TERMS STARTING WITH
Ignorance arc put forward as the Truth of things, that is the
Ignorance ::: Ignorance is a veil that separates the mind, body and life from their source and reality, Sachchidananda.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 45-46
Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is he non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 506
Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 524-525
Ignorance is the Mind separated in knowledge from its source of knowledge and giving a false rigidity and a mistaken appearance of opposition and conflict to the harmonious play of the supreme Truth in its universal manifestation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 182-183
Ignorance: (Lat. in, not + noscere, to become acquainted with) Partial or complete absence of knowledge. -- A.C.B.
Ignorance ; she has descended there and is not all above. Partly she veils and partly she unveils her knowledge and her power, often holds them back from her instruments and personalities and follows that she may transform them the way of the seeking mind, the way of the aspiring psychic, the way of the battling vital, the way of the imprisoned and suffering physical nature.
Ignorance (the) ::: Avidya, the Ignorance of oneness; the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life; the consciousness of the divided Many divorced from the unifying knowledge of the One Reality.
Ignorance, They have the right to test the sincerity of the sfidhakas in their power and will to cleave to the Divine and overcome all difficulties. *
Ignorance to Divine Knowledge, from darkness through half- light to Light, from death to Immortality, from suflfering to the
Ignorance ; when a certain inner perception loosens the knot, the worst of the difficulty is over.
ignorance and of the righteous.” The ruling
IGNORANCE. ::: Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life.
This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth.
Sevenfold Ignorance ::: If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, ip a spatial and temporal universe, wc see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many- sided self-ignorance. We are Ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming ; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence — that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self ; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becom- ing in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence — that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming ; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-sclf — that is the tViTid, \Vie egoistic ignorance. V/c aie ignorant of oat eteinai becoming in Time ; we take this Uttle life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space for our beginning, our middle and our end, — that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is super-conscient, sub- conscient, intraconscient, circumcooscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence — that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming ; we take the mind or life or body or any two or all three tor our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to deter- mine sovereignly by its emergence from their operations, — that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoy- ment of our life in the world ; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal, — that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.
ignorance ::: “Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” The Life Divine
ignorance, cosmic
ignorance ::: n. --> The condition of being ignorant; the want of knowledge in general, or in relation to a particular subject; the state of being uneducated or uninformed.
A willful neglect or refusal to acquire knowledge which one may acquire and it is his duty to have.
ignorance of Honorius.” The Koran ( sura 18, 95)
ignorance. See AVIDYĀ.
ignorance
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
TERMS ANYWHERE
a-avidya-siddhi ::: the perfection (siddhi) that is attainable under the conditions of vidya-avidya, where Knowledge is "inextricably intertwined with an original Ignorance".
ACTION. ::: If a man is spiritual and has gone beyond the vital and mind, he does not need to be always “doing” something. The self or spirit has the joy of its own existence. It is free to do nothing and free to do everything - but not because it is bound to action and unable to exist without it.
To be able to work with full energy is necessary, but to be able not to work is also necessary.
Action in sādhanā ::: The feeling that all one does is from the Divine, that all action is the Mother’s is a necessary step in experience but one cannot remain in it ; one has to go further. Those can remain in it who do not want to change the nature, but only to have the experience of the Truth behind it. Your action is according to universal Nature and in that again it is according to your individual nature, and all Nature is a force put out by the Divine Mother for the action of the universe. But as things are it is an action of the Ignorance and the ego; while what we want is an action of the divine Truth unveiled and undeformed by the Ignorance and the ego.
The aim of the sadhana is to become a conscious and perfect instrument instead of one that is unconscious and therefore imperfect. One can be a conscious and perfect instrument only when one is no longer acting in obedience to the ignorant push of the lower nature but in surrender to the Mother and aware of her higher Force acting within oneself.
active brahman ::: same as sagun.a brahman, the dynamic aspect of brahman which is expressed in the cosmic movement, "a universal Divine, one in being, multiple in personality and power, who conveys to us, when we enter into the consciousness of his universal forces, a sense of infinite quality and will and act and world-wide knowledge and a one yet innumerable delight"; realised by the mind separately from the santaṁ brahma or silent brahman, it is an aspect of universal being which "though wonderfully freed, uplifted and illumined, supports only the present self-expression of the Cosmic Spirit and does not transform, as would a transcendental Descent, the ambiguous symbols and veiled mysteries of a world of Ignorance". active samat samata
“Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” The Secret of the Veda
*[Agni]. Sri Aurobindo: "Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” *The Secret of the Veda
Agnoiology: (Gr. agnoio + logos, discourse on ignorance) J. F. Ferrier (1854) coined both this term and the term epistemology as connoting distinctive areas of philosophic inquiry in support of ontology. Agnoiology is the doctrine of ignorance which seeks to determine what we are necessarily ignorant of. It is a critique of agnosticism prior to the latter's appearance. Ignorance is defined in relation to knowledge since one cannot be ignorant of anything which cannot possibly be known. -- H.H.
agnostic ::: a. --> Professing ignorance; involving no dogmatic; pertaining to or involving agnosticism. ::: n. --> One who professes ignorance, or denies that we have any knowledge, save of phenomena; one who supports agnosticism, neither affirming nor denying the existence of a personal Deity, a future life,
agnosticism ::: n. --> That doctrine which, professing ignorance, neither asserts nor denies.
The doctrine that the existence of a personal Deity, an unseen world, etc., can be neither proved nor disproved, because of the necessary limits of the human mind (as sometimes charged upon Hamilton and Mansel), or because of the insufficiency of the evidence furnished by physical and physical data, to warrant a positive conclusion (as taught by the school of Herbert Spencer); -- opposed
::: "A gnostic Supernature transcends all the values of our normal ignorant Nature; our standards and values are created by ignorance and therefore cannot determine the life of Supernature. At the same time our present nature is a derivation from Supernature and is not a pure ignorance but a half-knowledge; . . . .” The Life Divine*
“A gnostic Supernature transcends all the values of our normal ignorant Nature; our standards and values are created by ignorance and therefore cannot determine the life of Supernature. At the same time our present nature is a derivation from Supernature and is not a pure ignorance but a half-knowledge; …” The Life Divine
Agnosy: Ignorance, especially universal ignorance. -- C.A.B.
"A Godhead is seated in the heart of every man and is the Lord of this mysterious action of Nature. And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be, — it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” *Essays on the Gita
“A Godhead is seated in the heart of every man and is the Lord of this mysterious action of Nature. And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be,—it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” Essays on the Gita
AHAMKARA. ::: Ego; ego-idea; egoism; the separative egosense; the divisional principle of ego-formation.
rājasika ahamkāra ::: dynamic egoism.
sāllvika ahamkāra ::: egoism as expressed in the sense of goodness and virtue.
tāmasika ahamkāra ::: egoism as expressed in ignorance and inertia.
ahaṅkara ::: the ego; the subjective principle by which the purus.a is induced to identify himself with prakr.ti and her activities; "the limited ‘I" in us", freedom from which is part of the mukti or liberation of the nature: the egoistic consciousness, including the "ego-sense in the life stuff" and the "ego-idea in the mind" which "maintain a constructed symbol of self, the separative ego, which does duty for the hidden real self, the spirit or true being" and whose nature "is a self-limitation of consciousness by a willed ignorance of the rest of its play and its exclusive absorption in one form, one combination of tendencies, one field of the movement of energies". aha ahankara-mukti-siddhi
AIM. ::: To return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul’s aim in life.
There is only one aim to be followed, the increase of Peace, Light, Power and the growth of a new consciousness in the being. With that new consciousness the true knowledge, understanding, strength, feeling will come.
Aim of yoga ::: 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.
Aim of Integral yoga ::: it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into a divine living.
ajnana. ::: ignorance &
ajnanasambhutam hrtstham samsayam ::: [doubt born of ignorance stationed in the heart]. [Gita 4.42]
ajnanenavrtam jnanam tena muhyanti jantavah ::: because Knowledge is veiled by Ignorance, mortal men [creatures] are deluded. [Gita 5.15]
“All aspects of the omnipresent Reality have their fundamental truth in the Supreme Existence. Thus even the aspect or power of Inconscience, which seems to be an opposite, a negation of the eternal Reality, yet corresponds to a Truth held in itself by the self-aware and all-conscious Infinite. It is, when we look closely at it, the Infinite’s power of plunging the consciousness into a trance of self-involution, a self-oblivion of the Spirit veiled in its own abysses where nothing is manifest but all inconceivably is and can emerge from that ineffable latency. In the heights of Spirit this state of cosmic or infinite trance-sleep appears to our cognition as a luminous uttermost Superconscience: at the other end of being it offers itself to cognition as the Spirit’s potency of presenting to itself the opposites of its own truths of being,—an abyss of non-existence, a profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and delight of existence can manifest themselves,—but they appear in limited terms, in slowly emerging and increasing self-formulations, even in contrary terms of themselves; it is the play of a secret all-being, all-delight, all-knowledge, but it observes the rules of its own self-oblivion, self-opposition, self-limitation until it is ready to surpass it. This is the Inconscience and Ignorance that we see at work in the material universe. It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the infinite and eternal Existence.” The Life Divine
"All ethics is a construction of good in a Nature which has been smitten with evil by the powers of darkness born of the Ignorance, . . . .” The Life Divine
“All ethics is a construction of good in a Nature which has been smitten with evil by the powers of darkness born of the Ignorance, …” The Life Divine
::: "All evolution is the progressive self-revelation of the One to himself in the terms of the Many out of the Inconscience through the Ignorance towards self-conscient perfection.” Essays Divine and Human **evolution"s, Evolution"s.**
“All evolution is the progressive self-revelation of the One to himself in the terms of the Many out of the Inconscience through the Ignorance towards self-conscient perfection.” Essays Divine and Human
All evolution is the progressive self-revelation of the One to himself in the terms of the Many out of the Inconscience through the Ignorance towards self-conscient perfection.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 219
“… all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge ….”The Life Divine
". . . all sin is an error of the will, a desire and act of the Ignorance.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“… all sin is an error of the will, a desire and act of the Ignorance.” The Synthesis of Yoga
All world-existence is manifestation, but our ignorance is the agent of a partial, limited and ignorant manifestation,— in part an expression but in part also a disguise of the original being, consciousness and delight of existence. If this state of things is permanent and unalterable, if our world must always move in this circle, if some Ignorance is the cause of all things and all action here and not a condition and circumstance, then indeed the cessation of individual ignorance could only come by an escape of the individual from world-being, and a cessation of the cosmic ignorance would be the destruction of world-being. But if this world has at its root an evolutionary principle, if our ignorance is a half-knowledge evolving towards knowledge, another account and another issue and spiritual result of our existence in material Nature, a greater manifestation here becomes possible.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 496-97
Amal: “I think this is the reflection of a Vedic image and refers to the world of the Ignorance where what has come from the Truth has gone astray.”
Amal: “The Decree and the Law refer to the fact of death in the world. The fact of death in the world summed up for the ancient Indian mind the condition under which the human being lives and the fulfilment of the Divine Will in the world would mean as another Savitri line puts it: ‘The end of Death, the death of Ignorance’.”
Amal: “The pointer in the passage is to an excessive growth of falsehood before the Divine manifests—a period of great ignorance which will end with a sudden surprising revelation.”
Amal: “The priestess in the mystic cults of the ancient world used to sit on a three-legged stool which symbolised the mysterious power of the three-headed snake, the original ignorance.”
"A mind of light will replace the present confusion and trouble of this earthly ignorance; it is likely that even those parts of humanity which cannot reach it will yet be aware of its possibility and consciously tend towards it; not only so, but the life of humanity will be enlightened, uplifted, governed, harmonised by this luminous principle and even the body become something much less powerless, obscure and animal in its propensities and capable instead of a new and harmonised perfection. It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would mean a new humanity uplifted into Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-consciousness, capable even on the mental level and in its own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A mind of light will replace the present confusion and trouble of this earthly ignorance; it is likely that even those parts of humanity which cannot reach it will yet be aware of its possibility and consciously tend towards it; not only so, but the life of humanity will be enlightened, uplifted, governed, harmonised by this luminous principle and even the body become something much less powerless, obscure and animal in its propensities and capable instead of a new and harmonised perfection. It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would mean a new humanity uplifted into Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-consciousness, capable even on the mental level and in its own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Amitabha Buddha ::: [in Buddhist legend "the Buddha of measureless splendour"] who turned away when his spirit was on the threshold of nirvana and took the vow never to cross its while a single being remained in the sorrow and the Ignorance.
ana (ajnana; ajnanam) ::: ignorance; absence of jñana; "the forgetfulness of the high and true self", resulting in bondage to the three modes (trigun.a) of the lower Nature (apara prakr.ti). aj ñanam
andham tamah pravisanti ye avidyam upasate, tato bhuya iva te tamo ya u vidyayam ratah ::: into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Knowledge alone. [Isa 9]
And still we can recognise at once in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. For if each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line and carry out its complete consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence; this is Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source. There has already been a similar separation of Overmind from its supramental source, but with a transparency in the veil which allows a conscious transmission and maintains a certain luminous kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Mind separated acts as if it were an independent principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force stands similarly on its separate self; if it communicates with or combines or contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of the overmind movement, on a basis of underlying oneness, but as independent units joining to form a separate constructed whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level, no doubt, comprehends its own unity, but it is not aware of its own source and foundation in the Spirit or can only comprehend it by the intelligence, not in any enduring experience; it acts in itself as if by its own right and works out what it receives as material without direct communication with the source from which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of each other and of the cosmic whole except for the knowledge that they can get by contact and communication,—the basic sense of identity and the mutual penetration and understanding that comes from it are no longer there. All the actions of this Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance and its divisions and, although they are the results of a certain conscious knowledge, it is a partial knowledge, not a true and integral self-knowledge, nor a true and integral world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter and reappears in the gross material universe which arises from the final lapse into the Inconscience. …
“And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be,—it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” Essays on the Gita
" . . .and when the dividing ignorance is cured which gives us the sense of a gulf between Life and Matter, it is difficult to suppose that Mind, Life and Matter will be found to be anything else than one Energy triply formulated, the triple world of the Vedic seers.” The Life Divine
“ . . .and when the dividing ignorance is cured which gives us the sense of a gulf between Life and Matter, it is difficult to suppose that Mind, Life and Matter will be found to be anything else than one Energy triply formulated, the triple world of the Vedic seers.” The Life Divine
"A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle. This advance like others in the evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound, but from the very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the eventual outcome.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle. This advance like others in the evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound, but from the very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the eventual outcome.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
aparardha ::: "the lower half of world-existence", the hemisphere of aparardha the triloka (three worlds) of manas, pran.a and anna1 or mind, life and matter; these three principles "are in themselves powers of the superior principles" (of the higher hemisphere, parardha), "but wherever they manifest in a separation from their spiritual sources, they undergo as a result a phenomenal lapse into a divided in place of the true undivided existence . . . oblivious of all that is behind it and of the underlying unity, a state therefore of cosmic and individual Ignorance" (avidya).
..a path of integral seeking of the Divine by which all that we are is in the end liberated out of the Ignorance and its undivine formations into a truth beyond the Mind, a truth not only of highest spiritual status but of a dynamic spiritual self-manifestation in the universe. ::: he object of this Yoga is not to liberate the soul from Nature, but to liberate both soul and nature by sublimation into the Divine Consciousness from whom they came.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 366-67
apavada. ::: the refutation of ignorance through Self-enquiry; introspection based on right discrimination between the real Brahman and the unreal appearance of the universe
Argumentum ad ignorantiam: An argument purporting to demonstrate a point or to persuade people, which avails itself of facts and reasons the falsity or inadequacy of which is not readily discerned; a misleading argument used in reliance on people's ignorance. -- R.B.W.
ASCENT AND DESCENT. ::: The practice of this yoga is double ::: one side is of an ascent of the consciousness to the higher planes, the other is that of a descent of the power of the higher planes into the earth-consciousness so as to drive out the Power of darkness and ignorance and transform the nature.
All the consciousness in the human being who is the mental embodied in living matter has to rise so as to meet the higher consciousness; the higher consciousness has also to descend into mind, into life, into matter.
To ascend is easier than to bring down ; the higher consciousness gets entangled and impeded in the physical and the mind and vital.
ascent and descent ::: the two-sided practice of the Integral Yoga, an ascent of the consciousness to the higher planes, a descent of the power of the higher planes into the earth-consciousness so as to drive out the power of darkness and ignorance and control the nature.
As Mind is only a final action of Supermind in the descent towards creation and Life an action of Conscious-Force working in the conditions of the ignorance created by this descent of Mind, so Matter, as we know it, is only the final form taken by consciousbeing as the result of that working. Matter is substance of the one conscious-being phenomenally divided within itself by the action of a universal Mind,3—a division which the individual mind repeats and dwells in, but which does not abrogate or at all diminish the unity of Spirit or the unity of Energy or the real unity of Matter.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 250
ASPECTS OF THE DIVINE. ::: The Divine has three aspects for us :
1. It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe- although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.
2. It is the Spirit and Master of our own being within us whom we have to serve and learn to express his will in all our movements so that we may grow out of the Ignorance into the Light.
3. The Divine is transcendent Being and Spirit, all bliss and light and divine knowledge and power, and towards that highest divine existence and its Light we have to rise and bring down the reality of it more and more into our consciousness and life.
“As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man;—this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other,—invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
“As the Sun is image and godhead of the golden Light of the divine Truth, so Dawn is image and godhead of the opening out of the supreme illumination on the night of our human ignorance. Dawn daughter of Heaven and Night her sister are obverse and reverse sides of the same eternal Infinite.” The Secret of the Veda
"A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
“A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
ATMAN. ::: The Ātman is the Self or Spirit that remains above, pure and stainless, unaffected by the stains of life, by desire and ego and ignorance. It is realised as the true being of the individual, but also more widely as the same being in all and as the Self in the cosmos; it his also a self-existence above the individual and cosmos and it is then called the Paramatma, the supreme Divine Being.
at.t.ahasya (attahasya; attahasyam) ::: loud laughter, "the laughter that attahasya makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance", an element of Mahakali bhava or Can.d.ibhava, and the principal form of devihasya.
attahasya ::: [loud laughter], the laughter that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance. ::: attahasyam [nominative]
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
avarana&
Avidya: A Sanskrit term for ignorance. Unawareness of true reality.
avidya ::: ignorance; the power by which "the Spirit dwells . . . in the avidya consciousness of multiplicity and relativity"; "the knowledge of the Many" (bahu), which "becomes no longer knowledge at all but ignorance, Avidya" because it "takes the Many for the real fact of existence and views the One [eka1] only as a cosmic sum of the Many". avikalpa samadhi
avidyamaya ::: [maya of the Ignorance].
avidya ::: the Ignorance; the consciousness of Multiplicity; the relative and multiple consciousness.
Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flows from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 103
avidya. ::: "to know not"; nescience; inexplicable ignorance that lulls the spiritual being away from its true nature
avidyayam antare vartamanah ::: living and moving within the Ignorance. [Katha 1.2.5; Mund. 1.2.8]
avidyayam antare ::: within the Ignorance. [see the following]
aya ::: (c. 1931, in the diagram on page 1360) overmind in its fundamental power of measuring and limiting consciousness (maya), regarded as the essential form of overmind proper (see overmind system); "the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable".
barbarism ::: n. --> An uncivilized state or condition; rudeness of manners; ignorance of arts, learning, and literature; barbarousness.
A barbarous, cruel, or brutal action; an outrage.
An offense against purity of style or language; any form of speech contrary to the pure idioms of a particular language. See Solecism.
benight ::: v. t. --> To involve in darkness; to shroud with the shades of night; to obscure.
To overtake with night or darkness, especially before the end of a day&
BFI {brute force and ignorance}
bhargo. ::: radiance; luster; glory; splendour; effulgence; destroyer of ignorance
Ignorance arc put forward as the Truth of things, that is the
Ignorance ::: Ignorance is a veil that separates the mind, body and life from their source and reality, Sachchidananda.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 45-46
Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is he non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 506
Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 524-525
“Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
Ignorance is the Mind separated in knowledge from its source of knowledge and giving a false rigidity and a mistaken appearance of opposition and conflict to the harmonious play of the supreme Truth in its universal manifestation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 182-183
Ignorance: (Lat. in, not + noscere, to become acquainted with) Partial or complete absence of knowledge. -- A.C.B.
“Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth,—truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
Ignorance ; she has descended there and is not all above. Partly she veils and partly she unveils her knowledge and her power, often holds them back from her instruments and personalities and follows that she may transform them the way of the seeking mind, the way of the aspiring psychic, the way of the battling vital, the way of the imprisoned and suffering physical nature.
Ignorance (the) ::: Avidya, the Ignorance of oneness; the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life; the consciousness of the divided Many divorced from the unifying knowledge of the One Reality.
Ignorance, They have the right to test the sincerity of the sfidhakas in their power and will to cleave to the Divine and overcome all difficulties. *
"Ignorance, this matrix of sin, has in its substantial effect the appearance of a triple cord of limited mind, inefficient life, obscure physical animality, the three ropes with which the Rishi Shunahshepa in the parable was bound as a victim to the sacrificial post.” The Secret of the Veda
“Ignorance, this matrix of sin, has in its substantial effect the appearance of a triple cord of limited mind, inefficient life, obscure physical animality, the three ropes with which the Rishi Shunahshepa in the parable was bound as a victim to the sacrificial post.” The Secret of the Veda
Ignorance to Divine Knowledge, from darkness through half- light to Light, from death to Immortality, from suflfering to the
Ignorance ; when a certain inner perception loosens the knot, the worst of the difficulty is over.
Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 599
"Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.” The Life Divine
“Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.” The Life Divine
brute force and ignorance "jargon" (BFI) A popular design technique at many software houses - {brute force} coding unrelieved by any knowledge of how problems have been previously solved in elegant ways. Dogmatic adherence to design methods tends to encourage this sort of thing. Characteristic of early {larval stage} programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Also encountered in the variants BFMI - brute force and massive ignorance, and BFBI - brute force and bloody ignorance. "Gak, they used a {bubble sort}! That's strictly BFI." Compare {bogosity}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-06-12)
brute force "programming" A primitive programming style in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his own intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. The term can also be used in reference to programming style: brute-force programs are written in a heavy-handed, tedious way, full of repetition and devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see also {brute force and ignorance}). The {canonical} example of a brute-force algorithm is associated with the "{travelling salesman problem}" (TSP), a classical {NP-hard} problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive to N other cities. In what order should the cities be visited in order to minimise the distance travelled? The brute-force method is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it considers even obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to Houston via San Francisco and New York, in that order). For very small N it works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly inefficient when N increases (for N = 15, there are already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for N = 1000 - well, see {bignum}). Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no better general solution than brute force. See also {NP-complete}. A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first number off the front. Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem is not terribly big, the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the programmer time it would take to develop a more "intelligent" algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the speed improvement. When applied to {cryptography}, it is usually known as {brute force attack}. {Ken Thompson}, co-inventor of {Unix}, is reported to have uttered the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original {Unix} {kernel}'s preference for simple, robust and portable {algorithms} over {brittle} "smart" ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that {operating system}. Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate aesthetic judgment. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-14)
bubble sort A sorting technique in which pairs of adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries "bubble upward" in the list until they bump into one with a lower sort value. Because it is not very good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by {naive} and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical} example of a naive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity. [{Jargon File}]
"But in the larger universal consciousness there must be a power of carrying this movement to its absolute point, to the greatest extreme possible for any relative movement to reach, and this point is reached, not in human unconsciousness which is not abiding and always refers back to the awakened conscious being that man normally and characteristically is, but in the inconscience of material Nature. This inconscience is no more real than the ignorance of exclusive concentration in our temporary being which limits the waking consciousness of man; for as in us, so in the atom, the metal, the plant, in every form of material Nature, in every energy of material Nature, there is, we know, a secret soul, a secret will, a secret intelligence at work, other than the mute self-oblivious form, the Conscient, — conscient even in unconscious things, — of the Upanishad, without whose presence and informing Conscious-Force or Tapas no work of Nature could be done.” The Life Divine
“But in the larger universal consciousness there must be a power of carrying this movement to its absolute point, to the greatest extreme possible for any relative movement to reach, and this point is reached, not in human unconsciousness which is not abiding and always refers back to the awakened conscious being that man normally and characteristically is, but in the inconscience of material Nature. This inconscience is no more real than the ignorance of exclusive concentration in our temporary being which limits the waking consciousness of man; for as in us, so in the atom, the metal, the plant, in every form of material Nature, in every energy of material Nature, there is, we know, a secret soul, a secret will, a secret intelligence at work, other than the mute self-oblivious form, the Conscient,—conscient even in unconscious things,—of the Upanishad, without whose presence and informing Conscious-Force or Tapas no work of Nature could be done.” The Life Divine
"But the role of subliminal forces cannot be said to be small, since from there come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings towards a better self and better humanity without which man would be only a thinking animal — as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve, if they do not yet dispel, the ignorance.” Letters on Yoga*
“But the role of subliminal forces cannot be said to be small, since from there come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings towards a better self and better humanity without which man would be only a thinking animal—as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve, if they do not yet dispel, the ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
“But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different,—something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” Letters on Yoga
By immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 18, Page: 93
by the Falsehood and the Ignorance, For If it were to yield to tlic demands of the Falsehood, It would defeat Its own purpose.
"By the supermind is meant the full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement.” Letters on Yoga
“By the supermind is meant the full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement.” Letters on Yoga
citti acitti ::: the Knowledge and the Ignorance. [cf. the following]
cittim acittim cinavad vi vidvan ::: let the knower distinguish the Knowledge and the Ignorance. [RV 4.2.11]
Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance
Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our God- ward endeavour. The working of the DIvme Force in m under the conditions of the transition and the tight of the psychic being turning us alw’aj'S towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instiga- tions of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner Jaw of our action which continues rilJ the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature.
Consciousness ; there is a dynamic union of likeness or oneness of nature between That and our instrumental being here. The lirst is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, inokfa, sayuj}a. which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, sdmipia, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude. The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, sadhannya, is the high intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-
COSMIC FORCE. ::: A Power that works under the Ignorance.
::: cosmic ignorance
cosmic ignorance
COSMIC IGNORANCE. ::: The whole movement of world- consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is per%’ertcd, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . 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; . . . 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.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Self ::: Sri Aurobindo: "When one has the cosmic consciousness, one can feel the cosmic Self as one"s own self, one can feel one with other beings in the cosmos, one can feel all the forces of Nature as moving in oneself, all selves as one"s own self. There is no why except that it is so, since all is the One.” Letters on Yoga (See also Cosmic Spirit)
"Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; . . . .” *The Life Divine
"An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme reality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, — an infinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all personality, — is the reality and meaning of self-existence: so too the cosmic Self, Spirit, Being, Person is the reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the same Self, Spirit, Being or Person manifesting its multiplicity is the reality and meaning of individual existence.” The Life Divine
"But this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe — although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Spirit ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Cosmic Spirit or Self contains everything in the cosmos — it upholds cosmic Mind, universal Life, universal Matter as well as the overmind. The Self is more than all these things which are its formulations in Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"[The Divine in one of its three aspects] . . . is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe - although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
". . . the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the universe, . . . .” *The Life Divine
"For the cosmic Spirit inhabits each and all, but is more than all; . . . .”The Life Divine
Cusa. Nicholas of: (1401-1464) Born in Cusa (family name: Krebs), educated in the mystical school of Deventer, and at the Universities of Heidelberg, Padua and Cologne. He became a Cardinal in 1448, Bishop of Brixen in 1450, and died at Todi. He was interested in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and ecclesiastical policy. His thought is Neo-Platonic and mystical, he is critical of Aristotelian Scholasticism. His theories of "learned ignorance" and the "concordance of contraries" have been historically influential. Chief works: De concordantia Catholica, De docta ignorantia, De conjecturis (Opera, Paris, 1514). E. Van Steenberghe, Le Card. N. de Cuse,l'action, la pensee (Paris, 1920). -- V.J.B.
cyberpunk /si:'ber-puhnk/ (Originally coined by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or editor Gardner Dozois) A subgenre of SF launched in 1982 by William Gibson's epoch-making novel "Neuromancer" (though its roots go back through Vernor Vinge's "True Names" to John Brunner's 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider"). Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly na"ive and tremendously stimulating. Gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular by the short-lived but innovative "Max Headroom" TV series. See {cyberspace}, {ice}, {jack in}, {go flatline}. Since 1990 or so, popular culture has included a movement or fashion trend that calls itself "cyberpunk", associated especially with the rave/techno subculture. Hackers have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, self-described cyberpunks too often seem to be shallow trendoids in black leather who have substituted enthusiastic blathering about technology for actually learning and *doing* it. Attitude is no substitute for competence. On the other hand, at least cyberpunks are excited about the right things and properly respectful of hacking talent in those who have it. The general consensus is to tolerate them politely in hopes that they'll attract people who grow into being true hackers. [{Jargon File}]
darkness ::: n. --> The absence of light; blackness; obscurity; gloom.
A state of privacy; secrecy.
A state of ignorance or error, especially on moral or religious subjects; hence, wickedness; impurity.
Want of clearness or perspicuity; obscurity; as, the darkness of a subject, or of a discussion.
A state of distress or trouble.
dasyu ::: (in the Veda) an enemy, plunderer or destroyer; any of various powers of darkness and ignorance who oppose the seeker of truth and immortality.
“Day and Night,—the latter the state of Ignorance that belongs to our material Nature, the former the state of illumined Knowledge that belongs to the divine Mind of which our mentality is a pale and dulled reflection.” The Secret of the Veda
DEFECTS. ::: Each defect of the nature of the Ignorance is a deformation of something in the higher nature — a deformation which amounts to a perversion even.
dense ::: a. --> Having the constituent parts massed or crowded together; close; compact; thick; containing much matter in a small space; heavy; opaque; as, a dense crowd; a dense forest; a dense fog.
Stupid; gross; crass; as, dense ignorance.
Desire ::: Desire is only a mode of the emotional mind which by ignorance seeks its delight in the object of desire and not in the Brahman who expresses Himself in the object.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 20
destiny ::: “Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One’s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” Letters on Yoga
DESTINY. ::: Destiny in the ripd sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and detenmning the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiri- tual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher
destruction ::: “Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” Letters on Yoga
Divine and led by Utc common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance. Tltc religious life is a movement of the same Ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond.
Divine Bliss. Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine
divine gnosis ::: the highest form of gnosis, the "invincible Gnosis of the Divine", also called (from 29 October 1927 onwards) supermind gnosis or supermind, "the secret Wisdom which upholds both our Knowledge and our Ignorance" and "which creates, governs and upholds the worlds". divine h hasya
Divine Will is something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the ‘Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty, and Ananda, for these arc the Divine Nature.
DIVISION. ::: Division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.
Division of being ■ A necessary stage In the yogic develop- ment and experience. One feels that there is a twofold being, the inner psychic which is the true one and the other, the outer human being which is instrumentaf for the outward life. To live in the inner psychic being in union with the Divine while doing the outward work is the first stage in Karmayoga.
Live always in the psychic being, your true being. The psychic will, in due time, awaken and turn to the Divine all the rest of the nature, so that even the outer being will feel itself in touch with the Divine and moved by the Divine in all it is and feels and does.
division ::: “God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Docta ignorantia: Liteially, learned ignorance, refers to men's knowledge of God which unavoidably includes a negative element, since He immeasurably surpasses the knowledge of Him gleaned from this phenomenal world, yet for man this is truly a real learning. Title given to one of his philosophical treatises by Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) who understood it in the sense of an insight into the incomprehensibility of the infinite. -- J.J.R.
Doda ignorantia: Latin for learned ignorance; it refers to men’s knowledge of God which unavoidably includes a negative element, since He immeasurably surpasses the knowledge of Him gleaned from this phenomenal world, yet for man this is truly a real learning. Title given to one of his philosophical treatises by Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) who understood it in the sense of an insight into the incomprehensibility of the infinite.
dvandva (dwandwa) ::: duality; any of the pairs of opposites that "are the positive and negative terms in which the ego soul of the lower nature enjoys the universe", freedom from which is part of the mukti or liberation of the nature, also applied to pairs of related terms that are not opposites, such as hunger and thirst; the "discordant and divided experience" that consists of "an oscillation between or a mixture of constant pairs of contraries", due to "an ignorance which is unable to seize on the spiritual truth of things and concentrates on the imperfect appearances, but meets them not with a mastery of their inner truth, but with a strife and a shifting balance of attraction and repulsion, capacity and incapacity, liking and disliking, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, acceptance and repugnance". dvandva rragadvesa
elephantine Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous {hogs} (owing perhaps to poor design founded on {brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in source form. An elephantine program may be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke about being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare "has the elephant nature" and the somewhat more pejorative monstrosity. See also {second-system effect} and {baroque}. [{Jargon File}]
entire ::: a. --> Complete in all parts; undivided; undiminished; whole; full and perfect; not deficient; as, the entire control of a business; entire confidence, ignorance.
Without mixture or alloy of anything; unqualified; morally whole; pure; faithful.
Consisting of a single piece, as a corolla.
Having an evenly continuous edge, as a leaf which has no kind of teeth.
Equality ::: Equality does not mean a fresh ignorance or blindness; it does not call for and need not initiate a greyness of vision and a blotting out of all hues. Difference is there, variation of expression is there and this variation we shall appreciate, —far more justly than we could when the eye was clouded by a partial and erring love and hate, admiration and scorn, sympathy and antipathy, attraction and repulsion. But behind the variation we shall always see the Complete and Immutable who dwells within it and we shall feel, know or at least, if it is hidden from us, trust in the wise purpose and divine necessity of the particular manifestation, whether it appear to our human standards harmonious and perfect or crude and unfinished or even false and evil.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 224-225
error ::: 1. A wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention; a deviation from accuracy or correctness. 2. The act or an instance of deviating from an accepted code of behaviour. **error"s, errors, errorless.
“Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength’ or ‘Behold God’s power in me’, but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate.’” The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . evil is the fruit of a spiritual ignorance and it will disappear only by the growth of a spiritual consciousness and the light of spiritual knowledge.” The Life Divine
“… evil is the fruit of a spiritual ignorance and it will disappear only by the growth of a spiritual consciousness and the light of spiritual knowledge.” The Life Divine
evil ::: “… wrong will and falsehood of the steps, . . . separative egoism inflicting by its ignorance and separate contrary will harm on oneself or harm on others, self-driven to a wrong dealing with one’s own soul, mind, life or body or a wrong dealing with the soul, mind, life, body of others, . . . is the practical sense of all human evil.” The Life Divine
“Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Evolution is an inverse action of the involution: what is an ultimate and last derivation in the involution is the first to appear in the evolution; what was original and primal in the involution is in the evolution the last and supreme emergence.” The Life Divine ::: "Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Faith ::: Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 191
faith ::: “Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation, because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise, there will be no longer any need of the gleam.” Letters on Yoga
Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation, because we arc ignorant and do not yet know that which we arc seeking to realise ; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun.
falsehood ::: “It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, …” Letters on Yoga
Falsehood ::: not Ignorance (Avidya), but an extreme result of it. Falsehood is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power puts forth its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its willful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. Whenever these perversions created out of the stuff of ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense.
fear ::: “Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things. It might almost be considered as an invention of the hostile forces.” Letters on Yoga
FEAR. ::: Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence
festing power of Supermtnd, always aware of the Divine and free from Ignorance and its consequences.
flame ::: “The true soul secret in us,—subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil,—this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
fn yoga one uses the inner will and compels the vital to sub- mit itself to tapasyS so that it may become calm, strong, obe- dient— or else calls down the calm from above obliging the vital to renounce desire and become quiet and receptive. The vital is a good instrument but a bad master. If you allow it to follow its likes and dislikes, its fancies, its desires, its bad habits, it becomes your master and peace and happiness are no longer possible. It becomes not your instrument or the instrument of the Divine Shakli, but of any force of the Ignorance or even any hostile force that is able to seize and use it.
Force (the Mother's) ::: the higher Force of the Divine that descends from above to transform the nature; the Divine Force which works to remove the ignorance and change the nature into the divine nature.
". . . for doubt is the mind"s persistent assailant.” Letters on Yoga ::: "The enemy of faith is doubt, and yet doubt too is a utility and necessity, because man in his ignorance and in his progressive labour towards knowledge needs to be visited by doubt, otherwise he would remain obstinate in an ignorant belief and limited knowledge and unable to escape from his errors.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
::: "For in reality, no man works, but Nature works through him for the self-expression of a Power within that proceeds from the Infinite. To know that and live in the presence and in the being of the Master of Nature, free from desire and the illusion of personal impulsion, is the one thing needful. That and not the bodily cessation of action is the true release; for the bondage of works at once ceases. A man might sit still and motionless for ever and yet be as much bound to the Ignorance as the animal or the insect. But if he can make this greater consciousness dynamic within him, then all the work of all the worlds could pass through him and yet he would remain at rest, absolute in calm and peace, free from all bondage.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
“For in reality, no man works, but Nature works through him for the self-expression of a Power within that proceeds from the Infinite. To know that and live in the presence and in the being of the Master of Nature, free from desire and the illusion of personal impulsion, is the one thing needful. That and not the bodily cessation of action is the true release; for the bondage of works at once ceases. A man might sit still and motionless for ever and yet be as much bound to the Ignorance as the animal or the insect. But if he can make this greater consciousness dynamic within him, then all the work of all the worlds could pass through him and yet he would remain at rest, absolute in calm and peace, free from all bondage.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations,—as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
For the soul released from the grip of death and ignorance after travelling in”far-off eternities” , where, we cannot even hazard a guess, returning to earth a joyous captive of the Divine Mother, the earth appears to be nothing more than a green hillock, and yet, Satyavan lives”glad” in the moments of a sun that is transient,”among the busy works of men.”
"For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Freed from thy clutch of pain and ignorance
From the subliminal come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings tow’ards a better self and better humanity without which man svould be only a thinking animal — as also most of the art, , philosophy, poetry, thirst for knowledge which relieve, if they do not yet dispel, the ignorance.
ghafla ::: heedlessness; mindlessness; ignorance
Gnosis ::: …the description of gnosis applies to all consciousness that is based upon Truth of being and not upon the Ignorance or Nescience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 1004
Guiding Unv of experience ::: The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human conscious~ ness to the Divine Consciousness ; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control ; it is that surrender and that control which bring tbs guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is so absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind fonnaljons and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the bands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine^tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within. That is the inner light we must Uberate ; for the light of thb inmost soul is our one sure illumioation so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-
happily Of software, used to emphasise that a program is unaware of some important fact about its environment, either because it has been fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. The sense of "happy" here is not that of elation, but rather that of blissful ignorance. "The program continues to run, happily unaware that its output is going to /dev/null." [{Jargon File}]
heathenism ::: n. --> The religious system or rites of a heathen nation; idolatry; paganism.
The manners or morals usually prevalent in a heathen country; ignorance; rudeness; barbarism.
hermetic ideality ::: (in 1919) the second of the three planes of ideality, the plane whose essence is sruti (inspiration), later called srauta vijñana. Whereas the logistic ideality "remembers at a second remove the knowledge secret in the being but lost by the mind in the oblivion of the ignorance", the hermetic ideality "divines at a first remove a greater power of that knowledge". The first "resembles the reason, is a divine reason", the second is said to be of the nature of "inspired interpretation".
HOLOCAUST OF THE DIVINE. ::: The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser tnple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nafure-b^y and Nature-force, and they exist because moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was fbere «i the possibilities of The Infinite she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow assimilate it ; avoid self-dispersion and all externalising of the consciousness.
holocaust ::: “The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
Hostile Forces ::: The hostile forces are there in the world to maintain the Ignorance—they were there in the sadhana because they had the right to test the sincerity of the sadhaks and their power and will to cleave to the Divine and overcome all difficulties.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 640
"Hostile Forces. The purpose they serve in the world is to give a full chance to the possibilities of the Inconscience and Ignorance — for this world was meant to be a working out of these possibilities with the supramental harmonisation as its eventual outcome.” *Letters on Yoga
“Hostile Forces. The purpose they serve in the world is to give a full chance to the possibilities of the Inconscience and Ignorance—for this world was meant to be a working out of these possibilities with the supramental harmonisation as its eventual outcome.” Letters on Yoga
"Human pity is born of ignorance & weakness; it is the slave of emotional impressions. Divine compassion understands, discerns & saves.” Essays Divine and Human*
“Human pity is born of ignorance & weakness; it is the slave of emotional impressions. Divine compassion understands, discerns & saves.” Essays Divine and Human
::: "If there is an evolution in material Nature and if it is an evolution of being with consciousness and life as its two key-terms and powers, this fullness of being, fullness of consciousness, fullness of life must be the goal of development towards which we are tending and which will manifest at an early or later stage of our destiny. The Self, the Spirit, the Reality that is disclosing itself out of the first inconscience of life and matter, would evolve its complete truth of being and consciousness in that life and matter. It would return to itself, — or, if its end as an individual is to return into its Absolute, it could make that return also, — not through a frustration of life but through a spiritual completeness of itself in life. Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half-fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature.” The Life Divine
“If there is an evolution in material Nature and if it is an evolution of being with consciousness and life as its two key-terms and powers, this fullness of being, fullness of consciousness, fullness of life must be the goal of development towards which we are tending and which will manifest at an early or later stage of our destiny. The Self, the Spirit, the Reality that is disclosing itself out of the first inconscience of life and matter, would evolve its complete truth of being and consciousness in that life and matter. It would return to itself,—or, if its end as an individual is to return into its Absolute, it could make that return also,—not through a frustration of life but through a spiritual completeness of itself in life. Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half-fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature.” The Life Divine
“If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . 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; . . . 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.” The Life Divine
“If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance,—all Nature is its external proof,—we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” The Life Divine
If we would understand the difference of this global Overmind Consciousness from our separative and only imperfectly synthetic mental consciousness, we may come near to it if we compare the strictly mental with what would be an overmental view of activities in our material universe. To the Overmind, for example, all religions would be true as developments of the one eternal religion, all philosophies would be valid each in its own field as a statement of its own universe-view from its own angle, all political theories with their practice would be the legitimate working out of an Idea Force with its right to application and practical development in the play of the energies of Nature. In our separative consciousness, imperfectly visited by glimpses of catholicity and universality, these things exist as opposites; each claims to be the truth and taxes the others with error and falsehood, each feels impelled to refute or destroy the others in order that itself alone may be the Truth and live: at best, each must claim to be superior, admit all others only as inferior truth-expressions. An overmental Intelligence would refuse to entertain this conception or this drift to exclusiveness for a moment; it would allow all to live as necessary to the whole or put each in its place in the whole or assign to each its field of realisation or of endeavour. This is because in us consciousness has come down completely into the divisions of the Ignorance; Truth is no longer either an Infinite or a cosmic whole with many possible formulations, but a rigid affirmation holding any other affirmation to be false because different from itself and entrenched in other limits. Our mental consciousness can indeed arrive in its cognition at a considerable approach towards a total comprehensiveness and catholicity, but to organise that in action and life seems to be beyond its power. Evolutionary Mind, manifest in individuals or collectivities, throws up a multiplicity of divergent viewpoints, divergent lines of action and lets them work themselves out side by side or in collision or in a certain intermixture; it can make selective harmonies, but it cannot arrive at the harmonic control of a true totality. Cosmic Mind must have even in the evolutionary Ignorance, like all totalities, such a harmony, if only of arranged accords and discords; there is too in it an underlying dynamism of oneness: but it carries the completeness of these things in its depths, perhaps in a supermind-overmind substratum, but does not impart it to individual Mind in the evolution, does not bring it or has not yet brought it from the depths to the surface. An Overmind world would be a world of harmony; the world of Ignorance in which we live is a world of disharmony and struggle. …
IGNORANCE. ::: Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life.
This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth.
Sevenfold Ignorance ::: If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, ip a spatial and temporal universe, wc see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many- sided self-ignorance. We are Ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming ; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence — that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self ; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becom- ing in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence — that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming ; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-sclf — that is the tViTid, \Vie egoistic ignorance. V/c aie ignorant of oat eteinai becoming in Time ; we take this Uttle life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space for our beginning, our middle and our end, — that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is super-conscient, sub- conscient, intraconscient, circumcooscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence — that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming ; we take the mind or life or body or any two or all three tor our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to deter- mine sovereignly by its emergence from their operations, — that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoy- ment of our life in the world ; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal, — that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.
ignorance ::: “Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” The Life Divine
ignorance, cosmic
ignorance ::: n. --> The condition of being ignorant; the want of knowledge in general, or in relation to a particular subject; the state of being uneducated or uninformed.
A willful neglect or refusal to acquire knowledge which one may acquire and it is his duty to have.
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
ignorant ::: a. --> Destitute of knowledge; uninstructed or uninformed; untaught; unenlightened.
Unacquainted with; unconscious or unaware; -- used with of.
Unknown; undiscovered.
Resulting from ignorance; foolish; silly. ::: n.
ignorantism ::: n. --> The spirit of those who extol the advantage to ignorance; obscuriantism.
"I have started writing about doubt, but even in doing so I am afflicted by the ‘doubt" whether any amount of writing or of anything else can ever persuade the eternal doubt in man which is the penalty of his native ignorance. In the first place, to write adequately would mean anything from 60 to 600 pages, but not even 6000 convincing pages would convince doubt. For doubt exists for its own sake; its very function is to doubt always and, even when convinced, to go on doubting still; it is only to persuade its entertainer to give it board and lodging that it pretends to be an honest truth-seeker. This is a lesson I have learnt from the experience both of my own mind and of the minds of others; the only way to get rid of doubt is to take discrimination as one"s detector of truth and falsehood and under its guard to open the door freely and courageously to experience.” Letters on Yoga
I have started writing about doubt, but even in doing so I am afflicted by the ‘doubt’ whether any amount of writing or of anything else can ever persuade the eternal doubt in man which is the penalty of his native ignorance. In the first place, to write adequately would mean anything from 60 to 600 pages, but not even 6000 convincing pages would convince doubt. For doubt exists for its own sake; its very function is to doubt always and, even when convinced, to go on doubting still; it is only to persuade its entertainer to give it board and lodging that it pretends to be an honest truth-seeker. This is a lesson I have learnt from the experience both of my own mind and of the minds of others; the only way to get rid of doubt is to take discrimination as one’s detector of truth and falsehood and under its guard to open the door freely and courageously to experience.” Letters on Yoga
illiteracy ::: n. --> The state of being illiterate, or uneducated; want of learning, or knowledge; ignorance; specifically, inability to read and write; as, the illiteracy shown by the last census.
An instance of ignorance; a literary blunder.
imagination ::: “… our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: . . . . Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of a limited capacity of knowledge, a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious and visible the things that are not obvious and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of the possible and the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true to outer experience. That is at least the appearance of its operation; but, in reality, it is the mind’s way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilities, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
immortality ::: “By immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.” The Upanishads
IMPURITY. ::: The Anaoda descending cannot be held if there is too much sexual impurity creating an intoxicant or degrading mixture ; the Power recedes, if there is ambition, vanity or other aggressive form of lower self, the Oght if there is an attachment to obscurity or to any form of the Ignorance, the Presence if the chamber of the heart has not been made pure.
Inconscience ::: Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness, they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience…
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 27
inconscience ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity.” *The Life Divine
"All aspects of the omnipresent Reality have their fundamental truth in the Supreme Existence. Thus even the aspect or power of Inconscience, which seems to be an opposite, a negation of the eternal Reality, yet corresponds to a Truth held in itself by the self-aware and all-conscious Infinite. It is, when we look closely at it, the Infinite"s power of plunging the consciousness into a trance of self-involution, a self-oblivion of the Spirit veiled in its own abysses where nothing is manifest but all inconceivably is and can emerge from that ineffable latency. In the heights of Spirit this state of cosmic or infinite trance-sleep appears to our cognition as a luminous uttermost Superconscience: at the other end of being it offers itself to cognition as the Spirit"s potency of presenting to itself the opposites of its own truths of being, — an abyss of non-existence, a profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and delight of existence can manifest themselves, — but they appear in limited terms, in slowly emerging and increasing self-formulations, even in contrary terms of themselves; it is the play of a secret all-being, all-delight, all-knowledge, but it observes the rules of its own self-oblivion, self-opposition, self-limitation until it is ready to surpass it. This is the Inconscience and Ignorance that we see at work in the material universe. It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the infinite and eternal Existence.” *The Life Divine
"Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness, they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience.” Letters on Yoga
*inconscience.
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
• individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha in itself is divine, but exteriorised in the ignorance of Nature it is the individual apparent being imperfect with her imperfection.
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
“In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
Inner Life (Spiritual) ::: In all spiritual living the inner life is the thing of first importance; the spiritual man lives always within, and in a world of the Ignorance that
refuses to change he has to be in a certain sense separate from it and to guard his inner life against the intrusion and influence of the darker forces of the Ignorance: he is out of the world even when he is within it; if he acts upon it, it is from the fortress of his inner spiritual being where in the inmost sanctuary he is one with the Supreme Existence or the soul and God are alone togetherSri Aurobindo
::: "In our yoga the Nirvana is the beginning of the higher Truth, as it is the passage from the Ignorance to the higher Truth. The Ignorance has to be extinguished in order that the Truth may manifest.” Letters on Yoga*
“In our yoga the Nirvana is the beginning of the higher Truth, as it is the passage from the Ignorance to the higher Truth. The Ignorance has to be extinguished in order that the Truth may manifest.” Letters on Yoga
inscience ::: n. --> Want of knowledge; ignorance.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: 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.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
intelligence ::: “Intelligence does not depend on the amount one has read, it is a quality of the mind. Study only gives it material for its work as life also does. There are people who do not know how to read and write who are more intelligent than many highly educated people and understand life and things better. On the other hand, a good intelligence can improve itself by reading because it gets more material to work on and grows by exercise and by having a wider range to move in. But book-knowledge by itself is not the real thing, it has to be used as a help to the intelligence but it is often only a help to stupidity or ignorance—ignorance because knowledge of facts is a poor thing if one cannot see their true significance.” Letters on Yoga
intermediate zone ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers. ::: It is not necessary for everyone to struggle through the intermediate zone. If one has purified oneself, if there is no abnormal vanity, egoism, ambition or other strong misleading element, or if one is vigilant and on one"s guard, or if the psychic is in front, one can either pass rapidly and directly or with a minimum of trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth.
Intermediate Zone ::: The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higherMind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels, but one can receive something from them, even from the Overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 118
In the Truth or in constant touch with it and not, as the ordmaiy mind does, in the Ignorance.
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "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.” *The Life Divine
"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"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
“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’’. When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” The Life Divine
In yoga one uses the lance wiU and compels the vital to sub- mit itself to lapasi-a so that It may become calm, strong, obe- dient— or else calls down the calm from above obliging the vital to renounce desire and become quiet and receptive. The vital is a good instrument but a bad master- If you allow it to follow its likes and dislikes, its fancies, its desires, its bad habits, it becomes your master and peace and happiness are no longer possible. It becomes not your instrument or the instrument of the Divine Shakti, but of any force of the Ignorance or even any hostile force that is able to seize and use it.
irony ::: a. --> Made or consisting of iron; partaking of iron; iron; as, irony chains; irony particles.
Resembling iron taste, hardness, or other physical property. ::: n. --> Dissimulation; ignorance feigned for the purpose of confounding or provoking an antagonist.
“Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone’ but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone’. One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don’t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into Prakrit! of
“It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truthconsciousness, and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truthconsciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit to conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must to that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 536-37
“It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe—although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"It [the Cosmic Spirit] uses Truth and Falsehood, Knowledge and Ignorance and all the other dualities as elements in the manifestation and works out what has to be worked out till all is ready for a higher working.” Letters on Yoga*
“It [the Cosmic Spirit] uses Truth and Falsehood, Knowledge and Ignorance and all the other dualities as elements in the manifestation and works out what has to be worked out till all is ready for a higher working.” Letters on Yoga
jnana yoga. ::: the yoga of knowledge or wisdom is the most difficult path, requiring tremendous strength of will and intellect, which leads the aspirant to experience his unity with God directly by dissolving the veils of ignorance; constantly and seriously thinking on the true nature of the Self as taught by the Upanishads; one of the four paths of yoga &
Job Control Language "language, operating system" (JCL) {IBM}'s supremely {rude} {script} language, used to control the execution of programs in IBM {OS/360}'s {batch} systems. JCL has a very {fascist} {syntax}, and some versions will, for example, {barf} if two spaces appear where it expects one. Most programmers confronted with JCL simply copy a working file (or {card deck}), changing the file names. Someone who actually understands and generates unique JCL is regarded with the mixed respect one gives to someone who memorises the phone book. It is reported that hackers at IBM itself sometimes sing "Who's the breeder of the crud that mangles you and me? I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e" to the tune of the "Mickey Mouse Club" theme to express their opinion of the beast. As with {COBOL}, JCL is often used as an archetype of ugliness even by those who haven't experienced it. However, no self-respecting {mainframe} {MVS} programmer would admit ignorance of JCL. See also {fear and loathing}. (1999-03-03)
Kali ::: (literally "the black") the "dark Mother", a name given in the Kali Hindu tradition to the "supreme Energy . . . beneficent even in the mask of destruction", represented "with her garland of skulls trampling naked in battle", symbolic of "the Nature Force [prakr.ti] in the ignorance surrounded by difficulties, wresting and breaking everything in a blind struggle to get through till she finds herself standing
kali yuga. ::: the age of strife, discord, quarrel, contention, irreligion and inexplicable ignorance; the last of the four cycles beginning in
karana deha. ::: the causal body; a state of pure forgetfulness, ignorance, where there is no thought of well-being nor of the gross and subtle bodies; a state of forgetfulness where nothing can exist; the "knowing" principle
Knowledge and Ignorance could strive no more;
“Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: …” The Life Divine
Known Lazy Bastard "abuse" (KLB) A term, used among technical support staff, for a user who repeatedly asks for help with problems whose solutions are clearly explained in the documentation, and persists in doing so after having been told to {RTFM}. KLBs are singled out for special treatment (i.e. ridicule), especially if they have been heard to say "It's so boring to read the manual! Why don't you just tell me?". The deepest pit in Hell is reserved for KLBs whose questions reveal total ignorance of the basic concepts (e.g., "How do I make a font in {Excel}?", "Where do I turn on my {RAM}?"), and who refuse to accept that their questions are neither simple nor well-formed. (1998-09-07)
Kr.s.n.akali (Krishnakali; KrishnaKali; Krishna-Kali; Krishna Kali) —Krsnakali (also called Kalikr.s.n.a) the union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali, forming the "subjective base" of karma; Kali as prakr.ti surrendering herself in a relation of (madhura) dasya to Kr.s.n.a, the purus.a; "a complete union of the two sides of the Duality" of isvara-sakti which, when it rules one"s consciousness, can draw it "altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance"; the same union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali seen everywhere in the vision (darsana) of the external world, a perception which because of its "vivid personality" is regarded as superior to that of purus.a-prakr.ti; short for Kr.s.n.akali bhava or Kr.s.n.akali darsana.Kr Krsnakali bhava (Krishnakali bhava; Krishna-Kali -; Krishna Kali -). s.n.akali bhava
lilamaya ::: playful; enjoying the cosmic game; pertaining to the lila; lilamaya (sagun.a brahman) perceived as pouring out the delight of existence .... (ananda) into the play of the world; ("the Lilamaya") short for lilamaya isvara or lilamaya purus.a, the Lord or Soul of bliss who "can play with the manifestation without being imbued with the Ignorance".
Madhav: “The curtain of ignorance has been lifted.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “There is an eternal light in every one of us. But it is as if guarded, protected from the profane, vulgar sight by a cave of darkness. Cave signifies a narrowing, dimming enclosure. This blanket of darkness guards that Light. Where there is such a concentration of thick darkness in yourself, you can be sure that deep inside there is the ‘Light Eternal’. This is the light of the Self of which the Rishi’s speak. It stands veiled by layers and layers of the darkness of Ignorance.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “There is another veil. First there is the veil of darkness, a veil of ignorance. Then there is a veil of light, a dazzling light. It acts as a curtain. If you look only at that light you get blinded.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “There is in this creation of God an everlasting No. ‘NO’ is negation of the fleeting pleasures of life, unsubstantial movements of life, the attraction of the senses, the hold of ego, ignorance. For that the answer is no. This is not it, this is not it, neti, neti, thou hast only neared this everlasting No.” The Book of the Divine Mother
MAHAKALI ::: Goddess of the supreme strength ; with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest austerity of lapas and swiftness to the battle and the victory and the laughter, the attahosya, that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance. .*
Afa/ifliflh' and Kdh are not the same. Kali is a lesser form.
Mahakali in the higher planes appears usually with the golden colour.
mala. ::: taint; impurity; defilement; defect; ignorance; limitation of consciousness; also a flower garland or string of beads, usually 108, used to count off repetitions of a mantra
“Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine.
Mind and life in the body are in the state of Death because by Ignorance they fail to realise Sachchidananda. Realising perfectly Sachchidananda, they can convert themselves, Mind into the nature of the Truth, vijnana, Life into the nature of caitanya, Body into the nature of sat, that is, into the pure essence. When this cannot be done perfectly in the body, the soul realises its true state in other forms of existence or worlds, the sunlit worlds and states of felicity, and returns upon material existence to complete its evolution in the body. A progressively perfect realisation [of Sachchidananda] in the body is the aim of human evolution.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 41-42
Mind and the Divine Sakti ::: Be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that arc beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and com- plexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehen- sion ; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth.
Mind of Light ::: A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 585
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
Moderate Realism: See Realism. Modus tollens: See Logic, formal, § 2. Moha: (Skr.) Distraction, perplexity, delusion, beclouding of the mind rendering it unfit to perceive the truth, generally explained as attachment to the phenomenal; in Buddhism, ignorance, as a source of vice. -- K.F.L.
Moha: A Sanskrit term, meaning distraction, perplexity, delusion, beclouding of the mind, rendering it unfit to perceive the truth, generally explained as attachment to the phenomenal; in Buddhism, ignorance, as a source of vice.
Money ::: Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine it is delegated here and in the ignorance of the lower Nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose
Ref: CWSA Vol. M - 4, Page: 374
MONEY. ::: Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force m its manifestation on earth woris an the vitaf and physical planes and Is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. In its origin and true action it belongs lo the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine it is delegated here and in the ignorance of the lower Nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose.
MUKTI. ::: Salvation ; liberation from the Ignorance that 'holds all terrestrial beings.
Multiplicity is the play or varied self-expansion of the One, shifting in its terms, divisible in its view of itself, by force of which the One occupies many centres of consciousness, inhabits many formations of energy in the universal Movement. Multiplicity is implicit or explicit in unity. Without it the Unity would be either a void of non-existence or a powerless, sterile limitation to the state of indiscriminate self-absorption or of blank repose. But the consciousness of multiplicity separated from the true knowledge in the many of their own essential oneness,—the view-point of the separate ego identifying itself with the divided form and the limited action,—is a state of error and delusion. In man this is the form taken by the consciousness of multiplicity. Th
refore it is given the name of Avidya, the Ignorance.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 51-52
Naturally, the release from subconscient ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functionings of the body must be among the ultimate elements of a supra- mental change.
Nature ::: Prakriti, the outer or executive side of the Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. The higher, divine Nature (Para Prakriti) is free from Ignorance and its consequences; the lower nature (Prakriti) is a mechanism of active Force put forth for the working of the evolutionary Ignorance. The lower nature of an individual is his mind, life and body.
Neo-Scholasticism: See Scholasticism. Nescience: (Lat. nesciens, ignorant) A state of ignorance such as is professed by the agnostic. See Agnosticism. -- L.W.
nescience ::: absence of knowledge or awareness; ignorance. **
nescience ::: n. --> Want of knowledge; ignorance; agnosticism.
nescient. ::: *Sri Aurobindo: "Nescience in Nature is the complete self-ignorance; . . . .” The Life Divine*
neti-neti. ::: "not this, not this"; "it is neither knowledge nor ignorance"; analytical process of progressively negating all names and forms in order to arrive at the eternal underlying Truth &
night ::: n. --> That part of the natural day when the sun is beneath the horizon, or the time from sunset to sunrise; esp., the time between dusk and dawn, when there is no light of the sun, but only moonlight, starlight, or artificial light.
Darkness; obscurity; concealment.
Intellectual and moral darkness; ignorance.
A state of affliction; adversity; as, a dreary night of sorrow.
night ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Night is the symbol of the Ignorance or Avidya in which men live just as Light is the symbol of Truth and Knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga
"In the way that one treads with the greater Light above, even every difficulty gives its help and has its value and Night itself carries in it the burden of the Light that has to be.” Letters on Yoga **Night, Night"s.
Night ::: Symbol of the Ignorance or Avidya in which men live.
Night ::: “The Night is the symbol of the Ignorance or Avidya in which men live just as Light is the symbol of Truth and Knowledge.” Letters on Yoga
Nirvana is a liberated condition of the being, not a world ; it is a withdrawal from the worlds and the manifestation. In our yoga the Nirvana is the beginning of the higher Truth, as it is the passage from the Ignorance to the higher Truth.
No doubt, the Supermind has also acted in the history of the world but always through the Overmind. It is the direct descent of the Supramental Consciousness and Power that alone can utterly re-create life in terms of the Spirit. For, in the Overmind there is already the play of possibilities which marks the beginning of this lower triple world of Mind, Life and Matter in which we have our existence. And whenever there is this play and not the spontaneous and infallible working of the innate Truth of the Spirit, there is the seed of distortion and ignorance. Not that the Overmind is a field of ignorance; but it is the border-line between the Higher and the Lower, for, the play of possibilities, of separate even if not yet divided choice, is likely to lead to deviation from the Truth of things.
no more happy condition than this union and dependence ; for this step carries you back beyond the borderline from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, info its deep peace and its intense
"Nothing can happen without the presence and support of the Divine, for Nature or Prakriti is the Divine Force and it is this that works out things, but it works them out according to the nature and through or with the will of each man which is full of ignorance — that goes on until men turn to the Divine and become conscious of Him and united with Him. Then only can it be said that all begins to be done in him by the direct Will of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
“Nothing can happen without the presence and support of the Divine, for Nature or Prakriti is the Divine Force and it is this that works out things, but it works them out according to the nature and through or with the will of each man which is full of ignorance—that goes on until men turn to the Divine and become conscious of Him and united with Him. Then only can it be said that all begins to be done in him by the direct Will of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
“Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness, they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience.” Letters on Yoga
One and the Divine everj-svhetc and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance.
Or, if it is willing, then it is unable. Or, if it is able, then it turns the action given to it by the Light or the Force into a new mechanical routine and so takes out of it all soul and life. It is obscure, stupid, indolent, full of ignorance and inertia, dark- ness and slowness of tamas.
“Our self-ignorance and our world-ignorance can only grow towards integral self-knowledge and integral world-knowledge in proportion as our limited ego and its half-blind consciousness open to a greater inner existence and consciousness and a true self-being and become aware too of the not-self outside it also as self,—on one side a Nature constituent of our own nature, on the other an Existence which is a boundless continuation of our own self-being. Our being has to break the walls of ego-consciousness which it has created, it has to extend itself beyond its body and inhabit the body of the universe.” The Life Divine
::: "Out of imperfection we have to construct perfection, out of limitation to discover infinity, out of death to find immortality, out of grief to recover divine bliss, out of ignorance to rescue divine self-knowledge, out of matter to reveal Spirit. To work out this end for ourselves and for humanity is the object of our Yogic practice.” *Essays Divine and Human
“Out of imperfection we have to construct perfection, out of limitation to discover infinity, out of death to find immortality, out of grief to recover divine bliss, out of ignorance to rescue divine self-knowledge, out of matter to reveal Spirit. To work out this end for ourselves and for humanity is the object of our Yogic practice.” Essays Divine and Human
Overmind ::: full of lights and powers, the Overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally , it creates and acts in the same way. The Overmind is a delegate of the Supramental Consciousness, its delegate to the cosmic Ignorance. The Supramental is the total Truth-Consciousness; the Overmind draws down the truths separately and gives them a separate identity.
Overmind ::: Overmind is the highest source of the cosmic consciousness available to the embodied being in the Ignorance. It is part of the cosmic consciousness—but the human individual when he opens into the cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-Life- Matter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer— although influences and experiences can come down from there.
Ref: CWSA Vol.28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 152
OVERMIND. ::: Plane of consciousness beyond individual mind, beyond even universal mind in ignorance ; it carries in
overmind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) — the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The overmind is the highest of the planes below the supramental.” *Letters on Yoga
"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, — although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators.” *Letters on Yoga
"The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” *Letters on Savitri
"In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
*Overmind"s.
Oversoul ::: We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance, luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery. We become aware, in a certain experience, of a range of being superconscient to all these three, aware too of something, a supreme highest Reality sustaining and exceeding them all, which humanity speaks of vaguely as Spirit, God, the Oversoul: from these superconscient ranges we have visitations and in our highest being we tend towards them and to that supreme Spirit. There is then in our total range of existence a superconscience as well as a subconscience and inconscience, overarching and perhaps enveloping our subliminal and our waking selves, but unknown to us, seemingly unattainable and incommunicable.
"Pain is caused because the physical consciousness in the Ignorance is too limited to bear the touches that come upon it. Otherwise, to cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience all touches come as Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
“Pain is caused because the physical consciousness in the Ignorance is too limited to bear the touches that come upon it. Otherwise, to cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience all touches come as Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
pitryana (Pitriyan) ::: the road of the Fathers, supposed to lead to inferior worlds attained by the Fathers who still belong to the evolution in the Ignorance.
::: "Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret. God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret. God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Power on the ordinary consciousness which is seen as the light of Ignorance.
POWERS AND APPEARANCES. ::: There are forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of Ignorance and in putting them for\vard as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed
powers ::: Sri Aurobindo: "These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers (the former gods, purve devah , as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
powers ::: “These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers (the former gods, purve devah , as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
Prakriti ::: What is meant by Prakriti or Nature is the outer or executive side of the Shakti or Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. This outer side appears here to be mechanical, a play of the forces, Gunas, etc. Behind it is the living Consciousness and Force of the Divine, the divine Shakti. The Prakriti itself is divided into the lower and higher,—the lower is the Prakriti of the Ignorance, the Prakriti of mind, life and Matter separated in consciousness from the Divine; the higher is the Divine Prakriti of Sachchidananda with its manifesting power of supermind, always aware of the Divine and free from Ignorance and its consequences. Man so long as he is in the ignorance is subject to the lower Prakriti, but by spiritual evolution he becomes aware of the higher Nature and seeks to come into contact with it. He can ascend into it and it can descend into him—such an ascent and descent can transform the lower nature of mind, life and Matter.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 287
prakr.ti (prakriti) ::: nature; "the active force of Nature which by its prakrti motion creates and maintains and by its sinking into rest dissolves the phenomenon of the cosmos"; the universal energy acting for the enjoyment of the purus.a on all the planes of being; the "outer or executive side" of the sakti or Conscious Force of the isvara, working in the Ignorance (avidya) as the lower or apara prakr.ti and in the Knowledge (vidya) as the higher or para prakr.ti.
preferences, fancies, phantasies, strong insistences and to elimi- nate the mental and vital ego’s pressure which sets the conscious- ness to work in the service of its o^vn claims and desires. Other- wise these things will come io with force and claim to be intui- tions, inspirations and the rest of it or if any intuitions come, they can be twisted and spoiled by the mixture of these forces of the Ignorance.
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
Probability: In general Chance, possibility, contingency, likelihood, likehness, presumption. conjecture, prediction, forecast, credibility, relevance; the quality or state of being likely true or likely to happen; a fact or a statement which is likely true, real, operative or provable by future events; the conditioning of partial or approximate belief or assent; the motive of a presumption or prediction; the conjunction of reasonable grounds for presuming the truth of a statement or the occurrence of an event; the field of knowledge between complete ignorance and full certitude; an approximation to fact or truth; a qualitative or numerical value attached to a probable inference, and by extension, the systematic study of chances or relative possibilities as forming the subject of the theory of probability. A. The Foundation of Probability. We cannot know everything completely and with certainty. Yet we desire to think and to act as correctly as possible hence the necessity of considering methods leading to reasonable approximations, and of estimating their results in terms of the relative evidence available in each case. In D VI-VII (infra) only, is probability interpreted as a property of events or occurrences as such: whether necessary or contingent, facts are simply conditioned by other facts, and have neither an intelligence nor a will to realize their certainty or their probability. In other views, probability requires ultimately a mind to perceive it as such it arises from the combination of our partial ignorance of the extremely complex nature and conditions of the phenomena, with the inadequacy of our means of observation, experimentation and analysis, however searching and provisionally satisfactory. Thus it may be said that probability exists formally in the mind and materially in the phenomena as related between themselves. In stressing the one or the other of these two aspects, we obtain (1) subjectize probability, when the psychological conditions of the mind cause it to evaluate a fact or statement with fear of possible error; and (2) objective probability, when reference is made to that quality of facts and statements, which causes the mind to estimate them with a conscious possibility of error. Usually, methods can be devised to objectify technically the subjective aspect of probability, such as the rules for the elimination of the personal equation of the inquirer. Hence the methods established for the study and the interpretation of chances can be considered independently of the state of mind as such of the inquirer. These methods make use of rational or empirical elements. In the first case, we are dealing with a priori or theoretical probability, which considers the conditions or occurrences of an event hypothetically and independently of any direct experience. In the second case, we are dealing with inductive or empirical probability. And when these probabilities are represented with numerals or functions to denote measures of likelihood, we are concerned with quantitative or mathematical probability. Methods involving the former cannot be assimilated with methods involving the latter, but both can be logically correlated on the strength of the general principle of explanation, that similar conjunctions of moral or physical facts demand a general law governing and justifying them.
Purani: “ The growth of the divine potentialities in man is spoken of in Veda as the growth of a Child. The Master takes the symbol straight and employs it thus: ‘where the God-child lies on the lap of Night and Dawn.’ The idea is that through the state of ignorance and through the state of awakening that is Dawn,—through the alterations of two—, the God-child in man attains its growth. Ignorance is not thus something anti-divine. It contributes to the growth of the Divine in man. This certainly reminds one of the hymn in the Veda which runs as follows: ‘Two are joined together, powers of truth, powers of May, they have built the child and given him birth and they nourish his growth’. (Rig Veda X, 5. 3). Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri: An Approach and a Study
Purani: “The ‘python coils’ reminds us of Ahi-Vritra of the Rig Veda where it is symbolic of the coils of Ignorance enveloping the human being restricting his freedom and knowledge.”
Purusha ::: The Conscious Being, Purusha, is the Self as originator, witness, support and lord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature. As the aspect of Self is in its essential character transcendental even when involved and identified with its universal and individual becomings, so the Purusha aspect is characteristically universal-individual and intimately connected with Nature even when separated from her. For this conscious Spirit while retaining its impersonality and eternity, its universality, puts on at the same time a more personal aspect;7 it is the impersonal-personal being in Nature from whom it is not altogether detached, for it is always coupled with her: Nature acts for the Purusha and by its sanction, for its will and pleasure; the Conscious Being imparts its consciousness to the Energy we call Nature, receives in that consciousness her workings as in a mirror, accepts the forms which she, the executive cosmic Force, creates and imposes on it, gives or withdraws its sanction from her movements. The experience of Purusha-Prakriti, the Spirit or Conscious Being in its relations to Nature, is of immense pragmatic importance; for on these relations the whole play of the consciousness depends in the embodied being. If the Purusha in us is passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a constant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental, vital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its formation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance. If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul’s freedom; for it becomes detached, and it is possible then to know Nature and her processes and in all independence, since we are no longer involved in her works, to accept or not to accept, to make the sanction no longer automatic but free and effective; we can choose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from her works and withdraw into the Self’s spiritual silence, or we can reject her present formations and rise to a spiritual level of existence and from there re-create our existence. The Purusha can cease to be subject, anısa, and become lord of its nature, Isvara.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 362-63
quest ::: “The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings,—including Science itself,—must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
Reason is a clarified, ordered and organised Ignorance. It is a half-enlightened Ignorance seeking for truth, but a truth which it insists on founding upon the data and postulates of the Ignorance. Reason is not in possession of the Truth, it is a seeker. It is [unable to] discover the Truth or embody it; it leaves Truth covered but rendered into mental representations, a verbal and ideative scheme, an abstract algebra of concepts, a theory of the Ignorance. Sense-evidence is its starting point and it never really gets away from that insecure beginning. Its concepts start from sense-data and though like a kite it can fly high into an air of abstractions, it is held to the earth of sense by a string of great strength; if that string is broken it drifts lazily [in] the clouds and always it falls back by natural gravitation to its original earth basis—only so can it receive strength to go farther. Its field is the air and sky of the finite, it cannot ascend into the stratosphere of the spiritual vision, still less can it move at ease in the Infinite.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 256
RESISTANCE. ::: 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 su/Tering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature ivhose principal characer 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 suffer- ing of the mind and vital parts. The pbj-sical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incom- prehension, an inability to respond to the higher consciousness, a habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it docs not want to do so ; both lital and physical suffer- ing 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 in 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 (he
RETIREMENT, It may be necessary for the seeker at any period to withdraw into himself, to remain plunged in his inner being, to shut out from himself the noise and turmoil of the life of the Ignorance until a certain inner change has been accom- plished or something achieved without which a further effective action on life has become difficult or impossible. But this can only be a period or an episode, a- temporary necessity or a pre- paratory spiritual manoeuvre.
r.n.am (rinam) ::: debt; the aspect of r.tam that relates to "our debts of rnam the Ignorance"; motion, "the right movement".
rudity ::: n. --> Rudeness; ignorance.
Samata ::: Equality does not mean a fresh ignorance or blindness; it does not call for and need not initiate a greyness of vision and a blotting out of all hues. Difference is there, variation of expression is there and this variation we shall appreciate, —far more justly than we could when the eye was clouded by a partial and erring love and hate, admiration and scorn, sympathy and antipathy, attraction and repulsion. But behind the variation we shall always see the Complete and Immutable who dwells within it and we shall feel, know or at least, if it is hidden from us, trust in the wise purpose and divine necessity of the particular manifestation, whether it appear to our human standards harmonious and perfect or crude and unfinished or even false and evil.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 224-25
samsara ::: cyclic movement; the world; the ordinary life of the Ignorance.
Satyavan, as Sri Aurobindo writes,”…is the soul carrying the truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance;”. Descended into the grip of death and ignorance, the divine realized soul, does not become ignorance but descends into death and then is saved by Savitri, the Divine Mother. After leaving his body”this house of clay” and wandering”in far-off eternities”, all the while a captive in Savitri’s “golden hands” he returns and replies to his father,
“Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; …” (From a letter of Sri Aurobindo to a disciple. Included as a Note at the preface to Savitri.)
savitur. ::: the radiating Source of all creation with the brightness of the sun; the spiritual light that destroys ignorance and bestows wisdom, bliss and eternity; divine illumination
see: cosmic ignorance
Self and Nature to dominate and change our present nature and turn it from nature of Ignorance into nature of Truth-Knowledge
self-ignorance ::: n. --> Ignorance of one&
Since the Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence is the universal creatrix, the nature of a given world will depend on whatever self-formulation of that Consciousness expresses itself in that world. Equally, for each individual being, his seeing or representation to himself of the world he lives in will depend on the poise or make which that Consciousness has assumed in him. Our human mental consciousness sees the world in sections cut by the reason and sense and put together in a formation which is also sectional; the house it builds is planned to accommodate one or another generalised formulation of Truth, but excludes the rest or admits some only as guests or dependents in the house. Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences together in a reconciling vision. Thus the mental reason sees Person and the Impersonal as opposites: it conceives an impersonal Existence in which person and personality are fictions of the Ignorance or temporary constructions; or, on the contrary, it can see Person as the primary reality and the impersonal as a mental abstraction or only stuff or means of manifestation. To the Overmind intelligence these are separable Powers of the one Existence which can pursue their independent self-affirmation and can also unite together their different modes of action, creating both in their independence and in their union different states of consciousness and being which can be all of them valid and all capable of coexistence. A purely impersonal existence and consciousness is true and possible, but also an entirely personal consciousness and existence; the Impersonal Divine, Nirguna Brahman, and the Personal Divine, Saguna Brahman, are here equal and coexistent aspects of the Eternal. Impersonality can manifest with person subordinated to it as a mode of expression; but, equally, Person can be the reality with impersonality as a mode of its nature: both aspects of manifestation face each other in the infinite variety of conscious Existence. What to the mental reason are irreconcilable differences present themselves to the Overmind intelligence as coexistent correlatives; what to the mental reason are contraries are to the Overmind intelligence complementaries. Our mind sees that all things are born from Matter or material Energy, exist by it, go back into it; it concludes that Matter is the eternal factor, the primary and ultimate reality, Brahman. Or it sees all as born of Life-Force or Mind, existing by Life or by Mind, going back into the universal Life or Mind, and it concludes that this world is a creation of the cosmic Life-Force or of a cosmic Mind or Logos. Or again it sees the world and all things as born of, existing by and going back to the Real-Idea or Knowledge-Will of the Spirit or to the Spirit itself and it concludes on an idealistic or spiritual view of the universe. It can fix on any of these ways of seeing, but to its normal separative vision each way excludes the others. Overmind consciousness perceives that each view is true of the action of the principle it erects; it can see that there is a material world-formula, a vital world-formula, a mental world-formula, a spiritual world-formula, and each can predominate in a world of its own and at the same time all can combine in one world as its constituent powers. The self-formulation of Conscious Force on which our world is based as an apparent Inconscience that conceals in itself a supreme Conscious-Existence and holds all the powers of Being together in its inconscient secrecy, a world of universal Matter realising in itself Life, Mind, Overmind, Supermind, Spirit, each of them in its turn taking up the others as means of its self-expression, Matter proving in the spiritual vision to have been always itself a manifestation of the Spirit, is to the Overmind view a normal and easily realisable creation. In its power of origination and in the process of its executive dynamis Overmind is an organiser of many potentialities of Existence, each affirming its separate reality but all capable of linking themselves together in many different but simultaneous ways, a magician craftsman empowered to weave the multicoloured warp and woof of manifestation of a single entity in a complex universe. …
&
Socratic method: (from Socrates, who is said by Plato and Xenophon to have used this method) is a way of teaching in which the master professes to impart no information, (for, in the case of Socrates, he claimed to have none), but draws forth more and more definite answers by means of pointed questions. The method is best illustrated in Socrates' questioning of an unlearned slave boy in the Meno of Plato. The slave is led, step by step, to a demonstration of a special case of the Pythagorean theoiem. Socrates' original use of the method is predicated on the belief that children are born with knowledge already in their souls but that they cannot recall this knowledge without some help, (theory of anamnesis). It is also associated with Socratic Irony, i.e., the profession of ignorance on the part of a questioner, who may be in fact quite wise. -- V.J.B.
some impurity, weakness or, at the very least, ignorance. One should then seek out this weakness in oneself and correct it.
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usual- ly ages to reach abiding results ; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from ioconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and co- operator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transforma- tion. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid consersion. quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our
Spiritual evolution ::: It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the menial being realised in the fully deve- loped man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the supramental consciousness and the supramental being, the Truth-Consciousness which is the integral consciousness of the spiritual being. Mind cannot be our last conscious expression because mind is fundamentally an ignorance seeking for knowledge ; it is only the supramental Truth-Cons- ciousness that can bring us the true and whole Self-Knowledge and world-KnowIedge ; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and fulfilment of our spiritual evolution.
Sri Aurobindo: "And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be, — it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” *Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "By immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.” *The Upanishads
*Sri Aurobindo: "Dawn always means an opening of some kind — the coming of something that is not yet fully there.” Letters on Yoga ::: "As the Sun is image and godhead of the golden Light of the divine Truth, so Dawn is image and godhead of the opening out of the supreme illumination on the night of our human ignorance. Dawn daughter of Heaven and Night her sister are obverse and reverse sides of the same eternal Infinite.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Day and Night, – the latter the state of Ignorance that belongs to our material Nature, the former the state of illumined Knowledge that belongs to the divine Mind of which our mentality is a pale and dulled reflection.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One"s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength" or ‘Behold God"s power in me", but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate."” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation, because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise, there will be no longer any need of the gleam.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things. It might almost be considered as an invention of the hostile forces.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Intelligence does not depend on the amount one has read, it is a quality of the mind. Study only gives it material for its work as life also does. There are people who do not know how to read and write who are more intelligent than many highly educated people and understand life and things better. On the other hand, a good intelligence can improve itself by reading because it gets more material to work on and grows by exercise and by having a wider range to move in. But book-knowledge by itself is not the real thing, it has to be used as a help to the intelligence but it is often only a help to stupidity or ignorance — ignorance because knowledge of facts is a poor thing if one cannot see their true significance.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: . . . . Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of a limited capacity of knowledge, a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious and visible the things that are not obvious and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of the possible and the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true to outer experience. That is at least the appearance of its operation; but, in reality, it is the mind"s way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilities, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; . . .” (Author"s note at the preface to Savitri.)
Sri Aurobindo: “Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; …” (Note at the preface to Savitri.)
Sri Aurobindo: " Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance — when that ceases, when one lives in the Divine and no more in one"s separated smaller self, then only suffering can altogether cease.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
Sri Aurobindo: "The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings, — including Science itself, — must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Universal love is the spiritual founded on the sense of the One and the Divine everywhere and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Victory. The final emergence of the embodied consciousness on earth from the bondage of the Ignorance.” *On Himself
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . wrong will and falsehood of the steps, . . . separative egoism inflicting by its ignorance and separate contrary will harm on oneself or harm on others, self-driven to a wrong dealing with one"s own soul, mind, life or body or a wrong dealing with the soul, mind, life, body of others, . . . is the practical sense of all human evil.” *The Life Divine
" Suffering is not inflicted as a punishment for sin or for hostility — that is a wrong idea. Suffering comes like pleasure and good fortune as an inevitable part of life in the ignorance. The dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, good fortune and ill-fortune are the inevitable results of the ignorance which separates us from our true consciousness and from the Divine. Only by coming back to it can we get rid of suffering. Karma from the past lives exists, much of what happens is due to it, but not all. For we can mend our karma by our own consciousness and efforts. But the suffering is simply a natural consequence of past errors, not a punishment, just as a burn is the natural consequence of playing with fire. It is part of the experience by which the soul through its instruments learns and grows until it is ready to turn to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
“ Suffering is not inflicted as a punishment for sin or for hostility—that is a wrong idea. Suffering comes like pleasure and good fortune as an inevitable part of life in the ignorance. The dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, good fortune and ill-fortune are the inevitable results of the ignorance which separates us from our true consciousness and from the Divine. Only by coming back to it can we get rid of suffering. Karma from the past lives exists, much of what happens is due to it, but not all. For we can mend our karma by our own consciousness and efforts. But the suffering is simply a natural consequence of past errors, not a punishment, just as a burn is the natural consequence of playing with fire. It is part of the experience by which the soul through its instruments learns and grows until it is ready to turn to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
SUFFERING. ::: Life here is an evolution and the soul grows by experience, working out by it this or that in the nature, and if there is suffering, it is for the purpose of that working out, not as a judgment inflicted by God or Cosmic Law on the errors or stumblings which are inevitable in the Ignorance.
suffering ::: “ Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance—when that ceases, when one lives in the Divine and no more in one’s separated smaller self, then only suffering can altogether cease.” Letters on Yoga
Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Superniind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural Imperfec- tions and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Super- mind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the false- hoods and uncertainties that are our lot ; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the tnith
Supermind ::: The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and th
refore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is th
refore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or later. But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 558-62
Supramental Power or Shakti which can manifest direct its world of Light and Truth in which all is luminously based on the har- mony and unity of the One, not disturbed by a veil of Ignorance or any disguise.
Swabhava ::: Swabhava means one thing in the highest spiritual nature and takes quite another form and significance in the lower nature of the three gunas. There too it acts, but is not in full possession of itself, is seeking as it were for its own true law in a half light or a darkness and goes on its way through many lower forms, many false forms, endless imperfections, perversions, self-losings, self-findings, seekings after norm and rule before it arrives at self-discovery and perfection. Our nature here is amixed weft of knowledge and ignorance, of truth and falsehood, of success and failure, of right and wrong, of finding and losing, of sin and virtue.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 520-21
tamasa &
tamas ::: darkness, obscurity; [one of the three gunas]: the mode of ignorance and inertia, the force of inconscience (translates in quality as incapacity and inaction) .
tamasikata ::: [inertia, obscurity, ignorance].
Tamas: One of the three constituents (gunas) of the Cosmic Substance (prakriti), viz. the restraining aspect of Nature that obstructs and envelops the other two constituents by counteracting the tendency of rajas to do work and sattva to reveal; in Yoga, the quality of delusion or ignorance.
tamas. ::: qualities of darkness, dullness, error, ignorance, delusion, inactivity, sluggishness, heaviness, inertia, folly and evil; last and lowest of the three qualities
tamoguna. :::action which is limiting, localising, encircling, internalising and confining; absorbed by the quality of ignorance; gross, inert and visible; basis of all mental and physical forms and forces; originating from ignorance, it leads to extremes or slothfulness
The action of the animal sex-energy in Nature is a device for a particular purpose in the economy of the matcriaJ creation in the Ignorance. But the vital excitement that accompanies it makes the most favourable opportuni^ and vibration in the atmosphere for the inrush of those vital forces and beings whose ' whole business is to prevent the descent of the suprarnentaJ Light.
"The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one"s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one"s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one"s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces — for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness — and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in ::: —the nature.” Letters on Yoga*
“The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one’s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one’s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one’s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces—for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness—and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in—the nature.” Letters on Yoga
“The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” Letters on Yoga
"The Cross is in Yoga the symbol of the soul & nature in their strong & perfect union, but because of our fall into the impurities of ignorance it has become the symbol of suffering and purification.” Essays Divine and Human*
“The Cross is in Yoga the symbol of the soul & nature in their strong & perfect union, but because of our fall into the impurities of ignorance it has become the symbol of suffering and purification.” Essays Divine and Human
The Divine appears to us here in one view as an equal, inactive and impersonal Witness Spirit, an immobile consenting Purusha not bound by quality or Space or Time, whose support or sanction is given impartially to the play of all action and energies which the transcendent Will has once permitted and authorised to fulfil themselves in the cosmos. This Witness Spirit, this immobile Self in things, seems to will nothing and determine nothing; yet we become aware that his very passivity, his silent presence compels all things to travel even in their ignorance towards a divine goal and attracts through division towards a yet unrealised oneness. Yet no supreme infallible Divine Will seems to be there, only a widely deployed Cosmic Energy or a mechanical executive Process, Prakriti.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 432
"The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers.” Letters on Yoga
“The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers.” Letters on Yoga
The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the
“[The Divine in one of its three aspects] . . . is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe—although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives, and to return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul"s aim in life. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
“The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives, and to return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul’s aim in life. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
*The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives, and to return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul's aim in life. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.
“The enemy of faith is doubt, and yet doubt too is a utility and necessity, because man in his ignorance and in his progressive labour towards knowledge needs to be visited by doubt, otherwise he would remain obstinate in an ignorant belief and limited knowledge and unable to escape from his errors.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Eternal is our refuge; all the rest are false values, the Ignorance and its mazes, a self-bewilderment of the soul in phenomenal Nature.” The Life Divine*
“The Eternal is our refuge; all the rest are false values, the Ignorance and its mazes, a self-bewilderment of the soul in phenomenal Nature.” The Life Divine
"The evil forces are perversions of the Truth by the Ignorance — in any complete transformation they must disappear and the Truth behind them be delivered.” Letters on Yoga
“The evil forces are perversions of the Truth by the Ignorance—in any complete transformation they must disappear and the Truth behind them be delivered.” Letters on Yoga
The human body has always been in the habit of answering to whatever forces choose to lay hands on it and illness is the price it pays for its inertia and ignorance. It has to leam to answer to the one Force alone, but that is not easy for it to leam.
“The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
The impulse towards Itiya Is a creation of the mind, it is not the sole possible destiny of the soul. When the mind tries to abolish its own Ignorance, it finds no escape from it except by laya, because it supposes that there is no higher principle of cosmic experience beyond itself — beyond itself is only the pure
“The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” Letters on Savitri
“The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
“The integral Knowledge is something that is already there in the integral Reality: it is not a new or still non-existent thing that has to be created, acquired, learned, invented or built up by the mind; it must rather be discovered or uncovered, it is a Truth that is self-revealed to a spiritual endeavour: for it is there veiled in our deeper and greater self; it is the very stuff of our own spiritual consciousness, and it is by awaking to it even in our surface self that we have to possess it. There is an integral self-knowledge that we have to recover and, because the world-self also is our self, an integral world-knowledge. A knowledge that can be learned or constructed by the mind exists and has its value, but that is not what is meant when we speak of the Knowledge and the Ignorance.” The Life Divine
“The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers.
"The mind is ignorance seeking for the Truth, the supramental by its very definition is the Truth-Consciousness, Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power.” Letters on Yoga
“The mind is ignorance seeking for the Truth, the supramental by its very definition is the Truth-Consciousness, Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power.” Letters on Yoga
The Mother is dealing with the Ignorance in the fields of the
The Mother: "To be humble means for the mind, the vital and the body never to forget that without the Divine they know nothing, are noting and can do nothing; with the Divine they are nothing but ignorance, chaos and impotence. The Divine alone is Truth, Life, Power, Love, Felicity.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
"The personal and the impersonal are themselves posited and experienced by mind as separate realities and one or other is declared and seen as supreme, so that the personal can have laya in the Impersonal or, on the contrary, the impersonal disappears into the absolute reality of the supreme and divine Person — the impersonal in that view is only an attribute or power of the personal Divine. But at the summit of spiritual experience passing beyond mind one begins to feel the fusion of all these things into one. Consciousness, Existence, Ananda return to their indivisible unity, Sachchidananda. The personal and the impersonal become irrevocably one, so that to posit one as against the other appears as an act of ignorance.” *Letters on Yoga
“The personal and the impersonal are themselves posited and experienced by mind as separate realities and one or other is declared and seen as supreme, so that the personal can have laya in the Impersonal or, on the contrary, the impersonal disappears into the absolute reality of the supreme and divine Person—the impersonal in that view is only an attribute or power of the personal Divine. But at the summit of spiritual experience passing beyond mind one begins to feel the fusion of all these things into one. Consciousness, Existence, Ananda return to their indivisible unity, Sachchidananda. The personal and the impersonal become irrevocably one, so that to posit one as against the other appears as an act of ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
The Prakrti b divided into the lower and the Ji/g/ter ::: the lower b the Prakrti of the Ignorance, the Prakrti of mind, life and matter separated in consdonsness from the Divine ; the higher b the Divine Prakrti of Sachchidananda with its mani-
"The progress of Life involves the development and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in conflict with each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground of unity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make possible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, must be increasingly the common aim of humanity in its active life-evolution, if it at all means to rise out of life"s more confused, painful and obscure movement, out of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience of Matter. This can only be truly and satisfactorily done when the soul discovers itself in its highest and completest spiritual reality and effects a progressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth their standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements, and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other.” *The Human Cycle, etc.
“The progress of Life involves the development and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in conflict with each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground of unity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make possible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, must be increasingly the common aim of humanity in its active life-evolution, if it at all means to rise out of life’s more confused, painful and obscure movement, out of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience of Matter. This can only be truly and satisfactorily done when the soul discovers itself in its highest and completest spiritual reality and effects a progressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth their standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements, and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other.” The Human Cycle, etc.
"There are, according to the Sankhya philosophy accepted in this respect by the Gita, three essential qualities or modes of the world-energy and therefore also of human nature, sattva, the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction, rajas, the mode of passion, action and struggling emotion, tamas, the mode of ignorance and inertia.” Essays on the Gita
“There are, according to the Sankhya philosophy accepted in this respect by the Gita, three essential qualities or modes of the world-energy and therefore also of human nature, sattva, the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction, rajas, the mode of passion, action and struggling emotion, tamas, the mode of ignorance and inertia.” Essays on the Gita
::: **"There is no fear in the higher Nature. Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things.” Letters on Yoga
“There is no fear in the higher Nature. Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things.” Letters on Yoga
“There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
..the release from subconscient ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functioning of the body must be among the ultimate results of a supramental change.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 330 ::: .Supraphysical Worlds ::: This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an embodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance tangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical form-matter. These worlds and beings may have nothing to do with ourselves and our life, they may exercise no action upon us; but often also they enter into secret communication with earth-existence, obey or embody and are the intermediaries and instruments of the cosmic powers and influences of which we have a subjective experience, or themselves act by their own initiation upon the terrestrial world’s life and motives and happenings. It is possible to receive help or guidance or harm or misguidance from these beings; it is possible even to become subject to their influence, to be possessed by their invasion or domination, to be instrumentalised by them for their good or evil purpose. At times the progress of earthly life seems to be a vast field of battle between supraphysical Forces of either character, those that strive to uplift, encourage and illumine and those that strive to deflect, depress or prevent or even shatter our upward evolution or the soul’s self-expression in the material universe. Some of these Beings, Powers or Forces are such that we think of them as divine; they are luminous, benignant or powerfully helpful: there are others that are Titanic, gigantic or demoniac, inordinate Influences, instigators or creators often of vast and formidable inner upheavals or of actions that overpass the normal human measure. There may also be an awareness of influences, presences, beings that do not seem to belong to other worlds beyond us but are here as a hidden element behind the veil in terrestrial nature. As contact with the supraphysical is possible, a contact can also take place subjective or objective—or at least objectivised— between our own consciousness and the consciousness of other once embodied beings who have passed into a supraphysical status in these other regions of existence. It is possible also to pass beyond a subjective contact or a subtle-sense perception and, in certain subliminal states of consciousness, to enter actually into other worlds and know something of their secrets. It is the more objective order of other-worldly experience that seized most the imagination of mankind in the past, but it was put by popular belief into a gross-objective statement which unduly assimilated these phenomena to those of the physical world with which we are familiar; for it is the normal tendency of our mind to turn everything into forms or symbols proper to its own kind and terms of experience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22 Page: 806-07
The soul or psyche is immutable only^ in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing ps3'cbic individual evolving in tbS manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part Jn the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine J^re that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until h is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge. This evolving psychic being is not therefore at any time all that the soul or essential psychic existence bears within it.
::: "The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga
“The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge.” Letters on Yoga
“The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” Letters on Yoga
The story of Mel, a Real Programmer "programming, person" A 1983 article by Ed Nather about {hacker} {Mel Kaye}. The full text follows. A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming made the bald and unvarnished statement, "Real Programmers write in FORTRAN". Maybe they do now, in this decadent era of Lite beer, hand calculators and "user-friendly" software but back in the Good Old Days, when the term "software" sounded funny and Real Computers were made out of {drums} and {vacuum tubes}, Real Programmers wrote in {machine code} - not {Fortran}, not {RATFOR}, not even {assembly language} - {Machine Code}, raw, unadorned, inscrutable {hexadecimal} numbers, directly. Lest a whole new generation of programmers grow up in ignorance of this glorious past, I feel duty-bound to describe, as best I can through the generation gap, how a Real Programmer wrote code. I'll call him Mel, because that was his name. I first met Mel when I went to work for {Royal McBee Computer Corporation}, a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter company. The firm manufactured the {LGP-30}, a small, cheap (by the standards of the day) {drum}-memory computer, and had just started to manufacture the RPC-4000, a much-improved, bigger, better, faster -- drum-memory computer. Cores cost too much, and weren't here to stay, anyway. (That's why you haven't heard of the company, or the computer.) I had been hired to write a {Fortran} compiler for this new marvel and Mel was my guide to its wonders. Mel didn't approve of compilers. "If a program can't rewrite its own code," he asked, "what good is it?" Mel had written, in {hexadecimal}, the most popular computer program the company owned. It ran on the {LGP-30} and played blackjack with potential customers at computer shows. Its effect was always dramatic. The LGP-30 booth was packed at every show, and the IBM salesmen stood around talking to each other. Whether or not this actually sold computers was a question we never discussed. Mel's job was to re-write the blackjack program for the {RPC-4000}. ({Port}? What does that mean?) The new computer had a one-plus-one addressing scheme, in which each machine instruction, in addition to the {operation code} and the address of the needed {operand}, had a second address that indicated where, on the revolving drum, the next instruction was located. In modern parlance, every single instruction was followed by a {GO TO}! Put *that* in {Pascal}'s pipe and smoke it. Mel loved the RPC-4000 because he could optimize his code: that is, locate instructions on the drum so that just as one finished its job, the next would be just arriving at the "read head" and available for immediate execution. There was a program to do that job, an "optimizing assembler", but Mel refused to use it. "You never know where its going to put things", he explained, "so you'd have to use separate constants". It was a long time before I understood that remark. Since Mel knew the numerical value of every operation code, and assigned his own drum addresses, every instruction he wrote could also be considered a numerical constant. He could pick up an earlier "add" instruction, say, and multiply by it, if it had the right numeric value. His code was not easy for someone else to modify. I compared Mel's hand-optimised programs with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program, and Mel's always ran faster. That was because the "{top-down}" method of program design hadn't been invented yet, and Mel wouldn't have used it anyway. He wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first, so they would get first choice of the optimum address locations on the drum. The optimizing assembler wasn't smart enough to do it that way. Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either, even when the balky {Flexowriter} required a delay between output characters to work right. He just located instructions on the drum so each successive one was just *past* the read head when it was needed; the drum had to execute another complete revolution to find the next instruction. He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure. Although "optimum" is an absolute term, like "unique", it became common verbal practice to make it relative: "not quite optimum" or "less optimum" or "not very optimum". Mel called the maximum time-delay locations the "most pessimum". After he finished the blackjack program and got it to run, ("Even the initialiser is optimised", he said proudly) he got a Change Request from the sales department. The program used an elegant (optimised) {random number generator} to shuffle the "cards" and deal from the "deck", and some of the salesmen felt it was too fair, since sometimes the customers lost. They wanted Mel to modify the program so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console, they could change the odds and let the customer win. Mel balked. He felt this was patently dishonest, which it was, and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer, which it did, so he refused to do it. The Head Salesman talked to Mel, as did the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging, a few Fellow Programmers. Mel finally gave in and wrote the code, but he got the test backward, and, when the sense switch was turned on, the program would cheat, winning every time. Mel was delighted with this, claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical, and adamantly refused to fix it. After Mel had left the company for greener pa$ture$, the Big Boss asked me to look at the code and see if I could find the test and reverse it. Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to look. Tracking Mel's code was a real adventure. I have often felt that programming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art; there are lovely gems and brilliant coups hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever, by the very nature of the process. You can learn a lot about an individual just by reading through his code, even in hexadecimal. Mel was, I think, an unsung genius. Perhaps my greatest shock came when I found an innocent loop that had no test in it. No test. *None*. Common sense said it had to be a closed loop, where the program would circle, forever, endlessly. Program control passed right through it, however, and safely out the other side. It took me two weeks to figure it out. The RPC-4000 computer had a really modern facility called an {index register}. It allowed the programmer to write a program loop that used an indexed instruction inside; each time through, the number in the index register was added to the address of that instruction, so it would refer to the next datum in a series. He had only to increment the index register each time through. Mel never used it. Instead, he would pull the instruction into a machine register, add one to its address, and store it back. He would then execute the modified instruction right from the register. The loop was written so this additional execution time was taken into account -- just as this instruction finished, the next one was right under the drum's read head, ready to go. But the loop had no test in it. The vital clue came when I noticed the index register bit, the bit that lay between the address and the operation code in the instruction word, was turned on-- yet Mel never used the index register, leaving it zero all the time. When the light went on it nearly blinded me. He had located the data he was working on near the top of memory -- the largest locations the instructions could address -- so, after the last datum was handled, incrementing the instruction address would make it overflow. The carry would add one to the operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set: a jump instruction. Sure enough, the next program instruction was in address location zero, and the program went happily on its way. I haven't kept in touch with Mel, so I don't know if he ever gave in to the flood of change that has washed over programming techniques since those long-gone days. I like to think he didn't. In any event, I was impressed enough that I quit looking for the offending test, telling the Big Boss I couldn't find it. He didn't seem surprised. When I left the company, the blackjack program would still cheat if you turned on the right sense switch, and I think that's how it should be. I didn't feel comfortable hacking up the code of a Real Programmer." [Posted to {Usenet} by its author, Ed Nather "utastro!nather", on 1983-05-21]. {Jargon File (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html)}. [{On the trail of a Real Programmer (http://www.jamtronix.com/blog/2011/03/25/on-the-trail-of-a-real-programmer/)}, 2011-03-25 blog post by "jonno" at Jamtronix] [When did it happen? Did Mel use hexadecimal or octal?] (2003-09-12)
The subconscient is not the whole foundation of the nature; it is only the lower basis of the Ignorance and affects mostly the lower vital and physical exterior consciousness and these again affect the higher parts of the nature. While it is well to see what it is and how it acts, one must not be too preoccupied with this dark side or this apparent aspect of the instrumental being. One should rather regard it as something not oneself, a mask of false nature imposed on the true being by the Ignorance. The true being is the inner with all its vast possibilities of reaching and expressing the Divine and especially the inmost, the soul, the psychic Purusha which is always in its essence pure, divine, turned to all that is good and true and beautiful. The exterior being has to be taken hold of by the inner being and turned into an instrument no longer of the upsurging of the ignorant subconscient Nature, but of the Divine. It is by remembering always that and opening the nature upwards that the Divine Consciousness can be reached and descend from above into the whole inner and outer existence, mental, vital, physical, the subconscient, the subliminal, all that we overtly or secretly are. This should be the main preoccupation. To dwell solely on the subconscient and the aspect of imperfection creates depression and should be avoided. One has to keep a right balance and stress on the positive side most, recognising the other but only to reject and change it. This and a constant faith and reliance on the Mother are what is needed for the transformation to come. P.S. It is certainly the abrupt and decisive breaking that is the easiest and best way for these things—vital habits.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 355
The subconscient is universal as well as individual like all the other main parts of the Nature. But there are different parts or planes of the subconscient. All upon earth is based on the Inconscient as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete "sub"-conscience, a suppressed or involved consciousness, in which there is everything but nothing is formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body. It contains the potentiality of all the primitive reactions to life which struggle out to the surface from the dull and inert strands of Matter and form by a constant development a slowly evolving and self-formulating consciousness; it contains them not as ideas, perceptions or conscious reactions but as the fluid substance of these things. But also all that is consciously experienced sinks down into the subconscient, not as precise though submerged memories but as obscure yet obstinate impressions of experience, and these can come up at any time as dreams, as mechanical repetitions of past thought, feelings, action, etc., as "complexes" exploding into action and event, etc., etc. The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearance. It is the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever. All seeds are there and all Sanskaras of the mind, vital and body,—it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 354
The supermind is a Truth- Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 280
The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe- The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence ; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable.
"The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness.” The Supramental Manifestation
“The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness.” The Supramental Manifestation
The surrender of the vital is always difficult because of the unwillingness of the forces of the universal vital Ignorance.
“The true soul secret in us,—subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil,—this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
The Truth-Consciousness whether above or in the universe by which the Divine knows not only hts own essence and being but his manifestation also. The fundamental character is knowledge by identity, by that the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of manifestation is known because this too is That, Mind is an Instrument of the Ignorance trying to know •— Supermind is the Knower possessing Knowledge, because one with it and the known, therefore seeing all things in the light of His own Truth, the light of their true self which is He. U is a dynamic and not only a siatic Power, not only a
The union has a threefold character. There is a union in spiritual essence, by identity; there is a union by the indwelling of our soul in this highest Being and Consciousness; there is a dynamic union of likeness or oneness of nature between That and our instrumental being here. The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samıpya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude. The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the high intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 131
The vita! is the being behind the Force of Life ; in its outer form in the ignorance it generates the desire-soul which governs most men and which they mistake often for the soul. The vital as the desire-soul and desire-nature controls the consciousness to a large extent in most men because men are governed by desire.
“The vital is the. . . being behind the Force of Life; in its outer form in the Ignorance it generates the desire-soul which governs most men and which they mistake often for the real soul.
"The vital is the. . . being behind the Force of Life; in its outer form in the Ignorance it generates the desire-soul which governs most men and which they mistake often for the real soul. ::: The vital as the desire-soul and desire-nature controls the consciousness to a large extent in most men, because men are governed by desire.” Letters on Yoga
“The will of man works in the ignorance by a partial light or more often flickerings of light which mislead as much as they illuminate. His mind is an ignorance striving to erect standards of knowledge, his will an ignorance striving to erect standards of right, and his whole mentality as a result very much a house divided against itself, idea in conflict with idea, the will often in conflict with the ideal of right or the intellectual knowledge. The will itself takes different shapes, the will of the intelligence, the wishes of the emotional mind, the desires and the passion of the vital being, the impulsions and blind or half-blind compulsions of the nervous and the subconscient nature, and all these make by no means a harmony, but at best a precarious concord among discords. The will of the mind and life is a stumbling about in search of right force, right Tapas which can wholly be attained in its true and complete light and direction only by oneness with the spiritual and supramental being.” The Synthesis of Yoga
.. this being we are is or can be whatever it has the faith and will to be – for faith is only will aiming at a higher truth – and cease to set limits to our possibility… - Sri Aurobindo ::: .Falsehood ::: Falsehood, on the other hand, is not this Avidya, but an extreme result of it. It is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and th
refore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the Yogic sense, mithya, moha.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 103
This is because its very nature is knowledge ::: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in itS own right ; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper per- ception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter end boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error ::: it starts from truth and light and moves always in troth and light. As its know- ledge is always true, so too its will is always true ; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the
“This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
tions; but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own possibilities. The natural possibilities of a world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which they live, an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error, an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to enjoy, parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark Infinite. …
to the psychic. The psychic never feels a sadness from disap- pointed desire, because that is not in its nature ; the sorrow it sometimes feels is when it sees the Divine rejected or the mental, vital, physical in man or in nature turning away from the Truth to follow perversion, darkness or ignorance.
trail ::: v. t. --> To hunt by the track; to track.
To draw or drag, as along the ground.
To carry, as a firearm, with the breech near the ground and the upper part inclined forward, the piece being held by the right hand near the middle.
To tread down, as grass, by walking through it; to lay flat.
To take advantage of the ignorance of; to impose upon.
Transcendent ::: “A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence—and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal—of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth—a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos.” The Synthesis of Yoga
transcendent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence — and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal — of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth — a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three powers overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation; this is the first of the Trinities. In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental terms and none of them can be neglected if we would have the experience of the whole Truth of existence. Out of the individual we wake into a vaster freer cosmic consciousness; but out of the universal too with its complex of forms and powers we must emerge by a still greater self-exceeding into a consciousness without limits that is founded on the Absolute.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge.” The Life Divine
The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her — the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities.” Letters on Yoga
**Transcendent"s.**
transformation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body — and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended — they can only be mended by transformation.” *Letters on Yoga
"‘Transformation" is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind") to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change — the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” *Letters on Yoga
"It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
The Mother: "Transformation. The change by which all the elements and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth.”
"One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
treta yuga. ::: the age where there is the introduction of ignorance; this yuga &
trigun.a ::: the three gun.as, qualities or modes of the lower Nature triguna (apara prakr.ti), called sattva, rajas and tamas, which may be defined "in terms of the motion of the universal Energy as Nature"s three concomitant and inseparable powers of equilibrium, kinesis and inertia"; psychologically, tamas is "Nature"s power of nescience", rajas "her power of active seeking ignorance enlightened by desire and impulsion", and sattva "her power of possessing and harmonising knowledge". Among these gun.as "there is a necessary disequilibrium, a shifting inconstancy of measures and a perpetual struggle for domination" which can cease only when "the disharmonies of the triple mode of our inferior existence are overpassed and there begins a greater triple mode of a divine Nature" (para prakr.ti); tamas, rajas and sattva are then replaced by sama, tapas (or pravr.tti) and prakasa, of which they are "imperfect or degraded forms".
trigun.atita (trigunatita; trigunatitam) ::: beyond the trigun.a, "supetrigunatita rior to the three qualities and master of them and therefore at once capable of action and unaffected, undominated by its own action"; brahman manifesting in "the repose, kinesis, illumination of the divine Nature" above "this nature of the Ignorance with its unquiet unbalanced activity of the three modes". trigun trigunatita
Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself,—Intuition especially with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up local points and stretches of country in our consciousness,—which can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner being and then as a result in the outer surface self also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material, vital, mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as the Creator Power in the universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy we can see the stamp of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above. …
unacquaintance ::: n. --> The quality or state of being unacquainted; want of acquaintance; ignorance.
unconning ::: a. --> Not knowing; ignorant. ::: n. --> Ignorance.
uncunningness ::: n. --> Ignorance.
unintelligence ::: n. --> Absence or lack of intelligence; unwisdom; ignorance.
“Universal love is the spiritual founded on the sense of the One and the Divine everywhere and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
unknown ::: “The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity.” The Life Divine
unscience ::: n. --> Want of science or knowledge; ignorance.
unskill ::: n. --> Want of skill; ignorance; unskillfulness.
unwisdom ::: n. --> Want of wisdom; unwise conduct or action; folly; simplicity; ignorance.
unwit ::: v. t. --> To deprive of wit. ::: n. --> Want of wit or understanding; ignorance.
veil (the) ::: the veil of Ignorance.
victim ::: 1. One who is harmed or killed by another. 2. One who is harmed by or made to suffer from an act, circumstance, agency, or condition. 3. A living creature slain and offered as a sacrifice during a religious rite. 4. One who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency. victim"s, victims.
VICTORY. ::: The final emergence of the embodied conscious- ness on earth from the bondage of the Ignorance.
victory ::: “Victory. The final emergence of the embodied consciousness on earth from the bondage of the Ignorance.” On Himself
vidya-avidyamayi maya ::: [maya composed of Knowledge and Ignorance].
vidya avidya ::: the Knowledge and the Ignorance.
vidya-avidya ::: the Knowledge-Ignorance, where vidya, the convidya-avidya sciousness of unity, is subject to the conditions of avidya, the divided consciousness.
Vidya ::: Knowledge appears to signify a consciousness of the Truth, the Right, satyam rtam, and of all that is of the order of the Truth and Right; ignorance is an unconsciousness, acitti, of the Truth and Right.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 506
—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….
"We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
“We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
“We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge.” The Life Divine
*What is meant here is the Divine in its essential manifestation which reveals itself to us as Light and Consciousness, Power, Love and Beauty. But in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient—the inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this Universe,— or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat. The Ignorance which is the characteristic of our mind and life is the result of this origin in the Inconscience. Moreover, in the evolution out of inconscient existence there rise up naturally powers and beings which are interested in the maintenance of all negations of the Divine, error and unconsciousness, pain, suffering, obscurity, death, weakness, illness, disharmony, evil. Hence the perversion of the manifestation here, its inability to reveal the true essence of the Divine. Yet in the very base of this evolution all that is divine is there involved and pressing to evolve, Light, Consciousness, Power, Perfection, Beauty, Love. For in the Inconscient itself and behind the perversions of the Ignorance Divine Consciousness lies concealed and works and must more and more appear, throwing off in the end its disguises. That is why it is said that the world is called to express the Divine.
What we call Ignorance is not really anything else than a power of the one divine Knowledge-Will or Maya; it is the capacity of the One Consciousness similarly to regulate, to hold back, measure, relate in a particular way the action of its Knowledge.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 515
"What we have called specifically the Mind of Light is indeed the last of a series of descending planes of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a self-chosen limitation or modification of its self-manifesting activities, but its essential character remains the same: there is in it an action of light, of truth, of knowledge in which inconscience, ignorance and error claim no place.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“What we have called specifically the Mind of Light is indeed the last of a series of descending planes of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a self-chosen limitation or modification of its self-manifesting activities, but its essential character remains the same: there is in it an action of light, of truth, of knowledge in which inconscience, ignorance and error claim no place.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Wheel of life: (1) Samsara (q.v.)—(2) A wheel often depicted in Tibetan paintings, setting forth the basic beliefs in reincarnation found in Lamaism. The endless circumference of the wheel is symbolic of immortality; the three prominences of the hub symbolize the three great vices, ignorance, lust and anger, a lapse into which will make the wrongdoer reincarnate as an insect or other low life-form in his next life; the six spokes symbolize the six principle divisions of life and religion: the gods, the demigods, hell, the tortured souls, human beings, and animals.
When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant’s groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we arc so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in uniwrsal Nature. The self-abnega- tion of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment ; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.
When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant’s groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we are so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. The self-abnegation of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 59-60
Will (Divine) ::: something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will not be an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda.
will, human ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The will of man works in the ignorance by a partial light or more often flickerings of light which mislead as much as they illuminate. His mind is an ignorance striving to erect standards of knowledge, his will an ignorance striving to erect standards of right, and his whole mentality as a result very much a house divided against itself, idea in conflict with idea, the will often in conflict with the ideal of right or the intellectual knowledge. The will itself takes different shapes, the will of the intelligence, the wishes of the emotional mind, the desires and the passion of the vital being, the impulsions and blind or half-blind compulsions of the nervous and the subconscient nature, and all these make by no means a harmony, but at best a precarious concord among discords. The will of the mind and life is a stumbling about in search of right force, right Tapas which can wholly be attained in its true and complete light and direction only by oneness with the spiritual and supramental being.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
with her foot on the Divine itself ::: then she comes to herself and the struggle and destruction are over"; the Goddess (devi) into whose undivided consciousness-force (cit-sakti) "our divided & unequal individual force of action & thought" is to be renounced in order "to 86 replace our egoistic activities by the play in our body of the universal Kali and thus exchange blindness & ignorance for knowledge and ineffective human strength for the divine effective Force"; the sakti carrying out the lila according to the pleasure of the isvara, the second member of the karma catus.t.aya; sometimes the same as Mahakali.
work ::: “I do not mean by work action done in the ego and the ignorance, for the satisfaction of the ego and in the drive of rajasic desire. There can be no Karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego, rajas and desire, which are the seals of ignorance.
Works of Sri Aurobindo—English—CWSA—The Life Divine—The Boundaries Of The Ignorance
work ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I do not mean by work action done in the ego and the ignorance, for the satisfaction of the ego and in the drive of rajasic desire. There can be no Karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego, rajas and desire, which are the seals of ignorance.
world ::: 1. Everything that exists; the universe; the macrocosm. 2. The earth with its inhabitants. 3. Any sphere, realm, or domain, with all pertaining to it. 4. Any period, state, or sphere of existence. world"s, worlds, wonder-world, wonder-worlds, world-adventure, world-adventure"s, world-being"s, World-Bliss, world-cloak, world-conjecture"s, world-creating, world-creators, world-delight, World-Delight, world-destiny, world-destroying, world-disillusion"s, world-dream, world-drowse, world-egos, world-energies, world-energy, World-Energy, world-force, world-experience, world-fact, world-failure"s, world-fate, World-Force, world-forces, World-free, World-Geometer"s, world-heart, world-idea, world-ignorance, World-Ignorance, World-maker"s, world-indifference, world-interpreting, world-kindergarten, world-knowledge, world-law, world-laws, world-libido"s, world-making"s, World-Matter"s, World-naked, world-need, world-ocean"s, world-outline, world-pain, world-passion, World-personality, world-pile, world-plan, world-power, World-Power, World-Power"s, World-Puissance, world-rapture, world-redeemer"s, world-rhyme, world-rhythms, world-scene, world-scheme, world-sea, World-Self, world-shape, world-shapes, world-space, world-stuff, world-symbol, World-symbols, World-task, world-time, World-Time‘s, world-tree, world-ways, world-whim, dream-world, heaven-world, mid-world.
world ignorance
world-ignorance ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Our self-ignorance and our world-ignorance can only grow towards integral self-knowledge and integral world-knowledge in proportion as our limited ego and its half-blind consciousness open to a greater inner existence and consciousness and a true self-being and become aware too of the not-self outside it also as self, — on one side a Nature constituent of our own nature, on the other an Existence which is a boundless continuation of our own self-being. Our being has to break the walls of ego-consciousness which it has created, it has to extend itself beyond its body and inhabit the body of the universe.” The Life Divine
world-knowledge ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The integral Knowledge is something that is already there in the integral Reality: it is not a new or still non-existent thing that has to be created, acquired, learned, invented or built up by the mind; it must rather be discovered or uncovered, it is a Truth that is self-revealed to a spiritual endeavour: for it is there veiled in our deeper and greater self; it is the very stuff of our own spiritual consciousness, and it is by awaking to it even in our surface self that we have to possess it. There is an integral self-knowledge that we have to recover and, because the world-self also is our self, an integral world-knowledge. A knowledge that can be learned or constructed by the mind exists and has its value, but that is not what is meant when we speak of the Knowledge and the Ignorance.” *The Life Divine
KEYS (10k)
194 Sri Aurobindo
31 The Mother
23 Sri Ramakrishna
7 Manly P Hall
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
5 Saint Thomas Aquinas
4 Hermes
4 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
2 Swami Vijnanananda
2 Swami Ramakrishnananda
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Sri Aurobindo
2 Socrates
2 Rene Guenon
2 Ramesh Balsekar
2 Ramakrishna
2 Patanjali
2 Nicholas of Cusa
2 Manapurush Swami Shivananda
2 Joseph Campbell
2 Chinese Proverb
2 Chamtrul Rinpoche
2 Plato
2 Ibn Arabi
2 Bodhidharma
1 Tsongkapa
1 Tolstoi
1 The Sophia of Jesus
1 The Mother
1 The Mahasiddha Shantideva
1 Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
1 Taigu Ryokan
1 Swami Satyananda Saraswati
1 Swami Rama
1 SWAMI PREMANANDA
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 SRI ADI SHANKARACHARYA
1 Sigmund Freud
1 Shinjo Ito
1 Shaykh Mehmet Adil al-Haqqani Al-Naqshabandi
1 Shakespeare
1 Saul Williams
1 Sanyutta Nikaya
1 Saint Jerome
1 Robert Anton Wilson
1 Rene Guenon: Initiation And Spiritual Realization (1952)
1 Ramakrishan
1 Proverbs IX. 6
1 Proclus
1 Porphyry
1 Percy Bysshe Shelley
1 PARAMAHAMSA YOGANANDA
1 Osho
1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
1 Nicolas of Cusa
1 Narada Sutra
1 Mortimer J Adler
1 Mooji
1 Michel de Montaigne
1 Mark Twain
1 Margaret Atwood
1 Marcus Tullius Cicero
1 Marcus Aurelius
1 Manly P Hall?
1 Majihima Nikaya
1 Magghima Nikaya
1 Latita Vistara
1 Kant
1 Julian Huxley
1 John Wheeler
1 Jigme Lingpa
1 James Clerk Maxwell
1 Jalaluddin Rumi
1 H P Lovecraft
1 Hippocrates
1 Hermes II
1 Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
1 Georges Van Vrekhem
1 George Carlin
1 George Bernard Shaw
1 Galatians. V. 23
1 From the "Ashtavakra Gita."
1 Dzogchen Rinpoche III
1 Dhammapada 243
1 Dalai Lama
1 "Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi
1 Charles F Haanel
1 Charles Darwin
1 Buddhist Texts
1 Blaise Pascal
1 Bhagavat Purana
1 Bhagavad Gita V. 16
1 Bhagavad Gita
1 Benjamin Franklin
1 Baha ullah
1 Averroes
1 Attar of Nishapur
1 Alfred Korzybski
1 Albert Pike
1 Swami Vivekananda
1 Jorge Luis Borges
1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 Jalaluddin Rumi
1 Epictetus
1 Aleister Crowley
1 African Proverb
1 A B Purani
1 Aberjhani
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
28 Sri Aurobindo
16 Socrates
14 Plato
14 Mark Twain
14 Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
12 Victor Hugo
12 Swami Vivekananda
12 Neil deGrasse Tyson
12 Henry David Thoreau
12 Anonymous
9 William Shakespeare
9 Thomas Jefferson
9 Samuel Johnson
9 Dalai Lama XIV
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
8 George Eliot
7 Terry Pratchett
7 Maya Angelou
7 Herman Melville
7 Charles Darwin
1:I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
~ Socrates,#KEYS
2:Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. ~ Saint Jerome, #KEYS
3:If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." ~ African Proverb, #KEYS
4:Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil. ~ Plato, #KEYS
5:There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
~ Socrates,#KEYS
6:Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom." ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
7:Not Engaging in Ignorance is Wisdom.
~ Bodhidharma,#KEYS
8:Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. ~ Mark Twain, #KEYS
9:The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#KEYS
10:Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #KEYS
11:Ignorance of future ills is a more useful thing than knowledge. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #KEYS
12:Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
~ Michel de Montaigne,#KEYS
13:The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #KEYS
14:Ecclesiastes shows that man without God is in total ignorance and inevitable misery. ~ Blaise Pascal, #KEYS
15:Knowledge leads to unity and ignorance to diversity. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
16:Forsake your ignorance and live. ~ Proverbs IX. 6, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
17:Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #KEYS
18:What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
19:And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. ~ Shakespeare, #KEYS
20:True knowledge leads to unity, ignorance to diversity. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
21:The evil of the soul is ignorance. ~ Hermes, "The Key", the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
22:Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is the equation. ~ Averroes, #KEYS
23:Nothing is worse than active ignorance. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #KEYS
24:Only remove ignorance. That is all there is to be done. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
25:Ignorance is not a state of innocence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Purity, #KEYS
26:The plague of ignorance overflows all the earth. ~ Hermes II, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
27:There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. ~ Hippocrates, #KEYS
28:True knowledge leads to unity, ignorance to diversity. ~ Ramakrishan, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
29:The "I" or "Mine" of the individual comes of Ajnana -- ignorance of truth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
30:Three roots of evil: desire, disliking and ignorance. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
31:Ignorance is also most always on the point of doing evil. ~ Chinese Proverb, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
32:Ignorance is nothing but a superimposition of the non-self. The destruction of ignorance is liberation. ~ SRI ADI SHANKARACHARYA, #KEYS
33:The idea of thou and I is a fruit of the soul's ignorance. ~ Bhagavat Purana, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
34:Where ignorance shat, violence and horror fed the beasts of chaos." ~ Aberjhani, quote from "The River of Winged Dreams.", (2005)., #KEYS
35:If you know the Self, there will be no darkness, no ignorance and no misery. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
36:Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
37:Get rid of your ignorance which makes you think that you are other than Bliss. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
38:Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
39:Limited and divided being is ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Doctrine of the Mystics, #KEYS
40:The knot of the Ignorance is egoism. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: The Inhabiting Godhead, Life and Action, #KEYS
41:Egotism exists in ignorance, not in knowledge. He attains the Truth who is void of conceit. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
42:The knowledge which purifies the intelligence is true knowledge. All the rest is ignorance. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
43:A struggling ignorance is his wisdom's mate: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
44:Ignorance is the field in which all other difficulties grow. ~ Patanjali, Aphorisms II. 4, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
45:Ignorance is the night of the spirit, but a night without stars or moon. ~ Chinese Proverb, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
46:All the values of the mind are constructions of ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
47:Ignorance was a thin shade protecting light, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
48:It is always the business of man the thinker to know. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
49:The lower is for us the first condition of the higher. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
50:Oneness and multiplicity are poles of the same Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
51:Problems are the creations of mental ignorance seeking for knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
52:The beginning of Ignorance is a limitation of Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
53:The accumulated ignorance and misdoings of innumerable births vanish at one glance of the gracious God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
54:All ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine and the Undivine, #KEYS
55:It is only through consciousness that we can approach Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
56:What we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #KEYS
57:Deluded by ignorance, you become attached to sense objects and go deeper and deeper into the abyss of Maya. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
58:Knowledge and Ignorance are in their nature subjective. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Inner Experience and Outer Life, #KEYS
59:Division of consciousness is the basis of the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #KEYS
60:It is on the blindness of ignorance that is founded the working which affirms the ego. ~ Sanyutta Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
61:The Avatar is the sun of divine knowledge whose light dispels the accumulated darkness and ignorance of ages. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
62:The knowledge which purifies the intelligence is true knowledge. All the rest is ignorance. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
63:Errors are permitted to the mind because they open doors upon truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of the Ignorance, #KEYS
64:Man moves towards something which fulfils the universe by transcending it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Knowledge and Ignorance, #KEYS
65:Moral evil is in reality a form of mental disease or ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Delight of Existence, The Problem, #KEYS
66:Memory is only a process of consciousness, a utility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #KEYS
67:The words "My" and "Mine" spring from ignorance. How few of us say things came into existence by the will of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
68:This world is in love with its own ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
69:Egotism exists in ignorance, not in knowledge. The rain water stands in low places, but runs off from high places. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
70:She throws a glittering robe on Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #KEYS
71:The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
72:Knowledge and ignorance are of the mind. But the Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. It is light itself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
73:Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #KEYS
74:No action, however vast, exhausts the original power from which it proceeds. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of the Ignorance, #KEYS
75:Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
76:The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Problems in Human Relations, #KEYS
77:Nirvana means to extinguish the burning fires of the Three Poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance. This can be accomplished by letting go of dissatisfaction." ~ Shinjo Ito, #KEYS
78:Pain and suffering are necessary results of the Ignorance in which we live. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
79:A city of ancient Ignorance
Founded upon a soil that knew not Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
80:Ego is the most formidable of the knots which keep us tied to the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #KEYS
81:Prakriti is the action of the All-conscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance, #KEYS
82:Self-justification is always a sign of ego and ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Problems in Human Relations
Self-Justification#KEYS
83:The divine Maya comprehends Vidya as well as Avidya, the Knowledge as well as the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Mind and Supermind, #KEYS
84:Absolute consciousness is in its nature absolute power; the nature of Chit is Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of the Ignorance, #KEYS
85:A man can be secure from sin in the will, only when his intellect is secure from ignorance and from error ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.70)., #KEYS
86:Limitation by ignorance and error is the fundamental defect of an untransformed mind, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Divine Body, #KEYS
87:The knowledge of the absolute does away, in the end, with both knowledge and ignorance, since knowledge is free from all duality. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
88:We are not only what we know of ourselves but an immense more which we do not know. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #KEYS
89:All sin is an error of the will, a desire and act of the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis, #KEYS
90:Look for the ego, and it vanishes. If you enquire, ignorance will be found to be non-existent. It is the mind which feels misery and darkness. See the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
91:With ignorance are born all the passions, with the destruction of ignorance the passions also are destroyed. ~ Majihima Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
92:Error is the constant denial by the All of the ego's false sufficiency in a limited knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Knowledge and Ignorance, #KEYS
93:Our present nature is a derivation from Supernature and is not a pure ignorance but a half-knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
94:The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
95:The ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #KEYS
96:It is the great sun that finally removes The misty ignorance of the world, It is the quintessential butter from the churning of the milk of Dharma. ~ The Mahasiddha Shantideva, #KEYS
97:The highest heights of mind or of overmind come still within the belt of a mitigated ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
98:It is ignorance that thinks that "I am the doer." All our strength is the strength of God. All is silent if the divine fire is removed. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
99:Our call must be to live on a new height in all our being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #KEYS
100:His knowledge dwells in the house of Ignorance; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05, #KEYS
101:Our standards and values are created by ignorance and therefore cannot determine the life of Super nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
102:In the worst Ignorance there is some point of the knowledge which constitutes that form of Ignorance ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Knowledge and Ignorance, #KEYS
103:Extended within the Infinite,...headless and footless, concealing his two ends. - Rig Veda
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Boundaries of the Ignorance,#KEYS
104:If we have not equality, it is a sign that we are still pursued by the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #KEYS
105:When shall I be free? When that "I" has vanished. "I" and "Mine" is ignorance. "Thou" and "Thine" is knowledge. Thou, O Lord are the doer. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
106:Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
107:Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#KEYS
108:You see many stars at night in the sky but find them not in the day -- just as in the days of your ignorance, you say that there is no God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
109:The ignorant one does not see his ignorance as he basks in its darkness; nor does the knowledgeable one see his own knowledge, for he basks in its light ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
110:For those in whom self-knowledge has destroyed their ignorance, knowledge illumines sunlike that highest existence. ~ Bhagavad Gita V. 16, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
111:As with the figure of a symbol dance
The screened Omniscient plays at Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dual Being,#KEYS
112:Ignorance is no excuse when once we know that ignorance is the only possible excuse. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, #KEYS
113:Our ignorance is not entire; it is a limitation of consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #KEYS
114:Fear of the gods arose from man's ignorance of God and his ignorance of the laws that govern the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Godward Emotions, #KEYS
115:The essence of bondage is limitation & the chief circumstances of limitation are death, suffering and ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
116:What is the use of imagining yourself a sinner? You are infinite; it is sheer ignorance that makes you imagine that you are finite. Back of everyone there is Infinity! ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS
117:What we call the Ignorance does not create a new thing and absolute falsehood but only misrepresents the Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Mind and Supermind, #KEYS
118:Christ came to take away our ignorance, for "He came to enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.15.3sc)., #KEYS
119:Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Fate, Free Will and Prediction, #KEYS
120:A Guru is a God-knowing person who has been divinely appointed by Him to take the seeker as a disciple and lead him from the darkness of ignorance to the light of wisdom. ~ PARAMAHAMSA YOGANANDA, #KEYS
121:Vain are human power and human love
To break earth's seal of ignorance and death; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#KEYS
122:Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is ... ~ Manly P Hall?, Understand your Bible?, #KEYS
123:The dualities that trouble our consciousness are contrasted truths of one and the same Truth of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
124:Now our Lord knew both what he asked about, and what answer would be given, and thus he was not asking out of ignorance ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (In Jn 18 lect 6)., #KEYS
125:Pain is a contrary effect of the one delight of existence resulting from the weakness of the recipient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
126:The discord, the disharmony of our life and nature is abnormal to it although it is normal to the life of the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
127:A man might sit still and motionless for ever and yet be as much bound to the Ignorance as the animal or the insect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work, #KEYS
128:There is a stain worse than all stains, the stain of ignorance. Purify yourselves of that stain, O disciples, and be free from soil. ~ Dhammapada 243, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
129:The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:
It longed for the adventure of Ignorance
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
130:A higher instrumental dynamis than mind is needed to transform totally a nature created by the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
131:Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one's ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
132:Our imperfect mental instrumentation is not the last word of our possibilities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #KEYS
133:Oneness with others is not enough by itself, if it is a oneness with their ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #KEYS
134:The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle." ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
135:I want to be able to feel her constantly with me.
The Mother is always there with you. You have only to throw away the forces of Ignorance to feel her with you always. ~ Sri Aurobindo, TMWLOTM,#KEYS
136:Pain is caused because the physical consciousness in the Ignorance is too limited to bear the touches that come upon it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Illness and Health, #KEYS
137:The difficulties which come to birth in the disciple, are ignorance, egoism, desire, aversion and a tenacious will to existence upon the earth. ~ Patanjali, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
138:the only thing that is to be eliminated is our own unconsciousness, the Ignorance and the results of the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, #KEYS
139:I realized that the whole world was filled with God alone. One cannot have spiritual realization without destroying ignorance; so I would assume the attitude of a tiger and devour ignorance. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
140:All ignorance and all perversity only the distortion of the truth and right of things and not the play of an absolute falsehood. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Mind and Supermind, #KEYS
141:Whether on earth or in the abodes of the gods, all beings are upon three evil paths; they are in thepower of existence, desire and ignorance. ~ Latita Vistara, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
142:He saw the labour of a godhead's birth.
A secret knowledge masked as Ignorance; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
143:Even now hints of a luminous Truth like stars
Arise in the mind-mooned splendour of Ignorance; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
144:If we are treading the path of light, and if by chance, by mistake, by ignorance, or even by bad habit, we commit mistakes, we will return to the path again, because of the guidance from the unknown. ~ Swami Rama, #KEYS
145:Light is the source of all clearness and harmony even as the darkness of ignorance is the cause of all our stumblings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Purified Understanding, #KEYS
146:What are the roots of evil? Desire, disliking, ignorance. And what then are the roots of good? Liberation from desire, disliking and ignorance. ~ Magghima Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
147:Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come;
Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
148:As individual egos we dwell in the Ignorance and judge everything by a broken, partial and personal standard of knowledge; ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Cosmic Consciousness, #KEYS
149:It lived upon the margin of the Idea
Protected by Ignorance as in a shell.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
150:Ignorance means, not to see the good. Not to see the truth is ignorance. Those who don't see it are ignorant people. ~ Shaykh Mehmet Adil al-Haqqani Al-Naqshabandi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
151:O queen, thy thought is a light of the Ignorance,
Its brilliant curtain hides from thee God's face. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
152:To do anything through ignorance or through passion takes away from the nature of injury, and to a certain extent calls for mercy and forgiveness ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.47.2)., #KEYS
153:Knowledge ends not in these surface powers
That live upon a ledge in the Ignorance ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
154: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
155:In reality, there is neither guru nor disciple, neither theory nor practice, neither ignorance nor realization. It all depends on what you take yourself to be. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
156:Through wealth and honour our egoism gets bloated up, and there is no greater obstacle in the spiritual path than egoism. It is in fact this egoism, the product of ignorance, that masks our vision of God. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
157:A certain kind of Nirvana experience is necessary even for this Yoga. That is, the world must become in a way nothing to you because, as it is constituted, it is a work of ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
158:A monstrous birth prepared its cosmic form
In Nature's titan embryo, Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
159:Knowledge leads to unity, but ignorance to diversity. So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance. But when God is realised within, that is true knowledge. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
160:Wherever there is pride, attachment, judgement and desire, there is suffering. When we awaken from ignorance into our true nature, suffering is absent." ~ Mooji, (b. 1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher. From "Before I Am,", (2012), #KEYS
161:Wisdom attracts him with her luminous masks,
But never has he seen the face behind:
A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
162:Wisdom leads to Unity, but Ignorance to Separation. So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance. But when God is realized Within, that is True Knowledge.
~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
163:Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
164:The real truth of things lies not in their process, but behind it, in whatever determines, effects or governs the process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #KEYS
165:In man a dim disturbing somewhat lives;
It knows but turns away from divine Light
Preferring the dark ignorance of the fall. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,#KEYS
166:Man cannot teach by his own power. One cannot conquer ignorance without the power of God. He who teaches men gets his power from God. None but a man of renunciation can teach others. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
167:The will of man works in the ignorance by a partial light or more often flickerings of light which mislead as much as they illuminate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Nature of the Supermind, #KEYS
168:What men call chance is simply their ignorance of causes; if the statement that something had happened by chance were to mean that it had no cause, it would be a contradiction in terms. ~ Rene Guenon, The Crisis Of The Modern World, #KEYS
169:For even he who is most greedy for knowledge can achieve no greater perfection than to be thoroughly aware of his own ignorance in his particular field. The more be known, the more aware he will be of his ignorance. ~ Nicholas of Cusa, #KEYS
170:By righteousness is the way to a higher region, but by unrighteousness to a lower region; by knowledge cometh freedom, but by ignorance the prolongation of bondage. ~ Galatians. V. 23, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
171:Our true completeness comes not by describing wider circles on the plane where we began, but by transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #KEYS
172:Sure, there is technically 'nothing to do'. But to take on this attitude while still in doubt is totally contrary to common sense. There is a lot of such misapplication of pointers going on due to laziness and ignorance. ~ John Wheeler, #KEYS
173:The mind is the ignorance attempting to know or it is the ignorance receiving a derivative knowledge: it is the action of Avidya. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
174:The laws of this world as it is are the laws of the Ignorance and the Divine in the world maintains them so long as there is the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Physical Mind and Sadhana, #KEYS
175:His knowledge scans bright pebbles on the shore
Of the huge ocean of his ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
176:Your duty is to be; and not to be this or that." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-1950), Hindu sage, recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in Self-awareness, Wikipedia., #KEYS
177:There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #KEYS
178:His knowledge he disguised as Ignorance,
His Good he sowed in Evil's monstrous bed,
Made error a door by which Truth could enter in. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
179:It is in fact this egoism, the product of ignorance, that masks our vision of God. Really His glory is present everywhere, but we fail to see Him because we refuse to remove the veil of ignorance that obstructs our vision. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
180:Knowledge of God has entered into us and at once ignorance disappears. The knowledge of joy arrives and before her, my son, sorrow shall flee away to those who can still feel her sting. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
181:The world lives in us, thinks in us, forms itself in us; but we imagine that it is we who live, think, become separately by ourselves and for ourselves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #KEYS
182:An errant ray from the immortal Mind
Accepted the earth's blindness and became
Our human thought, servant of Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#KEYS
183:Our ignorance is Wisdom's chrysalis,
Our error weds new knowledge on its way,
Its darkness is a blackened knot of light; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
184:Deep sleep can e'er be had while wide awake By search for Self. In dream and waking states Pursue the quest for Self without a break So long sleep's ignorance them permeates." ~ "Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi,", (1972, 1997), ed. Arthur Osborne, #KEYS
185:In the exact Inconscient's stark conceit,
In the casual error of the world's ignorance
A plan, a hidden Intelligence is glimpsed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
186:Why is intuition superior to reason?
- Because it does not depend upon experience or memory and frequently brings about the solution to our problems by methods concerning which we are in entire ignorance.
~ Charles F Haanel, The Master Key System,#KEYS
187:All our wisest and most divine doctors concur that visible things are truly images of invisible things and that from creatures the creator can be seen in a recognizable way as if in a mirror or in an enigma. ~ Nicolas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance I.11, #KEYS
188:Each defect of the nature of the Ignorance is a deformation of something in the higher nature—a deformation which amounts to a contradiction even. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Aspects of the Cosmic Consciousness, #KEYS
189:Ignorance fears all things, falling, terror-stricken before the passing wind. Superstition stands as the monument to ignorance, and before it kneel all who realize their own weakness who see in all things the strength they do not possess ~ Manly P Hall, #KEYS
190:Every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #KEYS
191:What has to be overcome is the opposition of the Ignorance that does not want the transformation of the nature. If that can be overcome, then old spiritual ideas will not form an obstacle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS
192:A Truth supreme has forced the world to be;
It has wrapped itself in Matter as in a shroud,
A shroud of Death, a shroud of Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
193:Here in Life's nether realms all contraries meet;
Truth stares and does her works with bandaged eyes
And Ignorance is Wisdom's patron here: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
194:There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;
In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met
And light and darkness are their eyes' interchange. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
195:The observations and reckonings of astronomers have taught us many surprising things, but the most important result of their studies is, undoubtedly, that they reveal to us the abyss of our ignorance. ~ Kant, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
196:A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately. ~ Margaret Atwood, #KEYS
197: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
198:Above all thou must tear this robe that thou wearest, this garment of ignorance which is the principle of wickedness, this dark covering, this living death, this tomb which thou carriest about with thee. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
199:Another etymological theory considers the term guru to be based on the syllables gu (गु) and ru(रु), which it claims stands for darkness and light that dispels it, respectively.[Note 2] The guru is seen as the one who dispels the darkness of ignorance. ~ ?, #KEYS
200:If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed. ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, #KEYS
201:Out of a slow confused embroiled self-search
Mind grew to a clarity cut out, precise,
A gleam enclosed in a stone ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.04#KEYS
202:The body and the mind, are only symptoms of ignorance - of misapprehension. Behave as if you were Pure Awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless; beyond 'where', and 'when', and 'how'. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
203:Just as light destroys darkness,
Generosity destroys miserliness,
Discipline destroys harmfulness.
Patience destroys intolerance,
Perseverance destroys laziness,
Concentration destroys distraction,
Wisdom destroys ignorance. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS
204:This great perplexed and discontented world,
This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain:
There are pitched desire's tents, grief's headquarters. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
205:Ask yourself: Do I want to continue being a great practitioner of ignorance, anger, and desire? Or do I want to become a great practitioner of wisdom and compassion instead?
Do not waste your precious human rebirth by making the wrong decision. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS
206:saw the signature and fiery seal
Of Wisdom on the dim Power's hooded work
Who builds in Ignorance the steps of Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
207:The truth is that there is really no 'profane realm' that could in any way be opposed to a 'sacred realm'; there is only a 'profane point of view', which is really none other than the point of view of ignorance. ~ Rene Guenon: Initiation And Spiritual Realization (1952) #KEYS
208:Evil is the fruit of a spiritual ignorance and it will disappear only by the growth of a spiritual consciousness and the light of spiritual knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #KEYS
209:We are already the noumenal Absolute and we do not need any relative knowledge for the apprehension of what is. Knowledge is as much of a burden as ignorance. When both are thrown away, our natural knowingness shines in its original pristine brilliance. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
210:The intuitive mind is not yet the wide sunlight of truth, but a constant play of flashes of it keeping lighted up a basic state of ignorance or of half-knowledge and indirect knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Intuitive Mind, #KEYS
211:Let the strong wind of dispassion rise in your minds, that the trees of desire be uprooted. Then, even as birds fly from the shelter of trees before a strong wind, will the ignorance of selfishness, jealousy, hatred, and egoism take flight from your hearts. ~ SWAMI PREMANANDA, #KEYS
212:The quiddity of things, which is the truth of beings, is unattainable in its purity; though it is sought by all philosophers, it is found by no one as it is. And the more deeply we are instructed in this ignorance, the closer we approach the truth. ~ Nicholas of Cusa, DDI I.3, #KEYS
213:To him justice and injustice are equal, knowledge and ignorance have the same value, for he has broken the cage of personality and desire and he has flown on the wings of immortality towards the eternal heavens. ~ Baha ullah, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
214:Each leaned on the occult Inconscient's power,
The fountain of its needed Ignorance,
Archmason of the limits by which it lives. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
215:Take everyone where he or she stands, without blaming them for their worldly or spiritual poverty & ignorance, & help them on until each one realizes the highest Jnana, Bhakti, eternal freedom & bliss - in fact, until each one realizes the supreme goal. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS
216:Knowledge, the knower and that which is known, as the triad, do not really exist in reality. I am that stainless Consciousness in which this triad appears through ignorance." ~ From the "Ashtavakra Gita.", (c. 500-400 BC), dialogue between the sage Ashtavakra & King Janaka, Wik., #KEYS
217:Flee the Ignorance and flee also the Illusion. Turn thy face from the deceptions of the world; distrust thy senses, they are liars. But in thy body which is the tabernacle of sensation, seek the "Eternal Man." ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
218:Meditate upon the Knowledge and the Bliss Eternal, and you will have bliss. The Bliss is indeed eternal, only it is covered and obscured by ignorance. The less your attachment to the sense-objects, the more will be your love for God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
219:One cannot have realization without the grace of the God. Cry to Him and pray & you will have His grace. He is right inside. You will realize Him the moment He lifts the veil of ignorance. It is grace & grace alone that we need. There is no other way. ~ Manapurush Swami Shivananda, #KEYS
220:One cannot have realization without the grace of the God. Cry to Him & pray and you will have His grace. He is right inside. You will realize Him the moment He lifts the veil of ignorance. It is grace & grace alone that we need. There is no other way. ~ Manapurush Swami Shivananda, #KEYS
221:Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know, you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are. ~ Osho, #KEYS
222:Other than Consciousness nothing exists. Whatever you see is your own reflection. It is only through ignorance of your true nature that universe appears to exist. One who understands with conviction that the universe is nothing but an illusion becomes free of it. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
223:You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
224:Ignorance can be compared to a dark room in which you sleep. No matter how long the room has been dark, an hour or a million years, the moment the lamp of awareness is lit the entire room becomes luminous. You are that luminosity. You are that clear light. ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #KEYS
225:The subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #KEYS
226:Only if God assumes the human mind
And puts on mortal ignorance for his cloak
And makes himself the Dwarf with triple stride,
Can he help man to grow into the God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
227: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
228:Our mind doesn't know that if it goes to and run after the outside world there's nothing but suffering. It keeps running out in ignorance. When it gets the maturity, it will go inside by itself. Until then, it is our job to put it inside with effort (meditation). ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
229:Every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, we don't even know we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think this is reality. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #KEYS
230:Only if God assumes the human mind
And puts on mortal ignorance for his cloak
And makes himself the Dwarf with triple stride,
Can he help man to grow into the God.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
231:But still there lacked the last transcendent power
And Matter still slept empty of its Lord.
The Spirit was saved, the body lost and mute
Lived still with Death and ancient Ignorance ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan and Savitri,#KEYS
232:The mind of ignorance relies on a certain foundation or element of relative or moral certainties, but for the rest a dealing with probabilities and possibilities is its chief resource. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Towards the Supramental Time Vision, #KEYS
233:You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man, because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
234:True teachers who do not deceive on the supreme path, are like great ships that rescue beings from the ocean of existence. They are like rain of nectar that covers the flames of karma and defilements. And they are like the sun and moon that dispels the darkness of ignorance. ~ Jigme Lingpa, #KEYS
235:One, universal, ensphering creation,
Wheeling no more with inconscient Nature,
Feel thyself God-born, know thyself deathless.
Timeless return to thy immortal existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Soul in the Ignorance,#KEYS
236:What does 'the final victory' mean? What is victory and what is defeat? What do they represent in our sports?
I was not referring to victory in games, but to the victory of the consciousness over ignorance and stupidity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS
237:The 'I' casts off the illusion of 'I' and yet remains as 'I'. Such is the paradox of Self-Realization." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-950), Hindu sage, recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in Self-awareness, Wikipedia., #KEYS
238:What Nature herself attends from us is that the whole of what we are should rise into the spiritual consciousness and become a manifest and manifold power of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #KEYS
239:Soul in the Ignorance, wake from its stupor.
Flake of the world-fire, spark of Divinity,
Lift up thy mind and thy heart into glory.
Sun in the darkness, recover thy lustre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Soul in the Ignorance,#KEYS
240:
Sweet Mother, I will try to do whatever You wish. Where are You?
Cross beyond the ignorance of a mind that judges without knowing, plunge into the depths of a calm and unassuming silence: there you will find me.
~ The Mother, More Answers From The Mother,#KEYS
241:One day the Face must burn out through the mask.
Our ignorance is Wisdom's chrysalis,
Our error weds new knowledge on its way,
Its darkness is a blackened knot of light;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
242:A creature of his own grey ignorance,
A mind half shadow and half gleam, a breath
That wrestles, captive in a world of death,
To live some lame brief years. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Thinking Animal,#KEYS
243:Where there is knowledge there is also ignorance. Therefore I ask you to go beyond both knowledge & ignorance. The thorn of ignorance has pierced the sole of a man's foot. He needs the thorn of knowledge to take it out. Afterwards he throws away both thorns ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
244:You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, Sayings of Ramakrishna, #KEYS
245:Man was created to express the Divine. His duty is therefore to become conscious of the Divine and to surrender himself entirely to His Will. All the rest, whatever the appearance, is falsehood and ignorance.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life, 8, [T0],#KEYS
246:There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;
In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met
And light and darkness are their eyes' interchange;
Our pleasure and pain are their wrestle and embrace, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
247:A human thing on earth,
A lump of Matter, a house of closed sight,
A mind compelled to think out ignorance,
A life-force pressed into a camp of works
And the material world her limiting field. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
248:he true law of life is so simple, clear and intelligible that men cannot excuse their bad living under the pretext of ignorance. If men live in contradiction to the law of their true living, they are repudiating reason. And that is in fact what they do. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
249:The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of misapprehension. Behave as if you were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
250:Above us dwells a superconscient God
Hidden in the mystery of his own light:
Around us is a vast of ignorance
Lit by the uncertain ray of human mind,
Below us sleeps the Inconscient dark and mute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
251:It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ~ Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, #KEYS
252:47. When I was asleep in the Ignorance, I came to a place of meditation full of holy men and I found their company wearisome and the place a prison; when I awoke, God took me to a prison and turned it into a place of meditation and His trysting-ground.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Jnana,#KEYS
253:The Master of Wisdom in his first coming to birth in the supreme ether of the great Light, - many his births, seven his mouths of the Word, seven his Rays, - scatters the darknesses with his cry. Rig Veda.3 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #KEYS
254:In each case it is Tapas that is effective, but it acts in a different manner according to the thing that has to be done, according to the predetermined process, dynamism, self-deploying of the Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance,#KEYS
255:The ordinary man says in his ignorance "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
256:Ten knots of bondage; the illusion of personality; doubt; belief in the efficacy of rites and religious practices; sensuality; ill will; desire of a future life in the world of form; desire of a future life in the world of the formless; pride; unquietness; ignorance. ~ Narada Sutra, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
257:Why, O men born from the earth, do you yield yourselves to death, when it is permitted to you to obtain immortality? Return to yourselves, O you who walk in error and languish in ignorance, withdraw from the light that is darkness, renounce corruption, take part in immortality. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
258:That which causes us trials shall yield us triumph: and that which make our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. The only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve: which could not happen unless we had commenced with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.
~ Albert Pike,#KEYS
259:Ignorance of oneself is then an evil in all respects, whether ignoring the greatness and dignity of the inner man one lowers one's divine principle or ignoring the natural baseness of the external man one commits the fault of glorifying oneself. ~ Porphyry, "Treatise on the Precept, Know Thyself", the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
260:Process is merely a utility; it is a habitual adoption of certain effective relations which might in the infinite possibility of things have been arranged otherwise, for the production of effects which might equally have been quite different. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #KEYS
261:The ordinary man says in his ignorance "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
262:Just as full sunlight completely dispels all darkness but even a few rays provide a measure of light, so, if we complete the practice of training the mind, we will totally dispel the darkness of our ignorance, but if we engage in only some parts of the practice, this will still help to reduce our ignorance and self-cherishing . ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #KEYS
263:An absolute supernatural darkness falls
On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means;
Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal need,
He at length must cast from him his surface ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
264:The supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 280,#KEYS
265:To be humble means for the mind, the vital and the body never to forget that without the Divine they know nothing, are nothing and can do nothing; without the Divine they are nothing but ignorance, chaos and impotence. The Divine alone is Truth, Life, Power, Love, Felicity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Purity and Humility, 152,#KEYS
266:Every soul is engaged in a great work-the labor of personal liberation from the state of ignorance. The world is a great prison; its bars are the Unknown. And each is a prisoner until, at last, he earns the right to tear these bars from their moldering sockets, and pass, illuminated and inspired into the darkness, which becomes lighted by that presence ~ Manly P Hall, #KEYS
267:It is only by aspiration and prayer that ego can be overcome; a constant and sincere aspiration is always answered by the Divine. Feb 3rd
Ignorance is a human general illness and nobody can escape it until one is united with the Divine. Feb 9th
Let the aspiration and love for the Divine conquer in you all desires and difficulties. Feb 14
~ The Mother#KEYS
268:It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.
~ The Mother, on after meeting Sri Aurobindo for the first time, March 30th 1914,#KEYS
269: By the Divine Consciousness we mean the spiritual consciousness to which the Divine alone exists, because all is the Divine and by which one passes beyond the Ignorance and the lower nature into unity with the Divine and the Divine Nature.
Here in the Ignorance we are not aware of the Divine and we obey the lower nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, LOY1,#KEYS
270:The Psychic's Choice at the Time of Death
The psychic being at the time of death chooses what it will work out in the next birth and determines the character and conditions of the new personality. Life is for the evolutionary growth by experience in the conditions of the Ignorance till one is ready for the higher light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, CWSA 28:532,#KEYS
271:In the world of my knowledge and my ignorance
Where God is unseen and only is heard a Name
And knowledge is trapped in the boundaries of mind
And life is hauled in the drag-net of desire
And Matter hides the soul from its own sight, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
272:Abraham Maslow said that the fully realized person transcends his local group and identifies with the species. But the election of Ronald Reagan might've been the beginning of my giving up on my species. Because it was absurd. To this day it remains absurd. More than absurd, it was frightening: it represented the rise to supremacy of darkness, the ascendancy of ignorance. ~ George Carlin, #KEYS
273:For the Ignorance is still in reality a knowledge seeking for itself behind the original mask of Inconscience; it misses and finds; its results, natural and even inevitable on their own line, are the true consequence of the lapse,—in a way, even, the right working of the recovery from the lapse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #KEYS
274: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
275:Have confidence in the Mother and be sure that the liberation from these things will surely come. What the soul feels is the sign of the spiritual destiny as of the spiritual need. What opposes is a remnant of the nature of the human ignorance. Our help will be there with you fully to overcome it. 27 February 1935
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
276:... what we call the Ignorance does not create a new thing and absolute falsehood but only misrepresents the Truth. The Ignorance is the Mind separated in knowledge from its source of knowledge and giving a false rigidity and a mistaken appearance of opposition and conflict to the harmonious play of the supreme Truth in its universal manifestation.~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, #KEYS
277:Everyone wants a happy life without difficulties or suffering. We create many of the problems we face. No one intentionally creates problems, but we tend to be slaves to powerful emotions like anger, hatred and attachment that are based on misconceived projections about people and things. We need to find ways of reducing these emotions by eliminating the ignorance that underlies them and applying opposing forces. ~ Dalai Lama, #KEYS
278:Every soul is engaged in a great work-the labor of personal liberation from the state of ignorance. The world is a great prison; its bars are the Unknown. And each is a prisoner until, at last, he earns the right to tear these bars from their moldering sockets, and pass, illuminated and inspired into the darkness, which becomes lighted by that presence ~ Manly P Hall, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry: Or the Secret of Hiram Abiff, #KEYS
279:O Lord, my sweet Master, Thou whom I adore in silence and to whom I have entirely consecrated myself, Thou who governest my life, kindle in my heart the flame of Thy pure love that it may burn like a glowing brazier, consuming all imperfections and transforming into a comforting warmth and radiating light the dead wood of egoism and the black coals of ignorance.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, 55,#KEYS
280:An absolute supernatural darkness falls
On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means;
Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal need,
He at length must cast from him his surface soul
And be the ungarbed entity within:
That hour had fallen now on Savitri.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
281:But from time to time Thy sublime light shines in a being and radiates through him over the world, and then a little wisdom, a little knowledge, a little disinterested faith, heroism and compassion penetrates men's hearts, transforms their minds and sets free a few elements from that sorrowful and implacable wheel of existence to which their blind ignorance subjects them.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations,#KEYS
282:The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.
~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, 16 June 1960,#KEYS
283:Before deciding that something is wrong in others or in circumstances, you must be quite sure of the correctness of your judgment - and what judgment is correct so long as one lives in the ordinary consciousness that is based on ignorance and filled with falsehood?
Only the Truth-Consciousness can judge. So it is better, in all circumstances, to leave the judgment to the Divine.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
284:So, the only thing to do is to accept quietly the conditions in which you find yourself, knowing that for him who has faith in the Divine it is always the best for him that happens. The Divine does not want human beings to suffer, but, in their ignorance, human beings react in such a way that they bring suffering upon themselves. In peace, quietness and surrender is the only solution.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
285:He desired, 'May I be Many'. He concentrated in Tapas, by Tapas he created the world; creating, he entered into it; entering, he became the existent and the beyond-existence, he became the expressed and the unexpressed, he became knowledge and ignorance, he became the truth and the falsehood: he became the truth, even all this whatsoever that is. 'That Truth' they call him. [Taittiriya Upanishad] ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of the Ignorance, #KEYS
286:upon a supramental collective :::
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 supamental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom,#KEYS
287:We do not fight against any creed, any religion. We do not fight against any form of government. We do not fight against any caste, any social class. We do not fight against any nation or civilisation. We are fighting division, unconsciousness, ignorance, inertia and falsehood. We are endeavouring to establish upon earth union, knowledge, consciousness, truth; and we fight whatever opposes the advent of this new creation of Light, Peace, Truth and Love. ~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 6, Satprem, #KEYS
288:377. God made the infinite world by Self-knowledge which in its works is Will-Force self-fulfilling. He used ignorance to limit His infinity; but fear, weariness, depression, self-distrust and assent to weakness are the instruments by which He destroys what He created. When these things are turned on what is evil or harmful & ill-regulated within thee, then it is well; but if they attack thy very sources of life & strength, then seize & expel them or thou diest.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
289:Freedom from pride and arrogance, harmlessness, patience, sincerity, purity, constancy, self-control, indifference to the objects of sense, absence of egoism,...freedom from attachment to son and wife and house, constant equality of heart towards desirable or undesirable events, love of solitude and withdrawal from the crowd, perpetual knowledge of the Supreme and study of the principles of things, this is knowledge; what is contrary in nature to this, is ignorance. ~ Bhagavad Gita, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
290:First, once and for all, you should know that luck, good or bad, does not exist. What to our ignorance looks like luck is simply the result of causes we know nothing about. It is certain that for someone who has desires, when his desires are not satisfied, it is a sign that the Divine Grace is with him and wants, through experience, to make him progress rapidly, by teaching him that a willing and spontaneous surrender to the Divine Will is a much surer way to be happy in peace and light than the satisfaction of any desire.
~ Sri Aurobindo,#KEYS
291:D.: Impurities of limitation, ignorance and desire (anava, mayika, and kamya) place obstacles in the way of meditation. How to conquer them?
M.: Not to be swayed by them.
D.: Grace is necessary.
M.: Yes, Grace is both the beginning and the end. Introversion is due to Grace: Perseverance is Grace; and Realisation is Grace. That is the reason for the statement: Mamekam saranam vraja (only surrender to Me). If one has entirely surrendered oneself is there any part left to ask for Grace? He is swallowed up by Grace. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 319,#KEYS
292:The integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes -- the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and supramental plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T4],#KEYS
293:I feel sincerely that I want the Divine and nothing else. But when I am in contact with other people, when I am busy with things without any value, I naturally forget the Divine, my one goal. Is it insincerity? If not, then what does it mean?
Yes. It is insincerity of the being, in which one part wants the Divine and another part wants something else. It is through ignorance and stupidity that the being is insincere. But with a persevering will and an absolute confidence in the Divine Grace, one can cure this insincerity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
294:Across a luminous dream of spirit-space
She builds creation like a rainbow bridge
Between the original Silence and the Void.
A net is made of the mobile universe;
She weaves a snare for the conscious Infinite.
A knowledge is with her that conceals its steps
And seems a mute omnipotent Ignorance.
A might is with her that makes wonders true;
The incredible is her stuff of common fact.
Her purposes, her workings riddles prove;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
295: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
296:(From a meditation written on the day after the Mother first saw Sri Aurobindo)
It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.
O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overflows with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope has no bounds.
My adoration is beyond all words, my reverence is silent. 30 March 1914
~ The Mother,#KEYS
297: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
298:But since it is from the Ignorance that we proceed to the Knowledge, we have had first to discover the secret nature and full extent of the Ignorance. If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, in a spatial and temporal universe, we see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many-sided self-ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution,#KEYS
299:The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
~ H P Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu,#KEYS
300:At this point it may be objected: well, then, if even the crabbed sceptics admit that the statements of religion cannot be confuted by reason, why should not I believe in them, since they have so much on their side: tradition, the concurrence of mankind, and all the consolation they yield? Yes, why not? Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief. But do not deceive yourself into thinking that with such arguments you are following the path of correct reasoning. If ever there was a case of facile argument, this is one. Ignorance is ignorance; no right to believe anything is derived from it. ~ Sigmund Freud, #KEYS
301:sacrifice, the redeeming principle :::
The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul, submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 106,#KEYS
302:The Yoga must start with an effort or at least a settled turn towards this total concentration. A constant and unfailing will of consecration of all ourselves to the Supreme is demanded of us, an offering of our whole being and our many-chambered nature to the Eternal who is the All. The effective fullness of our concentration on the one thing needful to the exclusion of all else will be the measure of our self-consecration to the One who is alone desirable. But this exclusiveness will in the end exclude nothing except the falsehood of our way of seeing the world and our will's ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5], #KEYS
303:The first proof of ignorance is selfishness, which includes what we term self-centeredness. To be selfish is to violate the basic principles of our kind. Yet, for ages the majority of mortals have considered selfishness a virtue. Those who are selfish then reveal a further degree of benightedness because those who are ignorant and selfish are also possessive. The desire to control, own, accumulate, and overshadow, is a common fault. It is unfortunately true that a common fault does not become a virtue merely because it is frequently indulged. If men were not selfish and possessive, there would be slight cause for war, crime, and poverty. ~ Manly P Hall, (HORIZON Summer 1955, p.6), #KEYS
304:Reply To A Friend ::: In stubborn stupidity, I live on alone
befriended by trees and herbs.
Too lazy to learn right from wrong,
I laugh at myself, ignoring others.
Lifting my bony shanks, I cross the stream,
a sack in my hand, blessed by spring weather.
Living thus, I want for nothing,
at peace with all the world.
Your finger points to the moon,
but the finger is blind until the moon appears.
What connection has moon and finger?
Are they separate objects or bound?
This is a question for beginners
wrapped in seas of ignorance.
Yet one who looks beyond metaphor
knows there is no finger; there is no moon. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#KEYS
305:Noah harkened to the voice of the Lord that is he lived according to the Law, perfecting his soul and enriching his consciousness with the many experiences which result from the mystery of living. As a consequence the "Lord" protects the life of Noah, and brings the Ark at the end to a safe testing place upon the Mount of the illumination, Ararat. Part of the thirty-third degree of Freemasonry includes an interpretation of the symbolism of Noah and his Ark. Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is the illumined mystic floating safely over the chaos.
~ Manly P Hall, How To Understand Your Bible,#KEYS
306:The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higherMind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels, but one can receive something from them, even from the Overmind, indirectly.Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Himself And The Ashram, 118,#KEYS
307:If renunciation is not embraced
By the pure motivation of bodhicitta,
It will not become a cause for the perfect bliss of unsurpassed awakening,
So the wise should generate supreme bodhicitta.
Beings are swept along by the powerful current of the four rivers,
Tightly bound by the chains of their karma, so difficult to undo,
Ensnared within the iron trap of their self-grasping,
And enshrouded in the thick darkness of ignorance.
Again and yet again, they are reborn in limitless saṃsāra,
And constantly tormented by the three forms of suffering.
This is the current condition of all your mothers from previous lives—
Contemplate their plight and generate supreme bodhichitta. ~ Tsongkapa,#KEYS
308: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
309:the threefold character of the union :::
The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samipya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude, The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the highest intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
310:We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, #KEYS
311:Overmind is the highest source of the cosmic consciousness available to the embodied being in the Ignorance. It is part of the cosmic consciousness-but the human individual when he opens into the cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-Life-Matter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer- although influences and experiences can come down from there.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 152,#KEYS
312: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, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
313:It is the Divine in the inconscient who aspires for the Divine in the consciousness. That is to say, without the Divine there would be no aspiration; without the consciousness hidden in the inconscient, there would be no possibility of changing the inconscience to consciousness. But because at the very heart of the inconscient there is the divine Consciousness, you aspire, and necessarily - this is what he says - automatically, mechanically, the sacrifice is made. And this is why when one says, "It is not you who aspire, it is the Divine, it is not you who make progress, it is the Divine, it is not you who are conscious, it is the Divine" - these are not mere words, it is a fact. And it is simply your ignorance and your unconsciousness which prevent you from realising it. (Meditation) ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, #KEYS
314:'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
315:At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down
To guide her force that feels but cannot know,
Its breath of power controls her restless seas
And life obeys the governing Idea.
At her will, led by a luminous Immanence
The hazardous experimenting Mind
Pushes its way through obscure possibles
Mid chance formations of an unknowing world.
Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient,
Transmuted instincts shape to divine thoughts,
Thoughts house infallible immortal sight
And Nature climb towards God's identity.
The Master of the worlds self-made her slave
Is the executor of her fantasies:
She has canalised the seas of omnipotence;
She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
316:the soul alone ensures sincerity :::
It is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness, are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,#KEYS
317: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
318:He found the vast Thought with seven heads that is born of the Truth; he created some fourth world and became universal. . . .
The Sons of Heaven, the Heroes of the Omnipotent, thinking the straight thought, giving voice to the Truth, founded the plane of illumination and conceived the first abode of the Sacrifice. . . . The Master of Wisdom cast down the stone defences and called to the Herds of Light, . . . the herds that stand in the secrecy on the bridge over the Falsehood between two worlds below and one above; desiring Light in the darkness, he brought upward the Ray-Herds and uncovered from the veil the three worlds; he shattered the city that lies hidden in ambush, and cut the three out of the Ocean, and discovered the Dawn and the Sun and the Light and the Word of Light. Rig Veda.2 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge,#KEYS
319:The true soul secret in us, - subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, - this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine #KEYS
320:This now leads us to elucidate more precisely the error of the idea that the majority should make the law, because, even though this idea must remain theoretical - since it does not correspond to an effective reality - it is necessary to explain how it has taken root in the modern outlook, to which of its tendencies it corresponds, and which of them - at least in appearance - it satisfies. Its most obvious flaw is the one we have just mentioned: the opinion of the majority cannot be anything but an expression of incompetence, whether this be due to lack of intelligence or to ignorance pure and simple; certain observations of 'mass psychology' might be quoted here, in particular the widely known fact that the aggregate of mental reactions aroused among the component individuals of a crowd crystallizes into a sort of general psychosis whose level is not merely not that of the average, but actually that of the lowest elements present. ~ Rene Guenon, The Crisis of the Modern World, #KEYS
321:
Sweet Mother,
Why has the Divine made His path so difficult? He can make it easier if He wants, can't He?
First of all, one should know that the intellect, the mind, can understand nothing of the Divine, neither what He does nor how He does it and still less why He does it. To know something of the Divine, one has to rise above thought and enter into the psychic consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, or into the spiritual consciousness.
Those who have had the experience have always said that the difficulties and sufferings of the path are not real, but a creation of human ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out of this ignorance one also gets out of the difficulties, to say nothing of the inalienable state of bliss in which one dwells as soon as one is in conscious contact with the Divine. So according to them, the question has no real basis and cannot be posed. ~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, 21 September 1959,#KEYS
322:Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.
Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
Something that wished but knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
A throe that came and left a quivering trace,
Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave
To raise its head and look for absent light,
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,
Like one who searches for a bygone self
And only meets the corpse of his desire.
It was as though even in this Nought's profound,
Even in this ultimate dissolution's core,
There lurked an unremembering entity,
Survivor of a slain and buried past
Condemned to resume the effort and the pang,
Reviving in another frustrate world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
323:the best we can conceive as the thing to be done :::
The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can command in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,#KEYS
324:In the terrestrial formulation of Knowledge and Power, this correlation is not altogether apparent because there consciousness itself is concealed in an original Inconscience and the natural strength and rhythm of its powers in their emergence are diminished and disturbed by the discordances and the veils of the Ignorance. The Inconscient there is the original, potent and automatically effective Force, the conscious mind is only a small labouring agent; but that is because the conscious mind in us has a limited individual action and the Inconscient is an immense action of a universal concealed Consciousness: the cosmic Force, masked as a material Energy, hides from our view by its insistent materiality of process the occult fact that the working of the Inconscient is really the expression of a vast universal Life, a veiled universal Mind, a hooded Gnosis, and without these origins of itself it could have no power of action, no organising coherence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.28 - The Divine Life, #KEYS
325:The personal will of the sadhaka has first to seize on the egoistic energies and turn them towards the light and the right; once turned, he has still to train them to recognise that always, always to accept, always to follow that. Progressing, he learns, still using the personal will, personal effort, personal energies, to employ them as representatives of the higher Power and in conscious obedience to the higher Influence. Progressing yet farther, his will, effort, energy become no longer personal and separate, but activities of that higher Power and Influence at work in the individual. But there is still a sort of gulf or distance which necessitates an obscure process of transit, not always accurate, sometimes even very distorting, between the divine Origin and the emerging human current. At the end of the process, with the progressive disappearance of egoism and impurity and ignorance, this last separation is removed; all in the individual becomes the divine working. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS
326:A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence - and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal - of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth - a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS
327: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
328:What you write is no doubt true and it is necessary to see it so as to be able to comprehend and grasp the true attitude necessary for the sadhana. But, as I have said, one must not be distressed or depressed by perceiving the weaknesses inherent in human nature and the difficulty of getting them out. The difficulty is natural, for they have been there for thousands of lives and are the very nature of man's vital and mental ignorance. It is not surprising that they should have a power to stick and take time to disappear. But there is a true being and a true consciousness that is there in us hidden by these surface formations of nature and which can shake them off once it emerges. By taking the right attitude of selfless devotion within and persisting in it in spite of the surface nature's troublesome self-repetitions one enables this inner being and consciousness to emerge and with the Mother's Force working in it deliver the being from all return of the movements of the old nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
329:But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be no more happy condition than this union and dependence; for this step carries you back beyond the border-line from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, into its deep peace and its intense Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 12, #KEYS
330:
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
331: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
332:Supermind is the dynamic form of satcitananda (being-consciousness-bliss), and the necessary conduit, mediator or linkage between satcitananda and the manifest creation. (Life Divine Book I, ch.14-16) ... Supermind is spiritual consciousness acting as a self-luminous knowledge, will, sense, aesthesis, energy, self-creative and unveiling power of its own delight and being. Mind is the action of the same powers, but limited and only very indirectly and partially illumined. Supermind lives in unity though it plays with diversity; mind lives in a separative action of diversity, though it may open to unity. Mind is not only capable of ignorance, but, because it acts always partially and by limitation, it works characteristically as a power of ignorance : it may even and it does forget itself in a complete inconscience, or nescience, awaken from it to the ignorance of a partial knowledge and move from the ignorance towards a complete knowledge, -- that is its natural action in the human being, -- but it can never have by itself a complete knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection, 625,#KEYS
333:Ishwara-Shakti is not quite the same as Purusha-Prakriti; for Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other. Ishwara is Purusha who contains Prakriti and rules by the power of the Shakti within him. Shakti is Prakriti ensouled by Purusha and acts by the will of the Ishwara which is her own will and whose presence in her movement she carries always with her. The Purusha-Prakriti realisation is of the first utility to the seeker on the Way of Works; for it is the separation of the conscient being and the Energy and the subjection of the being to the mechanism of the Energy that are the efficient cause of our ignorance and imperfection; by this realisation the being can liberate himself from the mechanical action of the nature and become free and arrive at a first spiritual control over the nature. Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216, #KEYS
334: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
335: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
336:Supermind and the human mind are a number of ranges, planes or layers of consciousness - one can regard it in various ways - in which the element or substance of mind and consequently its movements also become more and more illumined and powerful and wide. The Overmind is the highest of these ranges; it is full of lights and powers; but from the point of view of what is above it, it is the line of the soul's turning away from the complete and indivisible knowledge and its descent towards the Ignorance. For although it draws from the Truth, it is here that begins the separation of aspects of the Truth, the forces and their working out as if they were independent truths and this is a process that ends, as one descends to ordinary Mind, Life and Matter, in a complete division, fragmentation, separation from the indivisible Truth above. There is no longer the essential, total, perfectly harmonising and unifying knowledge, or rather knowledge for ever harmonious because for ever one, which is the character of Supermind. In the Supermind mental divisions and oppositions cease, the problems created by our dividing and fragmenting mind disappear and Truth is seen as a luminous whole. In the Overmind there is not yet the actual fall into Ignorance, but the first step is taken which will make the fall inevitable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS
337:38 - Strange! The Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar. - Sri Aurobindo.
To what plane of consciousness did Christ belong?
In the Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo mentions the names of three Avatars, and Christ is one of them. An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.
I heard Sri Aurobindo himself say that Christ was an emanation of the Lord's aspect of love.
The death of Caesar marked a decisive change in the history of Rome and the countries dependent on her. It was therefore an important event in the history of Europe.
But the death of Christ was the starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. This is why Sri Aurobindo tells us that the death of Christ was of greater historical significance, that is to say, it has had greater historical consequences than the death of Caesar. The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.
16 June 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.61-62),#KEYS
338: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
339: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
340:So too we can rise to a consciousness above and observe the various parts of our being, inner and outer, mental, vital and physical and the subconscient below all, and act upon one or other or the whole from that higher status. It is possible also to go down from that height or from any height into any of these lower states and take its limited light or its obscurity as our place of working while the rest that we are is either temporarily put away or put behind or else kept as a field of reference from which we can get support, sanction or light and influence or as a status into which we can ascend or recede and from it observe the inferior movements. Or we can plunge into trance, get within ourselves and be conscious there while all outward things are excluded; or we can go beyond even this inner awareness and lose ourselves in some deeper other consciousness or some high superconscience. There is also a pervading equal consciousness into which we can enter and see all ourselves with one enveloping glance or omnipresent awareness one and indivisible. All this which looks strange and abnormal or may seem fantastic to the surface reason acquainted only with our normal status of limited ignorance and its movements divided from our inner higher and total reality, becomes easily intelligible and admissible in the light of the larger reason and logic of the Infinite or by the admission of the greater illimitable powers of the Self, the Spirit in us which is of one essence with the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.2.02 #KEYS
341:The second condition of consciousness is potential only to the human being and gained by an inner enlightening and transformation of the mind of ignorance; it is that in which the mind seeks for its source of knowledge rather within than without and becomes to its own feeling and self-experience, by whatever means, a mind, not of original ignorance, but of self-forgetful knowledge. This mind is conscious that the knowledge of all things is hidden within it or at least somewhere in the being, but as if veiled and forgotten, and the knowledge comes to it not as a thing acquired from outside, but always secretly there and now remembered and known at once to be true, - each thing in its own place, degree, manner and measure. This is its attitude to knowledge even when the occasion of knowing is some external experience, sign or indication, because that is to it only the occasion and its reliance for the truth of the knowledge is not on the external indication or evidence but on the inner confirming witness. The true mind is the universal within us and the individual is only a projection on the surface, and therefore this second state of consciousness we have either when the individual mind goes more and more inward and is always consciously or subconsciously near and sensitive to the touches of the universal mentality in which all is contained, received, capable of being made manifest, or, still more powerfully, when we live in the consciousness of universal mind with the personal mentality only as a projection, a marking board or a communicating switch on the surface. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Towards the Supramental Time Vision, 887, #KEYS
342:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 219, #KEYS
343:scope and aim of the works of sacrifice :::
Into the third and last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works; for here is its field of effectuation and major province. It covers the entire range of lifes more visible activities; under it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling Spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self-will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden essence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 169,#KEYS
344:The sign of the immersion of the embodied soul in Prakriti is the limitation of consciousness to the ego. The vivid stamp of this limited consciousness can be seen in a constant inequality of the mind and heart and a confused conflict and disharmony in their varied reactions to the touches of experience. The human reactions sway perpetually between the dualities created by the soul's subjection to Nature and by its often intense but narrow struggle for mastery and enjoyment, a struggle for the most part ineffective. The soul circles in an unending round of Nature's alluring and distressing opposites, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune, good and evil, sin and virtue, joy and grief, pain and pleasure. It is only when, awaking from its immersion in Prakriti, it perceives its oneness with the One and its oneness with all existences that it can become free from these things and found its right relation to this executive world-Nature. Then it becomes indifferent to her inferior modes, equal-minded to her dualities, capable of mastery and freedom; it is seated above her as the high-throned knower and witness filled with the calm intense unalloyed delight of his own eternal existence. The embodied spirit continues to express its powers in action, but it is no longer involved in ignorance, no longer bound by its works; its actions have no longer a consequence within it, but only a consequence outside in Prakriti. The whole movement of Nature becomes to its experience a rising and falling of waves on the surface that make no difference to its own unfathomable peace, its wide delight, its vast universal equality or its boundless God-existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
345: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
346:The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the mental being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijnana and which we may term the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind where the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge. If we can break down the veil of the intellectual, emotional, sensational mind which our ordinary existence has built between us and the Divine, we can then take up through the Truth-mind all our mental, vital and physical experience and offer it up to the spiritual -- this was the secret or mystic sense of the old Vedic "sacrifice" -- to be converted into the terms of the infinite truth of Sachchidananda, and we can receive the powers and illuminations of the infinite Existence in forms of a divine knowledge, will and delight to be imposed on our mentality, vitality, physical existence till the lower is transformed into the perfect vessel of the higher. This was the double Vedic movement of the descent and birth of the gods in the human creature and the ascent of the human powers that struggle towards the divine knowledge, power and delight and climb into the godheads, the result of which was the possession of the One, the Infinite, the beatific existence, the union with God, the Immortality. By possession of this ideal plane we break down entirely the opposition of the lower and the higher existence, the false gulf created by the Ignorance between the finite and the Infinite, God and Nature, the One and the Many, open the gates of the Divine, fulfil the individual in the complete harmony of the cosmic consciousness and realise in the cosmic being the epiphany of the transcendent Sachchidananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 2.15, #KEYS
347:IN OUR scrutiny of the seven principles of existence it was found that they are one in their essential and fundamental reality: for if even the matter of the most material universe is nothing but a status of being of Spirit made an object of sense, envisaged by the Spirit's own consciousness as the stuff of its forms, much more must the life-force that constitutes itself into form of Matter, and the mind-consciousness that throws itself out as Life, and the Supermind that develops Mind as one of its powers, be nothing but Spirit itself modified in apparent substance and in dynamism of action, not modified in real essence. All are powers of one Power of being and not other than that All-Existence, All-Consciousness, All-Will, All-Delight which is the true truth behind every appearance. And they are not only one in their reality, but also inseparable in the sevenfold variety of their action. They are the seven colours of the light of the divine consciousness, the seven rays of the Infinite, and by them the Spirit has filled in on the canvas of his self-existence conceptually extended, woven of the objective warp of Space and the subjective woof of Time, the myriad wonders of his self-creation great, simple, symmetrical in its primal laws and vast framings, infinitely curious and intricate in its variety of forms and actions and the complexities of relation and mutual effect of all upon each and each upon all. These are the seven Words of the ancient sages; by them have been created and in the light of their meaning are worked out and have to be interpreted the developed and developing harmonies of the world we know and the worlds behind of which we have only an indirect knowledge. The Light, the Sound is one; their action is sevenfold.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 7 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance, 499,#KEYS
348: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
349:19 - When I had the dividing reason, I shrank from many things; after I had lost it in sight, I hunted through the world for the ugly and the repellent, but I could no longer find them. - Sri Aurobindo
Is there really nothing ugly and repellent in the world? Is it our reason alone that sees things in that way?
To understand truly what Sri Aurobindo means here, you must yourself have had the experience of transcending reason and establishing your consciousness in a world higher than the mental intelligence. For from up there you can see, firstly, that everything that exists in the universe is an expression of Sachchidananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss) and therefore behind any appearance whatever, if you go deeply enough, you can perceive Sachchidananda, which is the principle of Supreme Beauty.
Secondly, you see that everything in the manifested universe is relative, so much so that there is no beauty which may not appear ugly in comparison with a greater beauty, no ugliness which may not appear beautiful in comparison with a yet uglier ugliness.
When you can see and feel in this way, you immediately become aware of the extreme relativity of these impressions and their unreality from the absolute point of view. However, so long as we dwell in the rational consciousness, it is, in a way, natural that everything that offends our aspiration for perfection, our will for progress, everything we seek to transcend and surmount, should seem ugly and repellent to us, since we are in search of a greater ideal and we want to rise higher.
And yet it is still only a half-wisdom which is very far from the true wisdom, a wisdom that appears wise only in the midst of ignorance and unconsciousness.
In the Truth everything is different, and the Divine shines in all things. 17 February 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS
350:Man's refusal of the Divine Grace has been depicted very beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness . He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He is not even aware that there may be anything higher or nobler than the ugliness he is steeped in. He lives on earth-life with an earth-consciousness, moves mechanically and helplessly through vicissitudes over which he has no control. Even so the material life is not a mere despicable thing; behind its darkness, behind its sadness, behind all its infirmities, the Divine Mother is there upholding it and infusing into it her grace and beauty. Indeed, she is one with this world of sorrows, she has in effect become it in her infinite pity and love so that this material body of hers may become conscious of its divine substance and manifest her true form. But the human being individualised and separated in egoistic consciousness has lost the sense of its inner reality and is vocal only in regard to its outward formulation. It is natural for physical man therefore to reject and deny the physical Godhead in him, he even curses it and wants to continue as he is.
He yells therefore in ignorance and anguish:
I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he
Who is nailed on the wide cross of the Universe . . .
I toil like the animal, like the animal die.
I am man the rebel, man the helpless serf...
I know my fate will ever be the same.
It is my Nature' s work that cannot change . . .
I was made for evil, evil is my lot;
Evil I must be and by evil live;
Nought other can I do but be myself;
What Nature made, that I must remain.2' ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, On Savitri, 13,#KEYS
351:The first cause of impurity in the understanding is the intermiscence of desire in the thinking functions, and desire itself is an impurity of the Will involved in the vital and emotional parts of our being. When the vital and emotional desires interfere with the pure Will-to-know, the thought-function becomes subservient to them, pursues ends other than those proper to itself and its perceptions are clogged and deranged. The understanding must lift itself beyond the siege of desire and emotion and, in order that it may have perfect immunity, it must get the vital parts and the emotions themselves purified. The will to enjoy is proper to the vital being but not the choice or the reaching after the enjoyment which must be determined and acquired by higher functions; therefore the vital being must be trained to accept whatever gain or enjoyment comes to it in the right functioning of the life in obedience to the working of the divine Will and to rid itself of craving and attachment. Similarly the heart must be freed from subjection to the cravings of the life-principle and the senses and thus rid itself of the false emotions of fear, wrath, hatred, lust, etc, which constitute the chief impurity of the heart. The will to love is proper to the heart, but here also the choice and reaching after love have to be foregone or tranquillised and the heart taught to love with depth and intensity indeed, but with a calm depth and a settled and equal, not a troubled and disordered intensity. The tranquillisation and mastery of these members is a first condition for the immunity of the understanding from error, ignorance and perversion. This purification spells an entire equality of the nervous being and the heart; equality, therefore, even as it was the first word of the path of works, so also is the first word of the path of knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Purified Understanding,#KEYS
352: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
353: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
354:Disciple: If the Asuras represent the dark side of God on the vital plane - does this dark side exist on every plane? If so, are there beings on the mental plane which correspond to the dark side?
Sri Aurobindo: The Asura is really the dark side of God on the mental plane. Mind is the very field of the Asura. His characteristic is egoistic strength, which refuses the Higher Law. The Asura has got Self-control, Tapas, intelligence, only, all that is for his ego.
On the vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshashas which represent violent passions and impulses. There are other beings on the vital plane which we call pramatta and piśacha and these; manifest, more or less, on the physico-vital plane.
Distiple: What is the corresponding being on the higher plane?
Sri Aurobindo: On the higher plane there are no Asuras - there the Truth prevails. There are "Asuras" there in the Vedic sense,- "beings with divine powers". The mental Asura is only a deviation of that power.
The work of the Asura has all the characteristics of mind in it. It is mind refusing to submit to the Higher Law; it is the mind in revolt. It works on the basis of ego and ignorance.
Disciple: What are the forces that correspond to the dark side of God on the physical plane?
Sri Aurobindo: They are what may be called the "elemental beings", or rather, obscure elemental forces - they are more "forces" than "beings". It is these that the Theosophists call the "Elementals". They are not individualised beings like the Asura and the Rakshasas, they are ignorant forces working oh the subtle physical plane.
Disciple: What is the word for them in Sanskrit;?
Sri Aurobindo: What are called bhūtas seem most nearly to correspond to them.
Disciple: The term "Elemental" means that these work through the elements.
Sri Aurobindo: There are two kinds of "elementals": one mischievous and the other innocent. What the Europeans call the gnomes come under this category. ~ A B Purani, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, 15-06-1926,#KEYS
355:The way of integral knowledge supposes that we are intended to arrive at an integral self-fulfilment and the only thing that is to be eliminated is our own unconsciousness, the Ignorance and the results of the Ignorance. Eliminate the falsity of the being which figures as the ego; then our true being can manifest in us. Eliminate the falsity of the life which figures as mere vital craving and the mechanical round of our corporeal existence; our true life in the power of the Godhead and the joy of the Infinite will appear. Eliminate the falsity of the senses with their subjection to material shows and to dual sensations; there is a greater sense in us that can open through these to the Divine in things and divinely reply to it. Eliminate the falsity of the heart with its turbid passions and desires and its dual emotions; a deeper heart in us can open with its divine love for all creatures and its infinite passion and yearning for the responses of the Infinite. Eliminate the falsity of the thought with its imperfect mental constructions, its arrogant assertions and denials, its limited and exclusive concentrations; a greater faculty of knowledge is behind that can open to the true Truth of God and the soul and Nature and the universe. An integral self-fulfilment, - an absolute, a culmination for the experiences of the heart, for its instinct of love, joy, devotion and worship; an absolute, a culmination for the senses, for their pursuit of divine beauty and good and delight in the forms of things; an absolute, a culmination for the life, for its pursuit of works, of divine power, mastery and perfection; an absolute, a culmination beyond its own limits for the thought, for its hunger after truth and light and divine wisdom and knowledge. Not something quite other than themselves from which they are all cast away is the end of these things in our nature, but something supreme in which they at once transcend themselves and find their own absolutes and infinitudes, their harmonies beyond measure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge,#KEYS
356: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
357:the spiritual force behind adoration :::
All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life, 159,#KEYS
358:The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us -- intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or desire self, the heart, the body-has each, as it were, its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self on our superficial ignorance. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands and differing nature. Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order. Moreover, we find that inwardly too, no less than outwardly, we are not alone in the world; the sharp separateness of our ego was no more than a strong imposition and delusion; we do not exist in ourselves, we do not really live apart in an inner privacy or solitude. Our mind is a receiving, developing and modifying machine into which there is being constantly passed from moment to moment a ceaseless foreign flux, a streaming mass of disparate materials from above, from below, from outside. Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use offer the manifestation of their forms and forces. The difficulty of our separate salvation is immensely increased by this complexity and manifold openness and subjection to tile in-streaming energies of the universe. Of all this we have to take account, to deal with it, to know what is the secret stuff of our nature and its constituent and resultant motions and to create in it all a divine centre and a true harmony and luminous order. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 1.02, #KEYS
359:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138, #KEYS
360:This is the real sense and drive of what we see as evolution: the multiplication and variation of forms is only the means of its process. Each gradation contains the possibility and the certainty of the grades beyond it: the emergence of more and more developed forms and powers points to more perfected forms and greater powers beyond them, and each emergence of consciousness and the conscious beings proper to it enables the rise to a greater consciousness beyond and the greater order of beings up to the ultimate godheads of which Nature is striving and is destined to show herself capable. Matter developed its organised forms until it became capable of embodying living organisms; then life rose from the subconscience of the plant into conscious animal formations and through them to the thinking life of man. Mind founded in life developed intellect, developed its types of knowledge and ignorance, truth and error till it reached the spiritual perception and illumination and now can see as in a glass dimly the possibility of supermind and a truthconscious existence. In this inevitable ascent the mind of Light is a gradation, an inevitable stage. As an evolving principle it will mark a stage in the human ascent and evolve a new type of human being; this development must carry in it an ascending gradation of its own powers and types of an ascending humanity which will embody more and more the turn towards spirituality, capacity for Light, a climb towards a divinised manhood and the divine life.
In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very nature of the evolutionary process as it is at present, two stages. In the first, we can see the mind of Light gathering itself out of the Ignorance, assembling its constituent elements, building up its shapes and types, however imperfect at first, and pushing them towards perfection till it can cross the border of the Ignorance and appear in the Light, in its own Light. In the second stage we can see it developing itself in that greater natural light, taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind and lives as its subordinate portion or its delegate.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, Mind of Light, 587,#KEYS
361: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
362:complexity of the human constitution :::
There is another direction in which the ordinary practice of Yoga arrives at a helpful but narrowing simplification which is denied to the Sadhaka of the integral aim. The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless confusion of Nature. To the ordinary man who lives upon his own waking surface, ignorant of the self's depths and vastnesses behind the veil, his psychological existence is fairly simple. A small but clamorous company of desires, some imperative intellectual and aesthetic cravings, some tastes, a few ruling or prominent ideas amid a great current of unconnected or ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, partly without or in spite of it, arranging these things in some rough practical fashion, some tolerable disorderly order, -- this is the material of his existence. The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, -- and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of' the soul, -- we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer.
The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us -- intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or desire self, the heart, the body-has each, as it were, its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self on our superficial ignorance. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands and differing nature. Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 74-75,#KEYS
363: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
364: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
365:requirements for the psychic :::
At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being hidden within and felt only in its rare influences is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. Its action is like a searchlight showing up all that has to be changed in the nature; it has in it a flame of will insistent on perfection, on an alchemic transmutation of all the inner and outer existence. It sees the divine essence everywhere but rejects the mere mask and the disguising figure. It insists on Truth, on will and strength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, but on a Truth of abiding Knowledge that surpasses the mere practical momentary truth of the Ignorance, on an inward joy and not on mere vital pleasure, -- for it prefers rather a purifying suffering and sorrow to degrading satisfactions, -- on love winged upward and not tied to the stake of egoistic craving or with its feet sunk in the mire, on beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternal, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but of the Spirit. Its will is for the divinisation of life, the expression through it of a higher Truth, its dedication to the Divine and the Eternal.
But the most intimate character of the psychic is its pressure towards the Divine through a sacred love, joy and oneness. It is the divine Love that it seeks most, it is the love of the Divine that is its spur, its goal, its star of Truth shining over the luminous cave of the nascent or the still obscure cradle of the new-born godhead within us.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,#KEYS
366:Integral knowledge will then mean the cancelling of the sevenfold Ignorance by the discovery of what it misses and ignores, a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness:- it will mean the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all things; the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of the cosmos as the Self's becoming, the becoming of the Being, a manifestation of the Spirit; the knowledge of the world as one with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; the knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in Time beyond death and earth-existence; the knowledge of our greater and inner existence behind the surface; the knowledge of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above them; the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self, the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality. But this is not an intellectual knowledge which can be learned and completed in our present mould of consciousness; it must be an experience, a becoming, a change of consciousness, a change of being. This brings in the evolutionary character of the Becoming and the fact that our mental ignorance is only a stage in our evolution. The integral knowledge, then, can only come by an evolution of our being and our nature, and that would seem to signify a slow process in Time such as has accompanied the other evolutionary transformations. But as against that inference there is the fact that the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation. It is necessary then to see what is likely to be the principle of this new process of evolution and what are the movements of the integral knowledge that must necessarily emerge in it,-or, in other words, what is the nature of the consciousness that must be the base of the life divine and how that life may be expected to be formed or to form itself, to materialise or, as one might say, to realise.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, 681,#KEYS
367: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
368:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
369:Mother, suffering comes from ignorance and pain, but what is the nature of the suffering and pain the Divine Mother feels for her children-the Divine Mother in Savitri?
It is because she participates in their nature. She has descended upon earth to participate in their nature. Because if she did not participate in their nature, she could not lead them farther. If she remained in her supreme consciousness where there is no suffering, in her supreme knowledge and consciousness, she could not have any contact with human beings. And it is for this that she is obliged to take on the human consciousness and form, it is to be able to enter into contact with them. Only, she does not forget: she has adopted their consciousness but she remains in relation with her own real, supreme consciousness. And thus, by joining the two, she can make those who are in that other consciousness progress. But if she did not adopt their consciousness, if she did not suffer with their sorrow, she could not help them. Hers is not a suffering of ignorance: it is a suffering through identity. It is because she has accepted to have the same vibrations as they, in order to be able to enter into contact with them and pull them out of the state they are in. If she did not enter into contact with them, she would not be felt at all or no one could bear her radiance.... This has been said in all kinds of forms, in all kinds of religions, and they have spoken very often of the divine Sacrifice, but from a certain point of view it is true. It is a voluntary sacrifice, but it is true: giving up a state of perfect consciousness, perfect bliss, perfect power in order to accept the state of ignorance of the outer world so as to pull it out of that ignorance. If this state were not accepted, there would be no contact with it. No relation would be possible. And this is the reason of the incarnations. Otherwise, there would be no necessity. If the divine consciousness and divine force could work directly from the place or state of their perfection, if they could work directly on matter and transform it, there would be no need to take a body like man's. It would have been enough to act from the world of Truth with the perfect consciousness and upon consciousness. In fact that acts perhaps but so slowly that when there is this effort to make the world progress, make it go forward more rapidly, well, it is necessary to take on human nature. By taking the human body, one is obliged to take on human nature, partially. Only, instead of losing one's consciousness and losing contact with the Truth, one keeps this consciousness and this Truth, and it is by joining the two that one can create exactly this kind of alchemy of transformation. But if one did not touch matter, one could do nothing for it. ~ The Mother, Question And Answers,#KEYS
370: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
371:on purifying ego and desire :::
The elimination of all egoistic activity and of its foundation, the egoistic consciousness, is clearly the key to the consummation we desire. And since in the path of works action is the knot we have first to loosen, we must endeavour to loosen it where it is centrally tied, in desire and in ego; for otherwise we shall cut only stray strands and not the heart of our bondage.These are the two knots of our subjection to this ignorant and divided Nature, desire and ego-sense. And of these two desire has its native home in the emotions and sensations and instincts and from there affects thought and volition; ego-sense lives indeed in these movements, but it casts its deep roots also in the thinking mind and its will and it is there that it becomes fully self conscious. These are the twin obscure powers of the obsessing world-wide Ignorance that we have to enlighten and eliminate.
In the field of action desire takes many forms, but the most powerful of all is the vital selfs craving or seeking after the fruit of our works. The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material, -wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, niskama karma. ...
The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to all results, to all reactions, to all happenings. If good fortune and ill fortune, if respect and insult, if reputation and obloquy, if victory and defeat, if pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, not responding with the least disturbance or vibration in any spot of the nature, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise. The tiniest reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings still to the old nature. Our self-conquest is only partially accomplished; it is still imperfect or unreal in some stretch or part or smallest spot of the ground of our nature. And that little pebble of imperfection may throw down the whole achievement of the Yoga
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [102],#KEYS
372: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
373:An integral Yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. Our parts of will and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being of life, all our self and nature must seek the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternal. But mans present nature is limited, divided, unequal, -- it is easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part of his being and follow a definite line of progress proper to his nature: only rare individuals have the strength to take a large immediate plunge straight into the sea of the Divine Infinity. Some therefore must choose as a starting-point a concentration in thought or contemplation or the minds one-pointedness to find the eternal reality of the Self in them; others can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divine, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic and active; for these it is best to centre themselves in the will and enlarge their being through works. United with the Self and source of all by their surrender of their will into its infinity, guided in their works by the secret Divinity within or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master and mover of all their energies of thought, feeling, act, becoming by this enlargement of being selfless and universal, they can reach by works some first fullness of a spiritual status. But the path, whatever its point of starting, must debouch into a vaster dominion; it must proceed in the end through a totality of integrated knowledge, emotion, will of dynamic action, perfection of the being and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousness, on the level of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledge, will, emotion, the perfection of the self and the dynamic nature rise each to its absolute of itself and all to their perfect harmony and fusion with each other, to a divine integrality, a divine perfection. For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite. An ascent into the supramental Truth not only raises our spiritual and essential consciousness to that height but brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All then becomes part of the Divine Truth, an element and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and descent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Supermind and the Yoga of Works [279-280],#KEYS
374:The Mother once described the characteristics of the unity-body, of the future supramental body, to a young Ashramite: 'You know, if there is something on that window-sill and if I [in a supramental body] want to take it, I stretch out my hand and it becomes - wow! - long, and I have the thing in my hand without even having to get up from my chair ... Physically, I shall be able to be here and there at the same time. I shall be able to communicate with many people at the same time. To have something in my hand, I'll just have to wish for it. I think about something and I want it and it is already in my hand. With this transformed body I shall be free of the fetters of ignorance, pain, of mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won't need any material things to subsist on ... The body can even be lengthened if one wants it to become tall, or shrunk when one wants it to be small, in any circumstances ... There will be all kinds of changes and there will be powers without limit. And it won't be something funny. Of course, I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. 'It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent. It will have a supple and malleable body endowed with extraordinary capacities and able to do everything; a body without age, a creation of the New Consciousness or else a transformed body such as none has ever imagined ... All that is above man will be within its reach. It will be guided by the Truth alone and nothing less. That is what it is and more even than has ever been conceived.'895 This the Mother told in French to Mona Sarkar, who noted it down as faithfully as possible and read it out to her for verification. The supramental body will not only be omnipotent and omniscient, but also omnipresent. And immortal. Not condemned to a never ending monotonous immortality - which, again, is one of our human interpretations of immortality - but for ever existing in an ecstasy of inexhaustible delight in 'the Joy that surpasses all understanding.' Moment after moment, eternity after eternity. For in that state each moment is an eternity and eternity an ever present moment. If gross matter is not capable of being used as a permanent coating of the soul in the present phase of its evolution, then it certainly is not capable of being the covering of the supramental consciousness, to form the body that has, to some extent, been described above. This means that the crux of the process of supramental transformation lies in matter; the supramental world has to become possible in matter, which at present still is gross matter. - Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were supramentalized in their mental and vital, but their enormous problem was the supramentalization of the physical body, consisting of the gross matter of the Earth. As the Mother said: 'It is matter itself that must change so that the Supramental may manifest. A new kind of matter no longer corresponding with Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements? Is that possible?
~ Georges Van Vrekhem,#KEYS
375:Apotheosis ::: One of the most powerful and beloved of the Bodhisattvas of the Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan is the Lotus Bearer, Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord Looking Down in Pity," so called because he regards with compassion all sentient creatures suffering the evils of existence. To him goes the millionfold repeated prayer of the prayer wheels and temple gongs of Tibet: Om mani padme hum, "The jewel is in the lotus." To him go perhaps more prayers per minute than to any single divinity known to man; for when, during his final life on earth as a human being, he shattered for himself the bounds of the last threshold (which moment opened to him the timelessness of the void beyond the frustrating mirage-enigmas of the named and bounded cosmos), he paused: he made a vow that before entering the void he would bring all creatures without exception to enlightenment; and since then he has permeated the whole texture of existence with the divine grace of his assisting presence, so that the least prayer addressed to him, throughout the vast spiritual empire of the Buddha, is graciously heard. Under differing forms he traverses the ten thousand worlds, and appears in the hour of need and prayer. He reveals himself in human form with two arms, in superhuman forms with four arms, or with six, or twelve, or a thousand, and he holds in one of his left hands the lotus of the world.
Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance. "When the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change." This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain-through herohood; for, as we read: "All things are Buddha-things"; or again (and this is the other way of making the same statement) : "All beings are without self."
The world is filled and illumined by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva ("he whose being is enlightenment"); rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them-and with profound repose. And since he is what all of us may be, his presence, his image, the mere naming of him, helps. "He wears a garland of eight thousand rays, in which is seen fully reflected a state of perfect beauty.
The color of his body is purple gold. His palms have the mixed color of five hundred lotuses, while each finger tip has eighty-four thousand signet-marks, and each mark eighty-four thousand colors; each color has eighty-four thousand rays which are soft and mild and shine over all things that exist. With these jewel hands he draws and embraces all beings. The halo surrounding his head is studded with five hundred Buddhas, miraculously transformed, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, who are attended, in turn, by numberless gods. And when he puts his feet down to the ground, the flowers of diamonds and jewels that are scattered cover everything in all directions. The color of his face is gold. While in his towering crown of gems stands a Buddha, two hundred and fifty miles high." - Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra, 19; ibid., pp. 182-183. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Apotheosis,#KEYS
376:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],#KEYS
377: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
378:In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration.
A certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge. For when we come to the end of whatever path, the universe appears as only a symbol or an appearance of an unknowable Reality which translates itself here into different systems of values, physical values, vital and sensational values, intellectual, ideal and spiritual values. The more That becomes real to us, the more it is seen to be always beyond defining thought and beyond formulating expression. "Mind attains not there, nor speech."3 And yet as it is possible to exaggerate, with the Illusionists, the unreality of the appearance, so it is possible to exaggerate the unknowableness of the Unknowable. When we speak of It as unknowable, we mean, really, that It escapes the grasp of our thought and speech, instruments which proceed always by the sense of difference and express by the way of definition; but if not knowable by thought, It is attainable by a supreme effort of consciousness. There is even a kind of Knowledge which is one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known. Certainly, that Knowledge cannot be reproduced successfully in the terms of thought and speech, but when we have attained to it, the result is a revaluation of That in the symbols of our cosmic consciousness, not only in one but in all the ranges of symbols, which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal, of our external life. Moreover, there is also a kind of Knowledge through which That does reveal itself by all these names and forms of phenomenal existence which to the ordinary intelligence only conceal It. It is this higher but not highest process of Knowledge to which we can attain by passing the limits of the materialistic formula and scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind in the phenomena that are characteristic of them and not merely in those subordinate movements by which they link themselves to Matter.
The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, 'Forth now and push forward also in other fields.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
379:
Sweet Mother, how can one feel the divine Presence constantly?
Why not?
But how can one do it?
But I am asking why one should not feel it. Instead of asking the question how to feel it, I ask the question: "What do you do that you don't feel it?" There is no reason not to feel the divine Presence. Once you have felt it, even once, you should be capable of feeling it always, for it is there. It is a fact. It is only our ignorance which makes us unaware of it. But if we become conscious, why should we not always be conscious? Why forget something one has learnt? When one has had the experience, why forget it? It is simply a bad habit, that's all.
You see, there is something which is a fact, that's to say, it is. But we are unaware of it and do not know it. But after we become conscious and know it, why should we still forget it? Does it make sense? It's quite simply because we are not convinced that once one has met the Divine one can't forget Him any more. We are, on the contrary, full of stupid ideas which say, "Oh! Yes, it's very well once like that, but the rest of the time it will be as usual." So there is no reason why it may not begin again.
But if we know that... we did not know something, we were ignorant, then the moment we have the knowledge... I am sincerely asking how one can manage to forget. One might not know something, that is a fact; there are countless things one doesn't know. But the moment one knows them, the minute one has the experience, how can one manage to forget? Within yourself you have the divine Presence, you know nothing about it - for all kinds of reasons, but still the chief reason is that you are in a state of ignorance. Yet suddenly, by a clicking of circumstances, you become conscious of this divine Presence, that is, you are before a fact - it is not imagination, it is a fact, it's something which exists. Then how do you manage to forget it once you have known it?
...
It is because something in us, through cowardice or defeatism, accepts this. If one did not accept it, it wouldn't happen.
Even when everything seems to be suddenly darkened, the flame and the Light are always there. And if one doesn't forget them, one has only to put in front of them the part which is dark; there will perhaps be a battle, there will perhaps be a little difficulty, but it will be something quite transitory; never will you lose your footing. That is why it is said - and it is something true - that to sin through ignorance may have fatal consequences, because when one makes mistakes, well, these mistakes have results, that's obvious, and usually external and material results; but that's no great harm, I have already told you this several times. But when one knows what is true, when one has seen and had the experience of the Truth, to accept the sin again, that is, fall back again into ignorance and obscurity - this is indeed an infinitely more serious mistake. It begins to belong to the domain of ill-will. In any case, it is a sign of slackness and weakness. It means that the will is weak.
So your question is put the other way round. Instead of asking yourself how to keep it, you must ask yourself: how does one not keep it? Not having it, is a state which everybody is in before the moment of knowing; not knowing - one is in that state before knowing. But once one knows one cannot forget. And if one forgets, it means that there is something which consents to the forgetting, it means there is an assent somewhere; otherwise one would not forget.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 403,405,406,#KEYS
380: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
381:
"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
382:In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression. It is by this turn that the self-conscious Yoga aware of its aim begins: there is a new awakening and an upward change of the life motive. So long as there is only an intellectual, ethical and other self-training for the now normal purposes of life which does not travel beyond the ordinary circle of working of mind, life and body, we are still only in the obscure and yet unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature; we are still in pursuit of only an ordinary human perfection. A spiritual desire of the Divine and of the divine perfection, of a unity with him in all our being and a spiritual perfection in all our nature, is the effective sign of this change, the precursory power of a great integral conversion of our being and living. By personal effort a precursory change, a preliminary conversion can be effected; it amounts to a greater or less spiritualising of our mental motives, our character and temperament, and a mastery, stilling or changed action of the vital and physical life. This converted subjectivity can be made the base of some communion or unity of the soul in mind with the Divine and some partial reflection of the divine nature in the mentality of the human being. That is as far as man can go by his unaided or indirectly aided effort, because that is an effort of mind and mind cannot climb beyond itself permanently: at most it arises to a spiritualised and idealised mentality. If it shoots up beyond that border, it loses hold of itself, loses hold of life, and arrives either at a trance of absorption or a passivity. A greater perfection can only be arrived at by a higher power entering in and taking up the whole action of the being. The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the action of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, a substitution of its influence, possession and working for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being. Two rules there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga. A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Integral Perfection [618],#KEYS
383::::
As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power comes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for its own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much lightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 179,#KEYS
384:Allow the Lord to Do Everything :::
Now, when I start looking like this (Mother closes her eyes), two things are there at the same time: this smile, this joy, this laughter are there, and such peace! Such full, luminous, total peace, in which there are no more conflicts, no more contradictions. There are no more conflicts. It is one single luminous harmony - and yet everything we call error, suffering, misery, everything is there. It eliminates nothing. It is another way of seeing.
(long silence)
There can be no doubt that if you sincerely want to get out of it, it is not so difficult after all: you have nothing to do, you only have to allow the Lord to do everything. And He does everything. He does everything. It is so wonderful, so wonderful!
He takes anything, even what we call a very ordinary intelligence and he simply teaches you to put this intelligence aside, to rest: "There, be quiet, don't stir, don't bother me, I don't need you." Then a door opens - you don't even feel that you have to open it; it is wide open, you are tkane over to the other side. All that is done by Someone else, not you. And then the other way becomes impossible.
All this... oh, this tremendous labour of hte mind striving to understand, toiling and giving itself headaches!... It is absolutely useless, absolutely useless, no use at all, it merely increases the confusion.
You are faced with a so-called problem: what should you say, what should you do, how should you act? There is nothing to do, nothing, you only have to say to the Lord, "There, You see, it is like that" - that's all. And then you stay very quiet. And then quite spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflection, without calculation, nothing, nothing, without the slightest effect - you do what has to be done. That is to say, the Lord does it, it is no longer you. He does it. He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words into your mouth or your pen - He does everything, everything, everything, everything; you have nothing more to do but allow yourself to live blissfully.
I am more and more convinced that people do not really want it.
But clearing the ground is difficult, the work of clearing the ground before hand.
But you don't even need to do it! He does it for you.
But they are constantly breaking in: the old consciousness, the old thoughts....
Yes, they try to come in again, by habit. You only have to say, "Lord, You see, You see, You see, it is like that" - that's all. "Lord, You see, You see this, You see that, You see this fool" - and it is all over immediately. And it changes automatically, my child, without the slightest effort. Simply to be sincere, that is to say, to truly want everything to be right. You are perfectly conscious that you can do nothing about it, that you have no capacity.... But there is always something that wants to do it by itself; that's the trouble, otherwise...
No, you may be full of an excellent goodwill and then you want to do it. That's what complicated everything. Or else you don't have faith, you believe that the Lord will not be able to do it and that you must do it yourself, because He does not know! (Mother laughs.) This, this kind of stupidity is very common. "How can He see things? We live in a world of Falsehood, how can He see Falsehood and see..." But He sees the thing as it is! Exactly!
I am not speaking of people of no intelligence, I am speaking of people who are intelligent and try - there is a kind of conviction, like that, somewhere, even in people who know that we live in a world of Ignorance and Falsehood and that there is a Lord who is All-Truth. They say, "Precisely because He is All-Truth, He does not understand. (Mother laughs.) He does not understand our falsehood, I must deal with it myself." That is very strong, very common.
Ah! we make complications for nothing. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
385: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
386:Coded Language
Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic community to its drum woven past
Whereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released at the same given moment of recorded history , yet at a different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with the present.
We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.
Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal aggressors.
Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.
Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.
Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season
Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and effect
Reject mediocrity!
Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand.
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.
Thus, in the name of:
ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN
LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITH, LOURDE, WHITMAN
BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ, SIDDHARTHA
MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GURDJIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER, HOLIDAY
DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE, RACHMANINOV
ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHAWAY, HENDRIX, KUTI, DICKINSON, RIPPERTON
MARY, ISIS, THERESA, HANSBURY, TESLA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI
LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING, FOUR
LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERÓN, MARLEY, MAGDALENE, COSBY
SHAKUR, THOSE WHO BURN, THOSE STILL AFLAME, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED
We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever.
If you must count to keep the beat then count.
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.
Curve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.
Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry, crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
~ Saul Williams,#KEYS
387:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, #KEYS
388:[the sevenfold ignorance and the integral knowledge:]
We are ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence,-that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becoming in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence, -that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-self,-that is the third, the egoistic ignorance. We are ignorant of our eternal becoming in Time; we take this little life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space, for our beginning, our middle and our end,-that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is superconscient, subconscient, intraconscient, circumconscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence,-that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming; we take the mind or life or body or any two of these or all three for our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to determine sovereignly by its emergence their operations,-that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoyment of our life in the world; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal,-that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.
Our conception of the Ignorance will necessarily determine our conception of the Knowledge and determine, therefore, since our life is the Ignorance at once denying and seeking after the Knowledge, the goal of human effort and the aim of the cosmic endeavour. Integral knowledge will then mean the cancelling of the sevenfold Ignorance by the discovery of what it misses and ignores, a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness:- it will mean [1] the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all things; [2] the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of the cosmos as the Self's becoming, the becoming of the Being, a manifestation of the Spirit; [3] the knowledge of the world as one with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; [4] the knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in Time beyond death and earth-existence; [5] the knowledge of our greater and inner existence behind the surface; [6] the knowledge of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above them; [7] the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self, the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality.
But this is not an intellectual knowledge which can be learned and completed in our present mould of consciousness; it must be an experience, a becoming, a change of consciousness, a change of being. This brings in the evolutionary character of the Becoming and the fact that our mental ignorance is only a stage in our evolution. The integral knowledge, then, can only come by an evolution of our being and our nature, and that would seem to signify a slow process in Time such as has accompanied the other evolutionary transformations. But as against that inference there is the fact that the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation. It is necessary then to see what is likely to be the principle of this new process of evolution and what are the movements of the integral knowledge that must necessarily emerge in it,-or, in other words, what is the nature of the consciousness that must be the base of the life divine and how that life may be expected to be formed or to form itself, to materialise or, as one might say, to realise.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pg 680-683 [T1],#KEYS
389:Depression, unless one has a strong will, suggests, "This is not worth while, one may have to wait a lifetime." As for enthusiasm, it expects to see the vital transformed overnight: "I am not going to have any difficulty henceforth, I am going to advance rapidly on the path of yoga, I am going to gain the divine consciousness without any difficulty." There are some other difficulties.... One needs a little time, much perseverance. So the vital, after a few hours - perhaps a few days, perhaps a few months - says to itself: "We haven't gone very far with our enthusiasm, has anything been really done? Doesn't this movement leave us just where we were, perhaps worse than we were, a little troubled, a little disturbed? Things are no longer what they were, they are not yet what they ought to be. It is very tiresome, what I am doing." And then, if one pushes a little more, here's this gentleman saying, "Ah, no! I have had enough of it, leave me alone. I don't want to move, I shall stay in my corner, I won't trouble you, but don't bother me!" And so one has not gone very much farther than before.
This is one of the big obstacles which must be carefully avoided. As soon as there is the least sign of discontentment, of annoyance, the vital must be spoken to in this way, "My friend, you are going to keep calm, you are going to do what you are asked to do, otherwise you will have to deal with me." And to the other, the enthusiast who says, "Everything must be done now, immediately", your reply is, "Calm yourself a little, your energy is excellent, but it must not be spent in five minutes. We shall need it for a long time, keep it carefully and, as it is wanted, I shall call upon your goodwill. You will show that you are full of goodwill, you will obey, you won't grumble, you will not protest, you will not revolt, you will say 'yes, yes', you will make a little sacrifice when asked, you will say 'yes' wholeheartedly."
So we get started on the path. But the road is very long. Many things happen on the way. Suddenly one thinks one has overcome an obstacle; I say "thinks", because though one has overcome it, it is not totally overcome. I am going to take a very obvious instance, of a very simple observation. Someone has found that his vital is uncontrollable and uncontrolled, that it gets furious for nothing and about nothing. He starts working to teach it not to get carried away, not to flare up, to remain calm and bear the shocks of life without reacting violently. If one does this cheerfully, it goes quite quickly. (Note this well, it is very important: when you have to deal with your vital take care to remain cheerful, otherwise you will get into trouble.) One remains cheerful, that is, when one sees the fury rise, one begins to laugh. Instead of being depressed and saying, "Ah! In spite of all my effort it is beginning all over again", one begins to laugh and says, "Well, well! One hasn't yet seen the end of it. Look now, aren't you ridiculous, you know quite well that you are being ridiculous! Is it worthwhile getting angry?" One gives it this lesson cheerfully. And really, after a while it doesn't get angry again, it is quiet - and one relaxes one's attention. One thinks the difficulty has been overcome, one thinks a result has at last been reached: "My vital does not trouble me any longer, it does not get angry now, everything is going fine." And the next day, one loses one's temper. It is then one must be careful, it is then one must not say, "Here we are, it's no use, I shall never achieve anything, all my efforts are futile; all this is an illusion, it is impossible." On the contrary, one must say, "I wasn't vigilant enough." One must wait long, very long, before one can say, "Ah! It is done and finished." Sometimes one must wait for years, many years....
I am not saying this to discourage you, but to give you patience and perseverance - for there is a moment when you do arrive. And note that the vital is a small part of your being - a very important part, we have said that it is the dynamism, the realising energy, it is very important; but it is only a small part. And the mind!... which goes wandering, which must be pulled back by all the strings to be kept quiet! You think this can be done overnight? And your body?... You have a weakness, a difficulty, sometimes a small chronic illness, nothing much, but still it is a nuisance, isn't it? You want to get rid of it. You make efforts, you concentrate; you work upon it, establish harmony, and you think it is finished, and then.... Take, for instance, people who have the habit of coughing; they can't control themselves or almost can't. It is not serious but it is bothersome, and there seems to be no reason why it should ever stop. Well, one tells oneself, "I am going to control this." One makes an effort - a yogic effort, not a material one - one brings down consciousness, force, and stops the cough. And one thinks, "The body has forgotten how to cough." And it is a great thing when the body has forgotten, truly one can say, "I am cured." But unfortunately it is not always true, for this goes down into the subconscient and, one day, when the balance of forces is not so well established, when the strength is not the same, it begins again. And one laments, "I believed that it was over! I had succeeded and told myself, 'It is true that spiritual power has an action upon the body, it is true that something can be done', and there! it is not true. And yet it was a small thing, and I who want to conquer immortality! How will I succeed?... For years I have been free from this small thing and here it is beginning anew!" It is then that you must be careful. You must arm yourself with an endless patience and endurance. You do a thing once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times if necessary, but you do it till it gets done. And not done only here and there, but everywhere and everywhere at the same time. This is the great problem one sets oneself. That is why, to those who come to tell me very light-heartedly, "I want to do yoga", I reply, "Think it over, one may do the yoga for a number of years without noticing the least result. But if you want to do it, you must persist and persist with such a will that you should be ready to do it for ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to succeed." I do not say it will be like that, but the attitude must be like that. Nothing must discourage you; for there are all the difficulties of ignorance of the different states of being, to which are added the endless malice and the unbounded cunning of the hostile forces in the world.... They are there, do you know why? They have been.... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS
390:The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or lateR But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, 558,#KEYS
391:
Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?
Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi.
But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.
If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder.
Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter.
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.
Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together.
When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?
The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 93?
,#KEYS
392:The Supreme Discovery
IF WE want to progress integrally, we must build within our conscious being a strong and pure mental synthesis which can serve us as a protection against temptations from outside, as a landmark to prevent us from going astray, as a beacon to light our way across the moving ocean of life.
Each individual should build up this mental synthesis according to his own tendencies and affinities and aspirations. But if we want it to be truly living and luminous, it must be centred on the idea that is the intellectual representation symbolising That which is at the centre of our being, That which is our life and our light.
This idea, expressed in sublime words, has been taught in various forms by all the great Instructors in all lands and all ages.
The Self of each one and the great universal Self are one. Since all that is exists from all eternity in its essence and principle, why make a distinction between the being and its origin, between ourselves and what we place at the beginning?
The ancient traditions rightly said:
"Our origin and ourselves, our God and ourselves are one."
And this oneness should not be understood merely as a more or less close and intimate relationship of union, but as a true identity.
Thus, when a man who seeks the Divine attempts to reascend by degrees towards the inaccessible, he forgets that all his knowledge and all his intuition cannot take him one step forward in this infinite; neither does he know that what he wants to attain, what he believes to be so far from him, is within him.
For how could he know anything of the origin until he becomes conscious of this origin in himself?
It is by understanding himself, by learning to know himself, that he can make the supreme discovery and cry out in wonder like the patriarch in the Bible, "The house of God is here and I knew it not."
That is why we must express that sublime thought, creatrix of the material worlds, and make known to all the word that fills the heavens and the earth, "I am in all things and all beings."When all shall know this, the promised day of great transfigurations will be at hand. When in each atom of Matter men shall recognise the indwelling thought of God, when in each living creature they shall perceive some hint of a gesture of God, when each man can see God in his brother, then dawn will break, dispelling the darkness, the falsehood, the ignorance, the error and suffering that weigh upon all Nature. For, "all Nature suffers and laments as she awaits the revelation of the Sons of God."
This indeed is the central thought epitomising all others, the thought which should be ever present to our remembrance as the sun that illumines all life.
That is why I remind you of it today. For if we follow our path bearing this thought in our hearts like the rarest jewel, the most precious treasure, if we allow it to do its work of illumination and transfiguration within us, we shall know that it lives in the centre of all beings and all things, and in it we shall feel the marvellous oneness of the universe.
Then we shall understand the vanity and childishness of our meagre satisfactions, our foolish quarrels, our petty passions, our blind indignations. We shall see the dissolution of our little faults, the crumbling of the last entrenchments of our limited personality and our obtuse egoism. We shall feel ourselves being swept along by this sublime current of true spirituality which will deliver us from our narrow limits and bounds.
The individual Self and the universal Self are one; in every world, in every being, in every thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
In order to do that, he must become conscious of this Divine Presence within him. Some individuals must undergo a real apprenticeship in order to achieve this: their egoistic being is too all-absorbing, too rigid, too conservative, and their struggles against it are long and painful. Others, on the contrary, who are more impersonal, more plastic, more spiritualised, come easily into contact with the inexhaustible divine source of their being.But let us not forget that they too should devote themselves daily, constantly, to a methodical effort of adaptation and transformation, so that nothing within them may ever again obscure the radiance of that pure light.
But how greatly the standpoint changes once we attain this deeper consciousness! How understanding widens, how compassion grows!
On this a sage has said:
"I would like each one of us to come to the point where he perceives the inner God who dwells even in the vilest of human beings; instead of condemning him we would say, 'Arise, O resplendent Being, thou who art ever pure, who knowest neither birth nor death; arise, Almighty One, and manifest thy nature.'"
Let us live by this beautiful utterance and we shall see everything around us transformed as if by miracle.
This is the attitude of true, conscious and discerning love, the love which knows how to see behind appearances, understand in spite of words, and which, amid all obstacles, is in constant communion with the depths.
What value have our impulses and our desires, our anguish and our violence, our sufferings and our struggles, all these inner vicissitudes unduly dramatised by our unruly imagination - what value do they have before this great, this sublime and divine love bending over us from the innermost depths of our being, bearing with our weaknesses, rectifying our errors, healing our wounds, bathing our whole being with its regenerating streams?
For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives herself, conceals and forgets herself in the heart of all beings and things; she never accuses, she neither judges nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to encourage without impatience, to enrich each one with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands everything, she can endure everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns nothing that does not belong to all, and because she reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all, great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among their brethren.
How beautiful is this humble role of servant, the role of all who have been revealers and heralds of the God who is within all, of the Divine Love that animates all things....
And until we can follow their example and become true servants even as they, let us allow ourselves to be penetrated and transformed by this Divine Love; let us offer Him, without reserve, this marvellous instrument, our physical organism. He shall make it yield its utmost on every plane of activity.
To achieve this total self-consecration, all means are good, all methods have their value. The one thing needful is to persevere in our will to attain this goal. For then everything we study, every action we perform, every human being we meet, all come to bring us an indication, a help, a light to guide us on the path.
Before I close, I shall add a few pages for those who have already made apparently fruitless efforts, for those who have encountered the pitfalls on the way and seen the measure of their weakness, for those who are in danger of losing their self-confidence and courage. These pages, intended to rekindle hope in the hearts of those who suffer, were written by a spiritual worker at a time when ordeals of every kind were sweeping down on him like purifying flames.
You who are weary, downcast and bruised, you who fall, who think perhaps that you are defeated, hear the voice of a friend. He knows your sorrows, he has shared them, he has suffered like you from the ills of the earth; like you he has crossed many deserts under the burden of the day, he has known thirst and hunger, solitude and abandonment, and the cruellest of all wants, the destitution of the heart. Alas! he has known too the hours of doubt, the errors, the faults, the failings, every weakness.
But he tells you: Courage! Hearken to the lesson that the rising sun brings to the earth with its first rays each morning. It is a lesson of hope, a message of solace.
You who weep, who suffer and tremble, who dare not expect an end to your ills, an issue to your pangs, behold: there is no night without dawn and the day is about to break when darkness is thickest; there is no mist that the sun does not dispel, no cloud that it does not gild, no tear that it will not dry one day, no storm that is not followed by its shining triumphant bow; there is no snow that it does not melt, nor winter that it does not change into radiant spring.
And for you too, there is no affliction which does not bring its measure of glory, no distress which cannot be transformed into joy, nor defeat into victory, nor downfall into higher ascension, nor solitude into radiating centre of life, nor discord into harmony - sometimes it is a misunderstanding between two minds that compels two hearts to open to mutual communion; lastly, there is no infinite weakness that cannot be changed into strength. And it is even in supreme weakness that almightiness chooses to reveal itself!
Listen, my little child, you who today feel so broken, so fallen perhaps, who have nothing left, nothing to cover your misery and foster your pride: never before have you been so great! How close to the summits is he who awakens in the depths, for the deeper the abyss, the more the heights reveal themselves!
Do you not know this, that the most sublime forces of the vasts seek to array themselves in the most opaque veils of Matter? Oh, the sublime nuptials of sovereign love with the obscurest plasticities, of the shadow's yearning with the most royal light!
If ordeal or fault has cast you down, if you have sunk into the nether depths of suffering, do not grieve - for there indeed the divine love and the supreme blessing can reach you! Because you have passed through the crucible of purifying sorrows, the glorious ascents are yours.
You are in the wilderness: then listen to the voices of the silence. The clamour of flattering words and outer applause has gladdened your ears, but the voices of the silence will gladden your soul and awaken within you the echo of the depths, the chant of divine harmonies!
You are walking in the depths of night: then gather the priceless treasures of the night. In bright sunshine, the ways of intelligence are lit, but in the white luminosities of the night lie the hidden paths of perfection, the secret of spiritual riches.
You are being stripped of everything: that is the way towards plenitude. When you have nothing left, everything will be given to you. Because for those who are sincere and true, from the worst always comes the best.
Every grain that is sown in the earth produces a thousand. Every wing-beat of sorrow can be a soaring towards glory.
And when the adversary pursues man relentlessly, everything he does to destroy him only makes him greater.
Hear the story of the worlds, look: the great enemy seems to triumph. He casts the beings of light into the night, and the night is filled with stars. He rages against the cosmic working, he assails the integrity of the empire of the sphere, shatters its harmony, divides and subdivides it, scatters its dust to the four winds of infinity, and lo! the dust is changed into a golden seed, fertilising the infinite and peopling it with worlds which now gravitate around their eternal centre in the larger orbit of space - so that even division creates a richer and deeper unity, and by multiplying the surfaces of the material universe, enlarges the empire that it set out to destroy.
Beautiful indeed was the song of the primordial sphere cradled in the bosom of immensity, but how much more beautiful and triumphant is the symphony of the constellations, the music of the spheres, the immense choir that fills the heavens with an eternal hymn of victory!
Hear again: no state was ever more precarious than that of man when he was separated on earth from his divine origin. Above him stretched the hostile borders of the usurper, and at his horizon's gates watched jailers armed with flaming swords. Then, since he could climb no more to the source of life, the source arose within him; since he could no more receive the light from above, the light shone forth at the very centre of his being; since he could commune no more with the transcendent love, that love offered itself in a holocaust and chose each terrestrial being, each human self as its dwelling-place and sanctuary.
That is how, in this despised and desolate but fruitful and blessed Matter, each atom contains a divine thought, each being carries within him the Divine Inhabitant. And if no being in all the universe is as frail as man, neither is any as divine as he!
In truth, in truth, in humiliation lies the cradle of glory! 28 April 1912 ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, The Supreme Discovery,#KEYS
393:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Prudery is ignorance. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 2:What ignorance there is in human minds. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 3:Boldness is a child of ignorance. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 4:Ignorance is a tough evil to conquer. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 5:Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 6:Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 7:Freedom begins where it ends ignorance. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 8:Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 9:The complicated futility of ignorance. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 10:Ignorance is the womb of monsters. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 11:Ignorance never settles a question. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 12:Stupidity,& 13:Hidden knowledge differs little from ignorance. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 14:Ignorance is the wet-nurse of prejudice. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 15:Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 16:If ignorance were bliss, he'd be a blister ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 17:Ignorance is death, Knowledge is life. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 18:I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. ~ socrates, @wisdomtrove 19:Mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 20:Fear always springs from ignorance. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 21:Ignorance is the mother of all evils. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 22:I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 23:Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 24:Admiration is the daughter of ignorance. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 25:And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 26:The best defense against logic is ignorance. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 27:They say ignorance is bliss... . they're wrong ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 28:When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 29:Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 30:Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 31:I say there is no darkness but ignorance. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 32:Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 33:All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 34:Dignity is a mask we wear to hide our ignorance. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 35:It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 36:People are so skillful in their ignorance! ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 37:Science is the topography of ignorance. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 38:Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 39:The worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 40:Nothing is worse than active ignorance. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 41:Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 42:We must be warriors in the struggle against ignorance. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 43:Wisdom leads to unity, but ignorance to separation. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 44:And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 45:But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 46:For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 47:The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. ~ socrates, @wisdomtrove 48:If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 49:Knowledge leads to unity, but ignorance to diversity. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 50:The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 51:War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 52:Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance... ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 53:It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 54:Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 55:If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 56:Ignorance is more costly to any State than education. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 57:There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 58:Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 59:Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 60:Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 61:To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 62:We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 63:Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 64:Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 65:Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 66:It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word "intuition. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 67:Politics and church are the same. They keep the people in ignorance. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 68:Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 69:The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 70:To learn anything, you must put aside the safety of your ignorance. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 71:All ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 72:I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 73:Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 74:I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 75:The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 76:Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 77:War and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 78:Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 79:Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 80:So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 81:Desire, ignorance, and inequality‚Äîthis is the trinity of bondage. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 82:Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 83:Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 84:The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 85:Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 86:Where ignorance is bliss it's foolish to borrow your neighbor's newspaper. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 87:It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the plan of ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 88:Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 89:To me the thought of oneself as low and humble is a sin and ignorance. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 90:Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove 91:You must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 92:All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 93:Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 94:Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 95:In expanding the field of knowledge, we but increase the horizon of ignorance. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 96:The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 97:Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 98:Ignorance ain't not knowin' stuff; ignorance is knowin' stuff that AIN'T TRUE. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 99:It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 100:Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 101:All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 102:What we call evil, it seems to me, is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 103:When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 104:It's not ignorance does so much damage; it's knowin' so derned much that ain't so. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 105:Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 106:The combination of fear and ignorance (two sides of the same coin) can be paralyzing. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 107:A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 108:Man isn't a fool for his ignorance, but rather for believing things that are wrong. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 109:The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 110:When ignorance does not know something, it says that what it does not know is stupid. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 111:If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 112:Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 113:He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 114:Ignorance, poverty, and greed must disappear so that light can prevail in all places. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 115:It must certainly be more dangerous to live in ignorance than to live with knowledge. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 116:We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 117:His ignorance covers the world like a blanket and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 118:Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 119:Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 120:In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 121:The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 122:My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 123:Ignorance isn't bliss, but sometimes ignorance makes it possible for us to sleep at night. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 124:Ignorance lies not in the things you don't know, but in the things you know that ain't so. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 125:The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 126:The union of nature and soul removes the veil of ignorance that covers our intelligence. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 127:All knowledge is a form of ignorance. The most accurate map is yet only paper. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 128:Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 129:Make war not on terrorism but on ignorance, on sickness and on environmental degradation. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 130:The false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 131:Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 132:To be curious about that which is not one's concern while still in ignorance of oneself is absurd. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 133:Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 134:History is a record of the incessant struggle of humanity against ignorance and oppression. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 135:Ignorance breeds fear; the more you learn about your subject, the less fear it holds for you. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 136:It is a disgrace to let ignorance and vanity do more with us than prudence and principle. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 137:No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my ignorance. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 138:Ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. There is a beginning but no end to knowledge. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 139:The trouble with most folks isn't their ignorance. It's knowin' so many things that ain't so. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 140:America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to a select few. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 141:Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 142:Ignorance, arrogance, and racism have bloomed as Superior Knowledge in all too many universities. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 143:The curse of ignorance is that man without being good or evil is nevertheless satisfied with himself ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 144:Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 145:The only true conquests-those that awaken no regrets- are those obtained over our ignorance. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 146:He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 147:I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have got so much more of it. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 148:Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 149:To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 150:Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action? ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove 151:Darkness is the fit hour for beasts of prey, and ignorance the natural dwelling place of cruelty. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 152:It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don't think it will come back. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 153:Passionate people invariably deny their anger, and cowards often boast their ignorance of fear. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 154:Don’t let anyone’s ignorance, drama, or negativity stop you from being the best you can be. ~ marc-and-angel-chernoff, @wisdomtrove 155:Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 156:The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 157:When ignorance, the mother of sin, dissolves, destiny, the compulsion to sin again, ceases. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 158:To love and worship a god is also ignorance. My home is beyond all notions, however sublime. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 159:Pain, sorrow, ignorance are all illusory; they cannot live. Bliss, joy, knowledge are true; they cannot die. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 160:The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 161:It is better to be ignorant; at least the ignorance is yours. It is authentic, it is real, sincere and honest! ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 162:I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 163:Nothing fosters courage like a clear grasp of grace... & nothing fosters fear like an ignorance of mercy ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 164:One of the hardest things for the apparently separate self to understand is that there is no real ignorance. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 165:By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 166:The great mass of people judge well of things, for they are in natural ignorance, which is man's true state. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 167:The root cause of all the problems we have in the world today is ignorance of course. But most, polarization. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 168:Today's a new day. It's your day. You shape it. Don't let it be shaped by someone else's ignorance or fear. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 169:Perfect ignorance is quiet, perfect knowledge is quiet; not so the transition from the former to the latter. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 170:Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 171:Knowledge is not happiness, and science But an exchange of ignorance for that Which is another kind of ignorance. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 172:So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 173:The dumbing down of America is evident in the slow decay of substantive content, a kind of celebration of ignorance. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 174:When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is known as ignorance. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 175:He must be able to mystify his officers and men by false reports and appearances, and thus keep them in total ignorance. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 176:I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 177:We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 178:We have nothing to lose by trusting the infinite power of the Self, except the bondage of our own ignorance. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 179:Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 180:His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 181:Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 182:The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 183:Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 184:Cowards never win victories. We have to fight fear and troubles and ignorance if we expect them to flee before us. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 185:Marriage or non-marriage, good or evil, learning or ignorance, any of these is justified, if it leads to the goal. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 186:True tolerance only arises from a keen awareness of the abysmal ignorance of everyone as far as truth is concerned. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 187:Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 188:What is necessary to keep providing good care to nature has completely fallen into ignorance during the materialism era. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 189:A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 190:The very admission: & 191:An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 192:A judicious man looks at Statistics, not to "get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted & 193:A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 194:Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 195:The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 196:You need not spend your life wallowing in failure, ignorance, grief, poverty, shame and self-pity. There is a better way to live. ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 197:Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 198:The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is the pretense of intelligent ignorance. The former is teachable; the latter is not. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 199:Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 200:Do not try to entrap others with your haughty knowledge. To your wide surprise, they will entrap you with their lengthy ignorance. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 201:Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 202:True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 203:All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 204:All you've got to do is own up to your ignorance honestly, and you'll find people who are eager to fill your head with information. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 205:the meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture - it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 206:You may be ignorant of all the books in the world, and I hope you are, of all the latest theories, but that is not ignorance. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 207:It is never just disagreement but always intellectual dishonesty that is the apologist's worst enemy. And its apprentice is ignorance. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 208:The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 209:The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 210:Don’t try to become. Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 211:I, and "mine" that is ignorance. By discriminating, you will realize that what you call "I" is really nothing but Atman [the Self]. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 212:Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 213:Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 214:We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance. ~ john-wheeler, @wisdomtrove 215:S o long as God seems to be outside and far away, so long there is ignorance. But where God is realized within, that is true knowledge. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 216:Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 217:separation has not even a shadow of truth in reality, and that Maya, or ignorance and illusion, causes us to see the One as Many. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 218:Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 219:Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is devastation. Ignorance is tragedy. And ignorance is illness. It all stems from ignorance. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 220:But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 221:The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 222:Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one's ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 223:If you really want to change the world, you must first understand it adequately, or all you will do is reproduce in larger numbers your own ignorance. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 224:On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the other side was sense. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 225:We are ignorant of the Beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing. ~ jules-renard, @wisdomtrove 226:It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 227:My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 228:As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 229:Do not feel that you are destined to enlightenment in this life. You have no idea. This is an illusion of selfhood. It's gross ignorance and egotism. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 230:Poverty, sickness, wars, famines old age and death itself were not the inevitable fate of humankind. They were simply the fruits of our ignorance. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 231:Is there anything science should not try to explain? Science is knowledge and knowledge is power - power to do good or evil. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 232:Q: Why should ignorance be painful? M: It is at the root of all desire and fear, which are painful states and the source of endless errors. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 233:We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 234:The spiritual quest is a journey without distance. You travel from where you are right now To where you have always been. From ignorance to recognition. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 235:Ignorance itself is without a doubt a sin for those who do not wish to understand; for those who, however, cannot understand, it is the punishment of sin. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 236:The affections are the children of ignorance; when the horizon of our experience expands, and models multiply, love and admiration imperceptibly vanish. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 237:There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 238:Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 239:Nicholas of Cusa On learned ignorance: a translation and an appraisal of De docta ignorantia. Book by Nicholas of Cusa, translated by Jasper Hopkins, 1981. ~ nicholas-of-cusa, @wisdomtrove 240:All that lives is striving for happiness; yet a thousand and one pains and fears attend upon every pleasure which man seeks through the ignorance of exclusiveness. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 241:The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 242:So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 243:If you have attained something, this is the surest proof that you have gone astray. Therefore, not to have is to have, silence is thunder, ignorance is enlightenment. ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove 244:Examine your thoughts and feelings as they occur, give them your full attention and you will find that there is nothing like ignorance, only inattention. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 245:from you, my dear Erasmus, let me obtain this request, that just as I bear with your ignorance in these matters, so you in turn will bear with my lack of eloquence. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 246:If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word "fearlessness." ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 247:Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 248:Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ignorance. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 249:The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom - in other words, a rigorous discipline-enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery and drunkenness. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 250:Ignorance and prejudice are the ballast of our ship of state - however, ships without ballast are not seaworthy and cannot sail in the tempests, nor reach a safe harbor. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 251:Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 252:Q: What is matter? M: What you do not understand is matter. Q: Science understands matter. M: Science merely pushes back the frontiers of our ignorance. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 253:If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 254:I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 255:How strangely is antiquity treated! To answer some purposes it is spoken of as the times of darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is put for the light of the world. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 256:The Atman, the Sun of Knowledge that rises in the sky of the heart, destroys the darkness of the ignorance, pervades and sustains all and shines and makes everything to shine. ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove 257:Human beings are innately loving beings. When we fail to love, it is because an element of ignorance has intruded into our experience, submerging our natural impulse to love. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 258:The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology, and art even to be entertained. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 259:Science ... in other words, knowledge-is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then religion would mean ignorance. But it is often the antagonist of school-divinity. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 260:A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 261:History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 262:Ignorance is an enemy, even to its owner. Knowledge is a friend, even to its hater. Ignorance hates knowledge because it is too pure. Knowledge fears ignorance because it is too sure. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 263:If you attain liberation do not feel that it matters or it is important. You had nothing to do with it. If you are bound by ignorance do not feel bad. You had nothing to do with it. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 264:Love, thine is the future. Death, I use thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, there shall be in the future neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 265:It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 266:Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 267:I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 268:Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 269:When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 270:For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove 271:This idea of body is a simple superstition. It is superstition that makes us happy or unhappy. It is superstition caused by ignorance that makes us feel heat and cold, pain and pleasure. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 272:To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is wisdom. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 273:Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 274:Now I have a tiny bit of knowledge, but more interestingly, a bit of an awareness of my vast ignorance. This is humbling, and at the same time exciting, because it shows how amazing this world is. ~ leo-babauta, @wisdomtrove 275:The Buddha always reminds us that our afflictions, including our fear and our desiring, are born from our ignorance. That is why in order to dissipate fear, we have to remove wrong perception. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 276:Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 277:From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 278:I always did hate for anyone to know what my plans or hopes or prospects were—for, if I kept people in ignorance in these matters, no one could be disappointed but myself, if they were not realized. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 279:It is ignorance that causes us to identify ourselves with the body, the ego, the senses, or anything that is not the Atman. He is a wise man who overcomes this ignorance by devotion to the Atman. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 280:Q: What is the value of spiritual books? M: They help in dispelling ignorance. They are useful in the beginning, but become a hindrance in the end. One must know when to discard them. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 281:There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 282:To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 283:Each human being can at once be a fighter and forgiver. When self-doubt tortures him, he most play the role of a fighter. And when his own ignorance humiliates him, he must play the role of a forgiver. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 284:One of the wonderful things about science is that when scientists don’t know something, they can try out all kinds of theories and conjunctures, but in the end they can just admit their ignorance. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 285:Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 286:Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 287:For myself, I long ago decided that I would rather know the truth than be happy in ignorance. If I can not have both truth and happiness, give me truth. We’ll have a long time to be happy in heaven. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 288:To attempt social reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of the race without aiming, first and foremost, at political freedom is the very height of ignorance and futility. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 289:It is proper that noble spirits, equipped with truth and enlightened with the Divine intelligence, should arm themselves against dense ignorance by climbing up to the high rock and tower of contemplation. ~ giordano-bruno, @wisdomtrove 290:Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 291:When you make a mistake or get ridiculed or rejected, look at mistakes as learning experiences, and ridicule as ignorance. Look at rejection as part of one performance, not as a turn down of the performer. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 292:Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 293:Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 294:Every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 295:Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade. Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade: Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace, And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 296:The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 297:We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 298:As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 299:She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 300:The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 301:The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong? ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 302:To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. Youth is wholly experimental. The essence and charm of that unquiet and delightful epoch is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 303:Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 304:Be yourself and think for yourself, and while your conclusions may not be infallible, they will be nearer right than the inclusions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping you in ignorance. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 305:He who wholly renounces himself, and relies not on mere human reason, will make good progress in the Scriptures; but the world comprehends them not, from ignorance of that mortification which is the gift of God's word. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 306:The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 307:There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 308:The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 309:Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 310:You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water-craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness - perhaps ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things… ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 311:It is also true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 312:Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 313:When the bubble of ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the indivisible Self. Words that proceed from the Source of Truth have real meaning. But when men speakthese words as their own, the words become meaningless. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 314:Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 315:Each increment of knowledge imparted in this way is so satisfying-and one's ignorance at every stage so consequential-that the process of learning BJJ can become remarkably addictive. I have never experienced anything quite like it. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 316:Freemasonry teaches not merely temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, brotherly love, relief, and truth, but liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it denounces ignorance, superstition, bigotry, lust tyranny and despotism. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 317:There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 318:True deliverance of man is the deliverance from Avidya i.e. ignorance. It is not in destroying anything that is positive and real, for that cannot be possible, but that which is negative, which obstructs our vision of truth. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 319:All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 320:Science is the topography of ignorance. From a few elevated points we triangulate vast spaces, inclosing infinite unknown details. We cast the lead, and draw up a little sand from abysses we may never reach with our dredges. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 321:You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 322:Irrespective of doubts and convictions, and for the Infinite Love I bear for one and all, I continue to come as the Avatar, to be judged time and again by humanity in its ignorance, in order to help man distinguish the Real from the false. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 323:The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 324:The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil's masterpiece. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 325:A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 326:If anyone can show me, and convince me, that I have acted or thought in error, I will gladly change; for I seek truth, and no one was ever injured by the truth. But people injure themselves if they live with self- deception and ignorance. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 327:Meditate upon the Knowledge and Bliss Eternal , and you will also have bliss. The Bliss indeed is eternal, only it is covered and obscured by ignorance. The less your attachment is towards the senses, the more will be your love towards God . ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 328:The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-esteem interact to create a kind of perpetual failure machine that grinds down dreams from generation to generation. We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is its linchpin. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 329:& 330:Q: What remains to discover? M: The universe without and the immensity within as they are in reality, in the great mind and heart of God. The meaning and purpose of existence, the secret of suffering, life's redemption from ignorance. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 331:Aristocracy's only an admission that certain traits which we call fine - courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing - can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don't have the warpings of ignorance and necessity. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 332:Fear is born from ignorance. We think that the other person is trying to take away something from us. But if we look deeply, we see that the desire of the other person is exactly our own desire - to have peace, to be able to have a chance to live. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 333:Keep steadily in the focus of consciousness the only clue you have: your certainty of being. Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 334:When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me; though such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 335:Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's reason to live! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn to be free! we can learn to fly! ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 336:We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest errors that ignorance can make - we assume our standard of values is shared by all other humans in the world. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 337:I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 338:You see many stars at night in the sky, but find them not when the sun rises. Can you say that there are no stars, then, in the heaven of day? So, O man, because you behold not the Almighty in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 339:India saw from the beginning, - and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, - that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 340:All men's instincts, all their impulses in life, are efforts to increase their freedom. Wealth and poverty, health and disease, culture and ignorance, labor and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are all terms for greater or less degree of freedom. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 341:Don't be afraid to borrow if someone else has said it well. Winston Churchill said, The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. That's so well said. You could stay up all night and not think of that. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 342:I believe that very much of current Arminianism is simply ignorance of gospel doctrine; and if people began to study their Bibles, and to take the Word of God as they find it, they must inevitably, if believers, rise up to rejoice in the doctrines of grace. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 343:We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 344:Money is not the root of all evil... ignorance is the root of all evil. People do cruel and foolish things for money because they feel oppressed by a sense of lack. If people knew their power to generate wealth, they would never fight or hurt each other over money. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 345:Nothing could be more beneficial for even the most zealous searcher for knowledge than his being in fact most learned in that very ignorance which is peculiarly his own; and the better a man will have known his own ignorance, the greater his learning will be. ~ nicholas-of-cusa, @wisdomtrove 346:There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 347:We ought therefore to suspect that a great mass of information respecting the Bible, and the introduction of it into the world, has been suppressed by the united tyranny of Church and State, for the purpose of keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be known. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 348:Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being. We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 349:Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life! ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 350:They are Man's and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 351:Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 352:There are many instances in science, where those closest to the intricacies of the subject have a more highly developed sense of its intractability than those at some remove. On the other hand, those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 353:You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.”tags: inspirational, spiritual55 likesLike ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 354:Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 355:These Sutras are reminiscent of the Four Noble Truths of Lord Buddha: the misery of the world, the cause of misery, the removal of that misery, and the method used to remove it. Patanjali tells us that pain can be avoided. He further tells us that its cause is ignorance. ~ swami-satchidananda-saraswati, @wisdomtrove 356:The ordinary man says in his ignorance, "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illuminated by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omnipresent Benediction. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 357:A French woman is a perfect architect in dress: she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a snobby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 358:Never get to the point where you will be ashamed to ask anybody for information. The ignorant man will always be ignorant if he fears that by asking another for information he will display ignorance. Better once display your ignorance of a certain subject than always know nothing of it. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 359:I am the One, and I see all. But the blind man in Apartment 1-A is blind in many ways, as are all human beings, even those with functioning eyes. They are blind to their folly, to their ignorance, to their history, to the future that they will make for themselves. A future born of self-loathing. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 360:Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: "A judicious man," says he, "looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him." ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 361:There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 362:It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 363:There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 364:Nevertheless, (Jefferson) believed that the habit of skepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving government to the wolves. He taught that the country is safe only when the people rule. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 365:The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than understand and explain it. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 366:Who can tell whether the parallelogram, which in our ignorance we have defined and drawn, and the whole of whose properties we profess to know, may not be all the while panting for exterior angles, sympathetic with the interior, or sullenly repining at the fact that it cannot be inscribed in a circle? ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 367:Human beings are not our enemy. Our enemy is not the other person. Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice in us and in the other person. When we are armed with compassion and understanding, we fight not against other people, but against the tendency to invade, to dominate, and to exploit. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 368:Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance or absence of knowledge as ordinarily understood, but rather the realization that no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore He is only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is beyond and above knowledge. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 369:To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 370:However, the Scientific Revolution freed humankind from this conviction. The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 371:The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 372:Wherever there is evil and wherever there is ignorance and want of knowledge, I have found out by experience that all evil comes, as our scriptures say, relying upon differences, and that all good comes from faith in equality, in the underlying sameness and oneness of things. This is the great Vedantic ideal. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 373:When an unbaked pot is broken, the potter can use the mud to make a new one; but when a baked one is broken, he cannot do the same any longer. So when a person dies in a state of ignorance, he is born again; but when he becomes well baked in the fire of true knowledge and dies a perfect man, he is not born again. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 374:Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel that I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all knowledge is ignorance, that & 375:The only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 376:The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher's or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself - Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 377:The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 378:Births and deaths are inevitable for man only during the state of ignorance in which he thinks he is the body and cannot exist without it. Only the man who will not seek the awakening of wisdom must suffer the nightmares and delusive dreams of births and deaths and the fanciful miseries and limitations attending them. (gt) ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 379:Someone has said,"Education is going from an unconscious to conscious awareness of one's ignorance."..No one has a corner on wisdom. All the name-dropping in the world does not heighten the significance of our character. If anything, it reduces it. Our acute need is to cultivate a willingness to learn and to remain teachable. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 380:The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that ‚Äúwhere ignorance is bliss, ‚Äòtis folly to be wise. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 381:The human species was too fond of lying, cheating, envy, ignorance, self-pity, self-righteousness, and utopian visions that always led to mass murder-but until and if it destroyed itself, it harbored the potential to become nobler, to take responsibility for its actions, to live and let live, and to earn the stewardship of the earth. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 382:Unreason is now ascendant in the United States - in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 383:Unreason is now ascendant in the United States in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution ; 68 percent believe in Satan . Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world . ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 384:And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 385:There is within the hearts of people a deep desire for peace on earth, and they would speak for peace if they were not bound by apathy, by ignorance, by fear. It is the job of the peacemakers to inspire them from their apathy, to dispel their ignorance with truth, to allay their fear with faith that God's laws work - and work for good. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 386:Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 387:Scientists habitually moan that the public doesn't understand them. But they complain too much: public ignorance isn't peculiar to science. It's sad if some citizens can't tell a proton from a protein. But it's equally sad if they're ignorant of their nation's history, can't speak a second language, or can't find Venezuela or Syria on a map. ~ martin-rees, @wisdomtrove 388:Some are born with knowledge, some derive it from study, and some acquire it only after a painful realization of their ignorance. But the knowledge being possessed, it comes to the same thing. Some study with a natural ease, some from a desire for advantages, and some by strenuous effort. But the achievement being made, it comes to the same thing. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 389:I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 390:Humanity is our common lot. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, at least here on Earth, in the fate assigned to us. We come of the same void, inhabit the same flesh, are dissolved in the same ashes. But ignorance infecting the human substance turns it black, and that incurable blackness, gaining possession of the soul, becomes Evil. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 391:I took a closer look. There is no such thing as ignorance. Ignorance is nothing But my limited knowledge. I took a closer look. There is no such thing as defeat. Defeat is nothing But the inspirer Of my increasing will. I took a closer look. There is no such thing as death. Death is nothing But my strengthening And Dreaming rest. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 392:I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 393:It {Darwin's theory of evolution] was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 394:There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft mindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 395:Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 396:People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 397:Knowledge has two extremes. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great minds, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same natural ignorance from which they set out; this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 398:The great lesson from the true mystics, from the Zen monks, and now also from the Humanistic and Transpersonal psychologists – that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbours, friends, and family, in one's back yard ... To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is sacred. ~ abraham-maslow, @wisdomtrove 399:The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 400:Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 401:Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 402:The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 403:We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 404:She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 405:When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they don't really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not yet be old enough to desire the fruits of it ... his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 406:Mankind's journey into space, like every great voyage of discovery, will become part of our unending journey of liberation. In the limitless reaches of space, we will find liberation from tyranny, from scarcity, from ignorance and from war. We will find the means to protect this Earth and to nurture every human life, and to explore the universe. . . .This is our mission, this is our destiny. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 407:To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world - to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish - is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 408:When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 409:Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standard of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 410:We have seemingly been divided, limited, because of our ignorance; and we have become as it were the little Mrs. so - and - so and Mr. so - and - so. But all nature is giving this delusion the lie every moment. I am not that little man or little woman cut off from all else; I am the one universal existence. The soul in its own majesty is rising up every moment and declaring its own intrinsic Divinity. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 411:Choice! The key is choice. You have options. You need not spend your life wallowing in failure, ignorance, grief, poverty, shame, and self-pity. But hold on! If this is true then why have so many among us apparently elected to live in this manner? The answer is obvious. Those who live in unhappy failure have never exercised their options for a better way of life because they have never been aware that had any choices ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 412:In no other field of scientific endeavor do otherwise intelligent people feel free to make public claims based on prejudice and ignorance. Yet in relation to psychic phenomena, committed materialists feel free to disregard the evidence and behave irrationally and unscientifically, while claiming to speak in the name of science and reason. They abuse the authority of science and bring rationalism into disrepute. ~ rupert-sheldrake, @wisdomtrove 413:A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 414:Q: I find that I am always restless, longing, hoping, seeking, finding, enjoying, abandoning, searching again. What is it that keeps me on the boil? M: You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfectly lovable. Due to ignorance, you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 415:For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 416:The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 417:Most ignorances are vincible, and in the greater number of cases stupidity is what the Buddha pronounced it to be, a sin. For, consciously, or subconsciously, it is with deliberation that we do not know or fail to understand-because incomprehension allows us, with a good conscience, to evade unpleasant obligations and responsibilities, because ignorance is the best excuse for going on doing what one likes, but ought not, to do. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 418:It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 419:The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 420:The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 421:While the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless …; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying ‘I know this’, we ought to say ‘I more or less know something more or less like this’. … Knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 422:He was talking about the sign that said & 423:Having seen that you are a bundle of memories held together by attachment, step out and look from the outside. You may perceive for the first time something which is not memory. You cease to be a Mr-so-and-so, busy about his own affairs. You are at last at peace. You realise that nothing was ever wrong with the world - you alone were wrong and now it is all over. Never again will you be caught in the meshes of desire born of ignorance. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 424:For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion& 425:Patanjali, declares that the true secret of evolution is the manifestation of the perfection which is already in every being; that this perfection has been barred and the infinite tide behind is struggling to express itself. These struggles and competitions are but the results of our ignorance, because we do not know the proper way to unlock the gate and let the water in. This infinite tide behind must express itself; it is the cause of all manifestation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 426:All of our miseries are nothing but attachment. Our whole ignorance and darkness is a strange combination of a thousand and one attachments. And we are attached to things which will be taken away by the time of death, or even perhaps before. You may be very much attached to money but you can go bankrupt tomorrow. You may be very much attached to your power and position... but they are like soap bubbles. Today they are here, tomorrow not even a trace will be left. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 427:Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled! ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 428:There has always been a longing in the human heart for a more just, free, loving and creative society. But it was never before possible to fulfill these aspirations, because we had neither the evolutionary drivers and global crises to force us to change, nor did we have the scientific and technological powers that can free us from the limitations of scarcity, poverty, disease, and ignorance. This is the time of awakening for the social potential movement. ~ barbara-marx-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 429:That is the first thing to learn - not to seek. When you seek you are really only window-shopping. The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 430:One is not unpopular because he uses peculiar expressions; that just so happens; such terms become a fad, and by and by everybody, down to the last simpleton, uses them. But a person who follows through an idea in his mind is, and always will be, essentially unpopular. That is why Socrates was unpopular, though he did not use any special terms, for to grasp and hold his & 431:Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 432:The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 433:Suffering is the result of craving expressed through the Three Poisons: greed, hatred, and delusion. These are strong, traditional terms that cover a broad range of thoughts, words, and deeds, including the most fleeting and subtle. Greed is a grasping after carrots, while hatred is an aversion to sticks; both involve craving more pleasure and less pain. Delusion is a holding onto ignorance about the way things really are—for example, not seeing how they’re connected and changing. ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove 434:Freemasonry must stand upon the Rock of Truth, religion, political, social, and economic. Nothing is so worthy of its care as freedom in all its aspects. "Free" is the most vital part of Freemasonry. It means freedom of thought and expression, freedom of spiritual and religious ideals, freedom from oppression, freedom from ignorance, superstition, vice and bigotry, freedom to acquire and possess property, to go and come at pleasure, and to rise or fall according to will of ability. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 435:It is due to neither impotence nor ignorance on God‚Äôs part that evils occur in the world, but it is owing to the order of his wisdom and to the greatness of his goodness, whence come the many and divers grades of goodness in things, many of which would be lacking were he to allow no evil to exist. Thus there would be no good of patience without the evil of persecution, nor the good of the preservation of its life in a lion, without the evil of the destruction of the animals on which it lives. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 436:It is due to neither impotence nor ignorance on God‚Äôs part that evils occur in the world, but it is owing to the order of his wisdom and to the greatness of his goodness, whence come the many and divers grades of goodness in things, many of which would be lacking were he to allow no evil to exist. Thus there would be no good of patience without the evil of persecution, nor the good of the preservation of its life in a lion, without the evil of the destruction of the animals on which it lives. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 437:To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 438:It is ignorance that is at times incomprehensible to the wise; for instance, he may not see & 439:If the suns come down, and the moons crumble into dust, and systems after systems are hurled into annihilation, what is that to you? Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self, the God of the universe. Say - "I am Existence Absolute, Bliss Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, I am He," and like a lion breaking its cage, break your chain and be free forever. What frightens you, what holds you down? Only ignorance and delusion; nothing else can bind you. You are the Pure One, the Ever-blessed. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 440:Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know-and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know-even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction-than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 441:One day Mara, the Buddhist god of ignorance and evil, was traveling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara's attendants asked what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth." "Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of the truth, O evil one?" his attendants asked. "No," Mara replied. "Right after this they usually make a belief out of it." ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 442:Jung first gave us the term ‘shadow’ to refer to those parts of our personality that have been rejected out of fear, ignorance, shame, or lack of love. His basic notion of the shadow was simple: ‘the shadow is the person you would rather not be.’ He believed that integrating the shadow would have a profound impact, enabling us to rediscover a deeper source of our own spiritual life. ‘To do this,’ Jung said, ‘we are obliged to struggle with evil, confront the shadow, to integrate the devil. There is no other choice.’ ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 443:‚ÄúBlessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.‚Äù This sentence alone would save mankind, if all books and prophets were lost. This purity of heart will bring the vision of God. It is the theme of the whole music of this universe. In purity is no bondage. Remove the veils of ignorance by purity; then we manifest ourselves as we really are and know that we were never in bondage. The seeing of & 444:One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 445:Missionaries in the developing world waste a lot of time and money (not to mention the goodwill of non-Christians) proselytizing to the needy. . . . While missionaries do many noble things at great risk to themselves, their dogmatism still spreads ignorance and death. By contrast, volunteers for secular organizations . . . do not waste . . . time telling people about the virgin birth of Jesus. Nor do they tell people in sub-Saharan Africa - where nearly four million people die from AIDS every year - that condom use is sinful. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 446:Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 447:The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War’s roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life’s fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 448:Compared with the person who is conscious of his despair, the despairing individual who is ignorant of his despair is simply a negativity further away from the truth and deliverance. . . Yet ignorance is so far from breaking the despair or changing despair to nondespairing that it can in fact be the most dangerous form of despair. . . . An individual is furthest from being conscious of himself as spirit when he is ignorant of being in despair. But precisely this-not to be conscious of oneself as spirit-is despair, which is spiritlessness. . . . ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 449:The slave labors, but with no cheer - it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens' trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 450:There are three ways in which a ruler can bring misfortune on his army: By commanding the army to advance or to retreat, being ignorant of the fact that it cannot obey. This is called hobbling the army. By attempting to govern an army in the same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes restlessness in the soldier's minds. By employing the officers of his army without discrimination, through ignorance of the military principle of adaptation to circumstances. This shakes the confidence of the soldiers. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 451:The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 452:Wonder [admiratio astonishment, marvel] is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know. ... For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 453:Wonder [admiratio astonishment, marvel] is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know. ... For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 454:It was with the last revolution and the coming of INGSOC (Inglish/English Socialism) that the latest High learnt how to keep their position permanently - by cultivating ignorance among the other classes and by constantly surveying them through the Thought Police. Part of this strategy included the maintenance of a state of continual warfare, which Goldstein discussed in the third chapter. The three major powers were not fighting this perpetual war for victory; they were fighting to keep a state of emergency always present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 455:The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 456:In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers-or should I say, nurses?-will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 457:Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is myticism). Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial-at once full of hope and full of fear-of the vastitude of human ignorance. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 458:Every major religion has similar ideas of love, the same goal of benefiting through spiritual practice, and the same effect of making its followers into better human beings. All religions teach moral precepts for perfecting the functions of the mind, body, and speech. All teach us not to lie or steal or take others' lives, and so on. The common goal of all moral precepts laid down by the great teachers of humanity is unselfishness. Those teachers wanted to lead their followers away from the paths of negative deeds caused by ignorance and to introduce them to paths of goodness. All religions can learn from one another; their ultimate goal is to produce better human beings who will be more tolerant, more compassionate, and less selfish. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 459:That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call "free will" is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and character. Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of your practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 460:Darkness is destroyed by light, especially by much light; ignorance is destroyed by knowledge, especially by much knowledge. You must understand this as implying not privation, but transcendence and so you must say with absolute truth, that the ignorance which is of God is unknown by those who have the created light and the knowledge of created things, and that His transcendent darkness is obscured by any light, and itself obscures all knowledge. And if any one, seeing God, knows what he sees, it is by no means God that he so sees, but something created and knowable. For God abides above created intellect and existence, and is in such sense unknowable and non-existent that He exists above all existence and is known above all power of knowledge. Thus the knowledge of Him who is above all that can be known is for the most part ignorance. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 461:The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions. Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the world was already known. The great gods, or the one almighty God, or the wise people of the past possessed all-encompassing wisdom, which they revealed to us in scriptures and oral traditions. Ordinary mortals gained knowledge by delving into these ancient texts and traditions and understanding them properly. It was inconceivable that the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas were missing out on a crucial secret of the universe – a secret that might yet be discovered by flesh-and-blood creatures. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 462:It takes a lot of courage to fight biases and oppressive regimes, but it takes even greater courage to admit ignorance and venture into the unknown. Secular education teaches us that if we don’t know something, we shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging our ignorance and looking for new evidence. Even if we think we know something, we shouldn’t be afraid of doubting our opinions and checking ourselves again. Many people are afraid of the unknown, and want clear-cut answers for every question. Fear of the unknown can paralyse us more than any tyrant. People throughout history worried that unless we put all our faith in some set of absolute answers, human society will crumble. In fact, modern history has demonstrated that a society of courageous people willing to admit ignorance and raise difficult questions is usually not just more prosperous but also more peaceful than societies in which everyone must unquestioningly accept a single answer. People afraid of losing their truth tend to be more violent than people who are used to looking at the world from several different viewpoints. Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 463:Now pay attention to this. God is nameless for no one can either speak of him or know him. Therefore, a pagan master says that what we can know or say of the First Cause reflects ourselves more than it does the First Cause, for this transcends all speech and all understanding . . . He is being beyond being: he is a nothingness beyond being. Therefore St. Augustine says: ‘The finest thing that we can say of God is to be silent concerning him from the wisdom of inner riches.’ Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin. If you wish to be perfect and without sin, then do not prattle about God. Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding. A master says: If I had a God that I could understand, I would not regard him as God. If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance, and by falling into ignorance, you become like an animal since the animal part in creatures is that which is unknowing. If you do not wish to become like an animal therefore, do not pretend that you understand anything of the ineffable God. ~ meister-eckhart, @wisdomtrove 464:It was not without a deeper meaning that the divine Moses was commanded first to be himself purified, and then to separate himself from the impure; and after all this purification heard many voices of trumpets, and saw many lights shedding manifold pure beams: and that he was thereafter separated from the multitude and together with the elect priests came to the height of the divine ascents. Yet hereby he did not attain to the presence of God Himself; he saw not Him (for He cannot be looked upon), but the place where He was. This, I think, signifies that the divinest and most exalted of visible and intelligible things are, as it were, suggestions of those that are immediately beneath Him who is above all, whereby is indicated the presence of Him who passes all understanding, and stands, as it were, in that spot which is conceived by the intellect as the highest of His holy places; then that they who are free and untrammelled by all that is seen and all that sees enter into the true mystical darkness of ignorance, whence all perception of understanding is excluded, and abide in that which is intangible and invisible, being wholly absorbed in Him who is beyond all things, and belong no more to any, neither to themselves nor to another, but are united in their higher part to Him who is wholly unintelligible, and whom, by understanding nothing, they understand after a manner above all intelligence. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Ignorance is a bliss ~ John Green, #NFDB
2:Ignorance is fatal. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
3:willful ignorance. ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
4:Ignorance is not bliss. ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB
5:I'm against ignorance. ~ Herman Kahn, #NFDB
6:blissful as ignorance, ~ Brian Greene, #NFDB
7:Ignorance is trust. — ~ R Scott Bakker, #NFDB
8:Ignorance was bliss. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
9:Ignorance is bliss. ~ Penelope Fletcher, #NFDB
10:Evil is ignorance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
11:Ignorance is a fools castle. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
12:Ignorance is the cause of fear. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
13:Ignorance: the root of all evil. ~ Plato, #NFDB
14:Prudery is ignorance. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
15:Prejudice is ignorance. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
16:His ignorance is encyclopedic. ~ Abba Eban, #NFDB
17:Schools teach ignorance. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
18:Famous for my ignorance, me. ~ Harry Bingham, #NFDB
19:Ignorance breeds fear and hatred. ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
20:Ignorance is no cure for suffering. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
21:My ignorance is not charming. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
22:There is but one evil, ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
23:By ignorance the truth is known. ~ Henry Suso, #NFDB
24:Ignorance is fatal, M. Garrett ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
25:Education is imposed ignorance. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
26:Ignorance breeds superstition. ~ Damien Echols, #NFDB
27:Ignorance is fertile ground. ~ Robert Ferrigno, #NFDB
28:Ignorance is kind of bliss. ~ Jackie DeShannon, #NFDB
29:Theology is ignorance with wings. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
30:What ignorance there is in human minds. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
31:Ignorance is the cause of fear. ~ Emily Windsor, #NFDB
32:Ignorance never yet helped anybody. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
33:It is better to conceal ignorance. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
34:Only ignorance excuses stupidity ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
35:...radiating honest ignorance ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
36:Some ignorance is invincible. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB
37:The impudence of Ignorance ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
38:Boldness is a child of ignorance ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
39:Ignorance breeds fear and hatred. ~ Kristin Cast, #NFDB
40:Ignorance is a cure for nothing. ~ W E B Du Bois, #NFDB
41:Ignorance is a knowledge illiteracy. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
42:labelling our ignorance "God". ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
43:Only stupidity excuses ignorance. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
44:Racism springs from ignorance. ~ Mario Balotelli, #NFDB
45:Somebody else's ignorance is bliss. ~ Jack Vance, #NFDB
46:The darkest night is ignorance. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
47:Your ignorance cramps my conversation ~ Bob Hope, #NFDB
48:Art hath an enemy call'd ignorance . ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
49:Don't let ignorance win. Let love. ~ Nancy Garden, #NFDB
50:Forsake your ignorance and live. ~ Proverbs IX. 6, #NFDB
51:Ignorance is a tough evil to conquer. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
52:Ignorance is not an extension of time ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
53:Ignorance is the parent of fear ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
54:Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. ~ Plato, #NFDB
55:fright tends to fatten up on ignorance ~ Glen Cook, #NFDB
56:His ignorance makes him vulnerable. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
57:Ignorance is jealousy's twin sister. ~ Dean Frazer, #NFDB
58:Ignorance is the parent of fear, ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
59:Ignorance is the parent of fear. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
60:Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
61:Ignorance of the law excuses no man. ~ John Selden, #NFDB
62:Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
63:Doubt is really a groping ignorance. ~ Eliphas Levi, #NFDB
64:Ignorance can be cured. Stupid is forever. ~ Miriam, #NFDB
65:Ignorance is constricted awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
66:Ignorance is not a suitable defense ~ Roger Goodell, #NFDB
67:Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
68:Ignorance is the supreme oppressor. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
69:Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil. ~ Plato, #NFDB
70:My ignorance is becoming a theme ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
71:Art hath an enemy called ignorance. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
72:Chance is a name for our ignorance. ~ Leslie Stephen, #NFDB
73:Error is worse than ignorance. ~ Philip James Bailey, #NFDB
74:Freedom begins where it ends ignorance ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
75:had no need of a guide to learn ignorance ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
76:How much of ignorance is willful? ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
77:Ignorance is preferable to error. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
78:Ignorance is the cause of fear. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
79:Ignorance is the parent of fear... ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
80:Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil. ~ Plato, #NFDB
81:ignorance was bliss in this scenario. ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
82:Science's job is to map our ignorance. ~ David Byrne, #NFDB
83:There is no sin but ignorance. ~ Christopher Marlowe, #NFDB
84:Fear tends to come from ignorance. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
85:Freedom begins where it ends ignorance. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
86:Ignorance is brought about by assumption. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
87:Ignorance is not innocence but sin. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
88:Ignorance is the parent of fear ... ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
89:It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile. ~ Sting, #NFDB
90:Not Engaging in Ignorance is Wisdom.
~ Bodhidharma,#NFDB
91:Originality is no excuse for ignorance. ~ Fred Brooks, #NFDB
92:With great power comes great ignorance. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
93:Assume ignorance before malevolence. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
94:become a bastion of willful ignorance ~ Robert Masello, #NFDB
95:Enjoy your ignorance while you can. ~ G Norman Lippert, #NFDB
96:Ignorance and evil-an ugly alliance. ~ Tom Angleberger, #NFDB
97:Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
98:Ignorance is the father of all fear. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
99:Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion. ~ Robert A Burton, #NFDB
100:Ignorance is worse than authorization. ~ Peter Tieryas, #NFDB
101:Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
102:Prejudice is the child of ignorance. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
103:The complicated futility of ignorance. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
104:The evil of the soul is ignorance. ~ Hermes, “The Key”, #NFDB
105:There is nothing so costly as ignorance. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
106:All ignorance is the lack of love. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
107:A man is responsible for his ignorance. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
108:Bigotry is the disease of ignorance. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
109:Ignorance has its own advantages. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
110:Ignorance is never better than knowledge ~ Enrico Fermi, #NFDB
111:Ignorance is not innocence. ~ Christina Queen of Sweden, #NFDB
112:Ignorance is the mother of admiration. ~ George Chapman, #NFDB
113:Ignorance is the parent of fear . . . ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
114:Ignorance is the womb of monsters. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
115:Ignorance never settles a question. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
116:Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil. ~ Plato, #NFDB
117:I see no darkness, but ignorance. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
118:My own ignorance shames me. ~ Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, #NFDB
119:One's ignorance is one's chief asset. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
120:Reading can seriously damage your Ignorance ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
121:Admiration is the basis of ignorance. ~ Baltasar Gracian, #NFDB
122:As if ignorance was a plausible defense. ~ Chris Dietzel, #NFDB
123:Assume ignorance before malevolence. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
124:Hidden knowledge differs little from ignorance. ~ Horace, #NFDB
125:Ignorance est mère de tous les maux. ~ Fran ois Rabelais, #NFDB
126:Ignorance is always afraid of change. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
127:Ignorance is an enemy, even to its owner. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
128:Ignorance is the root cause of all difficulties. ~ Plato, #NFDB
129:Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
130:Love is so much bigger than our ignorance. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
131:When did ignorance become a point of view? ~ Scott Adams, #NFDB
132:Even his ignorance is encyclopedic. ~ Stanis aw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
133:Fear always springs from ignorance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
134:Ignorance is bold, and knowledge is reserved ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
135:Ignorance is God's prison. Knowing is God's palace ~ Rumi, #NFDB
136:Ignorance is the mother of all evils. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
137:Ignorance is the mother of presumption ~ Marie de Gournay, #NFDB
138:Ignorance of mortality is a comfort. ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
139:Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
140:I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance ~ Socrates, #NFDB
141:It is ignorance that causes most mistakes. ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
142:I won't let your ignorance silence my pain ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
143:My ignorance is becoming a theme. “All ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
144:Never underestimate your own ignorance. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
145:There is no darkness but ignorance. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
146:There is no sin greater than ignorance. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
147:Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
148:Chaos is the domain of ignorance itself. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
149:Credentialed ignorance is still ignorance. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
150:Education is a system of imposed ignorance. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
151:If ignorance were bliss, he'd be a blister ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
152:Ignorance is bliss. I wish I still had some. ~ Adam Pascal, #NFDB
153:Ignorance is death, Knowledge is life. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
154:Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
155:I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
156:I won't let your ignorance silence my pain. ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
157:Mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
158:All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance ~ Plato, #NFDB
159:All our ignorance brings us closer to death. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
160:A wise ignorance is an essential part of knowledge. ~ Plato, #NFDB
161:Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
162:Ignorance is a poison and knowledge will nourish. ~ KRS One, #NFDB
163:I'm tired of ignorance held up as inspiration. ~ Phil Plait, #NFDB
164:In the company of ignorance, be silent…and run! ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
165:It is ignorance that causes most mistakes. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
166:Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery ~ Miles Davis, #NFDB
167:Our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea. ~ William James, #NFDB
168:Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
169:Science begets knowledge; opinion, ignorance. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
170:Superstitions are just coincidence or ignorance. ~ Ron Rash, #NFDB
171:There is no slavery but ignorance. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
172:They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
173:Admiration is the daughter of ignorance. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
174:And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
175:Chaos is the domain of ignorance itself. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
176:Don’t fuck with my comfortable ignorance! ~ Randolph Lalonde, #NFDB
177:Fear always springs
from ignorance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
178:Fear is just another word for ignorance. ~ Hunter S Thompson, #NFDB
179:I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
180:Ignorance can't be pardoned. Only cured. ~ Robert Silverberg, #NFDB
181:Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
182:I'm a believer in 'Ignorance is bliss.' ~ Julianna Margulies, #NFDB
183:Is there a vaccine for ignorance and stupidity? ~ David Icke, #NFDB
184:Passion does not compensate for ignorance. ~ Samuel Chadwick, #NFDB
185:The best defense against logic is ignorance. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
186:The plague of ignorance overflows all the earth. ~ Hermes II, #NFDB
187:The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace. ~ Ouida, #NFDB
188:Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
189:blessed with ability but cursed with ignorance ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
190:Chance" is just a word expressing ignorance ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
191:Evil is relatively rare. Ignorance is epidemic. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
192:Evil is relatively rare; ignorance is epidemic. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
193:Faith rests not on ignorance, but on knowledge. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
194:How often ignorance stings less than knowledge. ~ Janny Wurts, #NFDB
195:I envy your ignorance, I hear that it's bliss. ~ Ani DiFranco, #NFDB
196:If ignorance is bliss, then knowledge is a cage. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
197:Ignorance and prejudice and fear go hand in hand ~ Neil Peart, #NFDB
198:Ignorance is God’s prison.
Knowing is God’s Palace ~ Rumi,#NFDB
199:Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed! ~ C J Cherryh, #NFDB
200:I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
~ Socrates,#NFDB
201:Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance ~ Plato, #NFDB
202:The only sin in the world is ignorance. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
203:We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them. ~ Livy, #NFDB
204:What gets to you is the everyday ignorance, ~ Peggy Orenstein, #NFDB
205:Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
206:I don't think you can ever regain your ignorance. ~ Carla Bley, #NFDB
207:Ignorance is not bliss. It is the kiss of death. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
208:Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity. ~ James Anthony Froude, #NFDB
209:Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
210:Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
211:I refuse to live in ignorance and helplessness. ~ Amber Argyle, #NFDB
212:I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
213:Like a lamp, dispelling the darkness of ignorance ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
214:Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance. ~ Plato, #NFDB
215:Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
216:shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
217:To know one's ignorance is the best part of knowledge. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
218:Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. ~ Thomas Gray, #NFDB
219:Where there is ignorance, sickness will thrive. ~ Osamu Tezuka, #NFDB
220:Wisdom makes light the darkness of ignorance. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
221:Arrogance is the conjoined twin of ignorance. ~ Andy Hargreaves, #NFDB
222:Don't censor yourself to comfort their ignorance. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
223:Her least favorite thing: VOLUNTARY IGNORANCE ~ Whoopi Goldberg, #NFDB
224:If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. ~ Derek Bok, #NFDB
225:ignorance and power, they´re a poor combination. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
226:Ignorance can be cured, but stupidity is forever ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
227:Ignorance is better than knowledge misapplied. ~ Norm MacDonald, #NFDB
228:Ignorance is only bliss if you want to get caught. ~ V E Schwab, #NFDB
229:Ignorance was bliss. Or at least less painfull ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB
230:I say there is no darkness but ignorance. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
231:Isn’t ignorance bliss?” “Ignorance is drunkenness, ~ Ella James, #NFDB
232:Là où règne l'ignorance, règne aussi la misère. ~ D ng Thu H ng, #NFDB
233:Over-diversification is a hedge for ignorance. ~ William O Neil, #NFDB
234:The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance. ~ Lyndon B Johnson, #NFDB
235:There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance. ~, #NFDB
236:The true Wisdom is in recognizing our own ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
237:Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
238:All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
239:Honesty doesn’t excuse ignorance. But it helps. ~ Stephen Baxter, #NFDB
240:If ignorance is bliss, why isn't the world happier? ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
241:Ignorance is always brutal when it is backed by power. ~ Various, #NFDB
242:Ignorance is a poor tool in a battle of wits. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
243:I know nothing but the certainty of my own ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
244:In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise. ~ Paul Krugman, #NFDB
245:The most violent element in society is ignorance. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
246:"The root of all the harm we cause is ignorance." ~ Pema Chödron, #NFDB
247:You must not be hurt by other people's ignorance. ~ Nancy Farmer, #NFDB
248:At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
249:At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
250:Dignity is a mask we wear to hide our ignorance. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
251:If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t you ecstatic? ~ William Lashner, #NFDB
252:Ignorance is not bliss; it's a missed opportunity ~ Adam Nicolson, #NFDB
253:Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness. ~ Giacomo Leopardi, #NFDB
254:Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
255:It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
256:Sometimes blissful ignorance is awfully empowering ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
257:Sophisticated ignorance, write my curses in cursive. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
258:Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
259:WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
260:When ignorance is bliss, there's folly in wisdom. ~ David Eddings, #NFDB
261:Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. ~ Laurence J Peter, #NFDB
262:All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
263:Envy is ignorance,
Imitation is Suicide. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
264:Few things benefit Trump more than ignorance. ~ David Cay Johnston, #NFDB
265:Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
266:Ignorance, hatred and greed are killing nature. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka, #NFDB
267:Ignorance is a burden I do not intend to carry. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
268:Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
269:In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance. ~ Theodore Dreiser, #NFDB
270:It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
271:I've come to see that ignorance is a privilege too. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
272:Like a lamp, dispelling the darkness of ignorance ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
273:People are so skillful in their ignorance! ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
274:purposeful ignorance is the same as stupid. ~ Tamara Rose Blodgett, #NFDB
275:Questions signified a vulgar display of ignorance. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
276:Science is the topography of ignorance. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, #NFDB
277:The cause of all pain and suffering is ignorance. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
278:The greatest wisdom often consist in ignorance. ~ Baltasar Gracian, #NFDB
279:Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
280:The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. ~ Sri Ramana Maharishi, #NFDB
281:The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
282:Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
283:Don’t hesitate to betray your ignorance. It’s no crime. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
284:Empathy nurtures wisdom. Apathy cultivates ignorance. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
285:ignorance is never to be preferred over knowledge. No ~ Ethan Cross, #NFDB
286:I’ve come to see that ignorance is a privilege, too. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
287:know your ignorance; defile your ignorance ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
288:misery is caused by ignorance and nothing else. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
289:My ignorance is becoming a theme." --Mare Barrow ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
290:The worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
291:You’re an enemy of art and I pity your ignorance, ~ William Goldman, #NFDB
292:Bravado usually is ignorance,’ Bottle snapped back. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
293:Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul ~ Plato, #NFDB
294:His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read. ~ V S Naipaul, #NFDB
295:Ignorance is beneficial when we are aware of it. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
296:Ignorance is the world's most curable affliction. ~ Jeri Smith Ready, #NFDB
297:Invincible ignorance could not be enlightened; and ~ Patrick O Brian, #NFDB
298:Knowledge is strength. Ignorance is the kiss of death. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
299:L’ignorance vaut encore mieux que la mauvaise science. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
300:My ignorance was inexcusable, and it made me ashamed. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
301:Nothing is worse than active ignorance. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
302:Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
303:So who turned up the volume of ignorance up to eleven? ~ Garth Ennis, #NFDB
304:True knowledge leads to unity, ignorance to diversity. ~ Ramakrishan, #NFDB
305:Well, intensity with ignorance—what do you want worse? ~ Henry James, #NFDB
306:We must be warriors in the struggle against ignorance ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
307:What the world has to eradicate is fear and ignorance. ~ Jan Masaryk, #NFDB
308:All science is a charted ignorance and belongs to Maya. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
309:Cruelty comes in many forms — ignorance is one of them. ~ V C Andrews, #NFDB
310:If ignorance is bliss, it's cuz she's never heard of this... ~ LeCrae, #NFDB
311:Ignorance is the enemy, curiosity the weapon of choice ~ Peter D Ward, #NFDB
312:I pretty much operate on adrenaline and ignorance. ~ Johnny Knoxville, #NFDB
313:Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
314:Nothing is worse than active ignorance. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
315:So ignorance increases ignorance, and knowledge ~ Stephen R Donaldson, #NFDB
316:Stupidity’s the deliberate cultivation of ignorance. ~ William Gaddis, #NFDB
317:Superstition is the child of ignorance and fear. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
318:The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
319:What the use of having ignorance if you can't show it? ~ Lou Costello, #NFDB
320:what wisdom can build, ignorance can destroy ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
321:And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
322:But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
323:Excellent. Ignorance is most undervalued in a student. ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
324:For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
325:His Ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
326:His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
327:Ignorance is not bliss; it is a sure path to annihilation. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
328:Ignorance isn’t prejudiced about who it afflicts, ~ Michael J Sullivan, #NFDB
329:I have my ignorance to thank for the few things I know. ~ Sacha Guitry, #NFDB
330:I’m not going to censor myself to comfort your ignorance ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
331:Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
332:Knowing ignorance is strength; ignoring knowledge is sickness. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
333:Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
334:Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance. ~ William Gaddis, #NFDB
335:There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
336:The Self is beyond both knowledge and ignorance. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
337:They let us be, here, in the cage of our ignorance. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
338:Three roots of evil: desire, disliking and ignorance. ~ Buddhist Texts, #NFDB
339:To remove ignorance is an important branch of benevolence. ~ Ann Plato, #NFDB
340:What can there be concerning outer space but ignorance? ~ Nigel Kneale, #NFDB
341:Wisdom leads to unity, but ignorance to separation. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
342:A state of apostasy is worse than a state of ignorance. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
343:Don't let ignorance win', said Ms. Stevenson. 'Let love. ~ Nancy Garden, #NFDB
344:Don’t let ignorance win,” said Ms. Stevenson. “Let love. ~ Nancy Garden, #NFDB
345:If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy? ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
346:Ignorance I know – ‘innocence’ I imagine is just a word. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
347:Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
348:Ignorance is the Mother not of Devotion, but of Heresy. ~ Cotton Mather, #NFDB
349:Ignorance is the primary source of all misery and vice. ~ Victor Cousin, #NFDB
350:Ignorance of certain subjects is a great part of wisdom. ~ Hugo Grotius, #NFDB
351:I'm not going to censor myself to comfort your ignorance. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
352:Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
353:innocence is beauty.
ignorance is death. -Kuroshitsuji ~ Yana Toboso,#NFDB
354:Judgement is often no more than a confession of ignorance. ~ Bill Clegg, #NFDB
355:Knowledge leads to unity, but ignorance to diversity. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
356:No particular race is the enemy. Ignorance is the enemy. ~ George Lopez, #NFDB
357:our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
358:Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
359:The Devil's success is contingent upon people's ignorance. ~ Benny Hinn, #NFDB
360:The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions. ~ Ken Follett, #NFDB
361:There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
362:The road to ignorance is paved with good editors. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
363:this subterfuge was nothing but the disguise of ignorance, ~ David Hume, #NFDB
364:A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
365:Big Daddy: Ignorance - of mortality - is a comfort. ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
366:Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
367:Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
368:Ignorance is vulnerable to the atmosphere it is exposed to ~ Suzy Hansen, #NFDB
369:In some cases, ignorance is deadlier than poverty. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
370:It is the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
371:Knowledge is always worth more than innocence. Or ignorance. ~ Lisa Cach, #NFDB
372:Our ignorance of history makes us vilify our own age. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
373:Perhaps the most tragic ignorance is that of responsibility. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
374:Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War... ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
375:The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
376:The biggest battle is the war against ignorance. ~ Mustafa Kemal Atat rk, #NFDB
377:The common curse of mankind, - folly and ignorance ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
378:The world has not yet broken him. Such freedom in ignorance. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
379:Timendi causa est nescire -
Ignorance is the cause of fear. ~ Seneca,#NFDB
380:tomes / Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
381:War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
382:Conclusions are ignorance arrested on the path to less ignorance. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
383:Education is the greatest weapon we have against ignorance ~ Kelly Meding, #NFDB
384:He doesn't realize how his ignorance makes him vulnerable. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
385:If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance. ~ Leo F Buscaglia, #NFDB
386:Infallibility and invincible ignorance are the same thing. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
387:One who preserves all the exterior decencies of ignorance. ~ Samuel Foote, #NFDB
388:Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance. ~ Lyndon B Johnson, #NFDB
389:Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. ~ Kerrigan Byrne, #NFDB
390:There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
~ Socrates,#NFDB
391:Time is information we don't have. Time is our ignorance. ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
392:True knowledge leads to unity, ignorance to diversity. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
393:Freedom and ignorance are incapable of long coexistence. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
394:Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance. ~ Bennett Cerf, #NFDB
395:Ignorance is not bad faith. But persistence in ignorance is. ~ Joanna Russ, #NFDB
396:Ignorance isn’t bliss; it’s fear postponed to a later date. ~ Alice Feeney, #NFDB
397:intelligence combined with arrogance equals ignorance. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
398:It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
399:It is the pain of ignorance which makes one into a seeker. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
400:Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
401:There are two kinds of disease of the soul, vice and ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
402:All magic means is a line between knowledge and ignorance, ~ Jack L Chalker, #NFDB
403:But ignorance is not bliss, only a deeper kind of terror. ~ Caitlin Doughty, #NFDB
404:Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
405:Fear and Bigotry are bred fom isolation and ignorance. -Shekinah ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
406:Ignorance is also most always on the point of doing evil. ~ Chinese Proverb, #NFDB
407:Ignorance is more costly to any State than education. ~ Booker T Washington, #NFDB
408:Ignorance is more than bliss, it's freaking orgasmic ecstacy! ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
409:I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here. ~ Gary Lucas, #NFDB
410:Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden. ~ Marcus Garvey, #NFDB
411:In the company of ignorance, be silent...or join the suffering. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
412:Money said, "I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
413:People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB
414:Poverty, discrimination, and ignorance restrict growth. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
415:Suffering is nothing but experience enslaved to ignorance. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
416:The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor. ~ A R Bernard, #NFDB
417:The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
418:The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
419:There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
420:The world has not yet broken him. Such freedom in ignorance. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
421:You may assume infinite ignorance and unlimited intelligence. ~ Leo Szilard, #NFDB
422:Do you make a habit out of proclaiming things in ignorance? ~ Patrick Weekes, #NFDB
423:Ignorance is ignorance, not a licence to believe what we like. ~ Bryan Magee, #NFDB
424:Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value. ~ Jean de La Fontaine, #NFDB
425:Librarians: Kicking Ignorance in the Balls for Over 4000 Years ~ Jim C Hines, #NFDB
426:No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
427:Something draws you... An impatience with your own ignorance. ~ Richard Ford, #NFDB
428:The idea of thou and I is a fruit of the soul’s ignorance. ~ Bhagavat Purana, #NFDB
429:The more we study the more we discover our ignorance. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
430:The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
431:Unknowing ignorance is preferable to informed stupidity. ~ Brandon Sanderson, #NFDB
432:When you're dealing with the universe, ignorance can be deadly. ~ Phil Plait, #NFDB
433:Your enlightenment is more powerful than your ignorance. ~ Swami Nithyananda, #NFDB
434:Apathy is the door to ignorance. Empathy is the door to wisdom. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
435:Blessed is the one who has arrived at infinite ignorance. ~ Evagrius Ponticus, #NFDB
436:Ignorance does not make the wrong choice into the right one. ~ Merrie Haskell, #NFDB
437:ignorance is like a cow that a lot of people can't stop milkin! ~ Mary Monroe, #NFDB
438:Ignorance is no reason with a fool for holding his tongue. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
439:Imperfect understanding is often more dangerous than ignorance. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
440:Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden... ~ Marcus Garvey, #NFDB
441:Only remove ignorance. That is all there is to be done. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
442:Only the forces of ignorance and darkness benefit from secrecy. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
443:Recognition is famously a passage from ignorance to knowledge. ~ Amitav Ghosh, #NFDB
444:Republicanism and ignorance are in bitter antagonism. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, #NFDB
445:"Suffering is nothing but experience enslaved to ignorance." ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
446:The only thing that makes something impossible is ignorance. ~ Jack L Chalker, #NFDB
447:The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. ~ John Rawls, #NFDB
448:There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
449:THERE'S NOTHING FURTHER REMOVED FROM FREEDOM THAN IGNORANCE. ~ Hajime Isayama, #NFDB
450:The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature. ~ Baron d Holbach, #NFDB
451:To succeed in life you need two things: Ignorance and confidence ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
452:What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
453:What we call originality is no more than ignorance of antecedents. ~ Dee Hock, #NFDB
454:Whoever will be cured of ignorance, let him confess it. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
455:Admitting one's ignorance is the first step in acquiring knowledge. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
456:Ah, how the seeds of cockiness blossom when soiled in ignorance. ~ Steve Alten, #NFDB
457:Ainged has remanded his post and seeks the Way of Ignorance. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
458:All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
459:But ignorance is not bliss, only a deeper kind of terror. We ~ Caitlin Doughty, #NFDB
460:Derision is the refuge of threatened ignorance, after all. ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
461:Fear and Bigotry are bred fom isolation and ignorance.
-Shekinah ~ P C Cast,#NFDB
462:God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
463:God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
464:If ignorance is your lens, you see things differently ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
465:If you think the cost of education is high, think about ignorance. ~ Derek Bok, #NFDB
466:Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know. ~ Robert Fulghum, #NFDB
467:Ignorance at twenty-two isn't a structural defect. ~ Jesse Lauriston Livermore, #NFDB
468:I trust that you have a good purpose for your ignorance ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
469:Opinion is the barren flower of the Way, the beginning of ignorance. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
470:Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
471:Read it wisely, Little One, for the power of ignorance is great. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
472:The common curse of mankind, folly, ignorance and stupidity. ~ William C Brown, #NFDB
473:the free rights of men to destroy themselves through ignorance. ~ Farley Mowat, #NFDB
474:The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next. ~ Frances Wright, #NFDB
475:The plea of ignorance will never take away our responsibilities. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
476:What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
477:WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
478:A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
479:But promises based on ignorance always prove disappointing. ~ Jussi Adler Olsen, #NFDB
480:Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
481:Eavesdropping's a sin, but ignorance is fatal. Take your pick. ~ Elizabeth Bear, #NFDB
482:Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
483:...given sufficient ignorance, one can doubt evolution.... ~ Steven E Landsburg, #NFDB
484:Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
485:I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
486:If you want courage, kill fear and blindfold ignorance ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
487:Ignorance can be corrected. Arrogance is a harder key to turn. ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
488:Ignorance clarifies. It selects and omits with placid perfection. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
489:Ignorance is not not knowin' - Ignorance is knowin' what ain't so. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
490:Ignorance is the worst form of slavery. (Paraphrased) ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
491:Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
492:I have never found criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance. ~ Harold MacMillan, #NFDB
493:Innocence doesn’t matter when ignorance is what people prefer. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
494:Insults sting but a little when they stem from a man's ignorance. ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
495:Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
496:Knowledge is a dangerous thing. But ignorance is no protection. ~ Masha du Toit, #NFDB
497:Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
498:Only priests and politicians benefit from a people's ignorance. ~ Ki Longfellow, #NFDB
499:Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
500:Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
501:The pain of ignorance can end. The pain of knowledge is forever ~ Reginald Hill, #NFDB
502:To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
503:To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
504:We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
505:Where ignorance prevails, there an opportunity exists. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
506:Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
507:A specialist is a barbarian whose ignorance is not well-rounded. ~ Stanislaw Lem, #NFDB
508:Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
509:Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
510:Ignorance can explain at best a small part of world inequality. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
511:Ignorance is a necessary condition for many excellent things. ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
512:Ignorance might be bliss, but it's irresponsible and dangerous too. ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
513:Ignorance of the outcome doesn't exempt you from the consequences. ~ Laura Wiess, #NFDB
514:innocence based in ignorance was unfit to protect itself. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
515:I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. ~ David Ogilvy, #NFDB
516:It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
517:Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
518:The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
519:There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?” The ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
520:The unhappiness of people is due to their ignorance of nature. ~ Baron d Holbach, #NFDB
521:This is the only poverty: ignorance of oneself—there is no other poverty. ~ Osho, #NFDB
522:True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain. ~ Claude Bernard, #NFDB
523:War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength. ~ George Orwell,#NFDB
524:Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
525:From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
526:If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble. ~ Gary Hamel, #NFDB
527:Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
528:Ignorance is bliss,” Travers said. “Yes. Very appropriate cliché. ~ Gregg Hurwitz, #NFDB
529:Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
530:Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
531:Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
532:Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
533:ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
534:It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word "intuition. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
535:Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
536:le mal qui est dans le monde vient presque toujours de l'ignorance ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
537:Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
538:Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. ~ M King Hubbert, #NFDB
539:Politics and church are the same. They keep the people in ignorance. ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
540:The main cause of poverty is self-inflicted fear and ignorance. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
541:The only competition you will ever face is with your own ignorance. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
542:The powerful have no monopoly on greed, hatred, fear, or ignorance. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
543:To read narrowly and shallowly is to read from a place of ignorance, ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
544:To read narrowly and shallowly is to read from a place of ignorance. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
545:To really know is science; to merely believe you know is ignorance. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
546:Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
547:you can’t ridicule my ignorance when you had a hand in shaping it! ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
548:Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
549:human’s life is a struggle between ignorance and illumination. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
550:Ignorance and weakness is not an impediment to survival. Arrogance is. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
551:Ignorance is not, not knowing something. It is knowing what isn't so. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
552:Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”4 ~ Denise Minger, #NFDB
553:Listening is a lamp that dispels the darkness of ignorance. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #NFDB
554:Science is trumped by ignorance when the ignorant are given a vote. ~ Chuck Wendig, #NFDB
555:The first step towards knowledge is to accept your own ignorance. ~ Joseph Delaney, #NFDB
556:The ignorance of how to use knowledge stockpiles exponentially. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
557:The ironies of her ignorance were sometimes too hard to bear. ~ Rebecca Harrington, #NFDB
558:The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
559:To fear what you do not understand is to mistake ignorance for safety. ~ Ginn Hale, #NFDB
560:To learn anything, you must put aside the safety of your ignorance. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
561:Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
562:Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
563:Without ignorance or disagreement all conversation would be boring. ~ Josh Steimle, #NFDB
564:You're an enemy of art and I pity your ignorance," Domingo said. ~ William Goldman, #NFDB
565:All ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again. ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
566:Be - don't try to become. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
567:Be satisfied in your ignorance for there is no safety in knowledge. ~ Coral Russell, #NFDB
568:Happy the man who lives long enough to acknowledge his ignorance ~ Elizabeth Goudge, #NFDB
569:I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
570:if customer ignorance is a profit center for you, you’re in trouble. ~ Geoff Colvin, #NFDB
571:If there is something that opens horizons, it is precisely ignorance. ~ Romain Gary, #NFDB
572:Ils venaient de prendre conscience de l'immensité de leur ignorance. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
573:Knowledge can be a dangerous thing—” “Not as dangerous as ignorance. ~ Anne Fortier, #NFDB
574:Only because of ignorance could he shape the world so fearlessly ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
575:Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs. ~ Guy Debord, #NFDB
576:Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement. ~ Benjamin Carson, #NFDB
577:Some things are made funny to some people by their ignorance. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
578:The greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been. ~ Fidel Castro, #NFDB
579:The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
580:when you squelch something, you give it power. Ignorance is not bliss. ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB
581:A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
582:As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
583:Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
584:Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption ~ James Madison, #NFDB
585:He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
586:I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
587:If you think education is expensive -- try ignorance. ~ Ann Landers, October 4, 1975, #NFDB
588:Inspiration springs more readily from knowledge than from ignorance. ~ Horace Kallen, #NFDB
589:Like all males, he hated to confess ignorance by asking directions, ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
590:Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance. ~ Ian Hacking, #NFDB
591:Races are very often invented from ignorance, or for evil purposes. ~ Francis Lieber, #NFDB
592:She fell silent, overcome at what humans, in their ignorance, had done. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
593:Speak for yourself. Only rank ignorance measures a man by appearances. ~ Janny Wurts, #NFDB
594:The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
595:The greatest impurity is ignorance. Free yourself from it. Be pure. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
596:The opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, but deceit and fraud. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
597:There is no mountain anywhere everyman ignorance is his own mountain ~ David Oyedepo, #NFDB
598:three main mental poisons, which are ignorance, desire, and hatred. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
599:Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
600:Condemnation before investigation is the highest form of ignorance. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
601:Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
602:exacerbated eagerness to exploit the ignorance and prejudice of voters. ~ Jean Tirole, #NFDB
603:Fear and realisation of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride. ~ Garth Nix, #NFDB
604:Forgive me. I continue to underestimate the breadth of your ignorance. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
605:If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world? ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
606:If you hid your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
607:If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. ~ Derek Bok, President of Harvard, #NFDB
608:Ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is often a responsibility nobody wants. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
609:Ignorance is not a state of innocence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Purity, #NFDB
610:It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch, #NFDB
611:Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
612:Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
613:preferring actual ignorance to the appearance of it, he did not ask. ~ Sheri S Tepper, #NFDB
614:She led a submerged life, a life catacombed by poverty and ignorance ~ R Scott Bakker, #NFDB
615:War and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
616:Well-meant ignorance is a grievous calamity in high places. ~ Jacques Benigne Bossuet, #NFDB
617:We need to accept our ignorance and say ‘I don’t know’ more often. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
618:Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
619:Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
620:Condemnation before investigation, is the highest form of ignorance. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
621:Faults of ignorance are excusable only where the ignorance itself is so ~ Sacha Guitry, #NFDB
622:If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
623:If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
624:Ignorance, as they say, is usually fatal, but sometimes it can be bliss. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
625:Ignorance is bliss, right? Well, knowledge is misery. And the truth hurts. ~ Mia Asher, #NFDB
626:Ignorance isn’t prejudiced about who it afflicts,” Royce replied. ~ Michael J Sullivan, #NFDB
627:ignorance is the natural state of mind for a research scientist. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
628:Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
629:...ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge... ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
630:Let ignorance reproduce itself until it is weary of its own offspring. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
631:Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
632:Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be attributed to ignorance. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
633:Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
634:Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
635:Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
636:The only thing that is more expensive than education is ignorance. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
637:The power of ignorance can make a powerful man look powerless ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
638:There is nothing more frightful than an active ignorance. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
639:There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
640:To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott, #NFDB
641:Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
642:Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous.
---Hobbes ~ Bill Watterson,#NFDB
643:Your ignorance keeps dismembering every piece of patience I have left. ~ Andrea Gibson, #NFDB
644:A lot of my reputation is a product of exaggeration and ignorance. ~ Marco Pierre White, #NFDB
645:And sometimes ignorance is even harder to deal with than deliberate evil. ~ Ry Murakami, #NFDB
646:Better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of all misfortune. ~ Plato, #NFDB
647:Beware jargon. It usually hides ignorance and carries little knowledge. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
648:Elective ignorance was a great survival skill, perhaps the greatest. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
649:How long, I wonder, will ignorance spell purity and knowledge shame? ~ Rosamond Lehmann, #NFDB
650:I didn't know that there was a thin line between ignorance and arrogance. ~ Faraaz Kazi, #NFDB
651:Ignorance is not a capital crime. It is a correctable condition. ~ Laura Knight Jadczyk, #NFDB
652:Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
653:Ignorance may be bliss, but at the end of the day it’s still ignorance. ~ Katie Alender, #NFDB
654:I'll show you how," Peter said. "Stop hiding behind your ignorance. ~ Diana Wynne Jones, #NFDB
655:I plead total ignorance to Led Zeppelin. I am totally in the dark about them. ~ Karen O, #NFDB
656:Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
657:Knowledge that takes you, not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance. ~ Elif Safak, #NFDB
658:Socrates says. Recognizing your ignorance is the beginning of all wisdom. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
659:The greater our knowledge increases the greater our ignorance unfolds. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
660:The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
661:The more you learn, the more acutely aware you become of your ignorance ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
662:To worship a sacred mystery was just to worship your own ignorance. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB
663:Unfortunately ignorance of the law is not excuse for breaking it, ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
664:While facts do kill ignorance, ignoring facts does not kill them. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
665:As areas of knowledge grow, so too do the perimeters of ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
666:Attainment is a poor measure of capacity, and ignorance no proof of defect. ~ Cyril Burt, #NFDB
667:But ignorance is happiness,When young Hope is to show the way ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon, #NFDB
668:Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” -Will Durant ~ Angela Roquet, #NFDB
669:Every now and then you meet a man whose ignorance is encyclopedic. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
670:He tapped into the Zen of ignorance, the enlightenment of absurdity. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
671:Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
672:Ignorance of future ills is a more useful thing than knowledge. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
673:Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance. ~ Sydney J Harris, #NFDB
674:mystery is not founded in ignorance, mystery is founded in imagination ~ S Spencer Baker, #NFDB
675:No man ever went broke overestimating the ignorance of the American public. ~ P T Barnum, #NFDB
676:not have the privilege of living in ignorance of this essential fact. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
677:Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
678:Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
679:Reason obeys itselt; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
680:Throw away your ignorance and grow up. It is never late to begin – start now. ~ Samarpan, #NFDB
681:Truth itself is always simple. Complexity is due to man's ignorance. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
682:"Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace." ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
683:You should welcome your ignorance because it enables you to learn. (31) ~ Stephen Dobyns, #NFDB
684:All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
685:As the Buddha says, “Suffering comes from both ignorance and denial.” One ~ Judith Orloff, #NFDB
686:Fear and realization of ignorance were strong medicines against stupid pride. ~ Garth Nix, #NFDB
687:Female gossips are generally actuated by active ignorance. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
688:Ignorance and fear are but matters of the mind - and the mind is adaptable. ~ Daniel Kish, #NFDB
689:Ignorance has its advantages. A universe of surprises is what I pray for! ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
690:Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
691:Ignorance is the field in which all other difficulties grow. ~ Patanjali, Aphorisms II. 4, #NFDB
692:Ignorance makes prejudice a weed that grows without hope of being ripped out. ~ Ginny Dye, #NFDB
693:In the past, ignorance protected inefficient or lower-quality sellers ~ Erik Brynjolfsson, #NFDB
694:Let's not be too rough on our own ignorance, it's what makes America great. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
695:Modern stupidity means not ignorance but the nonthought of received ideas ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
696:Once ignorance is weaponized, violence seems to be a tragic inevitability. ~ Henry Giroux, #NFDB
697:The length of sky is just about the size of my ignorance. Pure and wide. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
698:There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others. ~ R Scott Bakker, #NFDB
699:To Believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of ignorance and folly ~ Socrates, #NFDB
700:Walking in ignorance is a choice for those who find reality too hard to face. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
701:We've tried ignorance for a thousand years. It's time we try education. ~ Joycelyn Elders, #NFDB
702:Actions rooted in greed, hatred, or ignorance bring unpleasant results. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
703:Bits of ignorance are like viruses that are copied and spread by interaction. ~ Seth Lloyd, #NFDB
704:Chance ... must be something more than the name we give to our ignorance. ~ Henri Poincare, #NFDB
705:Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with great riches. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
706:Ignorance is the night of the spirit, but a night without stars or moon. ~ Chinese Proverb, #NFDB
707:Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
~ Michel de Montaigne,#NFDB
708:It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the plan of ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
709:Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
710:she knew how to use her own ignorance as an icebreaker in conversations. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
711:The apparent foolishness of others is but too frequently our own ignorance. ~ Arthur Helps, #NFDB
712:The only thing worse than human ignorance is human pride in that ignorance. ~ George Takei, #NFDB
713:This is the eternal challenge with ignorance — ignorance can't see itself. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
714:To me the thought of oneself as low and humble is a sin and ignorance. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
715:Trump's ignorance in environmental science is a threat to the entire planet. ~ Tom Morello, #NFDB
716:Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice. ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
717:Believing that what you do not know cannot exist is the crown of ignorance. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
718:Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
719:Envy comes from people’s ignorance of, or lack of belief, in their own gifts. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
720:If you think education is expensive, try estimating the cost of ignorance. ~ Howard Gardner, #NFDB
721:Ignorance has its virtues; without it there'd be mighty little conversation. ~ Sophia Loren, #NFDB
722:I was the perfect automaton: blessed with ability but cursed with ignorance. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
723:Kids these days, right? Ignorant and in love with their ignorance. ~ Christopher Farnsworth, #NFDB
724:Knowledge was never my problem. Ignorance is the condition I struggle with. ~ Stuart Turton, #NFDB
725:Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished. ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
726:My ignorance is essential. I do not write what I know but what I need to know. ~ Don Murray, #NFDB
727:Our ancestors sought knowledge, but we, their descendants, glorify ignorance. ~ S J Kincaid, #NFDB
728:Stop your ignorance! Seek for wisdom and give understanding a way! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
729:The man who realizes his ignorance has taken the first step toward knowledge. ~ Max Heindel, #NFDB
730:There was no hiding my ignorance this time. They should be used to it by now. ~ Ann Aguirre, #NFDB
731:We gain our first measure of intelligence when we first admit our own ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
732:You must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
733:Anytime I remember how I once disavowed feminism, I am ashamed of my ignorance. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
734:A struggling ignorance is his wisdom’s mate: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #NFDB
735:Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes! ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
736:He had tapped into the Zen of ignorance, the enlightenment of absurdity. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
737:ignorance of the language can be dispelled only by the destruction of the words. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
738:In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
739:It’s the concert of knowledge and ignorance that underwrites our decisions. ~ R Scott Bakker, #NFDB
740:It was said that familiarity bred contempt, but surely ignorance bred error. ~ Piers Anthony, #NFDB
741:Knowledge is less hard to bear than ignorance if you possess an imagination. ~ D E Stevenson, #NFDB
742:Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
743:Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition, ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
744:Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
745:The failure of a person is wrapped in his ignorance about his strengths. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
746:The Holy Bible. Promoting ignorance and superstition for nearly 2000 years. ~ Robert M Price, #NFDB
747:The idea of God is the ignorance which solves all doubt by repressing it. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
748:The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
749:To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat. ~ Greg Bear, #NFDB
750:True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it. ~ Karl Popper, #NFDB
751:What a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
752:What is a flaw but a human mistake, or an ignorance that sees without options? ~ Janny Wurts, #NFDB
753:Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
754:Ah! destructive Ignorance, what shall be done to chase thee out of the World! ~ Cotton Mather, #NFDB
755:Don't forget, Brodeck: it's ignorance that always triumphs, not knowledge. ~ Philippe Claudel, #NFDB
756:Each juggler should be trained in the ignorance of the laws of physics. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
757:I do not suffer from ignorance where exercise is related. I suffer from inertia. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
758:Ignorance didn’t feel like bliss. It felt like stupidity, and she hated it. “That ~ Beth Cato, #NFDB
759:It is the illusion of knowledge, not ignorance, that keeps one from growing. ~ Jerry Uelsmann, #NFDB
760:Most of what went wrong in the Ripper investigation was due to ignorance. ~ Patricia Cornwell, #NFDB
761:Never attribute to malice, that which can be explained through ignorance. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
762:Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
763:The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
764:The ignorance we’re ignorant of is the ignorance most difficult to remedy. ~ Leah Hager Cohen, #NFDB
765:The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
766:There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
767:… where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise wrote the poet Thomas Gray. ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
768:All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity. ~ Baron d Holbach, #NFDB
769:A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere. ~ Charles Kettering, #NFDB
770:Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
771:human capacity for arrogance was only exceeded by its capacity for ignorance. ~ Ashok K Banker, #NFDB
772:Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness. ~ Sidney Hook, #NFDB
773:Ignorance is not something that lends itself to a meaningful discussion. ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar, #NFDB
774:Most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance. ~ Yvon Chouinard, #NFDB
775:Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness ~ Adrienne Rich, #NFDB
776:Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
777:Television, the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation. ~ Michael Franti, #NFDB
778:The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
779:To broaden one's prospective is to push back the swirling winds of ignorance. ~ Joel T McGrath, #NFDB
780:We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly. ~ Thomas Cole, #NFDB
781:Where there is Love and Wisdom, there is neither Fear nor Ignorance. ~ Saint Francis of Assisi, #NFDB
782:But, after all, too much knowledge, like ignorance, brings you to a negation. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
783:But I was the perfect automaton: blessed with ability but cursed with ignorance. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
784:Humble, honest, ignorance is one of the finest flowers of the human spirit ~ Kenneth E Boulding, #NFDB
785:If wisdom was to cease throughout the world, no one would suspect himself of ignorance. ~ Saadi, #NFDB
786:It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
787:It sometimes requires ignorance and arrogance to know something for sure. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
788:No man should so act as to make a gain out of the ignorance of another. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
789:Nothing is more securely lodged than the ignorance of the experts. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
790:Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times, wrote Gustave Flaubert. ~ John Sweeney, #NFDB
791:Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
792:...the more you learn the more you understand the size of your own ignorance. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
793:From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
794:He declared that ignorance was the parent of fear, that knowledge was power. ~ Kenneth C Johnson, #NFDB
795:I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth. ~ Molly Ivins, #NFDB
796:Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
797:ignorance, changed to stupidity, was the equal of intelligence changed to despair. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
798:In extraordinary events ignorance of their causes produces astonishment. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
799:It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of our own ignorance. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
800:Of all the hatreds, none is greater than that of ignorance for knowledge. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
801:Our blind trust in the system is the product of ignorance and magical thinking, ~ William Landay, #NFDB
802:The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you know nothing about ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
803:the paradox of human ignorance is the most intriguing paradox of nature ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
804:There is only one calamity: ignorance. And there is only one solution: enlightenment. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
805:All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance. ~ Will Rogers, #NFDB
806:All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
807:All you need in life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure… MARK TWAIN ~ Julia London, #NFDB
808:British generals often gave away in stupidity what they had gained in ignorance. ~ Scott Anderson, #NFDB
809:Even one voice in a wilderness of ignorance is a voice that is heard by someone. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
810:Fear is the only true enemy, born of ignorance and the parent of anger and hate. ~ Edward Albert, #NFDB
811:Forgiveness is not born out of innocence or ignorance. Forgiveness is born of love. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
812:Humility and knowledge in poor clothes excel pride and ignorance in costly attire. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
813:Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. ~ Jessica Khoury, #NFDB
814:I just want to be happy. Ignoring things makes me happy. Ignorance is bliss, right? ~ Siera Maley, #NFDB
815:It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
816:Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite. ~ Karl Popper, #NFDB
817:So long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
818:Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
819:[T]o some people ignorance is a sleeping mask they mistake for corrective lenses. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
820:We live in an age of artificial scarcity, maintained by ignorance and fear. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
821:What we call evil, it seems to me, is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
822:Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
823:Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. ~ Saint Francis of Assisi, #NFDB
824:as his mother had always told him, ignorance could be fixed; stupid was forever. “My ~ David Weber, #NFDB
825:Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States. ~ W E B Du Bois, #NFDB
826:I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance. ~ Christopher Marlowe, #NFDB
827:I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance. ~ Christopher Marlowe, #NFDB
828:If you know the Self, there will be no darkness, no ignorance and no misery. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
829:Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
830:Ignorance and credulous hope make the market for most proprietary remedies. ~ Samuel Hopkins Adams, #NFDB
831:ignorance leads beings into endless frustration and suffering, wisdom frees them. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
832:Ignorance leads men into a party, and shame keeps them from getting out again. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
833:Ignorance was a thin shade protecting light, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #NFDB
834:Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
835:Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
836:Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
837:On the other hand, ignorance of Scripture almost always ensures a painful immaturity. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
838:Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement. ~ Ben Carson, Think Big (p. 22)., #NFDB
839:The combination of fear and ignorance (two sides of the same coin) can be paralyzing. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
840:The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
841:When ignorance invites you to a dinner, let understanding be your cutlery ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
842:When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
843:15 For it is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
844:But to some people ignorance is a sleeping mask they mistake for corrective lenses. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
845:Fear paints pictures of ghosts and hangs them in the gallery of ignorance. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
846:Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
847:I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil.
And that no one knows the truth. ~ Molly Ivins,#NFDB
848:Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
849:Ignorance is a dangerous and spiritual poison, which all men ought warily to shun. ~ Pope Gregory I, #NFDB
850:Ignorance is bliss. Oedipus ruined a great sex life by asking too many questions. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
851:Ignorance isn’t always bliss. Sometimes it’s just a huge pain in the arse, ~ Michael Marshall Smith, #NFDB
852:Ignorance is the source of hatred, and the way to get rid of ignorance is realization. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
853:Ignorance of impending evil is far better than a knowledge of its approach. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
854:Ignorance of the law is not excuse for breaking it. Make no mistake about it, ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
855:I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
856:Modern ignorance is in people's assumption that they can outsmart their own nature. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
857:My relationship with cats has saved me from a deadly and pervasive ignorance. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
858:The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
859:There was a certain wisdom in doing little, when one was obliged to act in ignorance. ~ C J Cherryh, #NFDB
860:The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:
It longed for the adventure of Ignorance ~ Sri Aurobindo,#NFDB
861:Throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
862:When ignorance does not know something, it says that what it does not know is stupid. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
863:Bad ideologies such as racism or sexism persist due to ignorance far more than malice. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
864:Beware of false knowledge, it is more dangerous than ignorance” ~ Bernard Shaw ~ Loren W Christensen, #NFDB
865:Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance. ~ Lyndon B Johnson, #NFDB
866:but where does this nobility come from? Generosity or fear? Wisdom or ignorance? ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
867:Ecclesiastes shows that man without God is in total ignorance and inevitable misery. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
868:Get rid of your ignorance which makes you think that you are other than Bliss. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
869:I am not a snob, because I know opulence doesn't stamp out ignorance and unhappiness. ~ Sarina Bowen, #NFDB
870:I count religion but a childish toy
And hold there is no sin but ignorance. ~ Christopher Marlowe,#NFDB
871:If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
872:Ignorance defends itself savagely, and illiteracy, as I well knew, can be shrewd. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
873:Ignorance, poverty, and greed must disappear so that light can prevail in all places. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
874:I made the enthusiast’s mistake of assuming that everyone shared my previous ignorance. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
875:In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice. ~ Boethius, #NFDB
876:Is ignorance so hard to bear, then? There is so very much in life we do not know … . ~ John C Wright, #NFDB
877:I was only limited by my ignorance, by my fear, and by my own sense of right and wrong. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
878:O death! We thank you for the light that you will shed upon our ignorance. ~ Jacques Benigne Bossuet, #NFDB
879:Reading’s the means by which the lowest man can lift himself from a state of ignorance. ~ John Jakes, #NFDB
880:Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” The man quoted Confucius? ~ Kerrigan Byrne, #NFDB
881:The bad one is that way because of the ignorance, therefore he can be healed with wisdom. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
882:what kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much corruption and ignorance? ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
883:Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
884:But here’s the thing about seeing and knowing everything—sometimes ignorance is safer. ~ Sara Shepard, #NFDB
885:Children would die of terror if they knew the folly and ignorance of their caretakers. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
886:Dzin philosophy insisted that true ignorance was far superior to shallow knowledge. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
887:Ecclesiastes shows that man without God is in total ignorance and inevitable misery. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
888:Fear is based on ignorance. Lack of understanding is also a primary cause of anger. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
889:Gossip is a policeman and a teacher. Without it, there would be chaos and ignorance. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
890:He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
891:innocence walks hand-in-hand with ignorance. How insight never clarifies, only complicates. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
892:It has been said that a specialist is a barbarian whose ignorance is not well-rounded ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
893:It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
894:It must certainly be more dangerous to live in ignorance than to live with knowledge. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
895:It's much better for an artist to know everything than to be limited by ignorance. ~ Phoebe Gloeckner, #NFDB
896:Maybe heaven was innocence, limbo was ignorance, and hell was fiery illumination. ~ Kimberly Sabatini, #NFDB
897:Not knowing a thing is not ignorance. Feigning knowledge you don’t have, can be, ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
898:Overconsumption is a universal human trait,” Orlu pointed out. “And so is ignorance. ~ Nnedi Okorafor, #NFDB
899:Spiritual ignorance is the greatest sin. It is what makes all other sins possible. ~ Swami Kriyananda, #NFDB
900:Theology is ignorance of natural causes; a tissue of fallacies and contradictions. ~ Paul Henri Thiry, #NFDB
901:The only enemy is ignorance. Peace, people. Let's get rid of all this nuclear testing. ~ Jon Bon Jovi, #NFDB
902:The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
903:There is only one calamity: ignorance. And there is only one solution: enlightenment. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
904:The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
905:The veil of ignorance has been set over your face since birth. Shall I pull it free? ~ Victor LaValle, #NFDB
906:They came in wagons [...] People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB
907:Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
908:Truth is better for humanity than ignorance, lies, or spin. And it's more interesting. ~ Steve Sailer, #NFDB
909:We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness. ~ Booker T Washington, #NFDB
910:...a little knowledge would unlock the gates to vast and unsuspected gates of ignorance. ~ Ruth Downie, #NFDB
911:A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
912:Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
913:Fear feeds off ignorance, whereas compassion and lucidity flower from understanding. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
914:Help and you will abolish apathy-the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil. ~ Tom Hanks, #NFDB
915:I don't like greed, I don't like ignorance. I really don't like anger. But I love love. ~ David Crosby, #NFDB
916:Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other. ~ James F Cooper, #NFDB
917:Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
918:Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
919:In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
920:It is bad enough that people are dying of AIDS, but no one should die of ignorance. ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #NFDB
921:It was idle to speculate, to build pyramids of surmise on a foundation of ignorance. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
922:Once a person stops searching for information and self-knowledge, ignorance sets in. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
923:Science intensifies religious truth by cleansing it of ignorance and superstition. ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
924:The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
925:The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
926:The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it? ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
927:the truth of ‘ignorance is bliss’, and that it is ignorance that makes life go on smoothly. ~ Samarpan, #NFDB
928:Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
929:Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
930:Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
931:All the best essays are epistemological journeys from ignorance or curiosity to knowledge. ~ Geoff Dyer, #NFDB
932:And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. ~ Shakespeare, #NFDB
933:And where there is ignorance, there is also want of learning and instruction in essentials. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
934:Education reform doesn't come cheap. But the price of ignorance is far, far greater ~ Rania Al Abdullah, #NFDB
935:Focus on our ignorance.” She didn’t quite grasp the concept. She’d never been ignorant. ~ John Sandford, #NFDB
936:His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
937:Ignorance is my least favorite thing. I really think it's at the core of all our problems. ~ Naomi Judd, #NFDB
938:Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
939:Infinite knowledge can never wonder. All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
940:My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
941:Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition, Inspector. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
942:Si vous cachez votre ignorance, vous ne recevrez pas de coups et vous n'apprendrez rien. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
943:...that's the true enemy of the future. Ignorance. Indifference. Failure to adapt. ~ Sophie Littlefield, #NFDB
944:The Communists …’ He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
945:The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
946:The knowledge from an enlightened person breaks on the hard rocks of ignorance. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
947:The Mother of Ignorance is always pregnant. But at Sean Price house, the b**ch have twins! ~ Sean Price, #NFDB
948:Unless a practice cools the fires of greed, aversion, and ignorance it is worthless. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
949:We rather confess our moral errors, faults, and crimes than our ignorance. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
950:you’re too ignorant to understand the reasons why your ignorance is a fatal disease. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
951:God has bestowed two gifts on man: hope and ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
952:Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be re-elected. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
953:Ignorance isn't bliss, but sometimes ignorance makes it possible for us to sleep at night. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
954:Ignorance lies not in the things you don't know, but in the things you know that ain't so. ~ Will Rogers, #NFDB
955:Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
956:It is on the blindness of ignorance that is founded the working which affirms the ego. ~ Sanyutta Nikaya, #NFDB
957:Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
958:She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
959:The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
960:The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
961:The next great transfer of wealth WILL take place, not by conspiracy but by ignorance. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
962:The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
963:The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
964:The union of nature and soul removes the veil of ignorance that covers our intelligence. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
965:This is the man (Ronald Reagan) who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency ~ Molly Ivins, #NFDB
966:To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant. —AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT. ~ Albert Jay Nock, #NFDB
967:A wise guy doesn't spill his ignorance. He uses his eyes and ears and keeps his trap shut— ~ Andre Norton, #NFDB
968:dead in the mind, meanin you're present but your ignorance only makes ur presense worse! ~ Sister Souljah, #NFDB
969:God's plan' is often a front for men's plans and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil. ~ Mary Daly, #NFDB
970:He decided not to ask for details. Better to avoid exposing his ignorance even further. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
971:He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
972:Ignorance is the biggest problem of all for the ocean - and for many other things as well. ~ Sylvia Earle, #NFDB
973:Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence. This is the equation. ~ Averroes, #NFDB
974:Inexperience can be overcome, ignorance be enlightened, but prejudice will destroy you. ~ Mercedes Lackey, #NFDB
975:I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
976:Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage. ~ Barbara Kingsolver, #NFDB
977:Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness. ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
978:Quite the reverse, since innocence based in ignorance was unfit to protect itself. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
979:The former ruling class kept the community of actors in ignorance by means of various lies. ~ Bela Lugosi, #NFDB
980:The privileges of knowledge have to be bought at the cost of the consolations of ignorance. ~ John Fowles, #NFDB
981:The reason that history so often repeats is not only human nature, but also human ignorance. ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
982:But thou art all my art, and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
983:C++ is a language strongly optimized for liars and people who go by guesswork and ignorance. ~ Erik Naggum, #NFDB
984:Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all. ~ Plato, #NFDB
985:His knowledge dwells in the house of Ignorance; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Godheads of the Little Life, #NFDB
986:History is a record of the incessant struggle of humanity against ignorance and oppression. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
987:If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head. ~ Jim Hightower, #NFDB
988:Ignorance worships mystery; reason explains it; the one grovels, the other soars. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
989:Invincible ignorance always upset him, even though he knew he should just laugh at it. ~ Philip Jos Farmer, #NFDB
990:I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
991:Kids who don't eavesdrop on adult conversations are doomed to a childhood of ignorance. ~ Kelley Armstrong, #NFDB
992:Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
993:Quantum mechanics, with its leap into statistics, has been a mere palliative for our ignorance ~ Rene Thom, #NFDB
994:The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
995:The Ignorance the people live in leads them to commit mistakes against their own happiness ~ Simon Bolivar, #NFDB
996:The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown ~ Humphry Davy, #NFDB
997:There's an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
998:Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance. ~ W Clement Stone, #NFDB
999:Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1000:A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
1001:and there comes a time in a woman’s life when innocence is merely a euphemism for ignorance. ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
1002:Ignorance’ is probably the best word to describe public opinion on dietary fat, Harcombe said. ~ Tim Noakes, #NFDB
1003:In his ignorance of the whole truth, each person maintains his own arrogant point of view. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
1004:It is a disgrace to let ignorance and vanity do more with us than prudence and principle. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1005:Knowledge is Power. Ignorance is Bliss. But curiosity—even if it had killed the cat—is king. ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
1006:Let us then submit to an invincible ignorance on which our happiness depends. ~ Julien Offray de La Mettrie, #NFDB
1007:No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my ignorance. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
1008:Not knowing a thing is not ignorance. Feigning knowledge you don't have can be--Sholto ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
1009:Peace we want because there is another war to fight against poverty, disease and ignorance. ~ Indira Gandhi, #NFDB
1010:There never was a time in our history when ignorance of current affairs could be so dangerous. ~ Edgar Dale, #NFDB
1011:The true conquests, the only ones that cause no regret, are those made over ignorance. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
1012:We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance. ~ Warren Weaver, #NFDB
1013:Because of poverty and ignorance, not everyman living on earth lives in the same epoch! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1014:Education is the best weapon through which we can fight poverty, ignorance and terrorism. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
1015:Ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. There is a beginning but no end to knowledge. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
1016:Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
1017:I got to the top the hard way—fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1018:I'm always doing poems from a place of not-knowing, a place of ignorance in a way. ~ Alison Hawthorne Deming, #NFDB
1019:Our ignorance has left us proud of some of the things of which we ought to be ashamed. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
1020:Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1021:Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1022:Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1023:Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1024:The country will survive Obama, but it cannot survive the abject ignorance that elected him. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1025:The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.” Many ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1026:They called it, in their ignorance, “civilisation”, but it was really part of their enslavement ~ Mary Beard, #NFDB
1027:Though the familiar use of things about us take off our wonder, yet it cures not our ignorance. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1028:To admit ignorance is the highest knowledge. It is the necessary condition for all learning. ~ Tom Spanbauer, #NFDB
1029:To break down prejudice is to get to a place of understanding, that can erode the ignorance. ~ David Oyelowo, #NFDB
1030:Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. —WILL DURANT, writer and historian ~ Laura D Adams, #NFDB
1031:Foolishness is more than being stupid, that deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1032:If you don’t confront ignorance and stupidity, ignorance and stupidity will think it’s okay. ~ William Wright, #NFDB
1033:Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1034:Inexperience can be overcome, ignorance can be enlightened, but prejudice will destroy you. ~ Mercedes Lackey, #NFDB
1035:It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1036:Limited and divided being is ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Doctrine of the Mystics, #NFDB
1037:On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
1038:Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1039:so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1040:The huge problem in our society is the enormous ignorance of the ideas that underlie modern art. ~ Thom Mayne, #NFDB
1041:The knowledge which purifies the intelligence is true knowledge. All the rest is ignorance. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1042:Unbelievers enjoy the security of their unbelief; there is great confidence in ignorance. ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
1043:We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler. ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
1044:A common error of ignorance is to maintain that what one does not know does not exist. ~ Leon Battista Alberti, #NFDB
1045:A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. ~ Dinesh D Souza, #NFDB
1046:Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
1047:Ignorance and stupidity are not the same. Remember that. Ignorance can always be alleviated. ~ Michelle Sagara, #NFDB
1048:Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is the equation. ~ Averroes, #NFDB
1049:I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1050:It is not difficult to pass for being learned. The secret is not to betray your ignorance. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
1051:I've always found that a really lively argument depends on the ignorance of the combatants. ~ Guy Vanderhaeghe, #NFDB
1052:Minds altogether horrible in their power, and in their ignorance — which their power protected. ~ Fritz Leiber, #NFDB
1053:Our ignorance, and it is based on the egos we have. It is the unwillingness to go beyond ego. ~ Edgar Mitchell, #NFDB
1054:Robert’s problem was familiar to Aquinas. He called it ignorantia affectata, cultivated ignorance. ~ Greg Bear, #NFDB
1055:The knot of the Ignorance is egoism. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: The Inhabiting Godhead, Life and Action, #NFDB
1056:The knowledge which purifies the intelligence is true knowledge. All the rest is ignorance. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1057:To be curious about that which is not one's concern while still in ignorance of oneself is ridiculous. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1058:True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1059:What’s looming in the shadows of our ignorance and denial is a critique of civilization itself. ~ Lierre Keith, #NFDB
1060:An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition. ~ Laurence Sterne, #NFDB
1061:By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance. ~ Desiderius Erasmus, #NFDB
1062:Don't ever mistake my silence for ignorance, my calmness for acceptance, or my kindness for weakness. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
1063:Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not it is wise to affect ignorance. ~ Baltasar Graci n, #NFDB
1064:I find few things more personally enriching than exploring the parameters of my own ignorance. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
1065:Ignorance and a narrow education lay the foundation of vice, and imitation and custom rear it up. ~ Mary Astell, #NFDB
1066:Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. ~ Jane Smiley, #NFDB
1067:Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is the equation. ~ Averroes, #NFDB
1068:Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1069:In friendship, as in love, we are often happier through our ignorance than our knowledge. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1070:In other words, science is a method that chiefly expands our ignorance rather than our knowledge. ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
1071:Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain! ~ Tryon Edwards, #NFDB
1072:Never ascribe to some conspiracy of evil what can be explained as easily by ignorance and fear. ~ Miles Cameron, #NFDB
1073:Taste is a matter of ignorance. If you know what you are tasting, you don't have to taste. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, #NFDB
1074:The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
1075:Unfortunately in our world, ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge does. You ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
1076:What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1077:A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti, #NFDB
1078:America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few. ~ Will Rogers, #NFDB
1079:Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not, it is wise to affect ignorance. ~ Baltasar Gracian, #NFDB
1080:Every human being was a victim of something, whether it was desire, addiction, ignorance, or faith. ~ Lee Thomas, #NFDB
1081:If skin color offends you than I hope my words run through your veins as a plague to ignorance. ~ Zachary Koukol, #NFDB
1082:Ignorance, arrogance, and racism have bloomed as Superior Knowledge in all too many universities. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
1083:MACHEVILL: I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance. ~ Christopher Marlowe,#NFDB
1084:RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1085:She chose a human out of ignorance because she never felt what Lucien could do with his tongue. ~ Aimee Roseland, #NFDB
1086:The curse of ignorance is that man without being good or evil is nevertheless satisfied with himself ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
1087:This world is in love with its own ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #NFDB
1088:Through ignorance of what is good and what is bad, the life of men is greatly perplexed. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1089:Together, we will reclaim America's schools, before ignorance and apathy claim more young lives. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1090:You can’t shed ignorance unless you develop the habit to learn by observation and self-analysis. ~ Awdhesh Singh, #NFDB
1091:Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1092:But the upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance. ~ Sheryl Sandberg, #NFDB
1093:Death falls heavily on that man who, known too well to others, dies in ignorance of himself. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
1094:Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1095:Is there innocence in ignorance? And if there is, do we tolerate other for their innocence's sake? ~ Claire North, #NFDB
1096:I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible. ~ Mark Slouka, #NFDB
1097:Modern ignorance is in people's assumption that they can outsmart their own nature. Wendell Berry ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1098:Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1099:Over the years I’ve learned that ignorance is more than just bliss. It’s freaking orgasmic ecstasy. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1100:Science is like a hungry furnace that must feed from the the forest of ignorance that surrounds us. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
1101:She would push and push on that one question until a crack formed in the wall of her ignorance. ~ Olen Steinhauer, #NFDB
1102:The explanation is that their science is only a very attenuated form of our universal ignorance. ~ Gustave Le Bon, #NFDB
1103:The only true conquests-those that awaken no regrets- are those obtained over our ignorance. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1104:The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
1105:There is nothing new to gain. On the other hand a man must lose his ignorance. That is all. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1106:We refuse to let our knowledge, however limited, be informed by your ignorance, however vast. ~ David Ray Griffin, #NFDB
1107:Willful ignorance or resistance to alleged facts has been a big ingredient in any success I’ve had. ~ Rob Delaney, #NFDB
1108:All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.’ Mark Twain, you know. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1109:Confident and courageous leaders have no problems pointing out their own weaknesses and ignorance. ~ Thom S Rainer, #NFDB
1110:Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
1111:For between true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. —HOBBES, Leviathan ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
1112:He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1113:History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
1114:I could understand ignorance, but I could not accept its glorification, still less its right to rule. ~ Jung Chang, #NFDB
1115:Ignorance, fear, hate: these are our enemies. Deny them with all your might.
-Oromis ~ Christopher Paolini,#NFDB
1116:Ignorance is a blessing as much as it is a curse. You can’t crave what you don’t know exists.” The ~ Kandi Steiner, #NFDB
1117:Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1118:Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug; but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1119:Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1120:Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
1121:Respectfully, 'Awkward Black Girl' was never meant to be politically correct. We poke fun at ignorance. ~ Issa Rae, #NFDB
1122:She throws a glittering robe on Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #NFDB
1123:The first reason for people's slavery is our ignorance, and above all, our ignorance of ourselves. ~ G I Gurdjieff, #NFDB
1124:There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1125:This is the latent ignorance that, like an unsuspected worm, burrows under the bulk of the prosperous. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1126:To be ignorant of one's own ignorance is to be in an unprogressive, uninspired state of existence. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
1127:When you're fighting for social justice, one of my biggest pet peeves is speaking out of ignorance. ~ Eva Longoria, #NFDB
1128:Blind and naked ignorance delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, on all things all day long ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
1129:Knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1130:Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1131:One day, the child will understand what he feared most and he will laugh at his ignorance! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1132:Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand... prejudice, fear and ignorance walk hand-in-hand. ~ Neil Peart, #NFDB
1133:The darkness, of which the historians complain, is essentially the darkness of their own ignorance. ~ George Sarton, #NFDB
1134:The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.’s in man’s ignorance. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1135:There are in fact two things, science and opinion. The former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
1136:There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
1137:The reason why the simpler sort are moved by authority is the consciousness of their own ignorance ~ Richard Hooker, #NFDB
1138:THERE IS NOTHING quite like ignorance combined with a driving need to succeed to force rapid learning. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1139:To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1140:Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are, therefore, the true sources of Superstition. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1141:Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action? ~ Adi Shankara, #NFDB
1142:Darkness is the fit hour for beasts of prey, and ignorance the natural dwelling place of cruelty. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1143:Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1144:Her ignorance was like standing in pure dark that could be either a closet or a vast, starless night. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1145:He who neglects to drink of the spring of experience is likely to die of thirst in the desert of ignorance. ~ Li Bai, #NFDB
1146:Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1147:I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance. ~ Richard Dreyfuss, #NFDB
1148:It is not good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge. ~ Enrico Fermi, #NFDB
1149:It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don't think it will come back. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
1150:Passionate people invariably deny their anger, and cowards often boast their ignorance of fear. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1151:Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand. Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand. ~ Neil Peart, #NFDB
1152:The fire of fear blazes with the fuel of ignorance leaving nothing but the ashes of hate behind. ~ Jamie Arpin Ricci, #NFDB
1153:The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of wilful blindness. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
1154:There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
1155:There was comfort in ignorance, in thinking the world a certain way and not knowing any different. ~ Christina Henry, #NFDB
1156:The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about, yet refuse to investigate. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
1157:Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
1158:Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1159:...when you take fright and add to it ignorance, you get hatred. That's a very unattractive equation. ~ Ann M Martin, #NFDB
1160:While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. ~ Karl Popper, #NFDB
1161:Fear fed on ignorance, just as ignorance fed on fear. The great truths were always circular. ~ Michaelbrent Collings, #NFDB
1162:It is a terrible mistake to put the rifles of tomorrow into the hands of the ignorance of yesterday. ~ Barbara Hambly, #NFDB
1163:Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior. ~ Martha C Nussbaum, #NFDB
1164:Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs. ~ Guy Debord, Panegyric (1989), Vol. 1, pt. 1., #NFDB
1165:The best-educated doctor in the world is standing on a low island in the middle of a sea of ignorance. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1166:There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” Now ~ A S King, #NFDB
1167:They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot ignorance. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1168:Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #NFDB
1169:Attachment is the state of ignorance or forgetfulness, and thus clinging to a memory of enjoyment ~ Goswami Kriyananda, #NFDB
1170:Do not hide your ignorance, because somebody might help you! Hiding always prolongs the problems. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1171:Education, introspection, self-love and excellence are the only ways to overcome the wrath of ignorance ~ Romany Malco, #NFDB
1172:For an ordinary trooper like him, ignorance was not simply an abstract value. It was in the manual. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
1173:Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
1174:Ignorance doesn't lead to salvation, nor does knowledge pave the way to sin. - Cinda Williams Chima ~ Scott Westerfeld, #NFDB
1175:Ignorance may be bliss, but only if it outweighs curiosity. Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
1176:I'm swimming upstream. Fighting the tide while the happy dead drift past me to the pools of ignorance. ~ Katie Waitman, #NFDB
1177:It might seem perverse, but the CEO is usually the last to know. With great power comes great ignorance. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1178:Men remain in ignorance as long as they hate, and they hate unjustly as long as they remain in ignorance. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
1179:Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1180:Now, if others will rid the earth of vanity, ignorance, and want, mankind can live happily ever after. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1181:That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God: ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1182:The Enemy has been here in the night of our natural ignorance, and sown the tares of spiritual errors. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
1183:The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1184:To heal the sick was to remedy not merely the infirmities of the flesh, but those of ignorance, fear, and superstition, #NFDB
1185:Until we find an antidote to our ignorance, our purpose shall always be hindered by ignorance ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1186:We could have drowned in our combined smells of chlorine and ignorance- guess which part I was? ~ Bonnie Sue Hitchcock, #NFDB
1187:We must eliminate the gulf of mistrust and ignorance that keeps us from learning from each other. ~ Coretta Scott King, #NFDB
1188:What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
1189:Willful ignorance is in itself willful sin, and the evil that comes of it is without excuse. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1190:Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1191:Charity puts and end to poverty; righteous conduct to misery; discretion to ignorance; and scrutiny to fear. ~ Chanakya, #NFDB
1192:Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1193:Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1194:He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1195:His mind was spinning endless threads of conjecture that snarled constantly around his ignorance. ~ Patricia A McKillip, #NFDB
1196:If ignorance is bliss, then knowledge is a cage.” “But knowledge is only a cage if you dwell in isolation. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
1197:If the Church knew all the commandments, one half they would condemn through prejudice and ignorance. ~ Joseph Smith Jr, #NFDB
1198:If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance “God”. ~ Jerry A Coyne, #NFDB
1199:If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them. ~ Baron d Holbach, #NFDB
1200:...ignorance is a curse lying in wait for the younger generation, for those who forgot to ask. ~ Hannah Mary Rothschild, #NFDB
1201:Ignorance is a wonderful thing—it’s the state you have to be in before you can really learn anything. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1202:It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3) ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1203:Modern science shows that most common ailments in today’s world are the result of nutritional ignorance. ~ Joel Fuhrman, #NFDB
1204:Nonetheless, they remind us that ignorance is the natural state of mind for a research scientist. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1205:No one was ever injured by the truth; but he who persists in self-deception and ignorance is injured. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1206:Since fear is mostly about ignorance, the best part is that it's as temporary as you choose. ~ Christine Comaford Lynch, #NFDB
1207:The dragons of twentieth-century life are ignorance, incompetence, slackness and disloyalty, she said. ~ Kate Grenville, #NFDB
1208:They have the authority of ignorance and that is something you simply cannot combat.” – John Steinbeck ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1209:They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half as bad as a lot of ignorance. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1210:They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1211:Traders lose because the game is hard, or out of ignorance, or lack of discipline or because of both. ~ Alexander Elder, #NFDB
1212:We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
1213:What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there? ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1214:Why does a public discussion of economic policy so often show the abysmal ignorance of the participants? ~ Robert Solow, #NFDB
1215:All the values of the mind are constructions of ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Thought and Knowledge, #NFDB
1216:Beware of false knowledge, it is more dangerous than ignorance” ~ Loren W Christensen Bernard Shaw ~ Loren W Christensen, #NFDB
1217:For an ordinary trooper like him, ignorance was not simply an abstract value. It was in the manual. — ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
1218:Ignorance and fear create the gods, enthusiasm and deceit adorn them, and human weakness worships them. ~ Graham McNeill, #NFDB
1219:I probably didn’t want to know the truth. Life is easier when you’re in the dark. Ignorance equals bliss, ~ Tim Marquitz, #NFDB
1220:It is always the business of man the thinker to know. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #NFDB
1221:It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
1222:It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the "plan of creation," "unity of design, ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
1223:It was a reaction from the old idea of "protoplasm", a name which was a mere repository of ignorance. ~ John B S Haldane, #NFDB
1224:Never ascribe to some conspiracy of evil what can be explained as easily by ignorance and fear.” Gabriel ~ Miles Cameron, #NFDB
1225:One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge. ~ Robert Staughton Lynd, #NFDB
1226:Pain, sorrow, ignorance are all illusory; they cannot live. Bliss, joy, knowledge are true; they cannot die. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
1227:testament to the human capacity to adapt (or, less charitably, to our ability to operate in ignorance). ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB
1228:The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
1229:The happiness of children is based on their ignorance of what their parents are really thinking ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore, #NFDB
1230:The only people who ever prize purity of ignorance are those who profit from a monopoly on knowledge. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1231:the only people who ever prize purity of ignorance are those who profit from a monopoly on knowledge. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1232:The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
1233:The way to eliminate ignorance is through steady, focused discrimination between the observer and the world. ~ Patanjali, #NFDB
1234:They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1235:Whoever said ignorance is bliss must have died a horrible death with a really surprised look on his face. ~ Lisa Shearin, #NFDB
1236:A city of ancient Ignorance
Founded upon a soil that knew not Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#NFDB
1237:a great publicity is a high way to remote customers and a universal key to the gate of ignorance ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1238:And he could not take the chance of putting his certain ignorance against this man's possible knowledge. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1239:As love comes from knowledge, so hatred comes from want of knowledge. Bigotry is the fruit of ignorance. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1240:Assume ignorance before malevolence. No one has a direct pipeline to your wants and needs—not even you. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1241:Each is liable to panic, which is, exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1242:Every book is a revolution. Books are our ticket out of boredom, despair, loneliness—but also ignorance. ~ Heidi Cullinan, #NFDB
1243:Faith consists, not in ignorance, but in knowledge, and that, not only of God, but also of the divine will. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1244:How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
1245:I THINK IT IS MONTAIGNE who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head, ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1246:It is forgivable to say nothing out of ignorance; it's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns. ~ Joshua Ferris, #NFDB
1247:Knowledge is a big subject. Ignorance is bigger. And it is more interesting. —STUART FIRESTEIN, Ignorance ~ Dexter Palmer, #NFDB
1248:Many gnostics, on the contrary, insisted that ignorance, not sin, is what involves a person in suffering. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
1249:Nothing fosters courage like a clear grasp of grace... & nothing fosters fear like an ignorance of mercy ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1250:Remain alert about your blindness, about your fear, about your ignorance, and just your alertness will dispel ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1251:Stand up to ignorance, because if you don't, the ignorant will run free to spread ignorance like a disease. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1252:...the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity; it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1253:The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th Century science has been the discovery of human ignorance. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
1254:The lower is for us the first condition of the higher. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #NFDB
1255:The veil is slowly rising, but as regards innumerable questions we must be content to remain in ignorance. ~ John Lubbock, #NFDB
1256:To the person whose ignorance is destroyed by real knowledge, God gives light equal to the light of the Sun”. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1257:We have all read the golden rule and the Sermon on the Mount. Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1258:Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action? ~ Adi Shankaracharya, #NFDB
1259:All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
1260:Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1261:Any business model based around poor people making bad decisions out of ignorance and desperation always works. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
1262:As far as ignorance is concerned, not just Buddhism, every religion recognizes it as the source of suffering. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1263:But like many young men who grow up as privileged as Jack of Diamonds, he didn’t suspect his own ignorance. ~ Frank Beddor, #NFDB
1264:Depraved conscience turns out to be as different from genuine ignorance as it is from honest recognition. ~ J Budziszewski, #NFDB
1265:Ignorance might be bliss for the ignorant, but for the rest of us it's a right fucking pain in the arse :) ~ Ricky Gervais, #NFDB
1266:I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1267:It may not be in the constitution, but every American has a god-given right to provinciality and ignorance. ~ Dov Davidoff, #NFDB
1268:It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"!
(Institutio III.2.3) ~ John Calvin,#NFDB
1269:I was going to talk about Nicholas Parsons' ignorance, but 18 seconds would be a wholly insufficient time. ~ Clement Freud, #NFDB
1270:my life seemed more fully layered because of the choices I had made, both consciously and in ignorance. I ~ Susan Meissner, #NFDB
1271:Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
1272:Oneness and multiplicity are poles of the same Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #NFDB
1273:Problems are the creations of mental ignorance seeking for knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #NFDB
1274:Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1275:The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1276:They were in a position of total ignorance and people in that position often died without being enlightened. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
1277:When the light fails and belief fades into nothingness, and the season of your darkest ignorance begins. ~ Bruce Holsinger, #NFDB
1278:Affreuse condition de l'homme ! Il n'y a pas un de ses bonheurs qui ne vienne d'une ignorance quelconque. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
1279:Assume ignorance before malevolence. No one has a direct pipeline to your wants and needs—not even you. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1280:I envy animals for two things - their ignorance of evil to come, and their ignorance of what is said about them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1281:I lament the want of a liberal education. I feel the mist of ignorance to surround me - Nathanael Greene ~ David McCullough, #NFDB
1282:In an honest search for knowledge, you quite often have to abide by ignorance for an indefinite period. ~ Erwin Schrodinger, #NFDB
1283:One of the hardest things for the apparently separate self to understand is that there is no real ignorance. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
1284:Our problems don’t stem from our ignorance so much as our disobedience of that which we know to be right. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1285:People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
1286:Smart people understand that there is no such thing as paranoia. It is just another mask for ignorance. ~ Hunter S Thompson, #NFDB
1287:The beginning of Ignorance is a limitation of Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #NFDB
1288:...the reading of many books brings wisdom, and the reading of one brings ignorance armed with rage and hatred. ~ Danilo Ki, #NFDB
1289:"When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is ignorance." ~ Zhuangzi|, #NFDB
1290:Art is just another way to describe and classify reality – its mystical aspects merely a function of ignorance. ~ Neal Asher, #NFDB
1291:A ship with a hole underneath is doomed to sink! And ignorance is also a hole in the brain, a big hole! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1292:By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1293:From the Zen view all beings are in the grip of the three poisons, greed, anger and delusion (ignorance). ~ Brenda Shoshanna, #NFDB
1294:Gentlemen, if my love for you equaled my ignorance of everything concerning you, it would indeed be unbounded. ~ Jean Plaidy, #NFDB
1295:Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1296:How am I supposed to take it easy when all around me these creatures are in a perpetual state of ignorance?"... ~ S G Browne, #NFDB
1297:However, when the idea that objects inherently exist takes hold, fundamental ignorance has been introduced. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1298:Ignorance is venomous and it murders the soul, spreading like a virus, running rampant, out of control. ~ Immortal Technique, #NFDB
1299:It is a virtue to admit ignorance when you don't know, but not to wallow in ignorance as an end in itself. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1300:It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1301:It is only when people don’t know history well that they judge the present so blindly in ignorance! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1302:It would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
1303:My father said the doctor was a charlatan and this was why we needed to keep struggling against ignorance ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
1304:Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1305:Simple ignorance has in its time been complimented by the names of most of the vices, and of all the virtues. ~ Arthur Helps, #NFDB
1306:That is the problem with ignorance. You can never truly know the extent of what you are ignorant about. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
1307:The great mass of people judge well of things, for they are in natural ignorance, which is man's true state. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
1308:There is no case where ignorance should be preferred to knowledge - especially if the knowledge is terrible. ~ Edward Teller, #NFDB
1309:There was comfort in ignorance, in thinking the world a certain way and not knowing any different. Hatcher ~ Christina Henry, #NFDB
1310:The root cause of all the problems we have in the world today is ignorance of course. But most, polarization. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
1311:To grow in love and service, you must value ignorance as much as knowledge and failure as much as success. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
1312:Viola felt as if she spent her life wading through a sea of ignorance, shallow but without a shore in sight. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
1313:[W]e must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge. ~ Meister Eckhart, #NFDB
1314:and the liberating insight into how suffering in our lives is born from ignorance and ends through wisdom. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
1315:As the sphere of understanding grows ever larger, necessarily the surface area of ignorance gets ever bigger ~ Dennis McKenna, #NFDB
1316:Bigotry is ever the child of ignorance, and the cultivation of the understanding is the only radical cure for it. ~ Mary Hays, #NFDB
1317:C'est dans l'absolue ignorance de notre raison d'être qu'est la racine de notre tristesse et de nos dégoûts. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
1318:Change..1.Hatred into harmony 2.Jealousy into generosity 3.Ignorance into knowledge. ~ The Mother(Words of The Mother Vol XV), #NFDB
1319:Do not mistake your ignorance or lack of skills for cowardice. It is a wise man that acknowledges his limitations. ~ Kel Kade, #NFDB
1320:Don't punish yourselves for people's ignorant reactions to what we all are. Don't let ignorance win. Let love. ~ Nancy Garden, #NFDB
1321:How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1322:Human ordeals thrive on ignorance. To understand a problem with clarity is already half way towards solving it. ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
1323:I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
1324:Nor am I ashamed, as some are, to confess my ignorance of those matters with which I am unacquainted. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1325:Oxford was not a conspiracy of silence as far as women were concerned; it was a conspiracy of ignorance. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1326:Perfect ignorance is quiet, perfect knowledge is quiet; not so the transition from the former to the latter. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
1327:Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1328:Science is a contemplative possession of reality through exclusion of all illusion, error and ignorance. ~ Georges Canguilhem, #NFDB
1329:that the only people who ever prize purity of ignorance are those who profit from a monopoly on knowledge. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1330:The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1331:The greater a man's- or boy's- ignorance of the world, the more certain he is that he sits at the center of that world. ~ Avi, #NFDB
1332:The less a tourist knows, the fewer mistakes he need make, for he will not expect himself to explain ignorance. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
1333:There's a lot of ignorance in our business... Everybody's an authority. To have your own vision is rewarding. ~ Robert Duvall, #NFDB
1334:We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science ~ James Lovelock, #NFDB
1335:All ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine and the Undivine, #NFDB
1336:(“If you think education is expensive, wait until you find out how much ignorance costs,” Hart was fond of saying.) ~ Matt Bai, #NFDB
1337:Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
1338:Ignorance sees phenomena—which actually do not exist in and of themselves—as existing independent of thought. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1339:I never saw men act with such ignorance, violence and self-serving malice as when energised by a just cause. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
1340:It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
1341:Our knowledge will take its revenge on us, just as ignorance exacted its revenge during the Middle Ages. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1342:Plato was right when he said that all evil comes from ignorance. He forgot that ignorance also comes from evil. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
1343:So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1344:so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1345:The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
1346:The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1347:We venture to make the assertion that there is but one sin: IGNORANCE, and but one salvation: APPLIED KNOWLEDGE. ~ Max Heindel, #NFDB
1348:What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
1349:Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve. ~ Frank McCourt, #NFDB
1350:With ignorance are born all the passions, with the destruction of ignorance the passions also are destroyed. ~ Majihima Nikaya, #NFDB
1351:A friend of mine says that in the world of religion we often have ignorance on fire and intelligence on ice. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1352:A lot more government,” Sam said. “And a lot more ‘guards’ I would say. With safety and security came ignorance. ~ Randi Darren, #NFDB
1353:Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
1354:I began to sense that a big part of our problem is simple ignorance of what the oldest cultures have to teach. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
1355:Ignorance and impetuosity are inseparable twins as are rumours and misunderstandings—all fused at their heads. ~ Shahnaz Bashir, #NFDB
1356:I lack the Lord’s own gentleness of heart, for I see deliberate malice where he sees ignorance and weakness. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
1357:Indulgence in animal killing for the taste of the tongue is the grossest kind of ignorance ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, #NFDB
1358:It is only through consciousness that we can approach Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #NFDB
1359:I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
1360:I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1361:Once again reality has proved that no particular group has a monopoly over demagogy, dogmatism, and ignorance. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
1362:Open the gates of wisdom, tear the veil of ignorance, enter the abode of Divine Bliss. Rest in peace forever. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1363:Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1364:Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1365:The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance-almost is the revelation of ignorance. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1366:The greater a man's - or boy's - ignorance of the world, the more certain he is that he sits in the center of that world. ~ Avi, #NFDB
1367:Therefore the doubts which have arisen in your heart out of ignorance should be slashed by the weapon of knowledge. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1368:We identify arrogant ignorance by its willingness to work on too big a scale, and thus to put too much at risk. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1369:What we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #NFDB
1370:Why did Nature create man? Was it to show that she is big enough to make mistakes, or was it pure ignorance? ~ Holbrook Jackson, #NFDB
1371:As long as superstition and ignorance prevail, humanity will fall short of eradicating war, poverty, and hunger. ~ Jacque Fresco, #NFDB
1372:Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1373:In the vacuum created by fear and ignorance and hunger and want, it's evil, not good, that rushes to fill the void. ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
1374:I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance". ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1375:Knowledge and Ignorance are in their nature subjective. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Inner Experience and Outer Life, #NFDB
1376:Perhaps, thought Talon, there was a path in between. A way to shed their ignorance without losing their souls. ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
1377:Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
1378:Science is not a vast encyclopedia, it is a thin flame of reason burning across ample reservoirs of ignorance. ~ Robert Kirshner, #NFDB
1379:The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1380:We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science. ~ James E Lovelock, #NFDB
1381:Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
1382:A gentleman will walk but never run.. it takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile.. be yourself no matter what they say. ~ Sting, #NFDB
1383:But ignorance of the father brought terror and fear, and terror grew dense like a fog, so that no one could see. ~ Marvin W Meyer, #NFDB
1384:Division of consciousness is the basis of the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #NFDB
1385:Erik maintained his ignorance in any and every matter he came across, and even improved upon it when he could. The ~ Steven Brust, #NFDB
1386:few governmental institutions are more misunderstood and feared out of ignorance than the Federal Reserve Board. ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1387:How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1388:How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1389:I have my own theory: ignorance is bliss. The less you know, the more confident you can be in tackling things. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
1390:It is our ignorance which makes us think that our self, as self, is real, that it has its complete meaning in itself. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1391:Just try to be yourself and resist complacency and ignorance. All you can do is work, work; work and be disciplined. ~ Raoul Peck, #NFDB
1392:No matter how busy you think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
1393:...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake. ~ B F Skinner, #NFDB
1394:One of the surprising discoveries of modern psychology is how easy it is to be ignorant of your own ignorance. ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
1395:preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1396:Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1397:The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and who wins after all? ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
1398:The dumbing down of America is evident in the slow decay of substantive content, a kind of celebration of ignorance. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1399:The happiest life consists of ignorance,
Before you learn how to grieve or rejoice."
--SOPHOCLES (496-406 B.C.) ~ Sophocles,#NFDB
1400:They could speak now, as adults, not separated by that gulf between a child’s ignorance and a grown-up’s sorrows. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
1401:This feat I also had no idea how to accomplish, but ignorance had never stopped me from taking action before. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
1402:What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife? ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, #NFDB
1403:Your ignorance will be your downfall. Magic or not, we won't give up. Magic or not, we will take back what's ours! ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
1404:Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning. ~ Vera Farmiga, #NFDB
1405:He must be able to mystify his officers and men by false reports and appearances, and thus keep them in total ignorance. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
1406:If in the darkness of ignorance, you don’t recognize a person’s true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1407:ignorance is the cause of the unbelief that fails of the inheritance. If, in our orthodox Churches, the abiding in ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1408:Ignorance is the worst plague of all, a form of blindness that destroys the hearts of the people who hide behind it. ~ David Estes, #NFDB
1409:In my country we say that ignorance is the warm bath in which it is comfortable to sit but dangerous to lie down. ~ Marina Lewycka, #NFDB
1410:It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
~ John Dos Passos,#NFDB
1411:It's a fine thing to be clever, but too much cleverness usually produces the same result as ignorance.-Lady Berwick ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
1412:I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
1413:Knowledge and ignorance are of the mind. But the Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. It is light itself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1414:Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1415:The four lesser apocalyptical horsemen of Panic, Bewilderment, Ignorance, and Shouting took control of the room, ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1416:There is no happiness in worldly objects. Because of our ignorance we imagine we derive happiness from them. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1417:Why did tradition always insist that ignorance was the optimum state for important transactions involving women? ~ Curtis Craddock, #NFDB
1418:Errors are permitted to the mind because they open doors upon truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of the Ignorance, #NFDB
1419:If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1420:If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!" (William Strunk) ... Why compound ignorance with inaudibility? ~ E B White, #NFDB
1421:Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord it over every aspect of human life. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1422:Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
1423:Is it ignorance if you don’t care to know it?” “Yes. That is almost the definition of ignorance, actually. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett, #NFDB
1424:Love transcends international boundaries. It heals the wounds of racial hatred, prejudice, bigotry and ignorance. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
1425:Most ignorance is by choice, you know, and so ignorance is very telling about what really matters to people. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
1426:One of the most powerful aspects of delusion, or ignorance, is the belief that what we do does not really matter. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
1427:Remove the Ego and Avidya (Ignorance) is gone. Look for it, the ego vanishes and the real Self alone remains. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1428:Someone has said, "Education is going from an unconscious to conscious awareness of one's ignorance." I agree. ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
1429:The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1430:There is no sin nor virtue: there is only ignorance. By realisation of non-duality this ignorance is dispelled. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1431:Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1432:We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
1433:We have nothing to lose by trusting the infinite power of the Self, except the bondage of our own ignorance. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
1434:When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1435:Don’t ever oppose those who doubt your abilities and capabilities; just expose them to their own ignorance! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1436:His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1437:Ignorance and its hand-maidens, prejudice, intolerance, suspicion of our fellowman, breed dictators and breed wars. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
1438:Ignorance is in each cell of our body and our consciousness. It's like a drop of ink diffused in a glass of water. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1439:In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
1440:It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
1441:Man moves towards something which fulfils the universe by transcending it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Knowledge and Ignorance, #NFDB
1442:Moral evil is in reality a form of mental disease or ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Delight of Existence, The Problem, #NFDB
1443:No matter how busy you make think you are you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance ~ Confucius, #NFDB
1444:Tant qu'il y aura sur la terre ignorance et misère, des livres de la nature de celui-ci pourront ne pas être inutiles. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1445:tant qu’il y aura sur la terre ignorance et misère, des livres de la nature de celui-ci pourront ne pas être inutiles. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1446:The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1447:The loss of hope is probably the most devastating consequence of the negativity instinct and the ignorance it causes. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
1448:The pain of humanity's most maltreated victims echoes deep within each of us, in the form of our shame or ignorance. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
1449:There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause. ~ Adam Clarke, #NFDB
1450:The scriptures say to wake up from the deep sleep of ignorance, remain fully awake, remain conscious, & go on learning. ~ Rama Swami, #NFDB
1451:...this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1452:We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology. ~ Ron Reagan, #NFDB
1453:While missionaries do many noble things at great risk to themselves, their dogmatism still spreads ignorance and death. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1454:With just a touch more self confidence and a liberal helping of ignorance I could have been a famous evangelist. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1455:And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
1456:As one lamp serves to dispel a thousand years of darkness, so one flash of wisdom destroys ten thousand years of ignorance. ~ Huineng, #NFDB
1457:As with the figure of a symbol dance
The screened Omniscient plays at Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dual Being,#NFDB
1458:Confidence is ignorance,” advised the centaur. “If you’re feeling cocky, it’s because there’s something you don’t know. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
1459:Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1460:I can hardly keep track of the things I don't know, but every now and then comes an ignorance that makes me nostalgic. ~ Erri De Luca, #NFDB
1461:I’d been the perfect example of ignorance. I didn’t know what made them love each other because I didn’t understand love. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
1462:Ignorance isn't necessarily a vacuum waiting to be filled; just as often, it is a wall, actively maintained. (p.107) ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
1463:I'm not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1464:I suspect people would be in for a real shock if they knew the depths of his [Obama's] historical ignorance. ~ Charles Foster Johnson, #NFDB
1465:Memory is only a process of consciousness, a utility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #NFDB
1466:No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
1467:Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
1468:Pride is not the heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
1469:Religions are the children of ignorance, and they do not long survive their mother.
- On Religion ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,#NFDB
1470:The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
1471:We are rocked in the tumult, and the awareness of one's own ignorance is a smothering cloak that proves poor armour. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1472:What makes so many Americans proud of their ignorance? They act as though their ignorance somehow made them charming. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1473:A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance-you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
1474:Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance, ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
1475:Censorship is the child of fear
the father of ignorance
and the desperate weapon of fascists everywhere. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson,#NFDB
1476:Cowards never win victories. We have to fight fear and troubles and ignorance if we expect them to flee before us. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1477:history of Christianity is principally a story of mankind’s misery and ignorance rather than of its requited love of God. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1478:Ignorance is the beginning of knowledge; knowledge is the beginning of wisdom; wisdom is the awareness of ignorance. ~ William Rotsler, #NFDB
1479:In her, ignorance and stupidity formed a perfect shield against the world: this, I suppose, is innocence. It ~ George MacDonald Fraser, #NFDB
1480:In the Bible the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance. ~ Robert Boyle, #NFDB
1481:I say, there is no darkness
but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than
the Egyptians in their fog. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1482:It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. ~ Paul Gauguin, #NFDB
1483:I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry. ~ Robert Charles Wilson, #NFDB
1484:Marriage or non-marriage, good or evil, learning or ignorance, any of these is justified, if it leads to the goal. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1485:Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
1486:Realized knowledge alone destroys ignorance. . . . Knowledge cannot spring up by any other means than inquiry. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1487:That you either get good at rising above and meeting ignorance with education, or you get really good at being bitter. ~ Jamie McGuire, #NFDB
1488:The three passions,” Stanley had said to me that morning, “are love, hate, and ignorance. Ignorance is the strongest. ~ Rachel Kushner, #NFDB
1489:True tolerance only arises from a keen awareness of the abysmal ignorance of everyone as far as truth is concerned. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
1490:Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it's about becoming more fully human. . . . It is the end of ignorance. ~ Surya Das, #NFDB
1491:Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance. But we can do something about that. ~ Sylvia Earle, #NFDB
1492:Going to university is only one avenue to gain knowledge. There are others. A degree isn't insurance against ignorance. ~ Julie Garwood, #NFDB
1493:Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is brutal. The brutality of ignorance is such that it will make you dead while alive. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
1494:Outdated ideas inevitably lead to outdated behaviors. When ignorance and hate enter the room, progress makes its exit. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
1495:Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else, an absolute ignorance. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
1496:The main cause of poverty or financial struggle is fear and ignorance, not the economy or the government or the rich. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
1497:The more one learns the more he understands his ignorance. I am simply an ignorant man, trying to lessen his ignorance. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
1498:This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1499:This self-congratulatory notion Americans have that their country is Number One is borne of ignorance and bad manners. ~ Bryan Cranston, #NFDB
1500:Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
665 Integral Yoga
74 Poetry
61 Yoga
51 Philosophy
51 Occultism
42 Christianity
33 Fiction
20 Psychology
14 Hinduism
10 Islam
6 Mythology
4 Education
4 Buddhism
4 Baha i Faith
2 Zen
2 Sufism
2 Mysticism
2 Integral Theory
1 Theosophy
1 Science
1 Philsophy
1 Kabbalah
1 Alchemy
473 Sri Aurobindo
360 The Mother
160 Nolini Kanta Gupta
123 Satprem
36 Sri Ramakrishna
24 H P Lovecraft
23 Saint Augustine of Hippo
22 Aleister Crowley
16 Aldous Huxley
15 Plotinus
14 Swami Vivekananda
14 Carl Jung
13 A B Purani
12 William Wordsworth
12 James George Frazer
11 Saint John of Climacus
11 Robert Browning
11 Plato
11 Percy Bysshe Shelley
10 Muhammad
9 Vyasa
9 Swami Krishnananda
9 Paul Richard
9 George Van Vrekhem
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
6 Jordan Peterson
6 Franz Bardon
5 Thubten Chodron
5 Saint Teresa of Avila
5 Patanjali
5 Friedrich Nietzsche
4 Jorge Luis Borges
4 John Keats
4 Baha u llah
3 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
3 Ovid
3 Joseph Campbell
3 Henry David Thoreau
3 Aristotle
3 Anonymous
2 William Butler Yeats
2 Taigu Ryokan
2 Rudolf Steiner
2 Nirodbaran
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Ken Wilber
2 Jetsun Milarepa
2 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Bokar Rinpoche
102 The Synthesis Of Yoga
52 Prayers And Meditations
49 The Life Divine
46 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
42 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
39 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
37 Savitri
36 Letters On Yoga IV
35 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
35 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
32 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
28 Essays On The Gita
26 Letters On Yoga II
24 Lovecraft - Poems
22 Letters On Yoga I
21 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
21 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
18 Questions And Answers 1956
18 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
17 Essays Divine And Human
17 Agenda Vol 03
16 The Perennial Philosophy
16 Questions And Answers 1953
16 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
16 City of God
16 Agenda Vol 04
15 Questions And Answers 1955
14 Magick Without Tears
14 Isha Upanishad
13 Questions And Answers 1954
13 Letters On Yoga III
13 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
12 Wordsworth - Poems
12 The Golden Bough
12 Talks
11 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
11 The Human Cycle
11 Shelley - Poems
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
11 Browning - Poems
11 Agenda Vol 08
10 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
10 Quran
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
9 Words Of Long Ago
9 Vishnu Purana
9 The Study and Practice of Yoga
9 Preparing for the Miraculous
9 Agenda Vol 11
9 Agenda Vol 09
8 Words Of The Mother II
8 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
8 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
8 Liber ABA
8 Agenda Vol 05
8 Agenda Vol 02
8 Agenda Vol 01
7 Record of Yoga
7 Kena and Other Upanishads
7 Agenda Vol 06
6 The Secret Of The Veda
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Some Answers From The Mother
6 Mysterium Coniunctionis
6 Maps of Meaning
5 Vedic and Philological Studies
5 The Integral Yoga
5 Raja-Yoga
5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
5 On Education
5 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
5 Agenda Vol 13
5 Agenda Vol 12
5 Agenda Vol 10
5 Agenda Vol 07
4 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
4 Letters On Poetry And Art
4 Keats - Poems
4 Initiation Into Hermetics
4 Bhakti-Yoga
3 Words Of The Mother III
3 Words Of The Mother I
3 Walden
3 Twilight of the Idols
3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
3 The Bible
3 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
3 Poetics
3 Metamorphoses
3 Labyrinths
3 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
3 Collected Poems
3 Aion
3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 Yeats - Poems
2 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
2 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2 The Practice of Psycho therapy
2 The Practice of Magical Evocation
2 The Book of Certitude
2 Tara - The Feminine Divine
2 Symposium
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Ryokan - Poems
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
2 On the Way to Supermanhood
2 Milarepa - Poems
2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
2 Amrita Gita
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ignorance, certainly, is not man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right forces. The search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart. "In the heart is established the Truth," says the Upanishad: it is there that is seated eternally the soul, the real being, who appears no bigger than the thumb. Even if the mind is utilised as an instrument of knowledge, the heart must be there behind as the guide and inspiration. It is precisely because, as I have just mentioned, Gargi sought to shoot uplike "vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself" of which Shakespeare speaksthrough the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajnavalkya had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the Ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man, however, is an epitome of creation. He embraces and incarnates the entire gamut of consciousness and comprises in him all beings from the highest Divinity to the lowest jinn or elf. And yet each human being in his true personality is a lineal descendant of one or other typal aspect or original Personality of the one supreme Reality; and his individual character is all the more pronounced and well-defined the more organised and developed is the being. The psychic being in man is thus a direct descent, an immediate emanation along a definite line of devolution of the supreme consciousness. We may now understand and explain easily why one chooses a particular Ishta, an ideal god, what is the drive that pushes one to become a worshipper of Siva or Vishnu or any other deity. It is not any rational understanding, a weighing of pros and cons and then a resultant conclusion that leads one to choose a path of religion or spirituality. It is the soul's natural call to the God, the type of being and consciousness of which it is a spark, from which it has descended, it is the secret affinity the spiritual blood-relation as it were that determines the choice and adherence. And it is this that we name Faith. And the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a deformation in the Ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source or the original is one and indivisible and in the highest integration consciousness is global and not exclusive. And the human being that attains such a status is not bound or wholly limited to one particular formation: its personality is based on the truth of impersonality. And yet the two can go together: an individual can be impersonal in consciousness and yet personal in becoming and true to type.
The number of gods depends on the level of consciousness on which we stand. On this material plane there are as many gods as there are bodies or individual forms (adhar). And on the supreme height there is only one God without a second. In between there are gradations of types and sub-types whose number and function vary according to the aspect of consciousness that reveals itself.
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Nachiketas is the young aspiring human being still in the Ignorancenaciketa, meaning one without consciousness or knowledge. The three boons he asks for are in reference to the three fundamental modes of being and consciousness that are at the very basis, forming, as it were, the ground-plan of the integral reality. They are (i) the individual, (ii) the universal or cosmic and (iii) the transcendental.
The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
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Man has two souls corresponding to his double status. In the inferior, the soul looks downward and is involved in the current of Impermanence and Ignorance, it tastes of grief and sorrow and suffers death and dissolution: in the higher it looks upward and communes and joins with the Eternal (the cosmic) and then with the Absolute (the transcendent). The lower is a reflection of the higher, the higher comes down in a diminished and hence tarnished light. The message is that of deliverance, the deliverance and reintegration of the lower soul out of its bondage of worldly ignorant life into the freedom and immortality first of its higher and then of its highest status. It is true, however, that the Upanishad does not make a trenchant distinction between the cosmic and the transcendent and often it speaks of both in the same breath, as it were. For in fact they are realities involved in each other and interwoven. Indeed the triple status, including the Individual, forms one single totality and the three do not exclude or cancel each other; on the contrary, they combine and may be said to enhance each other's reality. The Transcendence expresses or deploys itself in the cosmoshe goes abroad,sa paryagt: and the cosmic individualises, concretises itself in the particular and the personal. The one single spiritual reality holds itself, aspects itself in a threefold manner.
The teaching of Yama in brief may be said to be the gospel of immortality and it consists of the knowledge of triple immortality. And who else can be the best teacher of immortality than Death himself, as Nachiketas pointedly said? The first immortality is that of the physical existence and consciousness, the preservation of the personal identity, the individual name and formthis being in itself as expression and embodiment and instrument of the Inner Reality. This inner reality enshrines the second immortality the eternity and continuity of the soul's life through its incarnations in time, the divine Agni lit for ever and ever growing in flaming consciousness. And the third and final immortality is in the being and consciousness beyond time, beyond all relativities, the absolute and self-existent delight.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
In his profound investigation into the origins and basic nature of man, Robert Ardrey in African Genesis recently made a shocking statement. Although man has begun the conquest of outer space, the Ignorance of his own nature, says Ardrey, "has become institutionalized, universalized and sanctified." He further states that were a brotherhood of man to be formed today, "its only possible common bond would be Ignorance of what man is."
Such a condition is both deplorable and appalling when the means are readily available for man to acquire a thorough understanding of himself-and in so doing, an understanding of his neighbor and the world in which he lives as well as the greater Universe of which each is a part.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Mathur begged Sri Ramakrishna to take charge of the worship in the Kali temple. The young priest pleaded his incompetence and his Ignorance of the scriptures. Mathur insisted that devotion and sincerity would more than compensate for any lack of formal knowledge and make the Divine Mother manifest Herself through the image. In the end, Sri Ramakrishna had to yield to Mathur's request. He became the priest of Kali.
In 1856 Ramkumar breathed his last. Sri Ramakrishna had already witnessed more than one death in the family. He had come to realize how impermanent is life on earth. The more he was convinced of the transitory nature of worldly things, the more eager he became to realize God, the Fountain of Immortality.
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is, ultimately speaking, as illusory as the experience of any other object. Man attains his liberation, therefore, by piercing the veil of maya and rediscovering his total identity with Brahman. Knowing himself to be one with the Universal Spirit, he realizes ineffable Peace. Only then does he go beyond the fiction of birth and death; only then does he become immortal. 'And this is the ultimate goal of all religions — to dehypnotize the soul now hypnotized by its own Ignorance.
The path of the Vedantic discipline is the path of negation, "neti", in which, by stern determination, all that is unreal is both negated and renounced. It is the path of jnana, knowledge, the direct method of realizing the Absolute. After the negation of everything relative, including the discriminating ego itself, the aspirant merges in the One without a Second, in the bliss of nirvikalpa samadhi, where subject and object are alike dissolved. The soul goes beyond the realm of thought. The domain of duality is transcended. Maya is left behind with all its changes and modifications. The Real Man towers above the delusions of creation, preservation, and destruction. An avalanche of indescribable Bliss sweeps away all relative ideas of pain and pleasure, good and evil. There shines in the heart the glory of the Eternal Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Knower, knowledge, and known are dissolved in the Ocean of one eternal Consciousness; love, lover, and beloved merge in the unbounded Sea of supreme Felicity; birth, growth, and death vanish in infinite Existence. All doubts and misgivings are quelled for ever; the oscillations of the mind are stopped; the momentum of past actions is exhausted. Breaking down the ridge-pole of the tabernacle in which the soul has made its abode for untold ages, stilling the body, calming the mind, drowning the ego, the sweet joy of Brahman wells up in that superconscious state. Space disappears into nothingness, time is swallowed in eternity, and causation becomes a dream of the past. Only Existence is. Ah! Who can describe what the soul then feels in its communion with the Self?
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About this time Totapuri was suddenly laid up with a severe attack of dysentery. On account of this miserable illness he found it impossible to meditate. One night the pain became excruciating. He could no longer concentrate on Brahman. The body stood in the way. He became incensed with its demands. A free soul, he did not at all care for the body. So he determined to drown it in the Ganges. Thereupon he walked into the river. But, lo! He walks to the other bank." (This version of the incident is taken from the biography of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Saradananda, one of the Master's direct disciples.) Is there not enough water in the Ganges? Standing dumbfounded on the other bank he looks back across the water. The trees, the temples, the houses, are silhouetted against the sky. Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, he sees on all sides the presence of the Divine Mother. She is in everything; She is everything. She is in the water; She is on land. She is the body; She is the mind. She is pain; She is comfort. She is knowledge; She is Ignorance. She is life; She is death. She is everything that one sees, hears, or imagines. She turns "yea" into "nay", and "nay" into "yea". Without Her grace no embodied being can go beyond Her realm. Man has no free will. He is not even free to die. Yet, again, beyond the body and mind She resides in Her Transcendental, Absolute aspect. She is the Brahman that Totapuri had been worshipping all his life.
Totapuri returned to Dakshineswar and spent the remaining hours of the night meditating on the Divine Mother. In the morning he went to the Kali temple with Sri Ramakrishna and prostrated himself before the image of the Mother. He now realized why he had spent eleven months at Dakshineswar. Bidding farewell to the disciple, he continued on his way, enlightened.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
Where else might society turn for advice? Unguided by science, society is allowed to go right on filling its childrens' brain banks with large inventories of competence-devastating misinformation. In order to emerge from its massive Ignorance, society will probably have to rely exclusively upon its individuals' own minds to survey the pertinent experimental data-as do all great scientist-artists. This, in effect, is what the intuition of world-around youth is beginning to do. Mind can see that reality is evoluting into weightless metaphysics. The wellspring of reality is the family of weightless generalized principles.
It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These movements spring from desire and Ignorance (X's desire
for a frame without any exact knowledge of how the frame has
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more difficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness and sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of Ignorance and the eternal and divine either in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no world and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from the world's impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, sordid cares and egoistic self-content.
But the work in the world of so supreme a power as spiritual force cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can return upon the material and use it as a means of its own greater fullness. Refusing to be blinded by the dualities, the appearances, it can seek in all appearances whatsoever the vision of the same Lord, the same eternal Truth, Beauty, Love, Delight. The
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In India, for the last thousand years and more, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion of the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms for itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It has obtained from society the right of free spiritual development for all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb of the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as man's goal and those who live it as worthy of an absolute reverence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the formal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving element of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider movement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, for the most part, observed.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature, that which we know and are and must remain so long as the faith in us is not changed, acts through limitation and division, is of the nature of Ignorance and culminates in the life of the ego; but the higher Nature, that to which we aspire, acts by unification and transcendence of limitation, is of the nature of Knowledge and culminates in the life divine. The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage
The Synthesis of the Systems
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"conscious"; that means one does not live in total Ignorance of
what happens within oneself.
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its state of blind and falsifying Ignorance and enters into a state
of truth, and when that reversal, that conversion takes place,
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
creation of human Ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out
of this Ignorance one also gets out of the difficulties, to say
nothing of the inalienable state of bliss in which one dwells as
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The New Humanity will be something in the mould that we give to the gods. It will supply the link that we see missing between gods and men; it will be the race of embodied gods. Man will attain that thing which has been his first desire and earliest dream, for which he coveted the gods Immortality, amritatwam. The mortalities that cut and divide, limit and bind man make him the sorrowful being he is. These are due to his Ignorance and weakness and egoism. These are due to his soul itself. It is the soul that requires change, a new birth, as Christ demanded. Ours is a little soul that has severed itself from the larger and mightier self that it is. And therefore does it die every moment and even while living is afraid to live and so lives poorly and miserably. But the age is now upon us when the god-like soul anointed with its immortal royalties is ready to emerge and claim our salutation.
The breath and the surge of the new creation cannot be mistaken. The question that confronts us today is no longer whether the New Man, the Super-humanity, will come or if at all, when; but the question we have to answer is who among us are ready to be its receptacle, its instrument and embodiment.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
1.9
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Here where our half-lit Ignorance skirts the gulfs
On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,
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Back to the yoke of Ignorance and fate,
Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: Ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
But the initial illusory consciousness of the Overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
--
In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its, spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all together forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something moreOneness gathering into itself all diversity, not destroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the movement of Ignorance comes in when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The movement of Supermind is the movement of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the Overmind commences the play of divergent possibilities the simple, direct, united and absolute certainties of the supramental consciousness retire, as it were, a step behind and begin to work themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradictory forces. In the Overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it for its own enhancement until in the denser and darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation or manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in Matter it enters into more and more obscure forms and forces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a movement backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakeningsMatter awakening into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of conscious Spirit.
The apparent or actual result of the movement of Nescienceof Involutionhas been an increasing negation of the Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed, mortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of mortality, in order that in this very frame and field of mortality, Immortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather, possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the play itself and in the multiple mode of the terrestrial existence.
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It is also to be noted that as mind is not the last limit of the march of evolution, even so the progress of evolution will not stop with the manifestation and embodiment of the Supermind. There are other still higher principles beyond and they too presumably await manifestation and embodiment on earth. Creation has no beginning in time (andi) nor has it an end (ananta). It is an eternal process of the unravelling of the mysteries of the Infinite. Only, it may be said that with the Supermind the creation here enters into a different order of existence. Before it there was the domain of Ignorance, after it will come the reign of Light and Knowledge. Mortality has been the governing principle of life on earth till now; it will be replaced by the consciousness of immortality. Evolution has proceeded through struggle and pain; hereafter it will be a spontaneous, harmonious and happy flowering.
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal need,
--
Whether to bear with Ignorance and death
Or hew the ways of Immortality,
--
A grey tribunal of the Ignorance,
An Inquisition of the priests of Night
01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Matter. Our object is not to remove all "limitations" on the expansion of the ego or to give a free field and make unlimited room for the fulfilment of the ideas of the human mind or the desires of the ego-centred life-force. None of us are here to "do as we like", or to create a world in which we shall at last be able to do as we like; we are here to do what the Divine wills and to create a world in which the Divine Will can manifest its truth no longer deformed by human Ignorance or perverted and mistranslated by vital desire. The work which the sadhak of the supramental Yoga has to do is not his own work for which he can lay down his own conditions, but the work of the Divine which he has to do according to the conditions laid down by the Divine. Our Yoga is not for our own sake but for the sake of the Divine. It is not our own personal manifestation that we are to seek, the manifestation of the individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the manifestation of the Divine. Of that manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or for any ego-centred or self-seeking purpose.
This liberation, perfection, fullness too must not be pursued for our own sake, but for the sake of the Divine.
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
European science is conquering Nature in a way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in its own province, it does not touch man in his more intimate reality and does not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. For the most vital part of nature is the region of the life-forces, the powers of disease and age and death, of strife and greed and lustall the instincts of the brute in man, all the dark aboriginal forces, the forces of Ignorance that form the very groundwork of man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the world of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.
This is the present nature of man, with its threefold nexus of mind and life and body, that stands there to be fought and conquered. This is the inferior nature, of which the ancients spoke, that holds man down inexorably to a lower dharma, imperfect mode of life the life that is and has been the human order till today. No amount of ceaseless action, however selflessly done, can move this wheel of Nature even by a hair's breadth away from the path that it has carved out from of old. Human nature and human society have been built up and are run by the forces of this inferior nature, and whatever shuffling and reshuffling we may make in its apparent factors and elements, the general scheme and fundamental form of life will never change. To displace earth (and to conquer nature means nothing less than that) and give it another orbit, one must find a fulcrum outside earth.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Although consenting to mortal Ignorance,
His knowledge shared the Light ineffable.
--
Out of apprenticeship to Ignorance
Wisdom upraised him to her master craft
--
The stammer of the primal Ignorance;
Answer to that inarticulate questioning,
--
And the grey front of the world's Ignorance
And nescient Matter and the huge error of life.
--
Line of defence of Nature's Ignorance,
The illusion and mystery of the Inconscient
--
A secret knowledge masked as Ignorance;
Fate covered with an unseen necessity
--
\t:Thus came his soul's release from Ignorance,
His mind and body's first spiritual change.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samata of the Gita with the faith that the Divine is there and the Divine Will at work in all things even though at present under the conditions of a world of Ignorance. Beyond this are the Light and Ananda towards which life is working, but the best way for their advent and foundation in the individual being and nature is to grow in this spiritual equality. That would also solve your difficulty about things unpleasant and disagreeable. All unpleasantness should be faced with this spirit of samata.
I may say briefly that there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously called the Self, the Spirit or the Divine. The other is the normal consciousness in which men live; it is something quite superficial, an instrument of the Spirit for the play of life. Those who live and act in the normal consciousness are governed entirely by the common movements of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life.
--
The spiritual life (adhyatma jvana), the religious life (dharma jvana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance.
The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Well, it is sheer incantation. It is word-weaving, rhythm plaiting, thought-wringing in order to pass beyond these frail materials, to get into contact with, to give some sense of the mystery of existence that passeth understanding. We are very far indeed from the "natural" poets, Homer or Shakespeare, Milton, or Virgil. And this is from a profane, a mundane poet, not an ostensibly religious or spiritual poet. The level of the poetic inspiration, at least of the poetic view and aspiration has evidently shifted to a higher, a deeper degree. We may be speaking of tins and tinsel, bones and dust, filth and misery, of the underworld of Ignorance and ugliness,
All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A struggling Ignorance is his wisdom's mate:
He waits to see the consequence of his acts,
--
Its Ignorance is by their knowledge lit,
Its yearning lasts by their indifference.
--
To leap and bridge the chasms of Ignorance
And heal the hollow yearning gulfs of Life
--
In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met
And light and darkness are their eyes' interchange;
--
In the mystery of her cosmic Ignorance,
In the insoluble riddle of her play,
--
The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance,
The All-Blissful bore to be insensible.
--
Steering on the trade-routes of Ignorance.
His prow pushes towards undiscovered shores,
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nietzsche as the apostle of force is a name now familiar to all the world. The hero, the warrior who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquersuch is the ideal man, according to Nietzsche,the champion of strength, of greatness, of mightiness. The dominating personality infused with the supreme "will to power"he is Ubermensch, the Superman. Sentiment does not move the mountains, emotion diffuses itself only in vague aspiration. The motive power, the creative fiat does not dwell in the heart but somewhere higher. The way of the Cross, the path of love and charity and pity does not lead to the kingdom of Heaven. The world has tried it for the last twenty centuries of its Christian civilisation and the result is that we are still living in a luxuriant abundance of misery and sordidness and littleness. This is how Nietzsche thinks and feels. He finds no virtue in the old rgimes and he revolts from them. He wants a speedy and radical remedy and teaches that by violence only the Kingdom of Heaven can be seized. For, to Nietzsche the world is only a clash of forces and the Superman therefore is one who is the embodiment of the greatest force. Nietzsche does not care for the good, it is the great that moves him. The good, the moral is of man, conventional and has only a fictitious value. The great, the non-moral is, on the other hand, divine. That only has a value of its own. The good is nothing but a sort of makeshift arrangement which man makes for himself in order to live commodiously and which changes according to his temperament. But the great is one with the Supreme Wisdom and is absolute and imperative. The good cannot create the great; it is the great that makes for the good. This is what he really means when he says, "They say that a good cause sanctifies war but I tell thee it is a good war that sanctifies all cause." For the goodness of your cause you judge by your personal predilections, by your false conventionalities, by a standard that you set up in your IgnoranceBut a good war, the output of strength in any cause is in itself a cause of salvation. For thereby you are the champion of that ultimate verity which conduces to the ultimate good. Do not shrink, he would say, to be even like the cyclone and the avalanche, destructive, indeed, but grand and puissant and therefore truer emblems of the BeyondJenseitsthan the weak, the little, the pitiful that do not dare to destroy and by that very fact cannot hope to create.
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Who builds in Ignorance the steps of Light.
A sleeping deity opened deathless eyes:
--
In the seraglios of Ignorance.
For all we have acquired soon loses worth,
--
In the boundaries of Mind and Ignorance,
Protecting no more a dual eternity
--
Of knowledge for a living Ignorance.
In her mystery's moods divorced from the Maker's laws
--
This giant Ignorance, this dwarfish Life
It can illumine with a prophet sight,
--
The fountain of its needed Ignorance,
Archmason of the limits by which it lives.
--
The idea and feeling groping in Ignorance
At last clutched passionately the body of Truth,
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, the individual is not and cannot be such an isolated thing as our egoistic sense would like to have it. The sharp angularities of the individual are being, at every moment, chastened by the very primary conditions of life; and to fail to recognise this is the blindest form of Ignorance. It is no easy task to draw exactly the line of distinction between our individual being and our social or communal being. In actual life they are so blended together that in trying to extricate them from each other, we but tear and lacerate them both. The highest wisdom is to take the two together as they are, and by a gradual purifying processboth internal and external, internal in thought and knowledge and will, external in life and actionrestore them to their respective truth and lawSatyam and Ritam.
The individual who leads a severely individual life from the very beginning, whose outlook of the world has been fashioned by that conception, can hardly, if at all, enter at the end the communal life. He must perforce be either a vagabond or a recluse: But the recluse is not an integral man, nor the vagabond an ideal personality. The individual need not be too chaste and shy to associate with others and to give and take as freely and fully as he can. Individuality is not necessarily curtailed or mutilated in this process, but there is this other greater possibility of its getting enlarged and enhanced. Rather it is when you shut yourself up in your own self, that you stick to only one line of your personality, to a single phase of your self and thus limit and diminish yourself; the breadth and height and depth of your self, the cubic completeness of your personality you can attain only through a multiple and variegated stress by which you come in contact with the world and things.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The earliest dream of humanity is also the last fulfilment. The Vedic Rishis sang of the marriage of heaven and earthHeaven is my father and this Earth my mother. And Blake and Nietzsche are fiery apostles of that dream and ideal in an age crippled with doubt, falsehood, smallness, crookedness, impotence, colossal Ignorance.
We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition, this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across one aspirant in the line, and being a contemporary, his views and reviews in the matter will be all the more interesting to us.2 He is Gustave Thibon, a Frenchman-not a priest or even a religious man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly self-educated laque. Of late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as well as religious people, especially the Catholics, because of his remarkable conceptions which are so often unorthodox and yet so often ringing true with an old-world au thenticity.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
that people will discover my Ignorance. Why am I like
that? And how can I come out of it?
--
clings to his misery, his pettiness, his weakness, his Ignorance
and his limits - that is why he does not change.
--
desire and Ignorance and egoism."
Thoughts and Aphorisms, in SABCL, Vol. 17, p. 100.
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Ignorance, and this error is effaced as soon as the Ignorance is replaced by knowledge and the way of acting completely changed.
What man in his Ignorance calls "pardon" is the effacement, the
dissolution of errors committed.
--
It is Ignorance that has opinions.
Knowledge knows.
--
in the Ignorance, assumes the form of vital desires is the
same which, in its pure form, constitutes the dynamis
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thus, as sanctioned by God, there is a competition, a wager between man and Satan. The pact between the parties is this that, on the one hand, Satan will serve man here in life upon earth, and on the other hand, in return, man will have to serve Satan there, on the other side of life. That is to say, Satan will give the whole world to man to enjoy, man will have to give Satan only his soul. Man in his Ignorance says he does not care for his soul, does not know of a there or elsewhere: he will be satisfied if he gets what he wants upon earth. That, evidently, is the demand of what is familiarly known as life-force (lan vital): the utmost fulfilment of the life-force is what man stands for, although the full significance of the movement may not be clear to him or even to Satan at the moment. For life-force does not necessarily drag man down, as its grand finale as it were, into hellhowever much Satan might wish it to be so. In what way, we shall see presently. Now Satan promises man all that he would desire and even more: he would give him his fill so' that he will ask for no more. Man takes up the challenge and declares that his hunger is insatiable, whatever Satan can bring to it, it will take in and press on: satisfaction and satiety will never come in his way. Satan thinks he knows better, for he is armed with a master weapon to lay man low and make him cry halt!
Love Human and Love Divine
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is the origin of man's love for his own Ignorance?
It is inconscience.
Inconscience is the negation of all effort. Ignorance (that
is, the acknowledgement that there is something to be known
--
It seems to me, Mother, that when man does not accept the Divine, it is more out of Ignorance than out of
wickedness. Isn't it so?
It is undoubtedly out of Ignorance and fear of what he doesn't
know.
--
of Ignorance, negligence or absent-mindedness that we do not
feel it. But each time that we are attentive and concentrated, we
--
of living in Ignorance and falsehood.
27 December 1968
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
cure ourselves of Ignorance and incapacity - then life becomes
tremendously interesting and worth living.
--
Human consciousness is so corrupted that men prefer the miseries of the ego and its Ignorance to the luminous joy that comes
from a sincere surrender to the Divine. So great is their blindness
0 1956-10-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I used to be different (although I was said to be non-interfering); I acted, if at all, to defend myself But I understood very quickly that even this was a reaction of Ignorance and that things would be set right automatically if one remained in the true consciousness.
A consciousness that sees and makes you see.
0 1957-04-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In your Ignorance, you created a phantom of your destiny, and then, out of this non-existent ghost, you made a hobgoblin around which all the resistances of your outer nature have crystallized.
It is a double Ignorance:
in the universe, there are notthere cannot betwo similar destinies.
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This physical consciousness records all it sees, all your reactions, your thoughts, all the factswithout preference, without prejudice, without personal will. Nothing escapes it. Its work is almost mechanical. Therefore I know what to tell or to ask you according to the integral truth of your being and its present possibilities. Ordinarily, in the normal man, the physical consciousness does not see things as they are, for three reasons: because of Ignorance, because of preference, and because of an egoistic will. You color what you see, eliminate what displeases you. In short, you see only what you desire to see.
Now, I recently had a very striking experience: a discrepancy occurred between my physical consciousness and the consciousness of the world. In some instances decisions made in the Light and the Truth produced unexpected results, upheavals in the consciousness of others that were neither foreseen nor desired, and I did not understand. No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand and I emphasize this word understand. At last, I had to leave my highest consciousness and pull myself down into the physical consciousness to find out what was happening. And there, in my head, I saw what appeared to be a little cell bursting, and suddenly I understood: the recording had been defective. The physical consciousness had neglected to register certain of your lower reactions. It could not have been through preference or through personal will (these things were eliminated from my consciousness long, long ago). But I saw that this most material consciousness was already completely permeated with the transforming supramental truth, and it could no longer follow the rhythm of normal life. It was much more attuned to the true consciousness than to the world! I couldnt possibly blame it for lagging behind; on the contrary, it was in front, too far ahead! There was a discrepancy between the rhythm of the transformation of my being and the worlds own rhythm. The supramental action on the world is slow, it does not act directlyit acts by infiltration, by traversing the successive layers, and the results are slow to come about. So I had to pull myself violently down in order to wait for the others.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Consequently, if you do not remember having had the experience, you are left in the same condition as before, but with the difference that now you know, you can know, that these material laws do not correspond to the truth thats all. They do not at all correspond to the truth, so consequently, if you want to be faithful to your aspiration, you must in no way legitimize all that. Rather, you must say that it is an infirmity from which we are suffering for the moment, for an intermediate periodit is an infirmity and an Ignorance for it really is an Ignorance (this is not just a word): it is Ignorance, it is not the thing as it is, even in regard to our present material bodies. Therefore, we will not legitimize anything. What we say is thisit is an infirmity which has to be endured for the time being, until we get out of it, but we do NOT ACKNOWLEDGE all this as a concrete reality. It does NOT have a concrete reality, it has a false realitywhat we call concrete reality is a false reality.
And the proof I have the proof because I experienced it myselfis that from the minute you are in the other consciousness, the true consciousness, all these things which appear so real, so concrete, change INSTANTLY. There are a number of things, certain material conditions of my bodymaterial that changed instantly. It did not last long enough for everything to change, but some things changed and never returned, they remained changed. In other words, if that consciousness were kept constantly, it would be a perpetual miracle (what we would call a miracle from our ordinary point of view), a fantastic and perpetual miracle! But from the supramental point of view, it would not be a miracle at all, it would be the most normal of things.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It is the result of the descent of the supramental substance into Matter. Only this substancewhat it has put into physical Mattercould have made it possible. It is a new ferment. From the material standpoint, it removes from physical Matter its tamas, the heaviness of its unconsciousness, and from the psychological standpoint, its Ignorance and its falsehood. Matter is subtilized. But it has surely come only as a first experience to show how it will be.
It is truly a state of absolute omniscience and omnipotence in the body which changes all the vibrations around it.
It is likely that the greatest resistance will be in the most conscious beings due to a lack of mental receptivity, due to the mind itself which wants things to continue (as Sri Aurobindo has written) according to its own mode of Ignorance. So-called inert matter is much more easily responsive, much moreit does not resist. And I am convinced that among plants, for example, or among animals, the response will be much quicker than among men. It will be more difficult to act upon a very organized mind; beings who live in an entirely crystallized, organized mental consciousness are as hard as stone! It resists. According to my experience, what is unconscious will certainly follow more easily. It was a delight to see the water from the tap, the mouthwash in the bottle, the glass, the spongeit all had such an air of joy and consent! There is much less ego, you see, it is not a conscious ego.
The ego becomes more and more conscious and resistant as the being develops. Very primitive, very simple beings, little children will respond first, because they dont have an organized ego. But these big people! People who have worked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult for them.
--
Its action will be somewhat similar to what is described in the Last Judgment, which is an entirely symbolic expression of something that makes us discern between what belongs to the world of falsehood which is destined to disappear and what belongs to this same world of Ignorance and inertia but is transformable. One will go to one side and the other to the other side. All that is transformable will be permeated more and more with this new substance and this new consciousness to such an extent that it will rise towards it and serve as a link between the two but all that belongs incorrigibly to falsehood and Ignorance will disappear. This was also prophesied in the Gita: among what we call the hostile or anti-divine forces, those capable of being transformed will be uplifted and go off towards the new consciousness, whereas all that is irrevocably in darkness or belongs to an evil will shall be destroyed and vanish from the Universe. And a whole part of humanity that has responded to these forces rather too zealously will certainly vanish with them. And this is what was expressed in this concept of the Last Judgment.
May 1, 1958.
0 1960-08-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
We should not allow all this to upset us. There is but one thing to doremain in a state of constant peace, constant equanimity, for things are not they are not very pleasant. Oh, if you only knew all the letters they write me if you knew, first of all, the tremendous pile of stupidities that need never be written at all; then, added to that, such a display of Ignorance, egoism, bad will, total incomprehension and unequalled ingratitude, and all this so candid, my child! They heap all this on me daily, you know, and it comes from the most unexpected quarters.
If this were to affect me (Mother laughs), I would long ago have been who knows where. I dont care at all, not at all, really not at allit doesnt bother me, it makes me smile.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Of course not! A disciplined work, which to us seems important, is to him basically an Ignorance. What is true to such a person is a contemplative, ecstatic lifealong with a sentiment of compassion and charity, so that nonetheless you spend a bit of your time helping out the poor brutes! But the true thing is ecstatic contemplation. As for those who are advanced and yet still attach some importance to workits irrational!
The only way I can make him understand that I have work to do is to tell him, Mother asked me to do it; then he keeps quiet.
--
So I saw this I saw it moving about. And it kept coming and coming and coming, accumulating, piling up (they work 24 hours a day, six days a weekonly on the seventh do they rest). So I thought that this angry force must have some effect on the peoplewho knows, maybe this is what creates accidents. For I could see that once the sugar cane was fully crushed and had gone back up the chute, this force that had been beaten out was right there. And this worried me a little; I thought that there must be a certain danger in doing such a thing! What saves them is their Ignorance and their insensitivity. But Indians are never entirely insensitive in the way Westerners arethey are much more open in their subconscious.
I didnt speak of it to anyone, but it caused me some concern. And just the next day the machine broke down! When I was informed, immediately I thought It was then repaired, and again it broke downthree times. Then the following night, just before ten oclock I should mention that during the day I had thought, But why not attract these forces to our side, take them and satisfy them, give them some peace and joy and use them? I thought about it, concentrated a little, but then I didnt bother any further. At ten oclock that evening, they came upon mein a flood! They kept coming and coming. And I was busy with them the whole time. They were not ugly (not so luminous either! ), they were wholesome, straightforwardhonest forces. So I worked on them. This began exactly at 9:30, and for one hour I was busy working. After an hour, Id had enough: Listen, this is quite fine, youre very nice, but I cant spend all my time like this! We shall see what to do later for it absorbed my whole consciousness. They kept coming and coming (you understand what that means to a body?!). So at 10:30 I told them, Listen, my little ones, be quiet now, thats enough for today At 10:30, the machine broke down!
--
Things can be done in this way. In truth, a lot can be doneits mans Ignorance that gets him in trouble.
With the Supramental World.
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Im just now finishing the Yoga of Self-Perfection When we see what human life is and, even in the best of cases, what it represents in the way of imbecility, stupidity, narrowness, meanness (not to mention Ignorance because that is too flagrant) and even those who believe themselves to have generous heart, for example, or liberal ideas, a desire to do good! Each time the consciousness orients itself in one direction to attain some result, everything that was in existence (not just ones personal existence, but this sort of collectivity of existences that each being represents), everything that is contrary to this effort immediately presents itself in its crudest light.
It happened this morning while I was walking back and forth in my room. I had finished my japa I had to stop and hold my head in my hands to keep from bursting into tears. No, it is too dreadful, I said to myself; and to think that we want Perfection!
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nevertheless, it ought to be a very general rule; yet its critics have a reply: If you dont see evil you can never cure it. If you leave someone to his squalor he will never emerge from it. (Its not exactly true, but its how they legitimize their actions.) In this aphorism, Sri Aurobindo has anticipated these objections: it is not through Ignorance or unconsciousness or indifference that you fail to see evilyou can see and even feel it, but you refuse to collaborate in spreading it by giving it the force of your attention or the support of your consciousness. And for that, you must yourself be above the perception and sensationable to see evil or ugliness without suffering, without feeling shocked or troubled. You see them from a height where such things do not exist, yet you have the conscious perception of themthey dont affect you, you are free. This is the first step.
The second step is to be POSITIVELY conscious of the supreme Goodness and Beauty behind all things and supporting all things, permitting them to exist. Once you have seen Him, you can perceive Him behind the mask and the distortioneven ugliness, even cruelty, even evil are a disguise for that Something which is essentially good or beautiful, luminous, pure.
--
Love, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the Ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this Lovepure, essential, suprememelts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed.
Its easy to understand how someone who has this experience can spread it and act upon others, since to have it you must touch the unique, supreme Essence of the whole manifestation the Origin and the Essence, the Source and the Reality of all that is; then you immediately enter the realm of Unity where there is no more separation among individuals: its a single vibration that can repeat itself endlessly in outer forms.2
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately, disgust, rebellion and anger, all movements of violence, are necessarily movements of Ignorance and of limitation with all the weakness that limitation implies. Rebellion is a weakness, for its the feeling of an impotent will. When you feel, when you see that things are not as they should be, then you rebel against whatever is out of keeping with your vision. But if you were all-powerful, if your will and your vision were all-powerful, there would be no opportunity to rebel! You would always see that all things are as they should be! That is omnipotence.1 Then all these movements of violence become not only useless but profoundly ridiculous.
Consequently, there is only one solution: by aspiration, concentration, interiorization and identification, to unite with the supreme Will. And that is both omnipotence and perfect freedom. Its the only omnipotence, the only freedomall the rest are approximations. You may be en route, but its not That, not the total thing.
0 1961-01-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This power of self-deception, the minds craft in devising splendid justifications for any Ignorance or folly whatsoever, is tremendous.
And its not a random experience coming now and then, its something you can witness minute by minute. You generally see it far more readily in others! But if you watch yourself carefully, you will catch yourself a thousand times a daylooking at things in a favorable way: Oh, its NOT the same thing! And besides, its NEVER the same for you as it is for your neighbor!
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, this ardor of the Flame was thereburning all to offer all. It was absolutely concrete, an intensity of vibrations; I could see the vibrationsall the movements of obscurity and Ignorance were cast into that. And I recall a time when I was translating these hymns to Agni with Sri Aurobindo, and Agni was real for me. Well, yesterday it wasnt that, it wasnt the god Agni, it was a STATE OF BEING. It was a state of the Supreme, and as such, it was intimate, clear, intense, vibrant and living.
(silence)
--
An illustration of this is the well-known story about the man who refused to move out of the path of an elephant on the pretext that he was Brahman and that Brahman had told him to stay put. And the mahout replied, 'But Brahman has told me that you should get out of the way and let the elephant Brahman pass.' Although childishly simplified, it's the same thing. It's because we look 'in this way' yet not , in that way' at the same time, and above all, because we don't look at EVERYTHING at the same time. From the minute we could be integral in our perception, all relationships would remain the same, but instead of being in a state of Ignorance, we would experience them in a state of knowledge.
Would remain the same? You mean they would physically be the same as they are now, but would be seen in a different way?
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, for the least little thing, the whole mechanism has to be discovered, and discovered in a realm of the most total Ignorance, where, really, unconsciousness is the most unconscious and Ignorance the most ignorant.
(silence)
0 1961-05-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you become identified with the Supreme and there is but ONE willHis then of course you have supreme mastery. Otherwise its all nothing but illusion. You imagine that by wanting a certain thing you can change circumstances, but you still have to be in total Ignorance to believe that the change occurs because YOU want it toin fact, the Supreme is making use of you. Consequently, you have no mastery at all; you are an instrument used by the Supreme, and thats all.
So all these things [the earlier Questions and Answers] seem quite childish to me, quite childishirrelevant chatter. You are outside the garden talking about what is within. It would be best to delete the whole thing.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But all languageall language!is a language of Ignorance. All means of expression, all that is said and all the ways of saying it, are bound to partake of that Ignorance. And thats why its so difficult to express something concretely true; to do so would require extremely lengthy explanations, themselves, of course, fully erroneous. Sri Aurobindos sentences are sometimes very long for precisely this reasonhe is trying to get away from this ignorant language.
Our whole way of thinking is wrong!
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This eye [hemorrhage], for instance, resulted from such a disorder, a very dark force that someone allowed to enter, not deliberately, not knowingly, but through weakness and Ignorance, always mingled, of course, with desire and ego and all the rest. (Without desire and ego, such things would find no access but desire and ego are very widespread.) At any rate, that was plainly the cause and I sensed it immediately. Sometimes when it comes, it creeps up like this (Mother brings her hand to her throat), a black shadow strangling you. Yet inwardly nothing is affected at all, to such an extent that if I didnt pay attention to the purely external reaction, I wouldnt know anything had happened (its the great Play); but externally the indication is immediate: half an hour later I had this eye hemorrhage. I was struggling against a wholly undesirable intrusion, and I knew italthough from an outer point of view, the cause was insignificant. Its not always the events we consider serious or important that produce the most harmful effectsfar from it. Sometimes its an altogether INSIGNIFICANT intrusion of falsehood, for some quite insignificant reasonwhat is commonly labeled a stupidity. This stems from the fact that the adverse forces are always lying in wait, ready to rush in at the least sign of weakness.
The incomprehension generated by doubt (the kind of doubt that always results from an egoistic movement) is very dangerous. Very dangerous. Its not even necessary to be in a psychic consciousness even for an enlightened vital consciousness, it produces no effect; but HERE, in this material swarm.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
67There is no sin in man, but a great deal of disease, Ignorance and misapplication.
68The sense of sin was necessary in order that man might become disgusted with his own imperfections. It was Gods corrective for egoism. But mans egoism meets Gods device by being very dully alive to its own sins and very keenly alive to the sins of others.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So long as theres no question of physical transformation, the psychological and in large part, the subjective point of view is sufficientand thats relatively easy. But when it comes to incorporating matter into the work, matter as it is in this world where the very starting point is false (we start off in unconsciousness and Ignorance), well, its very difficult. Because, to recover the consciousness it has lost, Matter has had to individualize itself, and for that for the form to last and retain this possibility of individualityit has been created with a certain indispensable measure of rigidity. And that rigidity is the main obstacle to the expansion, to the plasticity and suppleness necessary for receiving the Supermind. I constantly find myself facing this problem, which is utterly concrete, absolutely material when youre dealing with cells that have to remain cells and not vaporize into some nonphysical reality, and at the same time have to have a suppleness, a lack of rigidity, enabling them to widen indefinitely.
There have been times, while working in the most material mind (the mind ingrained in the material substance), when I felt my brain swelling and swelling and swelling, and my head becoming so large it seemed about to burst! On two occasions I was forced to stop, because it was (was it only an impression, or was it a fact?) in any event it seemed dangerous, as if the head would burst, because what was inside was becoming too tremendous (it was that power in Matter, that very powerful deep blue light which has such powerful vibrations; it is able to heal, for example, and change the functioning of the organsreally a very powerful thing materially). Well then, thats what was filling my head, more and more, more and more, and I had the feeling that my skull was (it was painful, you know) that there was a pressure inside my skull pushing out, pushing everything out. I wondered what was going to happen. Then, instead of following the movement, helping it along and going with it, I became immobile, passive, to see what would happen. And both times it stopped. I was no longer helping the movement along, you see, I simply remained passive and it came to a halt, there was a sort of stabilization.
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And there was the sudden vision of all the error, all the incomprehension, all the Ignorance, all the darkness andeven worseall the ill will in the earths consciousness, which felt responsible for the prolongation of those adverse forces and beings and offered them up in a great it was more than an aspiration, it was a sort of holocaust, so that the adverse forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change.
The adverse forces were necessitated by all these negations of the divine life. And this movement of earth consciousness towards the Supreme, the offering of all these things with such extraordinary intensity, was a kind of reparation so that those adverse forces might disappear.
--
It came after the vision of the great divine Becoming.2 Since this world is progressive, I was wondering, since it is increasingly becoming the Divine, wont there always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Wont there always be what we call adverse forces, in other words, things that dont harmoniously follow the movement? Then came the answer, the vision of That: No, the moment of this very Possibility is drawing near, the moment for the manifestation of the essence of perfect Love, which can transform this unconsciousness, this Ignorance and this ill will that goes with it into a luminous and joyous progression, wholly progressive, wholly comprehensive, thirsting for perfection.
It was very concrete.
--
The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability; for in order to reject anything from the being one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement. It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely and improperly with a rudimentary and insufficient knowledge in the system of psycho-analysis. The process of raising up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there can be no complete change without it. But it can truly succeed only when a higher light and force are sufficiently at work to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency that is held up for change. Many, under the pretext of anubhava, not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with their consent instead of rejecting it, find justifications for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with it, indulging its return, eternising it; afterwards when they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that they find themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate them.Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others out of sheer Ignorance; but in yoga, as in life, Ignorance is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge. Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising up of itself to give you as much of the anubhava as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a higher internal guidance.
***
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
90This world was built by Ignorance and Error that they might know. Wilt thou abolish Ignorance and error? Then knowledge too will perish. Thou canst not abolish Ignorance and error, but thou mayst transmute them into the utter and effulgent reason.
91If Life alone were and not death, there could be no immortality; if love were alone and not cruelty, joy would be only a tepid and ephemeral rapture; if reason were alone and not Ignorance, our highest attainment would not exceed a limited rationality and worldly wisdom.
92Death transformed becomes Life that is Immortality; Cruelty trans. figured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy; Ignorance transmuted becomes Light that leaps beyond wisdom and knowledge.
He did a portrait in profile of Sri Aurobindo, looking towards the future.
0 1962-04-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All the results of the Falsehood had disappeared: Death was an illusion, Sickness was an illusion, Ignorance was an illusion something that had no reality, no existence. Only Love, and Love, and Love, and Loveimmense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything.
And how, how to express in the world? It was like an impossibility, because of the contradiction. But then it came: You have accepted that this world should know the Supramental Truth and it will be expressed totally, integrally. Yes, yes.
0 1962-05-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its quite odd, you know; pain is like the symbolic (and rather too concrete!) sign of life in the Ignorance.
And even there I have had an instant (but it was like a flash the flash of a new experience), an instant when pain disappeared into something else. It has happened three or four times. The pain suddenly became something completely different (not a pleasant sensation, not that at all): another state of consciousness.
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have looked at this very, very often. There was even a time when I thought that if one could get a total, complete and perfect knowledge of the whole working of physical Nature as we perceive it in the world of Ignorance, then this might be a means to rediscover or reattain the Truth of things. After my last experience [of April 13] I can no longer think this way.
I dont know if I am making myself clear. I thought for a time, a very long time, that if Science went to its furthest possible limits (if this is conceivable), it would join up with true Knowledge. In the study of the composition of matter, for exampleby pressing the investigation further and further ona point would be reached where the two would meet. But when I had that experience of passing from the eternal Truth-Consciousness to the consciousness of the individualized world,1 well it appeared impossible to me. And if you ask me now, I think that this possibility of Science pushed to its extreme limits joining up with true Knowledge, and this impossibility of any true conscious connection with the material world are both incorrect. There is something else.
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
May 18: Pain, the symbol of life in the Ignorance.
Mother later specified: "It's like inverting a prism."
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But one thing has happened practically without my noticing it. In the past, before that experience [April 13], the body used to feel the struggle against the forces of wear and tear (different organs wearing out, losing their endurance, their power of reaction, and certain movements, for instance, becoming less easy to make). Thats what the body felt, although the body-consciousness never sensed any aging, never, none that simply didnt exist. But in actual material fact, there was some difficulty. And now, looking at it in the ordinary way, externally, superficially, you might say there has been a great deterioration; well, the body doesnt feel that way at all! What it feels is that a particular movement, effort, gesture or action belongs to the worldthis world of Ignorance and isnt being performed in the true way: its not the true movement, done in the true way. And its sensation or perception is that the state I was speaking of, soft, with no angles, has to develop along a certain line and produce effects on the body that will make true action possible, action expressing the true will. With no difference on the surface, perhaps (I dont know about that yet) but done in another way. And I am not talking about grandiose things, mind you, but of everyday activities: getting up, walking, taking a bath. I no longer have a feeling of incapacity, but a feeling of (whats the word for it?) an unwillingnessa bodily unwillingnessto do things in the old way.
There is another way to be found.
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There has never been too great an attachment to this form. There was never any attachment (even in so-called full Ignorance) to anything but consciousness yes, something set great store by this consciousness, wouldnt let it be destroyed, saying, This is something precious. But the body. Its not even too good an instrument; simply modest, plastic, self-effacing, and molding itself to every necessity. An ability to mold itself to all points of view and to realize every ideal it deemed worthy of realizingthis very suppleness was its one virtue. And extremely modest, never wanting to impose itself on anything or anyone. Fully conscious of its incapacity, but capable of doing anything, of realizing anything. It was consciously formed with this make-up, because thats what was necessary. And nothing is too great or overwhelming, since there isnt the resistance put up by a small personality with the sense of its own smallness. No, none of that mattersCONSCIOUSNESS matters; consciousness vast as the universe, even vaster. And along with consciousness, the capacity to adaptto adapt and mold itself to every necessity.
Even now, my one feeling about this form is that its too rigid. Those stupendous inner revelations, those great movements of creative consciousness are constantly hampered by this. Its trying, its trying its best, but it is still governed by such appallingly rigid laws! Appalling. How long will it take to overcome this?
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The old way of yoga failed to bring about the harmony or unity of Spirit and life: it instead dismissed the world as Maya [Illusion] or a transient Play. The result has been loss of life-power and the degeneration of India. As was said in the Gita, These peoples would perish if I did not do worksthese peoples of India have truly gone down to ruin. A few sannyasins and bairagis [renunciants] to be saintly and perfect and liberated, a few bhaktas [lovers of God] to dance in a mad ecstasy of love and sweet emotion and Ananda [Bliss], and a whole race to become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep tamas [inertia]is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the worlds final secret and the problem it raises remains unsolved. There, the Ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Play of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. Then it becomes possible to fully know and fully realize Godto do what is said in the Gita, To know Me integrally. The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda these are the spirits five levels. The higher man rises on this ascent the nearer he comes to the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless Parabrahman [Absolute] but in the body, in life, in the world. The integral being, the integral consciousness, the integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.
This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this siddhi will be complete, then I am absolutely certain that through me God will give to others the siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in Gods appointed time. I have no hasty or disorderly impulse to rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but Gods. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me then I will move.
--
Let me tell you in brief one or two things about what I have long seen. My idea is that the chief cause of the weakness of India is not subjection nor poverty, nor the lack of spirituality or dharma [ethics] but the decline of thought-power, the growth of Ignorance in the motherl and of Knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to thinkthought-incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages, this state of things is now the sign of a terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of Ignorance. The modern world is the age of the victory of Knowledge. Whoever thinks most, seeks most, labors most, can fathom and learn the truth of the world, and gets so much more Shakti. If you look at Europe, you will see two things: a vast sea of thought and the play of a huge and fast-moving and yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe is in that. And in the strength of that Shakti it has been swallowing up the world, like the tapaswins [ascetics] of our ancient times, by whose power even the gods of the world were terrified, held in suspense and subjection. People say Europe is running into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these revolutions and upsettings are the preconditions of a new creation.
Then look at India. Except for some solitary giants, everywhere there is your simple man, that is, the average man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti but only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the easy word. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; there even an ordinary laborer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But there is still this difference: there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field, its thought-power can no longer move ahead. There Europe sees everything as riddlenebulous metaphysics, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still, some effort is being made in Europe to surmount even this limitation. We already have the spiritual sensewe owe it to our forefa thersand whoever has that sense has at his disposal such Knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get that Shakti one must be a worshiper of Shakti. We are not worshipers of Shakti. We are worshipers of the easy way. But Shakti is not to be had by the easy way. Our forefa thers dived into a sea of vast thought and gained a vast Knowledge and established a mighty civilization. As they went on in their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The force of thought diminished and with it also the strong current of Shakti. Our civilization has become an achalayatana [prison], our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues, any permanent resurgence of India is improbable
0 1962-08-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Uninterrupted, with one link the link of supreme Eternity. But the sense of consequences is false, it already implies a lowering of consciousness. So for meeven physically, in the midst of this whole hodgepodge of confusion, Ignorance and stupidityit all translates into: I do things, and the results are none of my business. Thats how its expressed here in the body.
Its a kind of liberation I dont mean from worry or preoccupation, theres no question of that but from the very IDEA of a consequence: its this way because thats the way it is; it has to be this way, so it is. Thats all. And at each second its this way because it has to be, and so it is. And That repeats itself eternally, and it is this eternal Pulsation which is expressed in time by those gusts I feel this very strongly, very strongly. Its a constant, spontaneous and very natural experience for me. The idea of something behind or ahead in time and so on is a Truth changing from immutable Eternity into Eternity of manifestation. And it changes like this (Mother makes a pulsating gesture), exactly like gustspuff, puff, puff.
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Stubbornly. You have to be stubbornstubborn, stubborn, stubborn. Youre up against all the resistance of unconsciousness and Ignorance, up against all the power of unconsciousness and Ignorance something obstinate and unyielding. But its like the story of the drop of water on the rock: a matter of time. The water will eventually wear its way through the rock. It takes ages, but it will succeed, for it falls persistently, drop after drop. First it runs off, eventually it makes a hole, and you have a wide river flowing below. Nature gives us this wonderful example to follow. Thats it: we must be like the water dripping on the rock.
Water is vital energy. The rock is unconsciousness.
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is no longer a play BETWEEN oneself and things, its. Truly, the sign of the Supermind is Oneness. Not a sum of a lot of different things, but, on the contrary, a Oneness at play with Itself. Theres nothing of the way gods relate to each other and the world, for they are still part of the realm of diversity, though FREE from Ignorance. They dont have Ignorance, they dont have what we human beings have here. They have no Ignorance, they have no Unconsciousness, but they have the sense of diversity and of separation.
What about Sri Aurobindos experience at Alipore, then? You know, that well-known experience when he saw Narayana in the prisoners, Narayana in the guards, Narayana everywhere?
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I am not talking about people with no intelligence, but about intelligent people, people who are trying. Theres still a sort of conviction in them somewhere, even in those who know that were living in a world of Ignorance and Falsehood and that theres a Lord who is all truth. Well, they reason that precisely because He is all truth, He wont understand (Mother laughs). He wont understand our falsehood, I have to deal with it on my own. This is a very predominant, very widespread attitude.
One sometimes even goes to a great deal of trouble to explain things to Him: Its this way, You see, thats how it is. And when youre finished, you realize. Oh, that reminds me of an experience I had one night two years ago. It was the first time the Supermind entered the cells of my body, and it had risen up to the brain. So the brain found itself in the presence of something (laughing) considerably more powerful than it was used to receiving! And, like the idiot it is, it got worried. As for me (gesture above or beyond), I saw it all, I saw that the brain was getting worried, so I tried to tell it what a nitwit it was and to just keep still. It did keep still, but you know, it was really seething away in there, as if it were about to explode. So I said, All right now, lets go see Sri Aurobindo and ask him what to do. Immediately everything became utterly calm and I woke up in Sri Aurobindos house in the subtle physicala very material sensation, with everything quite concrete. So I arrived, or rather not I but the body-consciousness arrived2 and started explaining to Sri Aurobindo what had happenedit was very excited, talking and talking. The response was a sort of inscrutable smile and then nothing. He simply looked. An inscrutable smilenot a word. All the excitement died away. A face out of eternity. The excitement died away. Then it was time for Sri Aurobindos lunch (people eat therein another way). So as not to disturb him, I went into the next room. He came in after some time and stood before me (Imy physical being, that is, my physical consciousness had had time to calm down). I knelt down and took his hand (a MUCH clearer sensation than anything physical, mon petit!); I kissed his hand. He simply said, Oh! This is better. (Mother laughs.)
0 1962-10-16, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One may be in a state of consciousness where the body is nothing but a burdenits unresponsive, or its too deteriorated and theres nothing more to be done with it, or one hasnt been created to try to make it immortal (which, after all, is something very exceptional). Within the great mass of humanity, many bodies are no longer good for anything, and in such cases it may very well be a relief to be separated from your body abruptly, instead of waiting for a slow decomposition. So once again I am saying to myself, A rash and hasty judgment the judgment of Ignorance.
I cant say. Each individual has to FEEL it and, if hes conscious enough, say what he would like.
--
So all the ideas I used to have about death, all the things I have said about death, practically all the things I have consciously DONE2oh! I have realized that all this, too, belongs to the past, and to a past of Ignorance. Here also, I will probably have other things to say later.
If I ever say them.
0 1962-12-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So one doesnt say anything because. You see, when people are in Ignorance their immediate explanation is always the same:
Hes gone crazy.
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For instance, two or three nights ago (I dont remember), I was with Sri Aurobindo, we were doing a certain work (it was in a mental zone with certain vital reactions mixed in), well, a general work. I was with Sri Aurobindo and we were doing the work together. He wanted to explain to me how a particular movement is turned into a distorted movement; he was explaining this to me (but theres nothing mental or intellectual about it, nothing to do with theories). And without even (how can I put it?) without even a thought or an explanation to forewarn you, a true movement is changed into a movement that is not false but distorted. I was speaking to Sri Aurobindo and he was answering, then I turn my head away like this (not physicallyall this is an inner life, naturally), I turned my head as if to see the [vibratory] effect. Then I turn back and send Sri Aurobindo the movement necessary to carry on with the experience, and I receive a reply which surprises me because of the quality of its vibration (it was a reply of Ignorance and weakness). So I turn my attention back again, and as a matter of fact in Sri Aurobindos place I saw the doctor. Then I understood! Superficially, one may say, So, Sri Aurobindo and the doctor are the same! (To people who would see such a thing it would occur that they are the sameof course its all, all the same! All is one, people just dont understand this complete oneness.) Naturally it didnt surprise me for the thousandth of a second, there wasnt any surprise, but oh, I understood! This way (Mother slightly tilts her hand to the left), its Sri Aurobindo, and that way (slightly to the right), its the doctor. This way its the Lord, and that way its a man!!
Really interesting.5
0 1963-01-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
83Shame has admirable results and both in aesthetics and in morality we could ill spare it; but for all that it is a badge of weakness and the proof of Ignorance.
Its the same thing! Thats what I said at the end: the sense of sin, regret, remorse, all of it, oh! That will do, wont it?
0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is the best possible use of the need for miracles. The need for miracles is a gesture of Ignorance: Oh, I wish it were that way! Its a gesture of Ignorance and impotence. On the other hand, those who tell you, You live in a world of miracles, know only the lower end of things (and quite imperfectly at that), and they are impervious to anything else.
We should turn this need for miracles into a conscious aspiration to something something that already is, that exists, and that will be manifested WITH THE HELP of all those aspirations: all those aspirations are necessary, or rather, looking at it in a truer way, they are an accompanimenta pleasant accompanimentto the eternal unfolding.
0 1963-05-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
90This world was built by Ignorance and Error that they might know. Wilt thou abolish Ignorance and error? Then knowledge too will perish. Thou canst not abolish Ignorance and error, but thou mayst transmute them into the utter and effulgent exceeding of reason.
91If life alone were and not death, there could be no immortality; if love were alone and not cruelty, joy would be only a tepid and ephemeral rapture; if reason were alone and not Ignorance, our highest attainment would not exceed a limited rationality and worldly wisdom.
92Death transformed becomes Life that is Immortality; Cruelty transfigured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy; Ignorance transmuted becomes Light that leaps beyond wisdom and knowledge.
Its the same idea, that opposition and opposites stimulate progress. Because to say that without Cruelty, Love would be tepid The principle of Love, as it is beyond the Manifest and the Nonmanifest, has nothing to do with either tepidness or cruelty. But Sri Aurobindos idea, it seems, is that opposites are the most effective and rapid way to knead Matter so that it may intensify its manifestation.
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In this field, we know nothing. Oh, as soon as we get into the field even the field of sensation, the vital, all problems are solved. Nothing could be easier, theres nothing to discuss; in the field of feelings, the work was done long ago. Thats not what I mean: I mean when we get to the bottom of the problem. There, everything, everything is in a sort of incomprehension, of total Ignorance, along with all the ideas that result from the intellectual and scientific development and are so sure of themselves, so full of impregnable certainty! The certainty of the material experience, of the thing you touch.
To use that without being governed by it, to base yourself on that without being influenced by it, is very difficult.
0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its perfectly obvious that people can live, that men can exist and live BECAUSE they are unconscious. If they were conscious, really conscious of the state they live in, it would be intolerable. And I can see that there is a very difficult period when you go from that unconsciousness (unconsciousness of the habit of living in that state) to a conscious vision of the state you live in. When you become totally conscious of things as they areof what you are, of your condition and when you do not yet have the power to get out, like last night, its almost intolerable. And there was a very clear awareness, very precise, that it isnt a question of life or death: it doesnt depend on that sort of thing, which ultimately changes nothing but a wholly superficial appearance thats not it! You know, people who are unhappy think, Ah, a day will come when Ill die, and all my difficulties will be overtheyre simpletons! It wont be over at all, it will go on. It will go on until the time when they get out for good, that is, when they emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. Its the only way out: to emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. And you can die a thousand times, it wont get you out, its perfectly uselessit just goes on. Sometimes, on the contrary, it drags you even further down.
Thats the thing.
--
I suppose people without solid heads become unhinged. Although truly, there is a remarkable Grace, because people are given a dose of experiences exactly according to their capacity. But this morning there was an hour an hour when I was absolutely conscious, absolutely conscious, and conscious of one single thing: the powerlessness the powerlessness to get out of Ignorance. The will to get out of Ignorance and the powerlessness to do so. It gave me a whole hour of tension.
When I woke up, the tension was such that my head was like a boiling kettle; so immediately, I said, Lord, its Your concern, not mine; its not my business. And naturally, everything calmed down instantly.
But those who do not have that experience (its not a question of words, its a question of experience), those who do not have that experience, were they to have that half-knowledge, the knowledge that we live in Ignorance, that we live in Ignorance with a sort of incapacity to get outThere is no way out, no way to get outand that human wisdom is like that little old man who comes and tells you, But why should you want to get out? Why should you thats the way things are, just the way things are. Its appalling. I felt, you know, like when you concentrate forces to the bursting point, as they do with their bombs; it was exactly like that: so concentrated, so overwhelming that I felt as if everything were about to burst. So much so that it would be utterly impossible for humanity to live with the awareness of the state it is in, if, at the same time, there werent the key to get out (the key hasnt been found yet), or the assurance that we will get out.
Im not speaking of things of the higher mind, because there the key to the way out was found long ago, a long time ago: I mean down below, in the material world the material world. Thats why all those people, like the old man last night, go somewhere elseits all the same to them, why should they bother! Why do you want to change that? And dont try to give light here, its no use and in addition its a nuisance. Leave this Ignorance in peace.
It is very clearly symbolic. But its a frightful anguish, hard to bear.
0 1963-07-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What the supramental will do the mind cannot foresee or lay down. The mind is Ignorance seeking for the Truth, the supramental by its very definition is the Truth-Consciousness, Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power. In a supramental world imperfection and disharmony are bound to disappear. But what we propose just now is not to make the earth a supramental world but to bring down the supramental as a power and established consciousness in the midst of the restto let it work there and fulfill itself as Mind descended into Life and Matter and has worked as a Power there to fulfill itself in the midst of the rest. This will be enough to change the world and to change Nature by breaking down her present limits. But what, how, by what degrees it will do it, is a thing that ought not to be said nowwhen the Light is there, the Light will itself do its workwhen the supramental Will stands on earth, that Will will decide. It will establish a perfection, a harmony, a Truth-creation for the rest, well, it will be the rest that is all.
(XXII.13)
--
It is not advisable to discuss too much what it [the supermind] will do and how it will do it, because these are things the supermind itself will fix, acting out of the Divine Truth in it, and the mind must not try to fix for it grooves in which it will run. Naturally, the release from subconscient Ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functionings of the body must be among the ULTIMATE (Mother repeats) elements of a supramental change; but the details of these things must be left for the supramental Energy to work out according to the Truth of its own nature.
(XXII.8)
--
The greatest difficulty is that the bodys texture is made of Ignorance, so that every time the Force, the Light, the Power try to penetrate somewhere, that Ignorance has to be dislodged. Every time the experience is similar, renewed in detail (but not in essence; I mean, every time its a particular point, but the essence of the problem is always the same): its a sort of Negation out of ignorant stupiditynot out of ill will, there is no ill will: its an inert and ignorant stupidity which, by the very fact of what it is, DENIES the possibility of the divine Power. And thats what has to be dissolved every time. At every step, in every detail, its always the same thing that has to be dissolved.
Its repeated again and again. Its not as in the realm of ideas, where once you have seen the problem clearly and have the knowledge, its over; some doubts or absurdities may come back to you from outside, but the thing is established, the Light is there, and automatically things are either repelled or transformed. But this here isnt the same thing! Every single aggregate of cells. Not that it comes from outside: its BUILT that way! Built by an inert and stupid Ignorance. An inert and stupid automatism. And so, automatically, it deniesnot denies, theres no will to deny: it is an opposite, I mean it CANNOT understand, its an oppositean ESTABLISHED oppositeof the divine Power. And every time, there is a kind of action which really in every detail is almost miraculous: suddenly that negation is compelled compelled to recognize that the divine Force is all-powerful. Seen from another angle, its a sort of perpetual little miracle.
Ill give you an example: last time you were with me, I got (while you were present) a pain here (gesture to the right side), a frightful pain of the kind that makes people howl (they think theyre very sick, of course!), it came here like that. You didnt see anything, did you, I didnt show anything.
--
But constantly (I make the problem more precise for the sake of clarity), there are constantly in the atmosphere, as I have always said, all the suggestions, all that atmosphere of the physical mind which is full of every possible stupidity. You have to be permanently on your guard and sweep it all away: Go away, dont interfere. The doctors opinions, the example of other people, that whole really, that whole terrible muddle of Ignorance all around, which you have to drive back: Dont meddle, mind your own business.
(silence)
0 1963-08-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As long as you wallow in your Ignorance, you dont notice it.
Well
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its still going on. Now, theres a great battle against all the ideas, the habits, the sensations, the possibilities, everything, concerning deathdeath (laughing), not death in the sense of the consciousness departing (that, of course, people talk about, but those things no longer exist), no: WHAT THE CELLS MUST FEEL.2 And all the possibilities are presented to me With that consciousness (the consciousness accumulated, compressed in all those cells), when the heart stops beating and its understood that, according to human Ignorance, you are dead, how does the force that groups all those cells together abdicate its will to hold them all together? Naturally, I was told right away (because the problemall the problemscome from everywhere, and its purposely that I am shown the problem and made to struggle with it; its not just as an idea), I was told right away that that force, that consciousness which holds everything together in really superconscious cells (they dont have at all the ordinary type of consciousness; ordinarily, its the inner, vital being [Mother touches the heart center] thats conscious of oneness, that is, conscious of being a being), that this aggregate of cells is now an aggregate OF ITS OWN WILL, with an organized consciousness which is a sort of collective gathering of that cellular consciousness; well Obviously this is an exceptional condition, but even in the past, in those beings who were very developed outwardly, there was a beginning of willed, conscious cellular gathering, and thats certainly why in ancient Egypt, where occultism was very developed. exceptional beings such as the pharaohs, the high priests, etc., were mummified, so as to preserve the form as long as possible. Even here in India, generally they were petrified (in the Himalayas there were petrifactive springs). There was a reason.3
And I saw for Sri Aurobindo (although he hadnt yet started this systematic transformation; but still, he was constantly pulling the supramental force down into his body), even in his case, it took five days to show the first slight sign of decomposition. I would have kept his body longer, but the government always meddles in other peoples business, naturally, and they pestered me awfully, saying it was forbidden to keep a body so long and that we should So when the body began to (whats the word?) shrinkit was shrinking and contracting, that is, dehydrating then we had to do it. He had had enough time to come out, since almost everything came into my bodyalmost everything that was material came into my body.
--
But what I was shown clearly and what I saw was (I have difficulty talking because it all came to me in English: Sri Aurobindo was there and it was in English), it was the stupidity and carelessness, really, the Ignorance the stupid Ignorance and I-couldnt-care-less attitude the living have towards the dead. Thats something frightful. Frightful. Frightful. Ive heard stories from everywhere, all sorts of appalling things. For instance, one of the stories (it took place while Sri Aurobindo was here): there was a disciple whose son died (or at least they thought him dead), and as they werent Hindus, they didnt burn him: they buried him. Then at night, his son came to him and told him you see, he saw his son at the window, knocking at the window and telling him, But why did you bury me alive? (I dont know in what language, but anyway) And that idiot of a father thought, Im dreaming!! Then the next day, long afterwards, he had second thoughts and asked himself, What if we took a look? And they found him turned over in his coffin.
When the man told me the story and how he found it quite natural to think, I am dreaming, I cant find words to tell my indignation at that moment, when I saw that you know, its such a crass, such an inert stupidity! It didnt even occur to him how he would have felt if the thing had happened to HIM. It didnt even occur to him!
--
The attitude of the living towards the dead is one of the most loathsome expressions of mankinds selfish Ignorance.
Its either a complete I-couldnt-care-less attitude, or else, Ohh, anything to get rid of that! I have some children here (theyre no longer children), who live here with their fathers and mothers (who arent very old), and some of those children told me dreams in which they saw their fathers or mothers dead and coming to them and they sent them back violently, saying, Youre dead, youve got no right to come and bother us!
0 1963-09-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience lasted a long time for all details, to all problems, thats what I answered. And when I came to the end, I said to myself, But thats a wonderful argument! Because all the elements of doubt, Ignorance, incomprehension, bad will, negation, with that argument they were all muzzledannulled, they had no effect.
That work, I think, must have had worldwide repercussions. I was in it, in that state (with the sense of a very great power and a wonderful freedom) for certainly at least six or eight hours. (The work had started long before, but it became rather acutely present these last few days.)
0 1963-09-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Above all, there is a kind of coexistence, of juxtaposition of two things that are really opposite states yet always seem to be together: a Peace in which everything is harmonious (I am speaking of the bodys cells), everything is harmonious to the point that no disorder can occur, no illness, no suffering, no disorganization or decomposition can occurimpossible; its a Peace thats eternal, absolutely beyond time (though it is felt in the bodys cells); and at the same time, a tremoran ignorant and bustling and dark tremor, dark in the sense that its unaware of its Ignorance, not knowing what to do and doing useless things all the time. And in that state you find disorder, decomposition, disorganization, suffering and at times it becomes acute, acute, all the nerves are tense and it aches all over and both states are together.4
Are together, I mean to the point that you dont even feel you make a movement of reversal, you dont even know how you go from one state to the other, you the reversal is imperceptible.
--
But when I see the care Ive taken for so many years to purify that fellow, I am a little (what should I say?) I cant say frightened or anxious, but (I cant even say pessimistic), but the condition of people who havent done all the yoga Ive done for years, how difficult it must be! Because the bodys cells obey that material mind, which, in its natural state, is a mass of stupid Ignorance that thinks its so smart, oh! An almost foul mass of stupidity, and it thinks its so smart! It thinks it knows everything.
(silence)
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is really now a struggle against all that terrestrial formation against, yes, the Ignorance and unconsciousness of the earths primal thought.
Its still there; even in those who have developed their higher mind, who are able to emerge from that darkness and Ignorance, its still there its still there in a sort of mental or vital subconscient. And its so dark! Thoroughly stupid, you know: it can be given hundreds and thousands of proofs, it remains unaffecteda kind of incapacity to understand. And then it constantly rises to the surface, and I am constantly obliged (gesture of offering to the Heights) to present it: This is still there, that is still there, that And I see very well that the distinction between what goes on in this body and its atmosphere, and what goes on in all other bodies is I dont know if the distinction still exists, but its imperceptible. And the consciousness is aware of all those movements as if they were personal to the physical person. But the physical person (Mother touches her body) isnt just this body I am not yet sure whether the physical person isnt the whole earth (for certain things, it is the whole earth), or whether the physical person is the entirety of all the bodies of the people I am in contact with. During the last hours of the night, that is, between 2 and 4, I see precise forms; but those precise forms are themselves representative, meaning there are TYPES and those types take on the image of someone I am in contact with or was in personal contact with. But to me they are types: Oh, its such and such a type but that can be thousands of people. And the action (its always for an action), the action on the person-type has repercussions on all that he represents.
And thats a labor which seems infiniteendless, at any rate.
--
Things are increasingly AS THEY ARE: exact, without complications. I have noticed that with people, even the most sincere and straightforward, there is always a kind of coating, an emotive coating (even with the coldest and driest), something that belongs to the vital; an emotive coating that makes things fuzzy, uncertain and allows a game that gives them a feeling of all sorts of mysterious forces at playthings are very clear, very simple, very, oh, very simple, and that coating brings along a sort of confusion. Its not sentiment, not emotion either, its something something that LOVES uncertainty, the unknown, the unexpectednot positively chance (its not so strong), but which loves to live in that, in in fact, in Ignorance! Which loves not to know whats going to happen. Even the simplest things, the most obvious, have all that coating over them.
Look, for instance, how many people, even the most serious, love to have their fortune told: reading the hand, reading the handwriting (I am pestered with people who ask me things like that), but anyway, even regardless of any spiritual idea, that sort of interest people find in being told, See, your life line will last up to here. People love it! They love it, they love to remain in their uncertainty. They love their Ignorance. They love that unknown the unknown full of mysteries. They love the prophet who comes and tell them, This is what you will do. This is what is going to happen to you. It seems so childish! Its the same as the taste for theater, its the same thing (not the playwright, but the spectator who watches the play without knowing how it will end), or again the taste for novels the taste for the unknown. But then thats very close to the taste for the marvelous.
There is still a long way to go to enter Knowledge the consciousness in which you know things quietly, in which everything is so simple, so natural, so evident. And its that coating which brings complications: suddenly things get complicated in the human atmosphere.
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, the remarkable thing is that the Vibration (what we could call the quality of the vibration that comes from the Lord) is constructive: it constructs, it is peaceful and luminous; while that other vibration, of desire and such like, complicates, destroys and confuses, it twists thingsconfuses and distorts them, twists them. And it takes away the light: it makes for a dullness, which can be intensified with violent movements to the point of very dark shadows. But even where there is no passion, where passion doesnt interfere, thats how it is. You see, the physical reality has become nothing but a field of vibrations mingling together and, unfortunately, clashing together too, in conflict with one another. And the clash, the conflict, is the climax of that kind of turmoil, of disorder and confusion created by certain vibrations, which are ultimately vibrations of Ignorance (they come because people dont know, they are vibrations of Ignorance), and are too small, too narrow, too limitedtoo short. The problem isnt seen from a psychological standpoint at all: its nothing but vibrations.
If we look at it from a psychological standpoint On the mental plane, its very easy; on the vital plane, its not too difficult; on the physical plane, its a little heavier, because desires are passed off as needs. But there too, there has been a field of experience these last few days: the study of medical and scientific conceptions on the bodys makeup, its needs, and whats good or bad for it. And all this, in its essence, again boils down to the same question of vibrations. It was quite interesting: there was an appearance (because all things as the ordinary consciousness sees them are nothing but appearances), there was an appearance of food poisoning (mushrooms that are thought to have been bad). It was the object of a particular study to find out whether there was something absolute about the poisoning, or whether it was relative, that is, based on Ignorance, a wrong reaction and the absence of the true Vibration. And the conclusion was as follows: its a question of proportion between the amount, the sum of the vibrations that belong to the Supreme, and the sum of the vibrations that still belong to darkness. Depending on the proportion, the poisoning appears as something concrete, real, or else as something that can be eliminated, in other words, that doesnt resist the influence of the Vibration of Truth. And it was very interesting, because, immediately, as soon as the consciousness became aware of the cause of the trouble in the bodys functioning (the consciousness perceived where it came from and what it was), immediately the observation began, with the idea: Lets see what happens. First set the body perfectly at rest with the certainty (which is always there) that nothing happens except by the Lords Will and that the effect too is the Lords Will, all the consequences are the Lords Will, and consequently one should be very still. So the body is very still: untroubled, not agitated, it doesnt vibrate, nothingvery still. Once this is achieved, to what extent are the effects unavoidable? Because a certain quantity of matter that contained an element unfavorable to the bodys elements and life was absorbed, what is the proportion between the favorable and the unfavorable elements, or between the favorable and the unfavorable vibrations? And I saw very clearly: the proportion varies according to the amount of cells in the body that are under the direct Influence, that respond to the supreme Vibration alone, and the amount of other cells that still belong to the ordinary way of vibrating. It was very clear, because I could see all the possibilities, from the ordinary mass [of cells], which is completely upset by that intrusion and where you have to fight with all the ordinary methods to get rid of the undesirable element, to the totality of the cellular response to the supreme Force, which renders the intrusion perfectly innocuous. But this is still a dream for tomorrowwere on the way. But the proportion has become rather favorable (I cant say all-powerful, far from it, but rather favorable), so that the consequences of the ill-being didnt last very long and the damage was, so to say, minimal.
But all the experiences nowadays, one after the otherall the PHYSICAL experiences, of the bodypoint to the same conclusion: everything depends on the proportion between the elements that respond exclusively to the Supremes Influence, the half-and-half elements, on the road to transformation, and the elements that still follow Matters old vibratory process. The latter appear to be decreasing in number, to a great extent, but there are still enough of them to bring about unpleasant effects or unpleasant reactionsthings that are untransformed, that still belong to ordinary life. But all problems, whether psychological or purely material or chemical, all problems boil down to this: they are nothing but questions of vibrations. And there is the perception of that totality of vibrations and of what we could call (in a very rough and approximative way) the difference between the constructive and the destructive vibrations. We can say (to put it very simply) that all the vibrations that come from the One and express Oneness are constructive, while all the complications of the ordinary, separative consciousness lead to destruction.
--
This can be seen for everything. Take, for example, an external field of action, in the outer world and with outer things (naturally, to say it is outer is simply to put yourself in a false position), but, for example, if in the highest consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness, you tell someone, Go (I am giving one example among millions), Go and see so-and-so, tell him this to obtain that. If the person is receptive, inwardly immobile and surrendered, he goes, sees the other person, tells him, and the thing happenswithout the SLIGHTEST complication, just like that. If the person has an active mental consciousness, doesnt have total faith and has all the mixture of ego and Ignorance, he sees the difficulties, sees the problems to be resolved, sees all the complicationsnaturally, they all occur! So according to the proportion (everything is a question of proportion, always), according to the proportion, it creates complications, it takes time, the thing is delayed, or, a little worse, it is distorted, it doesnt occur exactly as it should, it is changed, diminished, distorted, or, finally, it doesnt occur at allthere are many, many degrees, but it all belongs to the domain of complications (mental complications) and desire. Whereas the other way is immediate. Examples of those cases (of all cases) are innumerable, so also are the examples of the immediate case. Then people tell you, Oh, youve worked a miracle! No miracle was worked: it should always be that way. Its because the intermediary did not add himself to the action.
I dont know if thats clear, but anyway
0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I tried to find out why your physical life began (well, not quite began, but you were very, very young, just the same) with such a painful experience [the concentration camps]. And I saw why: it was like a separationnot separation, but disentanglement, you understand? There are two things in every human being: what comes from the past and has persisted because it is formed and conscious, and then all that dark, unconscious mass, really muddy, that is added in every new life. Then the other thing gets into that and finds itself imprisoned, you knowadulterated and imprisoned and generally it takes more than half ones life to emerge from that entanglement. Well, for you, care was taken to more than double the dose at the beginning, and it caused a kind of tearing apart: one part went up above, another part fell down below. And the part (it acted almost like a filter), the part that rose up was very cleansed, very cleansed of all that swarming: its becoming very, very conscious of the mixture. Just see, today, the whole morning until I was swamped with work by people, till then there was a sharp awareness of the part of the being that still belongs, as I said, to Unconsciousness, to Ignorance, to Darkness, to Stupidity, and is not even as harmonious as a tree or a flower; something thats not even as tranquil as a stone, not even as harmonious and not even as strong as the animal something that is really a downfall. That is really human inferiority. And maybe (no, I shouldnt say maybe: I know) it was necessary for things to settle downsettle, you know, as when you let a liquid settle? Thats exactly it: its the Light that settles, the Consciousness that settles. And indeed its true, there is in you a part that has entirely settled. Every time I see it (it comes in the course of the work, you understand), its lovely in its quality of light, its quality of vibration, and it has settled considerably. But its true that there is also a kind of sediment, a deposit (deposit, you know?) which is a bit heavy thats what youre conscious of.
But you shouldnt say me! Its not you, that residue isnt you! But you are indeed conscious of the Light, arent you?
0 1963-11-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No. You know, what lends force to the opposition is superstitious Ignorancesuperstitious in the sense of a sort of faith or at least of belief in Destiny, in Fate. Its ingrained, as if woven into the human substance. They have the same superstition, the same superstitious belief in what is favorable to them as in what is unfavorable; in the divine Power as in the adverse powerits the SAME attitude. And thats why the divine Power doesnt have its full force, and also precisely why the adverse force has so much power over them, because its absolutely a movement of Falsehood, of Ignoranceof total Ignorance.
Recently, I was following the thing down to the smallest detail, in everybodys mentality. Even in those who have read Sri Aurobindo, who have studied Sri Aurobindo, who have understood, who have come into contact with that region of light, its still there its still there. Its very yes, its very tightly woven into the most outward and material part of the consciousness. Its a kind of submissiveness, which may be quite rebellious, but which gives a sense, as you said, of something hanging over your head and shoulders: a sort of Fate, of Destiny.
So there is the good destiny and the bad destiny; there is a divine force which one regards as something entirely beyond understanding, whose designs and aims are perfectly inexplicable, and the submission, the surrender consists in acceptingblindlyall that happens. Ones nature revolts, but revolts against an Absolute against which it is helpless. And all of that is Ignorance. Not one of all those movements is truefrom the most intense revolt to the blindest submission, its all false, not one true movement.
I dont know if its in Sri Aurobindos writings (I dont remember), but I hear very strongly (not for me, for mankind):
0 1963-12-07 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And thats the only thing: all the rest, all moral notions, everything, everything, even the notion of Ignorance it all becomes mental chatter. But this, this experience, is marvelous. Far from Thee.
Mother means structures, not cells in the biological sense.
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mothers eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha6 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.
Ganapati, or Ganesh: the son of the supreme Mother, god of material knowledge and wealth. He is represented with an elephant's head.
0 1964-01-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There should be somewhere upon earth a place that no nation could claim as its own, a place where every human being of goodwill, sincere in his aspiration, could live freely as a citizen of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme Truth; a place of peace, concord, harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weakness and Ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the concern for progress would take precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the search for pleasures and material enjoyment. In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their souls; education would be given not with a view to passing examinations or obtaining certificates and posts, but to enrich ones existing faculties and bring forth new ones. In this place, titles and positions would be replaced by opportunities to serve and organize; everyones bodily needs would be provided for equally, and in the general organization, intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority would be expressed not by increased pleasures and powers in life, but by greater duties and responsibilities. Beauty in all its art formspainting, sculpture, music, literaturewould be accessible to all equally, the ability to share in the joys it brings being limited solely by ones capacities and not by social or financial position. For in this ideal place, money would no longer be the sovereign lord; individual worth would have a far greater importance than that of material wealth and social position. There, work would not be for earning ones living, but the means to express oneself and develop ones capacities and possibilities, while at the same time being of service to the group as a whole, which would in turn provide for everyones subsistence and field of action. In short, it would be a place where human relationships, ordinarily based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in trying to do ones best, of collaboration and real brotherhood.
The earth is not ready to realize such an ideal, for humanity does not yet possess either the knowledge necessary to understand and adopt it or the conscious force indispensable for its execution. This is why I call it a dream.
0 1964-02-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This week, you know, I should have remained quiet (meaning that I would have liked to), because the result of that intensity of aspiration [in the body] is to give me a crystal clear and almost constant perception of the extent to which the material substance is made of Falsehood and Ignoranceas soon as the consciousness is clear, at rest, peaceful, in a luminous vision, falsities seem to come up from all sides. It isnt an active perception, in the sense that I dont try to know: these are things that PRESENT themselves to the consciousness. And then you realize what it takes to clarify all that, to transform all thatwhat tremendous power of Truth-Force! And you notice that the intensity of the aspirationwhich hastens the transformation and brings the realization nearermay well (Mother touches her eye) yes, heres the result.
And I notice that, all around, those nearer to the center of descent are very shaken upvery. I see very few bodies around me capable of bearing it. But then, if thats how it is, necessarily the descent is so filtered and diminished that how much will get through?
0 1964-04-08, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On top of this, there are lots of adverse forces, of adverse suggestions (some made of Ignorance, others of ill will) that come and harass. I dont believe themit doesnt believe them, but it doesnt have the assurance that would allow it to laugh in their face. It doesnt believe them, but
Theres one thing, you know, which is so difficult (Mother has a spasm in her throat), so difficult, its that Sri Aurobindo left. Thats at the root of everything. Before, my body wasnt like this; before, nothing in me was like this: there was an absolute certitude. That, you know, it was a collapse.
0 1964-07-15, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
to be grateful, never to forget this wonderful Grace of the Supreme who leads each one to his divine goal by the shortest ways, in spite of himself, his Ignorance and misunderstanding, in spite of the ego, its protests and its revolts.
June 26, 1964
0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If one can be like this, opentruly open in a simplicity you know, the simplicity of Ignorance that knows its ignorant like this (gesture, hands open), ready to receive all that comes then, perhaps, something will happen.
Naturally, the thirst for progress, the thirst to know, the thirst to transform yourself, and above all the thirst for Love and Truthif you can keep that, then you go faster. Really a thirst, a need, you know, a need. All the rest doesnt matter, what you need is THAT.
0 1964-11-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It wasnt a defined form, but it was a personal form. And it came in the wake of a series of experiences in which I saw the different attitudes of different categories of people or thinkers, according to their conviction. And it came as if that form were saying to my body (it was a PHYSICAL presence), as if it were saying, really with words (it was a translation; the words are always a translation I dont know what language the Supreme speaks (!), but it is translated, it must be translated in everyones brain according to his own language), as if He were telling me, Through you (that is, through this, the body) I am charging (it was like a conquest, a battle), I am charging to conquer the physical world. Thats how it was. And the sensation was really of an all-powerful Being whose proportions were like ours, but who was everywhere at once, and really of a physical charge to chase away all the dark little demons of Ignorance, and those little demons were like black vibrations. But He had something like a form, a color and above all, there was a contacta contact, a sensation. Thats the first time.
I have never tried to see a personal form, and it always seemed to me an impossibility, as if it were childishness and a diminishing; but this came quite unexpectedly, spontaneously, stunningly: a flash. I was so astonished. The astonishment made it go away.
0 1964-11-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo wrote, Every event (like every moment of life) will be a marvel when it is the marvelous Whole that lives that lives in the body. This was really like the expression of what the body felt. And it is its ONLY raison dtrethere is no other, all the rest It went through every disgust, every disdain, every indifference, to the point where it asked, But how can we live? What for? Why, why do we exist, why were we created? Why? All that is nothing! And strangely, there was a sort of memory of the eons of time during which people lived in this Ignorance of the why and in a sort of bewilderment. That so much time could have been spent to find the only thing the only thing that exists! And why all that, why? All that, centuries of absurd sensations. It was curious: like a slow memory of a futile and useless lifeabsurd and so painful! Why all that in order to find THAT?
It is curious.
0 1965-02-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Later, Mother adds a comment to the Declaration she made on the occasion of the events of February 11: We do not fight against any creed, any religion. We do not fight against any form of government. We do not fight against any caste, any social class. We do not fight against any nation or civilisation. We are fighting division, unconsciousness, Ignorance, inertia and falsehood. We are endeavouring to establish upon earth union, knowledge, consciousness, truth; and we fight whatever opposes the advent of this new creation of Light, Peace, Truth and Love.1 February 16, 1965.)
That makes our outer position clear. Many people think we are trying to establish a new religion or that we are against this or that religion; there are many ideas like that everywhere. But that doesnt interest us at all! Those are all the human activities in every formthey are approximations.
0 1965-03-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told him, thats why people who very much tried to find, but in vain, spoke of Gods Will; but that (Mother shakes her head) that seems to be irreconcilable with, as I said, the knowledge you have when you have passed beyond the Mind. The Mind can say that to itself in order to give itself peace, but its thoroughly, thoroughly unsatisfying, because it postulates an unacceptable arbitrariness, which is felt as contrary to the Truth. But then, how do you explain those kinds of reversals? Naturally, others, like Buddha, spoke about Ignorance; they said, You are ignorant; you think you know, but you are ignorant. But the key he gave isnt satisfying, either. Because when you have taken care to establish down to the cells of the body an apparently unshakable equanimity, how can you accept the Ignorance factor?
Which means that the further you go, the nearer you draw to the Goal, the more inexplicable it appears to be.
0 1965-04-28, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As long as you dont have the power to do everything, that is, as long as you dont have the supreme Power, you know nothing. And the supreme Power is Let me make myself clearer (Mother smiles). Someone is dying from cancer in America. I said to that someone that what would happen would be the best for his soul; I said it at a time when the so-called human knowledge still imagined it could cure him. He has lost his speech, but not consciousness neither hearing nor consciousness (its a cancer of the brain). The doctor (most eminent, of course, the best you could find) says he only lives on through sheer willpower and HE doesnt want to live! (Yet he lives on, life goes on.) He doesnt want to live, he wants to die. But of course he cant say so, he cant speak anymore. And the doctor, on his part, in his Ignorance, bewildered by the phenomenon, says its through his will that he lives on.
I received all this news this morning; for several hours I have been living through the consciousnesses with this problem: the fact that he is still living. And there is always (for consciousnesses such as those) Death with a big question markwhat is it exactly? What happens exactly [when one dies]? What is the change in consciousness? Is there a change in consciousness? What happens? Because my work (the promise I gave) consists in making him, before he leaves his body, conscious of the eternal Truth. So for at least three hours this morning I was confronted with this problem (thats why I was completely withdrawn when I came), and I said to myself, But until one is the master of life and death, one knows nothing!
0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
i) Ignorance ii) Fear iii) Falsehood.
4) Are you satisfied with the overall progress India has made since Independence? (Yes or No)
0 1965-08-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The cells, the whole material consciousness, used to obey the inner individual consciousness the psychic consciousness most of the time, or the mental (but the mind had been silent for a long time). But now this material mind is organizing itself like the other one, or the other ones, rather, like the mind of all the states of beingdo you know, it is educating itself. It is learning things and organizing the ordinary science of the material world. When I write, for instance, I have noticed that it takes great care not to make spelling errors; and it doesnt know, so it inquires, it learns, it looks up in the dictionary or it asks. Thats very interesting. It wants to know. You see, all the memory that came from mental knowledge went away a long, long time ago, and I used to receive indications only like this (gesture from above). But now its a sort of memory being built from below, and with the care of a little child who educates himself but who wants to know, who doesnt want to make errorswho is perfectly conscious of his Ignorance, and who wants to know. And the truly interesting thing is that it knows this knowledge to be quite more than relative, simply conventional, but it is like an instrument that would like to be free of defects, like a machine that would like to be perfect.
It is a rather recent awakening. There has been a sort of reversal of consciousness.
0 1965-10-16, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I am not talking about those who immediately feel, Oh, Mother is wrong, I am not even talking about those; I am talking about those who truly have goodwill, but who are up to here (gesture to the mouth), even up to here (gesture to the forehead) fully in Ignorance and Falsehood, and who cover that with the cloak of a knowledge they have learned but dont even feel.
How will the world change? Its not possible.
0 1965-11-13, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, all of a sudden, in all this chaos, this struggle, this friction, this suffering, and this Ignorance and this darkness and this effort and this and that (oh, its much worse than when it takes place in the mind: its here [in the body] and its a question, yes, of life and death in the true sense of the phrase, that is to say, of existence or nonexistence, of consciousness or total unconsciousness and then how much it costs to find out anything!), and then, all of a sudden, just one drop its not even a drop (its not liquid!), its not even a flash of lightning, its yes, its a vibration, a DIFFERENT vibrationluminous, so wonderfully sweet, peaceful, powerful, absolute. Its like something lighting up (gesture like a burst of light or a luminous pulsation). And then theres no need anymore of discussion or explanation or anything: youve understoodits to become conscious of THAT, its to live THAT.
It happened this morning.
0 1966-01-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The only creation for which there is any place here is the supramental, the bringing of the divine Truth down on the earth, not only into the mind and vital but into the body and into Matter. Our object is not to remove all limitations on the expansion of the ego or to give a free field and make unlimited room for the fulfillment of the ideas of the human mind or the desires of the ego-centred life-force. None of us are here to do as we like, or to create a world in which we shall at last be able to do as we like; we are here to do what the Divine wills and to create a world in which the Divine Will can manifest its truth no longer deformed by human Ignorance or perverted and mistranslated by vital desire. The work which the sadhak of the supramental yoga has to do is not his own work for which he can lay down his own conditions, but the work of the Divine which he has to do according to the conditions laid down by the Divine. Our yoga is not for our own sake but for the sake of the Divine. It is not our personal manifestation that we are to seek, the manifestation of the individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the manifestation of the Divine. Of that manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or for any ego-centred or self-seeking purpose. This liberation, perfection, fullness too must not be pursued for our own sake, but for the sake of the Divine.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1966-03-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And unfortunately, people give him the opportunity to do so: its stupidity, Ignorance, a sort of blindness.
Whats lamentable above all is the way men confuse power with violence. That sort of ignorant feeling that thinks power must manifest as violence.3 Violence is an asuric deformation. True power acts in peacea peace like this (gesture of massive descent), which nothing can disturb.
0 1966-04-20, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, I would like all those who are with me to feel, just as I know it, that its a reversal of appearancesshe is alive, she is conscious, she has all her faculties, all her possibilities, its all there. She hasnt lost anything! Its only human Ignorance that believes there is a loss. She hasnt lost ANYTHING.
Some go in a glorynot many, but some do. And those who go like that dont even have a difficult passage. I was writing that line for her, and I felt (it was half an hour, three quarters of an hour ago) a liberation.
0 1966-07-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So they began with a complete Ignorance and general stupidity, participating in all that this life is outwardly (as if it were something wonderful!). But as soon as they begin to grow a little wiser, it stops being wonderful. Its like what I said about this flower [the lotus]: when you know how to look at a flower, at the so spontaneous and, oh, uncomplicated expression of this marvelous Love, then you understand how long the way isall these attachments, all this importance we give to useless things, whereas there should be a spontaneous and natural beauty.
If the world understood too soon, nobody would want to stay on, basically! Thats the point.
0 1966-09-28, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am referring here to physical suffering, because all the other kinds of sufferingvital, mental, emotive sufferingarise from a wrong functioning of the mind, and those we can easily rank them in the Falsehood, thats all. But physical suffering is to me like a child being beaten, because here in Matter, Falsehood turned into Ignorance, which means there is no bad willthere is no bad will in Matter, everything is inertia and Ignorance: total Ignorance of the Truth, Ignorance of the Origin, Ignorance of the Possibility, even Ignorance of what needs to be done so as not to suffer materially. This Ignorance is everywhere in the cells, and only the experience and the experience of what, in this rudimentary consciousness, is translated as sufferingcan awaken, arouse the need to know and be cured, and the aspiration to be transformed.
This has become a certitude because the aspiration has been born in all these cells, and its growing more and more intense and is surprised at the resistance. But they have observed that when something is upset in the functioning (which means that instead of being supple, spontaneous, natural, the functioning becomes a painful effort, a struggle with something that takes on the appearance of a bad will but is only a reluctance devoid of understanding), at such times the intensity of the aspiration, of the call, grows tenfold: it becomes constant. The difficulty is to keep up this state of intensity; generally it all falls back into, I cant say drowsiness, but its a sort of slackening: you take things easy. And its only when the inner disorder becomes hard to bear that the intensity grows and becomes permanent. For hourshourswithout flagging, the call, the aspiration, the will to unite with the Divine, to become the Divine, is kept up at its peakwhy? Because there was whats outwardly called a physical disorder, a suffering. Otherwise, when there isnt any suffering, there is now and then an upsurge, then it flags and falls back; then at some other time, another upsurge It never ends! It lasts for eternities. If we want things to go fast (fast relatively to the rhythm of our lives), the whiplash is necessary. I am convinced of this, because as soon as you are in your inner being, you treat this with contempt (for yourself).
0 1967-01-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If a certain balance is kept, that state (of prolonged trance) may be dispensed with, but then the same work which would have been done in a few weeks or a few months (I dont know) will extend over yearsyears and years. So its a question of patiencepatience isnt lacking. But its not only a question of patience; its a question of proportion: there must be a certain balance between the two, between the pressure from outside of the external work (not external, the collective work), and the pressure on the body for its transformation. If wisdom is still there, that is, if the instrument is constantly and infallibly capable of doing exactly what is expected of it (to put it into words: the supreme Lords precise will), then the trance would not be necessary. It would only be if there is a resistance in the execution (out of Ignorance).
Thats how I perceive it.
0 1967-03-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only an appearance, and an appearance based on a limited view. But there is no radical change in the vibration of the consciousness. This came as an answer to a sort of anguish there was in the cells a sort of anguish at not knowing what death really is; a sort of anguish, like that. And the response was very clear and very persistent: it was that the consciousness alone can know, because because the importance attached to the difference of state is a merely superficial difference based on an Ignorance of the phenomenon in itself. One who could retain a means of communication would be able to say that as far as he himself is concerned, it doesnt make much difference.
But this is something which is being worked out. There still remain grey areas and some details of the experience are missing. So it would be better to wait, it seems to me, until the knowledge is more complete, because rather than give an approximation with assumptions, it would be better to give the complete fact with the total experience. So well put it off till later.
0 1967-03-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Were Truth to manifest in such a way as to be seen and understood by all, they would be terrified by the enormity of their Ignorance and false interpretation.
I hit hard this time.
--
One could say thanks to all this (not even because ofTHANKS TO all this), I have had these last days, these last three days, the vision the concrete vision, showing how at every second, the supreme Consciousness (which I personally find convenient to call the supreme Lord), how at EVERY SECOND, it makes you do or say or see or know ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move like this (round gesture expressing the innumerably ramified movement of universal forces), to move forward. Its not yet the direct, all-powerful, crushing Movement of direct Forces (gesture from above downward, like a sword of light): its a movement like this (same round gesture), but marvellousmarvellously subtle, ingenious, respectful of everything, but everything; you know, a movement that makes use of everything to lead towards the Goal, even errorswhich are not errors because when the Consciousness is there, the error isnt an error committed by Ignorance: a thing is said or done because thats what needs to be said or needs to be doneit may in appearance be even a blunder, yet its ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move forward (same innumerable round gesture), move forward luminously towards the desired goal. Its absolutely marvellous! And seen in tiny little details and in the whole. Its this marvel of a Consciousness that makes each one do what must be done, puts each thing in its place, arranges everything, and its our idiocy, an absolutely ignorant and stupid vision, that would have us believe in faults, in errors, in Each one is a problem to be resolved, so all those problems interpenetrate, and it is the WHOLE that must be led, precisely towards this famous Truth (the true one). But Ive spent, you know, hours in admirationa blissful admirationbefore this marvel of order, with all the little things around you, all the little people around you, all the little circumstances. Its wonderful! Wonderful!
And then, this presumptuous mind which understands nothing and asserts itself in its all-powerful knowledge, oh its so comical!
0 1967-04-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That there is a very great Pressure, a sort of intensity of pressure, is indisputableeverywhere, everywhere. And naturally, the reaction of Ignorance.
Basically, Nature had arranged things, and as she had no limitation of time, they were arranged so as to last millennia and millennia and millenniashe went along at a leisurely pace, having fun on the way; she invented everything that could be invented and had fun. But things didnt move along very fast. And she has arranged things in such a way that if there is a pressure to move faster, oh, it causes catastrophes.
On the immense mass, the mass still plunged in Ignorance, it creates a sort of excitement that tends to become unhealthy. Those who are settled in a certain equilibrium protest; I have often heard them say, But we arent in a hurry, things are all right as they are! Why do you want to change them so fast, that will happen in its own time! Thats the attitude of those who have found a sufficiently harmonious equilibrium in life: Oh, you are in too much of a hurry, why do you want to upset everything? Let things just carry on on their own. It will happen in its own timelike that. All those who are somewhat sattvic, level-headed, have that kind of equilibrium. Then, among those who aspire, a small number are sincere, serious, level-headed, ready for anything: ready to go slowly, to go fast, to do much, to do little but they are steady and quiet. And finally, there is a band of people who like imbalance and, for them, its an opportunity for all kinds of crazy things. But the Pressure of the Force is clearly making itself felt everywhere.
Sri Aurobindo always said that the most important, but also the most difficult thing, is to know how to keep ones BALANCE IN INTENSITY. To have the intensity of aspiration, the intensity of effort, the intensity of the march forward, while at the same time keeping ones balance the balance of perfect peace. Thats the ideal condition. But its difficult.
0 1967-05-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, quite recently, when I began doing the yoga in the cells, lo and behold, they started seeing! But then what a caravanserai! And it kept going and coming, and seeing and seeing, constantly, all the time. I would open my eyes: instead of seeing material things, I would see the physical things behind them. Oh! Then I said, I understand! It was the aspiration of Ignorance, now I understand: people who dont see are blessed! Because I always used to say, My visions arent concrete, they are subjective visions since they are inner visions; they are subjective visions, not concrete ones I want concrete visions, I want to see the material world as it is; not in its deceptive appearanceAS IT IS. When I started seeing, I said, No thanks! We are blessed not to see.
But thats not what I am asking.
0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are two things that make you die. One (the one that precedes the dramatic human existence) is wear and tear. What does wear and tear come from? From Ignorance, obviously. From Ignorance and the incapacity to renew forces; and that means the whole lower life: it decomposes, recomposes, decomposes again. But its only with animality and the beginning of a mental functioning that (Mother takes on a grandiloquent tone) death comes, such as we conceive it. But that is when the vital element that gives life (what we call life) breaks down. There are innumerable reasons for that, all of which stem from the same source. Of course, taken together, it is the incapacity to follow the movement of progress: the need to remix everything together in order to start all over again. But for those who are beginning to think, that no longer has any reason to exist.
An accident? An accident to the material combination? But what accident, since the heart can stop and start again? Its a question of how long the accident lasts.
--
Then people say, He is dead thats Ignorance.
(silence)
0 1967-08-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats how it is. Day after day, almost hour after hour, as the Power comes back You remember, I once said it had gone completely,1 and that was true, it had gone completely in order to leave the body absolutely to itself, for its conversion, we could say; but once there had been in this body consciousness the same aspiration and the same ardour of consciousness (with a far greater steadiness than in any other part of the being; there are no fluctuations as there are in the vital and mind, its very steady), once that was established (through kinds of pulsations, not distant from one another, first on one detail, then spreading out and becoming generalized), since then the Power has been I can say it has been coming back. But at each stage of that return, all the old difficulties appear to be waking up again,2 they seem to spring up again (they had completely fallen asleep, you understand), and each time, this body consciousness feels a sort of surprise, at once astonished and distressed that the presence of the divine Power, the divine Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness, should give rise to all those difficulties, which are essentially difficulties of Ignorance and inertia the incapacity to receive. And it comes back as memories, like that (gesture from below), like a snake rearing its head. And every time, everything in the physical consciousness has the same call, Why? How can these things be when You are there! Thats the astonishing thing: Since You are there, how can these things be?
Till now, in the majority of cases, this has signalled a conversion, a transformation, an illumination (depending on the case), but this case we were just talking about (the Tantric apprentice) came precisely as a result of that return of the Power (I knew it; he told me yesterday, but I knew it when he had his revolt). And all that came was just all the old revolts, all the old movements, which were previously so strong, so widespread, so ESTABLISHED, and had been as though halted in their expression by the withdrawal of the Power. So everyone was slumbering in his condition. Then, as soon as the Force started coming back and working again, it all woke up.
0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, it came to me as a discovery. The whole religion, instead of being seen like this (gesture from below), was seen like that (gesture from above). Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use their language), the son of God came to give his message (a message of love, unity, fraternity and charity) to the earth; and the earth, that is, those who govern, who werent ready, sacrificed him, and his Father, the supreme Lord, let him be sacrificed in order that his sacrifice would have the power to save the world. That is how they see Christianity, in its most comprehensive idea the vast majority of Christians dont understand anything whatsoever, but I mean that among them there may be (perhaps, its possible), among the cardinals for instance who have studied occultism and the deeper symbols of things, some who understand a little better anyway. But according to my vision (Mother points to her note on Christianity), what happened was that in the history of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, began to question and rebel against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia (its very clear in animals, it has become very clear already: suffering was the means to make them emerge from inertia), but man, on the other hand, went beyond that stage and began to rebel against suffering, naturally also to revolt against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity. There was already before it a fairly long earth historywe shouldnt forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, are part of the one Divine, the one God (its the image of the Gita, the God who swallows the world and its creatures). There is that, here in India. There was the Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation. Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity arrived. So there had been a whole period before it, and a great number of people beginning to rebel against suffering and wanting to escape from it like that. Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the necessity to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine beatitude, but notnot by refusing to collaborate with life, but IN life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.
That gives a place to all religions in the development from the Inconscient to the divine Consciousness.
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Both. There would be a difference. The Ignorance and obscurity present in the world are what gives divine Action a distorted appearance; and naturally, that must tend to disappear. But it is also true that there is a way of looking at things which you could say, which gives their appearance another meaning the two are there, like this (intertwined gesture).
(silence)
--
All those so-called problems (I constantly receive questions and more questions and problems of the mindall the problems of Ignorance) are problems of earth-worms. As soon as you emerge above, that type of problem no longer exists. There are no contradictions either. Contradictions always arise from the inadequacy of vision and the incapacity to see something from all standpoints at once.
In any case, to come back to the down-to-earth question in his notebook, I dont think any sage in any age said, Be good and all will outwardly go well for youbecause thats nonsense. In a world of disorder and a world of falsehood, to hope for that isnt reasonable. But if you are sincere enough and total enough in your way of being, you can have the inner joy and the full satisfaction, whatever the circumstancesand nobody, nothing has the power to touch that. But thats something else. But to ask for your business to do well, for your wife to be faithful and your children not to fall sick and all those things, that of course is nonsense!
0 1967-09-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I read her letter and learned the whole story, as always I did like this (gesture of immobile offering upward), and then the TRUE thing came (not at all what she thinks or what the Pope thinks, but the TRUE thing): an essential unity that will manifest on earth, but not just for this particular religion for ALL religions, all the religions that were manifestations of a (let us say, to understand each other clearly), an Avatar, that is, something that was sent down from above, that came to earth to bring a message, and a religion came out of it (I am not talking about all the forms of superstition and Ignorance). Those religions are destined to go back to their Origin and form a complex unity, complete, total, that is to say, the essence of all human aspirations for the unknown Divine. And that has not only been sanctioned: it EXISTS. In other words, its ready to descend.
In egoistic and limited human consciousnesses, it finds expression in this or that person, or it finds expression in the Pope who, naturally, would like to.3 Thats his whole raison dtre, otherwise he would just be one little man among many others. In other words, there is the whole motivation of human egoism that is there. Thats what distorts everything. But there is a something (which they talk about without knowing what they talk about), a something ready to manifest. And at the same time I seem to be told, Dont worry, be in peace, you dont need to do anything: it WILL BE, and as usual you will spontaneously say what you need to say, without knowing it. There.
0 1967-09-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But now, its the body that has the Experience. In a certain state, the state which corresponds to That, the essential state, everything is harmonious, with a living, smiling, happy peace; then as soon as there is a nothing, you know, a mere trifle, simply the coming into the atmosphere of something conflictinga mere nothingits felt like something extremely acute and painful. But not in the way of the pain of Ignorance, its more like you could call it an uneasiness, but its not even that. Everyone has explained it in his own way: some have called it falling from the Truth into Falsehood, others falling from the Light into Darkness, others falling from Ananda into suffering, yet others Everyone has given his explanation, but its something else. As for me, I have no words for it, but the body feels it, feels it very acutely, and it sees that at the end of it, the consequence of it, is disintegration. And its whole effort is to strive to reestablish that inner harmony, that harmonic state in which everything becomes harmonious, everything and in their appearance things havent changed! Yet in one way they are marvellous, and in the other detestable.
The opposition between the two things is becoming more pronounced every minute: one moment everything is divine, the next moment everything is detestableyet its the same thing.
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is an error too to imagine that, although the physical sexual action is to be abandoned, yet some inward reproduction of it is part of the transformation of the sex-centre. The action of the animal sex-energy in Nature is a device for a particular purpose in the economy of the material creation in the Ignorance. But the vital excitement that accompanies it makes the most favourable opportunity and vibration in the atmosphere for the inrush of those very vital forces and beings whose whole business is to prevent the descent of the supramental Light. The pleasure attached to it is a degradation and not a true form of the divine Ananda. The true divine Ananda in the physical has a different quality and movement and substance; self-existent in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine. You have spoken of Divine Love; but Divine Love, when it touches the physical, does not awaken the gross lower vital propensities; indulgence of them would only repel it and make it withdraw again to the heights from which it is already difficult enough to draw it down into the coarseness of the material creation which it alone can transform. Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error.8
Sri Aurobindo
0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time the rule or domination of Natures ordinary laws is, on one point or another, replaced (or must be or is going to be replaced on any point) by the authority of the Divine Consciousness, that creates a state of transition with all the appearances of a tremendous disorder and a very great danger. And as long as the body doesnt know, as long as its in its state of Ignorance, it gets panic-stricken (which is what happens in almost everyone), panic-stricken, it thinks its a serious illness, and sometimes, with the help of imagination, it may even result in an illness. But originally its not that: its a withdrawal, the withdrawal of Natures ordinary law with its adjunct of personal vital and mental law (but Natures law in the body is generally much stronger than the minds and the vitals law); well, its the withdrawal of that law and its replacement by the other. So there is a moment when its neither this nor that, and that moment is critical. But if the body begins to know, it remains still and has faithtrust and faith; it remains still, then all goes well. The difficulty soon passes and all goes well. So long as the body doesnt know its reactions are disastrous. But for it to know automatically and spontaneously, it means that a large part of its elements must already be conscious and transformed. Now, its all right. Not so long ago it was still necessary to stop, to fall silent, concentrate, to call the Presence, call on its faith, then everything was back in order. Now the movement is spontaneous.
And the surface, the very part that gives the sense of bark, is what will change lastwhats going to happen? I dont know I dont know. But it will change last.
--
Now stupidity, imbecility, Ignorance, all those things are looked at with a patience which waits for them to grow. But bad will and crueltyespecially viciousness, cruelty, what LOVES to cause suffering thats still difficult, one still has to keep a hold on oneself. In figurative language (not language, but a way of being), its Kali that wants to strike, and I have to tell her, Keep still, keep still. But thats a human transcription. All those gods, all those beings are real, they exist, but its a transcription. True truth is beyond all that.
So there.
0 1968-03-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the effect of a combination of three things: bad will (at the worst, a refusal to follow the movement), a more or less total bad will; an Ignorance of the laws and their consequences, that is, the causes and effects (a complete Ignorance); and, of course, a form of inertiaits all a form of inertia, but the greatest form of inertia is the incapacity to receive and respond. These three things combined are what creates diseases and so on, and the final effectdeath. That is, the disintegration of created harmony.
But from the collective point of view, the point of view of collective influence, its the other way around; in other words, thats what is taken to be the cause of disorders: instead of being the effect, its the causewhich is absurd.
0 1968-03-16, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Rejection of the one and acceptance of the other is childishness. Its Ignorance. All mental translations, like that of an Evil eternally evil, giving birth to the idea of hell, or that of a Good eternally good all that, all of it is childishness.
(silence)
0 1968-09-11, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You will see that your whole conception and notion [of heaven and hell] is based on one thing, an entity you call God, and a world you call his creation, which, to your mind, are two different thingsone having made the other, the latter being subjected to the former and the expression of what the former made. Well, thats the initial error. But if you could feel deep down that there is no division between that something you call God and that something you call the creation; if you thought, Its exactly the same thing, if you could FEEL that what you call God (which is perhaps a mere word), what you call God suffers when you suffer, is ignorant when you are ignorant, and it is through this whole creation that he finds himself again little by little, step by step, unites with himself, realizes himself, expresses himself, and its not at all something he willed arbitrarily and made autocratically, but it is the growing, increasingly developing expression of a consciousness that objectifies itself to itself Then, instead of being like a little child who kneels down, folds his hands and says, God, I implore You, make me a good boy, let me not cause my mother any sorrow (thats very easy and, well, I cant say its bad!), instead of lighting a candle and kneeling before it with folded hands, light a flame in your heart and have a great aspiration for something more beautiful, truer, nobler, better than anything I know; I ask that tomorrow I begin knowing all those things and begin doing all that I cannot doand every day a little more. Then, if you objectify a little, if for some reason you have been put in presence of a lot of misery in the world, if you have unhappy friends or suffering parents or difficultiesanything then you ask that the entire consciousness may rise TOGETHER towards that perfection which must manifest, that all this Ignorance which has made the world so unhappy may be changed into enlightened knowledge, that all that bad will may be illumined and transformed into benevolence. And how lovely those prayers would be!
I remember that during those classes, on certain days I knew it was the psychic that spoke, and on other days it was only the mind. And that day, I remember, the psychic presence was very strong.
0 1968-09-21, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its mostly mental, it comes with a sort of sense of fatality: You are the one who caused this to happen, youre getting your just deserts. Like that. Then the bodys answer is very simple, it says, Were all in the same state! The whole of Matter is like this, its full of Ignorance and incapacity. That becomes faults in the human mind, but its not faults. Or else, its hopeless: if what has been is indefinitely the cause of the whole future, its hopeless.
So all that can be held at arms length, it can be calmed, but I clearly see its not going away. And the body truly has trust, it has faith, thats what saves it, otherwise
0 1968-10-26, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, for a very long time for years the spontaneous attitude (its not the result of an effort), the bodys spontaneous attitude has been, Its my incapacity, my Ignorance, my helplessness, my stupidity that bring about my misery. It considers itself to be solely responsible for all its miseries. But then, thats the difficulty, its this contradiction: Why, why do You want things to be like this? Why?
So I spend almost entire days and nights in silence (I mean, without speaking), but seeingseeing And there isnt any sensation or perception of a separate individuality; there are innumerable experiences, dozens of them every day, showing that its the identification or unification with other bodies that makes you feel this persons misery, that persons misery, the misery of Its a fact. And its not felt as being another bodys misery, its felt as your own. Which means it has become difficult to make a distinction on a plane (Mother stretches her hands out into the distance). There is a plane ever so slightly more subtle than the quite material plane. So one isnt complaining about ones own misery, its that EVERYTHING is ones misery.
0 1968-11-16, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Several times, when the body was simply disgusted at its pettiness, its incapacity, its Ignorance, its stupidity (laughing) the response was very fine: Be quiet! Its not you who do things. So the body wondered (laughing), But then, what use am I?! It said I dont know, I got the impression of the place where two currents are joined (you know, when you connect one current with another?), the impression that the body was like that, that was its use! It had the sensation of being like one of these tools (Mother points to the electric socket).
A socket.
0 1968-12-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The bodys tapasya is something quite interesting, really interesting. The body You know, its modesty is total; it has a keen sense of all its limitations, all its incapacities, all its Ignorance, all and at the same timeat the same time the ABSOLUTE sense of the divine Presence, absolute; and a divine Presence that can break everything to pieces if it wants to. Its quite interesting. A Presence with such power! A power which is incalculable, with no possible comparison with earthly things.
The body has a very, very strong impression (a sort of awareness) that its sufferings stem from its incapacity. Theres a sort of perception that it has a HABIT of turning into suffering something it cant bear.
0 1969-02-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body is aware that That, this Consciousness, knows full well whether it will continue or not. It has never been told anything, and it knows (it has felt the two things equally, as equal certitudes, and with equal acceptance), it knows this is the most favorable condition for the work, so it doesnt ask anything. There are worries around (of all kinds), from an anguish at the idea that it could happen (all around, like that) to (laughing) a haste for the end to come! (That also happens.) But now the body has learned to be ab-so-lute-ly indifferent to those reactionsabsolutely. It smiles. It smiles with this benevolent Smile [of the superman consciousness], it has the same smile. And it sees, it knows, it senses where that [the worry or the haste] comes from, its thoroughly conscious. After all, its very amusing! Theres a whole gamut, a whole scale, from fear (a semiconscious, blind fear) to (Mother laughs) an impatient desire! Free at last! Free at last to do all the foolish things I want to do! It seems there arent many, but there are some.2 The two opposites of blind Ignorance coming together. The body has become very conscious: its very sensitive to what comes from people. It didnt have that before, but now it senses.
Its supported, helped: this superman consciousness that has come helps it a lot, its through it that the body feels, and that helps it a lot. Sometimes, when someone comes in, along with him (him or her or them) comes a slight acute uneasiness; if the body had felt that before knowing, it would have been painful, but now it can smile and wait to discover why its like that (Mother gestures as if to trace the vibration that caused the uneasiness). With others, on the contrary, the atmosphere is immediately filled with the presence of this Consciousness (thats new, and very interesting), so then the body feels fineit feels fine, rested.
0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is also quite a clear perception of the individual reaction; for instance, the way faith manifests in people, in different individuals, the coloration it takes, the amount of (what should I say?) Ignorance or falsehood added to it, and the amount that remains pure. Theres constantly, constantly a work of that kind, all the time. I find it very interesting.
And it is beginning to understand why this is like this, why that is like that.
0 1969-05-28, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I walked through large rooms in which beings without communication with outside were living. And other rooms where wretched beings were dragging out a wretched life. They took notice of my presence, which seemed to bring them a ray of light from outside. A few reacted well, with a smile; others fled. A few knocked against me. Then I went into other rooms. The same goal always seemed to justify my presence. For, as I went by, a few showed a sign of hope. But at the same time obstacles, sufferings, tortures of all kinds fell on me. They were not deliberately inflicted tortures, but sorts of reactions of Ignorance and suffering.
This work progressively became more and more difficult for me. I moved about with difficulty, walked more and more slowly, as though overburdened, until it finally became difficult for me to find my way to escape.
0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He has the very ingenuousness (the ingenuousness of Ignorance) thanks to which he doesnt have a mind that looks and smiles. He is wholly in his convictionits a condition good for people, they havent gone beyond that.
Well see.
0 1969-11-22, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, some really amusing things all the time, all the time, every minute. For an extremely long time it hasnt felt offended anymore, an extremely long time, but there was still a time when it would see, perceive incomprehension as a ridiculous thing or an Ignorance. Now thats over. Now For a long time, every time it used to ask, Ah! What do You want me to learn? Now that too is past. Because as soon as something comes (what Sri Aurobindo called the old man), something left from the old personality, which shows up like that, the body doesnt need anything to see the truth instantly: it appears profoundly ridiculous.
***
0 1970-01-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, now, when I am put in contact with all the things I said in the past (yet I did my best) I so much feel its like words of Ignoranceall of them based on choice and opposition: this and not that, this and not that, you approve and disapprove. Thats it. And now it looks so stupid! And so narrowso narrow. Whats admired in people who have been regarded as saints (saints, especially saints) is refusal: refusal of almost everything, except of God (Mother holds a single finger erect heavenward). And everything, from the highest thingones approach to the Divinefrom that down to the most material the bodys functionseverything from top to bottom is just the same stupidity: this but not that; this but not that; this in contradiction to that; this in opposition to that. All morality, all social rules, the whole material organization of the world is based on division. And it seems more and more evident that that will be the FIRST thing the firstwhich the higher being (which Sri Aurobindo called the supramental being), the first thing that being will want to abolish.
Now I understand why he said supramental; instead of saying superman he said supramental because superman is Whereas for that being, the very basis of his existence is different; instead of being based on division, its based on union. Man talks a lot about union, but he doesnt have the least idea what it is.
0 1970-02-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In its state of Ignorance (a general Ignorance), when the body wants to persist, it (what shall I say?) PASSIVELY accepts to persist as it is; but in its present state, it CANNOT accept to remain as it is, it has too much prescience of what must be, so theres a sort of need to remaina need to remain but without remaining, you understand? Things become in a constant and almost total transformation.
(long silence)
0 1970-04-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother, is there a Mother of Ignorance?
What do you call a Mother of Ignorance?
I had a dream in which I seemed to meet someone who was the Mother of Ignorance.
Possibly. Its possible, oh yes. Mon petit, EVERYTHING is possible, and not only possible: everything is. But everything isnt on earth, of course. You understand, there are many worlds, many regions there is nothing that is impossible and that isnt: if a thing is possible, it means it exists somewhere.
Logically, there has to be a Mother of Ignorance.
(Satprem to Sujata:) What did the Mother of Ignorance do?
(Sujata:) In my dream? I had a long dream, and towards the end, I met her. I had to go through a place, and I told her, I must go to the Light, to the Mother of Light.
--
It must be a region intermediary between the most material physical, vital and mind. Theres everything imaginable, you can see the most extraordinary things. And thats how it is. Strangely, even, you have a power there: one drop of truth has a tre-men-dous power in those worlds. With a single movement you can change lots of things. Only, of course, you also create them in the same way: the contrary movement, the movement of Ignorance (all the movements of Ignorance in the world) create things all the time. That is to say, it means shaping things, or making them active, or having them act. Only, its a reality which which is impermanent, to begin with. Ultimately, very few formsforms or thoughtshave an eternal reality: all that (Mother makes a gesture of perpetual recasting) is constantly moving and changing.
I remember the first time (that was very long ago, more than sixty years ago), the first time I asked, But why do we die? Why do we live to die?Thats idiotic! Then I was made to understand that all that we see as forms is (same gesture in perpetual movement). Its our clenched little consciousness; a clenched consciousness which makes it all appear a momentous phenomenon: we are small, we grow big, and in the end, we dissolve. But everything is like that (same gesture), everything is like that! There are very few thingsvery few that are eternal. They have a different quality. Its the first experience you get when you contact that which is eternal: it has a different vibratory quality And then, that will to make this last (Mother points to her body), this which is made, entirely made of wrong movementswrong movements and constantly in movement, constantly changing, constantly (same gesture). As Sri Aurobindo said, You want to make your body and everything around it last as it is?No, thank you! (Mother laughs) To last is, in fact, to become conscious, fully conscious in the eternal world.
--
(Sujata:) I simply told her, O Mother of Ignorance, it is to the Mother of Light that I want to go.
And it was enough! (Mother laughs)
0 1970-05-23, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Day after day, almost hour after hour, the body realizes its Ignorance, its imbecility, its all the time. And its seen very differently, outside all moral sense and, naturally, all preconceived ideasall that has been nicely swept away, oh, you cant imagine how grateful my body is that the mind was taken away from it, oh! And it has formed a mind of its own, which doesnt function in the ordinary way at all, but which is a sort of vision, a vision with with eyes from above. And (laughing) it might be frightful, but its so comical! (Mother laughs a lot)
The only thing is that everything, every second (Mother opens her hands in a gesture of offering, with a blissful smile) what still feels separate, oh, rushes with an aspiration to be a little more plastic.
0 1970-05-30, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
528Human pity is born of Ignorance and weakness; it is the slave of emotional impressions. Divine compassion understands, discerns and saves.
You answer:
0 1970-06-20, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Make knowledge a catch of the snare of Ignorance
And the Word a dart to slay my living Soul?
0 1970-07-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The conception of the Divine as an external omnipotent Power who has created the world and governs it like an absolute and arbitrary monarch the Christian or Semitic conceptionhas never been mine; it contradicts too much my seeing and experience during thirty years of sadhana. It is against this conception that the atheistic objection is aimed,for atheism in Europe has been a shallow and rather childish reaction against a shallow and childish exoteric religionism and its popular inadequate and crudely dogmatic notions. But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different,something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature. The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers. If we take the facts of the world as they are and the facts of spiritual experience as a whole, neither of which can be denied or neglected, then I do not see what other Divine there can be. This Divine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us and around us, but it is to the Light he is leading and not to anything else.
Letters on Yoga, 22.174
0 1970-07-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, suddenly I was lighter. As if a weight, a weight of Ignorance had been taken off from me.
(silence)
0 1970-09-12, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but Mother, I really feel that through this darkness, this Ignorance of the laws, you are being KNOWINGLY carried to the point where the solution will be foundall this is organised, its not adverse circumstances, you really are carried.
You are right. Youre right. If you like, I might say that I think that way (I dont think, but), there is a perception like that. But theres everything in between.
0 1971-02-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Basically, I realize more and more that we live in total Ignorance. We really dont know either what should be done or how to do it.
But surely that New Consciousness should make one do what is necessary.
0 1971-03-13, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But is German such a poor language? Isnt all this Ignorance on their part? They could take a word that isnt a common word and give it a special meaning and then, put in a note the special meaning theyve given the word. But to use a word that means mind is crazy, it immediately distorts the teaching.
Yes. The trouble is that the word they use for spirit is the word generally used for mind. So, if it is left exclusively to mean mind, they dont have anything for spirit, but if they use it exclusively for spirit, it may be interpreted as mind.
0 1971-05-01, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Most of the suffering is due to mens Ignorance.
We must have compassion and help them.
0 1971-10-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil with its sweet and bitter fruits is secretly rooted in the very nature of the Inconscience from which our being has emerged and on which it still stands as a nether soil and basis of our physical existence; it has grown visibly on the surface in the manifold branchings of the Ignorance which is still the main bulk and condition of our consciousness in its difficult evolution towards a supreme consciousness and an integral awareness. As long as there is this soil with the unfound roots in it and this nourishing air and climate of Ignorance, the tree will grow and flourish and put forth its dual blossoms and its fruit of mixed nature. It would follow that there can be no final solution until we have turned our inconscience into the greater consciousness, made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis and transformed our Ignorance into a higher knowledge. All other expedients will only be makeshifts or blind issues; a complete and radical transformation of our nature is the only true solution.
The Life Divine, XVIII.627
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The root that hasnt been found. The root of all the evil, the Ignorance, everything: As long as there is this soil with the unfound roots in it and this nourishing air , etc.
(after a silence)
0 1971-11-24, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have insisted on my writing and asked for the Truth and I have answered. But if you want to be a Mussulman, no one prevents you. If the Truth I bring is too great for you to understand or to bear, you are free to go and live in a half-truth or in your own Ignorance. I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. I am not asking you and the Mother is not asking you to accept us. You can go any day and live either the worldly life or a religious life according to your own preference. But as you are free, so also are others free to stay here and follow their own way.
23 October 1929
0 1972-02-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Human consciousness is so corrupt that people prefer the misery and Ignorance of the ego to the luminous joy that comes from sincere surrender to the Divine. Their blindness is so great that they refuse even to attempt the experience and prefer to be subjected to the misery of their ego rather than make the necessary effort to free themselves from it.
Their blindness is so total that they would not hesitate to make the Divine a slave to their ego, if such a thing were possible, just to avoid giving themselves to the Divine.
0 1972-07-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
without any Ignorance distorting His Action.
Yes, its quite correct.
0 1972-11-02, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Things always work out. I am convinced that whatever happens is willed by the Lord. Its only our impression that gets more or less warped by our Ignorance.
Yes, Mother.
0 1973-01-24, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Never, never before have I had such a sense of Ignorance, of impotence, of of being a jumble of frightful contradictions, and I know, I KNOWdeep down, beyond speech that its because I dont know how to find the place where they they harmonize and unite.
I can do absolutely nothing, I know absolutely nothingin fact, I am nothing but a false appearance, thats all.
0 1973-02-08, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Indispensable, its indispensable. Life begins with that. Otherwise, you are in falsehoodin a hodgepodge of confusion and Ignorance. The mind! The mind! The mind!
Otherwise, to be conscious of your own consciousness, you must mentalize it. Its dreadful, dreadful!
02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Fire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart of things. It is that which moves the creation upward, produces the unfolding evolution that is history, both individual and collective. It is kindled, it increases in volume and strength and purity and effectiveness, as and when a lower element is offered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon the lower one (which is what the rubbing of the arai or the pressing of the soma symbolises); the limitation is broken, the small enters into and becomes the vast, the crooked is straightened and leng thened out, what was hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the progression of the sacrifice (adhvaraadvanceon the path). That is also the victorious battle waged against the dark forces of Ignorance. The goal, the purpose is the descent and manifestation of the gods here upon earth in human vehicles.
But this Fire is not normally available. It is lost, imbedded in the thick petrified folds of unconsciousness and inconscience. Man's soul is not an apparent reality. It has to be found out, called forth, brought to the front. Even so, in the normal consciousness, the soul, the divine fire is a flickering, twinkling, hesitating spark; it is not sure of itself, not certain of its destiny. Yet when the time is ripe and the call comes, the gods, the luminous forces from above descend with all their insistence and meet the hidden godhead: Agni is reminded of his work and destiny which nothing can frustrate or cancel. He has to consent and undertake his sacrificial labour.
02.01 - Metaphysical Thought and the Supreme Truth, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Indian position. Even those who see that mental Thought must be overpassed and admit a supramental "Other", do not seem to escape from the feeling that it must be through mental Thought, sublimating and transmuting itself, that this other Truth must be reached and made to take the place of the mental limitation and Ignorance. And again Western thought has ceased to be dynamic; it has sought after a theory of things, not after realisation. It was still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for the attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment, spiritual discovery, a spiritual transformation. If there were not this difference, there would be no reason for seekers like yourself to turn to the East for guidance; for in the purely intellectual field, the Western thinkers are as competent as any Eastern sage.
It is the spiritual way, the road that leads beyond the intellectual levels, the passage from the outer being to the inmost Self, which has been lost by the over-intellectuality of the mind of Europe.
--
It is not by "thinking out" the entire reality, but by a change of consciousness that one can pass from the Ignorance to the
Knowledge - the Knowledge by which we become what we know. To pass from the external to a direct and intimate inner consciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an inner will and aspiration and opening to the Light till it passes in its ascent beyond Mind; to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through selfgiving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and body - this is the integral way to the Truth.1 It is this that we call the Truth here and aim at in our Yoga.
02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Across the thick smoke of earth's Ignorance
A Mind began to see and look at forms
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is a war to which even spiritual seekers can hardly remain indifferent with impunity. There are spiritual paths, however, that ask to render unto God what is God's and unto Satan what belongs to Satan; in other words, spirituality is kept apart from what is called worldliness, clean and untouched by the dust and murk of IgnoranceMaya. The injunction accordingly is that they who are worldly must remain worldly, they have no business, no right to meddle with spirituality, and they who are spiritual should, on the other hand, remain strictly spiritual, should have nothing to do with worldliness. Because of this complete divorce between the spiritual and the worldly, the world remains worldly even today, continues to be the empire of unspirituality and obscurity, of suffering and grief, it is unable to become a dynamic and living expression and embodiment of the Spirit.
Not that spiritual men have not served and worked for the welfare of the world; but their work could not be wholly effective, it was mixed, maimed, temporary in effect. This could not be otherwise, for their activity proceeded from inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for them than to exercise an indirect influence; their spiritual realisation could bring into the life of the world only a reminiscence, an echo, just a touch and a ray from another world. Or, secondly, when they did take part in worldly affairs, their activity could not rise much beyond the worldly standard; it remained enclosed within the sphere of the moral and the conventional, took such forms as, for example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical lifeeven the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding our worldly preoccupations according to a truly spiritual or a supramental or transcendental consciousness was a rare phenomenon and even where the ideal was found, it is doubtful whether the right means and methods were discovered. Yet the sole secret of changing man's destiny and transmuting the world lies in the discovery and application of a supreme spiritual Conscious-Power.
--
The Asura triumphs everywhere for a while because his power is well-built, perfectly organised. Human power is constituted differently and acts differently; it is full of faults and flaws to start with and for a long time. There is no gap anywhere in the power of the Asura, no tear or stitchit is streamlined, solid, of one piece; it is perfection itself in its own kind once for all. Man's being is made up of conflicts and contradictions; he moves step by step, slowly and laboriously, through gradual purification; he grows through endeavour and struggle. Man triumphs over the Asura only in so far as he moulds himself in the ways of the divine power. But in the world, the Divine and his powers remain behind, because the field of actuality in front is still the domain of the Asura. The outer field, the gross vehiclebody and life and mindall this is constituted by Ignorance and Falsehood; so the Asura can always establish there his influence and hold sway and has actually done so. Man becomes easily an instrument of the Asura, though often unwittingly; the earth is naturally in the firm grasp of the Asura. For the gods to conquer the earth, to establish their rule in the earth consciousness requires labour and endeavour and time.
No doubt, the violences indulged by men in older times, especially when they acted in groups and packs, were often inflamed and inspired by an Asuric influence. But today it must be clearly seen and recognised that it is the Asura himself with the whole band of his army that has descended upon the earth; they have possessed a powerfully organised human collectivity, shaped it in their mould, using it to complete their conquest of mankind and consolidate their definitive reign upon earth.
--
We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with the Asuraon this material plane of ours; but in man dwells the Divine and against the divine force and might, no asuric power can ultimately prevail. The human being who has stood against the Asura has by that very act sided with the gods and received the support and benediction of the Divine. The more we become conscious about the nature of this war and consciously take the side of the progressive force, of the divine force supporting it, the more will the Asura be driven to retire, his power diminished, his hold relaxed. But if through Ignorance and blind passion, through narrow vision and obscurant prejudice we fail to distinguish the right from the wrong side, the dexter from the sinister, surely we shall invite upon mankind utter misery and desolation. It will be nothing less than a betrayal of the Divine Cause.
The fate of India too is being decided in this world-crisison the plains of Flanders, on the steppes of Ukraine, on the farthest expanses of the Pacific. The freedom of India will become inevitable and even imminent in proportion as she becomes cognizant of the underlying character and significance of the present struggle, deliberately takes the side of the evolutionary force, works for the gods, in proportion as she grows to be an instrument of the Divine Power. The instrument that the Divine chooses is often, to all appearances, faulty and defective, but since it has this higher and mightier support, it will surely outgrow all its drawbacks and lapses, it will surmount all dangers and obstacles and become unconquerable. Thisis what the spiritual seeker means by saying that the Divine Grace can make the lame leap across the mountain. India's destiny today hangs in the balance; it lies in the choice of her path.
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The next steps, farther down or away, arrive when the drive towards differentiation and multiplication gathers momentum becomes accentuated, and separation and isolation increase in degree and emphasis. The lines of individuation fall more and more apart from each other, tending to form closed circles, each confining more and more exclusively to itself, stressing its own particular and special value and function, in contradistinction to or even against other lines. Thus the descent or fall from the Supermind leads, in the first instance, to the creation or appearance of the Overmind. It is the level of consciousness where the perfect balance of the One and the Many is disturbed and the emphasis begins to be laid on the many. The source of incompatibility between the two just starts here as if Many is notOne and One is not Many. It is the beginning of Ignorance, Avidya, Maya. Still in the higher hemisphere of the Overmind, the sense of unity is yet maintained, although there is no longer the sense of absolute identity of the two; they are experienced as complementaries, both form a harmony, a harmony as of different and distinct but conjoint notes. The Many has come forward, yet the unity is also there supporting it-the unity is an immanent godhead, controlling the patent reality of the Many. It is in the lower hemisphere of the Overmind that unity is thrown into the background half-submerged, flickering, and the principle of multiplicity comes forward with all insistence. Division and rivalry are the characteristic marks of its organisation. Yet the unity does not disappear altogether, only it remains very much inactive, like a sleeping partner. It is not directly perceived and envisaged, not immediately felt but is evoked as reminiscence. The Supermind, then, is the first crystallisation of the Infinite into individual centres, in the Overmind these centres at the outset become more exclusively individualised and then jealously self-centred.
The next step of Descent is the Mind where the original unity and identity and harmony are disrupted to a yet greater degree, almost completely. The self-delimitation of consciousness which is proper to the Supermind and even to the Overmind, at least in its higher domainsgives way to self-limitation, to intolerant egoism and solipsism. The consciousness withdraws from its high and wide sweep, narrows down to introvert orbits. The sense of unity in the mind is, at most, a thing of idealism and imagination; it is an abstract notion, a supposition and a deduction. Here we enter into the very arcana of Maya, the rightful possession of Ignorance. The individualities here have become totally isolated and independent and mutually conflicting lines of movement. Hence the natural incapacity of mind, as it is said, to comprehend more than one object simultaneously. The Super mind and, less absolutely, the Overmind have a global and integral outlook: they can take in each one in its purview all at once the total assemblage of things, they differentiate but do not divide the Supermind not at all, the Overmind not categorically. The Mind has not this synthetic view, it proceeds analytically. It observes its object by division, taking the parts piecemeal, dismantling them, separating them, and attending to each one at a time. And when it observes it fixes itself on one point, withdrawing its attention from all the rest. If it bas to arrive at a synthesis, it can only do so by collating, aggregating and summing. Mental consciousness is thus narrowly one pointed: and in narrowing itself, being farther away from the source it becomes obscurer, more and more outward gazing (parci khni) and superficial. The One Absolute in its downward march towards multiplicity, fragmentation and partiality loses also gradually its subtlety, its suppleness, its refinement, becomes more and more obtuse, crude, rigid and dense.
Between the Overmind and the Mind proper, varying according to the degree of immixture of the two, according to the degree of descent and of emergence of one and the other respectively, there are several levels of consciousness of which three main ones have been named and described by Sri Aurobindo. The first one nearest to the Overmind and the least contaminated by the Mind is pure Intuition; next, the intermediary one is called the Illumined Mind, and last comes the Higher Mind. They are all powers of the Overmind functioning in the Mind. The higher ranges are always more direct, intense, synthetic, dynamic than the lower ones where consciousness is slower, duller, more uncertain, more disintegrated. The lower the consciousness descends the more veiled it becomes, losing more and more the directness, the sureness, the intensity and force and the synthetic unity native to the highest ranges of our consciousness and being.
--
This is, so far then, the original and primal line of descent. It is the line down which the absolute Reality, the absolute Consciousness and the absolute Delight have turned into unreality and unconsciousness and un delight. But it is not all loss and debit. There is a credit side too. For it is only in this way, viz, by the manifestation of utter Ignorance, that the supreme Absolute has become concrete, the Formless has entered into form, the Bodiless has found a body: what was originally an indeterminate equal Infinity of pure consciousness, has become determinate and dynamic in the individual multiplicity of corporeal consciousness. What is the sense in all that, what is the gain or upshot? We shall presently see.
When consciousness has reached the farthest limit of its opposite, when it has reduced itself to absolutely unconscious and mechanical atoms of Matter, when the highest has descended into and become the lowest, then, by the very force of its downward drive, it has swung round and begun to mount up again. As it could not proceed farther on the downward gradient, having reached the extreme and ultimate limit of inconscience, consciousness had to turn round, as it were, by the very pressure of its inner impetus. First, then, there is a descent, a gradual involution, a veiling and closing up; next, an ascent, a gradual evolution, unfoldment and expression. We now see, however, that the last limit at the bottomMatteralthough appearing to be unconscious, is really not so: it is inconscient. That is to say, it holds consciousness secreted and involved within itself; it is, indeed, a special formulation of consciousness. It is the exclusive concentration of consciousness upon single points in itself: it is consciousness throwing itself out in scattered units and, by reason of separative identification with them and absorption into them, losing itself, forgetting itself in an absolute fixation of attention. The phenomenon is very similar to what happens when in the ordinary consciousness a worker, while doing a work, becomes so engrossed in it that he loses consciousness of himself, identifies himself with the work and in fact becomes the work, the visible resultant being a mechanical execution.
--
All the ancient legends about a principle and a personalityof Denial and Ignorance, of an Everlasting Nayrefer to this fact of a descending consciousness, a Fall. The Vedantic my, spoken of sometimes as the Dark Mother, seems to be the personification of the lower Overmind, Jehovah and Satan of the Hebrews, Olympians and Titans of the Greeks, Ahriman and Ahura Mazda of old Iran, the sons of Diti and Aditi the Indian Puranas speak of, are powers and personalities of consciousness when it has descended entirely into the mind and the vital where the division is complete. These lower reaches have completely lost the unitary consciousness; still there are beings even here that have succeeded in maintaining it as a memory or an aspiration, although in a general way the living reality of the oneness is absent. It is significant that the term asura which came to mean in classical and mythological ages a + sura, not-god, the Titan, had originally a different connotation and etymology, asu + ra, one having force or strength, and was used as a general attri bute of all the gods. The degradation in the sense of the word is a pointer to the spiritual Fall: Satan was once Lucifer, the bringer or bearer of light. We may mention in this connection that these beings of which we are speaking, dwelling in unseen worlds, are of two broad categories(1) beings that are native to each plane and immutably confined and bound to that plane, and (2) those that extend their existence through many or all planes and assume on each plane the norm and form appropriate to that plane. But this is a problem of individual destiny with which we are not concerned at present.
We were speaking of the descent into the Vital, the domain of dynamism, desire and hunger. The Vital is also the field of some strong creative Powers who follow, or are in secret contact with the line of unitary consciousness, who are open to influences from a deeper or higher or subtler consciousness. Along with the demons there is also a line of daimona, guardian angels, in the hierarchy of vital beings. Much of what is known as aesthetic or artistic creation derives its spirit from this sphere. Many of the gods of beauty and delight are denizens of this heaven. Gandharvas and Kinnaras are here, Dionysus and even Apollo perhaps (at least in their mythological aspectin their occult reality they properly belong to the Overmind which is the own home of the gods), many of the angels, seraphs and cherubs dwell here. In fact, the mythological heaven for the most part can be located in this region.
--
These characters, it is true, are not clear and pronounced, do not lie in front, at the beginning of the human personality. The normal human person has his psyche very much behind; but it is still there as antarymin, as the secret Inner Controller. And whatever the vagaries of the outer instruments or their slavery to the mode of Ignorance, in and through all that, it is this Inner Guide that holds the reins and drives upward in the end.
Thus naturally there appear gradations of the human personality; as the consciousness in the human being rises higher and higher, the psychic centre organises a higher and higher a richer, wider, deeper personality. The first great conversion, the first turning of the human personality to a new mode of life and living, that is to say, living even externally according to the inner truth and reality, the first attempt at a conscious harmonisation of the psychic consciousness with its surface agents and vehicles is what is known as spiritual initiation. This may happen and it does happen even when man lives in his normal mental consciousness. But there is the possibility of growth and evolution and transformation of personality in higher and a higher spiritual degree through the upper reaches of the higher Mind, the varying degrees of the Overmind and finally the Supermind. These are the spheres, the fields, even the continents of the personality, but the stuff, the substance of the personality, the inner nucleus of consciousness-force is formed, first, by the flaming aspiration, the upward drive within the developing and increasing psychic being itself, and secondly, by the descent, to a greater and greater degree, of the original Being from which it emanated. The final coalescence of the fully and integrally developed psychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source, the Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens the supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical body: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a radiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human personality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the wheel comes full circle: creation returns to the point from which it started but with an added significance, a new fulfilment.
--
The supramentalisation of the personality which means the perfect divinisation of the personality is yet not the final end of Nature's march. Her path is endless, since she follows the trail of infinity. There are still higher modes of consciousness, or, if they cannot properly be called higher, other modes of consciousness that lie in waiting to be brought out and placed and established in the front of terrestrial evolution. Only, supramentalisation means the definite crossing over from Ignorance, from every trace and shadow of Ignorance, into the abiding and perennial Knowledge and Freedom. Thenceforward the course of Nature's evolution may be more of the kind of expression than ascension; for, beyond the Supermind it is very difficult to speak of a higher or lower order of consciousness. Everything thereafter is in the full perfect light the difference comes in the mode or manner or stress of expression. However, that is a problem with which we are not immediately concerned.
We have spoken of four lines of Descent in the evolution and organisation of consciousness. There yet remains a fifth line. It is more occult. It is really the secret of secrets, the Supreme Secret. It is the descent of the Divine himself. The Divine, the supreme Person himself descends, not indirectly through emanations, projections, partial or lesser formulations, but directly in his own plenary self. He descends not as a disembodied force acting as a general movement, possessing, at the most, other objects and persons as its medium or instrument, but in an embodied form and in the fullness of his consciousness. The Indian word for Divine Incarnation, avatra, literally means he who has descended. The Divine comes down himself as a terrestrial being, on this material plane of ours, in order to raise the terrestrial and material Nature to a new status in her evolutionary courseeven so He incarnated as the Great Boar who, with his mighty tusk, lifted a solid mass of earth from out of the waters of the Deluge. It is his purpose to effect ascension of consciousness, a transmutation of being, to establish a truly New Order, a New Dharma, as it is termed dharmasamsthpanrthya. On the human level, he appears as a human person for two purposes. First of all, he shows, by example, how the ascension, the transmutation is to be effected, how a normal human being can rise from a lower status of consciousness to a higher one. The Divine is therefore known as the Lord of Yoga for Yoga is the means and method by which one consciously uplifts oneself, unites oneself with the Higher Reality. The embodied Divine is the ideal and pattern: he shows the path, himself walks the path and man can follow, if he chooses. The Biblical conception of the Son of GodGod made fleshas the intermediary between the human and the Divine, declaring, I am the Way and the Goal, expresses a very similar truth. The Divine takes a body for anotheroccultreason also. It is this: Matter or terrestrial life cannot be changedchanged radically, that is to say, transformed by the pure spiritual consciousness alone, lying above or within; also it is not sufficient to bring about only that much of change in terrestrial life which can be effected by the mere spiritual force acting in a general way. It looks as if the physical transformation which is what is meant by an ascension or emergence in the evolutionary gradient were possible only by a physical impact embodying and canalising the spiritual force: it is with his physical body that the Divine Incarnation seems to push and lift up physical Nature to a new and higher status.
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its thought invents our reasoned Ignorance;
Its sense fathers our body's reflexes.
--
Ineffable beyond Ignorance and death,
The images of its everlasting Truth
02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A question inevitably arises herewhat next? Once the evolutionary movement has reached the apex, does it stop there? After the apex, the Void? I t need not be so. The completion of the pyramid would mean simply the end of a particular order of creation, the creation in Ignorance. This is, indeed, what Sri Aurobindo envisages in his conception of the creation in supramental Gnosis. The evolutionary nisus, on its arrival at the apex, according to him crosses a borderland, leaps into another order of the world, of infinite Truth-Consciousness. Thereafter another new creation starts the building perhaps of another pyramid (if we want to continue the metaphor). The progression Of the evolutionary course is naturally expected to be an unending series. The pyramids rise tier upon tier ad infinitum. Only it is to be noted that in the basic pyramid the evolution starts from inconscience and moves from more Ignorance to less Ignorance through a gradually lessening density of darkness until the apex is reached where all shade of darkness is eliminated for ever. Beyond there is no mixture, however thin and diluted: it is a movement from light to light, from one expression of it to another, perhaps richer, but of the same quality.
This, however, is an aspect of the problem with which we are not immediately concerned. There is one question with which we have omitted to deal but which is nearer to us and touches present actualities. We spoke of the emergence of the Deity and of the Supreme Deityafter Mind. The question is, how long after? I do not refer to the duration of time needed, but to the steps or the stages that have to be passed. For between Mind and Deity, certainly between Mind and the Supreme Deity (Purushottama, as we would say), there may presumably still lie a course of graded emergence. In fact, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the Overmind and the Supermind, as farther steps of the evolutionary progress coming after Mind. He says that Mind closes the interior hemisphere of man's nature and consciousness; with Overmind man enters into the higher sphere of the Spirit. In this view, the religious feeling or perception or conduct would be but an intermediary stage between Mind and Overmind. They are not really emergent properties, but reflections, faint echoes and promises of what is to come, mixed up with attributes of the present mentality. The Overmind brings in a true emergence.
Still Overmindwhose characteristic is a cosmic consciousness and a transcendence of all ego-senseis not the firm basis on which a new terrestrial organisation can stand and endure. It is still a basis of unstable equilibrium. For it is not the supernal light and, although it transcends all Ignorance, yet does not possess that absolute synthetic unity, that transcendent power of consciousness which is at once the cosmic and the individual. That is the domain of the Supermind.
The whole urge of evolutionary Nature today is to bring out first the Overmental principle and then through it the Supramental which will establish and fix upon earth the principle of Deity and the Supreme Divine.
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our human Ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient,
--
He labours at the tasks her Ignorance sets,
Hidden in the cape of our mortality.
02.04 - The Kingdoms of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Tied to an instinct-driven Ignorance,
To find itself and find its hold on things.
--
In Ignorance she pursues the unfinished work,
For knowledge gropes, but meets not Wisdom's face.
--
The staring visage of her Ignorance,
The naked body of her poverty.
--
A fallen Ignorance in its covert night
Laboured to achieve its dumb unseemly work,
--
The Force that works by the light of Ignorance,
Her animal experiment began,
--
In Ignorance of the Self for ever one.
41.30
--
Only she had beaten out sparks of Ignorance;
Only the life could think and not the mind,
--
A gleam enclosed in a stone Ignorance.
42.34
02.04 - Two Sonnets of Shakespeare, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The end of Death, the death of Ignorance.
***
02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Protected by Ignorance as in a shell.
43.3
--
Ringed with the skies and seas of Ignorance
And kept it safe from Truth and Self and Light.
--
Life's cart finding no issue from Ignorance.
43.13
--
His knowledge a bright body of Ignorance,
He sees in all things strangely fashioned here
--
Watching the works of his own Ignorance,
Unknown, unfelt the mighty Witness lives
--
His knowledge dwells in the house of Ignorance;
His force nears not even once the Omnipotent,
--
That live upon a ledge in the Ignorance
And dare not look into the dangerous depths
--
Amid the figures of the Ignorance,
In the symbol pictures drawn by word and thought,
--
Even in our sceptic mind of Ignorance
A foresight comes of some immense release,
--
Its Knowledge to rescue an ancient Ignorance,
Its saviour light the inconscient universe.
02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
From where did you get this singular attitude towards the old Yogas and Yogis? Is the wisdom of the Vedanta and Tantra a small and trifling thing? Have then the sadhaks of this Asram attained to self-realisation and are they liberated Jivan-muktas, free from ego and Ignorance? If not, why then do you say, "it is not a very difficult stage", "their goal is not high", "is it such a long process?"
I have said that this Yoga was "new" because it aims at the integrality of the Divine in this world and not only beyond it and at a supramental realisation. But how does that justify a superior contempt for the spiritual realisation which is as much the aim of this Yoga as of any other?
--
Truth Purusha (supramental) and the Bliss Purusha; it says that one has to draw the physical self up into the vital, the vital into the mental, the mental into the Truth Self, the Truth Self into the Bliss Self and so attain perfection. But in this Yoga we become aware not only of this taking up but of a pouring down of the powers of the higher Self, so that there comes in the possibility of a descent of the Supramental Self and nature to dominate and change our present nature and turn it from nature of Ignorance into nature of Truth-Knowledge (and through the supramental into nature of Ananda) - this is the third or supramental transformation. It does not always go in this order, for with many the spiritual descent begins first in an imperfect way before the psychic is in front and in charge, but the psychic development has to be attained before a perfect and unhampered spiritual descent can take place, and the last or supramental change is impossible so long as the two first have not become full and complete. That's the whole matter, put as briefly as possible.
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The illumined caught by the snare of Ignorance,
Ethereal creatures drawn by body's lure
--
Here fallen, a slave of death and Ignorance,
To things deathless she is driven to aspire
--
To a dark eternity of Ignorance,
A quiver in an inert inconscient mass,
--
And seems a mute omnipotent Ignorance.
A might is with her that makes wonders true;
--
For even Ignorance there aspires to know
And shines with the lustre of a distant star;
--
Wherever Knowledge is Ignorance's twin.
All powers of Life towards their godhead tend
--
In a high state where Ignorance is no more,
Each movement is a wave of peace and bliss,
02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The seal of tears, the bond of Ignorance,
He turned to find that wide world-failure's cause.
--
And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;
The evil guarded at the roots of life
--
All knowledge was left a questioning Ignorance.
As from a womb obscure he saw emerge
--
He saw a city of ancient Ignorance
Founded upon a soil that knew not Light.
--
Lost in the circuits of the Ignorance.
A lie was there the truth and truth a lie.
02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Leaders of the cosmic Ignorance and unrest
And sponsors of sorrow and mortality
--
In Nature's titan embryo, Ignorance.
Then in a fatal and stupendous hour
--
It made an Ignorance of the all-wise Law;
It baffled the sure touch of life's hid sense,
--
That shield themselves with the covering Ignorance.
Offspring of the gulfs, agents of the shadowy Force,
--
And shattered the stereotypes of Ignorance.
Alive, breathing a deep spiritual breath,
02.09 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern French, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The queen upstairs is the higher consciousness. The king downstairs is the egoistic being in the lower consciousness. While it is dawn and daylight with the queen, it is night with the kinghe is just entering into sleep. The king sees dark 'Shadows closing him in, binding him downbonds of Ignorance imprisoning him in the ordinary life and consciousness. The queen, the higher power, is free of all that.
Both are being led towards a high divine destiny. But the ego-being is frightened, while the higher consciousness has no worry. And yet the lower consciousness is aflame; for its veins are flowing with a secret fire which its own sister has kindled in it. Ignorance harbours within its bosom a secret knowledge that is a reflection of the higher consciousness.
There are tranquil moments in the lower eternity that come from on high, from the queen. They do not belong to the king.
02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A rendezvous of Knowledge with Ignorance.
66.13
--
But all was still a mobile Ignorance;
Still Knowledge could not come and firmly grasp
--
To teach the Ignorance is her difficult charge,
Her thought starts from an original nescient Void
--
She takes for measuring-rod her Ignorance.
In her own domain a pontiff and a seer,
--
A prudent treasurer of its Ignorance,
It shrinks from adventure, blinks at glorious hope,
--
To save the world from Ignorance she came.
68.43
--
She throws a glittering robe on Ignorance.
68.63
--
Till all her knowledge seemed an Ignorance.
68.78
--
Our Ignorance is Wisdom’s chrysalis,
Our error weds new knowledge on its way,
--
Its aim to life, to Ignorance its close.
02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Our ancient Rishis speak of the supreme Light of lights, the Source of all the lights that burn here, the Light that is beyond darkness, on the other shore. Darkness is this world, the world of Ignorance, our earthly consciousness; this is a perception easily understandable. But in the mystic consciousness of a kind, darkness and light seem to be interchangeable. Darkness seems to be a form of light, nay even of a greater light.
It is said, the occultists say, that between the light of the day, that is to say, the light of the ordinary consciousness and the higher spiritual light, there is an interim world, an intermediate zone of consciousness. When one leaves the earthly day, the normal consciousness and goes within and to the heights, towards the other Light, one enters at first into a dark region (the selva oscura of Dante). Physically also, the scientists say today that when you leave the earth's atmosphere, from a certain height you no longer see the earthly light but you dive into a darkness where the sun does not shine in its glory as on earth. You see and feel the sunlight again when you approach the sun and are about to be consumed in its fires. In the same way, we are told that on the spiritual path too, the path of inner consciousness, when you leave the ordinary consciousness, when you lose that normal light and yet have not arrived at the other higher light you grope in an intermediary region of darkness. You have lost the lower knowledge and have not yet gained the higher knowledge, then you are in that uncertain world of greyness or darkness. Or it happens also that while in the comparatively faint light of the ordinary consciousness, you are suddenly confronted with the Superior Lightthrough some grace perhapsyou cannot stand the light and get blinded and see sheer darkness. Again, the infinite sky in its fathomless depth appears to the naked eye blue, deep blue, blue-black. Light concentrated, solidified, materialised becomes a speck of darkness to the human eye. Do we not say today that a particle of matter (consolidated darkness) is only a quantum of concentrated light-energy?
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its lights that combat Ignorance and Death.
In its vast ambit of ideal Space
--
Our human thought, servant of Ignorance.
An exile, labourer on this unsure globe
--
Even Nature's Ignorance is Truth's instrument;
Our struggling ego cannot change her course:
02.13 - In the Self of Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
An Ignorance on an uneasy throne
Travestied with a fortuitous sovereignty
--
A stage for the comedy of Ignorance.
The world seemed a long aeonic failure's scene:
--
Along the coasts of mortal Ignorance.
On its unstable and enormous breast
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we have said, a normally healthy society is a harmonious welding of these four elements. A society becomes diseased when only one member gets inflated and all-powerful at the expense of others or whenever there is an unholy alliance of some against the rest. Priest-craft, the Church militant, Fanaticism (religious or ideological), Inquisition are corruptions that show themselves when the first principle, the principle of Brahminhood, becomes exclusive and brings in arrogance and Ignorance. Similarly colonisation and imperialism of the type only too familiar to us are aberrations of the spirit that the second principle embodies the spirit of the Kshattriya. Likewise financial cartels, the industrial magnates, the profiteer, the arriviste are diseased growths in the economic body of a modern society which has forgotten the true Vaishya spirit that seeks to produce wealth in order to share and distribute fairly and equitably. The remedy of these ills society has suffered from is not the introduction of a fourth evil, the tyranny of the Fourth Estate of the proletariate. The Fourth was reduced, it is true, to a state of slavery and serfdom, of untouchability, at its reductio ad absurdum. The cure, we say, is not in blind revolt and an inauguration of the same evil under a new name and form, which means its perpetuation, but in the creation of a new life and soul, that can happen only with the creation of a new head and front Zeus-like that would give birth to the goddess of light and knowledge, inspirer of a true Brahminhood.
We repeat a fair and sure economic basis has to be found for the down-trodden, proletarian or other. For the proletariate is not the only unfortunate in the human society. There are whole groups of the unfortunate in the three other Estates also. Or perhaps if we like we can extend the meaning of the term "proletariate" and include in it all the less favoured sections of all the Four Orders.
03.01 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In my explanation of the universe I have put forward this cardinal fact of a spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here. It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the Supramental consciousness and the Supramental being, the Truth-Consciousness which is the integral consciousness of the spiritual being. Mind cannot be our last conscious expression because mind is fundamentally an Ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is only the Supramental
Truth-Consciousness that can bring us the true and whole SelfKnowledge and world-Knowledge; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and the fulfilment of our spiritual evolution.
--
Life, of conscious mind first in animal life and then fully in conscious and thinking man, the highest present achievement of evolutionary Nature. The achievement of mental being is at present her highest and tends to be regarded as her final work; but it is possible to conceive a still further step of the evolution: Nature may have in view beyond the imperfect mind of man a consciousness that passes out of the mind's Ignorance and possesses truth as its inherent right and nature. There is a truth-consciousness as it is called in the Veda, a supermind, as I have termed it, possessing Knowledge, not having to seek after it and constantly miss it. In one of the Upanishads a being of knowledge is stated to be the next step above the mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to attain the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be achieved as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she would be fulfilled and we could conceive of the perfection of life even here, its attainment of a full spiritual living even in this body or it may be in a perfected body. We could even speak of a divine life on earth; our human dream of perfectibility would be accomplished and at the same time the aspiration to a heaven on earth common to several religions and spiritual seers and thinkers.
The ascent of the human soul to the supreme Spirit is that soul's highest aim and necessity, for that is the supreme reality; but there can be too the descent of the Spirit and its powers into the world and that would justify the existence of the material world also, give a meaning, a divine purpose to the creation and solve its riddle. East and West could be reconciled in the pursuit of the highest and largest ideal, Spirit embrace Matter and Matter find its own true reality and the hidden Reality in all things in the Spirit.
03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the beginning, the sadhaka finds himself a divided personalityin his heart there is the awakening of aspiration, the divine touch, but with all its outward impulses, the physical consciousness remains subject to the control of old fixed habits under the sway of the lower nature. Ordinarily, man is an unconscious sinner, that is to say, he has no sense of the sins he commits. But he becomes a conscious sinner when he: reaches the level of which we are speaking. The conflicts, fears, agonies, compunctions in this stage have perhaps been nowhere more evident than in the life of the Christian seeker. In this state we know what to do but cannot do it the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. We want to do the right thing, we try to do it again and again, yet we fail every time. It is not that we fail only in respect of the movements of our heart and mind, in practice also we commit the same stupidities time and again. These stupiditiesand their name is legionare lust, anger, greed, Ignorance, vanity, envy, distrust, disobedience, revolt; repentance, constant repentance and earnest supplication for the divine grace that is the remedy, says the devout Christian.
But we, for ourselves, do not give any such supreme place to repentance. For, after all, it is a lower impulse, a vital impulse: as we call it; it does not allow the memory of the sin to be: forgotten; rather by dwelling upon it constantly, it keeps it alive, makes the impression of the sin all the more lurid. And not unoften does it lead to luxuriating in sinfulness Behind the sense of repentance is this consciousness, this idea that man is, by nature, corrupt, his sin is original. That is why the: Christian seeker has accepted sorrow and suffering, abasement and mortification as the indispensable conditions of his sadhana This calls to our mind a witty remark of Anatole France, that prince of humorists, that one could not be a lover of Christ unless one sinned the more one sinned, the more: could one grow in righteousness; the more the repentance, in other words, the more the divine grace.
We have said that this is not our path. The divine grace is a factwithout that nothing is possible. From one point of view, the divine grace is unconditioned. But it does not follow that the precedent of Jagai-Madhai is the invariable law of spiritual life. The law is rather this that the field must be ready, the being and the consciousness must get into a certain mould, attain certain order and disposition so that the descent of the Divine Grace, its manifestation and play may be possible. For, just as the divine grace is true, so it is equally true that the individual is essentially one with the Divine, sin and Ignorance are his external sloughs, identity with the Divine is his natural right. We, therefore, Jay equal stress on this hidden aspect of man, on the freedom of his will, on his personal effort which is the determining factor of his destiny. For in the field of Ignorance or half-knowledge, in the nether hemisphere of his consciousness, it is this power that directly builds up that ordered state of the being with whose support the divine grace can actualise itself and give a material shape to the integral fulfilment.
Hence the Mother gives the direction that though external lapses may be natural to our external nature, now that our inner consciousness has awakened, the vision and the earnestness to see and recognise our mistakes have developedassuming that this much of development has taken place in uswe must awake to the situation and be on the alert, we must bring such control to bear upon our vital impulses, upon our nervous centres as will prevent, for good and all, errors and stupidities from upsurging again and invading our physical self and our field of action. When we have reached this stage, we have acquired the capacity to ascend to another level of consciousness. It is then that we can lay the foundations of a new order in the worldit is then that along with the purification, the achievement will begin to take on a material form.
--
But we do not expect such a catastrophe. We have hope and confidence that the secret urge of Nature, the force of the Mahashakti will save man, individually and collectively, from Ignorance and foolishness, vouchsafe to him genuine good sense and the true inspiration.
The hour has come when a choice has to be made, radical and definitive. Lord, give us the strength to reject the falsehood and emerge in Thy truth, pure and worthy of Thy victory1943
03.01 - The Pursuit of the Unknowable, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A fruitful world-wide Ignorance foundered here;
Thought's long far-circling journey touched its close
--
The world's effort ceased convicted of Ignorance
Finding no sanction of supernal Light:
03.02 - The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The soul's Ignorance is slain but not the soul:
The zero covers an immortal face.
--
Knowledge and Ignorance could strive no more;
No longer could the titan Opposites,
--
To break earth's seal of Ignorance and death;
His nature's might seemed now an infant's grasp;
03.03 - Arjuna or the Ideal Disciple, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What makes a true disciple? For it is not everyone that can claim or be worthy of or meet the demands of the title. Disciplehood, like all great qualities, that is to say, qualities taken at their source and origin, is a function of the soul. Indeed, it is the soul itself coming up and asking for it'! native divine status; it is the call of the immortal in the mortal, the voice of the inmost being rising above the clamours and lures of the world, above the hungers and ties of one's own nature. When that rings out clear and unmistakable, the Divine reveals Himself as the Guru, the Path is shown and the initiation given. Even such a cry was Arjuna's when he said: iyaste ham sdhi mm twam prapannamit is a most poignant utterance in which the whole being bursts forth as it were, and delivers itself of all that it needs and of all that it gives. It needs the Illumination: it can no longer bear the darkness and confusion of Ignorance in which it is entangled; and it gives itself whole and entire, absolutely and without reserve, throws itself simply at the mercy of the Divine. Arjuna fulfils, as very few can so completely, the fundamental conditions the sine qua nonof discipleship.
A certain modern critic, however, demurs. He asks why Arjuna was chosen in preference to Yudhisthira and doubts the wisdom and justice of the choice (made by Sri Krishna or the author of the Gita). Is not the eldest of the Pandavas also the best? He possesses in every way a superior dhra. He has knowledge and wisdom; he is free from passions, calm and self-controlled; he always acts according to the dictates of what is right and true. He is not swayed by the impulses of the moment or by considerations relating to his personal self; serene and unruffled he seeks to fashion his conduct by the highest possible standard available to him. That is why he is called dharmarja. If such a one is not to be considered as an ideal disciple, who else can be?
03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The history of the emancipation of the different psychological domains in man is an interesting and instructive study. For the heart and the mind too were not always free and autonomous. An old-world consciousness was ruled or inspired by another faculty the religious sense. It is a sense, a faculty that has its seat neither in the mind nor even in the heart proper. Some would say it is in an inmost or topmost region, the Self, while others would relegate it to something quite the opposite, the lowest and most external strand in the human consciousness, viz., that of unconsciousness or infra-consciousness, Ignorance, fear, superstition.
The domination of the religious sense reached its apogee in the Middle Ages when it almost swallowed up and annihilated all other faculties and movements in man. The end of that epoch and the first beginnings of the Modern Age were signalised by the Mind, i.e. the Reason, declaring its independence. This was the Renaissance; and it was then that the seed was sown of modern science and scientism.
03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Where knowledge is a seeking Ignorance,
Life's steps a stumbling series without suit,
--
It needed not a sheath of Ignorance.
Then from the trance of that tremendous clasp
03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The human frame is the abode of the gods; it is a temple of God, as we all know. But the most significant thing about it is that the gods alone do not dwell there: all being, all creatures crowd there, even the ungodly and the undivine. The Pashu (the animal), the Pishacha (the demon), the Asura (the Titan), and the Deva (the god), all find comfortable lodging in itthere are many chambers indeed in this mansion of the Lord. Man was made after the image of God and yet Lucifer had access into that tabernacle and all his entire host with him. This duality of the divine and the undivine, the characteristic mark of human nature as it is, presents a field and a labour through which man's progress has to be worked out. The soul, the divine flame, has, been placed in Ignorance, that is to say, what is apparent Ignorance, the frame of Matter, just because this Matter in Ignorance is to be smelted, purified, given its original and intrinsic substance, shape and character. The human person in its actual form is not obviously something absolutely perfect and divine. The type, the norm it represents is divine, but it has been overlaid with all obscure and base elementsit has to be washed and cleaned thoroughly, smelted and reconditioned. The dark ungodly elements mar and vitiate; they must be removed on the one hand, but on the other, they point out and test the salvaging work that has to be done and is being done. Man is always at the crossroads. This is his especial difficulty and this is also his unique opportunity. His consciousness has a double valency, in contradistinction to the animal's which is, it can be said, monovalent, in that it is amoral, has not the sense of divided loyalty and hence the merit of choice. The movements of the animal follow a fixed stereotyped pattern; it has not got to deviate from the beaten track of its instincts. But man with his sense of the moral, of the good, of the progressive is at every step of his life faced with a dilemma, has to pause at a parting of the ways, always looks before and after and is puzzled at a cas de conscience. That, we have said, has been made for him the condition of growth, of a conscious and willed change with an ever-increasing tempo towards perfect perfection. That furnishes the occasion and circumstance by which he rises to divinity itself, becomes the Divine. He becomes the Divine thus not merely in the own home of the Divine, but on all the levels of the manifestation: all the planes of consciousness with all the hierarchy of beingspowers and personalitiesfind a new play of harmony, a supreme and global fulfilment in the transfigured human vehicle. The frame itself that encases the human consciousness acts as a living condenser: the very contour in its definiteness seems to exert a pressure towards an ever larger and higher synthesis, it may be compared to a kind of field office (Einsteinian, for example) that controls, regulates, moves and configurates all elements within its range. The human frame even as a frame possesses a magic virtue.
Vaishnavism sees the Divine as a human person, the human person par excellence. Krishna's body is a radiant form of consciousness (cinmaya), no doubt, but it is as definite, determinate, and concrete as the physical body, it is the physical itself but in its true substance. And its exquisiteness consists in its being human in form. The Vedantin's Maya does not touch it, it is beyond the illusory consciousness. For they say Goloka stands above Brahmaloka.
03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He fabricates signs of the Real in Ignorance.
He has hitched his mortal error to Truth's star.
--
A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore.
Assigned to meet the cosmic mystery
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A question is asked, where, at what stage or level of Involution does the principle of exclusive concentration (the principle of Ignorance) come in? If, as Sri Aurobindo says, it comes subsequently at a later stage, where was it then before? Was it not in the Absolute Reality itself? There can be nothing that is not inherent in the Absolute Reality. We all know, nothing comes out of nothing. Then, if it is in the original Reality already, why should it come out at a later stage and not be active from the very beginning? This standpoint seems to have been anticipated by some schools (Visishtadwaita Vedanta, for example) who describe in consequence the Reality (Brahman) as consisting, when viewed as a totality, of both Knowledge and Ignorancecit-acit; the Ignorance is a sort of peripheral reality not touching or affecting the Knowledge, but connected with or depending upon the nuclear reality, something like the physical body coexisting with and depending on the soul or self. One can also remember in this connection the Purusha-Prakriti relation in Sankhya. Such a standpoint, I suppose, is the precursor or philosophical background of what is well known as the Manichean principle.
Sri Aurobindo's view is different. It is something like this I am putting the thing as simply as possible, without entering into details or mysteries that merely confuse the brain. The Absolute Reality contains all, nothing can be outside it, pain and sin and all; true. But these do not exist as such in the supreme status, they are resolved each into its ultimate and fundamental force of consciousness. When we say I all things, whatever they are, exist in the Divine Consciousness, the Absolute, we have an idea that they exist there as they do here as objects or entities; it goes without saying, they do not. Naturally we have to make a distinction between things of Knowledge and things of Ignorance. Although there is a gradation between the twoKnowledge rolls or wraps itself gradually into Ignorance and Ignorance unrolls or unfolds itself slowly into Knowledgestill in the Divine Consciousness things of Knowledge alone exist, things of Ignorance cannot be said to exist there on the same title, because, as I have said, the original truths of things alone are therenot their derivations and deformations. One can say, indeed, that in the supreme Light darkness exists as a possibility; but this is only a figure of speech. Possibility does not mean that it is there like a seedor even a chromosome rodto sprout and grow. Possibility really means just a chance of the consciousness acting in a certain way, developing in a particular direction under certain conditions.
Matter exists in the absolute Consciousness, not as Matter but as its fundamental substratum, as that radical mode of being or consciousness which by the devolution of consciousness and the interaction of Knowledge and Ignorance in the end works itself out as Matter. So also with regard to Life and with regard to Mind. If things are to exist in the highest status of consciousness, the Divine Consciousness, exactly as they exist now, there would be no point or meaning in creation or manifestation. Manifestation or creation does not mean merely unveiling or unrolling in the sense of unpacking. It means a gradual shift in the stress of consciousness, giving it a particular mode of action.
The unrolling or Involution is the path traced by consciousness in its changing modes of concentration. The principle of concentration is inherent in consciousness. Sri Aurobindo speaks of four modes or degrees of this concentration: (I) the essential, (2) the integral, (3) the total or global and (4) the separative. The first is a sole in-dwelling or an entire absorption in the essence of its own being it is the superconscient Silence, at one end, and the Inconscience, at the other. The second is the total Sachchidananda, the supramental concentration; the third, multiple or totalising overmental awareness; the fourth is the concentration of Ignorance. All the four, however, form the integral play of one indivisible consciousness.
Here we come to the very heart of the mystery. As we have put it thus far, the process of Involution would appear as a series of stages in a descending order, a movement along a vertical line, as it were, one stage following another, more or less separate from each other, the lower being ever more ignorant, more separative, more exclusive. But this is not the whole picture. At each lower stage the higher is not merely high above, but also comes down and stands behind or becomes immanent in the lower. Along with the vertical movement there is also a horizontal movement. In other words, even when we are sunk in the lowest stratum of Ignorancein the domain of Matterwe have also there all the other strands behind, even the very highest, not merely as passive or neutral entities, but as dynamic agents exerting their living pressure to the full. Indeed the Ignorance is not mere Ignorance, but Knowledge itself, the very highest Knowledge, but in a particular mode of activity. What appears ignorant is full of a secret Knowledgeit is just the outer surface, the facet that appears as its opposite because of a particular manner of concentration, a total self-abandonment in the object of Knowledge. That Knowledge stands revealed if the mask is put away, that is to say, if we get behind, If we release the exclusiveness of the concentration. This release or getting behind does not mean necessarily the dissolution of the status itself for it is the pressure from behind, the concentration of the hidden consciousness that creates the status and its truth-forms; with the exclusiveness goes away only the twist, the aberration produced by it. When the consciousness withdraws from its mode and field of exclusive concentration, it need not concentrate again on the withdrawal only, it can be an inclusive concentration also embracing both the status the frontal and the behind. Both can be held together in one single movement of consciousness possessing the double function of projection and comprehensionprajna and vijna.
Such a synthetic poise is not a mere theoretical possibility: it is an actuality and is being demonstrated by the fact of evolution. The partial release of the absolutely exclusive concentration of consciousness in Matter has given rise to Life which is a double poise: Life plays in and through Matter and has not dissolved Matter. Likewise a further release of concentration has given birth to Mind which still bases itself upon and is woven into Life and Matter. The change-over from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to super-consciousness is the movement of consciousness from a unilateral towards an ever widening multiple poise and functioning of concentration.
The exclusive concentration was the logical and inevitable final term of a movement of separativity and exteriorisation. It had its necessity and utility. Its special function was utilised by Nature for precision and perfection in details of execution in the most material order of reality. Indeed, what can be more exact and accurate than the laws of physics, the mathematical laws that govern the movements of the material particles? Furthermore, if we look at the scientist himself, do we not find in him an apt image of the same phenomenon? A scientist means a specialist the more specialised and restricted his view, the surer he is likely to be in his particular domain. And specialised knowledge means a withdrawal from other fields and viewpoints of knowledge, an Ignorance of them. Likewise, a workman who moulds the head of a pin is all concentrated upon that single point of existencehe forgets the whole world and himself in that act whose perfect execution seems to depend upon the measure of his self-oblivion. But evidently this is not bound to be so. A one-pointed self-absorption that is Ignoranceis certainly an effective way of dealing with material objectsthings of Ignorance; but it is not the only way. It is a way or mechanism adopted by Nature in a certain status under certain conditions. One need not always forget oneself in the act in order to do the act perfectly. An unconscious instinctive act is not always best doneit can be done best consciously, intuitively. A wider knowledge, a greater acquaintance with objects and facts and truths of other domains too is being more and more insisted upon as a surer basis of specialisation. The pinpointed (one might almost say geometrically pointed) consciousness in Matter that resolves itself into unconsciousness acts perfectly but blindly; the vast consciousness also acts there with absolute perfection but consciouslyconscious in the highest degree.
As we have said, super-consciousness does not confine itself to the supreme status alone, to the domain of pure infinity, but it comes down and embraces the most inferior status too, the status of the finite. Precisely because it is infinity, it is not bound to its infinity but can express its infinity in and through infinite limits.
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We can, however, make a distinction between limitation and delimitation or individuation. Limitation is a movement of Ignorance: it is the result of exclusive concentration. It creates separateness, forgets the unity. Delimitation, on the contrary, is a movement of knowledge, of pure consciousness dynamic. It creates diversity, multiplicity maintained in unity.
It is to be added that the limitation in Ignorance is after all apparent; that does not mean it is unreal or illusory, in the sense of Mayavada. Here is the distinction: Mayavada holds all formation as my, illusory, makes no difference between limitation and delimitation: according to it, all delimitation is ignorant and illusory limitation; none has real or essential existence. In Sri Aurobindo's view limitation is real, as also delimitation: only the former is a temporary reality, it is the latter itself but under certain conditions. Again, Mayavada speaks of the Brahman, the Absolute or Transcendent as the sole and true reality: it is the Stable, the Unmoving, the utter Unity cancelling, negating all movement and multiplicity. Sri Aurobindo views the highest reality as dynamic also, permeating the multiplicity and becoming the multiplicity, becoming or existing as the multiplicity in a movement of Knowledge, becoming and appearing also at first in a movement and mode of Ignorance as the material multiplicity but gradually transmuting this ignorant multiplicity into a movement and embodiment of Knowledge. For the Knowledge was always there in and behind the Ignorance, secretly informing and guiding, moulding and transforming it.
Thus, for example, we would not say pain is an illusion, because Ananda is the root of all and is the All. We say pain is also a reality: it is a temporary and localised form of Ananda, Ananda muted and deformed, under certain stresses and conditions. Ananda is there always but not away and aloof from pain; it is not the opposite or the negation of pain. Nor is pain a superimposition, as something foreign, upon Ananda, so that when it passes away, like a cloud, Ananda appears automatically in its full glory. We consider pain as a formation of Ananda, it is the first result of an effort of consciousness to hold Ananda in and through a form, but it need not and cannot be the last consummation.
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The psychological atmosphere in India is of a luminous tenuity. Here, it appears, the veil between this world and the other has so thinned away that the two meet and interpenetrate easily and freely; immersed in one, you can at the same time ba the in the other. Owing to the cumulative effect of the sadhana of her saints and sages who appeared in countless number down countless ages, or, perhaps, owing to the grace of a descent into her consciousness, or some immanence there, of the breath and light of a Superior World, India has developed and possesses, already prepared, a magnetic field, a luminous zone of spiritual consciousness; and to enter into it the Indian has only to turn aside, to go round a corner, to take one step forward. However thick and hard the crust of the Ignorance may lie upon the Indian soul, once that soul awakes and is upon the path, it finds itself on a familiar ground; it is in a domain which it has the impression of having frequented often and anon and for long.
But in Europe the division between this world and the other, in the inner consciousness of the people, is more rigorous, a thick wall divides the two and to pass from the one to the other demands a violent break, a total revolution; and even when the Rubicon is crossed, one feels oneself in unfamiliar surroundings, moving in a shadowy world, and with the uncertain and faltering steps of a child.
03.05 - The World is One, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the higher scheme of Nature, the next evolutionary status that is being forged,itis unity, harmony that is insisted upon, for that is the very basis of the new creation: whatever militates against that, whatever creates division and disruption must be banned and ruthlessly eschewed. In the reality of things, in the actual life that man lives, it will be found that on the whole, things that separate are less numerous and insistent than those which unite, man and man and nation and nation, if each one simply lives and lets live: on the contrary, it is the points of concordance and mutuality that abound. A certain knot or twist in the mind makes all the difference: it brings in the Ignorance, selfishness, blind passiona possession by the dark forces of atavism that makes the mischief.
We ask for freedom, liberty of the individual, self-determinationwell and good. But that does not mean the licence to do as one pleases, impelled by one's irrational idiosyncrasies. The individual must be truly individual, not a fractional being, the self must be the real self, not a shadow or surface formulation in order to have the full right to unfettered movement. Liberty, yes; but that means liberty for all which means again the other two terms of the great trinity, equality and fraternity. Individuality, yes; that means every individuality, in other words, solidarity. The two sides of the equation must be given equal value and equal emphasis. If the stress upon one leads to Nazism, Fascism or Stalinism, steam-rollered uniformity or streamlined regimentation, the death of the individual, the other emphasis leads to disintegration and disruption, to the same end in a different way. But in the world of today, after the victory in the last war over the Nazi conception of humanity, it seems as though the spirit of disruption has gone abroad, human consciousness has been atom-bombed into flying fragments; so we have the spectacle of all manner of parochialism pullulating on the earth, regional and ideologicalimperial blocs, nations, groups, parties have chequered ad infinitum, have balkanised human commonalty.
03.07 - Some Thoughts on the Unthinkable, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine does not compel, he persuades. The individual soul is born out of the Divine and forms a part and parcel of the Divine, but it has been given freedomfreedom to live and move as it chooses. And although the Divine Will in the cosmos acts as a continuous pressure in the form of the evolutionary urge pushing inferior Nature gradually towards an unfolding of the Divine's own Consciousness and Nature, inherent in it and overarching it, yet it is a force that lies in the background and its fulfilment is only eventual. There is a long interim period of a full five-act drama in which the soul, through gathering experiences, freely moves and explores and seeks, falters and errs, and finally comes to its own; it comes to realise that the freedom it had, even the freedom to descend and enter into the region of the Ignorance, was accorded to it for the play of self-choice, for the joy of self-discovery, for the delight of self-surrender and self-fulfilment.
The Divine has two aspects in its manifestation, the one in which it is the All, the infinite and equal Brahman, spread wide as to include the two extremes, Knowledge and Ignorance, Birth and Death, impartially containing or consisting of the dualitiesit is the Reality that is; the other is the reality that becomesit is not the All, but the Over-All, the Transcendent that manifests and is being embodied; it is not the duality of Knowledge and Ignorance, but Supra-knowledge; it is not the duality of Birth and Death, but Immortality; it is the Divine in its own Truth-Nature that lies on one side beyond and behind, at the origin, and on the other, involved and submerged in the play of the All and gradually emerging out of the All, transforming it and giving it a concrete form even in the likeness of the original transcendent supra-Nature.
Both the Divines are to be envisaged and established in one single undivided realisation the static and equal and impartial Brahman forming the basis, the unshakable calm and absolute freedom, and the dynamic emergent Brahman revealing more and more in the manifested creation a definite divine Purpose and Aim and Fulfilment, The one accepts and contains everything, for it is everything; the other, on the basis of that wide acceptation, chooses and selects, keeps back or dissolves and annihilates, in the progression of its increasing light, the darkness, the Ignorance that form one part of the dual Nature.
The actual manifestation, the world as it stands, is in the hands of the Undivine. The Divine has to establish his reign through a working out of struggling and combating forces. The evil that man does or suffers from comes from his slavery to the Undivine: likewise the good that he is capable of doing or receiving is the sign of his freedom from that slavery and of his openness to the secret Divine.
The Undivine means the obscure separativeness of the Ignorance, the darkness of Inferior Nature. The Divine, from his superior status, has cast himself down and is scattered and concretised as the ignorant creation, he has consented to be degraded and imbedded into Matter, in order to quicken Matter gradually, to illumine and transform it and invest it with the Divine's own glory. The whole dynamics of creation consists in the interaction of these two forces, one apparent and pragmatic and patent, the other behind and involved and latent. The elements and forces of the Ignorance, while they appear to move in the cycles of their inexorable Law, are gradually led by the stress of the involved Spirit, to evolve and change, and finally express and incarnate that which it now negates, that which is the Spirit unveiled in its pristine au thenticity.
A day will come when it is the Divine that will reign upon earth, the Divine in his transcendent Delight and Knowledge and Power and Purity, and human life shall embody the Law of the Truth.
03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Shakespeare himself records, in two other of his major dramas, the mystery of two such stages preceding the one he deals with in Hamlet: one in Macbeth and the other in King Lear. Indeed these three mighty creations form a triology with the Karma of the human soul at different crises as its theme. King Lear represents human consciousness low down in the scale of evolution, almost at its starta nature primitive and barbarian. We seem to go back into a prehistoric world, a paleolithic age the domain of utter Ignorance, of vulgar greed and hunger, where one sees the rank play of a raw and crude and aboriginal nature. Man is here simply the eater, a true brother of the rest of the animal kind, one in blood with the tiger and the wolf. He is the sheer biological or vital being the Rakshasainto whom the light of the Mind has not yet descended, at least not to the extent of effecting an appreciable change in his original and primitive texture. It is a world ruled by the mode of tamas. 1
In Macbeth we move up one step farther; human consciousness attains here a higher level. Something of the mental being enters into the purely vital creature: instead of the Eater, the man with the mere stomach, we have here the Ruler, the Tyrant, the human being with its will and its arms that execute the will: the dominating motive is no longer hunger and greed and cruelty for cruelty's sake, but power and position and lordship, and the driving force, not blind passion and dark furysheer unconsciousness but deliberate resolution, foreseeing calculation and steady purposiveness; the Rakshasa gives place to the Asura. The Asura is the incarnation of conscious egotism, the will to dominate, to be the sole master and monarch; he is the self-aggrandising vaulting ambition. He does not seek to possess things for their own sake, not so much to enjoy them as to hold them as symbols of his royalty, of his personal worth and majesty. In Macbeth we have the world of the Asuraa creation of the mode of rajas.
03.10 - The Mission of Buddhism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
They speak of the coming of a new Buddha (Maitreya) with the close of the cycle now, ushering another cycle of new growth and achievement. It is said also that humanity has reached its apex, a great change-over is inevitable: seers and savants have declared that man will have to surpass himself and become superman in order to fulfil what was expected of him since his advent upon earth. If we say that the preparation for such a consummation was taken up at the last stage by the Buddha and Buddhism, and the Buddhistic inspiration, we will not be wrong. It was a cycle of ascending tapasya for the human vehicle: it was a seeking for the pure spirit which meant a clearance of the many Ignorances that shrouded it. It was also an urge of the spirit to encompass in its fold a larger and larger circle of humanity: it meant that the spiritual consciousness is no more an aristocratic or hermetic virtue, but a need in which the people, the large mass, have also their share, maybe in varying degrees.
A new humanity broad-based to encompass the whole earth, expressing and embodying the light and power and joy of spiritual heights, forming a happy world state, may very well announce in the new age the descent of a supreme truth and principle of existence here below.
03.14 - Mater Dolorosa, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet the solution need not be a total rejection and transcendence of Nature. For what is ignored in this view is Nature's dual reality. In one form, the inferior (apar), Nature means the Law of Ignoranceof pain and misery and death; but in another form, the superior (par), Nature's is the Law of Knowledge, that is to say, of happiness, immunity and immortality, not elsewhere in another world and in a transcendent consciousness, but here below on the physical earth in a physical body.
The whole question then is thishow far has this Higher Nature been a reality with us, to what extent do we live and move and have our being in it. It is when the normal existence, our body, our life and our mentality have all adopted and absorbed the substance of the Higher Prakriti and become it, when all the modes of Inferior Prakriti have been discarded and annihilated, or rather, have been purified and made to grow into the modes of the Higher Prakriti, that our terrestrial life can become a thing of absolute beauty and perfect perfection.
03.15 - Towards the Future, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This world, this material existence is to be transmuted the portion of earthly human existence at least, with which we are most concerned. It is at present made of Ignorance and sorrow and incapacity-composed of the particles of these entities; poor and sorry as they are, these have to be replaced by entities of light and joy and love, of peace and strength and wideness. Well, it is a transmutation or transubstantiation of the kind which Nature has already attempted as an experiment; I am referring to the alchemy of fossilisation. The present human formation must be dipped and soaked-and held under high pressure in an environment of the desired material or materials that one has in view.
Such an environment does exist. It is pressing from within or from above and is heading towards a resultant material action. It is an awakened dynamic spiritual reality which awaits and is working for its supreme and inevitable destiny.
03.17 - The Souls Odyssey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man, in his terrestrial body, although fallen, because shrouded and diverted from his central being of light and fire, is yet not, as I have said, wholly forsaken and cut adrift. He always carries within him that radiant core through all the peregrinations of earthly sojourn. And though the frontal consciousness, the physical memory has no contact with it, there is a stream of inner consciousness that continues to maintain the link. That is the silver lining to the dark cloud that envelops and engulfs our normal life. And that is why at timesnot unoften there occurs a crack, a fissure in the crust of our earthly nature of Ignorance and a tongue of flame leaps outone or other perhaps of the seven sisters of which the Upanishad speaks. And then a mere man becomes a saint, a seer, a poet, a prophet, a hero. This is the flaming godhead whom we cherish within, Agni, the leader of our progressive life, the great Sacrifice, the child whom we nourish, birth after birth, by all that we experience and do and achieve. To live normally and naturally in that fiery elementlike the legendary Salamanderto mould one's consciousness and being, one's substance and constitution, even the entire cellular organisation into the radiant truth is the goal of man's highest aspiration, the ultimate end of Nature's evolutionary urge and the cycle of rebirth.
Wordsworth: Ode on the Intimations of Immortality
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Light as it descends from its own home above to the lower levels of our being expresses itself no doubt in one way, but also gets diminished, modified, even deformed in another respect. The work of purification certainly goes on and until that is complete and there comes the fullest expression, it will continue. The action of light on the physical plane, for example, on the body of the Cosmic Being is so blurred and confusing apparently that it looks almost like the action of Darkness. And yet the Dark Night of the soul is not simply the obscurity of Ignorance. It is only the mud that lay diffused or settled in the being which has come up in its gathered mass in the process of churning and cleaning and appears like an obscure screen.
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04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Preferring the dark Ignorance of the fall.
Among the many who came drawn to her
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The dynamic becoming, becoming a power and personality of the omnipotent Divine, is a secret well known to the Yogis and mystics. Only it has not been worked out in all its implications, not given the full value and importance rightfully due to it. The reason is that although the principle was discovered and admitted, the proper key had not been found that could release and manipulate the Energy at its highest potential and largest amplitude. Because the major tendency in the spiritual man till now has been rather to follow the path of nivtti than the path of pravtti, this latter path being more or less identified with the path of Ignorance. But there is a higher line of pravtti which means the manifestation of the Divine, not merely the expression of the inferior Nature.
II
04.03 - The Call to the Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He loves the Ignorance fathering his pain.
A spell is laid upon his glorious strengths;
04.05 - The Freedom and the Force of the Spirit, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The ordinary average man is part and parcel of Nature's movement and his life is almost wholly moulded by circumstances: he has not developed an independent inner being that can react against the universal Nature's current, that is to say, the Nature as it is, as it is actually and dynamically expressed. He is the creature, described graphically in the Gita, as being moved helplessly on the circling wheel of Ignorance.2 But even among the average men there are many who are called men of will, they are not entirely submerged in Nature's current, but endeavour to have their own way even against that current. Their psycho-vital, aided often by their physical consciousness, has an independent formation, being a strong centre of self-driven force, and can impress upon the outer Nature and circumstances its own pattern and disposition. Naturally, all depends upon the degree and character of that consciousness.
But the true secret of the power to control and guide Nature's dispensation lies along a different line, not along the line of the normal activity of the mental and vital and physical consciousness. Body and life and mind belong after all, at least are closely affiliated, to one's environmental consciousness; they are indeed part of the circumstances in which one is born and lives and moves. It is when one bypasses them or passes through them beyond into one's soul, into one's true being and divine personality that one at last crosses mortality and attains immortalitymtyum trtv. . .amtam anute.3
04.06 - To Be or Not to Be, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Brahmin is he who represents in his nature and character the principle and movement of knowledge, of comprehension and inclusion, of peace and harmonyall the qualities that are termed sttwic. A Brahmin does not fight, the very build of his consciousness prevents him from wounding and hurting; he has no enemy; even if he is attacked or killed, he does not raise his arm to protect himself (although Ramakrishna would prescribe even for him a modified or mollified mode of resisting the evil, hissing at least if not biting). The Biblical injunction, we know, is to present the other cheek too to the smiter. This is for those who follow the Brahminical discipline. But a Kshatriya, who in his nature and consciousness is a warrior, has another dharma; he is the armed guard of knowledge and truth, he is strength and force. He has to resist the evil in the name of the Lord, he has to raise his arm to strike. He is the instrument of Rudra and Mahakali. Does not the mighty goddess declare I draw the bow for Rudra, I hurl the arrow to slay the hater of the truth?4 If the Kshatriya does not follow his own dharma, but seeks to imitate the Brahmin, he brings about a confusion liable to disintegrate the society, he is then un-Aryan, inglorious, unworthy of heaven, deserving all the epithets which Sri Krishna heaped upon the dejected, depressed and confused Arjuna. So long as the world is held by brute force, so long as there is the sway of evil power over the material earth and the physical body, there will be the need to resist it physically: if I do not do it, other instruments will be found. I may say like Arjuna, overwhelmed with pity and grief, I shall not fight, but God and the cosmic deities may refuse my refusal and compel me to do what in my Ignorance and wrong headedness I would not like to do.
Rig Veda, IX. 126
04.07 - Readings in Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To Be or Not to Be At the Origin of Ignorance
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part FourReadings in Savitri
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The deepest and the most fundamental mystery of the human consciousness (and in fact of the earth consciousness) is not that there is an unregenerate aboriginal being there as its bed-rock, a being made of the very stuff of Ignorance and I inconscience and inertia that is Matter: it is this that the I submerged being is not merely dead matter, but a concentrated, a solidified flame, as it were, a suppressed aspiration that burns inwardly, all the more violent because it is not articulate and in the open. The aboriginal is that which harbours in its womb the original being. That is the Inconscient Godhead, the Divinity in painMater Dolorosa the Divine Being who lost himself totally when transmuted into Matter and yet is harassed always by the oestrus of a secret flame driving it to know itself, to find itself, to be itself again. It is Rudra, the Energy coiled up in Matter and forging ahead towards a progressive evolution in light and consciousness. That is what Savitri, the universal Divine Grace become material and human, finds at the core of her being, the field and centre of concentrated struggle, a millennial aspiration petrified, a grief of ages congealed, a divinity lone and benumbed in a trance. This divinity has to awake and labour. The god has to be cruel to himself, for his divinity demands that he must surpass himself, he cannot abdicate, let Nature go her own way, the inferior path of ease and escape. The godhead must exercise its full authority, exert all its pressure upon itselftapas taptv and by this heat of incubation release the energy that leads towards the light and the high fulfilment. In the meanwhile, the task is not easy. The divine sweetness and solicitude lights upon this hardened divinity: but the inertia of the Inconscient, the 'Pani', hides still the light within its rocky cave and would not deliver it. The Divine Grace, mellow with all the tears of love and sympathy and tenderness she has gathered for the labouring godhead, has pity for the hard lot of a humanity stone-bound to the material life, yet yearning and surging towards freedom. The godhead is not consoled or appeased until that freedom is achieved and light and immortality released. The Grace is working slowly, laboriously perhaps but surely to that end: the stone will wear down and melt one day. Is that fateful day come?
That is the meaning of human life, the significance of even the very ordinary human life. It is the field of a dire debate, a fierce question, a constant struggle between the two opposing or rather polar forces, the will or aspiration to be and the will of inertia not to be the friction, to use a Vedic image, of the two batons of the holy sacrificial wood, arani out of which the flame is to leap forth. The pain and suffering men are subject to in this unhappy vale of tears physical illness and incapacity, vital frustration or mental confusionare symbols and expressions of a deeper fundamental Pain. That pain is the pain of labour, the travail for the birth and incarnation of a godhead asleep or dead. Indeed, the sufferings and ills of life are themselves powerful instruments. They inevitably lead to the Bliss, they are the fuel that kindles, quickens and increases the Fire of Ecstasy that is to blaze up on the day of victory in the full and integral spiritual consciousness. The round of ordinary life is not vain or meaningless: its petty innocent-looking moments and events are the steps of the marching Divinity. Even the commonest life is the holy sacrificial rite progressing, through the oblations of our experiences, bitter or sweet, towards the revelation and establishment of the immortal godhead in man.
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But the task is not easy. The flesh is weak: it is incapable of holding or receiving the breath of immortality. Not only so, it has a positive aversion, a bad will: it is refractory, antipa thetic to the touch of the spirit. Matter is dull and dumb, dark and obdurate: mortality loves and clings jealously and exclusively to its mortal home. The earthly being does not know, cannot appreciate the gift, the boon that is brought to him, to his very door: he has only to receive and accept in order to be saved out of all Ignorance and grief, impotence and death. The Divine Mother has forgotten herself, has made herself as small and as close and native to earth as any earthly creature, like anyone of us, taken upon herself all limitations and indignities, the entire burden of an earthly life, graced with her presence this mortal atmosphere. But
Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change;
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To Be or Not to Be At the Origin of Ignorance
04.09 - Values Higher and Lower, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The balance is upset exactly when we say that the higher depends on the lower or that it comes after. Not only so, the statement is likely to involve an error, a mistaken view. If one has to make a distinction between higher and lower, inner and outer, it will be nearer the truth and fact to say that the lower depends on the higher, it is the inner reality that upholds and inspires the outer form: without this inner cohesive deity all the external frame would fall to pieces. It is not the contingencies of time and circumstances, of day-to-day existence that determine the nature and form of power of the soul and spirit. It is the pressure of the Inner Being, antarym, that brings about the pattern and organisation of the outer life. At the summit of being, at the absolute point of consciousness the two are identical, absolutely one and the same. In the lower ranges as manifestation and variation begin the two maintain their union and harmony and mutuality so long as the consciousness retains its purity and the being is not invaded by Ignorance. Ignorance means the gradual predominance of the outer and the lower, till it reaches its last point in Inconscience where Matter is the only reality and everything is made to stand and depend on the grossest reality.
Even then, even from that nadir, let us consider things a little more closely. We have still consciousness left in us as human beings. Now, because 'man has a body and because he has to live and move in physical surroundings and circumstances, therefore body and physical conditions must necessarily come to his consciousness first in importancethis is not a valid argument nor a statement of fact. For man has and is something else besides: and this something else, in other words, the spiritual being, is quite a free and independent entity and can act as it wills ignoring and ignorant of the body and its circumstances. Whether one is poor or rich, successful or frustrated, happy or unhappy, one can always listen and follow the call of the Spirit.
04.10 - To the Heights-X, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Erring in the double darkness of Ignorance and ill-will,
Seeking remedy and refuge from evil
04.15 - To the Heights-XV (God the Supreme Mystery), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
He is our own Self, ourselves beyond the Ignorance and the
bondage of the moment.
04.20 - To the Heights-XX, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Bends down to our mortality held fast in pain and Ignorance-
A wide quietude suffuses and masters the heat and turmoil of the senses,
04.22 - To the Heights-XXII, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And the scales of Ignorance fell away!
The enraptured contemplation of thy embodiment
04.25 - To the Heights-XXV, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
through aeons of Ignorance
are now smoothed out, and with the freshness of a morning life
04.31 - To the Heights-XXXI, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Entered the prison of Ignorance and pain and grief
And became the mortals that we are-
04.37 - To the Heights-XXXVII, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And the self-will of Ignorance
Feel it as the dread devouring Flame.
05.01 - At the Origin of Ignorance, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:05.01 - At the Origin of Ignorance
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part FiveAt the Origin of Ignorance
At the Origin of Ignorance
The Divine Consciousness, basically and essentially one and unique, has inherent in it four cardinal attributesprinciples of its modulation, modes of its vibrationdeveloping into or appearing as four aspects and personalities. They are Light, Force, Delight and Knowledge. Originally and in the supreme status the four movements are one and indivisible and form one indissoluble identity with the Divine's pure essence and absolute unity. The differentiation or variability there in the Immutable is a play immanent in the integral self-nature of the Supreme. The one and the many form on that level a single entity, an undivided whole: the unity running in and through and holding the multiplicity and the multiplicity being the playfulness of the unity. Multiplicity, however, implies freedom of movement in the Unique. In other words, the very character of variability is the absolute freedom of the variables; the play consists precisely in the free choice and self-determination of the partners, the differentiated units. For a formation in the Divine Consciousness, an individualised formulation of its being must necessarily have the Divine's own freedom. Now, the result of this freedom is somewhat unexpected, to put it in the human way, that is to say, it was not explicit at that point, in that field of consciousness. For the freedom, in the normal course of its play, reached a degree or arrived at a mode which brought about I a shift and an impulsion meaning a rift and a clear separation: I the momentum of the free movement carried the individual formation beyond the range of its sense of unity and identity with all and the One. More and more it isolated itself, limiting itself to its own orbit and to its own fund of energy. This isolation, it must be noted, occurs at the origin without any sense of perversity or revolt or disobedience on the part of the free entity, as the legend formulated by the human mind imaged it. The movement of freedom and individual formation in its urge crosses, as it were, a borderline, passes from the safe zone within the Divine's own status into a different zone, creates it, as a matter of fact, by that overzealous and self-concentrated free movement. But, as I have said, there is no premeditation or arrire pense or bad will or spirit of contradiction there at the origin of the deviation. It is no original sin: it is a spontaneous, almost a logical consequence, an inevitable expression of the freedom that particulars enjoy as part and parcel of the Divine Universal.
And yet the result is strange and revolutionary. The game once begun develops its own scheme and pattern and modality. For that crucial step in the movement of freedom, that definite moving away, the assertion of complete independence and isolation immediately brought about a reversal of realities, a complete negation of the original attri butes. Thus Light became obscurity or Inconscience, Life became death, Delight became pain and suffering, Power became incapacity, Knowledge became Ignorance, and Truth became falsehood. In other words, Spirit became forthright Matter.
What seemed, however, to be nothing more than an accident is pregnant nevertheless with a profound meaning and significance. Indeed God has not created the world in jest. Spirit became Matter, that is to say, an apparent negation of the Spirit, to demonstrate that the negation is a way of affirmation, a more integral way of affirmation of the Spirit. Matter has been brought out to express another poise of the spirit, spirit concretised and embodied.
05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Earth symbolises and epitomises material Nature. It is the body and substance, the very personification, of unconsciousness Ignorance carried to the last limit and concretised. It represents, figures the very opposite of the Reality at the summit. The supreme and original Reality is the quaternary:(1) Light, (2) Truth, (3) Love and (4) Life. They are the first and primal godheads with whom creation starts and who preside over the whole play of the manifestation. These gods that emanated out of the supreme consciousness of the Divine Mother as her fundamental aspects and personalities had automatically an absolute freedom of action and movement, otherwise they would not be divine personalities. And this freedom could be exercised and was in fact exercised in cutting the tie with the mother consciousness, in order to follow a line of independent and separate development instead of a merger life of solidarity with the Supreme. The result was immediate and drastic the precipitation of a physical life and an earthly existence which negated the very principles of the original nature of the godheads and brought forth exactly their contraries: instead of Light there brooded Darkness and Inconscience, Truth turned to Falsehood, Love and Delight gave place to Hatred and Suffering and finally, instead of Life and Immortality there appeared Death. That was how separation, "the disobedience" of the Bible, caused the distortion that turned the gods into Asuras, that was how Lucifer became Satan.
And that was how Paradise was lost. But the story of Paradise Regained is yet more marvellous. When the Divine Mother, the creative infinite Consciousness found herself parcelled out and scattered (even like the body of Sati borne about by Shiva, in the well-known Indian legend) and lost in unconsciousness, something shot down from the Highest into the lowest, something in response to an appeal, a cry, as it were, from the depth of the utter hopelessness in the heart of Matter and the Inconscient. A dumb last-minute S O S from belowa De profundis clamaviwent forth and the Grace descended: the Supreme himself came down and entered into the scuttled dead particles of earth's dust as a secret core of light and flame, just a spark out of his own conscious substance. The Earth received the Grace and held it in her bosom. Thus she had her soul born in her the psychic being that is to grow and evolve and bring about her redemption, her transmutation into the divine substance.
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Human nature, human movement, is, however, different. Man, the terrestrial creature, has developed as the result of a slow growth, through struggle and suffering, the sturm und drangof an arduous ascent. He knows of things which the gods do not. He has an experience which even they, strange to say, covet. First of all, it must be borne in mind that the gods represent only one mode of consciousness, a fixed and definite typea god is bound by his godhood; but man embodies all the modes of consciousness, he is an ever growing and changing type. Man is an epitome of creation, he is coterminous with Nature. If he is that within which is wholly divineconsciousness and bliss, truth and immortalityphenomenally he is also quite the oppositeearthly, unconsciousness, pain and suffering, Ignorance and falsehood, incapacity and death. If heaven is his father, the earth is his motherdyaur me pit mt pthivriyam. And all the gradations in between he has in him and can become any.
Man possesses characters that mark him as an entity sui generis and give him the value that is his. First, toil and suffering and more failures than success have given him the quality of endurance and patience, of humility and quietness. That is the quality of earth-natureearth is always spoken of by the poets and seers as all-bearing and all-forgiving. She never protests under any load put upon her, never rises in revolt, never in a hurry or in worry, she goes on with her appointed labour silently, steadily, calmly, unflinchingly. Human consciousness can take infinite pains, go through the infinite details of execution, through countless repetitions and mazes: patience and perseverance are the very badge and blazon of the tribe. Ribhus, the artisans of immortalitychildren of Mahasaraswatiwere originally men, men who have laboured into godhood. Human nature knows to wait, wait infinitely, as it has all the eternity before it and can afford and is prepared to continue and persist life after life. I do not say that all men can do it and are of this nature; but there is this essential capacity in human nature. The gods, who are usually described as the very embodiment of calmness and firmness, of a serene and concentrated will to achieve, nevertheless suffer ill any delay or hindrance to their work. Man has not perhaps the even tenor, the steadiness of their movement, even though intense and fast flowing; but what man possesses is persistence through ups and downshis path is rugged with rise and fall, as the poet says. The steadiness or the staying power of the gods contains something of the nature of indifference, something hard in its grain, not unlike a crystal or a diamond. But human patience, when it has formed and taken shape, possesses a mellowness, an understanding, a sweet reasonableness and a resilience all its own. And because of its intimacy with the tears of things, because of its long travail and calvary, human consciousness is suffused with a quality that is peculiarly human and humane that of sympathy, compassion, comprehension, the psychic feeling of closeness and oneness. The gods are, after all, egoistic; unless in their supreme supramental status where they are one and identical with the Divine himself; on the lower levels, in their own domains, they are separate, more or less immiscible entities, as it were; greater stress is laid here upon their individual functioning and fulfilment than upon their solidarity. Even if they have not the egoism of the Asuras that sets itself in revolt and antagonism to the Divine, still they have to the fullest extent the sense of a separate mission that each has to fulfil, which none else can fulfil and so each is bound rigidly to its own orbit of activity. There is no mixture in their workingsna me thate, as the Vedas say; the conflict of the later gods, the apple of discord that drove each to establish his hegemony over the rest, as narrated in the mythologies and popular legends, carry the difference to a degree natural to the human level and human modes and reactions. The egoism of the gods may have the gait of aristocracy about it, it has the aloofness and indifference and calm nonchalance that go often with nobility: it has a family likeness to the egoism of an ascetic, of a saintit is sttwic; still it is egoism. It may prove even more difficult to break and dissolve than the violent and ebullient rjasicpride of a vital being. Human failings in this respect are generally more complex and contain all shades and rhythms. And yet that is not the whole or dominant mystery of man's nature. His egoism is thwarted at every stepfrom outside, by, the force of circumstances, the force of counter-egoisms, and from inside, for there is there the thin little voice that always cuts across egoism's play and takes away from it something of its elemental blind momentum. The gods know not of this division in their nature, this schizophrenia, as the malady is termed nowadays, which is the source of the eternal strain of melancholy in human nature of which Matthew Arnold speaks, of the Shelleyan saddest thoughts: Nietzsche need not have gone elsewhere in his quest for the origin and birth of Tragedy. A Socrates discontented, the Christ as the Man of Sorrows, and Amitabha, the soul of pity and compassion are peculiarly human phenomena. They are not merely human weaknesses and failings that are to be brushed aside with a godlike disdain; but they contain and yield a deeper sap of life and out of them a richer fulfilment is being elaborated.
Human understanding, we know, is a tangled skein of light and shademore shade perhaps than lightof knowledge and Ignorance, of Ignorance straining towards knowledge. And yet this limited and earthly frame that mind is has something to give which even the overmind of the gods does not possess and needs. It is indeed a frame, even though perhaps a steel frame, to hold and fix the pattern of knowledge, that arranges, classifies, consolidates effective ideas, as they are translated into facts and events. It has not the initiative, the creative power of the vision of a god, but it is an indispensable aid, a precious instrument for the canalisation and expression of that vision, for the intimate application of the divine inspiration to physical life and external conduct. If nothing else, it is a sort of blue print which an engineer of life cannot forego if he has to execute his work of building a new life accurately and beautifully and perfectly.
III
We have spoken of the stability, the fixity, the rigidity even, of the god type and we contrasted it with the variability, the many-sidedness, the multiple character of the human consciousness. In another view, however, the tables are turned and the opposite appears as the truth. Man, for example., has a physical body and nothing is more definite and fixed and rigid than this material sheath. The gods have no body, but they have a form which is supple and changeful, not hard and crystallised like the human figure. Gods, we said, are cosmic forceslines (or vectors, if we wish to be scientifically precise) of universal forces; this does not mean that they have no shape or form. They too have a form and can be recognised by it even as a human being is recognisable by his body. In spite of variability the form retains its identity. The form changes, for a god has the capacity to act in different contexts at the same time; within his own universe a god is multi-dimensional. The Indian seer and artist often seeks to convey this character of the immortals by giving them a plurality of arms and heads. In modern times the inspiration behind the surrealist movement lies precisely in this attempt to express simultaneity of diverse gestures and activities, a synthetic close-up of succeeding moments and disparate objects or events. But in spite of all changes Proteus remains Proteus and can be recognised as such by the vigilant and careful eye. The human frame, we have said, is more fixed and rigid, being made of the material substance. It has not evidently the variability of the body of a god. And yet there is a deeper mystery: the human body is not or need not be so inflexible as it appears to be or as it usually is. It has considerable plastic capacities. We would say that the human body holds a marvellous juste milieu. By its solid concreteness it acts as a fortress for the inner consciousness to dwell in safe from easy attacks of the hostiles: it acts also as a firm weapon for the same inner consciousness to cut into the material world and indent and impress its pattern of truth upon an otherwise hard and refractory material made of Ignorance and obscurity and falsehood. Furthermore, it is supple enough to receive and record into its grain the pattern and substance of the higher reality. The image of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ is symbolic of the alchemy of which the human body is capable when one knows how to treat it in occult knowledge and power. The human body can suffer a sea-change which is not within the reach of the radiant body of an immortal.
IV
05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A great mystery of existence, its central rub is the presence of Evil. All spiritual, generally all human endeavour has to face and answer this Sphinx. As he answers, so will be his fate. He cannot rise up even if he wishes, earth cannot progress even when there is the occasion, because of this besetting obstacle. It has many names and many forms. It is Sin or Satan in Christianity; Buddhism calls it Mara. In India it is generally known as Maya. Grief and sorrow, weakness and want, disease and death are its external and ubiquitous forms. It is a force of gravitation, as graphically named by a modern Christian mystic, that pulls man down, fixes him upon earth with its iron law of mortality, never allowing him to mount high and soar in the spiritual heavens. It has also been called the Wheel of Karma or the cycle of Ignorance. And the aim of all spiritual seekers has been to rise out of itsome-how, by force of tapasy, energy of concentrated will or divine Gracego through or by-pass and escape into the Beyond. This is the path of ascent I referred to at the outset. In this view it is taken for granted that this creation is transient and empty of happinessanityam asukham (Gita)it is anatta, empty of self or consciousness (Buddha) and it will be always so. The only way to deal with it, the way of the wise, is to discard it and pass over.
Sri Aurobindo's view is different. He says Evil can be and has to be conquered here itself, here upon this earth and in this body-the ancients also said, ihaiva tairjitah, they have conquered even here, prkariravimokat, before leaving the body. You have to face Evil full-square and conquer it, conquer it not in the sense that you simply rise above it so that it no longer touches you, but that you remain where you are in the very field of Evil and drive it out from there completely, erase and annihilate it where it was reigning supreme. Hence God has to come down from his heaven and dwell here upon earth and among men and in the conditions of mortality, show thus by his living and labour that this earthly earth can be transformed into a heavenly earth and this human body into a "body divine".
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The Divine brings down with himself his shaft of light, and the light, as it spreads, begins to scatter and dissolve the clouds of Ignorance. The Divine comes here below and as he formulates and concentrates his consciousness in or as an individualised channel, the power of the consciousness becomes dynamic and concrete and works out the desired change in th material plane. In the descent the Divine has to assume the lower potentials on the inferior levels and this involves an apparent veiling and lessening of his higher and divine degrees. In other words, the Divine in becoming human accepts and embraces in that embodiment all that humanity normally means, its weaknesses and frailties, its obstacles and difficulties, all the Ignorance and inconscience. This sacrifice he has agreed to, has undertaken in order to create out of it a golden body, a radiant matter, a heavenly or divinised earth.
God made man, the spirit become flesh: this is Grace, the benediction of the Holy One upon the sinful earth. The working of Grace in one of its characteristic movements has been beautifully envisaged in esoteric Christianity. The burden of sin that is to say, of weakness, impurity and Ignorancelies so heavy upon man, the force of gravitation is so absolute, that it is divine intervention alone, and in the most physical sense, which can save him. God takes upon himself man's load and relieves him of it: thus freed he can soar up easily and join the company of the Happy in heaven alongside God. This is the ransom paid by God to His Enemy, the vicarious atonement suffered by the Divine, the cross he has to bear when he comes upon this earth, into this vale of tears. I t is said, in terms of human feeling, pity so moved him that he left the happy abode of heaven, came down among men and lived like one of them, sharing their sorrow and pain and, what is divine, taking up the evil into himself, drinking, as it were, out of the poisoned bowl, so that man, frail mortal creature, may escape his doom.
This way too, as all other ways, has indeed been the way of escape. God came down in order to take away some men with him. They were the blessed ones, but the normal humanity remains as it is, as it has been, on the whole. The few that pass beyond do not seem to leave any trace here below. There was no regeneration of mankind, no reformation of earthly life.
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The humanist said, Nothing human I reckon foreign to me," In a deeper and more absolute sense the divine Mystic of the integral Yoga says the same. He is indeed humanity incarnate, the whole mankind condensed and epitomised in his single body. Mankind as imbedded in Ignorance and inconscience, the conscious soul lost in the dark depths of dead matter, is he and his whole labour consists in working in and through that obscure "gravitational" mass, to evoke and bring down the totality of the superconscient force, the creative delight which he is essentially in his inmost and topmost being. The labour within himself is conterminous with the cosmic labour, and the change effected in his being and nature means a parallel change in the world outside, at least a ready possibility of the change. All the pains and weaknesses normal humanity suffers from, the heritage of an inconscient earthly existence, the Divine takes into his incarnated bodyall and more and to the highest degreeinto a crucible as it were, and works out there the alchemy. The natural man individually shares also each other's burden in some way, for all are interconnected in lifeaction at one point has a reaction at all other points: only the sharing is done unconsciously and is suffered or imposed than accepted and it tends to be at a minimum. An ordinary mortal would break under a greater pressure. It is the Avatar who comes forward and carries on his shoulders the entire burden of earthly inconscience.
Suffering, incapacity and death are, it is said, the wages of earthly life; but they are, in fact, reverse aspects of divine truths. Whatever is here below has its divine counterpart above. What appears as matter, inertia, static existence here below is the devolution of pure Existence, Being or Substance up there. Life-force, vital dynamism here is the energy of Consciousness there. The pleasure of the heart and emotions and enjoyment is divine Delight. Finally, our mind with its half-lighted thinking power, its groping after knowledge has at its back the plenary light of the Supermind. So the aim is not to reject or withdraw from the material, vital and mental existence upon the earth and in this body, but house in them, make them concrete vehicles, expressions and embodiments of what they really are.
05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
At the Origin of Ignorance The Body Natural
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part FivePhysician, Heal Thyself
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And yet he does not change. He has not the sincere will to change. At least he takes the wrong way about it. And the reason is that he does not whole-heartedly adopt the course which he knows to be the only right thing. He is divided in his being: one part knows indeed, but another, the larger, the dynamic part does not profit by that knowledge, ignores it and pursues a contrary path, the accustomed groove of Ignorance and laissez-faire.
He consoles and comforts himself, lays the flattering unction to his soul by taking to a less exacting ideal, a substitute without tears, as it were. Therefore he looks outside, seeks to reform society, changing its laws and constitution, and wants to believe that in that way society can be remodelled and mankind transformed.
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At the Origin of Ignorance The Body Natural
05.03 - Satyavan and Savitri, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the mind's Ignorance veils the inner sight,
Only a little breaks through our earth-made bounds,
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Lived still with Death and ancient Ignorance;
The Inconscient was its base, the Void its fate.
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It shall escape from Death and Ignorance."
And Savitri, musing still, replied to him:
05.04 - Of Beauty and Ananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Brahman is there equally in the saint and the sinner, in the knowledge and in the Ignorance,-it is the static Brahman.
But the saint and the knowledge manifest and embody the dynamic Brahman.
05.04 - The Measure of Time, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Looked at from the higher source of things, the time-factor itself appears as an illusion. What is true is a certain set of conditions in which forces work themselves out. And in this pattern of conditions, time (along with space) does not give the absolute and fixed frame of reference, as is usually taken for granted, but is a varying background, even if it is not a side-issue or a by-product. The conscious force at work in the world aims at a change in the conditions; it is a work primarily of rearrangement and order. The state of Nature, of actualityof Ignorance and inertiais one of chaos. What the Divine Will behind, the Consciousness standing over, does is to develop a cosmos out of that chaos. Things are placed wrongly, at random, pell-mell: they have to be assorted, arranged, docketed, each item in its own place. We know, for example, of the material particle in which the atoms are huddled together, each pointing to a different direction, but when they are arranged in such a way that one half points in one way and the other half the contrary way, we have what is called a magnetised body.
It is when things are arranged in this manner, the right thing in the right place, that divine perfection, the Realisation in the material, is attained. And for this consummation to come about, the process that is followed is a greater and greater infiltration of higher and higher forces into the field of disorder, of our normal life and consciousness. The time taken simply indicates that the process is being worked out; it is an expression of the rhythm of procedure. But to the Divine; the Supreme Consciousness that works, time itself has no separate meaning or intrinsic value; for it a thousand or a million years do not mean more than what is one moment for us. Indeed, the slowness of time simply marks the steps of events in the lower ranges of creation: as we rise higher and higher, forces from there come down into the lower field, and the tempo of events quickens; finally, when the highest peak is attained and its forces descend and intervene in the ordering of the lowest levels, then the change, the arrangement that is being worked out, is accomplished immediately and without delay: the time lag is abolished altogether. Time may be compared to a kind of elastic bond connecting the highest and the lowest and running through the intermediate zones. It contracts as one moves upward and is telescoped, as it were, at the top.
05.06 - The Birth of Maya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ignorance entered into Knowledge, Pain invaded Delight, Weakness stole into Strength.
For a new and extraordinary manifestation this movement was permitted, for the fullness of experience, for an immense contradiction turning to a luminous reconciliation and harmony.
05.06 - The Role of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Evil is evil, no doubt; it is not divine and it is not an illusion. It is a real blot on the fair face of creation. Its existence cannot be justified in the sense that it is the right thing and has to be welcomed and maintained, since it forms part of the universal symphony. Not even in the sense that it is a test and a trial set by the Divine for the righteous to prove their merit. It has not been put there with a set purpose, but that once given, it has been the occasion of a miracle, it offered the opportunity for the manifestation of something unique, great and grandiose, marvellous and beautiful. The presence of evil moved the DivineGiustizia masse il mio alto Fattorel1and Grace was born. He descended, the Aloof and the Transcendent, in all his love and compassion down into this vale of tears: he descended straight into our midst without halting anywhere in the infinite gradation that marks the distance between the highest and the lowest, he descended from the very highest into the very lowest, demanding nothing, asking for no condition whatsoever from the soul in Ignorance, from the earth under the grip of evil. Thus it was that Life lodged itself in the home of death, Light found its way into the far cavern of obscurity and inconscience, and Delight bloomed in the core of misery. Hope was lit, a flame rising from the nether gloom towards the Dawn. But for the spirit of denial we would not have seen this close and intimate figure of the gracious Mother.
Justice moved my great maker
This is the divine miracle that has been vouchsafed to man, the spectacle of the Divine himself becoming an earthly creature, wearing as his own body of flesh and blood this mortal frame of pain and suffering and Ignorance, of obscurity and incapacity and falsehood. This is the calvary he has accepted, the sacrifice of his divinity he agreed to in order that the undivine too may gracefully serve the Divine, be taken up and transmuted into the reality from which it fell, of which it is an aberration.
The glory and beauty of this gesture one would not like not to have witnessed and experienced and shared.
05.07 - Man and Superman, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, one may ask, what would be the relation between the two humanities the human and the divine? And what would be the effect of the appearance of the new race upon the older stock? Here again we can take up the animal analogy. How has the advent of man affected the animal kingdom? It has affected to a certain extent, even to a considerable extent, one may venture to say. First of all, man has parked around him a fairly large group of animals, domesticated them, as it is termed, employing them in his service, using them for his purposes. Furthermore, he has gone out into the woods, the forests and mountains, ice-bound regions and deep seas, and there extended his sphere of influence, hunting and capturing animals that were so long free and unmolested, bringing about a change in the conditions of life even among wild animals. We do not say that the superman will deal with man in the same way (although something of the kind may be found in the Nietzschean ideology). For man was a creature of Ignorance, and his behaviour and influence were naturally of the ignorant kind. The superman, however, being delivered of Ignorance and living in perfect knowledge, has a different nature and outlook. He is one with the universe, with all its creatures; united with the Divine, he finds and realises his own self in each and every creature and thing: his character and conduct are the automatic expression of this sense of perfect identity. So he can do nothing that may seek to enslave or do real injury to mankind. On the contrary, his love and his knowledge, being one with the cosmic existence, will inevitably work for the progress and welfare of man too; indeed, his will be the perfect aid that even ordinary humanity can ask for and receive.
In spite of all the achievements he has had in the past, and in spite of the cul-de-sac or the blind alley into which he seems now to be stagnating, there is yet possibility enough for man to progress further, that is to say, even as a human being without taking the more audacious jump into supermanhood. The present miseries of human society, the maldistribution of the necessities of life, the ravages of illness and disease, the prevalence of Ignorance, are not and need not after all be a permanent and irrevocable feature of human organisation. They can be remedied to a large extent, and society made more decent to live in, even though it may not be transfigured into the City of God. Man, without foregoing his present human nature, can yet be a more humane and humanistic creature, that is to say, more truly human and less animal and demoniac that he is trying to be. To this end the advent and the presence of the divine race will surely contri bute in a large measure. The influence which the individuals of such a race will exert by the force of their luminous consciousness and the impact of their purified living, the sympathy and knowledge and comprehension which their very presence carries, will materially alter the nature and composition of the normal man and his society. There will emerge a sort of higher humanityan intermediary between the present more or less animal, degraded humanity and the divine humanity of the future. The two humanities may very well live amicably together and be of help and service to each other.
We may mention here the other extreme possibility also. If, for example, the old humanity in a body rejects the New Man and will not allow him an inch of ground on the earth which it holds now as its fief and domainas it may very well doin view of the evidence that we have of the envy, jealousy, hatred, incomprehension moving normal men when they come in contact with men who do not follow their mode of life, who seem to pursue avocations that are meaningless and even perhaps injurious to them; if such is the case, then, we say, it would mean either the end of humanity, in the same way as some species have become in fact extinct, or its reversion to a wild savage state, something like that (or perhaps worse) out of which it came.
05.10 - Children and Child Mentality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are two failings which a teacher must guard againstto which he is usually proneif he wishes to secure respect and obedience and trust from children: (I) telling a lie and (2) losing temper. A child can easily find out whether you are spinning a long yarn or not. He is inquisitive, irrepressively curious and, above all, he has his own manner and angle of looking at things. He puts questions about all things and subjects and in all ways that seem queer to an adult view. His answers too to questions, his solutions of problems are very unorthodox, bizarre. But it is all the more the task of the elder not only to put up with all these vagaries, but also with great sympathy and patience to appreciate and understand what the child attempts to express. If you get irritated or angry and try to snub or brush him away, it would mean the end of all cordial relation between you and him. Or, again, if you try to hoodwink him, give a false answer to hide your Ignorance, in that case too the child will not be deceived, he will find you out and lose all respect for you. It is far better to own your Ignorance, saying you do not know than to pose as a knowing man; although that may affect to some extent his sense of hero-worship and he may not entertain any longer the unspoilt awe and esteem with which he was accustomed to look up to you, still you will not lose his affection and confidence. Infinite patience and a temper that is never frayed or ruffled are demanded of the teacher and the parent who wish to guide and control successfully and happily a child. With that you can mould in the end the most refractory child, without that you will fail even with a child of goodwill.
Wordsworth: We Are Seven
05.11 - The Place of Reason, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In Sri Aurobindo, Reason and Intuition possess a dual relation of mutual negation and mutual affirmation, of exclusiveness and inclusiveness, as indeed is the relation of Brahman and the World. One negates the other in the sphere of Ignorance but in knowledge one affirms the other. That is to say, Reason or mental logic, so long as it is dominated by the senses, by the external impressions from things and by its analytic or exclusively separative method of procedure, is a denial of Intuition and a bar to spiritual experience. But Reason can be purified, relieved of its dross, illumined (sam-buddha)sublimated and uplifted then it comes to its own, becomes what it really is and should bea frame to give body to what is beyond and unembodied, a mirror in conceptual terms to what is supra-conceptual. It loses its hard rigidity and becomes supple, loses its obscurity, density and becomes transparent: it attains a new rhythm and gait and capacity. Many of the Upanishadic mantras, a good part of the Gita, do that. And Sri Aurobindo's own exposition is a miracle in that style. "Reason was a helper, Reason is the bar"and, we can add, Reason will again be an aid. The world, as it is, is anything but Divine; and yet it is nothing but the Divine essentially and fundamentally; it can and will attain the divine figure apparently and externally too. Even so with regard to man's mind and reason and all his other limbs.
Calcutta Review, January 1949.
05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Another tradition gives the Four Supernals as (1) Light or Consciousness, (2) Truth or Knowledge, (3) Life and (4) Love. The tradition also says that the beings representing these four fundamental principles of creation were the first and earliest gods that emanated from the Supreme Divine, and that as they separated themselves from their source and from each other, each followed his own independent line of fulfilment, they lost their divinity and turned into their oppositesLight became obscurity, Consciousness unconsciousness or the inconscient, Truth became falsehood and Knowledge Ignorance, Life became death and finally Love and Delight became suffering and hatred. These are the fallen angels, the Asuras that deny their divine essence and now rule the world. They have possessed mankind and are controlling earthly existence. They too have their emanations, forces and beings that are born out of them and serve them in their various degrees of power. Men talk and act inspired and impelled by these beings and when they do so, they lose their humanity and become worse than animals.
But still the Pure Reality descends undeviated in its own line and man enshrines that within him, the undying fire that will clean him and bear him to the source from where he came. And there are luminous godheads that help him and wish themselves to participate in the terrestrial transformation. There is a pressure from above and there is an urge from below, between these two infinities all is ground and moulded and changed. Even the Lords of Denial will in the end change and learn to affirm, become again what they truly were and are.
05.14 - The Sanctity of the Individual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The truth of the personality is not to be found in its horizontal, but vertical dimension. The Existentialist speaks of the existence (standing out) of the human person as a transcendence. But real transcendence is not so much in coming out as in going up and beyond. To be outside oneself is not always to transcend oneself: to be above oneself is the real transcendence. Man is a true and free person only when he is lord of Prakriti, dominating and commanding Nature, when he is identified with Ishwara, the supreme Person, the Master, and becomes an incarnate will and consciousness of His. The soul in Ignorance and in ignorant relation with others must rise and envisage its archetype in the Supreme Divine, as a free formulation of an Idea-Force of the Infinite.
If we do not keep in view this vertical transcendence and confuse it with immanence, we are likely to arrive at queer conclusions, as for example, one Existentialist says: polarity being an essential truth of the reality, the law of day and night is an eternal and immutable law and therefore, God cannot subsist as pure love; there must be also anger in him. In fact, God too is a becoming God as the human being. The limitation of such a view, characteristically Germanic and intellectual, is evident.
05.16 - A Modernist Mentality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Further Monsieur Gide says, God is nowhere, he has to be created. If he means that God is not anywhere in the manifest physical world, especially, the physical world of today, it is true, though here too partially true. God is never truly absent; even in and through this dismal and distressed age of ours he is ever present, a living power of abounding Graceeven if behind the veil, even if not patent to the sense-bound observer. Still God has to be made patent, established concretely in the physical world also, in the everyday normal human affairs. But, again, how to do it? And who is to do it? You or I in our complete, at best half-lit hazy Ignorance? By running blindly full tilt against any and all atheism and denial and egoism and arrogance, shouting at them, pointing the finger of scorn at them or being physically violent upon them? It were best if we moved with as much vigour against our own selves, against the ungodly within us. If one begins seriously at home, in dealing with oneself one will be best equipped to deal with the others and the world, in the process of new-creating in oneself one will be in a position to find out exactly what lies in the way of a new creation outside.
A deeper sense of truth and rectitude says: you have no right to break unless you have the power to make. Even an illusion you cannot and should not break if you do not know how and what to replace; you will only replace it by a greater and more disastrous illusion, you must yourself have the full vision of the truth, you must yourself realise and establish it in yourself, in your inner being as well as your outer personality. Then only you will have secured full authority (Ramakrishna's chaprash, badge) to make and unmake. If you have not the needed authority, then you must obey implicitly one who possesses the authority.
05.19 - Lone to the Lone, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The quintessence of spirituality is said to consist in, as has been described in the famous phrase of the Alexandrine mystic philosopher Plotinus, the flight of the lone to the lone. God is a solitary and the other solitary is the soul: so when one solitary mingles with the supreme solitary, the result is utter solitariness, which is spirituality at its apex, its highest height. The world, in this view, is an excrescence, an epiphenomenon Illusion, Maya. God is the transcendent Reality, above and beyond all manifestation, negating all multiplicities and relativities of creation: He is indivisible, single, absolute unityekamevdvityam, kevalamneha nnsti kincana. The human being too is not in reality the individual person bounded within a body, life and mind formation, standing in reciprocal relations with such other formations; his inner core of truth and substance is a unitary centre of consciousness anguthamitra purua,which is aloof and apart from his apparent and assumed personality and has no dealings with such personalities. God has no updhi, phenomenal qualification, neither has the soul of man. Therefore in his spiritual aspiration, man has to divest himself of all the outer growths that cover and bury his soul: with the clear unmixed vision of his pure soul he has to look straight into the face of the Divine Transcendent, shredded too of its cosmic vesture, and rise from the station of Ignorance, this level ground of clay to which it is pinned, and soar and fly and merge into the pure reality of the pure Spirit. Therefore it is said, naked we come into the vale of tears and naked we have to go back to our home. Or in terms of another imagery, it is the pure pouring into the pure, the full mixing into the full.
Some mystics and philosophers recently come into vogue (inspired or encouraged by the Christian or the Buddhist way of Realisation) have emphasised this outlook. But it has also been counterbalanced by another way of spiritual growth and fulfilment: we may call it the modern way, for it has been a pronounced characteristic of the modern consciousness. We referred in our previous essay to the Existentialist who has attracted so much attention in these days, the linchpin of whose philosophy is the value of the individual person, especially the individual personal in relation to each other. Kierkegaard, the Danish mystic, from whom this school is supposed to originate, speaks of the Absolute as the Single One that excludes and annuls all "others", the crowd. He lays especial emphasis upon complete solitariness and total renunciation as the very condition, sine qua non, of the soul's spiritual journey and yet characterises the singlenessof the one in terms that make of it an essential whole, an integer. Man must isolate himself from his phenomenal being, certainlyas the neti netiformula enjoins but also he must first find or become his real self, realise his true individuality before he can reach God, the Divine Self, identify himself with the Transcendent. It is only a freely and truly formed individual being that can give itself to the Divine or become one with it. This true individuality is indeed a solitary being away and apart from the crowd of personalities that surround itit has been called by the Indian mystics, the Purusha in the heart, no bigger than the thumb, the Dwarf Godhead (Vmana).
When one is a member of the crowd, he has no personality or individuality, he is an amorphous mass, moving helplessly in the current of life, driven by Nature-force as it pleases her: spiritual life begins by withdrawing oneself from this flow of Ignorance and building up or taking cognisance of one's true person and being. When one possesses oneself integrally, is settled in the armature of one's spirit self, he has most naturally turned away from the inferior personalities of his own being and the comradeship also of people in bondage and Ignorance. But then one need not stop at this purely negative poise: one can move up and arrive at a positive status, a new revaluation and reaffirmation. For when the divine selfhood is attained, one is no longer sole or solitary. Indeed, the solitariness or loneliness that is attributed to the spiritual status is a human way of viewing the experience: that is the impression left on the normal mind consciousness when the Purusha soars out of it, upwards from the life of the world to the life of the Spirit. But the soul, the true spiritual being in the individual, is not and cannot be an isolated entity; the nature of the spiritual consciousness is first transcendence, no doubt, transcendence of the merely temporal and ephemeral, but it is also universalisation, that is to say, the cosmic realisation that has its classic expression in the famous mantra of the Gita, he who sees himself in other selves and other selves in his own self. In that status "own" and "other" are not distinct or contrary things, but aspects of the one and the same reality, different stresses in one rhythm.
The flight then represents the freedom, the movement in height of the soul; but there is also the other, the horizontal movement leading to expansiveness and comprehension. One is transcendental, the other global or cosmic. First we have to reject, reject the false formations one by one (sheath by sheath, as it is described in the Upanishads) and arrive at the purest core of truth and reality; but again we have to come back, take up a new, the true formation. What was renounced has to be reintegrated in the divine becoming. While we are in Ignorance, our relations with men and the world are false and, ignorant, but once we attain our true self, we find the same self in men and things and we have no more revulsion for themtato na vijigupsate.
***
05.24 - Process of Purification, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are three well-marked stages in the process of the purification of nature and surrender to the Divine. When one has made up one's mind finally to take to the path of spiritual life and to turn one's back on the life of ignorant nature, one enters at the outset into a phase of divided consciousness and life. It is the stage when one cries, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." One feels an inner aspiration and devotion and even freedom and purity and wider consciousness, but actually in the practical world, he follows the old nature, acts under the pressure of Ignorance and the Ripus. You are a mundane man with profane habitsand yet within, when aloof, you are in contact with the deeper and larger breath of the Spirit. The next stage is one of external control and of modification of behaviour. You have the inner consciousness of the spirit grown strong in you and you are no longer a helpless prey to the physical outbursts of inferior nature: a kind of brake has been put upon the outgoing passions. Still at this stage the surges of passion are there within, inside the wall of control, as it were. The pressure and demand of the Spirit has brought about a deadlock in the ignorant movements of the outer nature, although the physico-vital and vital support behind has not been wholly purified and continues in its old way, expressing itself in veiled and sublimated acts and in dreams and imaginations. The vital support even when it does not express itself in grosser physical movements, even when it is self-contained, yet maintains its old taste for them. Finally, when this taste even goes away (that is the suggestion in the beautiful and luminous phrase of the Gita, rasavaljam), then only one rises into the integral and unadulterated life of the Spirit. Till that final consummation happens, the period of interregnum is a great occasion for training and experience. It is of considerable interest also from the standpoint of occult knowledge.
There are two typeswhich mean two stagesof control. You can control your nature by the force of your will, as one does a wicked horse by means of the toothed bit. But this control is precarious and the clearing or purification effected is only skin-deep. At the slightest weakening of the will or a momentary lack of vigilance, you may find yourself in the very midst of a volcanic eruption of passions. Even otherwise, even if there happens no external outburst, the burden or pressure of the ignorant nature is always there and the struggle or tension, although thrown into the background, obstructs the nature, does not give it the free and spontaneous higher poise of the spirit. The other control comes from the inmost being, from the spiritual self itself: it is automatic and it is occult in its action and therefore naturally effective. When the Spirit, the Inner Control (Antarymi)works, it happens that even if the desires are there, the occasions for their satisfaction are withdrawn from you. As the Mother says, some people who are destined for the spiritual life lose all earthly props whenever they wish to lean upon them, they lose their endeared objects whenever they are eager to cherish them. At a certain stage of the growth of the inner consciousness, the demand of the soul makes it impossible for the vital (or physico-vital), so far as it is unpurified and unprepared, to secure its objects: even if the lips yearn, the cup is taken away. The circumstances themselves yield to the pressure of the inner being and conspire, as it were, to withhold and remove all dangerous contacts. The being has not to say, "Lead me not into temptation", for the temptations by themselves slip away. That is the earlier poise of the interregnum we are describing; the next poise comes when the wish-impulses, the subjective vibrations also melt and disappear. Then there appear no such things as temptations. Objects, events, circumstances that might have acted in that role come and go, but the being remains indifferent and unruffled, because suffused with the delight of another contact. The detachment from the worldly is secure and absolute because the being has found its attachment to the Divine. That is the beginning of the integral spiritualisation of the nature.
05.25 - Sweet Adversity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To live in hope, to work in hope is not merely to live in illusion and to work for a chimera. On one consideration, to live otherwise, in hopelessness, cannot cure matters, even if the matter is truly and really as dark as it looks. To view a matter of fact solely and wholly in the matter of fact way does not give the right perspective of things, a proper appreciation of appearance and reality. It is well known that often we project our imagination and apprehension upon the external world and bring about or help to bring about results that were only a possibility. Our fear calls for the object feared and makes it a reality. Apart from that, however, and on a deeper consideration, to live in hope is to react against the danger apprehended, to call in a help and power that is or can be always at our disposal, which can not only console but save. Even if death be the end and there is no escape, yet we would be freed from the wounds and scars that it inflicts upon our being with its Ignorance and unconsciousness, we would learn to pass over luminously and in the full freedom of the spirit.
Hope is the image of the soul's prophetic vision. It is not just a way of escape from present sorrows, but a bridge-head leading to victory and fulfilment.
05.28 - God Protects, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Have life and property then no value in the eye of God? To the divine consciousness are these things mere my, transient objects of Ignorance, ties that bind the soul to earth and have to be cut away and thrown behind? We at least do not hold that opinion. We hold that life and property are valuable, they are significant: they become so in reference to the individual who has them. The life that is dedicated to the Divine, the life that is in some way connected with the higher consciousness, through which something of the world of light and delight comes down into our mortality acquires a special worth and naturally calls for divine protection. Likewise the property placed at the service of the Divine, which is used as an instrument for the Divine's own work upon earth, the Divine will surely protect, for it is then part of his grandeur and glory, aishwarya. Life and property become indeed sacred and inviolable when they are put at the disposal of the Divine for his use in the fulfilment of the cosmic design. As we know, life and property under present conditions upon earth are possessions of the undivine forces, they are weapons through which God's enemies hold sway over earth. Therefore life and property that seek to be on God's side run a great risk, they are in the domain of the hostiles and therefore need special protection. The Divine extends that protection, but under conditions for his rule in the material field is not yet absolute. The Asura too extends his protection to his agents, and his protection appears sometimes, if not often, more effective; for the present world is under his domination and all forces and beings obey him; God and the godly have to admit his terms and work out their design on that basis.
The conditions under which the Divine's protection can come are simple enough, but difficult to fulfil completely and thoroughly. The ideal conditions that ensure absolute safety are an absolute trust and reliance on the Divine Force, a tranquillity and fearlessness that nothing shakes, .whatever the appearances at the moment, the spirit and attitude of an unreserved self-giving that whatever one is and one has is God's. Between that perfect state at the peak of consciousness and the doubting and hesitant and timid mind at the lower end that of St. Peter, forexample, at his weakest moment there are various gradations of the conditions fulfilled and the protection given is variable accordingly. Not that the Divine Grace acts or has to act according to any such hard and fast rule of mechanics, there is no such mathematical Law of Protection in the scheme of Providence. And yet on the whole and generally speaking Providence, Divine Intervention, acts more or less successfully according to the degree of the soul's wakefulness on the plane that needs and possesses the protection.
05.34 - Light, more Light, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let us explain. Man is not as ignorant and helpless as he seems to be, as he would himself consider to be. There is in him always a spark, under the ashes, as it were, a perfect freedom behind the faade of a network of bondages, not dead or dormant but biding the time, to come out and be active on the surface. The spark is the light that directs to the right and warns against the wrong; the freedom is the choice to do the right and avoid the wrong. It is just a point of perception, just a flash of awareness, but net and clear: it is there, you have only to notice it. It does not give the why or the whither of the rightness: it is a simple declaration presented to you, for you to do what you like with it: to ignore or to profit by. Usually we do not pay attention to it: our attention is diverted towards another direction and other things. Our environment, our education, our domestic and social influences, even a good part of our own nature demand of us other ways of living and inhibit the spontaneous inherent light of the consciousness. Even so, if we care to look at it, if we sincerely turn round and ask for it, we will find it still there the flame behind the smoke, the queen in the harem, the deity in the sanctum. What is required is just a straight look and not the crooked wink we are accustomed to. The first attempts will necessarily mean a little fumbling, but if you mean what you do, you will find your vision getting clearer. It is our own disinclination that weaves the cobweb of Ignorance around the truth. Otherwise, an unsophisticated consciousness, a consciousness which is not vitiatedmore often by nurture than by naturecan always feel the presence of the truth and is directly aware of it.
A blinded misdirected mind, if it wakes up at any time and looks about for the truth sincerelywe insist upon the conditioncan recognise it, learn to trace it by certain indications it always leaves behind in the consciousness. A touch of the truth, a step towards it will be always accompanied by a sense of relief, of peace, of a serene happiness and unconditional freedom. These things are felt not as something gross and superficial affecting your outer life and situation, but pertaining to the depth of your being, concerning your inmost fibreit is nothing else but just the sense of light, as if you are at last out of the dark. A right movement brings you that feeling; and whenever you have that feeling you know that there has been the right movement. On the contrary, with a wrong movement you are ill at ease. You may say that a hardened criminal is never ill at ease; perhaps, but only after a great deal of hardening. The criminal was not always a criminal I am speaking of a human being, not a born hostilehe must have started some-where the downward incline. The distinction of the right and the wrong must have been presented to his consciousness and the choice was freely his. Afterwards one gets bound to one's Karma and its chain.
06.01 - The Word of Fate, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
His chant was a hymn of Ignorance and Fate.
He sang the name of Vishnu and the birth
--
Then, dallying with the mortal's Ignorance
Like one who knows not, questioning, he cried:
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the grey sleep of Matter's Ignorance.
Mind suffers lamed by the world's disharmony
--
An ignorant judge of problems Ignorance made,
Its heavenward flights reach closed and keyless gates,
--
In Ignorance and nescience are our roots.
A growing register of calamities
--
What need had the soul of Ignorance and tears?
Whence rose the call for sorrow and for pain?
--
O queen, thy thought is a light of the Ignorance,
Its brilliant curtain hides from thee God's face.
--
Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come;
Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light;
--
Against the world's Ignorance and its obstinate strength,
Against the stumblings of man's pervert will,
--
The dark account of mortal Ignorance.
It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
--
This world is in love with its own Ignorance,
Its darkness turns away from the saviour light,
--
It is the mother of our Ignorance.
He must call light into its dark abysms,
--
Pain is the signature of the Ignorance
Attesting the secret god denied by life:
--
It longed for the adventure of Ignorance
And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown
--
Strange meetings on the roads of Ignorance
And the companionship of half-known souls
--
This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain:
There are pitched desire's tents, grief's headquarters.
--
Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance.
O King, thy fate is a transaction done
--
O soul, intruder in Nature's Ignorance,
Armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights,
--
Forces the last passes of the Ignorance:
Advancing beyond Nature's last known bounds,
06.20 - Mind, Origin of Separative Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This power which in the inferior human consciousness appears as mind or mental discernment is the image or delegate here below of that very force of consciousness that originally separated the world from the Divine, created the ego and placed it as an objective reality against itself. It was a force of dividing consciousness, of exclusive concentration, that created the fission in the original unitary status of the Divine: it was that that precipitated the world of negation, of Ignorance and inconscience out of the supreme Light and Reality.
It was a power of denial that severed the world from its pure source: the same power can now be utilised for the return back for the reintegration. The power that separated from the Divine is capable of separating from the world; the consciousness that moved away from the One Divine can move away also from the Multiple Ignorance. As the individualised element isolated itself from the unitary consciousness of the Divine, in the same way the individualised element in man can stand aloof from the unitary being of the world: as it came down the ladder of consciousness from the supreme light of the spirit into the lowest depth of unconscious dead matter, the same path it can take in the opposite way and from the unconsciousness rise into the fullness of the original light. The soul has freely chosen the bondage, he is free too to choose his freedom again. That is what the Upanishad meant when it said: avidyay mtuym tirtw, by the Ignorance he shall cross death.
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06.23 - Here or Elsewhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the same way, there are souls that have emerged out of the fire of earthly life and are enjoying the safety and security of the heavens; but they have been called to come back into the world, add to the experience of the tranquil above the experience of the trouble below. Surely it increases the scope of their consciousness. But to turn upon the world means also to re-enter into Ignorance, for this world means Ignorance, as it is, it is nothing but Ignorance. The role then of one who returns is once more to embrace Ignorance, but with a view to bringing into it the light and bliss that he gained from above, permeating the stuff of the present world with the substance of the higher consciousness. It is a sacrifice demanded of him, thus to abandon the eternal felicity of the high heavens the unbroken union with the Divine above and to enter into the depths of this great perilous world: but this is a privilege too, to bring solace to the afflicted, the transforming light to obscure souls, the radiant energy to inert earth. It is a high privilege for which the luminous soul is thankful: he modestly accepts a gift of grace from the Supreme. He accepts the Ignorance and offers it: he lays it at the feet of the Supreme so that it may be transmuted into lightlight here below. His own role is that of a modest intermediary.
***
06.24 - When Imperfection is Greater Than Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A perfected consciousness is attained in the highest status of being, when it is full of light and delight, peace and purity, one with the Divine Consciousness. Such a Consciousness, when it comes down upon earth in its original unmixed clarity, lives as a foreign element and has no real contact with the world; it can have only a very indirect influence upon men and things. If the perfect, the Divine Consciousness has to be truly effective, has to change human and world nature, it must put on partially at least that nature; it must share in the imperfection of Ignorance so that it can show how that imperfection can be dealt with and transformed. The Divine has to become human, even the ordinary human, in a sense, in the outward instrumental aspect, to a greater or lesser degree as needed, so that He may come in living contact with the obscure lower consciousness and put His light into it and gradually purify and illumine it. If, however, the consciousness retains its fullness of power and light makes its appearance as such, it may dazzle and overwhelm, as a meteor miracle, but leave nothing substantial behind. This is what has happened in the past of man's history. The saints and sages, the greatest and the most genuine among them, mostly dwelt apart from humanity in consciousness and even away from human contact; the earth could not profit wholly by their example.
Therefore the Mother says in her Prayers and Meditations that having gone beyond all desires still she had to live in the midst of desires; she had no choice of her own, no preference, no attachment, no need of anything, yet she was put in the conditions of very ordinary life, the normal human life; she had to deal with the common man, handle the small insignificant objects of material existence. In one part of her being she had to identify herself with Ignorance and obscurity, so much so that even the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness the conscient and the inconscientwas for a time obliterated. Naturally, the inmost being in its inner self remained always calm, luminous, inviolable, but it put around itself this body of ordinary nature to meet its ordinary reactions and through them gradually to uplift and train it to manifest and incarnate the inmost divine.
The gods are perfect; but it is said, they have to become men, come down upon earth and assume human proportions that is, imperfections,if they wish to progress further, attain still higher levels of consciousness. For, the gods are perfect each in his own limited and well-defined and therefore unchangeable type; but man means an aspiring soul, that is to say, infinityhis very imperfection is a sign and symbol of ever greater possibility; the fluidity of his nature means an opportunity.
06.29 - Towards Redemption, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As I have often said, creation is the self-objectivisation of the Supreme Divine; it is the supreme consciousness putting itself lout of itself so that it may look at itself. In so doingin self-objectifying and self-dividingit scattered itself abroad: the one infinite multiplied itself into infinite atoms. Not only so, in detaching itself from itself the consciousness became the very opposite of itself: consciousness became unconsciousness, spirit became matter, delight became pain, knowledge' became Ignorance, and light became darkness. Boundless universality was the essential nature of the Divine, now it got clotted into the knots of egoism upon which is based this inconscient creation. In the midst of this utter negation, this denial by the universe of its origin, the Divine Love descended and lodged itself in order to bring back the erring creation to its lost home. The Divine Love became involved and entangled in the Inconscient, became one with it; only so could she (it was indeed the Divine Mother in her Grace) suffuse the inconscient universe with her own substance and transmute it into its original nature. The first effect or visible sign of this descent or divine infusion is the emergence of the psychic or the soul element in the material body: it is the speck of consciousness imbedded in matter, inhabiting the apparently dead particle or aggregate of particles, which continually grows in and through its relation of action and reaction with its surrounding unconsciousness, and at the same time extending its light into that darkness transforms it gradually into what it was originally at its source.
The origin of creation is an individualisation the manifestation or emanation of many, as units, out of the undivided and indivisible Single. It meant freedom for each unit to choose: the individual became, so to say, a unit of freedom. The immediate result, however, was not very successful, apparently, that is to say. For the individual unit chose to follow a path exactly opposite to its origin: the individualisation happened as if an element shot out of the infinite unity and flung itself in its momentum, as far away as possible, to the other pole. That is how the one spirit became the infinite particles of inconscient matter. The purpose and problem then set was to bring back the straying elements to their source and origin. The work was long travail. It took and it is taking even now ages for the one Being who could do the thing to prepare slowly, mount the steps gradually along which creation slid down, recover the ground painfully and achieve the hidden purpose, vindicating amply the deviation and the fall. Through devious ways, long, winding, arduous marches the spirit of evolution laboured through millenniums; it was the instrument utilised by the Divine Grace.
06.30 - Sweet Holy Tears, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It was a banquet I prepared for men. Instead of a life of misery and suffering, of obscurity and Ignorance I brought to them a life of light and joy and freedom. I took all the pains the task demanded and when it was ready I offered it to mankind to partake of it. But man in his foolishness and pigheadedness rejected it, did not want it. He preferred to remain in his dark miserable hole. Now, what am I to do with my Feast? I cannot let it go waste, throw it to the winds. So I offered it to my Lord and laid it at his feet. He accepted it. He alone can enjoy it and honour it.
The Feast is that of Transformation, the Divine Life on earth. Man is not capable of it naturally, cannot attain it by his own effort or personal worth. It is the Divine who is to bring it down Himself. He is to manifest Himself and thus establish His own life here below. Then only will it be possible for the human creature to open to the urgency of the new beauty and offer his surrender.
It was not easy to prepare the Feast. I had to bear the full load of the cross and ascend the calvary. Jesus as he mounted to his destiny with the Cross on his back stumbled often and fell and rose again with bruised limbs to begin again the arduous journey. Even so, this being too had to go through many disillusions and deceptions, many painful and brutal experiences. It was not a smooth and straight going, but a tortuous and dangerous ascent. But at the end of the tunnel there is always the light. The calvary and the crucifixion culminated in the Resurrection: the divine Passion of Christ flowered into this supreme Recompense. Here too after all the dark and adverse vicissitudes lies the fulfilment of transformation. One must pass through the entire valley of death and rise to the topmost summit to receive and achieve the fullness of the glory. One must leave behind all the lower ranges of Ignorance, the entire domain of human consciousness, come out of the imperfection man is made of; then only will he put on the divine nature as his own body and substance.
The Cross symbolises all the suffering and difficulty, the renunciation and self-denudation that the ascent to the Goal involves. The Calvary of the Christian legend means Ascension and Resurrection is Transformation in our sadhana. The Cross is also symbolic of the Transformed consciousness. It has three branches and represents the triple Divine, the Divine in his three modes of existence. The top branch, the vertical portion above the transverse line, stands for the supreme or transcendent Divine, one who is above manifestation; the middle the transverse or horizontal branch stands for the expanse of the universal consciousness, the Cosmic Divine; and the bottom portion, the vertical line below the transverse stands for the individual Divine immanent or imbedded in the manifestation. You will note that the flower we call transformation has a form similar to the Cross.
06.32 - The Central Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The key is to find the poise where both the extremes meet, the junction of the two levels of consciousness, the transcendent and the manifested, where the two not only do not contradict or oppose each other, but are aspects or modes of the same Truth, indissolubly united and unified. It is just the border-line, the last point of the manifested world and the first point of the Unmanifest (as one goes upward). If you are able to find the point you have not to make a choice between two irreconcilables, either the Brahman or the world. It is only when you miss the point that you are forced to the choice: some choose the other side of the border, the static consciousness, the eternal immutable pure being, self-absorbed and self-sufficient; others who dare not do that, turn to the world and remain entangled and drowned in its darkness, Ignorance, travail, undelight, impotency and misery. But, as I have said, this is not the necessary or inevitable solutionif solution it is at allof the enigma.
The first condition, however, to arrive at the crucial or synthetic state of consciousness (which is, in fact, the basic supramental consciousness, as Sri Aurobindo calls it) is the realisation that the world, that is to say, physical consciousness does not exist by itself. By itself, it is nothing. As the Prayer says, it knows nothing, it can do nothing, it is nothing.1 This realisation must not be merely a mental perception, a perception in the inner consciousness alone; but the body, the physical existence itself must be conscious and in that consciousness see and experience the truth that by itself it is a void, non-existence: it becomes so however only to find that it is real, supremely real when it is suffused with its true substance, when it is the embodiment or vehicle of the supramental consciousness.
06.34 - Selfless Worker, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Prayer says: I look for my conscious mind and I find it no more. . .1 Normally one is conscious of oneself. Whatever one does or whenever one does something, the consciousness always remains behind, I am here, I am doing. And if this sense of I am is not there, one can do nothing. All action stops automatically if I do not see or feel that I am acting. But that is the nature of ordinary consciousness; in the spiritual consciousness things are otherwise. Spiritual consciousness means the consciousness in which this sense of I am doing or even I am has disappeared, got dissolved. Truly, the work is done not by me, by the sense of illness, but by Prakriti, Nature, apparently by Lower Nature, secretly by Higher Nature. When the I disappears, the force that has been working continues to work, only the sense of I attached to it (in Ignorance and by Ignorance) is no longer there. Or, the I has completely merged itself into the working Force and is one with it. What is conscious is not the personality or the individual I, but the Force of action.
The Mother: Prayers and Meditations, 7 April 1914
07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is the mystic truth our Ignorance hides:
Doom is a passage for our inborn force,
07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Surmounting the seas of mortal Ignorance,
Its peak immutable above mind's air,
--
Around us is a vast of Ignorance
Lit by the uncertain ray of human mind,
--
A scale and series in the Ignorance.
This is not all we are or all our world.
--
The inferior nature born into Ignorance
Still took too large a place, it veiled her self
07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A mind compelled to think out Ignorance,
A life-force pressed into a camp of works
--
And puts on mortal Ignorance for his cloak
And makes himself the Dwarf with triple stride,
--
And Ignorance is Wisdom's patron here:
Those galloping hooves in their enthusiast speed
07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I play with knowledge and with Ignorance
And sin and virtue my inventions are
--
Where his largest knowledge is an Ignorance,
I am the Power that labours towards the best
--
But human mind clings to its Ignorance
And to its littleness the human heart
--
Bound in the chains of earthly Ignorance.
Imprisoned in his body and his brain
--
Of the huge ocean of his Ignorance.
517
07.05 - The Finding of the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
An innocent and holy Ignorance
Adored like one who worships formless God
--
Disguised in the costumes of Ignorance,
Crossing the years to immortality;
--
Effacing the circles of the Ignorance,
Powers and divinities burst flaming forth;
--
Casting aside its veil of Ignorance,
Allied to gods and cosmic beings and powers
--
A Light comes down into the Ignorance,
Its heavy painful knot loosens its grasp:
07.06 - Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Mind, hollow mirror in which Ignorance sees
A splendid figure of its own false self
--
One door in the Ignorance opened upon light,
Why hadst thou any need to come at all?
--
Delivered from Knowledge and from Ignorance
And rescued from the true and the untrue,
07.07 - The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Guarded behind its face of Ignorance:
She followed him through the march of endless Time.
07.08 - The Divine Truth Its Name and Form, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Freedom and Destiny The Symbolic Ignorance
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SevenThe Divine Truth Its Name and Form
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Freedom and Destiny The Symbolic Ignorance
07.09 - The Symbolic Ignorance, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:07.09 - The Symbolic Ignorance
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SevenThe Symbolic Ignorance
The Symbolic Ignorance
How can there be dark spots in the light of the full consciousness (the Mother's consciousness)? The darkness is only relative and depends upon the degree or status of conscious-ness. At the outset, on lower and narrower ranges, the light is dim and hedged in: it is surrounded by a much greater and denser area of darkness. As the consciousness grows, that is to say, manifests itself, as it rises and widens, the obscurity too recedes more and more and slowly fades away. This consciousness is not personal, but something impersonal. In other words, it holds within itself the universe including especially the earth. And earth is a dark object; it is made of Ignorance and unconsciousness. The light envelops it and only gradually penetrates and transforms it. The Mother's consciousness is thus the representative consciousness; it represents all that is yet unconscious and striving secretly without knowing towards consciousness; it is also at the same time the light itself that acts and transforms. The divine consciousness embodied acting upon itself thus symbolises and embodies its action upon what would be viewed as others.
***
07.10 - Diseases and Accidents, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Symbolic Ignorance The Problem of Evil
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SevenDiseases and Accidents
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And yet there is still another moment. When you have fallen and are already hurt, you have still now the open chance whether it will turn well or ill, whether it will stop at being just a mishap or become something really serious or as serious as possible. I do not know if you have noticed that there are certain people who do not seem to miss any occasion for an accident. Every time there is a possibility, they have it. And the accident is never slight, it tends to be serious and often very serious. People say, what an unlucky fellow! Chance is never on his side! etc., etc. But all that is sheer Ignorance. Everything depends absolutely upon the working of the consciousness. I could cite any number of instances and such striking ones. There are people who might have been killed but came out of the accident safe and sound. There are others for whom what was quite harmless in the beginning turns worse and worse and proves in the end, perhaps, fatal.
But you must understand it is not the working of thought, ordinary thought. The thought may be as good in one as in the other. It all depends upon the moment of choice. There are people who know to react in the right manner and at the right moment. It is the character that matters. Such people have a wakeful, alert consciousness; they are not asleep, they are on the watch constantly within themselves. And at the right moment they call for the aid, they invoke the divine force, yes, exactly at the right moment. And the danger is warded off. On the other hand, whenever there is something going wrong, some dislocation in the being, if you are seized by fear, dark foreboding or defeatism in the consciousness, then you are done for.
--
The Symbolic Ignorance The Problem of Evil
07.12 - This Ugliness in the World, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Everything in the world has at its source a supreme truth, how is it then that the world has become ugly in its expression? Why are things at all ugly? Because there are other things that intervene between the Source and the manifestation. For example, if I asked you: Do you know your true being? what would you say? You do not know; it would be wonderful if you did. It is the same with all beings and things. And yet you are already a sufficiently developed being, a thinking being, and have gone through many stages of refinement; you are not quite the lizard crawling on the wall! Still you cannot tell what is the truth of your being. That is the secret of the deformation in the world. It is because there is all the unconsciousness the Inconscient that has been created by the fact of separation from one's origin. It is this inconscience which prevents the Source from manifesting in its own nature, although it is there always. It is there, therefore that all things exist, the world exists; but in its expression it is deformed, because it has to manifest itself through inconscience, through Ignorance and obscurity. But how did it come about? The will to create was originally a will that projected itself towards individual formation; what it arrived at, however, was not the true individual (or individualisation) but a breaking up of the solid unity into infinitesimal fragments. The original indivisible unity became a sum of infinitely divided unities. These unities or units were individualisations of things separate and feeling and acting as such. It is precisely the feeling of separation from others that gives you the impression that you are an individual. Otherwise you would feel that you were only a fluid mass. That is to say, you are no longer conscious simply of your rigid outer form and all that cuts you off from others and makes of you a separate individual, you are conscious of the vital forces that move about everywhere, of the inconscient that is the foundation of all, you have the impression that you are a moving mass with all kinds of contradictory movements in it, which cannot be separated from each other. You would not have the impression that you are an individual being, but that you are something like one note or vibration in a whole complex. The original will was to form individual beings capable of becoming conscious again of their divine origin. This process of individualisation created the necessity that to be an individual one must feel oneself separate: that is why one is cut off from the original consciousness, at least apparently, and is fallen into inconscience. For the Life of life is the Origin alone and if it is separated from that source, consciousness naturally turns into unconsciousness and you lose trace of the truth of your being. That is the process of the creation or formation of the world by which the pure origin does not manifest directly in its essence and purity, but through deformation, that is to say, unconsciousness and Ignorance. That is how ugliness came in, death and disease, wickedness and misery and all. It is the movement, I say, brought in by the necessity of individual formation that has produced these things, each and every one of them, that is the one source of the multiple evil in all its modes and vibrations. I do not say this was indispensable that problem I may take up later on. But for the moment I direct you to the source in order to show the remedy. And there is no point in questioning why it is so. As I said, the only way to settle the world problem is to be conscious again, to recover the lost consciousness. Of course, if you say like some religions that good is good and evil is evil and they will always remain so, then there is no longer any problem. An eternal struggle binds the two together and whichever wins for the moment will make the world a little better at one moment and a little worse at another. But the two exist, continue to exist eternally and indissolubly intertwined. But you have seen it is not like that; one can come out of the tangle into the perfect unity of the truth, for it is that which is the only and original source.
It is this perfect truth, let me repeat, that has scattered itself abroad, into these innumerable little atoms, into these insignificant brain cells which, in spite of all their Ignorance, are still moved by a secret stir of consciousness: these little specks of darkness reach out towards light which they can find, for it is within them. They will arrive at what they seek. It may take time more or less, but they will reach in the end. That is then the remedy: it lies in the very heart of evil itself.
***
07.13 - Divine Justice, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You must understand once for all that the Divine, when he acts is not moved by human notions. Possibly he does things even without what we call reason. In any case the reasons are not of the human kind; above all, the Divine has not that sense of justice which man has. For example, when you see a man full of greed for money, trying to cheat people just for the sake of getting a few rupees, your idea of justice cries out that such a man should be deprived of all money, he must be reduced to poverty. But actually you find things happening to the contrary. Although that is only the appearance of the situation; behind there is an altogether different picture. The greedy gets the object of his greed, but he has to make an exchange, give up some other possibilities. He gets money but he loses in his consciousness. And then it also happens very often that when he does get what he desired so much, he finds himself not so happy, generally he is even less happy than before: he is tormented by the wealth he has gained. You must not judge things by apparent success or by apparent failure. One can say, on the whole, that the Divine gives what one asks for and that is the best way in which one gets his lesson. If your desire is ignorant, unconscious, obscure, selfish, you increase in yourself Ignorance, unconsciousness, obscurity and selfishness, that is to say, you move away more and more from truth and consciousness and happiness, in other words, away from the Divine. For the Divine, however, there is only one thing which is true, the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Union. Each time you put material things in front of you, you become more and more material, you push behind more and more the Divine. To the eye of the ignorant you may have all the appearance of wonderful success, but this success, from the standpoint of truth, is a terrible defeat, you have bartered truth for falsehood.
To judge by appearances, by apparent success is an act of complete Ignorance. Even in the case of a person hardened to the core, who has apparently the utmost success, there is a counterpart: exactly this hardening, this evil that is put up thicker and thicker between the outer consciousness and the inner truth becomes also more and more unbearable. The outer success has to be paid for very dearly. One must be very great, very pure, one must have a very high, very unselfish spiritual consciousness to be able to succeed and yet not be affected. There is nothing so difficult to bear than success. That is the true test in life. When you are not successful, you turn very naturally to yourself, go within you, seek there comfort for the outer failure. And they who have the Flame within them and the Divine helping them truly, that is to say, if they are mature enough to get the help, if they are ready to follow the path, must expect blows coming upon them one after another, because that helps. Indeed that is the most powerful, most direct and most effective help. But if you have 'Success, take care! Ask yourself, at what price you have had it? What is the thing you have paid for the success? Of course, there are people of a different kind. They who have gone beyond, who are conscious of their soul, who are entirely surrender they can succeed and success does not touch them. But one has to rise very high to be able to shoulder the burden of success. It is perhaps the last and final test that the Divine puts to anyone. He says: Now that you are noble and high and unselfish, you belong to Me alone. I shall make you triumph. We shall see if you can bear the blow!
To the Asuras too the Divine gives what they ask for. Generally it is in that way that their end comes all the sooner. An Asura is a conscious being. He knows that he has an end. He knows that the attitude he has taken in this universe will necessarily destroy him after a time. Of course the Asura's time is much longer than human time. Even then he knows that there will come an end for him, for he has cut himself from Eternity. What he seeks is to carry out his desires to the utmost extent possible till the day of his doom, when the final defeat comes. And very possibly if he is allowed his way the defeat will be hastened. That is why exactly when great things are about to happen, at that moment the adverse forces become the most active, most violently active and apparently the most successful. They are given a free field as it were to rush to their doom.
07.14 - The Divine Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only you must sincerely wish, you must have the will, to be cured. Everything lies there. Now I always come back to the same theme. You must be sincere. If you want an experience for the sake of the experience and, once you have it, to go back to your ordinary ways, that will not do. You must sincerely will to be curedcured precisely of the ordinary waysyou must have the aspiration, the true aspiration to overcome the obstacle, to mount up and up, above and beyond yourself, so that you may drop all that pulls you back, drags you down, to break all limits, clarify and purify yourself, rid yourself of all that lies in your way. If you have this will, the true intense will not to fall back into past errors, to rise out of obscurity and Ignorance towards the light, shorn of all that is human, too humantoo small, too ignorant then that will and that aspiration shall act, act gradually, strongly and effectively bringing you a complete and definitive result. But beware, there must be nothing that clings to the old movements, that does not declare itself but hides its head and when the occasion is opportune puts up its snout.
So I say you must be truly sincere, very truly. If you discover anything clutching, sticking somewhere in the depths, you must be ready to pluck it out, wholly erase it and see no mark of it is left behind. Yes, sometimes you repeat your mistakes. You repeat till your suffering becomes too acute to bear and compels you to be sincere in spite of yourself as it were. But you need not try that line. It is a method, but a bad method: bad, because it destroys so many things, wastes so much energy, leaves such wrong vibrations. In the intensity of your suffering you do discover the will towards perfect sincerity. But you can be sincere also in less arduous and torturous a way.
07.15 - Divine Disgust, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, the poison will not have the same effect upon the Divine as upon man. For there is an essential difference between a state of Ignorance and a state of knowledge. Something untoward happens to you in your normal state of Ignorance, it has a certain character and brings mentally certain results: but the same thing happening to you in a state of knowledge will not carry the same effect. For example, take a very material thing, a blow, a right royal physical blow, well, if you are in a state of inconscience and Ignorance, as you usually are, you will have to suffer the full consequence which in its turn depends wholly upon the force of the blow, who or what gave the blow and the helplessness of the object. But the the same blow delivered in the same way by the same agent but upon a being who is conscious and full of knowledge, will produce instantly a reaction reducing the natural consequences to a minimum, even annulling the consequences altogether; for the reaction here is a reaction of knowledge, of light and not that of Ignorance, of obscurity. On the moral level the action can be clearly noticed. For example, you can receive an emotional shock, not in egoistic blindness, that is to say, identifying yourself with it or drowned in it; you can hold it away from you, look at it in an objective manner, see what it is, note the nature of its vibration, etc., etc., and then you put the light of your knowledge, the ultra-violet ray, as it were, of truth upon it. As a result, there comes a new disposition, the shock loses its effectivity. Even so, the physical result of a physical blow can be obviated. If that were not possible what would be the utility of the Divine taking upon himself the evil thing. Evil would continue in the same way and the world continue suffering in the same way. Precisely because the obscure vibrations are transformed into vibrations of light in the divine consciousness that the Divine takes upon and within himself all the ills of the world.
In the case of the physical occurrence, the knowledge I speak of is the inner knowledge of the body cells, their existence, composition, distribution and the knowledge of the consequences of the blow, its natural and expected effects. Also at the same time there should be the knowledge of what the cells should be like, how they ought to react to the blow. And the procedure adopted too is quite different from that of physical Nature which takes hours, days, months to repair a damage; the inner knowledge can do the thing immediately. This inner knowledge can be brought down from its highest source. Instead of the mere psychological knowledge, one can call down the supramental knowledge and focus it upon the part of the body endangered. If the elements of the body, the cells come under the influence of the force of truth and receive it, then there can be an immediate new ordering of the elements according to the higher law. That will bring about not only the cure from the blow received, the mending of the accident, but initiate a big progress in the general consciousness. This power to comm and the consciousness has no limit. If you have committed an error, even a grave error, and if you can yet call upon the consciousness of truth, this power of the supramental and allow it to work, it will give you an occasion to make a formidable progress. In other words, never be discouraged if you have blundered, blundered even more than once. Only you must keep your will firm, and take sometimes the unshakable resolution not to repeat. Rest assured you will in the end triumph over your difficulty.
07.19 - Bad Thought-Formation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You go into the very origin of things. Why are there inconscience, Ignorance and obscurity? You ask for the why and wherefore of the universe. Why is creation like this and not otherwise? Everyone has explained in his own way. The philosophers have done so, the scientists have done so on different lines. But, none has found the way out. You ask why there is bad will, but the truly interesting and important thing is to find a means whereby there would be no bad will. What is the use of asking why there is pain and suffering and misery, unless it is to find out the remedy? If you look for the why, you may find as many explanations as you like, each may be useful in a way, but none leads you anywhere, except into a blind alley.
There are many things in the world you do not approve of. Some people who, as they put it, wish to have the knowledge, want to find out why it is so. It is a line of knowledge. But I say it is much more important to find out how to make things otherwise than they are at present. That is exactly the problem Buddha set before himself. He sat under a tree and continued till he found the solution. The solution, however, is not very satisfactory: You say, the world is bad, let us then do away with the world; but to whose profit, as Sri Aurobindo asks very pertinently? The world will no longer be bad, since it will exist no more. The world will have to be rolled back into its origin, the original pure existence or non-existence. Then man will be, in Sri Aurobindo's words, the all-powerful master of something that does not exist, an emperor without an empire, a king without a kingdom. It is a solution. But there are others, which are better. We consider ours to be the best. There are some who say, like the Buddha, evil comes from Ignorance, remove the Ignorance and evil will disappear. Others say that evil comes from division, from separation; if the universe were not separated from its origin, there would be no evil. Others again declare that it is an evil will that is the cause of all, of separation and Ignorance. Then the question is, where does this bad will come from? If it were at the origin of things, it must have been in the origin itself. And then some question the bad will itself,there is no such thing, essentially, fundamentally, it is pure illusion.
Do animals have a bad will?
07.21 - On Occultism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What did the tiger represent? I told the painter that perhaps in the course of the day or at some time he was angry with someone and indulged in violent thoughts, wishing him harm, etc. Now as in the physical world, so too in the occult world there is a law of action and reaction or return movement. You cherish a bad thought; it returns upon you as an attack from outside. So the tiger might have represented some bad thought or impulse in him which came back upon him, like, as it is said, a boomerang. It is exactly one of the reasons why one should have control over one's thoughts and feelings and sensations. For if you think ill of a person, wish unpleasant things for him, then in your dream you are likely to see the person coming to attack you, more violently perhaps than you thought of doing. In your Ignorance and impulse of self-justification you say, Just see, was I not right in my feeling towards this man, he wanted to kill me! In point of fact, however, the contrary is the truth. It is a common law in occultism that if you make a formationa mental formation, for example, to the effect that an accident or some unpleasant thing should happen to a person and you send out the formation to do its work, then, if it so happens that the person concerned is on a higher level of consciousness, that is to say, if he wishes harm to none, is quite disinterested and indifferent in the matter, then the formation approaches him but does not enter into his atmosphere or touch him, it rebounds upon the sender. In that case a serious accident may happen to the sender of the formation: if one wishes death to another, death may come to himself. That is often the result of black magic which is a de-formation of occultism.
Formations are of many kinds. A formation is made for a particular work. When the work is done, the formation too dissolves. But it is a huge and complex subject. You cannot learn the whole of chemistry in one hour.
07.25 - Prayer and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are many kinds of prayers. There is one external and physical, that is to say, simply words learnt by rote and repeated mechanically. It does not mean much. It has usually one result, however, making you quiet. If you go on repeating a few words or sounds for some time, it puts you into a state of calmness in the end. There is another kind which is the natural expression of a wish; you want a particular thing and you express it clearly. You can pray for an, object or for a circumstance, you can pray also for a person or for yourself. There is still another kind in which the prayer borders on aspiration and the two meet: it is the spontaneous formulation of a living experience; it shoots out of the depth of your being, it is the utterance of something lived within: it wants to express gratitude for the experience, asks for its continuation or seeks an explanation. It is then, what I said, almost an aspiration. Aspiration, however, does not necessarily formulate itself in words; if it uses words at all, it makes of them a kind of invocation. Thus, you wish to be in a certain condition. You have, for example, found in you something which is not in harmony with your ideal, a movement of obscurity or Ignorance or even bad will. You wish to see it changed. You do not express the thing in so many words, but it rises up in you like a flame, an ardent offering of the experience itself which seeks increase and greatening to be made more clear and precise. It is true all this is capable of being expressed in words, if one tries to recall and note down the experience. But the experience, the aspiration itself is, as I say, like a flame shooting up and contains within it the very thing it asks for. I say asks for, but the movement is not at all that of a desire; it is truly a flame, the flame of purifying will carrying at its centre the very object which it wished to be realised. The discovery of a fault in you impels you to make it an occasion for more progress, for greater self-discipline, for further ascension towards the Divine. It opens out a door upon your future, which you wish to be clearer, truer, intenser; all that gathers in you like a concentrated force and tosses you up in a movement of ascension. It needs no expression in words. It is indeed a flame that leaps up. Such is true aspiration. Prayer usually is something much more external; it is about a very precise object. It is always formulated; for the formulation itself makes what a prayer is. You may have an aspiration and you can transcribe it into a prayer, but the aspiration itself exceeds the prayer. It is something much more intimate, much more self-forgetful, living only in the object it wishes to be or the thing to do, almost identified with it. A prayer can be of a very high quality. Instead of being a request for a fulfilment of your particular desire, it may express your thankfulness and gratefulness for what the Divine has done and is doing for you. You are not busy with your little self and its egoistic interests, you ask for the Divine's ways in you and in the world. This leads you to the border of aspiration. For aspiration too has many degrees and it is expressed on many levels. But the core of aspiration is in the psychic being, it is there at its purest, for there is its origin and source. Prayers come from the other, the lower or secondary levels of being. That is to say, there are physical or material prayers, asking for physical or material things, vital prayers, mental prayers; there are psychic prayers and spiritual prayers too. Each has its own character and its own value. I say again there is a certain type of prayer which is so spontaneous and so disinterested, more like an appeal or a call, generally not for one's own sake, but acting sometimes like an intercession with the Divine on behalf of others. Such a prayer is extremely powerful. I have seen innumerable cases where such a prayer had brought about its immediate fulfilment. It means a great faith, a great fervour, a great sincerity and also a great simplicity of heart, something which does not calculate, which does not bargain or barter, does not give with the idea of receiving. The majority of prayers are precisely made with the idea of giving so that one may receive. But I was speaking of the rarer variety which also does exist, which is a kind of thanksgiving, a canticle or a hymn.
To sum up then it can be said that a prayer is always formed of words. Words have different values, according to the state of consciousness of the person when he formulates it. But always prayer is a formulated thing. But one can aspire without formulating. And then, prayer needs a person to whom one prays. There is, of course, a certain class of people whose conception of the universe is such that there is no room in it for the Divine (the famous French scientist Laplace, for example). Such people are not likely to favour the existence of any being superior to themselves to whom they can appeal or look up for guidance and help. There is no question of prayer for them. But even they, though they may not pray, may aspire. They may not believe in God, but they may believe, for example, in progress. They may conceive of the world as a progressive movement, that it is becoming better and better, rising higher and higher, growing constantly to a nobler fulfilment. They can ask for, will for, aspire for such progress; they need not look for the Divine. Aspiration requires faith, certainly, but not faith necessarily in a personal God. But prayer is always addressed to a person, a person who hears and grants it. There lies the great difference between the two. Intellectual people admit aspiration, but prayer they consider as something inferior, fit for unintellectual persons. The mystics say, aspiration is quite all right, but if your aspiration is to be heard and fulfilled, you must also pray, know how to pray and to whomwho else but the Divine? The aspiration need not be towards any person; the aspiration is not for a person, but for a state of consciousness, a knowledge, a realisation. Prayer adds to it the relation to a person. Prayer is a personal thing addressed to a person for a thing which he alone can grant.
07.30 - Sincerity is Victory, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To be sincere and to be candid are not the same thing. To be candid means a simplicity based, in a large measure, upon an Ignorance of things. A child is candid, because he is simple and ignorant and hides nothing; he is incapable of it and has no will to deceive anyone. But sincerity is different.
Sincerity is a most difficult thing to have, but it is also the most effective of things. If you have sincerity, you are sure of victory. But it must be true sincerity. Sincerity means that all the elements of your being, all its movements, each and every one, from the most spiritual to the most physical, from the inmost to the outermost, from the top-most to the bottom-most, all parts, severally and wholly and equally are turned to the Divine,' they ask for nothing else than the Divine, they live for and by the Divine.
07.31 - Images of Gods and Goddesses, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have seen some of these forms in the vital world and also in the mental world; they are truly creations of man. There is a Power from beyond that manifests, but in this triple world of Ignorance man creates God Himself in his own image and beings that appear there are more or less the outcome of the creative human thought. So at times we do have things that are truly frightful. I have seen formations that are so obscure, so un-understandable, so inexpressive! There are some divine beings that are treated worse than the others. Take, for example, this poor Mahakali. What has man made of her, wildly terrible, a nightmare beyond imagination! Such creations however live in a very inferior world, in the lowest vital world; and if there is anything there of the original being, it is such a far off reflection that it is hardly recognisable. And yet it is that which is pulled by the human consciousness. When, for example, an image is made and installed and the priest calls down into it a form, an emanation of a god, through an inner invocation there is usually a whole ceremony in this connectionif the priest is someone having the power of evocation, then the thing succeeds (what Ramakrishna did in the Kali temple). But generally priests are people with the commonest ideas and the most traditional training and education; when they think of the gods they give them attributes and appearances which are popular, which belong normally to entities of the vital world, at best to mental formations but which do not represent in any way the truth of the beings behind. All the idols in temples or the household gods worshipped by the many are inhabited by beings who know only how to lead you to unhappiness and disaster. They are so far away from the divinity that one means to worship. There are certain family Kalis that are real monsters. I have even advised some to throw such an image into the Ganges to get rid of the evil influence emanating from it. But of course it is always the fault of man and not of the divinity. For man wishes so much to make his gods in his own image.
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07.37 - The Psychic Being, Some Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It depends. As I have told you now, there are psychic beings that are just on the way of formation and growth, they usually cannot choose at the beginning, they cannot choose very much. But when they have come to a certain degree of development and consciousness, they make a choice; generally when they are still in the body, when they have gathered a certain amount of experience, they decide what is to be their next field of experience. I shall give you an illustration, although somewhat external. A psychic being, for example, needed the experience of power, authority, comm and and wanted to know the reactions of these movements and also how to turn them towards the Divine, to learn, in a word, what these things can teach. So the soul took the body of a king (or a queen). When it had the necessary experience, learnt what it had to learn, it gave up the body, being no longer useful. It is at that moment, when it decides to leave the body, that the soul still in the body makes the choice of the next experience. The choice very often takes a course of action and reaction. If the soul has experienced and studied a particular field, its choice falls upon a contrary field on the following occasion. Thus if the soul has had the experience of a kingly position and worked through that to enter into a conscious relation with the Divine, then at the moment of leaving the body that served with Power and authority and command, it perhaps would say: This time I shall take a middle position, neither high nor low, where there will be no need to lead mostly an external life, where one is neither in great luxury nor in great misery. With that resolution it returns to the psychic world for the necessary rest, for the assimilation of past experiences and preparation for the future. When the time comes for return upon earth, for the descent into a physical body, it remembers naturally the choice it had made, but from that higher and subtler plane at that moment the material world is not seen in the way we see it, it appears in a different form; still one can notice the differences in the surroundings and activities. One has not the vision of the details, but a total or global vision is there. It can choose an atmosphere, it can choose even a particular country. It has in view a certain kind of education, civilisation and influence, the kind of life that it wishes to lead. Then as it comes down and looks about, it distinguishes very clearly the different kinds of vibrations and makes its way accordingly. It aims, as it were, at the place where to drop. But it can hit the target only approximately. For there are one or two other factors besides which come into play. For there is not only its own choice, from above, there must also be a receptivity from below, an aspiration that draws to it the particular being or the particular type of being. Usually the call is from a mother, sometimes from both the parents. If the parent has some aspiration or receptivity, something that is sufficiently passive and open and looking up towards something higher, in that case, the thing appears to the psychic being as a luminous vibration which beckons it. It is the answer to its will. It shows the place it is to go to. It cannot fix the day of its birth. There will naturally be a period of uncertainty, but that is not expected to go beyond a year. The second factor that somewhat modifies or qualifies his choice comes from the nature of the birth itself. The soul, the conscious being, precipitates into the inconscience, for the physical world, even human consciousness, at its very best, is an inconscient thing when compared to the psychic consciousness. It is as though the soul fell head down-most. That makes it dazed and for a long time it does not know what is what. It does not know where it is, what it is doing nor why it is there; a complete blank possesses it. It is unable to express itself, especially as a baby, it has not the proper amount of brain to understand or manifest anything. Very rarely do children show the exceptional being that they have within them. Cases do occur indeed, but they are very few and far between. Generally it takes time for the soul to come to its own. It wakes up but slowly from its numbness, it is only gradually that it begins to understand that it is there for some reason and by choice. This oblivion is occasioned by the presence of the mind and mental education which completely shuts off the psychic consciousness. All kinds of circumstances, happenings, experiencesexternal and emotionalare then needed to strike open the doors; within, to bring the memory that one has come from elsewhere and for a very special reason. It is the normal longer process. But one may have the chance of meeting early enough some one who knows; then instead of groping and fumbling through Ignorance and darkness, you get the light and the help that give you the swift and straight contact.
The psychic will and psychic development are things that are completely outside the range of common notions. Ideas of justice and reward and punishment have no place here at all. Any people come to me and complain: What have I done in my past life that I have to be under such difficult conditions now, to suffer so much! I always reply: But don't you see it is a blessing for you, the divine grace upon you? In your past life perhaps you yourself asked for such conditions so that you may make greater progress through them! This way of looking at the thing may seem very novel. But truth lies that way.
07.40 - Service Human and Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You must look into yourself, question yourself before you do a thing and not do it simply because it is the thing normally done and it is how things are normally done. You can do good to others, if you know what is that good and if you possess that in yourself. If you wish to help others, you must be on a higher level than that of theirs. If you are one with the others, level with them in nature and consciousness, what can you do but share in their Ignorance and blind movements and perpetuate them? So it happens really that the first thing to do is to serve yourself.
You will make a remarkable discovery as you proceed to know what you are and who you are. That is how you should begin. I want to serve humanity. How can I serve? Who is this 'I' that wants to serve? You say, I am such a person, this form and this name. But the form you have now was not there when you were a baby: it has been changing constantly All the elements of your body are being renewed totally. Neither are your sensations and feelings those you had a few years ago. Your thoughts and ideas have undergone revolutions. The I covers a sum of ever-changing factors. There is nothing particularly to be called I : it is only a ring of changes. An empty name seems to be the only constant thing. One element at a time comes forwardan idea, a feeling, an Impulse and that is your I for the moment. At another moment another element comes up and becomes your I. You are not one I but a crowd of many Is. So what is the value of the declaration of one of the 1's that it has found the goal, the truth, the duty you have to follow? Thus if you proceed further, questioning and analysing yourself thoroughly and sincerely, you will stumble upon the reality. You will find that I does not exist at all. What exists is something else: it is the one indivisible reality, the Divine alone.
08.12 - Thought the Creator, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Human thought always creates forms in the mental world. It is a creative force. You are creating thought-forms constantly and sending them out into the atmosphere around; they go abroad to do their work. You are yourself surrounded always by such formations. No doubt there are people who cannot think clearly; they form around them only a kind of whirl. But they who think clearly and strongly create thought-forms that go out to accomplish their task and return to the source. There are cases of people who are troubled by their own formations that return to them or upon them as if to possess them and which they cannot get rid of; they do not know how to unmake a form which they make. When you have made a particularly strong formation, it remains always linked to you; it comes back again and again hitting your head and gathering force. In the end it becomes a necessity for you. There is a whole world of mystery to learn in this matter. Men live in Ignorance; they have powers of which they are thoroughly unconscious or know very little.
Buddhists, I mean those who are in the more orthodox tradition, do not believe in God or an eternal Reality; they do not believe in gods either, that is to say, in beings who are truly divine. They, however, know admirably how to use the mind and the mind's power. The Buddhist discipline makes you master of the mental instrument. A person following the Buddhist discipline came to me once and said that he had made an experiment: he had formed a being with his thought, he had created something like a Mahatma. He knew and it is a proved fact that these mental formations after a time begin to have a personal life, independently of the author,although they may be connected with him, yet they are quite independent, in the sense that they have a will of their own. But now he was facing a formidable difficulty. He said: "Do you know I have formed my Mahatma so well that he has become a personality quite independent of me and comes all the while to trouble me? He comes, scolds me for this and that, advises me in this matter and that and wants to control my life altogether. I am unable to get rid of him. I find it extremely difficult and do not know how to go about it. As I say, my Mahatma has become extremely troublesome. He does not leave me to be at rest. He interferes in all my activities, prevents me from doing my work and yet I know it is my own creation and I am unable to do away with it." He explained to me how he had tried to get rid of the thing. I then told him it was because he did not know the trick. I showed him the process and the next morning he came happy and beaming, saying "it has left." He could not cut the connection; even then cutting the connection is not sufficient, for the being would continue to live apart and independent. What is needed is to re-absorb what one has created, to swallow what has been put out.
08.18 - The Origin of Desire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From where does desire come? Buddha said that it came from Ignorance. It is almost that. Desire is something in the being which imagines that it requires an object other than itself for its satisfaction. This is sheer Ignorance, proved by the fact that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred when one has the thing desired, one no more cares for it.
At its very origin, I think, it was an obscure need for growth or increase. In the lowest forms of life we find love transformed into an instinctive and irresistible need for enlarging, swelling, absorbing, adding to it another body. This need to take in is desire. So perhaps if you go back far enough into the last depths of inconscience, you will see that the ultimate source of desire is love: it is love in its most dark and inconscient form. It is, as I said, a need for accretion, an attraction for an outside object in order to embrace it, swallow it, make it part of itself and so grow bigger. Now, suppose you have before you something beautiful, harmonious, pleasing: if you have the true consciousness, you enjoy and are happy to the full, by simply looking at the thing, by having an inner contact in consciousness with the beauty and harmony that is there. And there the matter ends. You have the joy and that is all. Such a movement is very common in the artist. He sees a beautiful person, he has the joy of observing the grace of the form, the harmony of the movements and all that. But it does not go beyond. He is perfectly happy, perfectly satisfied when he has seen something beautiful.
08.21 - Human Birth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When, however, it is a free and conscious soul that seeks to take a body again upon earth, it begins to work upon the body even before the birth. Such being the case, it has no reason not to accept the inconveniences that result from the Ignorance of the parents. It has chosen its place for a reason which is a reason not of Ignorance: it saw a lightwhich may be simply a light of possibility; but there was a light and that is why it came there. And when from the domain of the psychic it looks upon the earth and has chosen its place of birth, the choice has sufficient discernment in it not to have made a gross mistake.
In any case, even in the very best of situations, when a soul comes down consciously and when it has consciously worked in the formation of the physical body, so long as the body is formed in the usual animal way, the soul will have to struggle, and to correct all that comes from this human animality.
08.22 - Regarding the Body, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
With regard to their physical being, men live in a formidable Ignorance. How many of you know the exact quantity of food and the kind of food the body requires? Yes, simply this, how much to take and when to take? You do not know. You are taught all kinds of things. You learn why and how this earth moves or the sun does not, why or how the triangle consists of two right angles: your faculties of imagination and discrimination are set to the task and get sharpened. But this little bit of exact knowledge you do not have the quantity of food you must take and the hour when the body needs it. It may be you are not unaware at times of this exact need. But to know properly demands a discipline, continuous labour for years perhaps. Years indeed you require when it is a matter of control over your mind, of attaining a consciousness subtle enough to enable you to come in contact with the elements of transformation and progress, to know how to regulate for your body the exact amount of physical effort, material activity, expenditure and reception of energy, how to secure the proportion between what is received and what is given out, how to utilise energy to re-establish the equilibrium that was broken in order to push forward new cells that were lagging behind and then how to build up conditions for a further step in upward progress to be possible etc., etc. The task is formidable. And yet that is the thing to be done if you want the body to be transformed. First of all, you must bring the body into complete harmony with the inner consciousness. That means a work in each cell of the body, in each small activity, in each movement of the organs. Only that and nothing more can keep you busy day and night with no other thing to look to. It is not easy to maintain the effort, the concentration, the inner vision in a continuous manner.
You have to enter into the disposition of the cells, your inner physical organisation, if the body is to answer to the force that descends. First of all, you must be conscious of your physical cells, you must know their different functions, the degree of receptivity in each, which of them are in good condition and which are not. Even the simple thing you do not know whether you are tired or not, not to speak of why you are tired. You do not know if you have a pain somewhere, and why it is there. It is exactly for this reason that you run to the doctor. For you have the illusion that the doctor would know better how to look into what is there inside your body and what is happening there. That does not seem to be quite rational, but there is the habit. Who can look into oneself so precisely, accurately, positively, as to know exactly what is out of order, why it is out of order, how it has come to be so? All that is a matter of pure observation. And then only arises the problem of doing the thing that will bring about a new order which is a much more difficult affair. And yet this is only the ABC of body-transformation.
08.23 - Sadhana Must be Done in the Body, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To avoid a nightmare you have to be in your psychic consciousness; for when you are in that consciousness nothing troubles you or brings you anxiety. It is only when you are in a movement of Ignorance that you do not have the courage or the strength to face a danger.
What is the source of cowardice?
Ignorance is the source. Ignorance is the cause of all evil. I think, however, that one becomes a coward when one is tamasic i.e. one fears to make an effort.
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08.24 - On Food, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In a general way, education, cultures, refinement of the senses are the means of curing movements of crude instinct and desire and passion. To obliterate them is not curing them; instead, they have to be cultivated, intellectualised, refined. That is the surest way of curing them. To give them their maximum growth in view of the progress and development of consciousness, so that one may acquire to a sense of harmony and exactitude of perception is part of culture and education for the human being. Men cultivate their intelligence in the same way: they read, they think, compare and contrast, they make a study. In this way their mind enlarges itself, it becomes wider and more comprehensive than the minds of those who live without a mental education, who possess only a few ideas that perhaps even contradict each other. They are moved wholly by these as they have no other, they think those are the only ideas that should govern them: such minds are extremely narrow and limited. On the other hand, they who have cultivated their intelligence, who have studied and thought, who have widened their mental range a little and so can see and note and compare other ideas and possible notions discover easily that it is sheer Ignorance and absurdity to be attached to a limited set of ideas and to consider that alone as the expression of truth.
This training of taste, this education of the senses is a very good, a necessary means to prepare the consciousness for a higher development. There are persons who are very crude and very simple in nature. They can have a strong inspiration and arrive at a certain spiritual growth but the foundation will always remain of a somewhat inferior quality: and when they come back to their ordinary consciousness they find there great obstacles: for the stuff is missing there; there are not, in the vital and physical consciousness, elements enough to enable it to support a descent of the higher force.
08.27 - Value of Religious Exercises, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From this standpoint it is good that for a time humanity should come out of the religious atmosphere, full of fear and blind superstitious submission by which the adverse forces have profited so monstrously. The age of negation, of atheism and positivism is from this view quite indispensable for man's liberation from sheer Ignorance. It is only when you have come out of this, this abject submission to the evil forces of the Vital that you can rise to truly spiritual heights and then become there collaborators and right instruments of the forces of the Truth and Consciousness and Power. The superstitions of the lower levels you must leave far behind to rise high.
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09.01 - Prayer and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You aspire for a certain state of being. You have, for example, discovered within you something which does not agree with your ideal, a movement of obscurity or Ignorance, even perhaps a bad will, something which goes against what you want to realise. You do not formulate a vow in words but something rises up in you like a flame, an offering made of a living experience which asks for a greater, larger being, a being more and more clear and precise. The thing can be reproduced in words later on, when one tries to remember and note down the experience.
Aspiration bursts forth like a mounting flame bearing in itself the thing that one desires to become, to do or to have. I said "desires", but "aspires" is the right word, for it has neither the quality nor the form of a desire. It is truly a great flame of purifying will and it bears in its core what seeks to realise itself.
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"May the entire consciousness altogether rise to that Perfection which shall manifest! May all this Ignorance that has made the world so unhappy change into an enlightened knowledge! May this bad will be illumined and transformed into goodwill."
And in proportion to what you are able to do, what you are able to understand, you wish with all your heart that it may be like that. It may take the form of a prayer, and you can askask of what or whom? Ask of that which knows, ask of that which is capable, ask of all that is better and stronger than yourself to give the help that it may be so. And how beautiful such prayers would be!
09.02 - The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
His pasture ground they have fenced with Ignorance.
Into his fragile undefended breast
09.03 - The Psychic Being, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The psychic awakes slowly from its dazed condition and slowly it becomes aware that it is there for some reason and by choice. But the intensive mental education that one usually receives shuts out completely the psychic consciousness. Then a mass of circumstances, happenings of all kinds, emotions and sensations and various other things are needed to open the inner doors and to enable one to begin to rememberremember that one has come from another world, one has come for a very definite reason. If the psychic however had chanced to fall upon a little knowledge instead of falling into a world of Ignorance, there could have been a quicker contact.
There are not very many fully developed souls upon earth. Evidently those who have reached a certain culture, a certain growth, a certain individualisation have instinctively the tendency to come together and form groups. It is then that we come across in particular epochs and climes fully formed beings gathering together. But you must not believe that that gives in any way the exact measure of human culture and growth. That is only a spray of foam on the surface. Even among those who already form a selection, there is not perhaps one in a thousand who can be called truly an individual being, conscious of himself, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and therefore partially at least if not wholly free from external influences; because being a conscious entity when these influences come he sees them, those that seem to agree with his inner growth and normal development he accepts and those that contradict he rejects. And instead of being a chaos, or in any case a frightful mixture, he is an organised individual being, conscious of himself, moving in life, knowing where he wants to go and how to go.
09.04 - The Divine Grace, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And you in your external Ignorance may not recognise it, may at first protest against the circumstances as they come to you, may grumble and try even to change them. But after a time you will have become wiser, with a little distance put in between the event and yourself, you will find out that that was just the thing necessary for you to make the required progress. It is a Will, a supreme Good Will that arranges everything around you.
If you say to the Divine with conviction, "I want you ", the Divine will arrange all circumstances in such a way as to oblige you to be sincere. Something in you says, "I want nothing but you", and then all the while you want a hundred different things. Usually it is one thing particularly that comes and troubles you and prevents you from realising your aspiration. Well, the Divine will come without showing himself, without even your suspecting it and He will arrange circumstances in such a way that whatever prevents you from being solely given to the Divine, will be inevitably removed from your path. And then when all such things are removed you begin to complain and shout. But subsequently, if you are sincere, you remember that you said to the Divine that you belonged to Him alone. And then He will remain with you, all the rest will pass. That is the greater Grace.
09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Necessarily, the love between two human beings is always made of Ignorance, misunderstanding, weakness and a terrible sense of isolation. It would be as if you wanted to gain entrance into the presence of a unique Splendour and the first thing you do is to put a screen between yourself and this Splendour and you are very much astonished that you do not have even a vague impression of it! The first thing then to do is to do away with the screen, pass through and stand in the presence of the Splendour. Then you know what it is. But if you go on piling veil after veil between yourself and That, you will never see it. You may have just a vague impression, "there is something" and that is all.
One of the highest expressions of love in human beings is the giving of oneself entirely to the person loved. That is to say, to sacrifice oneself for the motherland, give one's life in defending another person, etc. This may not be the very highest form, but it is already something. From there you have to climb very high up to arrive at the true expression which is on the summit of the ascent. The ultimate expression of love is in the felicity of union.
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Therefore the best means is, when love comes in any form whatsoever, to try to pierce through its external appearance, to find out the divine principle that is behind and that is the cause of its existence. Naturally it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is the most effective. In other words, instead of ceasing to love, because you love in the wrong way, you must cease to love in the wrong way and try to love in the right way. For example, the love between human creatures, in all its forms, the love of the parents for their children, of the children for their parents, the love between brothers, between lovers, all are tainted with Ignorance and egoism and every other fault that is the common human fault. So, instead of ceasing altogether to love, which is besides very difficult, as it will simply dry up the heart and therefore serve no purpose, you must learn to love with devotion and self-giving and self-abnegation, you are to fight not against love itself but against its deformities. All forms of appropriation, the sense of possession, jealousy, all other feelings that accompany and support these root feelings are to be rejected. Instead you must not seek to possess, dominate, impose your will or caprice or desire, must not be eager to take and receive, but to give. Do not demand a return from the other, but be satisfied with your own love; do not seek your interest, your personal pleasure, the fulfilment of your own desire but rest content with your love and affection, do not ask for a response, but remain happy with loving only, nothing more.
If you have done that, you have taken a big step, and then through that attitude, little by little you may progress more into the feeling itself, and you will find one day that love is not a personal thing, love is a divine universal feeling that manifests through you as well as it can, but it is in its essence a divine thing.
09.06 - How Can Time Be a Friend?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One thing is certain. It is this. If you are able to see the deeper law of things and if you are in contact with a higher consciousness in order to realise something that is far beyond all human conceptions, why should you be concerned with any human opinion? Ordinary men have no notion of what spiritual life or divine realisation may be like. Naturally, it is precisely because of their Ignorance that they come and judge those things quite nonchalantly and advise you as to how you should live and move and act and be. They know nothing, they see nothing. Your attitude towards them should be one of supreme indifference. And yet you should not feel superior to them. On the other hand, you should be kind and wish that they should be reborn in the Light. You should avoid arguing with such people and never try to convince them, that would be a vain attempt. You should be absolutely indifferent, indifferent to their criticisms and indifferent to their praise. You should know it is easier to be indifferent to criticism than to compliments. I shall tell you a story in this connection.
I have spoken to you more than once of Madame D. N.1
09.09 - The Origin, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is this inconscience that brings it about that you are not aware any longer of the Truth of your being. The secret of all deformation in the world is this inconscience which has been produced by the fact of separation from the Origin. And that explains why there are ugliness, wickedness, illness, suffering and death. It is because of this inconscience that although the Origin is there, it cannot manifest itself. It is there, that is why the world exists, but it is deformed in its expression, because it manifests itself through inconscience, Ignorance and obscurity.
The only way to set everything right is to be conscious again and it is very simple.
09.13 - On Teachers and Teaching, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is the same with regard to curing Ignorance. If words are necessary to explain a certain thing, then you do not have the true knowledge. If I have to speak out all that I mean to say in order to make you understand, then I do not have the mastery, I simply exercise an influence upon your intelligence and help you understand, awaken in yourself the desire to know, to discipline yourself, etc., etc. But if I am not able, simply by looking at you, without saying anything, to make you enter into the light that will make you understand, well, I have not mastered the state of Ignorance.
The problem of teachers is: how to control the classes, how to bring the students under discipline?
09.17 - Health in the Ashram, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I wonder at their Ignorance. Perhaps I should not wonder; human nature is like that. These people do not know or see or feel in the least that they are here in the best of conditions for cure, nowhere else in the world would they get anything like the opportunity or the help that is here. Naturally, if one is to be here and derive the full benefit of his stay, one has to fulfil certain conditions or rather one condition. That one condition is to give up the ego, not to live the life of the ego, but to live the life of the soul, to dedicate oneself to the Divine. So it is evident that if this condition is not fulfilled, that is to say, being here you continue to live the life of your old self, your ego, if you refuse to change, naturally you do not get the benefit of the help that is given here. And when you refuse to go forward, not only do you halt where you are, you go backward. That is the meaning of one's health getting worse. Of course if you ask my permission to go away, you have it. The Grace is every where for all to the extent they can receive and allow it to come to them. But that is not what things would be if you were here and agreed to attempt to fulfil the conditions of the life here.
To be able to stay here one must have faith. But people's faith depends upon what the ego desires and seeks. "I believe in the Divine provided I find Him doing or arranging things as I would like them to be. If things happen contrary to my notions and wishes, then I believe no more in the Divine." That is their attitude.
10.01 - A Dream, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Horrified by this sight Harimohon looked at the boy and exclaimed, Why, Keshta! I used to think this man the happiest of all! The boy replied, Just there lies my power. Tell me now which of the two is mightierthis Tinkari Sheel or Sri Krishna, the master of Vaikuntha? Look, Harimohon, I too have the police, sentinels, government, law, justice, I too can play the game of being a king; do you like this game? No, my child, answered Harimohon, it is a very cruel game. Why, do you like it? The boy laughed and declared, I like all sorts of games; I like to whip as well as to be whipped. Then he continued. You see, Harimohon, people like you look at the outward appearance of things and have not yet cultivated the subtle power of looking inside. Therefore you grumble that you are miserable and Tinkari is happy. This man has no material want; still, compared to you, how much more this millionaire is suffering! Can you guess why? Happiness is a state of mind, misery also is a state of mind. Both are only mind-created. He Who possesses nothing, whose only possessions are difficulties, even he, if he wills, can be greatly happy. But just as you cannot find happiness after spending your days in dry piety, and as you are always dwelling upon your miseries so too this man who spends his days in sins which give him no real pleasure is now thinking only of his miseries. All this is the fleeting happiness of virtue and the fleeting misery of vice, or the fleeting misery of virtue and the fleeting happiness of vice. There is no joy in this conflict. The image of the abode of bliss is with me: he who comes to me, falls in love with me, wants me, lays his demands on me, torments mehe alone can succeed in getting my image of bliss. Harimohon went on eagerly listening to these words of Sri Krishna. The boy continued, And look here, Harimohon, dry piety has lost its charm for you, but in spite of that you cannot give it up, habit4 binds you to it; you cannot even conquer this petty vanity of being pious. This old man, on the other hand, gets no joy from his sins, yet he too cannot abandon them because he is habituated to them, and is suffering hells own agonies in this life. These are the bonds of virtue and vice; fixed and rigid notions, born of Ignorance, are the ropes of these bonds. But the sufferings of that old man are indeed a happy sign. They will do him good and soon liberate him.
So far Harimohon had been listening silently to Sri Krishnas words. Now he spoke out, Keshta, your words are undoubtedly sweet, but I dont trust them. Happiness and misery may be states of mind, but outer circumstances are their cause. Tell me, when the mind is restless because of starvation, can anyone be happy? Or when the body is suffering from a disease or enduring pain, can any one think of you? Come, Harimohon, that too I shall show you, replied the boy.
10.02 - Beyond Vedanta, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first step in the spiritual life is the Vedantic experience that the world is an illusion, an absolute illusion. Rather it is the Buddhist experience of nihil, nothingness, extinction that is the first step, the very basic realisation of all spiritual life. It is not the summit the nee plus ultra, beyond which there is nothing but it is the very foundation, the absolute minimum of spiritualitysine qua non, without which it is not. The one experience with which you start your spiritual journey is the total negation of whatever exists, reducing existence to zero: world-existence being equated with Ignorance. Life is a falsehood, one has to reject it outright. The next step in Vedanta would be, when you have eliminated everything, reduced all to zero, to contemplate, to find what remains, the irreducible reality the unity, the One, Sat, Brahman.
First, then, the total and absolute dissolution of this creation of Ignorance, the Creation which is Ignorance, and attaining a status of nothingness, absolute annihilation, then in that blank void emerges the Residue, the One True Realitya silent, infinite eternal immobility, a pure Existence. In the beginning the Non-Existence (Asat), then there arises the Pure Existence (Sat). That pure Existence is gradually found to possess or be Delight also. As Being is not the being in creation even so the Consciousness is not the normal or mental consciousness, and Delight too is not the joy of life; they are all of quite another quality and category.
In other words Purusha is given the exclusive reality, while Prakriti is negated, being identified with unconsciousness and Ignorance, is relegated to a status of relative reality. Prakriti is considered as my, the illusory consciousness, the Ignorance.
Purusha is the Brahman, the Conscious Being, the One Absolute Pure Reality.
10.02 - The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Force on man's crooked Ignorance Heaven's straight line
Or colonise a world of death with gods.
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And consciousness left in seeking Ignorance
And evolution's slow arrested plan.
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In the distorting mirror of Ignorance
Or upwards turns to catch imagined stars.
1.003 - Family of Imran, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
154. Then after the setback, He sent down security upon you. Slumber overcame some of you, while others cared only for themselves, thinking of God thoughts that were untrue—thoughts of Ignorance—saying, “Is anything up to us?” Say, “Everything is up to God.” They conceal within themselves what they do not reveal to you. And they say, “If it was up to us, none of us would have been killed here.” Say, “Even if you Had stayed in your homes, those destined to be killed would have marched into their death beds.” God thus tests what is in your minds, and purifies what is in your hearts. God knows what the hearts contain.
155. Those of you who turned back on the day when the two armies clashed—it was Satan who caused them to backslide, on account of some of what they have earned. But God has forgiven them. God is Forgiving and Prudent.
10.03 - Life in and Through Death, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The injunction is: you must die to the world if you want the life Eternal. Even so you must die to yourself if you want the Divine. The existing life which your ego has built up is a life of Ignorance, misery and decadence. Death is indeed the natural and inevitable consequence; but this is a death in Ignorance and bondage, it does not lead you to liberation and freedom. The dying that liberates is a conscious, deliberate movement of intelligence and will; dying to the world means withdrawing yourself from the world and turning within. Dying to yourself means withdrawing from your egohood and turning to the self, the being that is beyond. This withdrawal is to be done constantly and consistently in all the parts of the being. The mind is to move away from its thoughts, the vital from its desires and impulses and the body from its hunger and thirst. The first result of this withdrawal is a division of the being, an inner passive part and an outer active part. The inner part becomes gradually a mere witness and the outer part a mere mechanical functioning. When the withdrawal is so complete that the outer being or the world has no effect upon the inner, does not raise any ripple in it by its touch or contiguity then is accomplished the real death. Then it is said the outer existence, the material life does not continue long, it comes sooner or later to a dead stop. Thus the inner being is liberated completely and is freed into the life beyond, the Divine Existence, the Brahman. It is said that when each and every seed of the various elements that compose the being, that sprouts into the luxuriant tree of material life, when each and every seed is burnt up by the heat of mounting 'tapas', the force of aspiring consciousness, then there is no more chance or possibility of an ignorant earthly life, one is then naturally born into the Life of the Eternal. That is the final, the supreme death which is laya or pralaya.
To live away from life and consequently away from death is one thing, comparatively easy; but to live in life and consequently in death is another thing, somewhat more difficult. To withdraw oneself from the field of death and retire in the immutability beyond or some form of it is what was attempted in the ancient days. But there has been side by side always a growing tendency in man to stay here in this vale of tears under the shadow of death, to live dangerously and face the Evil and conquer it here itself; for death is not a mere negation an annihilation of the reality, it is only a mask put over the reality or is its obverse. Tear off or remove the disguise, you will see the smiling radiant Godhead behind.
10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That bridged with spans of light the world's Ignorance.
In waking Mind, the Thinker built his house.
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His knowledge he disguised as Ignorance,
His Good he sowed in Evil's monstrous bed,
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And Death and Ignorance govern the mortal world
And Nature's visage wears a greyer hue.
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Even in this labour and dolour of Ignorance,
On the hard perilous ground of difficult earth,
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Who would turn back to Ignorance and pain?
"O Death, I have triumphed over thee within;
10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Make Knowledge a catch of the snare of Ignorance
And the Word a dart to slay my living soul?
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Arise in the mind-mooned splendour of Ignorance;
Even now the deathless Lover's touch we feel:
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Crushed by its load of Ignorance and doubt
Which knowledge seems to increase and growth to enlarge,
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Of his Ignorance thou art the impenitent sign,
Of its vast tenebrous womb the natural child,
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His ways bewilder mortal Ignorance;
The finite in its little sections parked,
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In the casual error of the world's Ignorance
A plan, a hidden Intelligence is glimpsed.
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A shroud of Death, a shroud of Ignorance.
It compelled the suns to burn through silent Space,
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Its shadowy reflex our Ignorance.
It starts from the mute mass in countless jets,
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The Light of which the world's Ignorance is the shade
Till Truth draws back the shade that it has cast,
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Wearing the mind's mask of bright Ignorance.
Thou art my shadow and my instrument.
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Freed from thy clutch of pain and Ignorance
That he may stand master of life and fate,
1.004 - Women, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
17. Repentance is available from God for those who commit evil out of Ignorance, and then repent soon after. These—God will relent towards them. God is Knowing and Wise.
18. But repentance is not available for those who commit evils, until when death approaches one of them, he says, “Now I repent,” nor for those who die as disbelievers. These—We have prepared for them a painful torment.
1.005 - The Table, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
50. Is it the laws of the time of Ignorance that they desire? Who is better than God in judgment for people who are certain?
51. O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies; some of them are allies of one another. Whoever of you allies himself with them is one of them. God does not guide the wrongdoing people.
1.006 - Livestock, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
54. When those who believe in Our revelations come to you, say, “Peace be upon you, your Lord has prescribed mercy for Himself. Whoever among you does wrong out of Ignorance, and then repents afterwards and reforms—He is Forgiving and Merciful.”
55. Thus We explain the revelations, and expose the path of the unrighteous.
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108. Do not insult those they call upon besides God, lest they insult God out of hostility and Ignorance. We made attractive to every community their deeds. Then to their Lord is their return, and He will inform them of what they used to do.
109. They swear by God, with their most solemn oaths, that if a miracle were to come to them, they would believe in it. Say, “The miracles are only with God.” But how do you know? Even if it did come, they still would not believe.
1.007 - Initial Steps in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
So, we have to chalk out very carefully, as in a spiritual diary, the little mistakes that a person can commit by injudicious thinking, irrational analysis of conditions due to a false view of life, a false judgement of things, and due to a woeful lack of knowledge of human nature and psychology. These are the difficulties that arise due to Ignorance of the true nature of things that drives us into committing small mistakes, which will stand before us like devils one day and prevent us from going further. These mistakes must be avoided, and we have to consider them in some detail.
10.07 - The World is One, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The sense of separated and isolated existence, the feeling of a closed system that one assumes in opposition to others is the Maya of which the Vedanta speaks. It is real so long as it is taken to be real. But it possesses no inherent or absolute reality. A re-orientation or a remodelling of the individual self is the way towards re-establishing in the forefront, the background unity. Egoism, as it happens to be now, is the broken-up and scattered unity. Polarisation means precisely re-ordering and re-orienting the dispersal movement of Ignorance and bringing into a new purposeful existence the unity that already exists.
Laser: Light amplifications due to the stimulated emission of Radiation.
1.00b - Introduction, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Even in the remotest times the MAGUS has been regarded as one of the highest adepts and it might be of interest to learn that, as a matter of fact, the word magic is derived from this word. The so called sorcerers are by no means initiates but only imitators to the mysteries, who counting partly on the Ignorance and partly on the credulity of the individuality or a whole nation in order to reach their selfish aims by, lies and fraud. The true magician will always despise such practices.
In reality, magic is a sacred science, it is, in the very true sense the sum of all knowledge because it teaches how to know and utilize the sovereign rules. There is no difference between magic and mystic or any other conception of the name. Wherever au thentic initiatio n is at stake, one has to proceed on the same basis, according to the same rules, irrespective of the name given by this or that creed. Considering the universal polarity rules of good and evil, active and passive, light and shadow, each science can serve good as well as bad purposes. Let us take the example of a knife, an object that virtually ought to be used for cutting bread only, which, however, can become a dangerous weapon in the hands of a murderer. All depends on the character of the individual. This principle goes just as well for all the spheres of the occult sciences. In my book I have chosen the term of magician for all of my disciples, it being a symbol of the deepest initiation and the highest wisdom.
1.00c - INTRODUCTION, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
take us to the other shore of this ocean of Ignorance; that is
the science of religion; nothing else can be.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
We can take up this matter of the centres along three lines. Much has been written and discussed anent the centres, and much mystery exists which has aroused the curiosity of the ignorant, and has tempted many to meddle with that which does not concern them. I seek to elucidate somewhat and to give a new angle of vision to [162] the study of these abstruse matters. I do not in any way intend to take up the subject from such an angle as to convey rules and information that will enable a man to vivify these centres and bring them into play. I sound here a solemn word of warning. Let a man apply himself to a life of high altruism, to a discipline that will refine and bring his lower vehicles into subjection, and to a strenuous endeavor to purify and control his sheaths. When he has done this and has both raised and stabilised his vibration, he will find that the development and functioning of the centres has pursued a parallel course, and that (apart from his active participation) the work has proceeded along the desired lines. Much danger and dire calamity attends the man who arouses these centres by unlawful methods, and who experiments with the fires of his body without the needed technical knowledge. He may, by his efforts, succeed in arousing the fires and in intensifying the action of the centres, but he will pay the price of Ignorance in the destruction of matter, in the burning of bodily or brain tissue, in the development of insanity, and in opening the door to currents and forces, undesirable and destructive. It is not the part of a coward, in these matters concerning the subjective life, to move with caution and with care; it is the part of discretion. The aspirant, therefore, has three things to do:
1. Purify, discipline and transmute his threefold lower nature.
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
Consider the pettiness of men's minds. They ask for that which injureth them, and cast away the thing that profiteth them. They are, indeed, of those that are far astray. We find some men desiring liberty, and priding themselves therein. Such men are in the depths of Ignorance.
123
Liberty must, in the end, lead to sedition, whose flames none can quench. Thus warneth you He Who is the Reckoner, the All-Knowing. Know ye that the embodiment of liberty and its symbol is the animal. That which beseemeth man is submission unto such restraints as will protect him from his own Ignorance, and guard him against the harm of the mischief-maker. Liberty causeth man to overstep the bounds of propriety, and to infringe on the dignity of his station. It debaseth him to the level of extreme depravity and wickedness.
124
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Consort with all religions with amity and concord, that they may inhale from you the sweet fragrance of God. Beware lest amidst men the flame of foolish Ignorance overpower you. All things proceed from God and unto Him they return. He is the source of all things and in Him all things are ended.
145
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
was the criticizing part well, then: how could virtually everything I said be untrue? In my Ignorance and
confusion, I decided to experiment. I tried only to say things that my internal reviewer would pass
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beneficial). I believe that individuals and societies who flout these absolutes in Ignorance or in willful
opposition are doomed to misery and eventual dissolution.
1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
We are now in a position to say what happened to Mohammed. Somehow or another this phenomenon happened in his mind. More ignorant than Anna Kingsford, though, fortunately, more moral, he connected it with the story of the Annunciation, which he had undoubtedly heard in his boyhood, and said Gabriel appeared to me. But in spite of his Ignorance, his total misconception of the truth, the power of the vision was such that he was enabled to persist through the usual persecution, and founded a religion to which even to-day one man in every eight belongs.
The history of Christianity shows precisely the same remarkable fact. Jesus Christ was brought up on the fables to the Old Testament, and so was compelled to ascribe his experiences to Jehovah, although his gentle spirit could have had nothing in common with the monster who was always commanding the rape of virgins and the murder of little children, and whose rites were then, and still are, celebrated by human sacrifice.1
10.10 - A Poem, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If you are a slave of Ignorance, the essence is mixed
It's not that I don't love you, it's that I don't love you
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Don't hold the knowledge-sword in the fragment of Ignorance
Weak in poverty, exhausted in laziness,
10.11 - Beyond Love and Hate, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The mother says Love and Hate are at bottom the same thing. At the centre there is the same substance in both, it is the obverse and reverse of the same stuff. It is a vibration, it is a unique vibration, a vibration of extreme intensity, of extreme intimacy. At the centre there is this one single movement although at the periphery it becomes different, even contradictory. As the movement starts from the centre, and proceeds outward it differentiates itself, becomes more and more different, contrary, even contradictory to what it was at its origin. Hatred with all its most ugly features appears in the place of what was once a smiling beauty. Indeed, Love itself as we know it, as it is at the outside on the periphery, is equally a deformation and aberration like Hatred. Hatred kills but Love devours, vitally in man, literally in some of the lower species of animals. Human love and human hatred are both perversions, falsified expressions of another truth behind. It is human Ignorance and prejudice that appreciates one and deprecates the other. Yet both have the same root, the flowering of the same seed or it is somewhat like the two opposite kinds of electricitypositive and negative. The two charges have opposite signs but they attract each other and although in the expression and action they are contradictory, they are both charges of electrical energy and therefore substantially they are one and the same.
We may extend this viewpoint and find the resolution of all contrariness and contradictoriness. Paradoxically one may say then all contradictions are an apparent illusion, all contradictions naturally and inevitably mean an inmost unity and identity. Even so the Brahman and the world or the Purusha and the Prakriti are apparent negations to each other, the duality is in the ordinary ignorant consciousness, but the two are one in the supreme indivisible consciousness.
1.012 - Joseph, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
89. He said, “Do you realize what you did with Joseph and his brother, in your Ignorance?”
90. They said, “Is that you, Joseph?” He said, “I am Joseph, and this is my brother. God has been gracious to us. He who practices piety and patience—God never fails to reward the righteous.”
10.13 - Go Through, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In fact it is to the Divine that the dedication has to be made. Dedication means offering. All works, says the Gita, have to be offered to the Supreme, that is the meaning of sacrifice, the sacrifice of works (Karmayajna), all works come from the Divine and they are to go back to Him, that is how they are purified and through them thus purified and elevated, man attains his goal, union with the Supreme. However, not works alone but each and every element of the human beingeven love and passion and all the grosser urgesdo come from the only one Source, the Divine. They become impure and distorted, muddy and poisonous when man seeks to appropriate, that is to say, misappropriate them as his own personal belongings. To give up the sense of ownership is the core of dedication. You are not the possessor, the Divine is the only possessor. In fact, you also do not belong to yourself, you belong to the Divine. That is the ceremony of sacrifice you have to undertakeinstall the Divinity in all your parts and functions. That is how you purify and divinise your human elements. That is how you go through Ignorance and mortality and arrive at knowledge and immortality.
***
1.016 - The Bee, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
119. But towards those who do wrongs in Ignorance, and then repent afterwards and reform, your Lord thereafter is Forgiving and Merciful.
120. Abraham was an exemplary leader, devoted to God, a monotheist, and was not of the polytheists.
10.16 - The Relative Best, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only, in the progressive march, the best can always be bettered and must be bettered. In the earlier stages, when one is in Ignorance and darkness lies about, the path is sure to be tortuous with ups and downs, aberrations and retrogressions, but as one advances and the consciousness grows the obscurity dissipates, gradually the path too straightens itself, becomes smooth and kindly. That is how the best at one moment, which may appear to the superficial consciousness, very bad or even the worst, is betteredbetterment means precisely this that one rises into a clearer consciousness, one moves along a straighter path, one takes a shorter and happier course to the Goal. This is true as much of the individual as of the world as a whole, for the world too, like the individual, moves inevitably towards its high destiny the same as or parallel to that of the individual.
It is the best that happens always for nothing else can happen but it is a relative best, relative to the situation that the consciousness according to its status creates around. As the consciousness advances the nature of the best is also transformed.
10.18 - Short Notes - 1- The Sense of Earthly Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ignorance is usually equated with innocence. A child is ignorant, therefore he is innocent. Although it is said that Ignorance of law is no excuse. Spiritually however, Ignorance does not mean innocence. Ignorance or unconsciousness or inconsciencedifferent degrees of the same thing that is to say lack of consciousness, mean, at bottom, falsehood. It is through the Ignorance that Maya, the great illusion, was born. Ignorance is false apprehension, it begins with the sense of separation, "I am other than the Divine." That is how Jiva is born in or through the Ignorance. The world is separate from the Divine. That is how Matter is born as or in inconscience. And the creation appears as evil. This sense of separation is a falsehood for in reality nothing is separate from the supreme Consciousness, all is That.
To regain the Truth-sense, to move upward in the cycle of Ignorance and falsehood towards this Truth-sense is the world-labour and also human labour.
Even in the state of separation under conditions of the in conscience and falsehood, in spite of all appearances the Unity, the Truth-consciousness remains intact behind. It is never effaced or obliterated.
10.19 - Short Notes - 2- God Above and God Within, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
God is not only above or beyond the creation. He is also here within the creation. He is not only over our head looking down upon us. He is within our heart inspiring us, enlightening us, loving us. This is the dynamic Divine, the Supreme Consciousness concealed within the apparent inconscience of the material existence. It is that which pushes creation upward in its evolutionary course. It is that which lies behind man's Ignorance purifying his obscurity leading him to a more and more luminous revelation.
In the Vedic image above shines Surya, here below burns Agni. Both are aspects of the same Truth.
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
get lost in the world of the Ignorance and can only be saved
by a redeemer who reminds them of their origin. In the
--
the world of Ignorance and Darkness could never have
evolved back towards its Origin.
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
gerous way. But since Ignorance is no guarantee of security, and
in fact only makes our insecurity still worse, it is probably bet-
1.01 - BOOK THE FIRST, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And from that Ignorance proceeds thy hate.
Me Claros, Delphi, Tenedos obey;
1.01 - Description of the Castle, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
1. Plan of this book. 2. The Interior Castle. 3. Our curable self Ignorance. 4. God dwells in the centre of the soul. 5. Why all souls do not receive certain favours. 6. Reasons for speaking of these favours. 7. The entrance of the Castle. 8. Entering into oneself. 9. Prayer. 10. Those who dwell in the first mansion. 11. Entering. 12. Difficulties of the subject.
1.: WHILE I was begging our Lord to-day to speak for me, since I knew not what to say nor how to commence this work which obedience has laid upon me, an idea occurred to me which I will explain, and which will serve as a foundation for that I am about to write.
--
3.: As this is so, we need not tire ourselves by trying to realize all the beauty of this castle, although, being His creature, there is all the difference between the soul and God that there is between the creature and the Creator; the fact that it is made in God's image teaches us how great are its dignity and loveliness. It is no small misfortune and disgrace that, through our own fault, we neither understand our nature nor our origin. Would it not be gross Ignorance, my daughters, if, when a man was questioned about his name, or country, or parents, he could not answer? Stupid as this would be, it is unspeakably more foolish to care to learn nothing of our nature except that we possess bodies, and only to realize vaguely that we have souls, because people say so and it is a doctrine of faith. Rarely do we reflect upon what gifts our souls may possess, Who dwells within them, or how extremely precious they are. Therefore we do little to preserve their beauty; all our care is concentrated on our bodies, which are but the coarse setting of the diamond, or the outer walls of the castle.6
4.: Let us imagine, as I said, that there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse.7' Think over this comparison very carefully; God grant it may enlighten you about the different kinds of graces He is pleased to bestow upon the soul. No one can know all about them, much less a person so ignorant as I am. The knowledge that such things are possible will console you greatly should our Lord ever grant you any of these favours; people themselves deprived of them can then at least praise Him for His great goodness in bestowing them on others. The thought of heaven and the happiness of the saints does us no harm, but cheers and urges us to win this joy for ourselves, nor will it injure us to know that during this exile God can communicate Himself to us loathsome worms; it will rather make us love Him for such immense goodness and infinite mercy.
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere Ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his Ignorancewhich his growth requireswho has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clo the him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him.
The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
1.01 - Introduction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
All is light, a lustre which blinds instead of enlightening us because it is too puissant for our gaze; for all the veils in which our vision is enveloped, are only veils of dazzlement. There are for our eyes excessive splendours as well as insufficient gleams. The measure of every obscurity is the imperfection of our vision and the night is the symbol of our Ignorance.
But nothing is really hidden; for where shall anything whatsoever dissimulate its presence or its truth in the all that is universally self-evident? The things that are visible to us are those which are in correspondence with the measure of clarity already acquired by our consciousness and our mind.
1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
9. Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Knowledge alone.
10. Other, verily,9 it is said, is that which comes by the Knowledge, other that which comes by the Ignorance; this is the lore we have received from the wise who revealed That to our understanding.
11. He who knows That as both in one, the Knowledge and the Ignorance, by the Ignorance crosses beyond death and by the Knowledge enjoys Immortality.
12. Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the NonBirth, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Birth alone.
--
Personality, the Knowledge and the Ignorance, the Becoming and the Not-Becoming,
Life on earth and beyond and the supreme Immortality. The image is of the world either as a garment or as a dwelling-place for the informing and governing Spirit. The latter significance agrees better with the thought of the Upanishad.
--
9 Anyadeva - eva here gives to anyad the force, "Quite other than the result described in the preceding verse is that to which lead the Knowledge and the Ignorance." We have the explanation of anyad in the verse that follows. The ordinary rendering, "Knowledge has one result, Ignorance another", would be an obvious commonplace announced with an exaggerated pompousness, adding nothing to the thought and without any place in the sequence of the ideas.
10 In the inner sense of the Veda Surya, the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda "Sight". His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man's dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and leads him to the highest Sight.
1.01 - Maitreya inquires of his teacher (Parashara), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[5]: The three qualities, to which we shall have further occasion to advert, are, Satya, goodness or purity, knowledge, quiescence; Rajas, foulness, passion, activity; and Tamas, darkness, Ignorance, inertia.
[6]: Pradhānabuddhyādisū. This predicate of the Deity distinguishes most of the Purāṇas from several of the philosophical systems, which maintain, as did the earliest Grecian systems of cosmogony, the eternal and independent existence of the first principle of things, as nature, matter, or chaos. Accordingly, the commentator notices the objection. Pradhāna being without beginning, it is said how can Viṣṇu be its parent? To which he replies, that this is not so, for in a period of worldly destruction (Pralaya), when the Creator desists from creating, nothing is generated by virtue of any other energy or parent. Or, if this be not satisfactory, then the text may be understood to imply that intellect (Buddhi) &c. are formed through the materiality of crude nature, or Pradhāna.
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Is it not likely that this indicates modern philosophical Ignorance, rather than ancestral philosophical
error?
--
the earth were separated by the act of a deity? We do not know. Our abysmal Ignorance in this regard has
not been matched, however, by a suitable caution. We appear to have made the presumption that stories
--
and morality if we were willing to admit our Ignorance, and take the risk. Accurate specification of
underlying mythological commonalities might comprise the first developmental stage in the conscious
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M. had yet to learn the distinction between knowledge and Ignorance. Up to this time his conception had been that one got knowledge from books and schools. Later on he gave up this false conception. He was taught that to know God is knowledge, and not to know Him, Ignorance. When Sri Ramakrishna exclaimed, "And you are a man of knowledge!", M.'s ego was again badly shocked.
God with and without form
1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
God and all others are either impostures or at best imperfectly inspired, that this or that philosophy is the last word of the reasoning intellect and other systems are either errors or saved only by such partial truth in them as links them to the one true philosophical cult. Even the discoveries of physical Science have been elevated into a creed and in its name religion and spirituality banned as Ignorance and superstition, philosophy as frippery and moonshine. And to these bigoted exclusions and vain wranglings even the wise have often lent themselves, misled by some spirit of darkness that has mingled with their light and overshadowed it with some cloud of intellectual egoism or spiritual pride. Mankind seems now indeed inclined to grow a little modester and wiser; we no longer slay our fellows in the name of God's truth or because they have minds differently trained or differently constituted from ours; we are less ready to curse and revile our neighbour because he is wicked or presumptuous enough to differ from us in opinion; we are ready even to admit that Truth is everywhere and cannot be our sole monopoly; we are beginning to look at other religions and philosophies for the truth and help they contain and no longer merely in order to damn them as false or criticise what we conceive to be their errors. But we are still apt to declare that our truth gives us the supreme knowledge which other religions or philosophies
Essays on the Gita
1.01 - Prayer, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
"From Brahm to a clump of grass, all things that live in the world are slaves of birth and death caused by Karma; therefore they cannot be helpful as objects of meditation, because they are all in Ignorance and subject to change." In commenting on the word Anurakti used by Shandilya, the commentator Svapneshvara says that it means Anu, after, and Rakti, attachment; i.e. the attachment which comes after the knowledge of the nature and glory of God; else a blind attachment to any one, e.g. to wife or children, would be Bhakti. We plainly see, therefore, that Bhakti is a series or succession of mental efforts at religious realisation beginning with ordinary worship and ending in a supreme intensity of love for Ishvara.
next chapter: 1.02 - The Philosophy of Ishvara
--- Overview of noun ignorance
The noun ignorance has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (5) ignorance ::: (the lack of knowledge or education)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun ignorance
1 sense of ignorance
Sense 1
ignorance
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun ignorance
1 sense of ignorance
Sense 1
ignorance
=> ignorantness, nescience, unknowing, unknowingness
=> inexperience, rawness
=> unenlightenment
=> illiteracy
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun ignorance
1 sense of ignorance
Sense 1
ignorance
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun ignorance
1 sense of ignorance
Sense 1
ignorance
-> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> tradition
=> object
=> food, food for thought, intellectual nourishment
=> noumenon, thing-in-itself
=> universe, universe of discourse
=> topic, subject, issue, matter
=> issue
=> idea, thought
=> kernel, substance, core, center, centre, essence, gist, heart, heart and soul, inwardness, marrow, meat, nub, pith, sum, nitty-gritty
=> wisdom
=> representation, mental representation, internal representation
=> belief
=> unbelief, disbelief
=> heresy, unorthodoxy
=> goal, end
=> education
=> experience
=> acculturation, culture
=> lore, traditional knowledge
=> ignorance
=> knowledge domain, knowledge base, domain
=> metaknowledge
--- Grep of noun ignorance
ignorance
Wikipedia - Agnotology -- The study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt
Wikipedia - Argument from ignorance -- Logical fallacy that, since proposition has not yet been proven false, it must be true
Wikipedia - Avidya (Buddhism) -- Ignorance or misconceptions about the nature of metaphysical reality
Wikipedia - Ignorance (song) -- 2009 single by Paramore
Wikipedia - Ignorance
Wikipedia - Invincible ignorance (Catholic theology)
Wikipedia - Invincible ignorance fallacy
Wikipedia - invincible ignorance fallacy
Wikipedia - Jahiliyyah -- The period of "ignorance" prior to the rise of Islam
Wikipedia - Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly -- Play
Wikipedia - Pluralistic ignorance
Wikipedia - Rational ignorance
Wikipedia - Red pill and blue pill -- Dilemma between painful truth and blissful ignorance
Wikipedia - Sociology of scientific ignorance -- Study of ignorance in science
Wikipedia - Veil of ignorance (philosophy)
Wikipedia - Veil of ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10471394-the-second-book-of-general-ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1060442.Never_Plead_Ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17039812-studied-ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21063058-ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2466190.A_Smattering_of_Ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31461217-the-valor-of-ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3330091-the-book-of-animal-ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36384051-twisted-ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3936694-the-ignorance-of-blood
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/410632.The_Book_of_General_Ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6342595-breaking-the-idols-of-ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6596904-if-ignorance-is-bliss-why-aren-t-there-more-happy-people
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6628861-the-book-of-animal-ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78728.Ignorance
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8584962-ignorance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mantra#Lead_me_from_ignorance_to_truth
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Vincible_ignorance
Integral World - Blissful Ignorance, The Yoga of Unknowing, David Lane
Integral World - Arguments from Ignorance, The "Frisky Dirt" Discussion So Far, Frank Visser
selforum - veil of ignorance
selforum - temporal ignorance
https://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2009/08/waving-flag-of-cosmic-ignorance-in-face_15.html
https://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2012/05/profound-ignorance-of-and-disregard-for.html
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/IgnorantOfTheirOwnIgnorance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AchievementsInIgnorance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElementalIgnorance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GlobalIgnorance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IgnoranceIsBliss
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IgnorantOfTheirOwnIgnorance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PublicMediumIgnorance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RunsOnIgnorance
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ignorance
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)(2014) - Twenty years ago, he was best remembered as the comic book superhero Birdman. Now, former movie star Riggan Thomson is risking it all to star on Broadway in an adaptation of Raymond Carver's story, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. But he's faced with harsh critics, difficult cast members,...
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) ::: 7.7/10 -- R | 1h 59min | Comedy, Drama | 14 November 2014 (USA) -- A washed-up superhero actor attempts to revive his fading career by writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway production. Director: Alejandro G. Irritu Writers: Alejandro G. Irritu, Nicols Giacobone | 3 more credits
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Ignorance
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Ignorance_Is_Bliss
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Heresy_of_Ignorance
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ignorance
Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan -- -- Egg Firm, J.C.Staff -- 120 eps -- Manga -- Comedy School Shounen Slice of Life Supernatural -- Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan -- To the average person, psychic abilities might seem a blessing; for Kusuo Saiki, however, this couldn't be further from the truth. Gifted with a wide assortment of supernatural abilities ranging from telepathy to x-ray vision, he finds this so-called blessing to be nothing but a curse. As all the inconveniences his powers cause constantly pile up, all Kusuo aims for is an ordinary, hassle-free life—a life where ignorance is bliss. -- -- Unfortunately, the life of a psychic is far from quiet. Though Kusuo tries to stay out of the spotlight by keeping his powers a secret from his classmates, he ends up inadvertently attracting the attention of many odd characters, such as the empty-headed Riki Nendou and the delusional Shun Kaidou. Forced to deal with the craziness of the people around him, Kusuo comes to learn that the ordinary life he has been striving for is a lot more difficult to achieve than expected. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 660,572 8.44
The SoulTaker: Tamashii-gari -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 13 eps -- Original -- Demons Horror Supernatural -- The SoulTaker: Tamashii-gari The SoulTaker: Tamashii-gari -- Kyousuke Date comes home one night and finds his mother dying in a pool of her own blood. In her final moments, she stabs him in the chest. After a swift recovery, Kyousuke searches for answers regarding his mother's motives, but finds more than he bargained for when he is attacked by two rival organizations: the Hospital and the Kirihara Group. -- -- Kyousuke is surprised to discover that he has a twin sister named Runa, and both groups try to coerce information out of him about her despite his ignorance to her existence. As their assault continues, Kyousuke soon makes another discovery—he has the ability to transform into a terrifying mutant called SoulTaker. With these newfound powers, Kyousuke resolves to crush both organizations, uncover the truth behind his mother's actions, and protect Runa. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA -- TV - Apr 4, 2001 -- 22,544 6.37
The SoulTaker: Tamashii-gari -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 13 eps -- Original -- Demons Horror Supernatural -- The SoulTaker: Tamashii-gari The SoulTaker: Tamashii-gari -- Kyousuke Date comes home one night and finds his mother dying in a pool of her own blood. In her final moments, she stabs him in the chest. After a swift recovery, Kyousuke searches for answers regarding his mother's motives, but finds more than he bargained for when he is attacked by two rival organizations: the Hospital and the Kirihara Group. -- -- Kyousuke is surprised to discover that he has a twin sister named Runa, and both groups try to coerce information out of him about her despite his ignorance to her existence. As their assault continues, Kyousuke soon makes another discovery—he has the ability to transform into a terrifying mutant called SoulTaker. With these newfound powers, Kyousuke resolves to crush both organizations, uncover the truth behind his mother's actions, and protect Runa. -- -- TV - Apr 4, 2001 -- 22,544 6.37
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ignorance
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:"Ignorance_and_Want"_by_John_Leech.jpg
Age of Ignorance
AIDS: Don't Die of Ignorance
Alice: Ignorance Is Bliss
Argument from ignorance
Democracy and Political Ignorance
Esoteric Emotions The Death of Ignorance
Ignorance
Ignorance Is Bliss
Ignorance Is Bliss (Face to Face album)
Ignorance Is Bliss (film)
Ignorance Is Bliss (Skepta album)
Ignorance Never Dies
Ignorance (novel)
Ignorance (song)
Intelligence & Ignorance
Invincible ignorance
Invincible ignorance (Catholic theology)
The Book of General Ignorance
The Ignorance of Blood (film)
Vincible ignorance
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