
His little hour is spent in little things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Godheads of the Little Life,#KEYS |
143:Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything... just give him time to rationalize it.
~ Robert Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice, (1984).,#KEYS |
144:The Divine's Presence gives us peace in strength, serenity in action and an unchanging happiness in the midst of all circumstances.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Divine Is with You,#KEYS |
| 145:Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well. ~ Philip K Dick, #KEYS |
| 146:The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character. (461) ~ G Santayana, #KEYS |
| 147:A perfect rhythm will often even give immortality to work which is slight in vision and very far from the higher intensities of style. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Rhythm and Movement, #KEYS |
| 148:It is rebirth that gives to the birth of an incomplete being in a body its promise of completeness and its spiritual significance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS |
| 149:It is rebirth that gives to the birth of an incomplete being in a body its promise of completeness and its spiritual significance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS |
| 150:Our help is there always, it is not given at one time and withheld at another, nor given to some and denied to others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Difficulties of Human Nature, #KEYS |
| 151:Prakriti is the field of law and process, but the soul, the Purusha, is the giver of the sanction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS |
| 152:Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God's generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS |
153:All that leads you away from me in thought and feeling is bad. All that brings you closer to me and gives you the perception and joy of my presence is good.
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#KEYS |
154:Give yourself up to deep meditation.
Throw away all other considerations of life.
The calculative life will not be crowned with spiritual success. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Conscious Immortality, Ch. 7,#KEYS |
| 155:Realistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically accurate presentation of life, because Art is not and cannot be Science. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 156:All harmony proceeds upon seen or given lines and carries with it a constant pulsation and rhythmic recurrence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Instruments - Thought-Process, #KEYS |
| 157:Birth in the body is the most close, divine and effective form of help which the liberated can give to those who are themselves still bound. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Knowledge and Ignorance, #KEYS |
| 158:The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "bread-bread-fame" or "fame-fame-bread." ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS |
| 159:Whatever name he gives to this Power or whether he gives it a name or not, it is Isha, the Lord, whose presence he must feel around every object and movement in the Universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, #KEYS |
160:We must be satisfied with what the Divine gives us, and do what He wants us to do without weakness, free from useless ambition.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Surrender to the Divine Will, Surrender,#KEYS |
| 161:The zest for life, which is the source of all passion and all insight, even divine, does not come to us from ourselves.... It is God who has to give us the impulse of wanting him. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS |
| 162:All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS |
163:How can we know that we are receptive?
When we feel the urge to give and the joy of giving to the Divine's work, then we can be sure that we have become receptive.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
164:They [the candles] are placed outside the Circle to attract the hostile forces, to give them the first inkling of the Great Work, which they too must some day perform.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, The Circle,#KEYS |
165:Can 'calm' give a solution to all problems?
Yes, but for this the calm must be perfect, in all the parts of the being, so that the power may express itself through it.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
166:The genius too receives from some high fount
Concealed in a supernal secrecy
The work that gives him an immortal name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS |
| 167:After all, for the greatest as for the smallest of us our strength is not our own but given to us for the game that has to be played, the work that we have to do. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sleep, #KEYS |
| 168:It is necessary that the Holy Spirit enter our heart. Everything good that we do, that we do for Christ, is given to us by the Holy Spirit, but prayer most of all, which is always available to us. ~ Seraphim of Sarov, #KEYS |
169:In an outburst of heavenly joy and ease
Life yields to the divinity within
And gives the rapture-offering of its all,
And the soul opens to felicity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,#KEYS |
170:This world is in love with its own ignorance,
Its darkness turns away from the saviour light,
It gives the cross in payment for the crown. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS |
| 171:No matter what you experience on the path, never give up. Because all of the buddhas became enlightened for you. They know your potential, and they will not stop helping until you are enlightened too. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS |
| 172:Matter is a formation of life that has no real existence apart from the informing universal spirit which gives it its energy and substance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection, #KEYS |
173:Our tasks are given, we are but instruments;
Nothing is all our own that we create:
The Power that acts in us is not our force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS |
| 174:The body is given us as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS |
175:And when no subject is given, is it enough to concentrate on your Presence in the heart-centre? Should we avoid a formulated prayer?
Yes, concentration on the Presence is enough.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
| 176:Do you know when people really become spiritual? It is when they become the slaves of God and are branded with His sign, which is the sign of the Cross, in token that they have given Him their freedom. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #KEYS |
| 177:He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other. ~ Francis Bacon, #KEYS |
178:I have given my mind to be dug Thy channel mind,
I have offered up my will to be Thy will:
Let nothing of myself be left behind
In our union mystic and unutterable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Surrender,#KEYS |
| 179:Tantra is only valuable in so far as it enables us to give effect to Vedanta & in itself it has no value or necessity at all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To Motilal Roy, #KEYS |
180:The middle path is made for thinking man.
To choose his steps by reason’s vigilant light,
To choose his path among the many paths
Is given him, for each his difficult goal ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS |
| 181:To sleep, perchance to dream-ay, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life. ~ Shakespeare, #KEYS |
182:In the occult teachings you have been given certain images, under which you are instructed to think of certain things. These images are not descriptive but symbolic, and are designed to train the mind, not inform it.
~ Dion Fortune,#KEYS |
| 183:Poetry raises the emotions and gives each its separate delight. Art stills the emotions and teaches them the delight of a restrained and limited satisfaction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The National Value of Art, #KEYS |
| 184:The best way to view a present problem is to give it all you've got, to study it and its nature, to perceive within it the intrinsic interrelationships, to discover the answer to the problem within the problem itself. ~ Abraham Maslow, #KEYS |
185:As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don't bother to brush it off.
Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance.
Having a sense of humor saves you. ~ Joseph Campbell,#KEYS |
186:To give oneself to the Divine, to receive and be the Divine, to transmit and spread forth the Divine: these are the three simultaneous movements which constitute our total relation with the Divine.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
187:Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you; to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#KEYS |
188:It seized on speech to give those flamings shape,
Made beat the heart of wisdom in a word
And spoke immortal things through mortal lips. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness,#KEYS |
189:Life-God
Life’s visage hides life’s real self from sight;
Life’s secret sense is written within, above.
The thought that gives it sense lives far beyond; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life,#KEYS |
| 190:When you want to realise something, you make quite spontaneously the necessary effort; this concentrates your energies on the thing to be realised and that gives a meaning to your life. 13 Jan 1951 ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #KEYS |
| 191:First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS |
| 192:...a man should say to his soul every morning, "God has given thee twenty-four treasures; take heed lest thou lose anyone of them, for thou wilt not be able to endure the regret that will follow such loss. ~ Imam al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness, #KEYS |
193:Surrender is giving oneself to the Divine - to give everything one is or has to the Divine and regard nothing as one's own, to obey only the Divine will and no other, to live for the Divine and not for the ego.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS |
194:It is the Divine Presence that gives value to life. This Presence is the source of all peace, all joy, all security. Find this Presence in yourself and all your difficulties will disappear.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Divine Is with You,#KEYS |
195:The Divine is present among us. When we remember Him always He gives us the strength to face all circumstances with perfect peace and equanimity. Become aware of the Presence and your difficulties will disappear.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
| 196:Our troubles arise not from the failures of our thoughts alone; they arise largely because we have not given leadership to our hearts. We have not given to our souls the power to direct us in the right way of things. ~ Manly P Hall (Resurrection 1964, p.2), #KEYS |
197:Moved man’s tongue in its wrath looses speech that is hard to be pardoned,
Afterwards stilled we regret, we forgive. If all were resented,
None could live on this earth that is thick with our stumblings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS |
| 198:Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things and in the end bring his strength as a worthy offering to the altar of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS |
199:At each moment may our attitude be such that the Divine's Will determines our choice so that the Divine may give the direction to all our life.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Surrender to the Divine Will, To Will What the Divine Wills,#KEYS |
200:Who is worthy or unworthy in front of the Divine Grace?
All are children of the one and the same Mother. Her love is equally spread over all of them. But to each one She gives according to his nature and receptivity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
| 201:We are bidden to 'put on Christ', to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little. ~ C S Lewis, #KEYS |
202:Giant's Wine
Gifts I can give to soothe thy wounded life.
The pacts which transient beings make with fate,
And the wayside sweetness earth-bound hearts would pluck, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,#KEYS |
| 203:Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements. Why is this so? Because their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given this kind of education. ~ Aldous Huxley, #KEYS |
| 204:If it is the idea that finally expresses itself in all material forms, actions, institutions and consummations, it is the imagination that draws the idea out, suggests the shape and gives the creative impulse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Boycott Celebration, #KEYS |
205:The true aim of life is to find the Divine's Presence deep inside oneself and to surrender to It so that It takes the lead of the life, all the feelings and all the actions of the body. This gives a true and luminous aim to existence.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
| 206:A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS |
| 207:The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS |
208:A resolution means the will to try to get a thing done by the given time. It is not a binding 'promise' that the thing will be done by that time. Even if it is not, the endeavour will have to continue, just as if no date had been fixed.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS |
209:But the soul grows concealed within its house;
It gives to the body its strength and magnificence;
It follows aims in an ignorant aimless world,
It lends significance to earth’s meaningless life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS |
| 210:The proper function of the life-energy is to do what it is bidden by the divine principle in us, to reach to and enjoy what is given to it by that indwelling Divine and not to desire at all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Heart and the Mind, #KEYS |
| 211:We want not only a free India, but a great India, India taking worthily her place among the Nations and giving to the life of humanity what she alone can give. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To the Editor of the New India, #KEYS |
| 212:Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry. ~ Plato, Phaedrus, sec. 279, #KEYS |
213:It is not in order to be happy that we are upon earth, for in the present conditions of terrestrial life happiness is an impossibility. We are upon earth to find and realise the Divine, for the Divine Consciousness alone can give true happiness.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
214:The sex-vampire eats up the other’s vital and gives nothing or very little. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga
Sec-Vampire
In myself is the seed of all my creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma,#KEYS |
| 215:Almighty God, give me wisdom to perceive You, intelligence to understand You, diligence to seek You, patience to wait for You, eyes to behold You, a heart to meditate upon You and life to proclaim You, through the power of the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. ~ Saint Benedict of Nursia, #KEYS |
| 216:The truest reason why we must seek liberation is not to be delivered, individually, from the sorrow of the world, though that deliverance too will be given to us, but that we may be one with the Divine, the Supreme, the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work, #KEYS |
217:If you can't as yet remember the Divine all the time you are working, it does not greatly matter. To remember and dedicate at the beginning and give thanks at the end ought to be enough for the present. Or at the most to remember too when there is a pause...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS |
| 218:Behold the beginning of wisdom; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding. Exalt her and she shall promote thee. She shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace; a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee. ~ Proverbs, #KEYS |
219:What is the way of making the consciousness of human unity grow in man?
Spiritual education, that is to say an education which gives more importance to the growth of the spirit than to any religious or moral teaching or to the material so-called knowledge.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS |
| 220:Every suffering is a buddha-seed, because suffering impels mortals to seek wisdom. But you can only say that suffering gives rise to buddhahood. You can’t say that suffering is buddhahood. Your body and mind are the field. Suffering is the seed, wisdom the sprout, and buddhahood the grain. ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS |
221:[...]The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him many other things and one may seek him for any of them, for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything else of which one may feel the pull or impulse.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS |
222:fruits of the sacrifice :::
The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109],#KEYS |
223:Everything must be given to the Divine within us, to the universal All and to the transcendent Supreme. An absolute concentration of our will, our heart and our thought on that one and manifold Divine, an unreserved self-consecration of our whole being to the Divine alone
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 89,#KEYS |
| 224:We have to realize that science is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword can cut against poverty, illness, disease and give us more democracies, and democracies never war with other democracies, but the other side of the sword could give us nuclear proliferation, biogerms and even forces of darkness. ~ Michio Kaku, #KEYS |
225:Mother-Earth
Who but the fool and improvident, who but the dreamer and madman
Leaves for the far and ungrasped earth’s close and provident labour?
Children of earth, our mother gives tokens, she lays down her signposts,
Step by step to advance on her bosom, to g ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS |
226:The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes
And guide its giant stumblings through the void,
Have given to man the burden of his mind;
In his unwilling heart they have lit their fires
And sown in it incurable unrest. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,#KEYS |
227:The message of this lecture is that black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought.
Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up - there's a way out.
~ Stephen Hawkings,#KEYS |
228:as it were, then the possibilities are practically limitless. Given the correct techniques one can invoke or evoke anything, even things which did not exist before one thought of calling them. This may sound like complete Chaos, and I have to report that my own researches confirm that it is!
~ Peter J Carroll, Excerpts Part 1,#KEYS |
229:Little by little there has to be a constant equilibrium established between the parts of the subject's knowledge and the totality of his knowledge at any given moment. There is a constant differentiation of the totality of knowledge into the parts and an integration of the parts back into the whole.
~ Jean Piaget, 1977, p. 839,#KEYS |
230:Content to be with her and feel her near
He makes the most of the little that she gives
And all she does drapes with his own delight.
A glance can make his whole day wonderful,
A word from her lips with happiness wings the hours.
He leans on her for all he does and is: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS |
231:The ideal attitude is to belong only to the Divine, to work only for the Divine and above all to expect only from the Divine strength, peace and satisfaction. The Divine is all-merciful and gives us all that we need to lead us as quickly as possible to the goal.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Divine Is with You, [15],#KEYS |
| 232:Suicide is an absurd solution; he is quite mistaken in thinking that it will give him peace. He will only carry his difficulties with him into a more miserable condition of existence beyond and bring them back to another life on earth. The only remedy is ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path - VII, #KEYS |
| 233:That is the inconvenience of going away from a difficulty,—it runs after one,—or rather one carries it with oneself, for the difficulty is truly inside, not outside. Outside circumstances only give it the occasion to manifest itself and so long as the inn ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path - VII, #KEYS |
| 234:Don't bother much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behaviour. ~ C S Lewis, letter to Genia Goelz, June 13, 1951, #KEYS |
235:Keep your mind still.
That is enough.
The aim of all practices is to give up all practices.
When the mind becomes still,
the power of the Self
will be experienced.
The Self is all-pervading; if the mind is in peace, then one begins to experiences it. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, The Mountain Path, Dec 93, 139,#KEYS |
236:I believe that the human spirit is indomitable. If you endeavor to achieve, it will happen given enough resolve. It may not be immediate, and often your greater dreams is something you will not achieve within your own lifetime. The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself, for there is no futility even in death.
~ Monty Oum,#KEYS |
| 237:Beyond a given point man is not helped by more "knowing," but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way. As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes. ~ Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, #KEYS |
238:Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given: it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
~ The Mother, 11 May 1963,#KEYS |
| 239:Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS |
240:Be absolutely convinced that everything that happens, happens in order to give us precisely the lesson we needed, and if we are sincere in the sadhana, the lesson should be accepted with joy and gratitude. For one who aspires to the divine life, what can the actions of a blind and ignorant humanity matter to him?
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
241:They were bewildered, unhappy children-he thought-all of them, even his mother, and he was foolish to resent their ineptitude; it came from their helplessness, not from malice. It was he who had to make himself learn to understand them, since he had so much to give, since they could never share his sense of joyous, boundless power.
~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged,#KEYS |
242:Here even the highest rapture Time can give
Is a mimicry of ungrasped beatitudes,
A mutilated statue of ecstasy,
A wounded happiness that cannot live,
A brief felicity of mind or sense
Thrown by the World-Power to her body-slave,
Or a simulacr ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS |
| 243:The complete attempt to deal with the term is would go to the form and matter of every thing in existence, at least, if not to the possible form and matter of all that does not exist, but might. As far as it could be done, it would give the grand Cyclopaedia, and its yearly supplement would be the history of the human race for the time. (354) ~ Augustus De Morgan, #KEYS |
244:Where you are? In the Mother's presence here and close to me. Where you are going? Towards union with the Divine through dedication and service. What you are doing here? Service and self-giving to the Divine. The rest depends, as the Mother writes to you, on the simplicity and fullness with which you give yourself and serve.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS |
245:As individual egos we dwell in the Ignorance and judge everything by a broken, partial and personal standard of knowledge; we experience everything according to the capacity of a limited consciousness and force and are therefore unable to give a divine response or set the true value upon any part of cosmic experience.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 396, [T3],#KEYS |
| 246:Trump represents popularist neofascism and plutocracy, JP disenfranchised young males adrift in a society that no longer gives them guidelines, Greta the youth and the progressive center fighting back against the mess the plutocracy has made of the planet. Those three come most readily to mind as Charismatic Attractors, but I'm sure there must be others. ~ M Alan Kazlev, #KEYS |
247:468 - I may question God, my guide and teacher, and ask Him, 'Am I right or hast Thou in thy love and wisdom suffered my mind to deceive me?' Doubt thy mind, if thou wilt, but doubt not that God leads thee.
Life is given to us to find the Divine and unite with Him. The mind tries to persuade us that it is not so. Shall we believe this liar?
~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS |
| 248:A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS |
249:When you give us a subject for meditation, what should we do about it? Keep thinking of it?
Keep your thought focused upon it in a concentrated way.
And when no subject is given, is it enough to concentrate on your Presence in the heart-centre? Should we avoid a formulated prayer?
Yes, concentration on the Presence is enough.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
250:"I hail thee, almighty and victorious Death,
Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite.
O Void that makest room for all to be ...
Thou art my shadow and my instrument.
I have given thee thy awful shape of dread
And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain
To force the soul of man to struggle for light"
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS |
251:It is only when one gives oneself in all sincerity to the Divine Will that one has the peace and calm joy which come from the abolition of desires.
The psychic being knows this with certainty; so, by uniting with one's psychic, one can know it. But the first condition is not to be subject to one's desires and mistake them for the truth of one's being.
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#KEYS |
252:We cannot counteract the harm done by mental faith in the need for drugs by any external measures. Only by escaping from the mental prison and emerging consciously into the light of the spirit, by a conscious union with the Divine, can we enable Him to give back to us the balance and health we have lost.The supramental transformation is the only true remedy.
~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS |
253:410 - Devotion is not utterly fulfilled till it becomes action and knowledge. If thou pursuest after God and canst overtake Him, let Him not go till thou hast His reality.
If thou hast hold of His reality, insist on having also His totality. The first will give thee divine knowledge, the second will give thee divine works and a free and perfect joy in the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS |
254:D.: Is God personal?
B.: Yes, He is always the first person, the I, ever standing before you. Because you give precedence to worldly things, God appears to have receded to the background. If you give up all else and seek Him alone, He will remain as the I, the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS |
| 255:Dana, charity. There is no higher virtue than charity. The lowest man is he whose hand draws in, in receiving; and he is the highest man whose hand goes out in giving. The hand was made to give always. Give the last bit of bread you have even if you are starving. You will be free in a moment if you starve yourself to death by giving to another. Immediately you will be perfect, you will become God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS |
256:That devotee asked, "Will Ishwara manifest Himself if you give Him some name and pray to Him to appear in a particular form?"
Bhagavan: "Yes. He will answer your call by whatever name you call Him and will appear in whatever form you worship Him. As soon as He manifests Himself you ask something. He grants the boon and disappears, but you remain where you were." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Letters from Sri Ramanasramam,#KEYS |
| 257:The soul of man is the spark of God. Though this spark is limited on the earth, still God is all-powerful; and by teaching the prayer 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven', the Master has given a key to every soul who repeats this prayer; a key to open that door behind which is the secret of that almighty power and perfect wisdom which raises the soul above all limitations. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS |
258:X who has been studying astrology has prepared my horoscope. I send it to you to see. Do you think the indications he has given in it for my future have any value?
The horoscope is sufficiently vague and favourable to be taken in consideration as the base of a mental conception for your future. The most important factor in a horoscope is the intuitive faculty of the astrologer.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS |
259:The Divine Grace and Power can do anything, but with the full assent of the sadhak.
To learn to give the full assent, is the whole meaning of the sadhana. It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T9],#KEYS |
| 260:Having become a citizen of two worlds, the individual must act accordingly. There can be no backsliding, because the individual must reach a state of certainty before this enlightenment is given that makes it utterly and completely impossible to backslide. He cannot 'get it' and then fail and turn from it. If he turns from it, it means he never had it. If he fails, he fails himself. He cannot fail the infinite. ~ Manly P Hall, #KEYS |
261:Witness means an observer, someone who looks on and does not act himself. So, when the mind is very quiet, one can withdraw a little from circumstances and look at things as though he were a witness, and not participating in the action himself. This gives you a great quietude, and also a very precise sense of the value of things, because it cuts the attachment to action.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954, 13 October 1954,#KEYS |
| 262:During the dark night there is no choice but to surrender control, give in to unknowing, and stop and listen to whatever signals of wisdom might come along. It's a time of enforced retreat and perhaps unwilling withdrawal. The dark night is more than a learning experience; it's a profound initiation into a realm that nothing in the culture, so preoccupied with external concerns and material success, prepares you for. ~ Thomas Moore, #KEYS |
263:A DEVOTEE:"Sir, is there no help, then, for such a worldly person?"
MASTER:"Certainly there is. From time to time he should live in the company of holy men, and from time to time go into solitude and meditate on God. Furthermore, he should practice discrimination and pray to God, 'Give me faith and devotion.' Once a person has faith he has achieved everything. There is nothing greater than faith. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospels of Ramakrishna,#KEYS |
264:Our mind is spinning around,
About carrying out a lot of useless projects.
It's a waste! Give it up!
Thinking about the hundred plans you want to accomplish,
With never enough time to finish them,
Just weighs down your mind.
You are completely distracted,
By all of these projects, which never come to an end,
But keep spreading out more, like ripples in water.
Don't be a fool. For once, just sit tight. ~ Patrul Rinpoche,#KEYS |
| 265:Those who might be tempted to give way to despair should realize that nothing accomplished in this order can ever be lost, that confusion, error and darkness can win the day only apparently and in a purely ephemeral way, that all partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute towards the greater equilibrium of the whole, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of truth. ~ René Guénon, The Crisis Of The Modern World, #KEYS |
266:D.: Meditation is with mind and how can it kill the mind in order to reveal the Self?
M.: Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts; distraction of mind is a sign of its weakness. By constant meditation it gains strength, i.e., to say, its weakness of fugitive thought gives place to the enduring background free from thoughts. This expanse devoid of thought is the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 293,#KEYS |
267:Bjorn: I'm sorry to hear of Helga's death. We knew each other a long time. Since I was a boy.
Floki: I too am dead, Bjorn. A part of me died with my daughter, Angrboda, a second part with Ragnar, and the last part of what was Floki died with my sweet, sad Helga. What I am now is nothing. And all this nothing I give to the gods to do with as they please. And I shall be an empty ship with no rudder set upon their endless sea. And where they take me, I shall go.
~ Vikings,#KEYS |
| 268:If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first--Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God's glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect. ~ Blessed Cardinal Newman, Meditations and Devotions, #KEYS |
| 269:5'If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. 6'But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. 7'Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8'Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, James 1, #KEYS |
270:But if we desire to make the most of the opportunity that this life gives us, if we wish to respond adequately to the call we have received and to attain to the goal we have glimpsed, not merely advance a little towards it, it is essential that there should be an entire self-giving. The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS |
271:But if it is the important thing, the only thing that matters, and if everything else comes afterwards, and you want nothing but this, then - this is the first condition. You must first establish this, later we may speak of what follows. First this, that all the rest does not count, that only this counts, that one is ready to give everything to have this, that it is the only thing of importance in life. Then one puts oneself in the condition of being able to take a step forward.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954, 342,#KEYS |
272:From the point of view of a spiritual life, it is not what you do that matters most, but the way in which it is done and the consciousness you put into it. Remember always the Divine and all you do will be an expression of the Divine Presence. When all your actions are consecrated to the Divine, there will be no longer activities that are superior and activities that are inferior; all will have an equal importance - the value given them by the consecration.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Divine Is with You, #KEYS |
273:the Divine Personalities :::
But behind all these and in them he has felt a Divinity who is all these things, a Bringer of Light, a Guide and All-Knower, a Master of Force, A Giver of Bliss, Friend, Helper, Father, Mother, Playmate in the world-game, an absolute Master of his being, his souls Beloved and Lover. All relations known to human personality are there in the souls contact with the Divine; but they rise towards superhuman levels and compel him towards a divine nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS |
| 274:All of the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching which is more perfect or effective than another. A teaching's value lies solely in the inner awakening which an individual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. ~ Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, #KEYS |
| 275:The true occultist wants nothing but wisdom. When Solomon raised his hands to his God, Jehovah spoke from the heavens asking him what he would have, and he answered, "God give me the gift of wisdom." Jehovah asked him if there were not other things he desired, but Solomon answered, "No, only wisdom." And God told Solomon that because he had asked only for wisdom that all the other things should be added unto him and that from this day to the end of the world there would never be another king so rich, so great, or so blest. ~ Manly P Hall, #KEYS |
276:To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
~ C S Lewis, The Four Loves,#KEYS |
277:To learn how to will is a very important thing. And to will truly, you must first unify your being. ... And when you have a will, you will be able to say, say to the Divine: I want what You want. But not before that . Because in order to want what the Divine wants, you must have a will, otherwise you can will nothing at all. You would like to. You would like it very much. You would very much like to want what the Divine wants to do. You dont possess a will to give to Him and to put at His service.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS |
| 278:What is history? What is its significance for humanity? Dr. J. H. Robinson gives us a precise answer: "Man's abject dependence on the past gives rise to the continuity of history. Our convictions, opinions, prejudices, intellectual tastes; our knowledge, our methods of learning and of applying for information we owe, with slight exceptions, to the past-often to the remote past. History is an expansion of memory, and like memory it alone can explain the present and in this lies its most unmistakable value. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS |
| 279:You are not entering this world in the usual manner, for you are setting forth to be a Dungeon Master. Certainly there are stout fighters, mighty magic-users, wily thieves, and courageous clerics who will make their mark in the magical lands of D&D adventure. You however, are above even the greatest of these, for as DM you are to become the Shaper of the Cosmos. It is you who will give form and content to the all the universe. You will breathe life into the stillness, giving meaning and purpose to all the actions which are to follow. ~ Gary Gygax, #KEYS |
280:Those who really want to be yogis must give up, once for all, this nibbling at things. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking-machines. If we really want to be blessed and make others blessed, we must go deeper.
~ Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga, Pratyahara and Dharana, 73, [T4],#KEYS |
281:Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read.
. . .
We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure time, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master's service. Paul cries, "Bring the books" - join in the cry.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,#KEYS |
| 282:Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS |
283:Perfection is one way to approach the Divine; Unity is anotheR But Perfection is a global approach: all is there and all is as it should be-that is to say, the perfect expression of the Divine (you can't even say 'of His Will,' because that still implies something apart, something emanating from Him!).
It could be put like this (but it brings it down considerably): He is what He is and exactly as He wants to be. The 'exactly as He wants to be' takes us down quite a few steps, but it still gives an idea of what I mean by 'perfection'!
~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 02, Satprem,#KEYS |
284:"Savitri", the poem, the word of Sri Aurobindo is the cosmic Answer to the cosmic Question. And Savitri, the person, the Godhead, the Divine Woman is the Divine's response to the human aspiration.
The world is a great question mark. It is a riddle, eternal and ever-recurring. Man has faced the riddle and sought to arrive at a solution since he was given a mind to seek and interrogate.
What is this universe? From where has it come? Whither is it going? What is the purpose of it all? Why is man here? What is the object of his existence? ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, Savitri, #KEYS |
| 285:enactment ::: no experience is innocent and pregiven, rather it is brought forth or enacted in part by the activity of the subject doing the experiencing thus one activity, paradigm or injunction will bring forth a particular set of experiences. experiences that are not themselves .... but rather are co-created and co-enacted by the paradigm or activity itself and accordingly one paradigm does not give the correct view of the world and therefore as if it did to negate, criticize, or exclude other experiences brought forth by other paradigms. ~ Advanced Integral, L1, slide30 enactment, #KEYS |
286:Don't depend on death to liberate you from your imperfections. You are exactly the same after death as you were before. Nothing changes; you only give up the body. If you are a thief or a liar or a cheater before death, you don't become an angel merely by dying. If such were possible, then let us all go and jump in the ocean now and become angels at once! Whatever you have made of yourself thus far, so will you be hereafter. And when you reincarnate, you will bring that same nature with you. To change, you have to make the effort. This world is the place to do it.
~ Paramahansa Yogananda,#KEYS |
287:Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one's evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. A given system of Yoga, then, can be no more than a selection or a compression, into narrower but more energetic forms of intensity, of the general methods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a leisurely movement, with a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a more complete combination by the great Mother in her vast upward labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Life and Yoga, [6],#KEYS |
| 288:There are not many, those who have no secret garden of the mind. For this garden alone can give refreshment when life is barren of peace or sustenance or satisfactory answer. Such sanctuaries may be reached by a certain philosophy or faith, by the guidance of a beloved author or an understanding friend, by way of the temples of music and art, or by groping after truth through the vast kingdoms of knowledge. They encompass almost always truth and beauty, and are radiant with the light that never was on sea or land. - Clare Cameron, Green Fields of England ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden Of Pomegranates, #KEYS |
| 289:One alchemist announced that one grain of this powder would transmute into purest gold one hundred thousand times its own weight. But his readers did not realize that this powder is wisdom, one grain of which can transmute all the ignorance in the world. Nor did the reader properly understand that the PHILOSOPHER'S STONE IS KNOWLEDGE, the great miracle worker, or that the elixir of life was Truth, which makes all things new. It was sad that misunderstandings should exist, but wherever great truths are given to small minds, misunderstandings are inevitable. ~ Manly P Hall, (A Monthly Letter April 1937), #KEYS |
290:You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues. I'm not saying you're more intelligent than Aristotle, or wiser. For all I know, Aristotle's the cleverest person who ever lived. That's not the point. The point is only that science is cumulative, and we live later.
~ Richard Dawkins,#KEYS |
| 291:Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from the outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And we we cease to grow, we begin to die. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #KEYS |
292:The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks Of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#KEYS |
293:So, first of all, it is most important to turn inwards and change your motivation.
If you can correct your attitude, skilful means will permeate your positive actions, and you will have set out on the path of great beings.
If you cannot, you might think that you are studying and practising the Dharma but it will be no more than a semblance of the real thing.
Therefore, whenever you listen to the teachings and whenever you practise, be it meditating on a deity, doing prostrations and circumambulations, or reciting a mantra-even a single mani it is always essential to give rise to bodhicitta. ~ Patrul Rinpoche,#KEYS |
294:In reality, thought is only a scout and pioneer; it can guide but not command or effectuate. The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS |
295:Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Psalm 130
,#KEYS |
296:Mahasamadhi
[facsimile]
Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave the earth atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this marvellous Presence and that henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work. 7 December 1950
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS |
| 297:I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight . . . The ultimate Mystery of being, the ultimate Truth, is Love. This is the essential structure of reality. When Dante spoke of the 'love which moves the sun and the other stars', he was not using a metaphor, but was describing the nature of reality. There is in Being an infinite desire to give itself in love and this gift of Self in love is for ever answered by a return of love....and so the rhythm of the universe is created. ~ Venerable Bede, #KEYS |
298:The Magician should devise for himself a definite technique for destroying 'evil.' The essence of such a practice will consist in training the mind and the body to confront things which cause fear, pain, disgust, shame and the like. He must learn to endure them, then to become indifferent to them, then to analyze them until they give pleasure and instruction, and finally to appreciate them for their own sake, as aspects of Truth. When this has been done, he should abandon them, if they are really harmful in relation to health and comfort.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, APPENDIX VI: A FEW PRINCIPAL RITUALS, [311-312],#KEYS |
| 299:Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful stimulus that both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams. ~ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Volume 1, #KEYS |
300:Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.
This gives life its real sense and will help us to overcome all obstacles.
Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger by remaining young and progressive. 30 January 1972
*
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS |
301:the soul's seemingly magical influence :::
If you have within you a psychic being sufficiently awake to watch over you, to prepare your path, it can draw towards you things which help you, draw people, books, circumstances, all sorts of little coincidences which come to you as though brought by some benevolent will and give you an indication, a help, a support to take decisions and turn you in the right direction. But once you have taken this decision, once you have decided to find the truth of your being, once you start sincerely on the road, everything seems to conspire to help you to advance,
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS |
302:It is not from disgust for life and people that one must come to yoga. It is not to run away from difficulties that one must come here. It is not even to find the sweetness of love and protection, for the Divine's love and protection can be enjoyed everywhere if one takes the right attitude. When one wants to give oneself totally in service to the Divine, to consecrate oneself totally to the Divine's work, simply for the joy of giving oneself and of serving, without asking for anything in exchange, except the possibility of consecration and service, then one is ready to come here and will find the doors wide open.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS |
303:Drugs have a long history of use in magic in various cultures, and usually in the context of either ecstatic communal rituals or in personal vision quests. However compared to people in simple pastoral tribal situations most people in developed countries now live in a perpetual state of mental hyperactivity with overactive imaginations anyway, so throwing drugs in on top of this usually just leads to confusion and a further loss of focus. Plus as the real Shamans say, if you really do succeed in opening a door with a drug it will thereafter open at will and most such substances give all they will ever give on the first attempt.
~ Peter J Carroll, The Octavo,#KEYS |
| 304:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS |
| 305:"Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carried by the Eternal Will of the Father, and not for your sake alone. Dismiss from your mind the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of Necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake. The wide aerial flight of birds gives no true knowledge, nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud: flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled." ~ Zoroaster, #KEYS |
306:Saichō's Prayer
So long as I have not attained the stage where my six faculties are pure, I will not venture out into the world.
So long as I have not realized the absolute, I will not acquire any special skills or arts (e.g. medicine, divination, calligraphy, etc.)
So long as I have not kept all the precepts purely, I will not participate in any lay donor's Buddhist meetings.
So long as I have not attained wisdom (lit. hannya 般若), I will not participate in worldly affairs unless it be to benefit others.
May any merit from my practice in the past, present and future be given not to me, but to all sentient beings so that they may attain supreme enlightenment. ~ Saichō,#KEYS |
| 307:And so, please practice! Please let that be your guide. And I believe that you will find, if your practice matures, that Spirit will reach down and bless your every word and deed, and you will be taken quite beyond yourself, and the Divine will blaze with the light of a thousand suns, and glories upon glories will be given unto you, and you will in every way be home. And then, despite all your excuses and all your objections, you will find the obligation to communicate your vision. And precisely because of that, you and I will find each other. And that will be the real return of Spirit to itself. ~ Ken Wilber, Interview, Bodhisattvas will have to turn to politics, Interview with Frank Visser, 1995, #KEYS |
308:Self-Denial
Only when we have climbed above ourselves,
A line of the Transcendent meets our road
And joins us to the timeless and the true; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter
Self-exceeding
Perfect self-experience in our own being which is the crown and fulfilment of realisation by knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: The Realisation of Sachchidananda
Self-Experience
By an absolute self-giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita: Works, Devotion and Knowledge
Self-Giving
To him who is the source of all that we are, we give all that we are. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Supreme Divine,#KEYS |
309:Alas! I find no customers who want anything better than kalai pulse. No one wants to give up 'woman and gold'. Man, deluded by the beauty of woman and the power of money, forgets God. But to one who has seen the beauty of God, even the position of Brahma, the Creator, seems insignificant.
A man said to Ravana, 'You have been going to Sita in different disguises; why don't you go to her in the form of Rama?' 'But', Ravana replied, 'when I meditate on Rama in my heart, the most beautiful women - celestial maidens like Rambha and Tilottama - appear no better than ashes of the funeral pyre. Then even the position of Brahma appears trivial to me, not to speak of the beauty of another man's wife.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS |
| 310:I too have been into the underworld, like Odysseus, and will often be there again; and I have not only sacrificed just rams to be able to talk with the dead, but my own blood as well. There have been four pairs who did not refuse themselves to me: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With these I had come to terms when I have wandered long alone, and from them will I accept judgment. May the living forgive me if they sometimes appear to me as shades, so pale and ill-humored, so restless and, alas!, so lusting for life. Eternal liveliness is what counts beyond eternal life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, "Assorted Opinions and Maxims," §408 (edited)., #KEYS |
311:the souls influence through other parts of our being :::
...These are parts of the being under its influence and manifesting something of it. So, very often people enter into contact with these parts and this gives them illuminations, great joy, revelations, and they feel they have found their soul. But it is only the part of the being under its influence, one part or another, for ... I have already said many times that when one enters consciously into contact with one's soul and the union is established, it is over, it can no longer be undone, it is something permanent, constant, which resists everything, and which, at any moment whatever, if referred to can be found... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955,#KEYS |
| 312:Lila is by no means the last word. Passing through all these states, I said to the Divine Mother: 'Mother, in these states there is separation. Give me a state where there is no separation.' Then I remained for some time absorbed in the Indivisible Satchidananda. I removed the pictures of the gods and goddesses from my room. I began to perceive God in all beings. Formal worship dropped away. You see that bel-tree. I used to go there to pluck its leaves. One day, as I plucked a leaf, a bit of the bark came off. I round the tree full of Consciousness. I felt grieved because I had hurt the tree. One day I tried to pluck some durva grass, but I found I couldn't do it very well. Then I forced myself to pluck it. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS |
313:Nobility and Refinement
Nobility: the incapacity for any pettiness either of sentiments or of action.
*
Aristocracy: incapable of baseness and pettiness, it asserts itself with dignity and authority.
*
Dignity affirms its worth, but demands nothing.
*
Dignity of the emotions: not to permit one's emotions to contradict the inner Divinity.
*
Dignity in the physical: above all bargaining.
*
Psychic dignity refuses to accept anything that lowers or debases.
*
Refinement: gradually grossness is eliminated from the being.
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Sensitivity: one of the results of the refinement of the being.
*
Gentleness: always gracious and wishing to give pleasure. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
| 314:The Kingdom is most powerful where we least expect to find it. God does not take away our problems and trials but rather joins us in them. Such is the profound meaning of the incarnation: God becoming a human being. The Kingdom will manifest itself, not because of our efforts to keep trying, even when all effort seems hopeless, but because God loves us so much that God won't be able to stand seeing us struggle and always failing. God will do the impossible. He will give us a new attitude toward suffering. Such is the heart of the Christian ascesis, or self-discipline, and the mystery of transformation. It is the meaning of the Gospel as Therese perceived it. ~ Thomas Keating, St. Therese of Lisieux: A Transformation in Christ, #KEYS |
315:... and you, Marcus, you have given me many things; now I shall give you this good advice. Be many people. Give up the game of being always Marcus Cocoza. You have worried too much about Marcus Cocoza, so that you have been really his slave and prisoner. You have not done anything without first considering how it would affect Marcus Cocoza's happiness and prestige. You were always much afraid that Marcus might do a stupid thing, or be bored. What would it really have mattered? All over the world people are doing stupid things ... I should like you to be easy, your little heart to be light again. You must from now, be more than one, many people, as many as you can think of ...''
~ Karen Blixen, The Dreamers from Seven Gothic Tales (1934),#KEYS |
316:Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.
Thus ought man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible, nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it. ~ James Clerk Maxwell,#KEYS |
317:Thus slowly I lift man's soul nearer the Light.
But human mind clings to its ignorance
And to its littleness the human heart
And to its right to grief the earthly life.
Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,
Only when infinity weds the finite's thought,
Can man be free from himself and live with God.
I bring meanwhile the gods upon the earth;
I bring back hope to the despairing heart;
I give peace to the humble and the great,
And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise.
I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.
Then Love shall at last unwounded tread earth's soil;
Man's mind shall admit the sovereignty of Truth
And body bear the immense descent of God."
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS |
| 318:It is the power given by wisdom and knowledge that makes the occultist superior to his fellow man, his superiority being proportionate to his superior intelligence. In every walk of life, the uninitiated will be confronted with mysteries. To the average person, the working of a gasoline engine is just as mysterious as calculus would be to a kindergarten child, but intimate relationship and study result in that familiarity which gives ease in handling and intelligence in directing. It has been well said that no man is a stranger to his own valet. The philosopher is a servant of God, and by perfect serving, soon becomes capable of thoroughly understanding the desires and dictates of his divine Master. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #KEYS |
319:If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for . . . To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.
Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference. ~ Thomas Merton,#KEYS |
320:For me everything in human life is mixed, nothing is completely good, nothing completely bad. I cannot give my entire and exclusive support to this idea or that idea, to one cause or another.
The only important thing for me, in action, is Sri Aurobindo's work, automatically my conscious support is with all that helps that work and in proportion to the help. And for the work to be carried on as it must be I need all collaborations and all helps, I cannot accept only this one or that one and reject the others. I cannot belong to this party or that party. I belong to the Divine alone and my action upon earth is and will always be for the triumph of the Divine, irrespective of all sects and parties.
29 February 1956 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS |
321:18. Of the devotees, who is the greatest?
He who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the most excellent devotee. Giving one's self up to God means remaining constantly in the Self without giving room for the rise of any thoughts other than that of the Self. Whatever burdens are thrown on God, He bears them. Since the supreme power of God makes all things move, why should we, without submitting ourselves to it, constantly worry ourselves with thoughts as to what should be done and how, and what should not be done and how not? We know that the train carries all loads, so after getting on it why should we carry our small luggage on our head to our discomfort, instead of putting it down in the train and feeling at ease? ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Who am I,#KEYS |
322:
Mother, I would like to know from you if it is good for me to devote more time to meditation than I am doing at present. I spend about two hours, morning and evening together. I am as yet not quite successful in meditation. My physical mind disturbs me a lot. I pray to you that it may become quiet and my psychic being may come out. It is so painful to find the mind working like a mad machine and the heart sleeping like a stone. Mother, let me feel your presence within my heart always.
...
The increase of time given to meditation is not very useful unless the urge for meditation comes spontaneously from inside and not from any arbitrary decision of the mind.
My help, love and blessings are always with you.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
323:Sweet Mother,
One day in class you said, with your hands wide open, that we should give you everything, even our defects and vices and all the dirt in us. Is this the only way to get rid of them, and how can one do it?
One keeps one's defects because one hangs on to them as if they were something precious; one clings to one's vices as one clings to a part of one's body, and pulling out a bad habit hurts as much as pulling out a tooth. That is why one does not progress.
Whereas if one generously makes an offering of one's defect, vice or bad habit, then one has the joy of making an offering and one receives in exchange the force to replace what has been given, by a better and truer vibration. 13 June 1960 ~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#KEYS |
324:Everyone who is turned to the Mother is doing my Yoga. It is a great mistake to suppose that one can 'do' the Purna Yoga - i.e. carry out and fulfil all the sides of the Yoga by one's own effort. No human being can do that. What one has to do is to put oneself in the Mother's hands and open oneself to her by service, by bhakti, by aspiration; then the Mother by her light and force works in him so that the sadhana is done. It is a mistake also to have the ambition to be a big Purna Yogi or a supramental being and ask oneself how far have I got towards that. The right attitude is to be devoted and given to the Mother and to wish to be whatever she wants you to be. The rest is for the Mother to decide and do in you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 151 [T3],#KEYS |
325:It is ignorance if, when Allah afflicts someone by what gives him pain, he does not call on Allah to remove that painful matter from him. The one who has realization must supplicate and ask Allah to remove that from him. For that gnostic who possesses unveiling, that removal comes from the presence of Allah. Allah describes Himself as "hurt", so He said, "those who hurt Allah and His Messenger." (33:57) What hurt is greater than that Allah test you with affliction in your heedlessness of Him or a divine station which you do not know so that you return to Him with your complaint so that He can remove it from you?
Thus the need which is your reality will be proven. The hurt is removed from Allah by your asking Him to repel it from you, since you are His manifest form. ~ Ibn Arabi,#KEYS |
326:Why does one feel afraid?
I suppose it is because one is egoistic.
There are three reasons. First, an excessive concern about one's security. Next, what one does not know always gives an uneasy feeling which is translated in the consciousness by fear. And above all, one doesn't have the habit of a spontaneous trust in the Divine. If you look into things sufficiently deeply, this is the true reason. There are people who do not even know that That exists, but one could tell them in other words, 'You have no faith in your destiny' or 'You know nothing about Grace' - anything whatever, you may put it as you like, but the root of the matter is a lack of trust. If one always had the feeling that it is the best that happens in all circumstances, one would not be afraid
~ The Mother,#KEYS |
327:O DIVINE Force, supreme Illuminator, hearken to our prayer, move not away from us, do not withdraw, help us to fight the good fight, make firm our strength for the struggle, give us the force to conquer!
O my sweet Master, Thou whom I adore without being able to know Thee, Thou who I am without being able to realise Thee, my entire conscious individuality prostrates itself before Thee and implores, in the name of the workers in their struggle, and of the earth in her agony, in the name of suffering humanity and of striving Nature;
O my sweet Master, O marvellous Unknowable, O Dispenser of all boons, Thou who makest light spring forth in the darkness and strength to arise out of weakness, support our effort, guide our steps, lead us to victory.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, 211,#KEYS |
| 328:Similarly, the existence of Allah has multiplicity and the many Names. It is this or that according to what appears from it of the universe which demands the realities of the Divine Names by its development. They are doubled by it and stand in opposition to the unity of multiplicity. It is one by source in respect to its essence, as the primal substance (hayûla) is a single source in respect to its essence, while it has many forms which it supports by its essence. It is the same with Allah through the forms of tajalli which are manifested from Him. So the locii of the tajalli are the forms of the universe, in spite of the intelligible unity (ahadiyya). Look at the excellence of this divine instruction which Allah gives by granting its recognition to whoever He wishes among His slaves. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS |
329:It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [305],#KEYS |
| 330:So, it is a basic function of education to help you to find out what you really love to do, so that you can give your whole mind and heart to it, because that creates human dignity, that sweeps away mediocrity, the petty bourgeois mentality. That is why it is very important to have the right teachers, the right atmosphere, so that you will grow up with the love which expresses itself in what you are doing. Without this love your examinations, your knowledge, your capacities, your position and possessions are just ashes, they have no meaning; without this love your actions are going to bring more wars, more hatred, more mischief and destruction. All this may mean nothing to you, because outwardly you are still very young, but I hope it will mean something to your teachers-and also to you, somewhere inside. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #KEYS |
331:'And I protested. ''What do you mean, Diotima? Are you actually saying Love is ugly and bad?''
''Watch what you say!'' she exclaimed. ''Do you really think that if something is not beautiful it has to be ugly?''
''I certainly do''.
''And something that is not wise is ignorant, I suppose? Have you not noticed that there is something in between wisdom and ignorance?''
''And what is that?''
''Correct belief. 148 I am talking about having a correct belief without being able to give a reason for it. Don't you realise that this state cannot be called knowing - for how can it be knowledge 149 if it lacks reason?
And it is not ignorance either - for how can it be ignorance if it has hit upon the truth? Correct belief clearly occupies just such a middle state, between wisdom 150 and ignorance''. ~ Plato, Symposium, 202a,#KEYS |
332:Ask the Divine :::
If, for example, one wants to know something or one needs guidance, or something else, how can one have it from the Divine, according to one's need?
By asking the Divine for it. If you do not ask Him, how can you have it?
If you turn to the Divine and have full trust and ask Him, you will get what you need - not necessarily what you imagine you need; but the true thing you need, you will get. But you must ask Him for it. You must make the experiment sincerely; you must not endeavour to get it by all sorts of external means and then expect the Divine to give it to you, without even having asked Him. Indeed, when you want somebody to give you something, you ask him for it, don't you? And why do you expect the Divine to give it to you without your having asked Him for it? ~ The Mother, [T5],#KEYS |
333:With many people custom and habit of which ethics is but the social expression are the things most difficult to give up: and it is a useful practice to break any habit just to get into the way of being free from that form of slavery. Hence we have practices for breaking up sleep, for putting our bodies into strained and unnatural positions, for doing difficult exercises of breathing -- all these, apart from any special merit they may have in themselves for any particular purpose, have the main merit that the man forces himself todo them despite any conditions that may exist. Having conquered internal resistance one may conquer external resistance more easily. In a steam boat the engine must first overcome its own inertia before it can attack the resistance of the water.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part 2, The Wand,#KEYS |
334:There are a vast amount of Buddhas already, and each one manifests countless forms simultaneously throughout all of the planes of cyclic existence for the benefit of all beings. However, at any given time, each individual being will have a stronger karmic connection with certain Buddhas, compared to other Buddhas.
Likewise, if you were a Buddha, since a huge number of beings throughout cyclic existence would have a stronger karmic connection with you during certain times, you would be able to benefit them much more directly than the many other Buddhas would be able to. Do not forget this.
The deeper you realise this, the greater your bodhicitta motivation becomes - in other words, the greater your compassionate wish to attain the enlightened state of a Buddha for the benefit of all beings, as soon as possible!
~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS |
335:A smile costs nothing but gives much
It enriches those who receive
Without making poorer those who give
It takes but a moment,
But the memory of it sometimes
Lasts forever
None is so rich or mighty that
He can get along without it,
And none is so poor but that
He can be made rich by it
A smile creates happiness in the home,
Fosters good will in business,
And is the countersign of friendship
It brings rest to the weary,
Cheer to the discouraged,
Sunshine to the sad and it is natures
Best antidote for trouble
Yet it cannot be bought, begged,
Borrowed, or stolen, for it is
Something that is of no value
To anyone until it is given away.
Some people are too tired to give you a smile
Give them one of yours
As none needs a smile
So much as he who has no more to be give.
~ Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch?,#KEYS |
336:When the resolution has been taken, when you have decided that the whole of your life shall be given to the Divine, you have still at every moment to remember it and carry it out in all the details of your existence. You must feel at every step that you belong to the Divine; you must have the constant experience that, in whatever you think or do, it is always the Divine Consciousness that is acting through you. You have no longer anything that you can call your own; you feel everything as coming from the Divine, and you have to offer it back to its source. When you can realise that, then even the smallest thing to which you do not usually pay much attention or care, ceases to be trivial and insignificant; it becomes full of meaning and it opens up a vast horizon beyond."
Questions and Answers 1929 (28 April)
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS |
| 337:From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite): in other words, all that it is given to express, in all languages. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, #KEYS |
338:Two general and basic principles are proposed for the formation of categories: The first has to do with the function of category systems and asserts that the task of category systems is to provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort [("cognitive economy")]; the second has to do with the structure of the information so provided and asserts that the perceived world comes as structured information rather than than arbitrary or unpredictable attributes [("perceived world structure")]. Thus maximum information with least cognitive effort is achieved if categories map the perceived world structure as closely as possible. This condition can be achieved either by the mapping of categories to given attribute structures or by the definition or redefinition of attributes to render a given set of categories appropriately structured.
~ Rosch, 1978, p. 28,#KEYS |
339:The thunderbolt (vajra) is one of the major symbols in Buddhist iconography, signifying the spiritual power of Buddhahood (indestructible enlightenment) which shatters the illusory realities of the world. The Absolute, or Adi Buddha, is represented in the images of Tibet as Vajra-Dhara (Tibetan: Dorje-Chang) "Holder of the Adamantine Bolt.
...
We know also that among primitive peoples warriors may speak of their weapons as thunderbolts. Sicut in coelo et in terra: the initiated warrior is an agent of the divine will; his training is not only in manual but also in spiritual skills. Magic (the supernatural power of the thunderbolt), as well as physical force and chemical poison, gives the lethal energy to his blows. A consummate master would require no physical weapon at all; the power of his magic word would suffice. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,#KEYS |
| 340:Medieval alchemy prepared the way for the greatest intervention in the divine world that man has ever attempted: alchemy was the dawn of the scientific age, when the daemon of the scientific spirit compelled the forces of nature to serve man to an extent that had never been known before. It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the "superman" Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche's Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will to give birth to the superman, to "create a god for yourself out of your seven devils." Here we find the true roots, the preparatory processes deep in the psyche, which unleashed the forces at work in the world today. Science and technology have indeed conquered the world, but whether the psyche has gained anything is another matter. ~ Carl Jung, "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942), CW 13, § 163., #KEYS |
341:The transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life must be its central purpose. The means towards this supreme end is a self-giving of all our nature to the Divine. Everything must be given to the Divine within us, to the universal All and to the transcendent Supreme. An absolute concentration of our will, our heart and our thought on that one and manifold Divine, an unreserved self-consecration of our whole being to the Divine alone - this is the decisive movement, the turning of the ego to That which is infinitely greater than itself, its self-giving and indispensable surrender
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, 89,#KEYS |
342:When you feel unhappy like that, it means that you have a progress to make. You can say that we always need to progress, it is true. But at times our nature gives its consent to the needed change and then everything goes smoothly, even happily. On the contrary sometimes the part that has to progress refuses to move and clings to its old habits through inertia, ignorance, attachment or desire. Then, under the pressure of the perfecting force, the struggle starts translating itself into unhappiness or revolt or both together. The only remedy is to keep quiet, look within oneself honestly to find out what is wrong and set to work courageously to put it right. The Divine Consciousness will always be there to help you if your endeavour is sincere; and the more sincere your endeavour the more the Divine Consciousness will help and assist you.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
343:This Dog
Every morning this dog, very attached to me,
Quietly keeps sitting near my seat
Till touching its head
I recognize its company.
This recognition gives it so much joy
Pure delight ripples through its entire body.
Among all dumb creatures
It is the only living being
That has seen the whole man
Beyond what is good or bad in him
It has seen
For his love it can sacrifice its life
It can love him too for the sake of love alone
For it is he who shows the way
To the vast world pulsating with life.
When I see its deep devotion
The offer of its whole being
I fail to understand
By its sheer instinct
What truth it has discovered in man.
By its silent anxious piteous looks
It cannot communicate what it understands
But it has succeeded in conveying to me
Among the whole creation
What is the true status of man.
~ Rabindranath Tagore,#KEYS |
344:January 7, 1914
GIVE them all, O Lord, Thy peace and light, open their blinded eyes and their darkened understanding; calm their futile worries and their vain anxieties. Turn their gaze away from themselves and give them the joy of being consecrated to Thy work without calculation or mental reservation. Let Thy beauty flower in all things, awaken Thy love in all hearts, so that Thy eternally progressive order may be realised upon earth and Thy harmony be spread until the day all becomes Thyself in perfect purity and peace.
Oh! let all tears be wiped away, all suffering relieved, all anguish dispelled, and let calm serenity dwell in every heart and powerful certitude strengthen every mind. Let Thy life flow through all like a regenerating stream that all may turn to Thee and draw from that contemplation the energy for all victories. ~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations,#KEYS |
345:
Often, when I read Sri Aurobindo's works or listen to His words, I am wonderstruck: how can this eternal truth, this beauty of expression escape people? It is really strange that He is not yet recognised, at least as a supreme creator, a pure artist, a poet par excellence! So I tell myself that my judgments, my appreciations are influenced by my devotion for the Master - and everyone is not devoted. I do not think this is true. But then why are hearts not yet enchanted by His words?
Who can understand Sri Aurobindo? He is as vast as the universe and his teaching is infinite...
The only way to come a little close to him is to love him sincerely and give oneself unreservedly to his work. Thus, each one does his best and contributes as much as he can to that transformation of the world which Sri Aurobindo has predicted. 2 December 1964
~ The Mother, On Education, 396,#KEYS |
346:PURANI: There was some effort. Only, you can say that the effort was negligible in proportion to the success.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is not a question of proportion. One may have put in a great deal of effort and yet there could be no result because there was not a complete and total sincerity. On the other hand, when the result comes with little effort it is because the whole being has responded-- and Grace found it possible to act. All the same, effort is a contributory factor. Sometimes one goes on making an effort with no result or even the condition becomes worse. And when one has given it up, one finds suddenly that the result has come. It may be that the effort was keeping up the resistance too. And when the effort is given up, the resistance says, "This fellow has given up effort. What is the use of resisting anymore?" ( Laughter ) ~ Nirodbaran, TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO VOLUME 1, 405,#KEYS |
347:Thou must teach us the path to be followed and Thou must give us the power to follow it to the very end. . . .
O Thou source of all love and all light, Thou whom we cannot know in Thyself but can manifest ever more completely and perfectly, Thou whom we cannot conceive but can approach in profound silence, to complete Thy incommensurable boons Thou must come to our help until we have gained Thy victory. . . .
Let that true love be born which soothes all suffering; establish that immutable peace wherein resides true power; give us the sovereign knowledge which dispels all darkness. . . .
From the infinite depths to this most external body, in its smallest elements, Thou dost move and live and vibrate and set all in motion, and the whole being is now only a single block, infinitely multiple yet absolutely coherent, animated by one tremendous vibration: Thou.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations,#KEYS |
348:I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. This was the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin,#KEYS |
349:Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability- and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually-let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#KEYS |
| 350:But if in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His selfmanifestation. We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or atmost attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, #KEYS |
| 351:And He will judge and will forgive all, the good and the evil, the wise and the meek . . . And when He has done with all of them, then He will summon us. 'You too come forth,' He will say, 'Come forth ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!' And we shall all come forth, without shame and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, 'Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!' And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, 'Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?' And He will say, 'This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.' And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before him . . . and we shall weep . . . and we shall understand all things! Then we shall understand everything! . . . and all will understand ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #KEYS |
352:The hostile forces have a certain self-chosen function: it is to test the condition of the individual, of the work, of the earth itself and their readiness for the spiritual descent and fulfilment. At every step of the journey, they are there attacking furiously, criticising, suggesting, imposing despondency or inciting to revolt, raising unbelief, amassing difficulties. No doubt, they put a very exaggerated interpretation on the rights given them by their function, making mountains even out of what seems to us a mole-hill. A little trifling false step or mistake and they appear on the road and clap a whole Himalaya as a barrier across it. But this opposition has been permitted from of old not merely as a test or ordeal, but as a compulsion on us to seek a greater strength, a more perfect self-knowledge, an intenser purity and force of aspiration, a faith that nothing can crush, a more powerful descent of the Divine Grace.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS |
| 353:4. Crossing the First Threshold:With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the 'threshold guardian' at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in four directions-also up and down-standing for the limits of the hero's present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is darkness, the unknown and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the members of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored. The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS |
354:Jnanaprakasha:: Jnana includes both the Para and the Apara Vidya, the knowledge of Brahman in Himself and the knowledge of the world; but the Yogin, reversing the order of the worldly mind, seeks to know Brahman first and through Brahman the world. Scientific knowledge, worldly information & instruction are to him secondary objects, not as it is with the ordinary scholar & scientist, his primary aim. Nevertheless these too we must take into our scope and give room to God's full joy in the world. The methods of the Yogin are also different for he tends more and more to the use of direct vision and the faculties of the vijnana and less and less to intellectual means. The ordinary man studies the object from outside and infers its inner nature from the results of his external study. The Yogin seeks to get inside his object, know it from within & use external study only as a means of confirming his view of the outward action resulting from an already known inner nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Record Of Yoga - I,#KEYS |
| 355:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS |
356:There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109],#KEYS |
357:But in whatever way it comes, there must be a decision of the mind and the will and, as its result, a complete and effective self-consecration. The acceptance of a new spiritual idea-force and upward orientation in the being, an illumination, a turning or conversion seized on by the will and the heart's aspiration, -this is the momentous act which contains as in a seed all the results that the Yoga has to give. The mere idea or intellectual seeking of something higher beyond, however strongly grasped by the mind's interest, is ineffective unless it is seized on by the heart as the one thing desirable and by the will as the one thing to be done. For truth of the Spirit has not to be merely thought but to be lived, and to live it demands a unified single-mindedness of the being; so great a change as is contemplated by the Yoga is not to be effected by a divided will or by a small portion of the energy or by a hesitating mind. He who seeks the Divine must consecrate himself to God and to God only.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration,#KEYS |
358:When man's thoughts rise upon the wings of aspiration, when he pushes back the darkness with the strength of reason and logic, then indeed the builder is liberated from his dungeon and the light pours in, bathing him with life and power. This light enables us to seek more clearly the mystery of creation and to find with greater certainty our place in the Great Plan, for as man unfolds his bodies he gains talents with which he can explore the mysteries of Nature and search for the hidden workings of the Divine. Through these powers the Builder is liberated and his consciousness goes forth conquering and to conquer. These higher ideals, these spiritual concepts, these altruistic, philanthropic, educative applications of thought power glorify the Builder; for they give the power of expression and those who can express themselves are free. When man can mold his thoughts, his emotions, and his actions into faithful expressions of his highest ideals then liberty is his, for ignorance is the darkness of Chaos and knowledge is the light of Cosmos.
~ Manly P Hall,#KEYS |
359:the importance and power of surrender :::
Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender. You can surrender either through knowledge or through devotion. You may have a strong intuition that the Divine alone is the truth and a luminous conviction that without the Divine you cannot manage. Or you may have a spontaneous feeling that this line is the only way of being happy, a strong psychic desire to belong exclusively to the Divine: I do not belong to my self, you say, and give up the responsibility of your being to the Truth. Then comes self-offering: Here I am, a creature of various qualities, good and bad, dark and enlightened. I offer myself as I am to you, take me up with all my ups and downs, conflicting impulses and tendencies - do whatever you like with me.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS |
360:From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: ""You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem.
God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS |
| 361:16. Master of Two Worlds:Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back-not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other-is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another. It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS |
362:
Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo has said somewhere that if one surrenders to the Divine Grace, it will do everything for us. Therefore, what value has tapasya?
If you want to know what Sri Aurobindo has said on a given subject, you must at least read all that he has written on that subject. You will then see that he has apparently said the most contradictory things. But when one has read everything, and understood a little, one perceives that all the contradictions complement each other and are organised and unified into an integral synthesis. Here is another quotation from Sri Aurobindo which will show you that your question is based on ignorance. There are many others which you can read with interest and which will make your intelligence more supple: 'If there is not a complete surrender, then it is not possible to adopt the baby cat attitude; it becomes mere tamasic passivity calling itself surrender. If a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, it follows that personal effort is necessary.' 16 December 1964
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, 308,#KEYS |
363:So the devotion must be accompanied by another movement, that is, gratitude. This feeling of gratitude that the Divine exists, this gratefulness, full of wonder, that truly fills your heart with a sublime delight, because the Divine exists, because there is something in the universe that is the Divine, and there is not merely the monstrosity that we see—because there is the Divine, because the Divine is there.
And each time any least thing puts you in contact with this sublime reality of the Divine existence, your heart is filled with so intense and wonderful a delight, such gratefulness as is of all things the most delectable in taste.
Nothing can give you a delight equal to that of gratitude. You hear a bird singing, you see a flower, you look at a child, you witness an act of generosity, you read a beautiful sentence, you stand before a sunset, it does not matter what the thing is— all on a sudden it comes upon you, a kind of emotion, but so deep, so intense, because the world manifests the Divine, because there is something behind the world which is the Divine. ~ The Mother,#KEYS |
364:This concentration proceeds by the Idea, using thought, form and name as keys which yield up to the concentrating mind the Truth that lies concealed behind all thought, form and name; for it is through the Idea that the mental being rises beyond all expression to that which is expressed, to that of which the Idea itself is only the instrument. By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks open the barrier of our mentality and arrives at the state of consciousness, the state of being, the state of power of conscious-being and bliss of conscious-being to which the Idea corresponds and of which it is the symbol, movement and rhythm. Concentration by the Idea is, then, only a means, a key to open to us the superconscient planes of our existence; a certain self-gathered state of our whole existence lifted into that superconscient truth, unity and infinity of self-aware, self-blissful existence is the aim and culmination; and that is the meaning we shall give to the term Samadhi.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Integral Knowledge, Concentration [321],#KEYS |
365:If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others.
There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind Mind and the Overmind Maya,#KEYS |
366:To enlarge the sense-faculties without the knowledge that would give the old sense-values their right interpretation from the new standpoint might lead to serious disorders and incapacities, might unfit for practical life and for the orderly and disciplined use of the reason. Equally, an enlargement of our mental consciousness out of the experience of the egoistic dualities into an unregulated unity with some form of total consciousness might easily bring about a confusion and incapacity for the active life of humanity in the established order of the world's relativities. This, no doubt, is the root of the injunction imposed in the Gita on the man who has the knowledge not to disturb the life-basis and thought-basis of the ignorant; for, impelled by his example but unable to comprehend the principle of his action, they would lose their own system of values without arriving at a higher foundation.
Such a disorder and incapacity may be accepted personally and are accepted by many great souls as a temporary passage or as the price to be paid for the entry into a wider existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS |
367:January 1, 1914
To Thee, supreme Dispenser of all boons,
to Thee who givest life its justification, by making it pure, beautiful and good,
to Thee, Master of our destinies and goal of all our aspirations, was consecrated the first minute of this new year.
May it be completely glorified by this consecration; may those who hope for Thee, seek Thee in the right path; may those who seek Thee find Thee, and those who suffer, not knowing where the remedy lies, feel Thy life gradually piercing the hard crust of their obscure consciousness.
I bow down in deep devotion and in boundless gratitude before Thy beneficent splendour; in name of the earth I give Thee thanks for manifesting Thyself; in its name I implore Thee to manifest Thyself ever more fully, in an uninterrupted growth of Light and Love.
Be the sovereign Master of our thoughts, our feelings, our actions.
Thou art our reality, the only Reality.
Without Thee all is falsehood and illusion, all is dismol obscurity.
In Thee are life and light and joy.
In Thee is supreme Peace.
~ The Mother, Prayers and Meditation,#KEYS |
368:The matter of definition, I have said, is very important. I am not now speaking of nominal definitions, which for convenience merely give names to known objects. I am speaking of such definitions of phenomena as result from correct analysis of the phenomena. Nominal definitions are mere conveniences and are neither true nor false; but analytic definitions are definitive propositions and are true or else false. Let us dwell upon the matter a little more.
In the illustration of the definitions of lightning, there were three; the first was the most mistaken and its application brought the most harm; the second was less incorrect and the practical results less bad; the third under the present conditions of our knowledge, was the "true one" and it brought the maximum benefit. This lightning illustration suggests the important idea of relative truth and relative falsehood-the idea, that is, of degrees of truth and degrees of falsehood. A definition may be neither absolutely true nor absolutely false; but of two definitions of the same thing' one of them may be truer or falser than the other. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, 49,#KEYS |
369:I think one of the most important thing is to know why one meditates; this is what gives the quality of the meditation and makes it of one order or another.
You may meditate to open yourself to the divine Force, you may meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you may meditate to enter the depths of your being, you may meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally; you may meditate for all kinds of things. You may meditate to enter into peace and calm and silence - this is what people generally do, but without much success. But you may also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace out the line of progress. And then you may also meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difficulty to clear up, a solution to find, when you want help in some action or another. You may meditate for that too.
I think everyone has his own mode of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to help and fulfill this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic. ~ The Mother,#KEYS |
370:Other impacts it meets, but finds them too strong for it or too dissimilar and discordant or too weak to give it satisfaction; these are things which it cannot bear or cannot equate with itself or cannot assimilate, and it is obliged to give to them reactions of grief, pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, disliking, disapproval, rejection, inability to understand or know, refusal of admission. Against them it seeks to protect itself, to escape from them, to avoid or minimise their recurrence; it has with regard to them movements of fear, anger, shrinking, horror, aversion, disgust, shame, would gladly be delivered from them, but it cannot get away from them, for it is bound to and even invites their causes and therefore the results; for these impacts are part of life, tangled up with the things we desire, and the inability to deal with them is part of the imperfection of our nature. Other impacts again the normal mind succeeds in holding at bay or neutralising and to these it has a natural reaction of indifference, insensibility or tolerance which is neither positive acceptance and enjoymentnor rejection or suffering.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 730,#KEYS |
371:Find That Something :::
We can, simply by a sincere aspiration, open a sealed door in us and find... that Something which will change the whole significance of life, reply to all our questions, solve all our problems and lead us to the perfection we aspire for without knowing it, to that Reality which alone can satisfy us and give us lasting joy, equilibrium, strength, life.
All have heard it - Oh! there are even some here who are so used to it that for them it seems to be the same thing as drinking a glass of water or opening a window to let in the sunlight....
We have tried a little, but now we are going to try seriously!
The starting-point: to want it, truly want it, to need it. The next step: to think, above all, of that. A day comes, very quickly, when one is unable to think of anything else.
That is the one thing which counts. And then... One formulates one's aspiration, lets the true prayer spring up from one's heart, the prayer which expresses the sincerity of the need. And then... well, one will see what happens.
Something will happen. Surely something will happen. For each one it will take a different form.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS |
| 372:The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and to nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother-Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine. In this Yoga, therefore, there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others; any such relation or interchange immediately ties down the soul to the lower consciousness and its lower nature, prevents the true and full union with the Divine and hampers both the ascent to the supramental Truth consciousness and the descent of the supramental Ishwari Shakti. Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation or a sexual enjoyment, even if kept free from any outward act; therefore these things are absolutely forbidden in the sadhana. It goes without saying that any physical act of the kind is not allowed, but also any subtler form is ruled out. It is only after becoming one with the supramental Divine that we can find our true spiritual relations with others in the Divine; in that higher unity this kind of gross lower vital movement can have no place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, #KEYS |
373:My sweet mother, The more I look into myself, the more discouraged I am, and I don't know whether there is any chance of my making any progress. It seems that all the obscurities and falsehoods are rising up on every side, inside and outside, and want to swallow me up. There are times when I cannot distinguish truth from falsehood and I am then on the verge of losing my mind.
Still, there is something in me which says very weakly that all will be well; but this voice is so feeble that I cannot rely on it.1
My faults are so numerous and so great that I think I shall fail. On the other hand, I have neither the inclination nor the capacity for the ordinary life. And I know that I shall never be able to leave this life. This is my situation right now. The struggle is getting more and more acute, and worst of all I cannot lie to you. What should I do?
Do not torment yourself, my child, and remain as quiet as you can; do not yield to the temptation to give up the struggle and let yourself fall into darkness. Persist, and one day you will realise that I am close to you to console you and help you, and then the hardest part will be over. With all my love and blessings. 25 September 1947
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#KEYS |
374:Therefore the age of intuitive knowledge, represented by the early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads, had to give place to the age of rational knowledge; inspired Scripture made room for metaphysical philosophy, even as afterwards metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental Science.
Intuitive thought which is a messenger from the superconscient and therefore our highest faculty, was supplanted by the pure reason which is only a sort of deputy and belongs to the middle heights of our being; pure reason in its turn was supplanted for a time by the mixed action of the reason which lives on our plains and lower elevations and does not in its view exceed the horizon of the experience that the physical mind and senses or such aids as we can invent for them can bring to us.
And this process which seems to be a descent, is really a circle of progress.
For in each case the lower faculty is compelled to take up as much as it can assimilate of what the higher had already given and to attempt to re-establish it by its own methods.
By the attempt it is itself enlarged in its scope and arrives eventually at a more supple and a more ample selfaccommodation to the higher faculties. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.08-13,#KEYS |
375:How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.
~ Epictetus, (From Manual 51),#KEYS |
376:The Self, the Divine, the Supreme Reality, the All, the Transcendent, - the One in all these aspects is then the object of Yogic knowledge. Ordinary objects, the external appearances of life and matter, the psychology of out thoughts and actions, the perception of the forces of the apparent world can be part of this knowledge, but only in so far as it is part of the manifestation of the One. It becomes at once evident that the knowledge for which Yoga strives must be different from what men ordinarily understand by the word. For we mean ordinarily by knowledge an intellectual appreciation of the facts of life, mind and matter and the laws that govern them. This is a knowledge founded upon our sense-perception and upon reasoning from our sense-perceptions and it is undertaken partly for the pure satisfaction of the intellect, partly for practical efficiency and the added power which knowledge gives in managing our lives and the lives of others, in utilising for human ends the overt or secret forces of Nature and in helping or hurting, in saving and ennobling or in oppressing and destroying our fellow-men. Yoga, indeed, is commensurate with all life and can include these subjects and objects.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,#KEYS |
377:I accept, will not give up, and will practice each of the Three Jewels,
And will not let go of my guru or my yidam deity.
As the samaya of the Buddha, first among the Three Jewels,
I will apply myself to the true, essential reality.
As the samaya of sacred Dharma, second among the Three Jewels,
I will distill the very essence of all the vehicles' teachings.
As the samaya of the Sangha, the third and final Jewel,
I will look upon reality; I will behold pure awareness.
And as the samaya of the guru and the yidam deity,
I will take my very own mind, my pure mind, as a witness.
Generally speaking, the Three Jewels should be regarded as the ultimate place to take refuge. As was taught in the section on taking refuge, your mind should be focused one-pointedly, with all your hopes and trust placed in their care. The gurus are a lamp that dispels the darkness of ignorance.
As the guides who lead you along the path to liberation, they are your sole source of refuge and protection, from now until you attain enlightenment.
For these reasons, you should act with unwavering faith, pure view and devotion, and engage in the approach and accomplishment of the divine yidam deity. ~ Dzogchen Rinpoche III, Great Perfection Outer and Inner Preliminaries,#KEYS |
378:"Q: What is the right attitude to stick on to this path till the Supramental Truth is realised?
"A: There is the psychic condition and sincerity and devotion to the Mother."
What is "the psychic condition"?
The psychic condition? That means being in relation with one's psychic, I suppose, being governed by one's psychic being.
Sweet Mother, I don't understand very clearly the difference between faith, belief and confidence.
But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here. If you don't understand, then...
He has written "Faith is a feeling in the whole being."
The whole being, yes. Faith, that's the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence - one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one's own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do.
Faith is a certitude without any proof.
Mother, on what does faith depend?
Probably on Divine Grace. Some people have it spontaneously. There are others who need to make a great effort to have it.
~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-6, page no.120,#KEYS |
| 379:Considered from this point of view, the fact that some of the theories which we know to be false give such amazingly accurate results is an adverse factor. Had we somewhat less knowledge, the group of phenomena which these "false" theories explain would appear to us to be large enough to "prove" these theories. However, these theories are considered to be "false" by us just for the reason that they are, in ultimate analysis, incompatible with more encompassing pictures and, if sufficiently many such false theories are discovered, they are bound to prove also to be in conflict with each other. Similarly, it is possible that the theories, which we consider to be "proved" by a number of numerical agreements which appears to be large enough for us, are false because they are in conflict with a possible more encompassing theory which is beyond our means of discovery. If this were true, we would have to expect conflicts between our theories as soon as their number grows beyond a certain point and as soon as they cover a sufficiently large number of groups of phenomena. In contrast to the article of faith of the theoretical physicist mentioned before, this is the nightmare of the theorist. ~ Eugene Paul Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, #KEYS |
380:Ordinarily, man is limited in all these parts of his being and he can grasp at first only so much of the divine truth as has some large correspondence to his own nature and its past development and associations. Therefore God meets us first in different limited affirmations of his divine qualities and nature; he presents himself to the seeker as an absolute of the things he can understand and to which his will and heart can respond; he discloses some name and aspect of his Godhead.
This is what is called in Yoga the is.t.a-devata, the name and form elected by our nature for its worship. In order that the human being may embrace this Godhead with every part of himself, it is represented with a form that answers to its aspects and qualities and which becomes the living body of God to the adorer. These are those forms of Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, Kali, Durga, Christ, Buddha, which the mind of man seizes on for adoration. Even the monotheist who worships a formless Godhead, yet gives to him some form of quality, some mental form or form of Nature by which he envisages and approaches him. But to be able to see a living form, a mental body, as it were, of the Divine gives to the approach a greater closeness and sweetness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love,#KEYS |
381:Art is the human language of the nervous plane, intended to express and communicate the Divine, who in the domain of sensation manifests as beauty.
The purpose of art is therefore to give those for whom it is meant a freer and more perfect communion with the Supreme Reality. The first contact with this Supreme Reality expresses itself in our consciousness by a flowering of the being in a plenitude of vast and peaceful delight. Each time that art can give the spectator this contact with the infinite, however fleetingly, it fulfils its aim; it has shown itself worthy of its mission. Thus no art which has for many centuries moved and delighted a people can be dismissed, since it has at least partially fulfilled its mission - to be the powerful and more or less perfect utterance of that which is to be expressed. What makes it difficult for the sensibility of a nation to enjoy the delight that another nation finds in one art or another is the habitual limitation of the nervous being which, even more than the mental being, is naturally exclusive in its ability to perceive the Divine and which, when it has entered into relation with Him through certain forms, feels an almost irresistible reluctance to recognise Him through other forms of sensation. ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, 122,#KEYS |
382:Truly speaking, I have no opinion. According to a vision of truth, everything is still terribly mixed, a more or less favourable combination of light and darkness, truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance, and so long as decisions are made and action is undertaken according to opinions, it will always be like that.
We want to give the example of an action that is undertaken in accordance with a vision of truth, but unfortunately we are still very far from realising this ideal, and even if the vision of truth expresses itself, it is immediately distorted in its implementation.
So, in the present state of affairs, it is impossible to say, "This is true and that is false, this leads us away from the goal and that brings us nearer the goal."
Everything can be used for the progress to be made; everything can be useful if we know how to use it.
The important thing is never to lose sight of the ideal we want to realise and to make use of all circumstances in view of this goal.
And finally, it is always better not to make an arbitrary decision for or against things, and to watch the unfolding of events with the impartiality of a witness, relying on the Divine Wisdom which will decide for the best and do what is necessary. 29 July 1961 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T8],#KEYS |
383:"Because I have called, and ye refused . . . I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you." "For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them."
Time Jesum transeuntem et non revertentem: "Dread the passage of Jesus, for he does not return."
The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one's present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure. King Minos retained the divine bull, when the sacrifice would have signified submission to the will of the god of his society; for he preferred what he conceived to be his economic advantage. Thus he failed to advance into the liferole that he had assumed-and we have seen with what calamitous effect. The divinity itself became his terror; for, obviously, if one is oneself one's god, then God himself, the will of God, the power that would destroy one's egocentric system, becomes a monster. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,#KEYS |
| 384:A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all! ~ Richard P Feynman, #KEYS |
385:He is the friend, the adviser, helper, saviour in trouble and distress, the defender from enemies, the hero who fights our battles for us or under whose shield we fight, the charioteer, the pilot of our ways. And here we come at once to a closer intimacy; he is the comrade and eternal companion, the playmate of the game of living. But still there is so far a certain division, however pleasant, and friendship is too much limited by the appearance of beneficence. The lover can wound, abandon, be wroth with us, seem to betray, yet our love endures and even grows by these oppositions; they increase the joy of reunion and the joy of possession; through them the lover remains the friend, and all that he does, we find in the end, has been done by the lover and helper of our being for our souls perfection as well as for his joy in us. These contradictions lead to a greater intimacy. He is the father and mother too of our being, its source and protector and its indulgent cherisher and giver of our desires. He is the child born to our desire whom we cherish and rear. All these things the lover takes up; his love in its intimacy and oneness keeps in it the paternal and maternal care and lends itself to our demands upon it. All is unified in that deepest many-sided relation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Love,#KEYS |
386:The Twenty Tenets of Holons
1. Reality as a whole is not composed of things, or processes, but of holons.
2. Holons display four fundamental capacities:
a. self-preservation,
b. self-adaptation,
c. self-transcendence.
d. self-dissolution.
3. Holons emerge.
4. Holons emerge holarchically.
5. Each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessor.
6. The lower sets the possibilities of the higer; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower.
7. "The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises determines whether it is 'shallow' or 'deep'; and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its 'span'" (A. Koestler).
8. Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span.
9. Destroy any type of holon, and you will destroy all of the holons above it and none of the holons below it.
10. Holarchies coevolve.
11. The micro is in relational exchange with the macro at all levels of its depth.
12. Evolution has directionality:
a. Increasing complexity.
b. Increasing differentiation/integration.
c. Increasing organisation/structuration.
d. Increasing relative autonomy.
e. Increasing telos.
~ Ken Wilber, Sex Ecology Spirituality, 1995, p. 35-78.,#KEYS |
387:uniting life and Yoga :::
No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes. like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous withlife itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: All life is Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, Life and Yoga,#KEYS |
388:What is one to do to prepare oneself for the Yoga?
To be conscious, first of all. We are conscious of only an insignificant portion of our being; for the most part we are unconscious.
It is this unconsciousness that keeps us down to our unregenerate nature and prevents change and transformation in it. It is through unconsciousness that the undivine forces enter into us and make us their slaves. You are to be conscious of yourself, you must awake to your nature and movements, you must know why and how you do things or feel or think them; you must understand your motives and impulses, the forces, hidden and apparent, that move you; in fact, you must, as it were, take to pieces the entire machinery of your being. Once you are conscious, it means that you can distinguish and sift things, you can see which are the forces that pull you down and which help you on. And when you know the right from the wrong, the true from the false, the divine from the undivine, you are to act strictly up to your knowledge; that is to say, resolutely reject one and accept the other. The duality will present itself at every step and at every step you will have to make your choice. You will have to be patient and persistent and vigilant - "sleepless", as the adepts say; you must always refuse to give any chance whatever to the undivine against the divine. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS |
| 389:From above to below, the sefirot depict the drama of emanation, the transition from Ein Sof to creation. In the words of Azriel of Gerona, "They constitute the process by which all things come into being and pass away." From below to above, the sefirot constitute a ladder of ascent back to the One. The union of Tif'eret and Shekhinah gives birth to the human soul, and the mystical journey begins with the awareness of this spiritual fact of life. Shekhinah is the opening to the divine: "One who enters must enter through this gate." Once inside, the sefirot are no longer an abstract theological system; they become a map of consciousness. The mystic climbs and probes, discovering dimensions of being. Spiritual and psychological wholeness is achieved by meditating on the qualities of each sefirah, by imitating and integrating the attributes of God. "When you cleave to the sefirot, the divine holy spirit enters into you, into every sensation and every movement." But the path is not easy. Divine will can be harsh: Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac in order to balance love with rigor. From the Other Side, demonic forces threaten and seduce. [The demonic is rooted in the divine]. Contemplatively and psychologically, evil must be encountered, not evaded. By knowing and withstanding the dark underside of wisdom, the spiritual seeker is refined.~ Daniel C Matt, The Essential Kabbalah, 10, #KEYS |
390:keep faith :::
We must have faith that always what is for the best happens. We may for the moment not consider it as the best because we are ignorant and also blind, because we do not see the consequences of things and what will happen later. But we must keep the faith that if it is like that, if we rely on the Divine, if we give Him the full charge of ourselves, if we let Him decide everything for us, well, we must know that it is always what is best for us that happens. This is an absolute fact. To the extent to which you surrender, the best happens to you. This may not be in conformity with what you would like, your preferences or desire, because these things are blind: it is the best from thespiritual point of view, the best for your progress, your development, your spiritual growth, your true life. It is always that. And you must keep this faith, because faith is the expression of a trust in the Divine and the full self-giving you make to the Divine. And when you make it, it is something absolutely marvellous. That's a fact, these are not just words, you understand, it is a fact. When you look back, all kinds of things which you did not understand when they happened to you, you realise as just the thing which was necessary in order to compel you to make the needed progress. Always, without exception. It is our blindness which prevents us from seeing it. ~ The Mother,#KEYS |
391:Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the sacrifice and the manner of the sacrifice. The sacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme. The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to us and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by the One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through them to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109-110],#KEYS |
392:CHAPTER V
The Actual Practice:The Yoga of Meditative Equipoise
Part II
The Yoga of the Speech Recitation
The next section explains the yoga of vajra recitation in seven parts:
(1) general understanding, (2) the particular necessity for practice, (3) the actual nature of the recitation, (4) different types of recitation, (5) the manner of reciting the mantra, (6) number of recitations and (7) activity upon completion.
General Understanding
A general understanding of the yoga of vajra recitation is approached by considering the object that needs to be purified by the yoga, the means of purification and the result. The object that needs to be purified through the yoga of speech is the habit of perceiving all sounds-names, words, syllables and anything that is spoken-as merely ordinary sounds with ordinary meanings.
Simply stated, the object to purify is your present, obscured experience of speech and the habitual instincts that accompany it.
The practice of mantra recitation purifies this impure experience and results in pure, vajra-like speech. One achieves the Sambhogakaya and becomes imbued with the sixty qualities of the Buddha's speech. All of one's words become pleasing, meaningful and helpful. The means of purification is to recite the mantra, the pure sounds which the buddhas have given to us, over and over until they are like a spinning wheel of sound. ~ Gyatrul Rinpoche, Generating the DeityZ,#KEYS |
393:To prepare for Astral Magic a temple or series of temples needs to be erected on the plane of visualized imagination. Such temples can take any convenient form although some magicians prefer to work with an exact simulacrum of their physical temple. The astral temple is visualized in fine detail and should contain all the equipment required for ritual or at least cupboards where any required instruments can be found.
Any objects visualized into the temple should always remain there for subsequent inspection unless specifically dissolved or removed. The most important object in the temple is the magician's image of himself working in it. At first it may seem that he is merely manipulating a puppet of himself in the temple but with persistence this should give way to a feeling of actually being there. Before beginning Astral Magic proper, the required temple and instruments together with an image of the magician moving about in it should be built up by a repeated series of visualizations until all the details are perfect. Only when this is complete should the magician begin to use the temple. Each conjuration that is performed should be planned in advance with the same attention to detail as in Ritual Magic. The various acts of astral evocation, divination, enchantment, invocation and illumination take on a similar general form to the acts of Ritual Magic which the magician adapts for astral work. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Kaos [T2],#KEYS |
394:the one entirely acceptable sacrifice :::
And the fruit also of the sacrifice of works varies according to the work, according to the intention in the work and according to the spirit that is behind the intention. But all other sacrifices are partial, egoistic, mixed, temporal, incomplete, - even those offered to the highest Powers and Principles keep this character: the result too is partial, limited, temporal, mixed in its reactions, effective only for a minor or intermediate purpose. The one entirely acceptable sacrifice is a last and highest and uttermost self-giving, - it is that surrender made face to face, with devotion and knowledge, freely and without any reserve to One who is at once our immanent Self, the environing constituent All, the Supreme Reality beyond this or any manifestation and, secretly, all these together, concealed everywhere, the immanent Transcendence. For to the soul that wholly gives itself to him, God also gives himself altogether. Only the one who offers his whole nature, finds the Self. Only the one who can give everything, enjoys the Divine All everywhere. Only a supreme self-abandonment attains to the Supreme. Only the sublimation by sacrifice of all that we are, can enable us to embody the Highest and live here in the immanent consciousness of the transcendent Spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [110],#KEYS |
| 395:5. Belly of the Whale:The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again. The disappearance corresponds to the passing of a worshipper into a temple-where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal. The temple interior, the belly of the whale, and the heavenly land beyond, above, and below the confines of the world, are one and the same. That is why the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. The devotee at the moment of entry into a temple undergoes a metamorphosis. Once inside he may be said to have died to time and returned to the World Womb, the World Navel, the Earthly Paradise. Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting in picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS |
396:
Mother, in your symbol the twelve petals signify the twelve inner planes, don't they?
It signifies anything one wants, you see. Twelve: that's the number of Aditi, of Mahashakti. So it applies to everything; all her action has twelve aspects. There are also her twelve virtues, her twelve powers, her twelve aspects, and then her twelve planes of manifestation and many other things that are twelve; and the symbol, the number twelve is in itself a symbol. It is the symbol of manifestation, double perfection, in essence and in manifestation, in the creation.
What are the twelve aspects, Sweet Mother?
Ah, my child, I have described this somewhere, but I don't remember now. For it is always a choice, you see; according to what one wants to say, one can choose these twelve aspects or twelve others, or give them different names. The same aspect can be named in different ways. This does not have the fixity of a mental theory. (Silence)
According to the angle from which one sees the creation, one day I may describe twelve aspects to you; and then another day, because I have shifted my centre of observation, I may describe twelve others, and they will be equally true.
(To Vishwanath) Is it the wind that's producing this storm? It is very good for a dramatic stage-effect.... The traitor is approaching in the night... yes? We are waiting for some terrible deed....
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954, 395,#KEYS |
397:When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth......
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.>p>Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. ~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet,#KEYS |
| 398:"Listen to Erwin Schroedinger,the Nobel Prize-winning cofounder of quantum mechanics,and how can I convince you that he means this literally?Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown.It is not possible that this unity of knowledge,feelings,and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago;rather,this knowledge,feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all people,nay in all sensitive beings.The conditions for your existence are almost as old as rocks.For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought in pain.A hundred years ago (there's the test),another man sat on this spot;like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman.He felt pain and brief joy as you do.Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself?WAS IT NOT YOU,YOURSELF? Are you not humanity itself? Do you not touch all things human,because you are it's only Witness? Do you not therefore love the world,and love all people,and love the Kosmos,because you are its only Self? Do you not weep when one person is hurt,do you not cry when one child goes hungry,do you not scream when one soul is tortured? You know you suffer when others suffer.You already know this! "Was it someone else? Was it not you yourself?" ~ Ken Wilber, One Taste, p. 342-343, #KEYS |
399:Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really oveR But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.~ Haruki Murakami,#KEYS |
400:In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS |
| 401:0 Order - All developmental theories consider the infant to be "undifferentiated," the essence of which is the absence of any self-other boundary (interpersonally) or any subject-object boundary (intrapsychically), hence, stage 0 rather than stage 1. The infant is believed to consider all of the phenomena it experiences as extensions of itself. The infant is "all self" or "all subject" and "no object or other." Whether one speaks of infantile narcissism," "orality," being under the sway completely of "the pleasure principle" with no countervailing "reality principle," or being "all assimilative" with no countervailing "accommodation," all descriptions amount to the same picture of an objectless, incorporative embeddedness. Such an underlying psychologic gives rise not only to a specific kind of cognition (prerepresentational) but to a specific kind of emotion in which the emotional world lacks any distinction between inner and outer sources of pleasure and discomfort. To describe a state of complete undifferentiation, psychologists have had to rely on metaphors: Our language itself depends on the transcendence of this prerepresentational stage. The objects, symbols, signs, and referents of language organize the experienced world and presuppose the very categories that are not yet articulated at stage 0. Thus, Freud has described this period as the "oceanic stage," the self undifferentiated from the swelling sea. Jung suggested "uroboros," the snake that swallows its tail. ~ Robert Kegan, #KEYS |
402:Inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can command it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its levels. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes Gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,-for then there is no difficulty,-I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspiration's incertitudes.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Inspiration and Effort - I,#KEYS |
403:There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature. This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [92],#KEYS |
| 404:Why God sometimes allows people who are genuinely good to be hindered in the good that they do. God, who is faithful, allows his friends to fall frequently into weakness only in order to remove from them any prop on which they might lean. For a loving person it would be a great joy to be able to achieve many great feats, whether keeping vigils, fasting, performing other ascetical practices or doing major, difficult and unusual works. For them this is a great joy, support and source of hope so that their works become a prop and a support upon which they can lean. But it is precisely this which our Lord wishes to take from them so that he alone will be their help and support. This he does solely on account of his pure goodness and mercy, for God is prompted to act only by his goodness, and in no way do our works serve to make God give us anything or do anything for us. Our Lord wishes his friends to be freed from such an attitude, and thus he removes their support from them so that they must henceforth find their support only in him. For he desires to give them great gifts, solely on account of his goodness, and he shall be their comfort and support while they discover themselves to be and regard themselves as being a pure nothingness in all the great gifts of God. The more essentially and simply the mind rests on God and is sustained by him, the more deeply we are established in God and the more receptive we are to him in all his precious gifts - for human kind should build on God alone. ~ Meister Eckhart, #KEYS |
405:"So," she said. "I've been thinking of it as a computing problem. If the virus or nanomachine or protomolecule or whatever was designed, it has a purpose, right?"
"Definitely," Holden said.
"And it seems like it's trying to do something-something complex. It doesn't make sense to go to all that trouble just to kill people. Those changes it makes look intentional, just... not complete, to me."
"I can see that," Holden said. Alex and Amos nodded along with him but stayed quiet.
"So maybe the issue is that the protomolecule isn't smart enough yet. You can compress a lot of data down pretty small, but unless it's a quantum computer, processing takes space. The easiest way to get that processing in tiny machines is through distribution. Maybe the protomolecule isn't finishing its job because it just isn't smart enough to. Yet."
"Not enough of them," Alex said.
"Right," Naomi said, dropping the towel into a bin under the sink. "So you give them a lot of biomass to work with, and see what it is they are ultimately made to do."
"According to that guy in the video, they were made to hijack life on Earth and wipe us out," Miller said.
"And that," Holden said, "is why Eros is perfect. Lots of biomass in a vacuum-sealed test tube. And if it gets out of hand, there's already a war going on. A lot of ships and missiles can be used for nuking Eros into glass if the threat seems real. Nothing to make us forget our differences like a new player butting in." ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,#KEYS |
406:People think of education as something that they can finish. And what's more, when they finish, it's a rite of passage. You're finished with school. You're no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school - reading books, having ideas, asking questions - that's kid's stuff. Now you're an adult, you don't do that sort of thing any more.
You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning, and you make them ashamed afterward of going back to learning. If you have a system of education using computers, then anyone, any age, can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. If you enjoy learning, there's no reason why you should stop at a given age. People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age.
What's exciting is the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there's now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it's time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There's only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it. ~ Isaac Asimov, Carl Freedman - Conversations with Isaac Asimov-University Press of Mississippi (2005).pdf,#KEYS |
407:A divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others,—though to God nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral Yoga
For a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral yoga
To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire a thing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, The Mother’s Love,#KEYS |
408:[the value of sublimation:]
And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this wholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work against the whole-heartedness of our endeavour.
In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations, - an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations. What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of our past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man and to create a new centre of vision and a new universe of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, [71] [T1],#KEYS |
409:The great men of the past have given us glimpses of what is possible in the way of personality, of intellectual understanding, of spiritual achievement, of artistic creation. But these are scarcely more than Pisgah glimpses. We need to explore and map the whole realm of human possibility, as the realm of physical geography has been explored and mapped. How to create new possibilities for ordinary living? What can be done to bring out the latent capacities of the ordinary man and woman for understanding and enjoyment; to teach people the techniques of achieving spiritual experience (after all, one can acquire the technique of dancing or tennis, so why not of mystical ecstasy or spiritual peace?)...
The zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities and of the techniques for realizing them will make our hopes rational, and will set our ideals within the framework of reality, by showing how much of them are indeed realizable. Already, we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted. We are already justified in the conviction that human life as we know it in history is a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance; and that it could be transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge and comprehension, just as our modern control of physical nature based on science transcends the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, that were rooted in superstition and professional secrecy. ~ Julian Huxley, Transhumanism,#KEYS |
410:Why Ubuntu: If I were you I'd just install Ubuntu into a dual-boot partition (the Ubuntu website has instructions for this) and learn as you go. Ubuntu is similar enough to Windows that you should be able to start using it right away without much difficulty.
For running your Python scripts you'll want to drop into the shell (Ctrl + Alt + T If memory serves me right). As you become more comfortable with Ubuntu, you can start using the shell more and more. The shell is what gives you access to the power of Unix; every time you need to do something tedious and repetitive, try to find out how to do it through the shell.
Eventually you will find yourself using the shell constantly. You'll wonder how you ever managed without it, and deride other operating systems for their lack of sensible programming tools. One day you'll realise that desktop window managers are a needless distraction. You start using xmonad or awesomewm. Eventually you realise that this, too, is a bastardisaton of the Unix vision and start using tmux exclusively. Then suddenly it hits you - every computer, every operating system, no matter how insignificant or user-friendly, has the Unix nature. All of them are merely streams from where you can ssh back into the ocean of Unix. Having achieved enlightenment you are equally content using an iPad as your main work computer, using powershell in Windows or SSH into a Digital Ocean droplet from your parent's computer. This is the Zen of Unix.
~ JohnyTex, https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/38zytg/is_it_worth_my_time_to_learn_linux_while_learning,#KEYS |
411:Supermind, on the other hand, as a basic structure-rung (conjoined with nondual Suchness) can only be experienced once all the previous junior levels have emerged and developed, and as in all structure development, stages cannot be skipped. Therefore, unlike Big Mind, supermind can only be experienced after all 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-tier junior stages have been passed through. While, as Genpo Roshi has abundantly demonstrated, Big Mind state experience is available to virtually anybody at almost any age (and will be interpreted according to the View of their current stage), supermind is an extremely rare recognition. Supermind, as the highest structure-rung to date, has access to all previous structures, all the way back to Archaic-and the Archaic itself, of course, has transcended and included, and now embraces, every major structural evolution going all the way back to the Big Bang. (A human being literally enfolds and embraces all the major transformative unfoldings of the entire Kosmic history-strings to quarks to subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to cells, all the way through the Tree of Life up to its latest evolutionary emergent, the triune brain, the most complex structure in the known natural world.) Supermind, in any given individual, is experienced as a type of omniscience-the supermind, since it transcends and includes all of the previous structure-rungs, and inherently is conjoined with the highest nondual Suchness state, has a full and complete knowledge of all of the potentials in that person. It literally knows all, at least for the individual.
~ Ken Wilber?,#KEYS |
412:The hours spent in meditation is no proof of spiritual progress. It is proof of your progress when you no longer have to make an effort to meditate. Then you have rather to make an effort to stop meditating: it becomes difficult to stop meditation, difficult to stop thinking of the Divine, difficult to come down to the ordinary consciousness. Then you are sure of progress, then you have made real progress when concentrating on the Divine is the necessity of your life, when you cannot do without it, when it continues naturally from morning to night whatever you may be engaged in doing. Whether you sit down to meditation or go about and do things and work, what is required of you is consciousness; that is the one need - to be constantly conscious of the Divine.
But is not sitting down to meditation an indispensable discipline, and does it not give a more intense and concentrated union with the Divine?
That may be. But a discipline in itself is not what we are seeking. What we are seeking is to be concentrated on the Divine in all that we do, at all times, in all our acts and in every movement. There are some here who have been told to meditate; but also there are others who have not been asked to do any meditation at all. But it must not be thought that they are not progressing. They too follow a discipline, but it is of another nature. To work, to act with devotion and an inner consecration is also a spiritual discipline. The final aim is to be in constant union with the Divine, not only in meditation but in all circumstances and in all the active life. ~ The Mother,#KEYS |
413:This ego or "I" is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of Nature, a mental form of thought centralisation in the perceiving and discriminating mind, a vital form of the centralisation of feeling and sensation in our parts of life, a form of physical conscious reception centralising substance and function of substance in our bodies. All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. All that we externally and superficiallyare and do is not ego but Nature. An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed. The Sadhaka in his progress towards truth and self-knowledge must come to a point where the soul opens its eyes of vision and recognises this truth of ego and this truth of works. He gives up the idea of a mental, vital, physical, "I" that acts or governs action; he recognises that Prakriti, Force of cosmic nature following her fixed modes, is the one and only worker in him and in all things and creatures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,#KEYS |
414:the vital
the life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul of man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of nature. The vital part of man is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and governed by the spiritual light and power. The vital has three main parts:
higher vital
the mental vital and emotional vital taken together. The mental vital gives a mental expression by thought, speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations or other movements of the vital being; the emotional vital is the seat of various feelings, such as love, joy, sorrow, hatred and the rest.
central vital or vital proper
dynamic, sensational and passionate, it is the seat of the stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passion of various kinds and the field of many vital energies.
lower vital
made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds, etc. The material vital is that part of the lower vital turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane. ~ Integral Yoga; Sri Aurobindo's Teaching and Method of Practice,#KEYS |
| 415:The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again-if the powers have remained unfriendly to him-his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir). ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Keys, #KEYS |
416:Concentrating the Attention:
Whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain the concentration with a presistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - thats not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate. And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensble. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention. And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important. There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS |
417:
How can one "learn of pure delight"?
First of all, to begin with, one must through an attentive observation grow aware that desires and the satisfaction of desires give only a vague, uncertain pleasure, mixed, fugitive and altogether unsatisfactory. That is usually the starting-point.
Then, if one is a reasonable being, one must learn to discern what is desire and refrain from doing anything that may satisfy one's desires. One must reject them without trying to satisfy them. And so the first result is exactly one of the first observations stated by the Buddha in his teaching: there is an infinitely greater delight in conquering and eliminating a desire than in satisfying it. Every sincere and steadfast seeker will realise after some time, sooner or later, at times very soon, that this is an absolute truth, and that the delight felt in overcoming a desire is incomparably higher than the small pleasure, so fleeting and mixed, which may be found in the satisfaction of his desires. That is the second step.
Naturally, with this continuous discipline, in a very short time the desires will keep their distance and will no longer bother you. So you will be free to enter a little more deeply into your being and open yourself in an aspiration to... the Giver of Delight, the divine Element, the divine Grace. And if this is done with a sincere self-giving - something that gives itself, offers itself and expects nothing in exchange for its offering - one will feel that kind of sweet warmth, comfortable, intimate, radiant, which fills the heart and is the herald of Delight.
After this, the path is easy.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS |
418:Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called 'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS |
419:science of consciousness, the soul and objective matter :::
When the ancient thinkers of India set themselves to study the soul of man in themselves and others, they, unlike any other nation or school of early thought, proceeded at once to a process which resembles exactly enough the process adopted by modern science in its study of physical phenomena. For their object was to study, arrange and utilise the forms, forces and working movements of consciousness, just as the modern physical Sciences study, arrange and utilize the forms, forces and working movements of objective Matter. The material with which they had to deal was more subtle, flexible and versatile than the most impalpable forces of which the physical Sciences have become aware; its motions were more elusive, its processes harder to fix; but once grasped and ascertained, the movements of consciousness were found by Vedic psychologists to be in their process and activity as regular, manageable and utilisable as the movements of physical forces. The powers of the soul can be as perfectly handled and as safely, methodically and puissantly directed to practical life-purposes of joy, power and light as the modern power of electricity can be used for human comfort, industrial and locomotive power and physical illumination; but the results to which they give room and effect are more wonderful and momentous than the results of motorpower and electric luminosity. For there is no difference of essential law in the physical and the psychical, but only a difference and undoubtedly a great difference of energy, instrumentation and exact process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Towards a True Scientific Psychology, 106,#KEYS |
420:The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness working as mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its universality or even of the totality of his own being, unable to deal either with life in general or with his own life in a really effective and victorious movement of mastery. He seeks to know Matter in order to be master of the material environment, to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind in order to be master of the great obscure movement of mentality in which he is not only a jet of light of self-consciousness like the animal, but also more and more a flame of growing knowledge. Thus he seeks to know himself in order to be master of himself, to know the world in order to be master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the necessity of the Consciousness he is, the impulsion of the Force that is his life, the secret will of Sachchidananda appearing as the individual in a world in which He expresses and yet seems to deny Himself. To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity seated within him; and until the problem is solved, the impulse satisfied, the human race cannot rest from its labour. Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS |
421:"She"
How shall I welcome not this light
Or, wakened by it, greet with doubt
This beam as palpable to sight
As visible to touch? How not,
Old as I am and (some say) wise,
Revive beneath her summer eyes?
How not have all my nights and days,
My spirit ranging far and wide,
By recollections of her grace
Enlightened and preoccupied?
Preoccupied: the Morning Star
How near the Sun and yet how far!
Enlightened: true, but more than true,
Or why must I discover there
The meaning in this taintless dew,
The dancing wave, this blessed air
Enchanting in its morning dress
And calm as everlastingness?
The flame that in the heart resides
Is parcel of that central Fire
Whose energy is winds and tides-
Is rooted deep in the Desire
That smilingly unseals its power
Each summer in each springing flower.
Oh Lady Nature-Proserpine,
Mistress of Gender, star-crowned Queen!
Ah Rose of Sharon-Mistress mine,
My teacher ere I turned fourteen,
When first I hallowed from afar
Your Beautyship in avatar!
I sense the hidden thing you say,
Your subtle whisper how the Word
From Alpha on to Omega
Made all things-you confide my Lord
Himself-all, all this potent Frame,
All save the riddle of your name.
Wisdom! I heard a voice that said:
"What riddle? What is that to you?
How! By my follower betrayed!
Look up-for shame! Now tell me true:
Where meet you light, with love and grace?
Still unacquainted with my face?"
Dear God, the erring heart must live-
Through strength and weakness, calm and glow-
That answer Wisdom scorns to give.
Much have I learned. One problem, though,
I never shall unlock: Who then,
Who made Sophia feminine?
~ Owen Barfield, 1978,#KEYS |
422:Here lies the whole importance of the part of the Yoga of Knowledge which we are now considering, the knowledges of those essential principles of Being, those essential modes of self-existence on which the absolute Divine has based its self-manifestation. If the truth of our being is an infinite unity in which alone there is perfect wideness, light, knowledge, power, bliss, and if all our subjection to darkness, ignorance, weakness, sorrow, limitation comes of our viewing existence as a clash of infinitely multiple separate existences, then obviously it is the most practical and concrete and utilitarian as well as the most lofty and philosophical wisdom to find a means by which we can get away from the error and learn to live in the truth. So also, if that One is in its nature a freedom from bondage to this play of qualities which constitute our psychology and if from subjection to that play are born the struggle and discord in which we live, floundering eternally between the two poles of good and evil, virtue and sin, satisfaction and failure, joy and grief, pleasure and pain, then to get beyond the qualities and take our foundation in the settled peace of that which is always beyond them is the only practical wisdom. If attachment to mutable personality is the cause of our self-ignorance, of our discord and quarrel with ourself and with life and with others, and if there is an impersonal One in which no such discord and ignorance and vain and noisy effort exist because it is in eternal identity and harmony with itself, then to arrive in our souls at that impersonality and untroubled oneness of being is the one line and object of human effort to which our reason can consent to give the name of practicality.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS |
423:Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo is speaking about occult endeavour here and says that those who don't have the capacity must wait till it is given to them. Can't they get it through practice?
No. That is, if it is latent in someone, it can be developed by practice. But if one doesn't have occult power, he may try for fifty years, he won't get anywhere. Everybody cannot have occult power. It is as though you were asking whether everybody could be a musician, everybody could be a painter, everybody could... Some can, some can't. It is a question of temperament.
What is the difference between occultism and mysticism?
They are not at all the same thing.
Mysticism is a more or less emotive relation with what one senses to be a divine power - that kind of highly emotional, affective, very intense relation with something invisible which is or is taken for the Divine. That is mysticism.
Occultism is exactly what he has said: it is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science. It is altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry, for it is the same kind of knowledge as the knowledge of chemistry for material things. It is a knowledge of invisible forces, their different vibrations, their interrelations, the combinations which can be made by bringing them together and the power one can exercise over them. It is absolutely scientific; and it ought to be learnt like a science; that is, one cannot practise occultism as something emotional or something vague and imprecise. You must work at it as you would do at chemistry, and learn all the rules or find them if there is nobody to teach you. But it is at some risk to yourself that you can find them. There are combinations here as explosive as certain chemical combinations. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS |
| 424:If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, - an image which in this experience becomes a reality, - we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; for though we have applied that word for want of a better to any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to our intuitions something of its own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate. At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, - not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind Mind and the Overmind Maya, 293, #KEYS |
425:There is the one door in us that sometimes swings open upon the splendour of a truth beyond and, before it shuts again, allows a ray to touch us, - a luminous intimation which, if we have the strength and firmness, we may hold to in our faith and make a starting-point for another play of consciousness than that of the sense-mind, for the play of Intuition. For if we examine carefully, we shall find that Intuition is our first teacher. Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations. Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the Unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge. Reason only comes in afterwards to see what profit it can have of the shining harvest. Intuition gives us that idea of something behind and beyond all that we know and seem to be which pursues man always in contradiction of his lower reason and all his normal experience and impels him to formulate that formless perception in the more positive ideas of God, Immortality, Heaven and the rest by which we strive to express it to the mind. For Intuition is as strong as Nature herself from whose very soul it has sprung and cares nothing for the contradictions of reason or the denials of experience. It knows what is because it is, because itself it is of that and has come from that, and will not yield it to the judgment of what merely becomes and appears. What the Intuition tells us of, is not so much Existence as the Existent, for it proceeds from that one point of light in us which gives it its advantage, that sometimes opened door in our own self-awareness. Ancient Vedanta seized this message of the Intuition and formulated it in the three great declarations of the Upanishads, I am He, Thou art That, O Swetaketu, All this is the Brahman; this Self is the Brahman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge,#KEYS |
426:Though the supermind is suprarational to our intelligence and its workings occult to our apprehension, it is nothing irrationally mystic, but rather its existence and emergence is a logical necessity of the nature of existence, always provided we grant that not matter or mind alone but spirit is the fundamental reality and everywhere a universal presence. All things are a manifestation of the infinite spirit out of its own being, out of its own consciousness and by the self-realising, self-determining, self-fulfilling power of that consciousness. The Infinite, we may say, organises by the power of its self-knowledge the law of its own manifestation of being in the universe, not only the material universe present to our senses, but whatever lies behind it on whatever planes of existence. All is organised by it not under any inconscient compulsion, not according to a mental fantasy or caprice, but in its own infinite spiritual freedom according to the self-truth of its being, its infinite potentialities and its will of self-creation out of those potentialities, and the law of this self-truth is the necessity that compels created things to act and evolve each according to its own nature. The Intelligence- to give it an inadequate name-the Logos that thus organises its own manifestation is evidently something infinitely greater, more extended in knowledge, compelling in self-power, large both in the delight of its self-existence and the delight of its active being and works than the mental intelligence which is to us the highest realised degree and expression of consciousness. It is to this intelligence infinite in itself but freely organising and self-determiningly organic in its self-creation and its works that we may give for our present purpose the name of the divine supermind or gnosis.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 785-86,#KEYS |
| 427:Hence, it's obvious to see why in AA the community is so important; we are powerless over ourselves. Since we don't have immediate awareness of the Higher Power and how it works, we need to be constantly reminded of our commitment to freedom and liberation. The old patterns are so seductive that as they go off, they set off the association of ideas and the desire to give in to our addiction with an enormous force that we can't handle. The renewal of defeat often leads to despair. At the same time, it's a source of hope for those who have a spiritual view of the process. Because it reminds us that we have to renew once again our total dependence on the Higher Power. This is not just a notional acknowledgment of our need. We feel it from the very depths of our being. Something in us causes our whole being to cry out, "Help!" That's when the steps begin to work. And that, I might add, is when the spiritual journey begins to work. A lot of activities that people in that category regard as spiritual are not communicating to them experientially their profound dependence on the grace of God to go anywhere with their spiritual practices or observances. That's why religious practice can be so ineffective. The real spiritual journey depends on our acknowledging the unmanageability of our lives. The love of God or the Higher Power is what heals us. Nobody becomes a full human being without love. It brings to life people who are most damaged. The steps are really an engagement in an ever-deepening relationship with God. Divine love picks us up when we sincerely believe nobody else will. We then begin to experience freedom, peace, calm, equanimity, and liberation from cravings for what we have come to know are damaging-cravings that cannot bring happiness, but at best only momentary relief that makes the real problem worse. ~ Thomas Keating, Divine Therapy and Addiction, #KEYS |
428:There is a story I would like to tell you about a woman who practices the invocation of the Buddha Amitabha's name. She is very tough, and she practices the invocation three times daily, using a wooden drum and a bell, reciting, "Namo Amitabha Buddha" for one hour each time. When she arrives at one thousand times, she invites the bell to sound. (In Vietnamese, we don't say "strike" or "hit" a bell.) Although she has been doing this for ten years, her personality has not changed. She is still quite mean, shouting at people all the time.
A friend wanted to teach her a lesson, so one afternoon when she had just lit the incense, invited the bell to sound three times, and was beginning to recite "Namo Amitabha Buddha," he came to her door, and said, "Mrs. Nguyen, Mrs. Nguyen!" She found it very annoying because this was her time of practice, but he just stood at the front gate shouting her name. She said to herself, "I have to struggle against my anger, so I will ignore that," and she went on, "Namo Amitabha Buddha, Namo Amitabha Buddha."
The gentleman continued to shout her name, and her anger became more and more oppressive. She struggled against it, wondering, "Should I stop my recitation and go and give him a piece of my mind?" But she continued chanting, and she struggled very hard. Fire mounted in her, but she still tried to chant "Namo Amitabha Buddha." The gentleman knew it, and he continued to shout, "Mrs. Nguyen! Mrs. Nguyen!"
She could not bear it any longer. She threw away the bell and the drum. She slammed the door, went out to the gate and said, "Why, why do you behave like that? Why do you call my name hundreds of times like that?" The gentleman smiled at her and said, "I just called your name for ten minutes, and you are so angry. You have been calling the Buddha's name for ten years. Think how angry he must be! ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#KEYS |
429:When, in last week's aphorism, Sri Aurobindo opposed - as one might say - "knowledge" to "Wisdom", he was speaking of knowledge as it is lived in the average human consciousness, the knowledge which is obtained through effort and mental development, whereas here, on the contrary, the knowledge he speaks of is the essential Knowledge, the supramental divine Knowledge, Knowledge by identity. And this is why he describes it here as "vast and eternal", which clearly indicates that it is not human knowledge as we normally understand it.
Many people have asked why Sri Aurobindo said that the river is "slender". This is an expressive image which creates a striking contrast between the immensity of the divine, supramental Knowledge - the origin of this inspiration, which is infinite - and what a human mind can perceive of it and receive from it.
Even when you are in contact with these domains, the portion, so to say, which you perceive, is minimal, slender. It is like a tiny little stream or a few falling drops and these drops are so pure, so brilliant, so complete in themselves, that they give you the sense of a marvellous inspiration, the impression that you have reached infinite domains and risen very high above the ordinary human condition. And yet this is nothing in comparison with what is still to be perceived.
I have also been asked if the psychic being or psychic consciousness is the medium through which the inspiration is perceived.
Generally, yes. The first contact you have with higher regions is a psychic one. Certainly, before an inner psychic opening is achieved, it is difficult to have these inspirations. It can happen as an exception and under exceptional conditions as a grace, but the true contact comes through the psychic; because the psychic consciousness is certainly the medium with the greatest affinity with the divine Truth. ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS |
430:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows,
- some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS |
431:One can concentrate in any of the three centres which is easiest to the sadhak or gives most result. The power of the concentration in the heart-centre is to open that centre and by the power of aspiration, love, bhakti, surrender remove the veil which covers and conceals the soul and bring forward the soul or psychic being to govern the mind, life and body and turn and open them all-fully-to the Divine, removing all that is opposed to that turning and opening.
This is what is called in this Yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental vital-physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this Yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement, then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre) and to bring out the psychic being; for until that is done there is likely to be much difficulty and struggle of the lower consciousness obstructing, mixing with or even refusing the Divine Action from above. If the psychic being is once active this struggle and these difficulties can be greatly minimised. The power of concentration in the eyebrows is to open the centre there, liberate the inner mind and vision and the inner or Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [where to concentrate?],#KEYS |
432:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows, - some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works,#KEYS |
433:More often, he listened to the voice of Eros. Sometimes he watched the video feeds too, but usually, he just listened. Over the hours and days, he began to hear, if not patterns, at least common structures. Some of the voices spooling out of the dying station were consistent-broadcasters and entertainers who were overrepresented in the audio files archives, he guessed. There seemed to be some specific tendencies in, for want of a better term, the music of it too. Hours of random, fluting static and snatched bits of phrases would give way, and Eros would latch on to some word or phrase, fixating on it with greater and greater intensity until it broke apart and the randomness poured back in.
"... are, are, are, ARE, ARE, ARE... "
Aren't, Miller thought, and the ship suddenly shoved itself up, leaving Miller's stomach about half a foot from where it had been. A series of loud clanks followed, and then the brief wail of a Klaxon. "Dieu! Dieu!" someone shouted. "Bombs son vamen roja! Going to fry it! Fry us toda!"
There was the usual polite chuckle that the same joke had occasioned over the course of the trip, and the boy who'd made it-a pimply Belter no more than fifteen years old-grinned with pleasure at his own wit. If he didn't stop that shit, someone was going to beat him with a crowbar before they got back to Tycho. But Miller figured that someone wasn't him.
A massive jolt forward pushed him hard into the couch, and then gravity was back, the familiar 0.3 g. Maybe a little more. Except that with the airlocks pointing toward ship's down, the pilot had to grapple the spinning skin of Eros' belly first. The spin gravity made what had been the ceiling the new floor; the lowest rank of couches was now the top; and while they rigged the fusion bombs to the docks, they were all going to have to climb up onto a cold, dark rock that was trying to fling them off into the vacuum.
Such were the joys of sabotage. ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,#KEYS |
434:True love has no need of reciprocation; there can be no reciprocation because there is only one Love, the Love, which has no other aim than to love. It is in the world of division that one feels the need of reciprocation - because one lives in the illusion of the multiplicity of Love; but in fact there is only One Love and it is always this sole love which, so to say, responds to itself. 19 April 1967
*
Indeed, there is only one Love, universal and eternal, as there is only one Consciousness, universal and eternal.
All the apparent differences are colorations given by individualisation and personification. But these alterations are purely superficial. And the "nature" of Love, as of Consciousness, is unalterable. 20 April 1967
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When one has found divine Love, it is the Divine that one loves in all beings. There is no longer any division. 1 May 1967
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Once one has found divine Love, all other loves, which are nothing but disguises, can lose their deformities and become pure - then it is the Divine that one loves in everyone and everything. 6 May 1967
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True love, that which fulfils and illumines, is not the love one receives but the love one gives.
And the supreme Love is a love without any definite object - the love which loves because it cannot do other than to love. 15 May 1968
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There is only one love - the Divine's Love; and without that Love there would be no creation. All exists because of that Love and it is when we try to find our own love which does not exist that we do not feel the Love, the only Love, the Divine's Love which permeates all existence. 5 March 1970
*
When the psychic loves it loves with the Divine Love.
When you love, you love with the Divine's love diminished and distorted by your ego, but in its essence still the Divine's love.
It is for the facility of the language that you say the love of this one or that one, but it is all the same one Love manifested ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
435:
Should not one be born with a great aspiration?
No, aspiration is a thing to be developed, educated, like all activities of the being. One may be born with a very slight aspiration and develop it so much that it becomes very great. One may be born with a very small will and develop it and make it strong. It is a ridiculous idea to believe that things come to you like that, through a sort of grace, that if you are not given aspiration, you don't have it - this is not true. It is precisely upon this that Sri Aurobindo has insisted in his letter and in the passage I am going to read to you in a minute. He says you must choose, and the choice is constantly put before you and constantly you must choose, and if you do not choose, well, you will not be able to advance. You must choose; there is no "force like that" which chooses for you, or chance or luck or fate - this is not true. Your will is free, it is deliberately left free and you have to choose. It is you who decide whether to seek the Light or not, whether to be the servitor of the Truth or not - it is you. Or whether to have an aspiration or not, it is you who choose. And even when you are told, "Make your surrender total and the work will be done for you", it is quite all right, but to make your surrender total, every day and at every moment you must choose to make your surrender total, otherwise you will not do it, it will not get done by itself. It is you who must want to do it. When it is done, all goes well, when you have the Knowledge also, all goes well, and when you are identified with the Divine, all goes even better, but till then you must will, choose and decide. Don't go to sleep lazily, saying, "Oh! The work will be done for me, I have nothing to do but let myself glide along with the stream." Besides, it is not true, the work is not done by itself, because if the least little thing thwarts your little will, it says, "No, not that!..." Then?
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS |
436:This inner Guide is often veiled at first by the very intensity of our personal effort and by the ego's preoccupation with itself and its aims. As we gain in clarity and the turmoil of egoistic effort gives place to a calmer self-knowledge, we recognise the source of the growing light within us. We recognise it retrospectively as we realise how all our obscure and conflicting movements have been determined towards an end that we only now begin to perceive, how even before our entrance into the path of the Yoga the evolution of our life has been designedly led towards its turning point. For now we begin to understand the sense of our struggles and efforts, successes and failures. At last we are able to seize the meaning of our ordeals and sufferings and can appreciate the help that was given us by all that hurt and resisted and the utility of our very falls and stumblings. We recognise this divine leading afterwards, not retrospectively but immediately, in the moulding of our thoughts by a transcendent Seer, of our will and actions by an all-embracing Power, of our emotional life by an all-attracting and all-assimilating Bliss and Love. We recognise it too in a more personal relation that from the first touched us or at the last seizes us; we feel the eternal presence of a supreme Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher. We recognise it in the essence of our being as that develops into likeness and oneness with a greater and wider existence; for we perceive that this miraculous development is not the result of our own efforts; an eternal Perfection is moulding us into its own image. One who is the Lord or Ishwara of the Yogic philosophies, the Guide in the conscious being ( caitya guru or antaryamin ), the Absolute of the thinker, the Unknowable of the Agnostic, the universal Force of the materialist, the supreme Soul and the supreme Shakti, the One who is differently named and imaged by the religions, is the Master of our Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 62 [T1],#KEYS |
437:What is the most useful idea to spread and what is the best example to set?
The question can be considered in two ways, a very general one applicable to the whole earth, and another specific one which concerns our present social environment.
From the general point of view, it seems to me that the most useful idea to spread is twofold:
1) Man carries within himself perfect power, perfect wisdom and perfect knowledge, and if he wants to possess them, he must discover them in the depth of his being, by introspection and concentration.
2) These divine qualities are identical at the centre, at the heart of all beings; this implies the essential unity of all, and all the consequences of solidarity and fraternity that follow from it.
The best example to give would be the unalloyed serenity and immutably peaceful happiness which belong to one who knows how to live integrally this thought of the One God in all.
From the point of view of our present environment, here is the idea which, it seems to me, it is most useful to spread:
True progressive evolution, an evolution which can lead man to his rightful happiness, does not lie in any external means, material improvement or social change. Only a deep and inner process of individual self-perfection can make for real progress and completely transform the present state of things, and change suffering and misery into a serene and lasting contentment.
Consequently, the best example is one that shows the first stage of individual self-perfection which makes possible all the rest, the first victory to be won over the egoistic personality: disinterestedness.
At a time when all rush upon money as the means to sat- isfy their innumerable cravings, one who remains indifferent to wealth and acts, not for the sake of gain, but solely to follow a disinterested ideal, is probably setting the example which is most useful at present.
~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, Volume-2, 22-06-1912, page no.66-67,#KEYS |
438:See how, like lightest waves at play, the airy dancers fleet;
And scarcely feels the floor the wings of those harmonious feet.
Ob, are they flying shadows from their native forms set free?
Or phantoms in the fairy ring that summer moonbeams see?
As, by the gentle zephyr blown, some light mist flees in air,
As skiffs that skim adown the tide, when silver waves are fair,
So sports the docile footstep to the heave of that sweet measure,
As music wafts the form aloft at its melodious pleasure,
Now breaking through the woven chain of the entangled dance,
From where the ranks the thickest press, a bolder pair advance,
The path they leave behind them lost--wide open the path beyond,
The way unfolds or closes up as by a magic wand.
See now, they vanish from the gaze in wild confusion blended;
All, in sweet chaos whirled again, that gentle world is ended!
No!--disentangled glides the knot, the gay disorder ranges--
The only system ruling here, a grace that ever changes.
For ay destroyed--for ay renewed, whirls on that fair creation;
And yet one peaceful law can still pervade in each mutation.
And what can to the reeling maze breathe harmony and vigor,
And give an order and repose to every gliding figure?
That each a ruler to himself doth but himself obey,
Yet through the hurrying course still keeps his own appointed way.
What, would'st thou know? It is in truth the mighty power of tune,
A power that every step obeys, as tides obey the moon;
That threadeth with a golden clue the intricate employment,
Curbs bounding strength to tranquil grace, and tames the wild enjoyment.
And comes the world's wide harmony in vain upon thine ears?
The stream of music borne aloft from yonder choral spheres?
And feel'st thou not the measure which eternal Nature keeps?
The whirling dance forever held in yonder azure deeps?
The suns that wheel in varying maze?--That music thou discernest?
No! Thou canst honor that in sport which thou forgettest in earnest.
~ Friedrich Schiller,#KEYS |
| 439:Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition left in one, it would hardly be possible completely to set aside the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly convulses and upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy―describes the simple fact. One hears―one does not seek; one takes―one does not ask who gives. A thought suddenly flashes up like lightening; it comes with necessity, without faltering. I have never had any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now involuntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and titillations descending to one's very toes. There is a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as antitheses to the rest, but are produced and required as necessary shades of color in such an overflow of light. There is an instinct of rhythmic relations which embraces a whole world of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and tension). Everything happens quite involuntary, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the figures and similes is the most remarkable thing; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expression. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's own phrases, as if all things came to one, and offered themselves as similes. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra [trans. Thomas_Common] (1999), #KEYS |
440:the omnipresent Trinity :::
In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort,-God, Nature and the human soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension. It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta. There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic maybe our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#KEYS |
441:Many men think and write through inspiration. From where does it come?
Many! That is indeed a wonderful thing. I did not think there have been so many.... So?
Poets, when they write poems...
Ah! Inspirations come from very many different places. There are inspirations that may be very material, there are inspirations that may be vital, there are inspirations that come from all kinds of mental planes, and there are very, very rare inspirations that come from the higher mind or from a still higher region. All inspirations do not come from the same place. Hence, to be inspired does not necessarily mean that one is a higher be- ing.... One may be inspired also to do and say many stupid things!
What does "inspired" mean?
It means receiving something which is beyond you, which was not within you; to open yourself to an influence which is outside your individual conscious being.
Indeed, one can have also an inspiration to commit a murder! In countries where they decapitate murderers, cut off their heads, this causes a very brutal death which throws out the vital being, not allowing it the time to decompose for coming out of the body; the vital being is violently thrown out of the body, with all its impulses; and generally it goes and lodges itself in one of those present there, men half horrified, half with a kind of unhealthy curiosity. That makes the opening and it enters within. Statistics have proved that most young murderers admit that the impulse came to them when they were present at the death of another murderer. It was an "inspiration", but of a detestable kind.
Fundamentally it is a moment of openness to something which was not within your personal consciousness, which comes from outside and rushes into you and makes you do something. This is the widest formula that can be given.
Now, generally, when people say: "Oh! he is an inspired poet", it means he has received something from high above and expressed it in a remarkable manneR But one should rather say that his inspiration is of a high quality. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS |
442:How often there is a kind of emptiness in the course of life, an unoccupied moment, a few minutes, sometimes more. And what do you do? Immediately you try to distract yourself, and you invent some foolishness or other to pass your time. That is a common fact. All men, from the youngest to the oldest, spend most of their time in trying not to be bored. Their pet aversion is boredom and the way to escape from boredom is to act foolishly.
Well, there is a better way than that - to remember.
When you have a little time, whether it is one hour or a few minutes, tell yourself, "At last, I have some time to concentrate, to collect myself, to relive the purpose of my life, to offer myself to the True and the Eternal." If you took care to do this each time you are not harassed by outer circumstances, you would find out that you were advancing very quickly on the path. Instead of wasting your time in chattering, in doing useless things, reading things that lower the consciousness - to choose only the best cases, I am not speaking of other imbecilities which are much more serious - instead of trying to make yourself giddy, to make time, that is already so short, still shorter only to realise at the end of your life that you have lost three-quarters of your chance - then you want to put in double time, but that does not work - it is better to be moderate, balanced, patient, quiet, but never to lose an opportunity that is given to you, that is to say, to utilise for the true purpose the unoccupied moment before you.
When you have nothing to do, you become restless, you run about, you meet friends, you take a walk, to speak only of the best; I am not referring to things that are obviously not to be done. Instead of that, sit down quietly before the sky, before the sea or under trees, whatever is possible (here you have all of them) and try to realise one of these things - to understand why you live, to learn how you must live, to ponder over what you want to do and what should be done, what is the best way of escaping from the ignorance and falsehood and pain in which you live. 16 May 1958
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS |
443:
Sweet Mother, here it is written: "There is a Yoga-Shakti lying coiled or asleep..." How can it be awakened?
I think it awakens quite naturally the moment one takes the resolution to do the yoga. If the resolution is sincere and one has an aspiration, it wakes up by itself.
In fact, it is perhaps its awakening which gives the aspiration to do yoga.
It is possible that it is a result of the Grace... or after some conversation or reading, something that has suddenly given you the idea and aspiration to know what yoga is and to practise it. Sometimes just a simple conversation with someone is enough or a passage one reads from a book; well, it awakens this Yoga-Shakti and it is this which makes you do your yoga.
One is not aware of it at first - except that something has changed in our life, a new decision is taken, a turning.
What is it, this Yoga-Shakti, Sweet Mother?
It is the energy of progress. It is the energy which makes you do the yoga, precisely, makes you progress - consciously. It is a conscious energy.
In fact, the Yoga-Shakti is the power to do yoga.
Sweet Mother, isn't it more difficult to draw the divine forces from below?
I think it is absolutely useless.
Some people think that there are more reserves of energy - I have heard this very often: a great reserve of energy - in the earth, and that if they draw this energy into themselves they will be able to do things; but it is always mixed.
The divine Presence is everywhere, that's well understood. And in fact, there is neither above nor below. What is called above and below, I think that is rather the expression of a degree of consciousness or a degree of materiality; there is the more unconscious and the less unconscious, there is what is subconscious and what is superconscious, and so we say above and below for the facility of speech.
But in fact, the idea is to draw from the energies of the earth which, when you are standing up, are under your feet, that is, below in relation to you. But these energies are always mixed, and mostly they are terribly dark.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955,#KEYS |
444:For centuries and centuries humanity has waited for this time. It is come. But it is difficult.
I don't simply tell you we are here upon earth to rest and enjoy ourselves, now is not the time for that. We are here..... to prepare the way for the new creation.
The body has some difficulty, so I can't be active, alas. It is not because I am old, I am not old, I am younger than most of you. If I am here inactive, it is because the body has given itself definitely to prepare the transformation. But the consciousness is clear and we are here to work - rest and enjoyment will come afterwards. Let us do our work here.
So I have called you to tell you that. Take what you can, do what you can, my help will be with you. All sincere effort will be helped to the maximum.
It is the hour to be the heroic. Heroism is not what it is said to be; it is to become wholly unified - and the Divine help will always be with those who have resolved to be heroic in full sincerity.
There!
You are here at this moment that is to say upon earth, because you chose it at one time - you do not remember it any more, but I know it - that is why you are here. Well, you must rise to the height of the task. You must strive, you must conquer all weakness and limitations; above all you must tell your ego: "Your hour is gone." We want a race that has no ego, that has in place of the ego the Divine Consciousness. It is that which we want: the Divine Consciousness which will allow the race to develop itself and the Supramental being to take birth.
If you believe that I am here because I am bound - it is not true. I am not bound, I am here because my body has been given for the first attempt at transformation. Sri Aurobindo told me so. Well, I am doing it. I do not wish anyone to do it for me because.... Because it is not very pleasant, but I do it willingly because of the result; everybody will be able to benefit from it. I ask only one thing: do not listen to the ego.
If there is in your hearts a sincere Yes, you will satisfy me completely. I do not need words, I need the sincere adhesion of your hearts. That's all. ~ The Mother, (This talk was given by the Mother on April 2,1972,#KEYS |
445:Many Blows are Needed:
Mother, even when one tries to think that one is powerless, there is something which believes one is powerful. So?
Ah, yes, ah yes! Ah, it is very difficult to be sincere.... That is why blows multiply and sometimes become terrible, because that's the only thing which breaks your stupidity. This is the justification of calamities. Only when you are in an acutely painful situation and indeed before something that affects you deeply, then that makes the stupidity melt away a little. But as you say, even when there is something that melts, there is still a little something which remains inside. And that is why it lasts so long... How many blows are needed in life for one to know to the very depths that one is nothing, that one can do nothing, that one does not exist, that one is nothing, that there is no entity without the divine Consciousness and the Grace. From the moment one knows it, it is over; all difficulties have gone. When one knows it integrally and there is nothing which resists... but till that moment... And it takes very long.
Why doesn't the blow come all at once?
Because that would kill you. For if the blow is strong enough to cure you, it would simply crush you, it would reduce you to pulp. It is only by proceeding little by little, little by little, very gradually, that you can continue to exist. Naturally this depends on the inner strength, the inner sincerity, and on the capacity for progress, for profiting by experience and, as I said a while ago, on not forgetting. If one is lucky enough not to forget, then one goes much faster. One can go very fast. And if at the same time one has that inner moral strength which, when the red-hot iron is at hand, does not extinguish it by trying to pour water over it, but instead goes to the very core of the abscess, then in this case things go very fast also. But not many people are strong enough for this. On the contrary, they very quickly do this (gesture), like this, like this, in order to hide, to hide from themselves. How many pretty little explanations one gives oneself, how many excuses one piles up for all the foolishnesses one has committed.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS |
446:At the basis of this collaboration there is necessarily the will to change, no longer to be what one is, for things to be no longer what they are. There are several ways of reaching it, and all the methods are good when they succeed! One may be deeply disgusted with what exists and wish ardently to come out of all this and attain something else; one may - and this is a more positive way - one may feel within oneself the touch, the approach of something positively beautiful and true, and willingly drop all the rest so that nothing may burden the journey to this new beauty and truth.
What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a reality - perhaps of a not too distant future - a reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighed down by old habits, will surely have the good fortune not only to see but to realise. People sleep, they forget, they take life easy - they forget, forget all the time.... But if we could remember... that we are at an exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.
So, the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when one doesn't have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support, this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.
We can participate in it, we can become this new world. And truly, when one has such a marvellous opportunity, one should be ready to give up everything for its sake. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, [T1],#KEYS |
447:So then let the Adept set this sigil upon all the Words he hath writ in the book of the Works of his Will. And let him then end all, saying: Such are the Words!2 For by this he maketh proclamation before all them that be about his Circle that these Words are true and puissant, binding what he would bind, and loosing what he would loose. Let the Adept perform this ritual right, perfect in every part thereof, once daily for one moon, then twice, at dawn and dusk, for two moons; next thrice, noon added, for three moons; afterwards, midnight making up his course, for four moons four times every day. Then let the Eleventh Moon be consecrated wholly to this Work; let him be instant in constant ardour, dismissing all but his sheer needs to eat and sleep.3 For know that the true Formula4 whose virtue sufficed the Beast in this Attainment, was thus:
INVOKE OFTEN
So may all men come at last to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel: thus sayeth The Beast, and prayeth his own Angel that this Book be as a burning Lamp, and as a living Spring, for Light and Life to them that read therein.
1. There is an alternative spelling, TzBA-F, where the Root, "an Host," has the value of 93. The Practicus should revise this Ritual throughout in the Light of his personal researches in the Qabalah, and make it his own peculiar property. The spelling here suggested implies that he who utters the Word affirms his allegiance to the symbols 93 and 6; that he is a warrior in the army of Will, and of the Sun. 93 is also the number of AIWAZ and 6 of The Beast.
2. The consonants of LOGOS, "Word," add (Hebrew values) to 93 [reading the Sigma as Samekh = 60; reading it as Shin = 300 gives 333], and ΕΠΗ, "Words" (whence "Epic") has also that value; ΕΙ∆Ε ΤΑ ΕΠΗ might be the phrase here intended; its number is 418. This would then assert the accomplishment of the Great Work; this is the natural conclusion of the Ritual. Cf. CCXX, III, 75.
3. These needs are modified during the process of Initiation both as to quantity and quality. One should not become anxious about one's phyiscal or mental health on à priori grounds, but pay attention only to indubitable symptoms of distress should such arise. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber Samekh,#KEYS |
448:formal-operational ::: The orange altitude emerged a few hundred years ago with the European Rennisance. Its modern, rational view grew in prominance through the Age of Enlightenment and came to its fullest expression during the Industrial Revolution.
Fueling this age of reason and science was the emergence of formal operational cognition, or the ability to operate on thoughts themselves. No longer limited to reflection on concrete objects, cognition moves from representations to abstractions and can now operate on a range of non-tangiable propositions that may not reflect the concrete world. This is the basis of scientific reasoning through hypothesis. Orange also brings multiplistic thinking, or the realization that there are several possible ways of approaching a situation, even though one is still considered most right. Self-sense at orange features two shifts, first to expert and then to achiever, these moves feature an increase in self-awareness and appreciation for multiple possibilities in a given situation. Recognition that one doesnt always live up to idealized social expectations is fueled by an awareness that begins to penetrate the inner world of subjectivity. This is the beginning of introspection. An objectifiable self-sense and the capacity to take a third person perspective. Needs shift from belonging to self-esteem. And values land on pragmatic utiliarian approaches to life that rely on ... and thinking to earn progress, prosperity and self-reliance. Morality at orange sees right defined by universal ethical principles. The emergence of formal operational thinking at orange enables a world-centric care for universal human rights and the right of each individual for autonomy and the pursuit of happiness. A desire for individual dignity and self-respect are also driving forces behind orange morality. A significant number of the founding fathers of the United States harbored orange values. ...
Faith at orange is called Individual Reflective and so far as identity and world-view are differentiated from others, and faith takes on an essence of critical thought. Demythologizing symbols into conceptual meanings. At orange we see the emergence of rational deism and secularism. ~ Essential Integral, 4.1-51, Formal Operational,#KEYS |
| 449:And for the same reason, because that which we are seeking through beauty is in the end that which we are seeking through religion, the Absolute, the Divine. The search for beauty is only in its beginning a satisfaction in the beauty of form, the beauty which appeals to the physical senses and the vital impressions, impulsions, desires. It is only in the middle a satisfaction in the beauty of the ideas seized, the emotions aroused, the perception of perfect process and harmonious combination. Behind them the soul of beauty in us desires the contact, the revelation, the uplifting delight of an absolute beauty in all things which it feels to be present, but which neither the senses and instincts by themselves can give, though they may be its channels, - for it is suprasensuous, - nor the reason and intelligence, though they too are a channel, - for it is suprarational, supra-intellectual, - but to which through all these veils the soul itself seeks to arrive. When it can get the touch of this universal, absolute beauty, this soul of beauty, this sense of its revelation in any slightest or greatest thing, the beauty of a flower, a form, the beauty and power of a character, an action, an event, a human life, an idea, a stroke of the brush or the chisel or a scintillation of the mind, the colours of a sunset or the grandeur of the tempest, it is then that the sense of beauty in us is really, powerfully, entirely satisfied. It is in truth seeking, as in religion, for the Divine, the All-Beautiful in man, in nature, in life, in thought, in art; for God is Beauty and Delight hidden in the variation of his masks and forms. When, fulfilled in our growing sense and knowledge of beauty and delight in beauty and our power for beauty, we are able to identify ourselves in soul with this Absolute and Divine in all the forms and activities of the world and shape an image of our inner and our outer life in the highest image we can perceive and embody of the All-Beautiful, then the aesthetic being in us who was born for this end, has fulfilled himself and risen to his divine consummation. To find highest beauty is to find God; to reveal, to embody, to create, as we say, highest beauty is to bring out of our souls the living image and power of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, 144, #KEYS |
450:In the Indian spiritual tradition, a heart's devotion to God, called Bhakti, is regarded as the easiest path to the Divine. What is Bhakti? Is it some extravagant religious sentimentalism? Is it inferior to the path of Knowledge? What is the nature of pure and complete spiritual devotion to God and how to realise it?
What Is Devotion?
...bhakti in its fullness is nothing but an entire self-giving. But then all meditation, all tapasya, all means of prayer or mantra must have that as its end... [SABCL, 23:799]
Devotion Is a State of the Heart and Soul
Bhakti is not an experience, it is a state of the heart and soul. It is a state which comes when the psychic being is awake and prominent. [SABCL, 23:776]
...Worship is only the first step on the path of devotion. Where external worship changes into the inner adoration, real Bhakti begins; that deepens into the intensity of divine love; that love leads to the joy of closeness in our relations with the Divine; the joy of closeness passes into the bliss of union. [SABCL, 21:525]
Devotion without Gratitude Is Incomplete
...there is another movement which should constantly accompany devotion. ... That kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which truly fills you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine, the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you either directly or indirectly in contactwith this sublime Reality of divine existence, the heart is filled with so intense, so marvellous a joy, such a gratitude as of all things has the most delightful taste.
There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotion-indeed so deep, so intense-that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine.
So I find that devotion without gratitude is quite incomplete, gratitude must come with devotion. ~ The Mother,#KEYS |
451:There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should continue. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work. Then He placed the Gita in my hands. His strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I was not only to understand intellectually but to realise what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and opponent, success andfailure, yet not to do His work negligently. I realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindureligion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin,#KEYS |
452:But now thou askest me how thou mayest destroy this naked knowing and feeling of thine own being. For peradventure thou thinkest that if it were destroyed, all other hindrances were destroyed ; and if thou thinkest thus, thou thinkest right truly. But to this I answer thee and I say, that without a full special grace full freely given by God, and also a full according ableness on thy part to receive this grace, this naked knowing and feeling of thy being may in nowise be destroyed. And this ableness is nought else but a strong and a deep ghostly sorrow. ... All men have matter of sorrow; but most specially he feeleth matter of sorrow that knoweth and feeleth that he is. All other sorrows in comparison to this be but as it were game to earnest. For he may make sorrow earnestly that knoweth and feeleth not only what he is, but that he is. And whoso felt never this sorrow, let him make sorrow; for he hath never yet felt perfect sorrow. This sorrow, when it is had, cleanseth the soul, not only of sin, but also of pain that it hath deserved for sin ; and also it maketh a soul able to receive that joy, the which reave th from a man all knowing and feeling of his being. This sorrow, if it be truly conceived, is full of holy desire; and else a man might never in this life abide it or bear it. For were it not that a soul were somewhat fed with a manner of comfort by his right working, he should not be able to bear that pain that he hath by the knowing and feeling of his being. For as oft as he would have a true knowing and a feeling of his God in purity of spirit (as it may be here), and then feeleth that he may not for he findeth evermore his knowing and his feeling as it were occupied and filled with a foul stinking lump of himself, the which must always be hated and despised and forsaken, if he shall be God's perfect disciple, taught by Himself in the mount of perfection so oft he goeth nigh mad for sorrow. . . . This sorrow and this desire must every soul have and feel in itself (either in this manner or in another), as God vouchsafed! to teach his ghostly disciples according to his good will and their according ableness in body and in soul, in degree and disposition, ere the time be that they may perfectly be oned unto God in perfect charity such as may be had here, if God vouchsafed!.
~ Anonymous, The Cloud Of Unknowing,#KEYS |
453:34
D: What are the eight limbs of knowledge (jnana ashtanga)?
M: The eight limbs are those which have been already mentioned, viz., yama, niyama etc., but differently defined:
(1) Yama: This is controlling the aggregate of sense-organs, realizing the defects that are present in the world consisting of the body, etc.
(2) Niyama: This is maintaining a stream of mental modes that relate to the Self and rejecting the contrary modes. In other words, it means love that arises uninterruptedly for the Supreme Self.
(3) Asana: That with the help of which constant meditation on Brahman is made possible with ease is asana.
(4) Pranayama: Rechaka (exhalation) is removing the two unreal aspects of name and form from the objects constituting the world, the body etc., puraka (inhalation) is grasping the three real aspects, existence, consciousness and bliss, which are constant in those objects, and kumbhaka is retaining those aspects thus grasped.
(5) Pratyahara: This is preventing name and form which have been removed from re-entering the mind.
(6) Dharana: This is making the mind stay in the Heart, without straying outward, and realizing that one is the Self itself which is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
(7) Dhyana: This is meditation of the form 'I am only pure consciousness'. That is, after leaving aside the body which consists of five sheaths, one enquires 'Who am I?', and as a result of that, one stays as 'I' which shines as the Self.
(8) Samadhi: When the 'I-manifestation' also ceases, there is (subtle) direct experience. This is samadhi.
For pranayama, etc., detailed here, the disciplines such as asana, etc., mentioned in connection with yoga are not necessary.
The limbs of knowledge may be practised at all places and at all times. Of yoga and knowledge, one may follow whichever is pleasing to one, or both, according to circumstances. The great teachers say that forgetfulness is the root of all evil, and is death for those who seek release,10 so one should rest the mind in one's Self and should never forget the Self: this is the aim. If the mind is controlled, all else can be controlled. The distinction between yoga with eight limbs and knowledge with eight limbs has been set forth elaborately in the sacred texts; so only the substance of this teaching has been given here. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Self-Enquiry, 34,#KEYS |
454:"Now I have taught you about Immortal Man and have loosed the bonds of the robbers from him. I have broken the gates of the pitiless ones in their presence. I have humiliated their malicious intent, and they all have been shamed and have risen from their ignorance. Because of this, then, I came here, that they might be joined with that Spirit and Breath, [III continues:] and might from two become one, just as from the first, that you might yield much fruit and go up to Him Who Is from the Beginning, in ineffable joy and glory and honor and grace of the Father of the Universe.
"Whoever, then, knows the Father in pure knowledge will depart to the Father and repose in Unbegotten Father. But whoever knows him defectively will depart to the defect and the rest of the Eighth. Now whoever knows Immortal Spirit of Light in silence, through reflecting and consent in the truth, let him bring me signs of the Invisible One, and he will become a light in the Spirit of Silence. Whoever knows Son of Man in knowledge and love, let him bring me a sign of Son of Man, that he might depart to the dwelling-places with those in the Eighth.
"Behold, I have revealed to you the name of the Perfect One, the whole will of the Mother of the Holy Angels, that the masculine multitude may be completed here, that there might appear in the aeons, the infinities and those that came to be in the untraceable wealth of the Great Invisible Spirit, that they all might take from his goodness, even the wealth of their rest that has no kingdom over it. I came from First Who Was Sent, that I might reveal to you Him Who Is from the Beginning, because of the arrogance of Arch-Begetter and his angels, since they say about themselves that they are gods. And I came to remove them from their blindness, that I might tell everyone about the God who is above the universe. Therefore, tread upon their graves, humiliate their malicious intent, and break their yoke and arouse my own. I have given you authority over all things as Sons of Light, that you might tread upon their power with your feet."
These are the things the blessed Savior said, and he disappeared from them. Then all the disciples were in great, ineffable joy in the spirit from that day on. And his disciples began to preach the Gospel of God, the eternal, imperishable spirit. Amen.
~ The Sophia of Jesus (excerpt), The Nag Hamadi Library,#KEYS |
455:But this is not always the manner of the commencement. The sadhaka is often led gradually and there is a long space between the first turning of the mind and the full assent of the nature to the thing towards which it turns. There may at first be only a vivid intellectual interest, a forcible attraction towards the idea and some imperfect form of practice. Or perhaps there is an effort not favoured by the whole nature, a decision or a turn imposed by an intellectual influence or dictated by personal affection and admiration for someone who is himself consecrated and devoted to the Highest. In such cases, a long period of preparation may be necessary before there comes the irrevocable consecration; and in some instances it may not come. There may be some advance, there may be a strong effort, even much purification and many experiences other than those that are central or supreme; but the life will either be spent in preparation or, a certain stage having been reached, the mind pushed by an insufficient driving-force may rest content at the limit of the effort possible to it. Or there may even be a recoil to the lower life, - what is called in the ordinary parlance of Yoga a fall from the path. This lapse happens because there is a defect at the very centre. The intellect has been interested, the heart attracted, the will has strung itself to the effort, but the whole nature has not been taken captive by the Divine. It has only acquiesced in the interest, the attraction or the endeavour. There has been an experiment, perhaps even an eager experiment, but not a total self-giving to an imperative need of the soul or to an unforsakable ideal. Even such imperfect Yoga has not been wasted; for no upward effort is made in vain. Even if it fails in the present or arrives only at some preparatory stage or preliminary realisation, it has yet determined the soul's future.
But if we desire to make the most of the opportunity that this life gives us, if we wish to respond adequately to the call we have received and to attain to the goal we have glimpsed, not merely advance a little towards it, it is essential that there should be an entire self-giving. The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration,#KEYS |
456:Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother's eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient, unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads them according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet she has more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [39],#KEYS |
457:The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and the Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and our senses give us, is, so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of higher supramental and suprasensuous knowledge, a false report, an imperfect construction, an attenuated and erroneous figure. And yet that which the universe and the individual seem to be is still a figure of what they really are, a figure that points beyond itself to the reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a Truth-Consciousness, that exceeds our intellect and brings us into the true light of which it is a refracted ray.
There the abstract terms of pure reason and the constructions .of the mind disappear or are converted into concrete soul-vision and the tremendous actuality of spiritual experience. This knowledge can turn away to the absolute Eternal and lose vision of the soul and the universe; but it can too see that existence from that Eternal. When that is done, we find that the ignorance of the mind and the senses and all the apparent futilities of human life were not an useless excursion of the conscious being, an otiose blunder. Here they were planned as a rough ground for the self-expression of the Soul that comes from the Infinite, a material foundation for its self-unfolding and self-possessing in the terms of the universe. It is true that in themselves they and all that is here have no significance, and to build separate significances for them is to live in an illusion, Maya; but they have a supreme significance in the Supreme, an absolute Power in the Absolute and it is that that assigns to them and refers to that Truth their present relative values. This is the all-uniting experience that is the foundation of the deepest integral and most intimate self-knowledge and world-knowledge
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, 293, 11457,#KEYS |
458:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.
No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#KEYS |
459:Countless books on divination, astrology, medicine and other subjects
Describe ways to read signs. They do add to your learning,
But they generate new thoughts and your stable attention breaks up.
Cut down on this kind of knowledge - that's my sincere advice.
You stop arranging your usual living space,
But make everything just right for your retreat.
This makes little sense and just wastes time.
Forget all this - that's my sincere advice.
You make an effort at practice and become a good and knowledgeable person.
You may even master some particular capabilities.
But whatever you attach to will tie you up.
Be unbiased and know how to let things be - that's my sincere advice.
You may think awakened activity means to subdue skeptics
By using sorcery, directing or warding off hail or lightning, for example.
But to burn the minds of others will lead you to lower states.
Keep a low profile - that's my sincere advice.
Maybe you collect a lot of important writings,
Major texts, personal instructions, private notes, whatever.
If you haven't practiced, books won't help you when you die.
Look at the mind - that's my sincere advice.
When you focus on practice, to compare understandings and experience,
Write books or poetry, to compose songs about your experience
Are all expressions of your creativity. But they just give rise to thinking.
Keep yourself free from intellectualization - that's my sincere advice.
In these difficult times you may feel that it is helpful
To be sharp and critical with aggressive people around you.
This approach will just be a source of distress and confusion for you.
Speak calmly - that's my sincere advice.
Intending to be helpful and without personal investment,
You tell your friends what is really wrong with them.
You may have been honest but your words gnaw at their heart.
Speak pleasantly - that's my sincere advice.
You engage in discussions, defending your views and refuting others'
Thinking that you are clarifying the teachings.
But this just gives rise to emotional posturing.
Keep quiet - that's my sincere advice.
You feel that you are being loyal
By being partial to your teacher, lineage or philosophical tradition.
Boosting yourself and putting down others just causes hard feelings.
Have nothing to do with all this - that's my sincere advice.
~ Longchenpa, excerpts from 30 Pieces of Sincere Advice
,#KEYS |
460:It is your birthday tomorrow?
Yes, Mother.
How old will you be?
Twenty-six, Mother.
I shall see you tomorrow and give you something special. You will see, I am not speaking of anything material- that, I shall give you a card and all that- but of something...You will see, tomorrow, now go home and prepare yourself quietly so that you may be ready to receive it.
Yes, Mother.
You know, my child, what "Bonne Fete" signifies, that is, the birthday we wish here?
Like that, I know what it means, Mother, but not the special significance you want to tell me.
Yes, it is truly a special day in one's life. It is one of those days in the year when the Supreme descends into us- or when we are face to face with the Eternal- one of those days when our soul comes in contact with the Eternal and, if we remain a little conscious, we can feel His Presence within us. If we make a little effort on this day, we accomplish the work of many lives as in a lightning flash. That is why I give so much importance to the birthday- because what one gains in one day is truly something incomparable. And it is for this that I also work to open the consciousness a little towards what is above so that one may come before the Eternal. My child, it is a very, very special day, for it is the day of decision, the day one can unite with the Supreme Consciousness. For the Lord lifts us on this day to the highest region possible so that our soul which is a portion of that Eternal Flame, may be united and identified with its Origin.
This day is truly an opportunity in life. One is so open and so receptive that one can assimilate all that is given. I can do many things, that is why it is important.
It is one of those days when the Lord Himself opens the doors wide for us. It is as though He were inviting us to rekindle more powerfully the flame of aspiration. It is one of those days which He gives us. We too, by our personal effort, could attain to this, but it would be long, hard and not so easy. And this- this is a real chance in life- the day of Grace.
It is an occult phenomenon that occurs invariably, without our knowledge, on this particular day of the year. The soul leaves behind the body and journeys up and up till it merges into the Source in order to replenish itself and absorb from the Supreme Its Power, Light and Ananda and comes down charged for a whole year to pass. Then again and again... it continues like this year after year. ~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, Mona Sarkar,#KEYS |
461:
Are not offering and surrender to the Divine the same thing?
They are two aspects of the same thing, but not altogether the same. One is more active than the other. They do not belong to quite the same plane of existence.
For example, you have decided to offer your life to the Divine, you take that decision. But all of a sudden, something altogether unpleasant, unexpected happens to you and your first movement is to react and protest. Yet you have made the offering, you have said once for all: "My life belongs to the Divine", and then suddenly an extremely unpleasant incident happens (that can happen) and there is something in you that reacts, that does not want it. But here, if you want to be truly logical with your offering, you must bring forward this unpleasant incident, make an offering of it to the Divine, telling him very sincerely: "Let Your will be done; if You have decided it that way, it will be that way." And this must be a willing and spontaneous adhesion. So it is very difficult.
Even for the smallest thing, something that is not in keeping with what you expected, what you have worked for, instead of an opposite reaction coming in - spontaneously, irresistibly, you draw back: "No, not that" - if you have made a complete surrender, a total surrender, well, it does not happen like that: you are as quiet, as peaceful, as calm in one case as in the other. And perhaps you had the notion that it would be better if it happened in a certain way, but if it happens differently, you find that this also is all right. You might have, for example, worked very hard to do a certain thing, so that something might happen, you might have given much time, much of your energy, much of your will, and all that not for your own sake, but, say, for the divine work (that is the offering); now suppose that after having taken all this trouble, done all this work, made all these efforts, it all goes just the other way round, it does not succeed. If you are truly surrendered, you say: "It is good, it is all good, it is all right; I did what I could, as well as I could, now it is not my decision, it is the decision of the Divine, I accept entirely what He decides." On the other hand, if you do not have this deep and spontaneous surrender, you tell yourself: "How is it? I took so much trouble to do a thing which is not for a selfish purpose, which is for the Divine Work, and this is the result, it is not successful!" Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is like that.
True surrender is a very difficult thing.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 52,#KEYS |
| 462:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #KEYS |
463:Why do we forget things?
Ah! I suppose there are several reasons. First, because one makes use of the memory to remember. Memory is a mental instrument and depends on the formation of the brain. Your brain is constantly growing, unless it begins to degenerate, but still its growth can continue for a very, very long time, much longer than that of the body. And in this growth, necessarily some things will take the place of others. And as the mental instrument develops, things which have served their term or the transitory moment in the development may be wiped out to give place to the result. So the result of all that you knew is there, living in itself, but the road traversed to reach it may be completely blurred. That is, a good functioning of the memory means remembering only the results so as to be able to have the elements for moving forward and a new construction. That is more important than just retaining things rigidly in the mind.
Now, there is another aspect also. Apart from the mental memory, which is something defective, there are states of consciousness. Each state of consciousness in which one happens to be registers the phenomena of a particular moment, whatever they may be. If your consciousness remains limpid, wide and strong, you can at any moment whatsoever, by concentrating, call into the active consciousness what you did, thought, saw, observed at any time before; all this you can remember by bringing up in yourself the same state of consciousness. And that, that is never forgotten. You could live a thousand years and you would still remember it. Consequently, if you don't want to forget, it must be your consciousness which remembers and not your mental memory. Your mental memory will be wiped out inevitably, get blurred, and new things will take the place of the old ones. But things of which you are conscious you do not forget. You have only to bring up the same state of consciousness again. And thus one can remember circumstances one has lived thousands of years ago, if one knows how to bring up the same state of consciousness. It is in this way that one can remember one's past lives. This never gets blotted out, while you don't have any more the memory of what you have done physically when you were very young. You would be told many things you no longer remember. That gets wiped off immediately. For the brain is constantly changing and certain weaker cells are replaced by others which are much stronger, and by other combinations, other cerebral organisations. And so, what was there before is effaced or deformed.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS |
464:
"Without conscious occult powers, is it possible to help or protect from a distance somebody in difficulty or danger? If so, what is the practical procedure?"
Then a sub-question:
"What can thought do?"
We are not going to speak of occult processes at all; although, to tell the truth, everything that happens in the invisible world is occult, by definition. But still, practically, there are two processes which do not exclude but complete each other, but which may be used separately according to one's preference.
It is obvious that thought forms a part of one of the methods, quite an important part. I have already told you several times that if one thinks clearly and powerfully, one makes a mental formation, and that every mental formation is an entity independent of its fashioner, having its own life and tending to realise itself in the mental world - I don't mean that you see your formation with your physical eyes, but it exists in the mental world, it has its own particular independent existence. If you have made a formation with a definite aim, its whole life will tend to the realisation of this aim. Therefore, if you want to help someone at a distance, you have only to formulate very clearly, very precisely and strongly the kind of help you want to give and the result you wish to obtain. That will have its effect. I cannot say that it will be all-powerful, for the mental world is full of innumerable formations of this kind and naturally they clash and contradict one another; hence the strongest and the most persistent will have the best of it.
Now, what is it that gives strength and persistence to mental formations? - It is emotion and will. If you know how to add to your mental formation an emotion, affection, tenderness, love, and an intensity of will, a dynamism, it will have a much greater chance of success. That is the first method. It is within the scope of all those who know how to think, and even more of those who know how to love. But as I said, the power is limited and there is great competition in that world.
Therefore, even if one has no knowledge at all but has trust in the divine Grace, if one has the faith that there is something in the world like the divine Grace, and that this something can answer a prayer, an aspiration, an invocation, then, after making one's mental formation, if one offers it to the Grace and puts one's trust in it, asks it to intervene and has the faith that it will intervene, then indeed one has a chance of success.
Try, and you will surely see the result.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, 253,#KEYS |
465:He continuously reflected on her image and attributes, day and night. His bhakti was such that he could not stop thinking of her. Eventually, he saw her everywhere and in everything. This was his path to illumination.
He was often asked by people: what is the way to the supreme? His answer was sharp and definite: bhakti yoga. He said time and time again that bhakti yoga is the best sadhana for the Kali Yuga (Dark Age) of the present.
His bhakti is illustrated by the following statement he made to a disciple:
To my divine mother I prayed only for pure love.
At her lotus feet I offered a few flowers and I prayed:
Mother! here is virtue and here is vice;
Take them both from me.
Grant me only love, pure love for Thee.
Mother! here is knowledge and here is ignorance;
Take them both from me.
Grant me only love, pure love for Thee.
Mother! here is purity and impurity;
Take them both from me.
Grant me only love, pure love for Thee.
Ramakrishna, like Kabir, was a practical man.
He said: "So long as passions are directed towards the world and its objects, they are enemies. But when they are directed towards a deity, then they become the best of friends to man, for they take him to illumination. The desire for worldly things must be changed into longing for the supreme; the anger which you feel for fellow man must be directed towards the supreme for not manifesting himself to you . . . and so on, with all other emotions. The passions cannot be eradicated, but they can be turned into new directions."
A disciple once asked him: "How can one conquer the weaknesses within us?" He answered: "When the fruit grows out of the flower, the petals drop off themselves. So when divinity in you increases, the weaknesses of human nature will vanish of their own accord." He emphasized that the aspirant should not give up his practices. "If a single dive into the sea does not bring you a pearl, do not conclude that there are no pearls in the sea. There are countless pearls hidden in the sea.
So if you fail to merge with the supreme during devotional practices, do not lose heart. Go on patiently with the practices, and in time you will invoke divine grace." It does not matter what form you care to worship. He said: "Many are the names of the supreme and infinite are the forms through which he may be approached. In whatever name and form you choose to worship him, through that he will be realized by you." He indicated the importance of surrender on the path of bhakti when he said:
~ Swami Satyananda Saraswati, A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya,#KEYS |
466:10000 ::: The True Object of Spiritual Seeking:
To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him,-that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is a mental mistranslation of the Truth-these things cannot be the first or true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the Divine demands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. As we grow in the inner consciousness, or as the spiritual Truth of the Divine grows in us, our life and action must indeed more and more flow from that, be one with that. But to decide beforehand by our limited mental conceptions what they must be is to hamper the growth of the spiritual Truth within. As that grows we shall feel the Divine Light and Truth, the Divine Power and Force, the Divine Purity and Peace working within us, dealing with our actions as well as our consciousness, making use of them to reshape us into the Divine Image, removing the dross, substituting the pure gold of the Spirit. Only when the Divine Presence is there in us always and the consciousness transformed, can we have the right to say that we are ready to manifest the Divine on the material plane. To hold up a mental ideal or principle and impose that on the inner working brings the danger of limiting ourselves to a mental realisation or of impeding or even falsifying by a half-way formation the true growth into the full communion and union with the Divine and the free and intimate outflowing of His will in our life. This is a mistake of orientation to which the mind of today is especially prone. It is far better to approach the Divine for the Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an outflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outward, not by the working out of a mental principle.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T1],#KEYS |
467:INVOCATION
The ultimate invocation, that of Kia, cannot be performed. The paradox is that as Kia has no dualized qualities, there are no attributes by which to invoke it. To give it one quality is merely to deny it another. As an observant dualistic being once said:
I am that I am not.
Nevertheless, the magician may need to make some rearrangements or additions to what he is. Metamorphosis may be pursued by seeking that which one is not, and transcending both in mutual annihilation. Alternatively, the process of invocation may be seen as adding to the magician's psyche any elements which are missing. It is true that the mind must be finally surrendered as one enters fully into Chaos, but a complete and balanced psychocosm is more easily surrendered.
The magical process of shuffling beliefs and desires attendant upon the process of invocation also demonstrates that one's dominant obsessions or personality are quite arbitrary, and hence more easily banished.
There are many maps of the mind (psychocosms), most of which are inconsistent, contradictory, and based on highly fanciful theories. Many use the symbology of god forms, for all mythology embodies a psychology. A complete mythic pantheon resumes all of man's mental characteristics. Magicians will often use a pagan pantheon of gods as the basis for invoking some particular insight or ability, as these myths provide the most explicit and developed formulation of the particular idea's extant. However it is possible to use almost anything from the archetypes of the collective unconscious to the elemental qualities of alchemy.
If the magician taps a deep enough level of power, these forms may manifest with sufficient force to convince the mind of the objective existence of the god. Yet the aim of invocation is temporary possession by the god, communication from the god, and manifestation of the god's magical powers, rather than the formation of religious cults.
The actual method of invocation may be described as a total immersion in the qualities pertaining to the desired form. One invokes in every conceivable way. The magician first programs himself into identity with the god by arranging all his experiences to coincide with its nature. In the most elaborate form of ritual he may surround himself with the sounds, smells, colors, instruments, memories, numbers, symbols, music, and poetry suggestive of the god or quality. Secondly he unites his life force to the god image with which he has united his mind. This is accomplished with techniques from the gnosis. Figure 5 shows some examples of maps of the mind. Following are some suggestions for practical ritual invocation.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS |
468:The last sentence: "...in the Truth-Creation the law is that of a constant unfolding without any Pralaya." What is this constant unfolding?
The Truth-Creation... it is the last line? (Mother consults the book) I think we have already spoken about this several times. It has been said that in the process of creation, there is the movement of creation followed by a movement of preservation and ending in a movement of disintegration or destruction; and even it has been repeated very often: "All that begins must end", etc., etc.
In fact in the history of our universe there have been six consecutive periods which began by a creation, were prolonged by a force of preservation and ended by a disintegration, a destruction, a return to the Origin, which is called Pralaya; and that is why this tradition is there. But it has been said that the seventh creation would be a progressive creation, that is, after the starting-point of the creation, instead of its being simply followed by a preservation, it would be followed by a progressive manifestation which would express the Divine more and more completely, so that no disintegration and return to the Origin would be necessary. And it has been announced that the period we are in is precisely the seventh, that is, it would not end by a Pralaya, a return to the Origin, a destruction, a disappearance, but that it would be replaced by a constant progress, because it would be a more and more perfect unfolding of the divine Origin in its creation.
And this is what Sri Aurobindo says. He speaks of a constant unfolding, that is, the Divine manifests more and more completely; more and more perfectly, in a progressive creation. It is the nature of this progression which makes the return to the Origin, the destruction no longer necessary. All that does not progress disappears, and that is why physical bodies die, it's because they are not progressive; they are progressive up to a certain moment, then there they stop and most often they remain stable for a certain time, and then they begin to decline, and then disappear. It's because the physical body, physical matter as it is at present is not plastic enough to be able to progress constantly. But it is not impossible to make it sufficiently plastic for the perfecting of the physical body to be such that it no longer needs disintegration, that is, death.
Only, this cannot be realised except by the descent of the Supermind which is a force higher than all those which have so far manifested and which will give the body a plasticity that will allow it to progress constantly, that is, to follow the divine movement in its unfolding. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 207-209,#KEYS |
469:Has creation a definite aim? Is there something like a final end to which it is moving?
The Mother: No, the universe is a movement that is eternally unrolling itself. There is nothing which you can fix upon as the end and one aim. But for the sake of action we have to section the movement, which is itself unending, and to say that this or that is the goal, for in action we need something upon which we can fix our aim. In a picture you need a definite scheme of composition and colour; you have to set a limit, to put the whole thing within a fixed framework; but the limit is illusory, the frame is a mere convention. There is a constant continuation of the picture that stretches beyond any particular frame, and each continuation can be drawn in the same conditions in an unending series of frames. Our aim is this or that, we say, but we know that it is only the beginning of another aim beyond it, and that in its turn leads to yet another; the series develop always and never stop.
What is the proper function of the intellect? Is it a help or a hindrance to Sadhana?
Whether the intellect is a help or a hindrance depends upon the person and upon the way in which it is used. There is a true movement of the intellect and there is a wrong movement; one helps, the other hinders. The intellect that believes too much in its own importance and wants satisfaction for its own sake, is an obstacle to the higher realisation.
But this is true not in any special sense or for the intellect alone, but generally and of other faculties as well. For example, people do not regard an all-engrossing satisfaction of the vital desires or the animal appetites as a virtue; the moral sense is accepted as a mentor to tell one the bounds that one may not transgress. It is only in his intellectual activities that man thinks he can do without any such mentor or censor!
Any part of the being that keeps to its proper place and plays its appointed role is helpful; but directly it steps beyond its sphere, it becomes twisted and perverted and therefore false. A power has the right movement when it is set into activity for the divine's purpose; it has the wrong movement when it is set into activity for its own satisfaction.
The intellect, in its true nature, is an instrument of expression and action. It is something like an intermediary between the true knowledge, whose seat is in the higher regions above the mind, and realisation here below. The intellect or, generally speaking, the mind gives the form; the vital puts in the dynamism and life-power; the material comes in last and embodies. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 28th April 1931 and 5th May 1929,#KEYS |
470:10000 :::
The Only Way Out:
... Once you have no more desires, no more attachments, once you have given up all necessity of receiving a reward from human beings, whoever they are - knowing that the only reward that is worth getting is the one that comes from the Supreme and that never fails - once you give up attachment to all exterior beings and things, you at once feel in your heart this Presence, this Force, this Grace that is always with you. And there is no other remedy. It's the only remedy, for everybody without exception. To all those who suffer, for the same thing that has to be said: all suffering is the sign that the surrender is not total. Then, when you feel in you a 'bang' like that, instead of saying, 'Oh, this is bad' or 'This circumstance is difficult,' you say, 'My surrender is not perfect.' Then it's all right. And then you feel the Grace that helps you and leads you, and you go on. And one day you emerge into that peace that nothing can trouble.
You answer to all the contrary forces, the contrary movements, the attacks, the misunderstandings, the bad wills, with the same smile that comes from full confidence in the Divine Grace. And that is the only way out, there is no other.
But where to get such a strength?
Within you. The Divine Presence is in you. It is in you. You look for it outside; look inside. It is in you. The Presence is there. You want the appreciation of others to get strength - you will never get it. The strength is in you. If you want, you can aspire for what seems to you the supreme goal, supreme light, supreme knowledge, supreme love. But it is in you - otherwise you would never be able to contact it. If you go deep enough inside you, you will find it there, like a flame that is always burning straight up. And don't believe that it is difficult to do. It is because the look is always turned outside that you don't feel the Presence. But if, instead of looking outside for support, you concentrate and you pray - inside, to the supreme knowledge - to know at each moment what is to be done, the way to do it, and if you give all you are, all you do in order to acquire perfection, you will feel that the support is always there, always guiding, showing the way. And if there is a difficulty, then instead of wanting to fight, you hand it over, hand it over to the supreme wisdom to deal with it - to deal with all the bad wills, all the misunderstandings, all the bad reactions. If you surrender completely, it is no more your concern: it's the concern of the Supreme who takes it up and knows better than anybody else what is to be done. That is the only way out, only way out. There, my child
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, [T1],#KEYS |
471:Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing be cause they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing-mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common : mystery. Goldmund continued his thought: It is mystery I love and pursue. Several times I have seen it beginning to take shape; as an artist, I would like to capture and express it. Some day, perhaps, I'll be able to. The figure of the universal mother, the great birthgiver, for example. Unlike other fi gures, her mystery does not consist of this or that detail, of a particular voluptuousness or sparseness, coarseness or delicacy, power or gracefulness. It consists of a fusion of the greatest contrasts of the world, those that cannot otherwise be combined, that have made peace only in this figure. They live in it together: birth and death, tenderness and cruelty, life and destruction. If I only imagined this fi gure, and were she merely the play of my thoughts, it would not matter about her, I could dismiss her as a mistake and forget about heR But the universal mother is not an idea of mine; I did not think her up, I saw her! She lives inside me. I've met her again and again. She appeared to me one winter night in a village when I was asked to hold a light over the bed of a peasant woman giving birth: that's when the image came to life within me. I often lose it; for long periods it re mains remote; but suddenly it Hashes clear again, as it did today. The image of my own mother, whom I loved most of all, has transformed itself into this new image, and lies encased within the new one like the pit in the cherry.
As his present situation became clear to him, Goldmund was afraid to make a decision. It was as difficult as when he had said farewell to Narcissus and to the cloister. Once more he was on an impor tant road : the road to his mother. Would this mother-image one day take shape, a work of his hands, and become visible to all? Perhaps that was his goal, the hidden meaning of his life. Perhaps; he didn't know. But one thing he did know : it was good to travel toward his mother, to be drawn and called by her. He felt alive. Perhaps he'd never be able to shape her image, perhaps she'd always remain a dream, an intuition, a golden shimmer, a sacred mystery. At any rate, he had to follow her and submit his fate to her. She was his star.
And now the decision was at his fingertips; everything had become clear. Art was a beautiful thing, but it was no goddess, no goal-not for him. He was not to follow art, but only the call of his mother.
~ Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund,#KEYS |
472:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.
The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.
Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.
And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,#KEYS |
473:Mother of Dreams :::
Goddess supreme, Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest,
Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting?
Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them;
Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens;
There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens.
What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine?
Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses,
Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal?
Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances?
Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances?
Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching,
Holdest the night in thy ancient right, Mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended.
Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest,
Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses.
Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses.
Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened.
High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him;
Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;
I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have healed the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master,
Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.
For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal;
There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.
From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us;
Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.
Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,#KEYS |
474:
Sweet Mother, is there a spiritual being in everybody?
That depends on what we call "being". If for "being" we substitute "presence", yes, there is a spiritual presence in everyone. If we call "being" an organised entity, fully conscious of itself, independent, and having the power of asserting itself and ruling the rest of the nature - no! The possibility of this independent and all-powerful being is in everybody, but the realisation is the result of long efforts which sometimes extend over many lives.
In everyone, even at the very beginning, this spiritual presence, this inner light is there.... In fact, it is everywhere. I have seen it many a time in certain animals. It is like a shining point which is the basis of a certain control and protection, something which, even in half-consciousness, makes possible a certain harmony with the rest of creation so that irreparable catastrophes may not be constant and general. Without this presence the disorder created by the violences and passions of the vital would be so great that at any moment they could bring about a general catastrophe, a sort of total destruction which would prevent the progress of Nature. That presence, that spiritual light - which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness - is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature's work to be accomplished.
And this presence becomes quite obvious in the human being, even the most rudimentary. Even in the most monstrous human being, in one who gives the impression of being an incarnation of a devil or a monster, there is something within exercising a sort of irresistible control - even in the worst, some things are impossible. And without this presence, if the being were controlled exclusively by the adverse forces, the forces of the vital, this impossibility would not exist.
Each time a wave of these monstrous adverse forces sweeps over the earth, one feels that nothing can ever stop the disorder and horror from spreading, and always, at a certain time, unexpectedly and inexplicably a control intervenes, and the wave is arrested, the catastrophe is not total. And this is because of the Presence, the supreme Presence, in matter.
But only in a few exceptional beings and after a long, very long work of preparation extending over many, many lives does this Presence change into a conscious, independent, fully organised being, all-powerful master of his dwelling-place, conscious enough, powerful enough, to be able to control not only this dwelling but what surrounds it and in a field of radiation and action that is more and more extensive... and effective.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, 339-340,#KEYS |
| 475:What do we understand by the term "chance"? Chance can only be the opposite of order and harmony. There is only one true harmony and that is the supramental - the reign of Truth, the expression of the Divine Law. In the Supermind, therefore, chance has no place. But in the lower Nature the supreme Truth is obscured: hence there is an absence of that divine unity of purpose and action which alone can constitute order. Lacking this unity, the domain of lower Nature is governed by what we may call chance - that is to say, it is a field in which various conflicting forces intermix, having no single definite aim. Whatever arises out of such a rushing together of forces is a result of confusion, dissonance and falsehood - a product of chance. Chance is not merely a conception to cover our ignorance of the causes at work; it is a description of the uncertain mele ́e of the lower Nature which lacks the calm one-pointedness of the divine Truth. The world has forgotten its divine origin and become an arena of egoistic energies; but it is still possible for it to open to the Truth, call it down by its aspiration and bring about a change in the whirl of chance. What men regard as a mechanical sequence of events, owing to their own mental associations, experiences and generalisations, is really manipulated by subtle agencies each of which tries to get its own will done. The world has got so subjected to these undivine agencies that the victory of the Truth cannot be won except by fighting for it. It has no right to it: it has to gain it by disowning the falsehood and the perversion, an important part of which is the facile notion that, since all things owe their final origin to the Divine, all their immediate activities also proceed directly from it. The fact is that here in the lower Nature the Divine is veiled by a cosmic Ignorance and what takes place does not proceed directly from the divine knowledge. That everything is equally the will of God is a very convenient suggestion of the hostile influences which would have the creation stick as tightly as possible to the disorder and ugliness to which it has been reduced. So what is to be done, you ask? Well, call down the Light, open yourselves to the power of Transformation. Innumerable times the divine peace has been given to you and as often you have lost it - because something in you refuses to surrender its petty egoistic routine. If you are not always vigilant, your nature will return to its old unregenerate habits even after it has been filled with the descending Truth. It is the struggle between the old and the new that forms the crux of the Yoga; but if you are bent on being faithful to the supreme Law and Order revealed to you, the parts of your being belonging to the domain of chance will, however slowly, be converted and divinised. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #KEYS |
476:Sri Aurobindo tells us that surrender is the first and absolute condition for doing the yoga. Therefore it is not merely one of the required qualities, it is the very first indispensable attitude for commencing the yoga.
If you are not decided to make a total surrender, you cannot begin. But to make your surrender total, all the other qualities are necessary: sincerity, faith, devotion and aspiration.
And I add another one : endurance. Because if you are not able to face difficulties without getting discouraged, without giving up under the pretext that it is too difficult, if you are not able to receive blows and continue all the same, to "pocket" them, as it is said,—you receive blows because of your defects : you put them into your pocket and continue to march on without faltering; if you cannot do that with endurance, you will not go very far; at the first turning, when you lose sight of the little habitual life, you despair and give up the game.
The most material form of endurance is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if needed, you will arrive nowhere.
People come to me in despair : "But I thought it had been done, and I have to begin again !" And if they are told, "But it is nothing, you have to begin probably a hundred times, two hundred times, a thousand times", they lose all courage.
You take one step forward and you believe you are solid, but there will be always something that will bring about the same difficulty a little farther ahead.
You believe you have solved the problem, but will have to solve it again, it will present itself with just a little difference in its appearance, but it will be the same problem.
Thus there are people who have a fine experience and they exclaim, "Now, it is done !" Then things settle down, begin to fade, go behind a veil, and all on a sudden, something quite unexpected, a thing absolutely commonplace, that appears to be of no interest at all, comes before them and closes up the road. Then you lament: "Of what use is this progress that I have made, if I am to begin again !
Why is it so? I made an effort, I succeeded, I arrived at something and now it is as if I had done nothing. It is hopeless". This is because there is still the "I" and this "I" has no endurance.
If you have endurance, you say : "All right, I will begin again and again as long as necessary, a thousand times, ten thousand times, a million times, if necessary, but I will go to the end and nothing can stop me on the way".
That is very necessary.
Now, to sum up, we will put at the head of our list surrender. That is to say, we accept the fact that one must, in order to do the integral yoga, take the resolution of surrendering oneself wholly to the Divine. There is no other way, it is the way. ~ The Mother,#KEYS |
477:the process of unification, the perfecting our one's instrumental being, the help one needs to reach the goal :::
If we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavor.
As you pursue this labor of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. ... It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us [the psychic being], to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perfection and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realize. This discovery and realization should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
~ The Mother, On Education, [T1],#KEYS |
478:- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expression, - all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its own works, to express that One Divine in ideal forms, the One Divine in principles and forces, the One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, - for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 142 [T4],#KEYS |
479:The modern distinction is that the poet appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. But there are many kinds of imagination; the objective imagination which visualises strongly the outward aspects of life and things; the subjective imagination which visualises strongly the mental and emotional impressions they have the power to start in the mind; the imagination which deals in the play of mental fictions and to which we give the name of poetic fancy; the aesthetic imagination which delights in the beauty of words and images for their own sake and sees no farther. All these have their place in poetry, but they only give the poet his materials, they are only the first instruments in the creation of poetic style. The essential poetic imagination does not stop short with even the most subtle reproductions of things external or internal, with the richest or delicatest play of fancy or with the most beautiful colouring of word or image. It is creative, not of either the actual or the fictitious, but of the more and the most real; it sees the spiritual truth of things, - of this truth too there are many gradations, - which may take either the actual or the ideal for its starting-point. The aim of poetry, as of all true art, is neither a photographic or otherwise realistic imitation of Nature, nor a romantic furbishing and painting or idealistic improvement of her image, but an interpretation by the images she herself affords us, not on one but on many planes of her creation, of that which she conceals from us, but is ready, when rightly approached, to reveal.
This is the true, because the highest and essential aim of poetry; but the human mind arrives at it only by a succession of steps, the first of which seems far enough from its object. It begins by stringing its most obvious and external ideas, feelings and sensations of things on a thread of verse in a sufficient language of no very high quality. But even when it gets to a greater adequacy and effectiveness, it is often no more than a vital, an emotional or an intellectual adequacy and effectiveness. There is a strong vital poetry which powerfully appeals to our sensations and our sense of life, like much of Byron or the less inspired mass of the Elizabethan drama; a strong emotional poetry which stirs our feelings and gives us the sense and active image of the passions; a strong intellectual poetry which satisfies our curiosity about life and its mechanism, or deals with its psychological and other "problems", or shapes for us our thoughts in an effective, striking and often quite resistlessly quotable fashion. All this has its pleasures for the mind and the surface soul in us, and it is certainly quite legitimate to enjoy them and to enjoy them strongly and vividly on our way upward; but if we rest content with these only, we shall never get very high up the hill of the Muses.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#KEYS |
480:Eternal, unconfined, unextended, without cause and without effect, the Holy Lamp mysteriously burns. Without quantity or quality, unconditioned and sempiternal, is this Light.
It is not possible for anyone to advise or approve; for this Lamp is not made with hands; it exists alone for ever; it has no parts, no person; it is before "I am." Few can behold it, yet it is always there. For it there is no "here" nor "there," no "then" nor "now;" all parts of speech are abolished, save the noun; and this noun is not found either in {106} human speech or in Divine. It is the Lost Word, the dying music of whose sevenfold echo is I A O and A U M.
Without this Light the Magician could not work at all; yet few indeed are the Magicians that have know of it, and far fewer They that have beheld its brilliance!
The Temple and all that is in it must be destroyed again and again before it is worthy to receive that Light. Hence it so often seems that the only advice that any master can give to any pupil is to destroy the Temple.
"Whatever you have" and "whatever you are" are veils before that Light. Yet in so great a matter all advice is vain. There is no master so great that he can see clearly the whole character of any pupil. What helped him in the past may hinder another in the future.
Yet since the Master is pledged to serve, he may take up that service on these simple lines. Since all thoughts are veils of this Light, he may advise the destruction of all thoughts, and to that end teach those practices which are clearly conductive to such destruction.
These practices have now fortunately been set down in clear language by order of the A.'.A.'..
In these instructions the relativity and limitation of each practice is clearly taught, and all dogmatic interpretations are carefully avoided. Each practice is in itself a demon which must be destroyed; but to be destroyed it must first be evoked.
Shame upon that Master who shirks any one of these practices, however distasteful or useless it may be to him! For in the detailed knowledge of it, which experience alone can give him, may lie his opportunity for crucial assistance to a pupil. However dull the drudgery, it should be undergone. If it were possible to regret anything in life, which is fortunately not the case, it would be the hours wasted in fruitful practices which might have been more profitably employed on sterile ones: for NEMO<> in tending his garden seeketh not to single out the flower that shall be NEMO after him. And we are not told that NEMO might have used other things than those which he actually does use; it seems possible that if he had not the acid or the knife, or the fire, or the oil, he might miss tending just that one flower which was to be NEMO after him! ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, The Lamp,#KEYS |
481:Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spoke thus: Man is a rope stretched between animal and overman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous trembling and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going. I love those who know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers. I love the great despisers, because they are the great reverers, and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the overman may some day arrive. I love him who lives in order to know, and seeks to know in order that the overman may someday live. Thus he seeks his own down-going. I love him who works and invents, that he may build a house for the overman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus he seeks his own down-going. I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing. I love him who reserves no drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he walks as spirit over the bridge. I love him who makes his virtue his addiction and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more. I love him who does not desire too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for ones destiny to cling to. I love him whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and gives none back: for he always gives, and desires not to preserve himself. I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favor, and who then asks: Am I a dishonest player? - for he is willing to perish. I love him who scatters golden words in front of his deeds, and always does more than he promises: for he seeks his own down-going. I love him who justifies those people of the future, and redeems those of the past: for he is willing to perish by those of the present. I love him who chastens his God, because he loves his God: for he must perish by the wrath of his God. I love him whose soul is deep even in being wounded, and may perish from a small experience: thus goes he gladly over the bridge. I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going. I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the entrails of his heart; his heart, however, drives him to go down. I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and perish as heralds. Behold, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is called overman.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,#KEYS |
482:3. Conditions internal and external that are most essential for meditation. There are no essential external conditions, but solitude and seculsion at the time of meditation as well as stillness of the body are helpful, sometimes almost necessary to the beginning. But one should not be bound by external conditions. Once the habit of meditation is formed, it should be made possible to do it in all circumstances, lying, sitting, walking, alone, in company, in silence or in the midst of noise etc.
The first internal condition necessary is concentration of the will against the obstacles to meditation, i.e. wandering of the mind, forgetfulness, sleep, physical and nervous impatience and restlessness etc. If the difficulty in meditation is that thoughts of all kinds come in, that is not due to hostile forces but to the ordinary nature of the human mind. All sadhaks have this difficulty and with many it lasts for a very long time. There are several was of getting rid of it. One of them is to look at the thoughts and observe what is the nature of the human mind as they show it but not to give any sanction and to let them run down till they come to a standstill - this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in his Rajayoga. Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction - the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this way it usually happens that after the time the mind divides into two, a part which is the mental witness watching and perfectly undisturbed and quiet and a part in which the thoughts cross or wander. Afterwards one can proceed to silence or quiet the Prakriti part also. There is a third, an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence. It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out all mental-vital activities. It is easier to let the Silence descend into you, i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of efforts to pull down the Power or the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. if it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes,#KEYS |
483:Our culture, the laws of our culture, are predicated on the idea that people are conscious. People have experience; people make decisions, and can be held responsible for them. There's a free will element to it. You can debate all that philosophically, and fine, but the point is that that is how we act, and that is the idea that our legal system is predicated on. There's something deep about it, because you're subject to the law, but the law is also limited by you, which is to say that in a well-functioning, properly-grounded democratic system, you have intrinsic value. That's the source of your rights. Even if you're a murderer, we have to say the law can only go so far because there's something about you that's divine.
Well, what does that mean? Partly it means that there's something about you that's conscious and capable of communicating, like you're a whole world unto yourself. You have that to contribute to everyone else, and that's valuable. You can learn new things, transform the structure of society, and invent a new way of dealing with the world. You're capable of all that. It's an intrinsic part of you, and that's associated with the idea that there's something about the logos that is necessary for the absolute chaos of the reality beyond experience to manifest itself as reality. That's an amazing idea because it gives consciousness a constitutive role in the cosmos. You can debate that, but you can't just bloody well brush it off. First of all, we are the most complicated things there are, that we know of, by a massive amount. We're so complicated that it's unbelievable. So there's a lot of cosmos out there, but there's a lot of cosmos in here, too, and which one is greater is by no means obvious, unless you use something trivial, like relative size, which really isn't a very sophisticated approach.
Whatever it is that is you has this capacity to experience reality and to transform it, which is a very strange thing. You can conceptualize the future in your imagination, and then you can work and make that manifest-participate in the process of creation. That's one way of thinking about it. That's why I think Genesis 1 relates the idea that human beings are made in the image of the divine-men and women, which is interesting, because feminists are always criticizing Christianity as being inexorably patriarchal. Of course, they criticize everything like that, so it's hardly a stroke of bloody brilliance. But I think it's an absolute miracle that right at the beginning of the document it says straightforwardly, with no hesitation whatsoever, that the divine spark which we're associating with the word, that brings forth Being, is manifest in men and women equally. That's a very cool thing. You got to think, like I said, do you actually take that seriously? Well, what you got to ask is what happens if you don't take it seriously, right? Read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. That's the best investigation into that tactic that's ever been produced. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,#KEYS |
484:Sweet Mother, there's a flower you have named "The Creative Word".
Yes.
What does that mean?
It is the word which creates.
There are all kinds of old traditions, old Hindu traditions, old Chaldean traditions in which the Divine, in the form of the Creator, that is, in His aspect as Creator, pronounces a word which has the power to create. So it is this... And it is the origin of the mantra. The mantra is the spoken word which has a creative power. An invocation is made and there is an answer to the invocation; or one makes a prayer and the prayer is granted. This is the Word, the Word which, in its sound... it is not only the idea, it is in the sound that there's a power of creation. It is the origin, you see, of the mantra.
In Indian mythology the creator God is Brahma, and I think that it was precisely his power which has been symbolised by this flower, "The Creative Word". And when one is in contact with it, the words spoken have a power of evocation or creation or formation or transformation; the words... sound always has a power; it has much more power than men think. It may be a good power and it may be a bad power. It creates vibrations which have an undeniable effect. It is not so much the idea as the sound; the idea too has its own power, but in its own domain - whereas the sound has a power in the material world.
I think I have explained this to you once; I told you, for example, that words spoken casually, usually without any re- flection and without attaching any importance to them, can be used to do something very good. I think I spoke to you about "Bonjour", "Good Day", didn't I? When people meet and say "Bonjour", they do so mechanically and without thinking. But if you put a will into it, an aspiration to indeed wish someone a good day, well, there is a way of saying "Good Day" which is very effective, much more effective than if simply meeting someone you thought: "Ah! I hope he has a good day", without saying anything. If with this hope in your thought you say to him in a certain way, "Good Day", you make it more concrete and more effective.
It's the same thing, by the way, with curses, or when one gets angry and says bad things to people. This can do them as much harm - more harm sometimes - than if you were to give them a slap. With very sensitive people it can put their stomach out of order or give them palpitation, because you put into it an evil force which has a power of destruction.
It is not at all ineffective to speak. Naturally it depends a great deal on each one's inner power. People who have no strength and no consciousness can't do very much - unless they employ material means. But to the extent that you are strong, especially when you have a powerful vital, you must have a great control on what you say, otherwise you can do much harm. Without wanting to, without knowing it; through ignorance.
Anything? No? Nothing?
Another question?... Everything's over? ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 347-349,#KEYS |
485:Something happened to you before you were born, and this is what it was:
STAGE ONE: THE CHIKHAI
The events of the 49-day Bardo period are divided into three major stages, the Chikhai, the Chonyid, and the Sidpa (in that order). Immediately following physical death, the soul enters the Chikhai, which is simply the state of the immaculate and luminous Dharmakaya, the ultimate Consciousness, the BrahmanAtman. This ultimate state is given, as a gift, to all individuals: they are plunged straight into ultimate reality and exist as the ultimate Dharmakaya. "At this moment," says the Bardo Thotrol, "the first glimpsing of the Bardo of the Clear Light of Reality, which is the Infallible Mind of the Dharmakaya, is experienced by all sentient beings.''110 Or, to put it a different way, the Thotrol tells us that "Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light-Buddha Amitabha. Knowing this is sufficient. Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood ... is to keep thyself in the Divine Mind."110 In short, immediately following physical death, the soul is absorbed in and as the ultimate-causal body (if we may treat them together).
Interspersed with this brief summary of the Bardo Thotrol, I will add my commentaries on involution and on the nature of the Atman project in involution. And we begin by noting that at the start of the Bardo experience, the soul is elevated to the utter heights of Being, to the ultimate state of Oneness-that is, he starts his Bardo career at the top. But, at the top is usually not where he remains, and the Thotrol tells us why. In Evans-Wentz's words, "In the realm of the Clear Light [the highest Chikhai stage] the mentality of a person . . . momentarily enjoys a condition of balance, of perfect equilibrium, and of [ultimate] oneness. Owing to unfamiliarity with such a state, which is an ecstatic state of non-ego, of [causal] consciousness, the . . . average human being lacks the power to function in it; karmic propensities becloud the consciousness-principle with thoughts of personality, of individualized being, of dualism, and, losing equilibrium, the consciousness-principle falls away from the Clear Light."
The soul falls away from the ultimate Oneness because "karmic propensities cloud consciousness"-"karmic propensities'' means seeking, grasping, desiring; means, in fact, Eros. And as this Erosseeking develops, the state of perfect Oneness starts to "break down" (illusorily). Or, from a different angle, because the individual cannot stand the intensity of pure Oneness ("owing to unfamiliarity with such a state"), he contracts away from it, tries to ''dilute it," tries to extricate himself from Perfect Intensity in Atman. Contracting in the face of infinity, he turns instead to forms of seeking, desire, karma, and grasping, trying to "search out" a state of equilibrium. Contraction and Eros-these karmic propensities couple and conspire to drive the soul away from pure consciousness and downwards into multiplicity, into less intense and less real states of being. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project,#KEYS |
486:28 August 1957
Mother, Sri Aurobindo says here: "Whether the whole of humanity would be touched [by the Supramental influence] or only a part of it ready for the change would depend on what was intended or possible in the continued order of the universe."
The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 56
What is meant by "what was intended or possible"? The two things are different. So far you have said that if humanity changes, if it wants to participate in the new birth...
It is the same thing. But when you look at an object on a certain plane, you see it horizontally, and when you look at the same object from another plane, you see it vertically. (Mother shows the cover and the back of her book.) So, if one looks from above, one says "intended"; if one looks from below, one says "possible".... But it is absolutely the same thing, only the point of view is different.
But in that case, it is not our incapacity or lack of will to change that makes any difference.
We have already said this many a time. If you remain in a consciousness which functions mentally, even if it is the highest mind, you have the notion of an absolute determinism of cause and effect and feel that things are what they are because they are what they are and cannot be otherwise.
It is only when you come out of the mental consciousness completely and enter a higher perception of things - which you may call spiritual or divine - that you suddenly find yourself in a state of perfect freedom where everything is possible.
(Silence)
Those who have contacted that state or lived in it, even if only for a moment, try to describe it as a feeling of an absolute Will in action, which immediately gives to the human mentality the feeling of being arbitrary. And because of that distortion there arises the idea - which I might call traditional - of a supreme and arbitrary God, which is something most unacceptable to every enlightened mind. I suppose that this experience badly expressed is at the origin of this notion. And in fact it is incorrect to express it as an absolute Will: it is very, very, very different. It is something else altogether. For, what man understands by "Will" is a decision that is taken and carried out. We are obliged to use the word "will", but in its truth the Will acting in the universe is neither a choice nor a decision that is taken. What seems to me the closest expression is "vision". Things are because they are seen. But of course "seen", not seen as we see with these eyes.
(Mother touches her eyes...) All the same, it is the nearest thing.
It is a vision - a vision unfolding itself.
The universe becomes objective as it is progressively seen.
And that is why Sri Aurobindo has said "intended or possible". It is neither one nor the other. All that can be said is a distortion.
(Silence)
Objectivisation - universal objectivisation - is something like a projection in space and time, like a living image of what is from all eternity. And as the image is gradually projected on the screen of time and space, it becomes objective:
The Supreme contemplating His own Image.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS |
487:Talk 26
...
D.: Taking the first part first, how is the mind to be eliminated or relative consciousness transcended?
M.: The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.
D.: How is restlessness removed from the mind?
M.: External contacts - contacts with objects other than itself - make the mind restless. Loss of interest in non-Self, (vairagya) is the first step. Then the habits of introspection and concentration follow. They are characterised by control of external senses, internal faculties, etc. (sama, dama, etc.) ending in samadhi (undistracted mind).
Talk 27.
D.: How are they practised?
M.: An examination of the ephemeral nature of external phenomena leads to vairagya. Hence enquiry (vichara) is the first and foremost step to be taken. When vichara continues automatically, it results in a contempt for wealth, fame, ease, pleasure, etc. The 'I' thought becomes clearer for inspection. The source of 'I' is the Heart - the final goal. If, however, the aspirant is not temperamentally suited to Vichara Marga (to the introspective analytical method), he must develop bhakti (devotion) to an ideal - may be God, Guru, humanity in general, ethical laws, or even the idea of beauty. When one of these takes possession of the individual, other attachments grow weaker, i.e., dispassion (vairagya) develops. Attachment for the ideal simultaneously grows and finally holds the field. Thus ekagrata (concentration) grows simultaneously and imperceptibly - with or without visions and direct aids.
In the absence of enquiry and devotion, the natural sedative pranayama (breath regulation) may be tried. This is known as Yoga Marga. If life is imperilled the whole interest centres round the one point, the saving of life. If the breath is held the mind cannot afford to (and does not) jump at its pets - external objects. Thus there is rest for the mind so long as the breath is held. All attention being turned on breath or its regulation, other interests are lost. Again, passions are attended with irregular breathing, whereas calm and happiness are attended with slow and regular breathing. Paroxysm of joy is in fact as painful as one of pain, and both are accompanied by ruffled breaths. Real peace is happiness. Pleasures do not form happiness. The mind improves by practice and becomes finer just as the razor's edge is sharpened by stropping. The mind is then better able to tackle internal or external problems. If an aspirant be unsuited temperamentally for the first two methods and circumstantially (on account of age) for the third method, he must try the Karma Marga (doing good deeds, for example, social service). His nobler instincts become more evident and he derives impersonal pleasure. His smaller self is less assertive and has a chance of expanding its good side. The man becomes duly equipped for one of the three aforesaid paths. His intuition may also develop directly by this single method. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,#KEYS |
488:"If the Divine that is all love is the source of the creation, whence have come all the evils abounding upon earth?"
"All is from the Divine; but the One Consciousness, the Supreme has not created the world directly out of itself; a Power has gone out of it and has descended through many gradations of its workings and passed through many agents. There are many creators or rather 'formateurs', form-makers, who have presided over the creation of the world. They are intermediary agents and I prefer to call them 'Formateurs' and not 'Creators'; for what they have done is to give the form and turn and nature to matter. There have been many, and some have formed things harmonious and benignant and some have shaped things mischievous and evil. And some too have been distorters rather than builders, for they have interfered and spoiled what was begun well by others." - Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (30 June 1929)
You say, "Many creators or rather 'formateurs', formmakers, have presided over the creation of the world." Who are these 'formateurs'?
That depends. They have been given many names. All has been done by gradations and through individual beings of all kinds. Each state of being is inhabited by entities, individualities and personalities and each one has created a world around him or has contributed to the formation of certain beings upon earth. The last creators are those of the vital world, but there are beings of the Overmind (Sri Aurobindo calls this plane the Overmind), who have created, given forms, sent out emanations, and these emanations again had their emanations and so on. What I meant is that it is not the Divine Will that acted directly on Matter to give to the world the required form, it is by passing through layers, so to say, planes of the world, as for example, the mental plane - there are so many beings on the mental plane who are form-makers, who have taken part in the formation of some beings who have incarnated upon earth. On the vital plane also the same thing happens.
For example, there is a tradition which says that the whole world of insects is the outcome of the form-makers of the vital world, and that this is why they take such absolutely diabolical shapes when they are magnified under the microscope. You saw the other day, when you were shown the microbes in water? Naturally the pictures were made to amuse, to strike the imagination, but they are based on real forms, so magnified, however, that they look like monsters. Almost the whole world of insects is a world of microscopic monsters which, had they been larger in size, would have been quite terrifying. So it is said these are entities of the vital world, beings of the vital who created that for fun and amused themselves forming all these impossible beasts which make human life altogether unpleasant.
Did these intermediaries also come out of the Divine Power?
Through intermediaries, yes, not directly. These beings are not in direct contact with the Divine (there are exceptions, I mean as a general rule), they are beings who are in relation with other beings, who are again in relation with others, and these with still others, and so on, in a hierarchy, up to the Supreme.(to be continued....) ~ The Mother, Question and Answers,#KEYS |
489:Sweet Mother, here it is written: "It is part of the foundation of Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge." Are these forces different for each person?
Yes. The composition is completely different, otherwise everybody would be the same. There are not two beings with an identical combination; between the different parts of the being and the composition of these parts the proportion is different in each individual. There are people, primitive men, people like the yet undeveloped races or the degenerated ones whose combinations are fairly simple; they are still complicated, but comparatively simple. And there are people absolutely at the top of the human ladder, the e ́lite of humanity; their combinations become so complicated that a very special discernment is needed to find the relations between all these things.
There are beings who carry in themselves thousands of different personalities, and then each one has its own rhythm and alternation, and there is a kind of combination; sometimes there are inner conflicts, and there is a play of activities which are rhythmic and with alternations of certain parts which come to the front and then go back and again come to the front. But when one takes all that, it makes such complicated combinations that some people truly find it difficult to understand what is going on in themselves; and yet these are the ones most capable of a complete, coordinated, conscious, organised action; but their organisation is infinitely more complicated than that of primitive or undeveloped men who have two or three impulses and four or five ideas, and who can arrange all this very easily in themselves and seem to be very co-ordinated and logical because there is not very much to organise. But there are people truly like a multitude, and so that gives them a plasticity, a fluidity of action and an extraordinary complexity of perception, and these people are capable of understanding a considerable number of things, as though they had at their disposal a veritable army which they move according to circumstance and need; and all this is inside them. So when these people, with the help of yoga, the discipline of yoga, succeed in centralising all these beings around the central light of the divine Presence, they become powerful entities, precisely because of their complexity. So long as this is not organised they often give the impression of an incoherence, they are almost incomprehensible, one can't manage to understand why they are like that, they are so complex. But when they have organised all these beings, that is, put each one in its place around the divine centre, then truly they are terrific, for they have the capacity of understanding almost everything and doing almost everything because of the multitude of entities they contain, of which they are constituted. And the nearer one is to the top of the ladder, the more it is like that, and consequently the more difficult it is to organise one's being; because when you have about a dozen elements, you can quickly compass and organise them, but when you have thousands of them, it is difficult. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 215-216,#KEYS |
490:At it's narrowest (although this is a common and perhaps the official position; need to find ref in What is Enlightenment) "integral", "turquois" (Spiral Dynamics), and "second tier" (ditto) are all synonms, and in turn are equivalent to Wilber IV / AQAL/Wilber V "Post-metaphysical" AQAL. This is the position that "Integral = Ken Wilber". It constitutes a new philosophical school or meme-set, in the tradition of charismatic spiritual teachers of all ages, in which an articulate, brilliant, and popular figure would arise, and gather a following around him- or her-self. After the teacher passes on, their teaching remains through books and organisations dedicated to perpetuating that teaching; although without the brilliant light of the Founder, things generally become pretty stultifying, and there is often little or no original development. Even so, the books themselves continue to inspire, and many people benefit greatly from these tecahings, and can contact the original Light of the founders to be inspired by them on the subtle planes. Some late 19th, 20th, and early 21st century examples of such teachers, known and less well-known, are Blavatsky, Theon, Steiner, Aurobindo, Gurdjieff, Crowley, Alice Bailey, Carl Jung, Ann Ree Colton, and now Ken Wilber. Also, many popular gurus belong in this category. It could plausibly be suggested that the founders of the great world religions started out no different, but their teaching really caught on n a big way.
...
At its broadest then, the Integral Community includes not only Wilber but those he cites as his influences and hold universal and evolutionary views or teachings, as well as those who, while influenced by him also differ somewhat, and even those like Arthur M Young that Wilber has apparently never heard of. Nevertheless, all share a common, evolutionary, "theory of everything" position, and, whilst they may differ on many details and even on many major points, taken together they could be considered a wave front for a new paradigm, a memetic revolution. I use the term Daimon of the Integral Movement to refer to the spiritual being or personality of light that is behind and working through this broader movement.
Now, this doesn't mean that this daimon is necessarily a negative entity. I see a lot of promise, a lot of potential, in the Integral Approach. From what I feel at the moment, the Integral Deva is a force and power of good.
But, as with any new spiritual or evolutionary development, there is duality, in that there are forces that hinder and oppose and distort, as well as forces that help and aid in the evolution and ultimate divinisation of the Earth and the cosmos. Thus even where a guru does give in the dark side (as very often happens with many gurus today) there still remains an element of Mixed Light that remains (one finds this ambiguity with Sai Baba, with Da Free John, and with Rajneesh); and we find this same ambiguity with the Integral Community regarding what seems to me a certain offputting devotional attitude towards Wilber himself. The light will find its way, regardless. However, an Intregral Movement that is caught up in worship of and obedience to an authority figure, will not be able to achieve what a movement unfettered by such shackles could. ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, Wilber, Integral,#KEYS |
491:There is no invariable rule of such suffering. It is not the soul that suffers; the Self is calm and equal to all things and the only sorrow of the psychic being is the sorrow of the resistance of Nature to the Divine Will or the resistance of things and people to the call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body. When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt - which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance, then obviously there may be much suffering of the mind and vital parts. The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability to respond to the higher consciousness, a habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is moreover the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence on the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses, desires, feelings, responses continue even after they are thrown out and rejected, and can return like an invading army from outside, until the whole nature, given to the Divine, refuses to admit them. This is the subjective form of the universal resistance, but it may also take an objective form - opposition, calumny, attacks, persecution, misfortunes of many kinds, adverse conditions and circumstances, pain, illness, assaults from men or forces. There too the possibility of suffering is evident. There are two ways to meet all that - first that of the Self, calm, equality, a spirit, a will, a mind, a vital, a physical consciousness that remain resolutely turned towards the Divine and unshaken by all suggestion of doubt, desire, attachment, depression, sorrow, pain, inertia. This is possible when the inner being awakens, when one becomes conscious of the Self, of the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner physical, for that can more easily attune itself to the divine Will, and then there is a division in the being as if there were two beings, one within, calm, strong, equal, unperturbed, a channel of the Divine Consciousness and Force, one without, still encroached on by the lower Nature; but then the disturbances of the latter become something superficial which are no more than an outer ripple, - until these under the inner pressure fade and sink away and the outer being too remains calm, concentrated, unattackable. There is also the way of the psychic, - when the psychic being comes out in its inherent power, its consecration, adoration, love of the Divine, self-giving, surrender and imposes these on the mind, vital and physical consciousness and compels them to turn all their movements Godward. If the psychic is strong and master...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Resistances, Sufferings and Falls, 669,#KEYS |
492:Can it be said in justification of one's past that whatever has happened in one's life had to happen?
The Mother: Obviously, what has happened had to happen; it would not have been, if it had not been intended. Even the mistakes that we have committed and the adversities that fell upon us had to be, because there was some necessity in them, some utility for our lives. But in truth these things cannot be explained mentally and should not be. For all that happened was necessary, not for any mental reason, but to lead us to something beyond what the mind imagines. But is there any need to explain after all? The whole universe explains everything at every moment and a particular thing happens because the whole universe is what it is. But this does not mean that we are bound over to a blind acquiescence in Nature's inexorable law. You can accept the past as a settled fact and perceive the necessity in it, and still you can use the experience it gave you to build up the power consciously to guide and shape your present and your future.
Is the time also of an occurrence arranged in the Divine Plan of things?
The Mother: All depends upon the plane from which one sees and speaks. There is a plane of divine consciousness in which all is known absolutely, and the whole plan of things foreseen and predetermined. That way of seeing lives in the highest reaches of the Supramental; it is the Supreme's own vision. But when we do not possess that consciousness, it is useless to speak in terms that hold good only in that region and are not our present effective way of seeing things. For at a lower level of consciousness nothing is realised or fixed beforehand; all is in the process of making. Here there are no settled facts, there is only the play of possibilities; out of the clash of possibilities is realised the thing that has to happen. On this plane we can choose and select; we can refuse one possibility and accept another; we can follow one path, turn away from another. And that we can do, even though what is actually happening may have been foreseen and predetermined in a higher plane.
The Supreme Consciousness knows everything beforehand, because everything is realised there in her eternity. But for the sake of her play and in order to carry out actually on the physical plane what is foreordained in her own supreme self, she moves here upon earth as if she did not know the whole story; she works as if it was a new and untried thread that she was weaving. It is this apparent forgetfulness of her own foreknowledge in the higher consciousness that gives to the individual in the active life of the world his sense of freedom and independence and initiative. These things in him are her pragmatic tools or devices, and it is through this machinery that the movements and issues planned and foreseen elsewhere are realised here.
It may help you to understand if you take the example of an actor. An actor knows the whole part he has to play; he has in his mind the exact sequence of what is to happen on the stage. But when he is on the stage, he has to appear as if he did not know anything; he has to feel and act as if he were experiencing all these things for the first time, as if it was an entirely new world with all its chance events and surprises that was unrolling before his eyes. 28th April ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS |
| 493:But there's a reason. There's a reason. There's a reason for this, there's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It's never gonna get any better. Don't look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want: They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on -- good honest hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about them. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it. ~ George Carlin, #KEYS |
494:HOW CAN I READ SAVITRI?
An open reply by Dr Alok Pandey to a fellow devotee
A GIFT OF LOVE TO THE WORLD
Most of all enjoy Savitri. It is Sri Aurobindo's gift of Love to the world. Read it from the heart with love and gratitude as companions and drown in its fiery bliss. That is the true understanding rather than one that comes by a constant churning of words in the head.
WHEN
Best would be to fix a time that works for you. One can always take out some time for the reading, even if it be late at night when one is done with all the daily works. Of course, a certain receptivity is needed. If one is too tired or the reading becomes too mechanical as a ritual routine to be somehow finished it tends to be less effective, as with anything else. Hence the advice is to read in a quiet receptive state.
THE PACE
As to the pace of reading it is best to slowly build up and keep it steady. To read a page or a passage daily is better than reading many pages one day and then few lines or none for days. This brings a certain discipline in the consciousness which makes one receptive. What it means is that one should fix up that one would read a few passages or a page or two daily, and then if an odd day one is enjoying and spontaneously wants to read more then one can go by the flow.
COMPLETE OR SELECTIONS?
It is best to read at least once from cover to cover. But if one is not feeling inclined for that do read some of the beautiful cantos and passages whose reference one can find in various places. This helps us familiarise with the epic and the style of poetry. Later one can go for the cover to cover reading.
READING ALOUD, SILENTLY, OR WRITING DOWN?
One can read it silently. Loud reading is needed only if one is unable to focus with silent reading. A mantra is more potent when read subtly. I am aware that some people recommend reading it aloud which is fine if that helps one better. A certain flexibility in these things is always good and rigid rules either ways are not helpful.
One can also write some of the beautiful passages with which one feels suddenly connected. It is a help in the yoga since such a writing involves the pouring in of the consciousness of Savitri through the brain and nerves and the hand.
Reflecting upon some of these magnificent lines and passages while one is engaged in one\s daily activities helps to create a background state for our inner being to get absorbed in Savitri more and more.
HOW DO I UNDERSTAND THE MEANING? DO I NEED A DICTIONARY?
It is helpful if a brief background about the Canto is known. This helps the mind top focus and also to keep in sync with the overall scene and sense of what is being read.
But it is best not to keep referring to the dictionary while reading. Let the overall sense emerge. Specifics can be done during a detailed reading later and it may not be necessary at all. Besides the sense that Sri Aurobindo has given to many words may not be accurately conveyed by the standard dictionaries. A flexibility is required to understand the subtle suggestions hinted at by the Master-poet.
In this sense Savitri is in the line of Vedic poetry using images that are at once profound as well as commonplace. That is the beauty of mystic poetry. These are things actually experienced and seen by Sri Aurobindo, and ultimately it is Their Grace that alone can reveal the intrinsic sense of this supreme revelation of the Supreme. ~ Dr Alok Pandey,#KEYS |
495:DHARANA
NOW that we have learnt to observe the mind, so that we know how it works to some extent, and have begun to understand the elements of control, we may try the result of gathering together all the powers of the mind, and attempting to focus them on a single point.
We know that it is fairly easy for the ordinary educated mind to think without much distraction on a subject in which it is much interested. We have the popular phrase, "revolving a thing in the mind"; and as long as the subject is sufficiently complex, as long as thoughts pass freely, there is no great difficulty. So long as a gyroscope is in motion, it remains motionless relatively to its support, and even resists attempts to distract it; when it stops it falls from that position. If the earth ceased to spin round the sun, it would at once fall into the sun. The moment then that the student takes a simple subject - or rather a simple object - and imagines it or visualizes it, he will find that it is not so much his creature as he supposed. Other thoughts will invade the mind, so that the object is altogether forgotten, perhaps for whole minutes at a time; and at other times the object itself will begin to play all sorts of tricks.
Suppose you have chosen a white cross. It will move its bar up and down, elongate the bar, turn the bar oblique, get its arms unequal, turn upside down, grow branches, get a crack around it or a figure upon it, change its shape altogether like an Amoeba, change its size and distance as a whole, change the degree of its illumination, and at the same time change its colour. It will get splotchy and blotchy, grow patterns, rise, fall, twist and turn; clouds will pass over its face. There is no conceivable change of which it is incapable. Not to mention its total disappearance, and replacement by something altogether different!
Any one to whom this experience does not occur need not imagine that he is meditating. It shows merely that he is incapable of concentrating his mind in the very smallest degree. Perhaps a student may go for several days before discovering that he is not meditating. When he does, the obstinacy of the object will infuriate him; and it is only now that his real troubles will begin, only now that Will comes really into play, only now that his manhood is tested. If it were not for the Will-development which he got in the conquest of Asana, he would probably give up. As it is, the mere physical agony which he underwent is the veriest trifle compared with the horrible tedium of Dharana.
For the first week it may seem rather amusing, and you may even imagine you are progressing; but as the practice teaches you what you are doing, you will apparently get worse and worse. Please understand that in doing this practice you are supposed to be seated in Asana, and to have note-book and pencil by your side, and a watch in front of you. You are not to practise at first for more than ten minutes at a time, so as to avoid risk of overtiring the brain. In fact you will probably find that the whole of your willpower is not equal to keeping to a subject at all for so long as three minutes, or even apparently concentrating on it for so long as three seconds, or three-fifths of one second. By "keeping to it at all" is meant the mere attempt to keep to it. The mind becomes so fatigued, and the object so incredibly loathsome, that it is useless to continue for the time being. In Frater P.'s record we find that after daily practice for six months, meditations of four minutes and less are still being recorded.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS |
496:THE WAND
THE Magical Will is in its essence twofold, for it presupposes a beginning and an end; to will to be a thing is to admit that you are not that thing.
Hence to will anything but the supreme thing, is to wander still further from it - any will but that to give up the self to the Beloved is Black Magick - yet this surrender is so simple an act that to our complex minds it is the most difficult of all acts; and hence training is necessary. Further, the Self surrendered must not be less than the All-Self; one must not come before the altar of the Most High with an impure or an imperfect offering. As it is written in Liber LXV, "To await Thee is the end, not the beginning."
This training may lead through all sorts of complications, varying according to the nature of the student, and hence it may be necessary for him at any moment to will all sorts of things which to others might seem unconnected with the goal. Thus it is not "a priori" obvious why a billiard player should need a file.
Since, then, we may want "anything," let us see to it that our will is strong enough to obtain anything we want without loss of time.
It is therefore necessary to develop the will to its highest point, even though the last task but one is the total surrender of this will. Partial surrender of an imperfect will is of no account in Magick.
The will being a lever, a fulcrum is necessary; this fulcrum is the main aspiration of the student to attain. All wills which are not dependent upon this principal will are so many leakages; they are like fat to the athlete.
The majority of the people in this world are ataxic; they cannot coordinate their mental muscles to make a purposed movement. They have no real will, only a set of wishes, many of which contradict others. The victim wobbles from one to the other (and it is no less wobbling because the movements may occasionally be very violent) and at the end of life the movements cancel each other out. Nothing has been achieved; except the one thing of which the victim is not conscious: the destruction of his own character, the confirming of indecision. Such an one is torn limb from limb by Choronzon.
How then is the will to be trained? All these wishes, whims, caprices, inclinations, tendencies, appetites, must be detected, examined, judged by the standard of whether they help or hinder the main purpose, and treated accordingly.
Vigilance and courage are obviously required. I was about to add self-denial, in deference to conventional speech; but how could I call that self-denial which is merely denial of those things which hamper the self? It is not suicide to kill the germs of malaria in one's blood.
Now there are very great difficulties to be overcome in the training of the mind. Perhaps the greatest is forgetfulness, which is probably the worst form of what the Buddhists call ignorance. Special practices for training the memory may be of some use as a preliminary for persons whose memory is naturally poor. In any case the Magical Record prescribed for Probationers of the A.'.A.'. is useful and necessary.
Above all the practices of Liber III must be done again and again, for these practices develop not only vigilance but those inhibiting centres in the brain which are, according to some psychologists, the mainspring of the mechanism by which civilized man has raised himself above the savage.
So far it has been spoken, as it were, in the negative. Aaron's rod has become a serpent, and swallowed the serpents of the other Magicians; it is now necessary to turn it once more into a rod.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, The Wand,#KEYS |
497:
"The beings who were always appearing and speaking to Jeanne d'Arc would, if seen by an Indian, have quite a different appearance; for when one sees, one projects the forms of one's mind.... You have the vision of one in India whom you call the Divine Mother; the Catholics say it is the Virgin Mary, and the Japanese call it Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy; and others would give other names. It is the same force, the same power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths." Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (21 April 1929)
And then? You are not very talkative today! Is that all?
You say that "each person has his own world of dreamimagery peculiar to himself." Ibid.
Each individual has his own way of expressing, thinking, speaking, feeling, understanding. It is the combination of all these ways of being that makes the individual. That is why everyone can understand only according to his own nature. As long as you are shut up in your own nature, you can know only what is in your consciousness. All depends upon the height of the nature of your consciousness. Your world is limited to what you have in your consciousness. If you have a very small consciousness, you will understand only a few things. When your consciousness is very vast, universal, only then will you understand the world. If the consciousness is limited to your little ego, all the rest will escape you.... There are people whose brain and consciousness are smaller than a walnut. You know that a walnut resembles the brain; well these people look at things and don't understand them. They can understand nothing else except what is in direct contact with their senses. For them only what they taste, what they see, hear, touch has a reality, and all the rest simply does not exist, and they accuse us of speaking fancifully! "What I cannot touch does not exist", they say. But the only answer to give them is: "It does not exist for you, but there's no reason why it shouldn't exist for others." You must not insist with these people, and you must not forget that the smaller they are the greater is the audacity in their assertions.
One's cocksureness is in proportion to one's unconsciousness; the more unconscious one is, the more is one sure of oneself. The most foolish are always the most vain. Your stupidity is in proportion to your vanity. The more one knows... In fact, there is a time when one is quite convinced that one knows nothing at all. There's not a moment in the world which does not bring something new, for the world is perpetually growing. If one is conscious of that, one has always something new to learn. But one can become conscious of it only gradually. One's conviction that one knows is in direct proportion to one's ignorance and stupidity.
Mother, have the scientists, then, a very small consciousness?
Why? All scientists are not like that. If you meet a true scientist who has worked hard, he will tell you: "We know nothing. What we know today is nothing beside what we shall know tomorrow. This year's discoveries will be left behind next year." A real scientist knows very well that there are many more things he doesn't know than those he knows. And this is true of all branches of human activity. I have never met a scientist worthy of the name who was proud. I have never met a man of some worth who has told me: "I know everything." Those I have seen have always confessed: "In short, I know nothing." After having spoken of all that he has done, all that he has achieved, he tells you very quietly: "After all, I know nothing." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, [T8],#KEYS |
498:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.
But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS |
499:The true Mantra must come from within OR it must be given by a Guru
Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given; it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
I saw, in my case, that my mantra has the power of immortality; whatever happens, if it is uttered, it's the Supreme that has the upper hand, it's no longer the lower law. And the words are irrelevant, they may not have any meaning - to someone else, my mantra is meaningless, but to me it's full, packed with meaning. And effective, because it's my cry, the intense aspiration of my whole being.
A mantra given by a guru is only the power to realize the experience of the discoverer of the mantra. The power is automatically there, because the sound contains the experience. I saw that once in Paris, at a time when I knew nothing of India, absolutely nothing, only the usual nonsense. I didn't even know what a mantra was. I had gone to a lecture given by some fellow who was supposed to have practiced "yoga" for a year in the Himalayas and recounted his experience (none too interesting, either). All at once, in the course of his lecture, he uttered the sound OM. And I saw the entire room suddenly fill with light, a golden, vibrating light.... I was probably the only one to notice it. I said to myself, "Well!" Then I didn't give it any more thought, I forgot about the story. But as it happened, the experience recurred in two or three different countries, with different people, and every time there was the sound OM, I would suddenly see the place fill with that same light. So I understood. That sound contains the vibration of thousands and thousands of years of spiritual aspiration - there is in it the entire aspiration of men towards the Supreme. And the power is automatically there, because the experience is there.
It's the same with my mantra. When I wanted to translate the end of my mantra, "Glory to You, O Lord," into Sanskrit, I asked for Nolini's help. He brought his Sanskrit translation, and when he read it to me, I immediately saw that the power was there - not because Nolini put his power into it (!), God knows he had no intention of "giving" me a mantra! But the power was there because my experience was there. We made a few adjustments and modifications, and that's the japa I do now - I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.[[Mother later clarified: "'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't MY mantra, it's something I ADDED to it - my mantra is something else altogether, that's not it. When I say that my mantra has the power of immortality, I mean the other, the one I don't speak of! I have never given the words.... You see, at the end of my walk, a kind of enthusiasm rises, and with that enthusiasm, the 'Glory to You' came to me, but it's part of the prayer I had written in Prayers and Meditations: 'Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme' etc. (it's a long prayer). It came back suddenly, and as it came back spontaneously, I kept it. Moreover, when Sri Aurobindo read this prayer in Prayers and Meditations, he told me it was very strong. So I added this phrase as a kind of tail to my japa. But 'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't my spontaneous mantra - it came spontaneously, but it was something written very long ago. The two things are different."
And that's how a mantra has life: when it wells up all the time, spontaneously, like the cry of your being - there is no need of effort or concentration: it's your natural cry. Then it has full power, it is alive. It must well up from within.... No guru can give you that. ~ The Mother, Agenda, May 11 1963,#KEYS |
500:There's an idea in Christianity of the image of God as a Trinity. There's the element of the Father, there's the element of the Son, and there's the element of the Holy Spirit. It's something like the spirit of tradition, human beings as the living incarnation of that tradition, and the spirit in people that makes relationship with the spirit and individuals possible. I'm going to bounce my way quickly through some of the classical, metaphorical attributes of God, so that we kind of have a cloud of notions about what we're talking about, when we return to Genesis 1 and talk about the God who spoke chaos into Being.
There's a fatherly aspect, so here's what God as a father is like. You can enter into a covenant with it, so you can make a bargain with it. Now, you think about that. Money is like that, because money is a bargain you make with the future. We structured our world so that you can negotiate with the future. I don't think that we would have got to the point where we could do that without having this idea to begin with. You can act as if the future's a reality; there's a spirit of tradition that enables you to act as if the future is something that can be bargained with. That's why you make sacrifices. The sacrifices were acted out for a very long period of time, and now they're psychological. We know that you can sacrifice something valuable in the present and expect that you're negotiating with something that's representing the transcendent future. That's an amazing human discovery. No other creature can do that; to act as if the future is real; to know that you can bargain with reality itself, and that you can do it successfully. It's unbelievable.
It responds to sacrifice. It answers prayers. I'm not saying that any of this is true, by the way. I'm just saying what the cloud of ideas represents. It punishes and rewards. It judges and forgives. It's not nature. One of the things weird about the Judeo-Christian tradition is that God and nature are not the same thing, at all. Whatever God is, partially manifest in this logos, is something that stands outside of nature. I think that's something like consciousness as abstracted from the natural world. It built Eden for mankind and then banished us for disobedience. It's too powerful to be touched. It granted free will. Distance from it is hell. Distance from it is death. It reveals itself in dogma and in mystical experience, and it's the law. That's sort of like the fatherly aspect.
The son-like aspect. It speaks chaos into order. It slays dragons and feeds people with the remains. It finds gold. It rescues virgins. It is the body and blood of Christ. It is a tragic victim, scapegoat, and eternally triumphant redeemer simultaneously. It cares for the outcast. It dies and is reborn. It is the king of kings and hero of heroes. It's not the state, but is both the fulfillment and critic of the state. It dwells in the perfect house. It is aiming at paradise or heaven. It can rescue from hell. It cares for the outcast. It is the foundation and the cornerstone that was rejected. It is the spirit of the law.
The spirit-like aspect. It's akin to the human soul. It's the prophetic voice. It's the still, small voice of conscience. It's the spoken truth. It's called forth by music. It is the enemy of deceit, arrogance, and resentment. It is the water of life. It burns without consuming. It's a blinding light.
That's a very well-developed set of poetic metaphors. These are all...what would you say...glimpses of the transcendent ideal. That's the right way of thinking about it. They're glimpses of the transcendent ideal, and all of them have a specific meaning. In part, what we're going to do is go over that meaning, as we continue with this series. What we've got now is a brief description, at least, of what this is. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,#KEYS |
501:EVOCATION
Evocation is the art of dealing with magical beings or entities by various acts which create or contact them and allow one to conjure and command them with pacts and exorcism. These beings have a legion of names drawn from the demonology of many cultures: elementals, familiars, incubi, succubi, bud-wills, demons, automata, atavisms, wraiths, spirits, and so on. Entities may be bound to talismans, places, animals, objects, persons, incense smoke, or be mobile in the aether. It is not the case that such entities are limited to obsessions and complexes in the human mind. Although such beings customarily have their origin in the mind, they may be budded off and attached to objects and places in the form of ghosts, spirits, or "vibrations," or may exert action at a distance in the form of fetishes, familiars, or poltergeists. These beings consist of a portion of Kia or the life force attached to some aetheric matter, the whole of which may or may not be attached to ordinary matter.
Evocation may be further defined as the summoning or creation of such partial beings to accomplish some purpose. They may be used to cause change in oneself, change in others, or change in the universe. The advantages of using a semi-independent being rather than trying to effect a transformation directly by will are several: the entity will continue to fulfill its function independently of the magician until its life force dissipates. Being semi-sentient, it can adapt itself to a task in that a non-conscious simple spell cannot. During moments of the possession by certain entities the magician may be the recipient of inspirations, abilities, and knowledge not normally accessible to him.
Entities may be drawn from three sources - those which are discovered clairvoyantly, those whose characteristics are given in grimoires of spirits and demons, and those which the magician may wish to create himself.
In all cases establishing a relationship with the spirit follows a similar process of evocation. Firstly the attributes of the entity, its type, scope, name, appearance and characteristics must be placed in the mind or made known to the mind. Automatic drawing or writing, where a stylus is allowed to move under inspiration across a surface, may help to uncover the nature of a clairvoyantly discovered being. In the case of a created being the following procedure is used: the magician assembles the ingredients of a composite sigil of the being's desired attributes. For example, to create an elemental to assist him with divination, the appropriate symbols might be chosen and made into a sigil such as the one shown in figure 4.
A name and an image, and if desired, a characteristic number can also be selected for the elemental.
Secondly, the will and perception are focused as intently as possible (by some gnostic method) on the elemental's sigils or characteristics so that these take on a portion of the magician's life force and begin autonomous existence. In the case of preexisting beings, this operation serves to bind the entity to the magician's will.
This is customarily followed by some form of self-banishing, or even exorcism, to restore the magician's consciousness to normal before he goes forth.
An entity of a low order with little more than a singular task to perform can be left to fulfill its destiny with no further interference from its master. If at any time it is necessary to terminate it, its sigil or material basis should be destroyed and its mental image destroyed or reabsorbed by visualization. For more powerful and independent beings, the conjuration and exorcism must be in proportion to the power of the ritual which originally evoked them. To control such beings, the magicians may have to re-enter the gnostic state to the same depth as before in order to draw their power. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, #KEYS |
502:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation.
In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS |
503:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule.It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.
In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. His isolation will necessarily give a determination and a form to his outward activities that must be quite other than those of a consciously divine collective action. The inner state, the root of his acts, will be the same; but the acts themselves may well be very different from what they would be on an earth liberated from ignorance. Nevertheless his consciousness and the divine mechanism of his conduct, if such a word can be used of so free a thing, would be such as has been described, free from that subjection to vital impurity and desire and wrong impulse which we call sin, unbound by that rule of prescribed moral formulas which we call virtue, spontaneously sure and pure and perfect in a greater consciousness than the mind's, governed in all its steps by the light and truth of the Spirit. But if a collectivity or group could be formed of those who had reached the supramental perfection, there indeed some divine creation could take shape; a new earth could descend that would be a new heaven, a world of supramental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, 206,#KEYS |
504:Of course we do." Dresden's voice was cutting. "But you're thinking too small. Building humanity's greatest empire is like building the world's largest anthill. Insignificant. There is a civilization out there that built the protomolecule and hurled it at us over two billion years ago. They were already gods at that point. What have they become since then? With another two billion years to advance?"
With a growing dread, Holden listened to Dresden speak. This speech had the air of something spoken before. Perhaps many times. And it had worked. It had convinced powerful people. It was why Protogen had stealth ships from the Earth shipyards and seemingly limitless behind-the-scenes support.
"We have a terrifying amount of catching up to do, gentlemen," Dresden was saying. "But fortunately we have the tool of our enemy to use in doing it."
"Catching up?" a soldier to Holden's left said. Dresden nodded at the man and smiled.
"The protomolecule can alter the host organism at the molecular level; it can create genetic change on the fly. Not just DNA, but any stable replicatoR But it is only a machine. It doesn't think. It follows instructions. If we learn how to alter that programming, then we become the architects of that change."
Holden interrupted. "If it was supposed to wipe out life on Earth and replace it with whatever the protomolecule's creators wanted, why turn it loose?"
"Excellent question," Dresden said, holding up one finger like a college professor about to deliver a lecture. "The protomolecule doesn't come with a user's manual. In fact, we've never before been able to actually watch it carry out its program. The molecule requires significant mass before it develops enough processing power to fulfill its directives. Whatever they are."
Dresden pointed at the screens covered with data around them.
"We are going to watch it at work. See what it intends to do. How it goes about doing it. And, hopefully, learn how to change that program in the process."
"You could do that with a vat of bacteria," Holden said.
"I'm not interested in remaking bacteria," Dresden said.
"You're fucking insane," Amos said, and took another step toward Dresden. Holden put a hand on the big mechanic's shoulder.
"So," Holden said. "You figure out how the bug works, and then what?"
"Then everything. Belters who can work outside a ship without wearing a suit. Humans capable of sleeping for hundreds of years at a time flying colony ships to the stars. No longer being bound to the millions of years of evolution inside one atmosphere of pressure at one g, slaves to oxygen and water. We decide what we want to be, and we reprogram ourselves to be that. That's what the protomolecule gives us."
Dresden had stood back up as he'd delivered this speech, his face shining with the zeal of a prophet.
"What we are doing is the best and only hope of humanity's survival. When we go out there, we will be facing gods."
"And if we don't go out?" Fred asked. He sounded thoughtful.
"They've already fired a doomsday weapon at us once," Dresden said.
The room was silent for a moment. Holden felt his certainty slip. He hated everything about Dresden's argument, but he couldn't quite see his way past it. He knew in his bones that something about it was dead wrong, but he couldn't find the words. Naomi's voice startled him.
"Did it convince them?" she asked.
"Excuse me?" Dresden said.
"The scientists. The technicians. Everyone you needed to make it happen. They actually had to do this. They had to watch the video of people dying all over Eros. They had to design those radioactive murder chambers. So unless you managed to round up every serial killer in the solar system and send them through a postgraduate program, how did you do this?"
"We modified our science team to remove ethical restraints."
Half a dozen clues clicked into place in Holden's head. ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,#KEYS |
505:PRATYAHARA
PRATYAHARA is the first process in the mental part of our task. The previous practices, Asana, Pranayama, Yama, and Niyama, are all acts of the body, while mantra is connected with speech: Pratyahara is purely mental.
And what is Pratyahara? This word is used by different authors in different senses. The same word is employed to designate both the practice and the result. It means for our present purpose a process rather strategical than practical; it is introspection, a sort of general examination of the contents of the mind which we wish to control: Asana having been mastered, all immediate exciting causes have been removed, and we are free to think what we are thinking about.
A very similar experience to that of Asana is in store for us. At first we shall very likely flatter ourselves that our minds are pretty calm; this is a defect of observation. Just as the European standing for the first time on the edge of the desert will see nothing there, while his Arab can tell him the family history of each of the fifty persons in view, because he has learnt how to look, so with practice the thoughts will become more numerous and more insistent.
As soon as the body was accurately observed it was found to be terribly restless and painful; now that we observe the mind it is seen to be more restless and painful still. (See diagram opposite.)
A similar curve might be plotted for the real and apparent painfulness of Asana. Conscious of this fact, we begin to try to control it: "Not quite so many thoughts, please!" "Don't think quite so fast, please!" "No more of that kind of thought, please!" It is only then that we discover that what we thought was a school of playful porpoises is really the convolutions of the sea-serpent. The attempt to repress has the effect of exciting.
When the unsuspecting pupil first approaches his holy but wily Guru, and demands magical powers, that Wise One replies that he will confer them, points out with much caution and secrecy some particular spot on the pupil's body which has never previously attracted his attention, and says: "In order to obtain this magical power which you seek, all that is necessary is to wash seven times in the Ganges during seven days, being particularly careful to avoid thinking of that one spot." Of course the unhappy youth spends a disgusted week in thinking of little else.
It is positively amazing with what persistence a thought, even a whole train of thoughts, returns again and again to the charge. It becomes a positive nightmare. It is intensely annoying, too, to find that one does not become conscious that one has got on to the forbidden subject until one has gone right through with it. However, one continues day after day investigating thoughts and trying to check them; and sooner or later one proceeds to the next stage, Dharana, the attempt to restrain the mind to a single object.
Before we go on to this, however, we must consider what is meant by success in Pratyahara. This is a very extensive subject, and different authors take widely divergent views. One writer means an analysis so acute that every thought is resolved into a number of elements (see "The Psychology of Hashish," Section V, in Equinox II).
Others take the view that success in the practice is something like the experience which Sir Humphrey Davy had as a result of taking nitrous oxide, in which he exclaimed: "The universe is composed exclusively of ideas."
Others say that it gives Hamlet's feeling: "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so," interpreted as literally as was done by Mrs. Eddy.
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. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS |
506:Sweet Mother, how can we make our resolution very firm?
By wanting it to be very firm! (Laughter)
No, this seems like a joke... but it is absolutely true. One does not want it truly. There is always, if you... It is a lack of sincerity. If you look sincerely, you will see that you have decided that it will be like this, and then, beneath there is something which has not decided at all and is waiting for the second of hesitation in order to rush forward. If you are sincere, if you are sincere and get hold of the part which is hiding, waiting, not showing itself, which knows that there will come a second of indecision when it can rush out and make you do the thing you have decided not to do...
[] But if you really want it, nothing in the world can prevent you from doing what you want. It is because one doesn't know how to will it. It is because one is divided in one's will. If you are not divided in your will, I say that nothing, nobody in the world can make you ch |