INSPIRATION BY PART OF SELF
PHYSICAL INSPIRATION
- Physical Inspiration are generally various media showing various perfections or great developments manifested physically. And could exhibit Grace, Strength, Dexterity / Coordination , Beauty, Intricacy, Subtleness etc.
- I want to make a physical inspiration video at some point.
- including gymnastics, breakdancing, ballet, parkour, martial arts, weapons training, it could also use potentially other forms of beauty.
VITAL / EMOTIONAL INSPIRATION
- Vital Inspiration, I suppose, could be any form of inspiration that compels action. If it is strictly Vital then at its highest levels I imagine it is as if Bhatki. Any emotion or desire at its highest pitch.
- is this like seeing someone who is actually an embodiment of love? and my heart knowing I too must follow this path, instead of neglecting it.
- this also seems triggered by contemplating the worlds suffering. see also Tonglen.
- while not inspiring, Sun Salutations, seem to generate vital energy which then sometimes moves up? see also Pranayama.
MENTAL INSPIRATION
- whats this mean? things that promote new ideas or connections? or realization or imaginings? Higher mental movements tend to produce much mental action as it gets disected and consumed by the lower mind. But a Mental proper inspiration would be perhaps the ones that tend to cause higher mental movements afterwards, and brings to mind Wilber, Borges, Crowley.
HIGHER MENTAL INSPIRATION
- this brings to mind especially visions. things that seem to overflow with more then I can make of it. Goddess images, images of perhaps the subtle physical (inner / true physical). Or its like a subtle object with layer of casual. They tend to have LSD feel.
- These seem to get triggered by reading Savitri, or Sri Aurobindo, by smoking weed, sometimes meditation, sometimes dreaming. In the case of Sri Aurobindo the resultant higher mental movements may or may not have anything to do with what is being read, and generally it seems that if one taps into the thing being said, moves to that plane, then from there that habits of the being, funnel a force there, or the force that brought it forth into another discipline, such that may I make grand progress in Game Development ideation while reading Savitri.
SPIRITUAL INSPIRATION
- this is probably the hardest to trigger? perhaps this is not a thing one triggers, but seems more like a boon or gift. if one feels spiritually inspired from say studying Sri Ramakrishna, it could be said there comes a strong urge for spiritual practice, or prayer or aspiration. or the need for concentration (though not the thought or feeling of should as that is likely merely mental).
- otherwise something that triggers spiritual experience or even higher mental is often the intensest sufferings. in those pits of darkness, despair or desperation where one turns to God as there is nowhere else to go.
- a few components of this are openness, silence, stillness, overflowings or redirections of forces upwards, or downpours.
- QUOTES -
writing for inspiration ::: The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it. ~ Sigmund Freud
My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know it exists.
~ Nikola Tesla
It is in the silence of the mind that the strongest and freest action can come, e.g. the writing of a book, poetry, inspired speech etc. When the mind is active it interferes with the inspiration, puts in its own small ideas which get mixed up with the inspiration or starts something from a lower level or simply stops the inspiration altoge ther by bubbling up with all sorts of mere mental suggestions. So also intuitions or action etc. can come more easily when the ordinary inferior movement of the mind is not there. It is also in the silence of the mind that it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, from the psychic or from the higher consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV
TERMS STARTING WITH
inspiration ::: 1. A divine influence directly and immediately exerted upon the mind or soul. 2. An inspiring or animating action or influence. inspiration"s, Inspiration"s.
inspirational ::: a. --> Pertaining to inspiration.
inspirational gnosis ::: same as inspired logistis.
inspirational ::: having the nature of inspiration; same as inspired.
inspirational ideality ::: (in 1918-19) same as inspired logistis; (in 1920) same as srauta vijñana (hermetic ideality).
inspirational intuitional ::: same as inspirational intuitive.
inspirational intuitive ::: having the nature of inspired intuition.
inspirational intuitive idealised mind ::: the inspirational intuitive form of idealised mentality, same as inspired intuitional intellectuality.
inspirational intuivity ::: same as inspired intuitivity.
inspirational logistis ::: same as inspired logistis.
inspirational mental ::: having the nature of inspirational mentality.
inspirational mentality ::: the middle level of idealised mentality, a "mind of luminous inspiration" which, in dealing with the movement in time, sees things "in the light of the world"s larger potentialities"; its defect is that it may be liable "to a hesitation or suspension of determining view as between various potential lines of the movement or even to a movement away from the line of eventual actuality and following another not yet applicable sequence".
inspirational; offering or providing hope, encouragement, salvation, etc.
inspirational revelation ::: revelation with an element of inspiration;(in 1919) same as inspired revelatory logistis.
inspirational-revelatory ::: having the nature of inspirational revelation
inspirational tapas ::: tapas acting in the inspired logistis.
inspiration for the poem deriving from J. P.
inspirationist ::: n. --> One who holds to inspiration.
inspiration ::: n. --> The act of inspiring or breathing in; breath; specif. (Physiol.), the drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm; -- the opposite of expiration.
The act or power of exercising an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect or emotions; the result of such influence which quickens or stimulates; as, the inspiration of occasion, of art, etc.
inspiration ::: same as sruti, truth-hearing, the faculty of jñana which "comes as a vibration which carries the Truth in it and sometimes it comes as the actual word"; also, an instance of the working of this faculty; sometimes equivalent to inspired logistis, the middle plane of logistic ideality; (of vak) the characteristic of the fourth level of style (see inspired).
Inspiration: A state of psychic receptivity to creative spiritual influence.
Inspiration ::: “Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge; it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.” The Hour of God
Inspiration ::: Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast & eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 423
Inspiration, Inspired [from Latin in into, upon + spiro breathe (cf afflatus from ad upon + flo breathe); adopted from Greek empneusis from en in + pneo breathe] Generally the reception of knowledge or influence from a source superior — or even inferior — to the ordinary consciousness.
INSPIRATION. ::: It comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it.
INSPIRATION Reception of consciousness content from the superconscious.
(K 1.22.5)
INSPIRATION—The inbreathing or imparting of an idea, emotion or mental or spiritual influence; the elevating and creative influence of genius.
TERMS ANYWHERE
2. According to Plato, a prophetic prediction is a form of inspired "frenzy" which produces a good result which could not be obtained in a normal state of mind (Phaedrus). The other two forms of this abnormal activity are poetic inspiration and religious exaltation. This concept has been exalted by Christian theology which gave to it a divine origin: the gift of prediction is an attribute of a saint, and also of the biblical prophets.
2. Ilhāmi Husn -- inspiration of a musician and poet
3. Ilhāmi 'Ishq -- inspiration of a devotee
4. Ilhāmi Rūh -- inspiration of a mystic
5. Ilhāmi Ghaib -- inspiration of a prophet
Abraxas, Abrasax (Gnostic) Mystical term used by the Gnostics to indicate the supreme entity of our cosmic hierarchy or its manifestation in the human being which they called the Christos. Abraxas has the value of 365, based on numerical equivalents of the Greek alphabet. Because 365 represents the cycle of one revolution of our planet around the sun, they held that in Abraxas were mystically contained the full number of families of entities composing a hierarchy. These entities received from their supreme illuminator, Abraxas, the streams of life and inspiration governing their existence. Thus in a sense Abraxas is the cosmic Oversoul, the creative or Third Logos, Brahma. The Basilidean Gnostics taught that from this supreme God was created nous (mind). Abraxas also was identified with the Hebrew ’Adonai, the Egyptian Horus, and the Hindu Prajapati.
According to the Vedas and Puranas was famous for being the first to produce the sacred triad of fires by the friction of two sticks as many finger-breadths long as there are syllables in the Gayatri, and made of the wood of the asvattha tree (the tree of wisdom). This legend is full of occult meaning hid under archaic allusions. Pururavas is a generalized name for the human monad which in imbodiment is at once the son of divine wisdom and spirit, and of space or mystic earth. The triad of sacred fires are the fire of spirit or inspiration and intuition, the fire of intellect, and the fires of matter or space; and the union of these three into the one generalized fire of the human constitution forms in a sense the field of self-consciousness as well as of the self-conscious ego itself.
Aesir (Icelandic) [from ass the ridgepole supporting a roof] plural ases; feminine asynja, feminine plural asynjor. Creative gods of the Norse Eddas, inhabiting Asgard (gard, yard or estate), where they retire to feast on the “mead” of experience gained in spheres of life. The twelve deities who build their mansions on various “shelves” of our universe are: Odin Allfather, who occurs on every level of life and is inherent in every living thing; his consort, Frigga; Thor, the power of life and electromagnetism, who corresponds to the Tibetan fohat and in one aspect corresponds to Jove; Balder, the sun god; Njord, the Norse Saturn; Tyr, the Norse Mars; Frey, the deity of planet Earth; Freya, of Venus; Hermod (an aspect of Odin), of Mercury. Heimdall, “the whitest Ase,” is the watcher on the rainbow bridge who sounds the gjallarhorn (loud horn) at Ragnarok when a world ends. Brage is poetic inspiration. The most mysterious and lofty ase is Ull, a cold, wintry (unmanifest) world. Paradoxically, “blessed is he who first touches the fire” of that sphere. Forsete is the god of justice who corresponds to the lipikas, agents of karma.
afflation ::: n. --> A blowing or breathing on; inspiration.
afflatus ::: n. --> A breath or blast of wind.
A divine impartation of knowledge; supernatural impulse; inspiration.
afflatus ::: the miraculous communication of supernatural knowledge; hence also, the imparting of an over-mastering impulse, poetic or otherwise; inspiration. A creative inspiration, as that of a poet; a divine imparting of knowledge, thus it is often called divine afflatus.
AjantA. A complex of some thirty caves and subsidiary structures in India, renowned for its exemplary Buddhist artwork. Named after a neighboring village, the caves are carved from the granite cliffs at a bend in the Wagurna River valley, northeast of AURANGABAD, in the modern Indian state of Maharashtra. The grottoes were excavated in two phases, the first of which lasted from approximately 100 BCE to 100 CE, the second from c. 462 to 480, and consist primarily of monastic cave residences (VIHARA) and sanctuaries (CAITYA). The sanctuaries include four large, pillared STuPA halls, each enshrining a central monumental buddha image, which renders the hall both a site for worship and a buddha's dwelling (GANDHAKUtĪ), where he presides over the activities of the monks in residence. The murals and sculpture located at AjantA include some of the best-preserved examples of ancient Buddhist art. Paintings throughout the complex are especially noted for their depiction of accounts from the Buddha's previous lives (JATAKA). Despite the presence of some AVALOKITEsVARA images at the site, it is Sanskrit texts of mainstream Buddhism, and especially the MuLASARVASTIVADA school, that are the source and inspiration for the paintings of AjantA. Indeed, almost all of AjantA's narrative paintings are based on accounts appearing in the MuLASARVASTIVADA VINAYA, as well as the poems of Aryasura and AsVAGHOsA. On the other hand, the most common type of sculptural image at AjantA (e.g., Cave 4) is a seated buddha making a variant of the gesture of turning the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAMUDRA), flanked by the two bodhisattvas AVALOKITEsVARA and VAJRAPAnI. The deployment of this mudrA and the two flanking bodhisattvas indicates that these buddha images are of VAIROCANA and suggests that tantric elements that appear in the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA and the MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA, both of which postdate the AjantA images, developed over an extended period of time and had precursors that influenced the iconography at AjantA. Inscriptions on the walls of the earliest part of the complex, primarily in Indian Prakrits, attest to an eclectic, even syncretic, pattern of religious observance and patronage. Later epigraphs found at the site associate various patrons with Harisena (r. 460-477), the last known monarch of the VAkAtaka royal family. VarAhadeva, for example, who patronized Cave 16, was one of Harisena's courtiers, while Cave 1 was donated by Harisena himself, and Cave 2 may have been patronized by a close relative, perhaps one of Harisena's wives. Cave 16's central image, a buddha seated on a royal throne with legs pendant (BHADRASANA), is the first stone sculpture in this iconographic form found in western India. Introduced to India through the tradition of KUSHAN royal portraiture, the bhadrAsana has been interpreted as a position associated with royalty and worldly action. This sculpture may thus have functioned as a portrait sculpture; it may even allegorize Harisena as the Buddha. In fact, it is possible that VarAhadeva may have originally intended to enshrine a buddha seated in the cross-legged lotus position (VAJRAPARYAnKA) but changed his plan midway in the wake of a regional war that placed Harisena's control over the AjantA region in jeopardy. Around 480, the constructions at AjantA came to a halt with the destruction of the VAkAtaka family. The caves were subsequently abandoned and became overgrown, only to be discovered in 1819 by a British officer hunting a tiger. They quickly became the object of great archaeological and art historical interest, and were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: telepathic trikaladr.s.t.i in the inspired logistis, a form of inspirational trikaladr.s.t.i.
aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: trikaladr.s.t.i by means of inspiration; the second level of ideal trikaladr.s.t.i.
aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: trikaladr.s.t.i in the dynamic inspirational revelation.
anabuddhi (vijnanabuddhi; vijnana-buddhi; vijnana buddhi) ::: the intuitive mind, intermediate between intellectual reason (manasa buddhi) and pure vijñana, a faculty consisting of vijñana "working in mind under the conditions and in the forms of mind", which "by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination can do the work of the reason with a higher power, a swifter action, a greater and spontaneous certitude". vij ñana-caksuh
ana ::: (in 1914) same as inspirational vijñana; (in 1920) the second plane of ideality, previously called the hermetic ideality, whose essence is sruti or "inspired interpretation". It enters into the lower plane, the logistic ideality or luminous reason, "attended by a diviner splendour of light and blaze of fiery effulgence". The "illumined" level of higher mind in the diagram on page 1360 (c. 1931) may be correlated with the hermetic ideality or srauta vijñana of 1919-20. srauta vyapti srauta
ana ::: same as inspired logistis or inspirational mentality.
Aristotelianism ::: The philosophical tradition that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle and the Peripatetic school. Sometimes contrasted by critics with the rationalism and idealism of Plato, Aristotelianism is understood by its proponents as critically developing Plato's theories. Most particularly, Aristotelianism brings Plato's ideals down to Earth as goals and goods internal to natural species that are realized in activity. This is the characteristically Aristotelian idea of teleology.
“A ‘soma-drinker’ attains the power of placing himself in direct rapport with the bright side of the moon, thus deriving inspiration from the concentrated intellectual energy of the blessed ancestors. . . .
aspiration ::: n. --> The act of aspirating; the pronunciation of a letter with a full or strong emission of breath; an aspirated sound.
The act of breathing; a breath; an inspiration.
The act of aspiring of a ardently desiring; strong wish; high desire.
As the myth of Phaethon refers, among other things, to geological changes, Eridanus has both a cosmic and earthly significance; in the former referring to the flowing of the ocean or river, mystically supposed to surround the world; and in the latter, referring to the mystical river of inspiration flowing downwards in its descent from the spirit into recipient minds.
AvataMsakasutra. (T. Mdo phal po che; C. Huayan jing; J. Kegongyo; K. Hwaom kyong 華嚴經). In Sanskrit, "Garland Scripture"; also known as the BUDDHAVATAMSAKASuTRA ("Scripture of the Garland of Buddhas"), or *BuddhAvataMsakanAmamahAvaipulyasutra, the Sanskrit reconstruction of the title of the Chinese translation Dafangguang fo huayan jing, which is usually abbreviated in Chinese simply as the HUAYAN JING ("Flower Garland Scripture"). The sutra is one of the most influential Buddhist scriptures in East Asia and the foundational text of the indigenous East Asian HUAYAN ZONG. The first major edition of the AvataMsakasutra was said to have been brought from KHOTAN and was translated into Chinese by BUDDHABHADRA in 421; this recension consisted of sixty rolls and thirty-four chapters. A second, longer recension, in eighty rolls and thirty-nine chapters, was translated into Chinese by sIKsANANDA in 699; this is sometimes referred to within the Huayan tradition as the "New [translation of the] AvataMsakasutra" (Xin Huayan jing). A Tibetan translation similar to the eighty-roll recension also exists. The AvataMsakasutra is traditionally classified as a VAIPULYASuTRA; it is an encyclopedic work that brings together a number of heterogeneous texts, such as the GAndAVYuHA and DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, which circulated independently before being compiled together in this scripture. No Sanskrit recension of the AvataMsakasutra has been discovered; even the title is not known from Sanskrit sources, but is a reconstruction of the Chinese. (Recent research in fact suggests that the correct Sanskrit title might actually be BuddhAvataMsakasutra, or "Scripture of the Garland of Buddhas," rather than AvataMsakasutra.) There are, however, extant Sanskrit recensions of two of its major constituents, the Dasabhumikasutra and Gandavyuha. Given the dearth of evidence of a Sanskrit recension of the complete AvataMsakasutra, and since the scripture was first introduced to China from Khotan, some scholars have argued that the scripture may actually be of Central Asian provenance (or at very least was heavily revised in Central Asia). There also exists in Chinese translation a forty-roll recension of the AvataMsakasutra, translated by PRAJNA in 798, which roughly corresponds to the Gandavyuha, otherwise known in Chinese as the Ru fajie pin or "Chapter on the Entry into the DHARMADHATU." Little attempt is made to synthesize these disparate materials into an overarching narrative, but there is a tenuous organizational schema involving a series of different "assemblies" to which the different discourses are addressed. The Chinese tradition presumed that the AvataMsakasutra was the first sermon of the Buddha (see HUAYAN ZHAO), and the sutra's first assembly takes place at the BODHI TREE two weeks after he had attained enlightenment while he was still immersed in the samAdhi of oceanic reflection (SAGARAMUDRASAMADHI). The AvataMsaka is therefore believed to provide a comprehensive and definitive description of the Buddha's enlightenment experience from within this profound state of samAdhi. The older sixty-roll recension includes a total of eight assemblies held at seven different locations: three in the human realm and the rest in the heavens. The later eighty-roll recension, however, includes a total of nine assemblies at seven locations, a discrepancy that led to much ink in Huayan exegesis. In terms of its content, the sutra offers exuberant descriptions of myriads of world systems populated by buddhas and bodhisattvas, along with elaborate imagery focusing especially on radiant light and boundless space. The scripture is also the inspiration for the famous metaphor of INDRAJALA (Indra's Net), a canopy made of transparent jewels in which each jewel is reflected in all the others, suggesting the multivalent levels of interaction between all phenomena in the universe. The text focuses on the unitary and all-pervasive nature of enlightenment, which belongs to the realm of the Buddha of Pervasive Light, VAIROCANA, the central buddha in the AvataMsaka, who embodies the DHARMAKAYA. The sutra emphasizes the knowledge and enlightenment of the buddhas as being something that is present in all sentient beings (see TATHAGATAGARBHA and BUDDHADHATU), just as the entire universe, or trichiliocosm (S. TRISAHASRAMAHASAHASRALOKADHATU) is contained in a minute mote of dust. This notion of interpenetration or interfusion (YUANRONG) is stressed in the thirty-second chapter of Buddhabhadra's translation, whose title bears the influential term "nature origination" (XINGQI). The sutra, especially in FAZANG's authoritative exegesis, is presumed to set forth a distinctive presentation of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA) in terms of the dependence of the whole on its parts, stressing the unity of the universe and its emptiness (suNYATA) of inherent nature; dependent origination here emerges as a profound ecological vision in which the existence of any one thing is completely dependent on the existence of all other things and all things on any one thing. Various chapters of the sutra were also interpreted as providing the locus classicus for the exhaustive fifty-two stage MahAyAna path (MARGA) to buddhahood, which included the ten faiths (only implied in the scripture), the ten abodes, ten practices, ten dedications, and ten stages (DAsABHuMI), plus the two stages of awakening itself: virtual enlightenment (dengjue) and sublime enlightenment (miaojue). This soteriological process was then illustrated through the peregrinations of the lad SUDHANA to visit his religious mentors, each of whom is identified with one of these specific stages; Sudhana's lengthy pilgrimage is described in great detail in the massive final chapter (a third of the entire scripture), the Gandavyuha, titled in the AvataMsakasutra the "Entry into the DharmadhAtu" chapter (Ru fajie pin). The evocative and widely quoted statement in the "Brahmacarya" chapter that "at the time of the initial arousal of the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPADA), complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI) is already achieved" was also influential in the development of the East Asian notion of sudden enlightenment (DUNWU), since it implied that awakening could be achieved in an instant of sincere aspiration, without requiring three infinite eons (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) of religious training. Chinese exegetes who promoted this sutra reserved the highest place for it in their scriptural taxonomies (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) and designated it the "perfect" or "consummate" teaching (YUANJIAO) of Buddhism. Many commentaries on and exegeses of the sutra are extant, among which the most influential are those written by FAZANG, ZHIYAN, CHENGGUAN, LI TONGXUAN, GUIFENG ZONGMI, WoNHYO, ŬISANG, and MYoE KoBEN.
avesa (avesh) ::: inrush of inspiration or spiritual force. avesa
avesa ::: [entrance, possession]; exultation of the uplifting of the consciousness, elation of the inrush and passage [of poetical inspiration].
Awen (Welsh) The muse, the inspiration of the poets. Tydain Tad Awen (Tydain father of the muse), according to the Iolo Manuscript, was the founder of Druidism.
beacon ::: 1. A source of guidance or inspiration. 2. A signalling or guiding device or warning signal as a light or signal fire.
bhas.asakti (bhashashakti) ::: linguistic faculty; the power of underbhasasakti standing languages, especially by intuition, inspiration and other means proper to vijñana.
bibliolatrist ::: n. --> A worshiper of books; especially, a worshiper of the Bible; a believer in its verbal inspiration.
inspiration ::: 1. A divine influence directly and immediately exerted upon the mind or soul. 2. An inspiring or animating action or influence. inspiration"s, Inspiration"s.
inspirational ::: a. --> Pertaining to inspiration.
inspirational gnosis ::: same as inspired logistis.
inspirational ::: having the nature of inspiration; same as inspired.
inspirational ideality ::: (in 1918-19) same as inspired logistis; (in 1920) same as srauta vijñana (hermetic ideality).
inspirational intuitional ::: same as inspirational intuitive.
inspirational intuitive ::: having the nature of inspired intuition.
inspirational intuitive idealised mind ::: the inspirational intuitive form of idealised mentality, same as inspired intuitional intellectuality.
inspirational intuivity ::: same as inspired intuitivity.
inspirational logistis ::: same as inspired logistis.
inspirational mental ::: having the nature of inspirational mentality.
inspirational mentality ::: the middle level of idealised mentality, a "mind of luminous inspiration" which, in dealing with the movement in time, sees things "in the light of the world"s larger potentialities"; its defect is that it may be liable "to a hesitation or suspension of determining view as between various potential lines of the movement or even to a movement away from the line of eventual actuality and following another not yet applicable sequence".
inspirational; offering or providing hope, encouragement, salvation, etc.
inspirational revelation ::: revelation with an element of inspiration;(in 1919) same as inspired revelatory logistis.
inspirational-revelatory ::: having the nature of inspirational revelation
inspirational tapas ::: tapas acting in the inspired logistis.
inspiration for the poem deriving from J. P.
inspirationist ::: n. --> One who holds to inspiration.
inspiration ::: n. --> The act of inspiring or breathing in; breath; specif. (Physiol.), the drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm; -- the opposite of expiration.
The act or power of exercising an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect or emotions; the result of such influence which quickens or stimulates; as, the inspiration of occasion, of art, etc.
inspiration ::: same as sruti, truth-hearing, the faculty of jñana which "comes as a vibration which carries the Truth in it and sometimes it comes as the actual word"; also, an instance of the working of this faculty; sometimes equivalent to inspired logistis, the middle plane of logistic ideality; (of vak) the characteristic of the fourth level of style (see inspired).
Birth moment: Astrologers use this term for what they generally regard as the true moment of birth: the moment of the first inspiration of breath after ligation of the umbilical cord, when the infant ceases to receive blood conditioned through the mother’s receptivities, and must grow channels of receptivity to cosmic frequencies that accord with those present in the Earth’s magnetic field, and through these receptivities it begins to condition its own blood.
1. Ilhāmi 'Ilm -- inspiration of an artist and scientist
Bragi (Icelandic) [from bragr best] One of the twelve aesir, gods of the Norse Eddas. Representing poetic inspiration of the highest order, he is called the divine singer. It is said he lay sleeping on the ship of the dwarfs (kingdoms of the elements — earth, water, air, fire, aether), and when the vessel crossed the threshold of death, he awoke and sang the worlds into life. The sound of his joyfilled song and golden harp reverberates through the nine worlds awakening the music of all the spheres.
breathing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Breathe ::: n. --> Respiration; the act of inhaling and exhaling air.
Air in gentle motion.
Any gentle influence or operation; inspiration; as, the breathings of the Spirit.
Bsam yas. (Samye). Tibet's first Buddhist monastery, constructed on the north bank of the Gtsang po (Tsangpo) River in central Tibet, probably circa 779. The Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN invited the renowned Indian Buddhist preceptor sANTARAKsITA to found the institution and ordain Tibet's first monks. According to traditional accounts, local spirits hostile to Buddhism blocked the completion of the project. Unable to continue his work, sAntaraksita convinced the Tibetan ruler to invite the powerful Indian tantric master PADMASAMBHAVA to his kingdom in order to subdue these autochthonous spirits. Padmasambhava reached the site and, from atop the nearby hill called He po ri, he subjugated the demons, binding them by oath to become protectors of the dharma (DHARMAPALA). The Bsam yas complex was subsequently constructed in the form of a MAndALA arranged in the shape of the universe according to Buddhist cosmological accounts, based on the model of ODANTAPURĪ, a PAla-dynasty monastery located in the present-day Indian state of Bihar. At the center stands the main basilica, serving as Mount SUMERU, surrounded by chapels representing the four continents and eight subcontinents in the four cardinal directions, all of which is ringed by a massive wall capped with a thousand STuPAs. According to Tibetan and Chinese sources, in about 797 the monastery served as the venue for a great dispute between proponents of Indian and Chinese Buddhist perspectives on enlightenment and meditation. The outcome of this famous BSAM YAS DEBATE, in which the Indian view is said to have prevailed, greatly influenced the development of Buddhism in Tibet, which subsequently became a tradition that looked more to India than China for inspiration. Bsam yas was a religiously and politically vibrant institution from its inception up to the tenth century, after which its influence waned under BKA' GDAMS, SA SKYA, and eventually DGE LUGS control. Bsam yas's central basilica is renowned for its art and its architectural design, said to be a fusion of styles from India, China, Tibet, and Central Asia. The complex suffered on numerous occasions due to fires and, most recently, at the hands of the Chinese military during the Cultural Revolution. Extensive reconstruction and renovations were begun in the 1980s and Bsam yas remains an important pilgrimage destination and a potent symbol of Tibet's Buddhist heritage.
buddhi ::: intelligence; the thinking mind, the highest normal faculty of the antah.karan.a, also called the manasa buddhi or mental reason, whose three forms are the habitual mind, pragmatic reason and truth-seeking reason. The buddhi as "the discerning intelligence and the enlightened will" is "in its nature thought-power and will-power of the Spirit turned into the lower form of a mental activity" and thus "an intermediary between a much higher Truth-mind not now in our active possession, which is the direct instrument of Spirit, and the physical life of the human mind evolved in body"; its powers of perception, imagination, reasoning and judgment correspond respectively to the higher faculties of revelation, inspiration, intuition and discrimination belonging to vijñana, which may act in the mind to create "a higher form of the buddhi that can be called the intuitive mind" or vijñanabuddhi. In compound expressions, the word buddhi sometimes refers to a particular mentality or state of consciousness and may be translated "sense of", as in dasyabuddhi, "sense of surrender".
Buddhi (Sanskrit) Buddhi [from the verbal root budh to awaken, enlighten, know] The spiritual soul, the faculty of discriminating, the channel through which streams divine inspiration from the atman to the ego, and therefore that faculty which enables us to discern between good and evil — spiritual conscience. The qualities of the buddhic principle when awakened are higher judgment, instant understanding, discrimination, intuition, love that has no bounds, and consequent universal forgiveness.
But how then do you expect a supramental inspiration to come down here when the Overmind itself is so rarely in human reach? That is always the error of the impatient aspirant, to think he can get the Supermind without going through the intervening stages or to imagine that he has got it when in fact he has only got something from the illumined or intuitive or at the highest some kind of mixed overmind consciousness.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 27, Page: 27
canon ::: n. --> A law or rule.
A law, or rule of doctrine or discipline, enacted by a council and confirmed by the pope or the sovereign; a decision, regulation, code, or constitution made by ecclesiastical authority.
The collection of books received as genuine Holy Scriptures, called the sacred canon, or general rule of moral and religious duty, given by inspiration; the Bible; also, any one of the canonical Scriptures. See Canonical books, under Canonical, a.
castalian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Castalia, a mythical fountain of inspiration on Mt. Parnassus sacred to the Muses.
Crocodile [from Greek champsai, Egyptian emsehiu] In Egypt deified under the name of Sebak (or Sebeq). The principal seat of this worship was the city Crocodilopolis (Arsinoe) where great numbers of mummified beasts have been exhumed. When the canals became dry, the crocodiles would wander about the fields and make such havoc that they were naturally associated with the powers of destruction and evil, the principal malefactor of the pantheon being Set or Typhon. The ancient Egyptians did not regard Set or Typhon, and the crocodile which represented him, as the enemy, the destroyer. In fact, in the earlier dynasties Typhon was one of the most powerful and venerated of the divinities, giving blessings, life, and inspiration to the people, and in especial perhaps to the Royal House or rulers of Egypt. The reason lay in the fact that the earlier mythology showed Typhon or Set mystically as the shadow of Osiris, the god of light and wisdom — Typhon or Set being the alter ego or more material aspect of Osiris himself. “The Crocodile is the Egyptian dragon. It was the dual symbol of Heaven and Earth, of Sun and Moon, and was made sacred, in consequence of its amphibious nature, to Osiris and Isis” (SD 1:409). The crocodile was also named as one of the signs of the zodiac, the regency of which was connected with a group of lofty beings, whose “abode is in Capricornus” (SD 1:219).
demon">Demon In its original Latin form daemon means 'spirit', genie, or 'genius' who provided intuition, insight, and inspiration and allowed humans to converse with gods. In relation to the Greek form daimon, Socrates 'daimon' was his higher consciousness or some divinity connected with him. A demon was never considered to be an evil entity.
Dionysia Festivals sacred to Dionysos, especially those held in Attica and Attic-Ionic settlements. The inferior Dionysia were celebrated in December in country places where the vine was grown; the greater, in Athens for six days at the spring equinox. At this festival the new plays were performed for three consecutive days before immense number of citizens and strangers. The Lenaea (festival of vats) in February-March, the Oschophoria in October-November, and the Anthesteria for three days in February-March were also part of the Athenian cycle of Dionysia. The Dionysiac or Bacchic Mysteries became peculiarly liable to corruption in later times, owing to literal interpretation of the symbolism and the substitution of psychospiritual excitement for pure spiritual inspiration.
discrimination ::: same as viveka, one of the two components of smr.ti, a faculty of jñana; on the plane of vijñana or ideality it "is hardly recognisable as a separate power, but is constantly inherent in the three others [intuition, inspiration and revelation] and is their own determination of the scope and relations of their knowledge".
drew his inspiration for the “seven eyes of the
dynamic inspirational revelation ::: the dynamic gnosis or pragmatic ideality raised to the inspired revelatory logistis.
dynamic seer tapas ::: tapas acting in the dynamic inspirational revelation, the middle form of seer tapas. dynamic seer trik trikaladrsti
embreathement ::: n. --> The act of breathing in; inspiration.
entheasm ::: n. --> Inspiration; enthusiasm.
enthusiasm ::: n. --> Inspiration as if by a divine or superhuman power; ecstasy; hence, a conceit of divine possession and revelation, or of being directly subject to some divine impulse.
A state of impassioned emotion; transport; elevation of fancy; exaltation of soul; as, the poetry of enthusiasm.
Enkindled and kindling fervor of soul; strong excitement of feeling on behalf of a cause or a subject; ardent and imaginative zeal or interest; as, he engaged in his profession with
epiphany: In literature, a work which symbolically presents a moment of inspiration, insight and revelation.
er ru. (J. ninyu; K. i ip 二入). In Chinese, "the two accesses," or "two entrances." The putative Indian founder of the CHAN ZONG, BODHIDHARMA, taught in his ERRU SIXING LUN ("Treatise on the Two Accesses and Four Practices") that enlightenment could be gained by two complementary methods. The "access of principle" (li ru) was a more static approach to practice, which sought an intuitive insight into the DHARMA and a recognition of the fact that each and every person was innately endowed with the capacity for enlightenment. The "access of practice" (xing ru) was a set of four dynamic practices that teach the student how to act with correct understanding of SAMSĀRA and that ultimately culminates in the same understanding achieved through the access of principle. The four practices are: retribution of enmity, acquiescing to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing in accord with the dharma. Later Chan adepts sometimes sought to ascribe to these two accesses the original inspiration for the Chan notion of sudden enlightenment (see DUNWU), or the soteriological approach of sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation (see DUNWU JIANXIU).
Even from the time of the incarnation of the manasaputras in the third root-race, there has been an unbroken line, stream, or succession of lofty spiritual teachers guarding the ancient god-wisdom received in primordial ages from the dhyanis; and the Mysteries, even in their heyday of splendor and in their most secret lines of work, were the outer side of clothing of this inner stream of inspiration and sublime teaching. The light has not yet died from off the earth, and the spiritual stream still exists and does its work in the world, although for ages it has been acting more secretly and esoterically than ever. However, the time is coming when the Mysteries will again be reestablished and will receive the common reverence and respect from mankind that in former ages they universally had.
expiration ::: n. --> The act of expiring
The act or process of breathing out, or forcing air from the lungs through the nose or mouth; as, respiration consists of inspiration and expiration; -- opposed to inspiration.
Emission of volatile matter; exhalation.
The last emission of breath; death.
A coming to a close; cessation; extinction; termination; end.
Fire signs: In astrology, the “inspirational” signs: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius.
First Cabal, the: A hand-picked group of nine representatives for the first official Traditions Council; betrayed from within and half-slaughtered, its survivors scattered afterward. Considered a bad omen for the budding Council, but also considered an inspiration by later mages.
flash ::: n.** 1. A brief, sudden burst of bright light. 2. A sudden thought, insight, inspiration, or vision. 3. A momentary brightness. 4. A very brief moment; instant. flashes, lightening-flash. v. 5. To move or proceed rapidly. 6. To communicate or reveal through flashes. 7. To appear or occur suddenly; come into perception. 8. To cause to flash, as powder by ignition or a sword by waving. flashes, flashed, flashing.**
(for writing), pen; pencil; painter's brush. Esoterically, the pen with which God writes upon the heart, providing the source of inspiration. (in some texts as kalam)
gematria ::: Gematria Kabbalists believed that the written word of God was the result of His inspiration and that Scripture contained within itself an essence of His being. By the same token they believed that since God is hidden, so too, was there a hidden meaning beneath the divine words of Scripture. To uncover this hidden meaning they employed three separate methods of interpretation, Gematria, Notarikon and Temura. Gematria made use of the fact that every Hebrew letter has a numerical value assigned to it (see Sacred Alphabet), so any words with the same numerical value could be linked. For anyone interested in studying Gematria, Aleister Crowley's 'numerical dictionary' Liber 500 Sepher Sephiroth is essential reading.
Genius: Originally the word applied to a demon such as Socrates' inner voice. During the 17th century it was linked to the Plntonic theory of inspiration and was applied to the rejection of too rigid rules in art. It defined the real artist and distinguished his creative imagination from the logical reasoning of the scientist. In Kant (Critique of Judgment), genius creates its own rules. -- L.V.
geyi. (J. kakugi; K. kyogŭi 格義). In Chinese, "matching concepts," or "categorized concepts"; geyi has typically been explained as a method of translation and exegesis that was supposedly popular during the incipiency of Buddhism in China. It has been presumed that Buddhist translators of the Wei and Jin dynasties borrowed terms and concepts drawn from indigenous Chinese philosophy (viz., "Daoism") to "match" (ge) the "meaning" (yi) of complicated and poorly understood Sanskrit Buddhist terminology. For instance, translators borrowed the term wuwei, used in both Chinese Daoist and Confucian writings to refer to "nonaction" or "nondeliberative activity," to render the seminal Buddhist concept of NIRVĀnA. Misunderstandings were rife, however, since the matches would as often distort the Buddhist denotations of terms as clarify them. The technique of geyi has often been assumed by scholars to demonstrate that early Buddhism in China drew from the indigenous Daoist tradition in its initial attempts to make its message intelligible to its new Chinese audience. This view would correspondingly suggest that Daoism provided the inspiration for much of early Buddhist writing in China. This practice of drawing parallels to native Chinese concepts was criticized as early as the fourth century by the translator and cataloguer DAO'AN (312-385), who lobbied for the creation of a distinctive Chinese Buddhist vocabulary. Eventually Chinese Buddhists created their own neologisms for Buddhist technical terms, or resorted to transcription (viz., using Sinographs phonetically to transcribe the sound of the Sanskrit words) in order to render particularly significant, or polysemous, terms: e.g., using the transcription niepan, rather than the translation wuwei, as the standard rendering for nirvāna. In fact, however, the term geyi is quite rare in Chinese Buddhist literature from this incipient period. In the few instances where the term is attested, geyi seems instead to refer to Chinese attempts to cope with the use of lengthy numerical lists of seminal factors found in Indian Buddhist doctrinal formulations. This Indian proclivity for categorization is seldom evident in traditional Chinese philosophy and it would have been an extraordinary challenge for Chinese Buddhists to learn how to employ such lists skillfully. Against the received understanding of geyi as "matching concepts," then, the term may instead mean something more akin to "categorized concepts," referring to this Buddhist proclivity for producing extensive numerical lists of dharmas. See also FASHU.
Gowen Brooks) who derived her inspiration from
Greal: In the myths of the early inhabitants of the British Isles, a magic drink, supposed to give inspiration and enlightenment, prepared by the fertility goddess Ceridwen from the juices of six plants.
Guanyin. (J. Kannon; K. Kwanŭm 觀音). In Chinese, "Perceiver of Sounds," an abbreviation of the longer name Guanshiyin (J. Kanzeon; K. Kwanseŭm; Perceiver of the World's Sounds); the most famous and influential BODHISATTVA in all of East Asia, who is commonly known in Western popular literature as "The Goddess of Mercy." Guanyin (alt. Guanshiyin) is the Chinese translation of AVALOKITEsVARA, the bodhisattva of compassion; this rendering, popularized by the renowned Kuchean translator KUMĀRAJĪVA in his 405-406 CE translation of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), derives from an earlier form of this bodhisattva's name, Avalokitasvara, which is attested in some Sanskrit manuscripts of this scripture; Kumārajīva interprets this name as "gazing" (avalokita; C. guan) on the "sounds" (svara; C. yin) [of this wailing "world" (C. shi) of suffering]. Avalokitasvara was supplanted during the seventh century CE by the standard Sanskrit form Avalokitesvara, the "gazing" (avalokita) "lord" (īsvara); this later form is followed in XUANZANG's Chinese rendering Guanzizai (J. Kanjizai; K. Kwanjajae), as found in his 649 CE translation of the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). The primary textual source for Guanyin worship is the twenty-fifth chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra; that chapter is devoted to the bodhisattva and circulated widely as an independent text in East Asia. The chapter guarantees that if anyone in danger calls out Guanshiyin's name with completely sincerity, the bodhisattva will "perceive the sound" of his call and rescue him from harm. Unlike in India and Tibet, Avalokitesvara took on female form in East Asia around the tenth century. In traditional China, indigenous forms of Guanyin, such as BAIYI GUANYIN (White-Robed Guanyin), Yulan Guanyin (Guanyin with Fish Basket), SHUIYUE GUANYIN (Moon in Water Guanyin), Songzi Guanyin (Child-Granting Guanyin), MALANG FU, as well as Princess MIAOSHAN, became popular subjects of worship. Guanyin was worshipped in China by both monastics and laity, but her functions differed according to her manifestation. Guanyin thus served as a protectress against personal misfortune, a symbol of Buddhist ideals and restraint, or a granter of children. Various religious groups and lay communities also took one of her various forms as their patroness, and in this role, Guanyin was seen as a symbol of personal salvation. Beginning in the tenth century, these different manifestations of Guanyin proliferated throughout China through indigenous sutras (see APOCRYPHA), secular narratives, miracle tales, monastic foundation legends, and images. In later dynasties, and up through the twentieth century, Guanyin worship inspired both male and female religious groups. For example, White Lotus groups (see BAILIAN SHE; BAILIAN JIAO) during the Song dynasty included members from both genders, who were active in erecting STuPAs and founding cloisters that promoted Guanyin worship. In the twentieth century, certain women's groups were formed that took Princess Miaoshan's refusal to marry as inspiration to reject the institution of marriage themselves and, under the auspices of a Buddhist patron, pursue other secular activities as single women. ¶ In Japan, Kannon was originally introduced during the eighth century and took on additional significance as a female deity. For example, Kannon was often invoked by both pilgrims and merchants embarking on long sea voyages or overland travel. Invoking Kannon's name was thought to protect travelers from seven different calamities, such as fire, flood, storms, demons, attackers, lust and material desires, and weapons. Moreover, Kannon worship in Japan transcended sectarian loyalties, and there were numerous miracle tales concerning Kannon that circulated throughout the Japanese isles. ¶ In Korea, Kwanŭm is by far the most popular bodhisattva and is also known there as a deity who offers succor and assistance in difficult situations. The cult of Kwanŭm flourished initially under the patronage of the aristocracy in both the Paekche and Silla kingdoms, and historical records tell of supplications made to Kwanŭm for the birth of children or to protect relatives who were prisoners of war or who had been lost at sea. Hence, while the cult of AMITĀBHA was principally focused on spiritual liberation in the next life, Kwanŭm instead was worshipped for protection in this life. Still today, Kwanŭm is an object of popular worship and a focus of ritual chanting in Korean Buddhist monasteries by both monks and, especially, laywomen (and usually chanted in the form Kwanseŭm).
Guhyagarbhatantra. (T. Gsang ba'i snying po'i rgyud). In Sanskrit, the "Secret Essence Tantra," a central text of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism and the RDZOGS CHEN tradition. The tantra is regarded as an expression of the enlightened intention of the primordial DHARMAKĀYA, the buddha SAMANTABHADRA. It is a work of Indic origin, appearing around mid-eighth century, probably after the GUHYASAMĀJATANTRA. It is unclear whether the text was called Guhyagarbha at the time of its composition or whether that title was added later. In DUNHUANG documents, it is usually referred to as the Māyājālatantra. By the time of a late tenth-century manuscript, it is called the Guhyagarbhatantra. The later Tibetan tradition identifies the Guhyagarbha as the root tantra of the MAHĀYOGA class, as well as the main tantra of the MĀYĀJĀLA cycle of tantras, a group of eighteen mahāyoga tantras. The Guhyagarbha was particularly influential in late eighth- and early ninth-century Tibet, when it was a principal inspiration for the early rdzogs chen movement. Its Māyājāla MAndALA of one hundred deities (forty-two peaceful and fifty-eight wrathful) was widely employed. In the PHYI DAR period, the tantra was condemned by a number of GSAR MA figures (especially the eleventh-century translator 'Gos khug pa lhas btsas) as an apocryphal Tibetan creation, probably because of its importance in the Rnying ma sect and in the still-developing rdzogs chen tradition. However, a Sanskrit copy of the tantra was discovered at BSAM YAS and verified by sĀKYAsRĪBHADRA. In the thirteenth century, Lcom ldan rig ral ordered a new translation on the basis of the manuscript. Major commentators include Rong zom chos bzang (eleventh century) and KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS, and eventually, two schools of interpretations formed, the Rong klong lugs and the Zur lugs. The tantra exists in three distinct versions: in twenty-two, forty-six, and eighty-two chapters. The shorter version is considered the root tantra and is the subject of most commentary.
Guides Spiritualistic term for supposed invisible helpers and instructors belonging to the Spirit-land communicating with people either through mediumship or by a receptive capacity of the person communicated with. While theosophy rejects the explanation offered by spiritualists, it nevertheless teaches that the universe in its webs of being contains many orders of entities existing in all-various grades. Some of these entities can be to any worthy person a source of inspiration. However, the fact that their influence comes from a nonphysical source is no guarantee of the desirability of that influence, but by the very fact of its unknown origin should be scrutinized at once or suspected as to character and source. Nor must we forget in this connection that the possibilities of self-deception are almost infinite.
Hamsamantra: The Mantra "Soham" automatically an involuntarily uttered by the Jiva with every act of inspiration and expiration.
heart ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.” *The Secret of the Veda
Heart ::: The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 15, Page: 271-72
heart ::: “The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.” The Secret of the Veda
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".
hiccough ::: n. --> A modified respiratory movement; a spasmodic inspiration, consisting of a sudden contraction of the diaphragm, accompanied with closure of the glottis, so that further entrance of air is prevented, while the impulse of the column of air entering and striking upon the closed glottis produces a sound, or hiccough. ::: v. i.
hippocrene ::: n. --> A fountain on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, fabled to have burst forth when the ground was struck by the hoof of Pegasus. Also, its waters, which were supposed to impart poetic inspiration.
Hod ::: Eighth of the sefirot, hod means “splendor.” It is associated with inspiration, suppleness, and transitory beauty. It is, as it were, the principle of hesed translated into action. Hod is balanced by Netzach.
homily: A saying or phrase with an inspirational message.
Hwyl (Welsh) Sail; the method of chanting used in Wales for poetry and rhetoric, the idea being that the inspiration drives and fills the spoken words with a certain vibrant, singing quality of sound, as the wind fills, swells, and drives the sails of a ship.
ideality ::: the supra-intellectual faculty (vijñana) with its powers of smr.ti (consisting of intuition and discrimination), sruti (or inspiration) and dr.s.t.i (or revelation), usually distinguished from (but sometimes including) vijñanabuddhi or intuitive mind. The plane of ideality or vijñana generally referred to in the early period of the Record of Yoga appears to be what in 1918 was designated primary / inferior ideality, above which Sri Aurobindo then distinguished a secondary / superior ideality. In 1919, the lower plane came to be called logistic ideality in a scheme of three planes, of which the higher two were termed hermetic ideality (later srauta vijñana) and seer ideality. Up to 1920, "ideality" by itself continued to refer mainly to the first of these planes.
Illumined Mind ::: [illumined Mind] is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.
Ref: CWSA Vol.28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 164
imperative ::: (in 1920) being of the nature of a "revealingly imperative power of the spirit"s knowledge by identity", the element in the logos vijñana or highest representative ideality (see full revelatory ideality) that deals with "the imperatives of the infinite", connected with revelation in much the same way as representative with intuition and interpretative with inspiration, and evidently entering into the logistic ideality from a higher plane of imperative vijñana; (in early 1927) a plane related to, but higher than, the imperative vijñana of 1920, apparently occupying a position between the supreme supramental and the supreme supermind, for one of its forms "acts as an intermediary force, lifting the former into the latter". The forms of "the imperative" in 1927 are perhaps the "intuitive forms" which by January of that year had been arranged "in the gnosis", making them part of what at the end of October is called the overmind system. imperative vij ñana
IMPULSE. ::: An ovenvhelming impulse is not necessarily an inspiration of true guidance ; in following always such impulses one is more likely to become a creature of random caprices.
inanimation ::: n. --> Want of animation; lifeless; dullness.
Infusion of life or vigor; animation; inspiration.
income ::: n. --> A coming in; entrance; admittance; ingress; infusion.
That which is caused to enter; inspiration; influence; hence, courage or zeal imparted.
That gain which proceeds from labor, business, property, or capital of any kind, as the produce of a farm, the rent of houses, the proceeds of professional business, the profits of commerce or of occupation, or the interest of money or stock in funds, etc.; revenue; receipts; salary; especially, the annual receipts of a private person,
infidel ::: a. --> Not holding the faith; -- applied esp. to one who does not believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the supernatural origin of Christianity. ::: n. --> One who does not believe in the prevailing religious faith; especially, one who does not believe in the divine origin and
infidelity ::: n. --> Want of faith or belief in some religious system; especially, a want of faith in, or disbelief of, the inspiration of the Scriptures, of the divine origin of Christianity.
Unfaithfulness to the marriage vow or contract; violation of the marriage covenant by adultery.
Breach of trust; unfaithfulness to a charge, or to moral obligation; treachery; deceit; as, the infidelity of a servant.
inflatus ::: v. t. --> A blowing or breathing into; inflation; inspiration.
infusion ::: v. t. --> The act of infusing, pouring in, or instilling; instillation; as, the infusion of good principles into the mind; the infusion of ardor or zeal.
That which is infused; suggestion; inspiration.
The act of plunging or dipping into a fluid; immersion.
The act or process of steeping or soaking any substance in water in order to extract its virtues.
In Havamal — a long poem of the Elder Edda — Odin relates how he “hung nine nights in the windtorn tree” (of life), seeking runes of wisdom (in the material worlds), and that he “raised them with song.” It is said that Odin first invented runes and carved them on various beneficent agencies that safeguard human life on earth. One is carved on the shield Grimnismal that “stands before the shining god; mountain and billion would burn away should he fall aside.” Another rune is inscribed on the ear of Arvakrand one on the hoof of Allsvinn (the horses that draw the solar disk across the sky); one is on the reins of Sleipnir, Odin’s steed, one on the paw of the bear, another on the tongue of Bragi (poetic inspiration), on the claws of the wolf and on the eagle’s beak, on the rainbow bridge (Bifrost); on glass, on gold, on wine, on herb; on Vili’s heart and Odin’s spear, on the nails of the Norns, etc. All were later scraped off, mixed with the holy mead of wisdom, and distributed throughout the three worlds for the benefit of gods and men.
In modern usage, genius is exalted intellectual power and creative ability, a remarkable aptitude for some special pursuit, which is the greatest responsiveness of the brain and brain-memory to the higher manas or mind. The bent or especial aptitude along a particular line is due to efforts made along that line in past lives now coming forth in force, and relatively unhindered by the necessity of having to go through every step of the learning stages. It is as though the genius is enabled to tap the garnered treasury of wisdom stored within the reincarnating ego, and it flows forth through his mind unhampered; whereas the average person, except at odd inspirational moments, cannot regularly make the connection with this inner store of wisdom and knowledge. See also JINN
Inner God ::: Mystics of all the ages have united in teaching this fact of the existence and ever-present power of anindividual inner god in each human being, as the first principle or primordial energy governing theprogress of man out of material life into the spiritual. Indeed, the doctrine is so perfectly universal, and isso consistent with everything that man knows when he reflects over the matter of his own spiritual andintellectual nature, that it is small wonder that this doctrine should have acquired foremost place inhuman religious and philosophical consciousness. Indeed, it may be called the very foundation-stone onwhich were builded the great systems of religious and philosophical thinking of the past; and rightly so,because this doctrine is founded on nature herself.The inner god in man, man's own inner, essential divinity, is the root of him, whence flow forth ininspiring streams into the psychological apparatus of his constitution all the inspirations of genius, all theurgings to betterment. All powers, all faculties, all characteristics of individuality, which blossomthrough evolution into individual manifestation, are the fruitage of the working in man's constitution ofthose life-giving and inspiring streams of spiritual energy.The radiant light which streams forth from that immortal center or core of our inmost being, which is ourinner god, lightens the pathway of each one of us; and it is from this light that we obtain idealconceptions. It is by this radiant light in our hearts that we can guide our feet towards an ever largerfulfilling in daily life of the beautiful conceptions which we as mere human beings dimly or clearlyperceive, as the case may be.The divine fire which moves through universal Nature is the source of the individualized divine firecoming from man's inner god.The modern Christians of a mystical bent of mind call the inner god the Christ Immanent, the immanentChristos; in Buddhism it is called the living Buddha within; in Brahmanism it is spoken of as the Brahmain his Brahmapura or Brahma-city, which is the inner constitution.Hence, call it by what name you please, the reflective and mystical mind intuitively realizes that thereworks through him a divine flame, a divine life, a divine light, and that this by whatever name we maycall it, is himself, his essential SELF. (See also God)
inspirable ::: a. --> Capable of being inspired or drawn into the lungs; inhalable; respirable; admitting inspiration.
Inspiration: A state of psychic receptivity to creative spiritual influence.
"Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it.” Letters on Yoga*
“Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it.” Letters on Yoga
Inspiration ::: “Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge; it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.” The Hour of God
Inspiration ::: Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast & eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 423
Inspiration, Inspired [from Latin in into, upon + spiro breathe (cf afflatus from ad upon + flo breathe); adopted from Greek empneusis from en in + pneo breathe] Generally the reception of knowledge or influence from a source superior — or even inferior — to the ordinary consciousness.
INSPIRATION. ::: It comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it.
INSPIRATION Reception of consciousness content from the superconscious.
(K 1.22.5)
INSPIRATION—The inbreathing or imparting of an idea, emotion or mental or spiritual influence; the elevating and creative influence of genius.
inspired ::: having the nature of inspiration (sruti), as it acts on the level of inspired logistis or another level of ideality or intuitive mind, often in combination with intuition or revelation; (vak) having the qualities of the fourth level of style, which "brings to us not only pure light and beauty and inexhaustible depth, but a greater moved ecstasy of highest or largest thought and sight and speech".
inspired ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Inspire ::: a. --> Breathed in; inhaled.
Moved or animated by, or as by, a supernatural influence; affected by divine inspiration; as, the inspired prophets; the inspired writers.
inspired intellectuality ::: (mentioned only in the form of intuitional inspired intellectuality) same as inspirational mentality.
inspired intuitional intellectuality ::: intuitional intellectuality with an element of inspiration, raising it towards inspirational mentality.
inspired intuition ::: intuition with an element of inspiration; the middle form of intuitional ideality.
inspired intuitivity ::: a working of the intuitive mind related to inspirational mentality and pragmatic intuitivity.
inspired logistis ::: the middle level of logistic ideality, where inspiration (sruti) determines the predominant character of the working of the luminous reason; also, the second gradation of this level, between the intuitional inspired and revelatory inspired forms of logistic ideality.
inspired revelatory logistis ::: the second scale of revelatory logistis, in .74 which inspiration is taken up into revelation.
inspires ::: 1. Produces, kindles, arouses or awakens a feeling, thought, etc. 2. Guides or arouse by divine influence or inspiration. inspired, inspiring.* *n. inspirer.**
inspire ::: v. t. --> To breathe into; to fill with the breath; to animate.
To infuse by breathing, or as if by breathing.
To draw in by the operation of breathing; to inhale; -- opposed to expire.
To infuse into the mind; to communicate to the spirit; to convey, as by a divine or supernatural influence; to disclose preternaturally; to produce in, as by inspiration.
To infuse into; to affect, as with a superior or
inspirtory ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or aiding, inspiration; as, the inspiratory muscles.
instinction ::: n. --> Instinct; incitement; inspiration.
insufflation ::: n. --> The act of breathing on or into anything
The breathing upon a person in the sacrament of baptism to symbolize the inspiration of a new spiritual life.
The act of blowing (a gas, powder, or vapor) into any cavity of the body.
interpretative ::: (in 1920) being of the nature of an "ideative vision and thought" that "interpret . . . the illimitable unity and variety of the Infinite", the characteristic of the hermetic ideality or srauta vijñana, the plane of vijñana whose essence is sruti, also attributed to the highest forms of logistic ideality containing an element of inspiration; specifically, pertaining to the highest form of inspired revelatory logistis, called interpretative revelatory vijñana, to the second element in the highest representative ideality or to the srauta vijñana itself, from which these derive; (in 1927) short for interpretative imperative. interpretative dr drsti
interspiration ::: n. --> Spiritual inspiration at separate times, or at intervals.
In the ancient Mysteries, theurgy was divided into different degrees. To illustrate, in one of the highest initiatory degrees the initiant was brought face to face with the divinity within himself, and in order to accomplish this the initiant had to give of his own spiritual and intellectual substance and vitality so that his inner god might imbody itself on inner and invisible planes, the rite thus providing a temporary and illusory divorce which was really an essential union of the divine in man with the spiritual-intellectual — the latter recognizing for the time being its own divine origin and coalescing with it. In a less perfect form of such theurgical practice, and in a lower degree of the Mysteries, the initiant gave of his own astral and physical substance, the effluvia of his astral body and of his flesh and blood, to provide a vehicle through which a spiritual entity might have a tangible, although very temporary, imbodiment; and for the time being the initiant was thus enabled to see, touch, and converse with a being of the inner worlds who otherwise would have been utterly unable to enter our physical sphere except by those spiritual-akasic currents of forces which human beings recognize as inspiration.
In the sixth stage, theopneusty (in-breathing or through-breathing of a god, divine inspiration), the candidate becomes the vehicle of his own inner god, for a time depending on the neophyte’s own power of retention and observation, so that he is then inspired with the spiritual and intellectual powers and faculties of his higher self.
intuitional ::: having the nature of intuition, as it acts on the level of intuitional ideality or another level of ideality or intuitive mind, often in combination with inspiration or revelation.
intuitional inspired ::: having the nature of intuitive inspiration.
intuitional inspired intellectuality ::: the lowest form of inspirational mentality, in which intuition is taken up into inspiration.
intuitional inspired logistis ::: the lowest form of inspired logistis, in which intuition is taken up into inspiration.
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 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 (revelation, inspiration, intuitive perception, intuitive discrimination) is Vijnana working in mind under the conditions and in the forms of mind.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 71
Intuition sees In flashes and combined through a constant play of light — through revelations, inspirations, intuitions, swift dis- criminations.
intuitive-inspirational ::: having the nature of intuitive inspiration.
intuitive inspiration ::: intuition taken up into inspiration (on the plane of idealised mentality or logistic ideality); the same as intuitional inspired intellectuality or intuitional inspired logistis.
intuitive idealised mind ::: (mentioned only in the form of inspirational intuitive idealised mind) same as intuitional intellectuality.
Intuitive Mind ::: a mind of intuitive reason characterised by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination; it is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment.
intuitive mind ::: same as vijñanabuddhi, a higher form of the buddhi whose "inspirations, revelations, intuitions, self-luminous discernings are messages from a higher knowledge-plane", but which "can perceive the truth only by a brilliant reflection or limited communication and subject to the restrictions and the inferior capacity of the mental vision".
invocation of the Muse: A call or request for inspiration from the nine Muses, usually at the beginning of works from the Greek or Roman tradition.
It is also necessary to avoid looking on the lower quaternary as something evil, which must be destroyed or wrongly subjugated; it is in fact an essential part of the complete human being, and what it needs is regulation, inspiration from above, and consequent regeneration.
Jhumur: “There are moments when something calls to us—those magical inspirations. The birds move freely through the wind, they are the symbols of the freedom of movement and they are singers who link the worlds together in their song.”
kāsāya. (P. kāsāya; T. ngur smrig; C. jiasha; J. kesa; K. kasa 袈裟). In Sanskrit, "dyed" (lit. "turbid-colored") robes (CĪVARA), referring to the robes of an ordained monk or nun, which were traditionally required to be sewn from pieces of soiled cloth and "dyed" to a reddish- or brownish-yellow saffron color or ochre tone; also spelled kasāya. Although the color that eventually came to be used in different Buddhist traditions varied, the important feature was that it be a mixed or muddied hue-and thus impure-and not a pure primary color. This impurity would help monastics develop a sense of nonattachment even toward their own clothing. According to the VINAYA, the kāsāya robe is also supposed to be sewn from sullied cloth that ordinary laypeople would be loath to use for clothing, such as rag cloth or funerary shrouds. Even new cloth offered to the SAMGHA will typically be ritually defiled so that it fulfills this requirement. The final requirement for the kāsāya robe is that it be sewn from pieces of cloth, not single sheets of new cloth, which were thought to be too luxurious. Robes were sewn from an odd-numbered series of vertical panels, typically five, seven, or nine in number, with each panel also in segments and the whole construction surrounded by a cloth edging. The Buddha is said to have received his inspiration for this patchwork design of the kāsāya while he was looking over a field of rice paddies with their surrounding embankments. Robes were one of the four major requisites (S. NIsRAYA; P. nissaya) of the monks and nuns, along with such basics as a begging bowl (PĀTRA), and were the object of the KAtHINA ceremony, in which the monastics were offered cloth for making new sets of robes at the end of each rain's retreat (VARsĀ). Robes eventually became symbolic of sectarian affiliation and institutional status within the various Buddhist traditions and are made in an array of bright colors and luxurious fabrics; but even the fanciest of robes will still typically be sewn in the patchwork fashion of the original kāsāya. See also CĪVARA; TRICĪVARA.
kavi ::: poet; (in the Veda) seer, one who is "possessed of the Truthconsciousness and using its faculties of vision, inspiration, intuition, discrimination".
Lam rim chen mo. In Tibetan, "Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path"; the abbreviated title for one of the best-known works on Buddhist thought and practice in Tibet, composed by the Tibetan luminary TSONG KHA PA BLO BZANG GRAGS PA in 1402 at the central Tibetan monastery of RWA SGRENG. A lengthy treatise belonging to the LAM RIM, or stages of the path, genre of Tibetan Buddhist literature, the LAM RIN CHEN MO takes its inspiration from numerous earlier writings, most notably the BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA ("Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment") by the eleventh-century Bengali master ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA. It is the most extensive treatment of three principal stages that Tsong kha pa composed. The others include (1) the LAM RIM CHUNG BA ("Short Treatise on the Stages of the Path"), also called the Lam rim 'bring ba ("Intermediate Treatise on the States of the Path") and (2) the LAM RIM BSDUS DON ("Concise Meaning of the Stages of the Path"), occasionally also referred to as the Lam rim chung ngu ("Brief Stages of the Path"). The latter text, which records Tsong kha pa's own realization of the path in verse form, is also referred to as the Lam rim nyams mgur ma ("Song of Experience of the Stages of the Path"). The LAM RIM CHEN MO is a highly detailed and often technical treatise presenting a comprehensive and synthetic overview of the path to buddhahood. It draws, often at length, upon a wide range of scriptural sources including the SuTRA and sĀSTRA literature of both the HĪNAYĀNA and MAHĀYĀNA; Tsong kha pa treats tantric practice in a separate work. The text is organized under the rubric of the three levels of spiritual predilection, personified as "the three individuals" (skyes bu gsum): the beings of small capacity, who engage in religious practice in order to gain a favorable rebirth in their next lifetime; the beings of intermediate capacity, who seek liberation from rebirth for themselves as an ARHAT; and the beings of great capacity, who seek to liberate all beings in the universe from suffering and thus follow the bodhisattva path to buddhahood. Tsong kha pa's text does not lay out all the practices of these three types of persons but rather those practices essential to the bodhisattva path that are held in common by persons of small and intermediate capacity, such as the practice of refuge (sARAnA) and contemplation of the uncertainty of the time of death. The text includes extended discussions of topics such as relying on a spiritual master, the development of BODHICITTA, and the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). The last section of the text, sometimes regarded as a separate work, deals at length with the nature of serenity (sAMATHA) and insight (VIPAsYANĀ); Tsong kha pa's discussion of insight here represents one of his most important expositions of emptiness (suNYATĀ). Primarily devoted to exoteric Mahāyāna doctrine, the text concludes with a brief reference to VAJRAYĀNA and the practice of tantra, a subject discussed at length by Tsong kha pa in a separate work, the SNGAGS RIM CHEN MO ("Stages of the Path of Mantra"). The Lam rim chen mo's full title is Skyes bu gsum gyi rnyams su blang ba'i rim pa thams cad tshang bar ston pa'i byang chub lam gyi rim pa.
lam rim. In Tibetan, "stages of the path"; a common abbreviation for byang chub lam gyi rim pa (jangchup lamkyi rimpa), or "stages of the path to enlightenment," a broad methodological framework for the study and practice of the complete Buddhist path to awakening, as well as the name for a major genre of Tibetan literature describing that path. It is closely allied to the genre known as BSTAN RIM, or "stages of the doctrine." The initial inspiration for the instructions of this system is usually attributed to the Bengali master ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA, whose BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA ("Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment") became a model for numerous later stages of the path texts. The system presents a graduated and comprehensive approach to studying the central tenets of MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist thought and is often organized around a presentation of the three levels of spiritual predilection, personified as "three individuals" (skyes bu gsum): lesser, intermediate, and superior. The stages gradually lead the student from the lowest level of seeking merely to obtain a better rebirth, through the intermediate level of wishing for one's own individual liberation, and finally to adopting the MAHĀYĀNA outlook of the "superior individual," viz., aspiring to attain buddhahood in order to benefit all living beings. The approach is most often grounded in the teachings of the sutra and usually concludes with a brief overview of TANTRA. Although usually associated with the DGE LUGS sect, stages of the path literature is found within all the major sects of Tibetan Buddhism. One common Dge lugs tradition identifies eight major stages of the path treatises:
logistic ideality ::: the plane of luminous reason, the lowest of the three planes of ideality; its essence is smr.ti (intuition and discrimination, the latter often regarded as inherent in the former) and it has three levels ... with three or more forms of each, based on various combinations of intuition with inspiration and revelation, the higher faculties of jñana. On each successive level, "the lower first calls down into itself and is then taken up into the higher, so that on each level all the three elevations are reproduced, but always there predominates in the thought essence the character that belongs to that level"s proper form of consciousness". The logistic ideality of 1919-20 may be correlated with the "intuitive" level of higher mind in the diagram on page 1(c. 1931).
Loki is thus a complex figure of markedly dual character: his giant ancestry, which rightly belongs to the past, suggests the only partly evolved human nature, uninspired by divine wisdom. At the same time he is associated with the divine fire of intelligence. This godlike quality entails free will, which in our human condition is often unwise unless guided by inspiration and brings misfortune when acting on its own.
Lutheranism: An ecclesiastical school of thought claiming Martin Luther (1483-1546) as its source and inspiration. See Reformation. The Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith, the free grace of God, wholly without earned merit and institutional sanctions, is emphasized. The essence of the church-community is held to revolve about the pure, revealed Word of God and the sacraments of baptism and communion. Varieties of Lutheranism range from a liberal acknowledgment of the Augsburg Confession of 1530 to a more strict adherence to the several Lutheran documents collectively known as the Book of Concord. -- V.F.
Madhav: “Aswapathy participates in the luminous manifestation of Inspiration, Revelation and Intuition on his way to the heights of the Overmind.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Creatrix here is the power of inspiration; a highly powered puissance of inspiration works in his being.” Sat-Sang Vol. IX
Ma gcig lab sgron. (Machik Labdron) (c. 1055-1149). Female Tibetan Buddhist master who codified the important meditation tradition called "severance" (GCOD), classified as one of the so-called eight great conveyances that are lineages of achievement (SGRUB BRGYUD SHING RTA CHEN PO BRGYAD). Born in the southern Tibetan region of LA PHYI, Ma gcig lab sgron was recognized at a young age to be a prodigy. According to her traditional biographies, she had a natural propensity for the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ literature, spending much of her youth reading and studying its root texts and commentaries. She continued her religious education under the monk known as Grwa pa mngon shes (Drapa Ngonshe) and Skyo ston Bsod nams bla ma (Kyoton Sonam Lama) in a monastic setting where she was eventually employed to use her skills in ritual recitation and exegesis. She then took up the lifestyle of a tantric YOGINĪ, living as the consort of the Indian adept Thod pa Bhadra and giving birth to perhaps five children. Reviled in one source as "a nun who had repudiated her religious vows," Ma gcig lab sgron left her family and eventually met the figure who would become her root guru, the famed Indian yogin PHA DAM PA SANGS RGYAS who transmitted to her the instructions of "pacification" (ZHI BYED) and MAHĀMUDRĀ. She combined these with her training in prajNāpāramitā and other indigenous practices, passing them on as the practice of severance, principally to the Nepalese yogin Pham thing pa and her own son Thod smyon bsam grub (Tonyon Samdrup). Ma gcig lab sgron is revered as a dĀKINĪ, an emanation of the Great Mother (Yum chen mo, as the goddess PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ is known in Tibetan), and the female bodhisattva TĀRĀ. Her reincarnations have also been recognized in contemporary individuals, including the former abbess of the important SHUG GSEB nunnery, Rje btsun Rig 'dzin chos nyid zang mo (Jetsun Rikdzin Chonyi Sangmo). Ma gcig lab sgron remains a source of visionary inspiration for new ritual cycles, as well as a primary Tibetan example of the ideal female practitioner. Her tradition of severance continues to be widely practiced by Tibetan Buddhists of all sectarian affiliations.
Malchut Yisrael (The Kingdom of Israel) ::: An ultranationalist ideology that draws its inspiration from the biblical David kingdom, and calls for the establishment of the jewish state in all the territories promised by God to Abraham.
Manasasarovara (Sanskrit) Manasasarovara [from mānasa intelligent + sarovara lake of excellence] The lake of excellent intelligence; a sacred lake in the Himalayas of Tibet, as well as its tutelary deity said to be a naga (serpent, adept, sage). The lake, also called Anavatapta, is a place of yearly pilgrimage for the Hindus because the Vedas are claimed to have been written on its shores. Its name has reference to its historic occult connection with Sambhala, hence the reference is to its being the source of the Vedas, of inspiration, and therefore of knowledge and wisdom.
mantra ::: sacred syllable, name or mystic formula; the intuitive and inspired rhythmic utterance; any of the verses of the Veda, revealed verses of power not of an ordinary but of a divine inspiration and source.
mantra ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” *The Future Poetry
mantra ::: Sri Aurobindo: “The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” The Future Poetry
mantra ::: : “The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” The Future Poetry
Mark I "computer" (Or "Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator", "ASCC") A {first generation computer} that was designed by {Howard Aiken} of {Harvard University}, taking inspiration from {Charles Babbage}'s {Analytical Engine}. The Mark I, as the Harvard University staff called it, was built by {IBM} between 1939 to 1944. It was delivered to Harvard University and became operational in March 1944. The Mark I is considered to be the first full-sized {digital computer}. It was built from clutches, relays, rotating shafts and switches. It read its instructions from one paper tape and data from another. It could store 72 numbers, each of 23 decimal digits. It weighed about 4500 Kg, had 800 Km of wiring, was used only for numeric calculations, and took three seconds to carry out one multiplication. The IBM archives call it the, "...industry's largest electromechanical calculator." One of the Mark I's first programers was {John von Neumann}. The Mark I was retired in 1959, and disassembled. Parts are archived at Harvard in the Science Center. It was followed by the {Mark II}. (1996-11-24)
Merkaz Harav (The Rabbi's Center) ::: A Jerusalem Zionist yeshiva founded by Rabbi Avraham Itzhak Hacohen Kook, subsequently led by his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook; the school and the source of inspiration of all the founders of Gush Emunim.
Messenger ::: In the theosophical sense, an individual who comes with a mandate from the Lodge of the Masters ofWisdom and Compassion to do a certain work in the world.Only real genius -- indeed something more than merely human genius -- only extraordinary spiritual andintellectual capacity, native to the constitution of some lofty human being, could explain the reason forthe choice of such messengers. But, indeed, this is not saying enough; because in addition to genius andto merely native spiritual and intellectual capacity such a messenger must possess through initiatorytraining the capacity of throwing at will the intermediate or psychological nature into a state of perfectquiescence or receptivity for the stream of divine-spiritual inspiration flowing forth from the messenger'sown inner divinity or monadic essence. It is obvious, therefore, that such a combination of rare andunusual qualities is not often found in human beings; and, when found, such a one is fit for the work tobe done by such a messenger of the Association of great ones.The Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace send their envoys continuously into the world ofmen, one after the other, and in consequence these envoys are working in the world among men all thetime. Happy are they whose hearts recognize the footfalls of those crossing the mountaintops of theMystic East. The messengers do not always do public work before the world, but frequently work in thesilences and unknown of men, or relatively unknown. At certain times, however, they are commissionedand empowered and directed to do their work publicly and to make public announcement of theirmission. Such, for instance, was the case of H. P. Blavatsky.
Methodology: The systematic analysis and organization of the rational and experimental principles and processes which must guide a scientific inquiry, or which constitute the structure of the special sciences more particularly. Methodology, which is also called scientific method, and more seldom methodeutic, refers not only to the whole of a constituted science, but also to individual problems or groups of problems within a science. As such it is usually considered as a branch of logic; in fact, it is the application of the principles and processes of logic to the special objects of the various sciences; while science in general is accounted for by the combination of deduction and induction as such. Thus, methodology is a generic term exemplified in the specific method of each science. Hence its full significance can be understood only by analyzing the structure of the special sciences. In determining that structure, one must consider the proper object of the special science, the manner in which it develops, the type of statements or generalizations it involves, its philosophical foundations or assumptions, and its relation with the other sciences, and eventually its applications. The last two points mentioned are particularly important: methods of education, for example, will vary considerably according to their inspiration and aim. Because of the differences between the objects of the various sciences, they reveal the following principal methodological patterns, which are not necessarily exclusive of one another, and which are used sometimes in partial combination. It may be added that their choice and combination depend also in a large degree on psychological motives. In the last resort, methodology results from the adjustment of our mental powers to the love and pursuit of truth. There are various rational methods used by the speculative sciences, including theology which adds certain qualifications to their use. More especially, philosophy has inspired the following procedures: The Soctattc method of analysis by questioning and dividing until the essences are reached; the synthetic method developed by Plato, Aristotle and the Medieval thinkers, which involves a demonstrative exposition of the causal relation between thought and being; the ascetic method of intellectual and moral purification leading to an illumination of the mind, as proposed by Plotinus, Augustine and the mystics; the psychological method of inquiry into the origin of ideas, which was used by Descartes and his followers, and also by the British empiricists; the critical or transcendental method, as used by Kant, and involving an analysis of the conditions and limits of knowledge; the dialectical method proceeding by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which is promoted by Hegelianlsm and Dialectical Materialism; the intuitive method, as used by Bergson, which involves the immediate perception of reality, by a blending of consciousness with the process of change; the reflexive method of metaphysical introspection aiming at the development of the immanent realities and values leading man to God; the eclectic method (historical-critical) of purposive and effective selection as proposed by Cicero, Suarez and Cousin; and the positivistic method of Comte, Spencer and the logical empiricists, which attempts to apply to philosophy the strict procedures of the positive sciences. The axiomatic or hypothetico-deductive method as used by the theoretical and especially the mathematical sciences. It involves such problems as the selection, independence and simplification of primitive terms and axioms, the formalization of definitions and proofs, the consistency and completeness of the constructed theory, and the final interpretation. The nomological or inductive method as used by the experimental sciences, aims at the discovery of regularities between phenomena and their relevant laws. It involves the critical and careful application of the various steps of induction: observation and analytical classification; selection of similarities; hypothesis of cause or law; verification by the experimental canons; deduction, demonstration and explanation; systematic organization of results; statement of laws and construction of the relevant theory. The descriptive method as used by the natural and social sciences, involves observational, classificatory and statistical procedures (see art. on statistics) and their interpretation. The historical method as used by the sciences dealing with the past, involves the collation, selection, classification and interpretation of archeological facts and exhibits, records, documents, archives, reports and testimonies. The psychological method, as used by all the sciences dealing with human behaviour and development. It involves not only introspective analysis, but also experimental procedures, such as those referring to the relations between stimuli and sensations, to the accuracy of perceptions (specific measurements of intensity), to gradation (least noticeable differences), to error methods (average error in right and wrong cases), and to physiological and educational processes.
Milton’s inspiration (says R. H. West, quoted in
mind, Ideal Mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijñâna and which we may describe in our modern turn of language as the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind. There 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.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and Inspiration.
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.*
Most of the basic problems and theories of cosmology seem to have been discussed by the pre-Socratic philosophers. Their views are modified and expanded in the Timaeus of Plato, and rehearsed and systematized in Aristotle's Physics. Despite multiple divergencies, all these Greek philosophers seem to be largely agreed that the universe is limited in space, has neither a beginning nor end in time, is dominated by a set of unalterable laws, and has a definite and recurring rhythm. The cosmology of the Middle Ages diverges from the Greek primarily through the introduction of the concepts of divine creation and annihilation, miracle and providence. In consonance with the tendencies of the new science, the cosmologies of Descartes, Leibniz and Newton bring the medieval views into closer harmony with those of the Greeks. The problems of cosmology were held to be intrinsically insoluble by Kant. After Kant there was a tendency to merge the issues of cosmology with those of metaphysics. The post-Kantians attempted to deal with both in terms of more basic principles and a more flexible dialectic, their opponents rejected both as without significance or value. The most radical modern cosmology is that of Peirce with its three cosmic principles of chance, law and continuity; the most recent is that of Whitehead, which finds its main inspiration in Plato's Timaeus.
Much could be said about the vine and the juice — fresh or fermented — of its fruit. Ancient peoples selected certain animals or plants as emblems of spiritual and mystical facts. Thus with the Mediterranean peoples the juice of grapes was chosen as an emblem of inspiration.
Muni (Sanskrit) Muni [from the verbal root man to think] An ascetic, monk, devotee, hermit (especially one who has taken a vow of silence); a person who has attained union with his inner divinity by means of aspiration, so that filled with inspiration as he is, and guided by the inner spiritual monitor, he is said to attain more or less fully the status of an incarnate divinity on earth. With the Sanskrit expression hridayeshu sthitah (abiding in the hearts), the phrase has direct reference to the Silent Watcher of our planetary chain, who is in a sense the spiritual and mystical parent of the higher part of the human constitution.
Netzach ::: Seventh of the sefirot, Netzach means “endurance” or “eternity.” It is the principle of determination, continuity, and steadiness, counterbalanced by hod, which represents inspiration and splendor.
New Thought: The name of a movement, based on the work of Phineas P. Quimby (1802-1866), who practiced mental and spiritual healing. The movement adopted the name The National New Thought Alliance in 1908, and became the International New Thought Alliance in 1914. Its constitution, adopted in 1916, states that its purpose is “to teach the Infinitude of the Supreme One, the Divinity of Man and his Infinite possibilities through the creative power of constructive thinking and obedience to the voice of the Indwelling Presence which is our source of Inspiration, Power, Health and Prosperity.”
Odr (Icelandic) Mind, wit, soul, sense; in Norse mythology, cosmic mind, corresponding to the Sanskrit mahat. The name Odin is derived from it when Odin represents the Allfather. In one legend reminiscent of the Egyptian tale of Isis, Odr is the husband of Frigga, who weeps golden tears as she searches the worlds for him. Here he may stand for one of the divine ancestors of the human race, and his long journeys are the peregrinations made by the monad, Odr’s spiritual aspect, through the worlds of form and matter. Odr is used for song or poetry in many compound words such as odar-smidr (song smith), odar-ar (speech oar, the tongue), odraerir (inspirer of wisdom, the vessel containing the blood of Kvasir: inspiration brought to the gods from higher gods).
Our subliminal self is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting-place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature,—and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being’s direct consciousness of things than its informants: the subliminal is not dependent on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to its direct experience of objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind’s documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience. It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw from the surface activities whether by sleep or inward-drawn concentration or by the inner plunge of trance. Our waking state is unaware of its connection with the subliminal being, although it receives from it—but without any knowledge of the place of origin—the inspirations, intuitions, ideas, will-suggestions, sense-suggestions, urges to action that rise from below or from behind our limited surface existence. Sleep like trance opens the gate of the subliminal to us; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of the limited waking personality and it is behind this veil that the subliminal has its existence. But we receive the records of our sleep experience through dream and in dream figures and not in that condition which might be called an inner waking and which is the most accessible form of the trance state, nor through the supernormal clarities of vision and other more luminous and concrete ways of communication developed by the inner subliminal cognition when it gets into habitual or occasional conscious connection with our waking self. The subliminal, with the subconscious as an annexe of itself,—for the subconscious is also part of the behind-the-veil entity,—is the seer of inner things and of supraphysical experiences; the surface subconscious is only a transcriber. It is for this reason that the Upanishad describes the subliminal being as the Dream Self because it is normally in dreams, visions, absorbed states of inner experience that we enter into and are part of its experiences...
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 236
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
Panini (Sanskrit) Pāṇini The most eminent of all Sanskrit grammarians of whatever age, the author of the Ashtadhyayi, Paniniya, and several other works. Panini was considered a rishi who received his inspiration from the god Siva. Orientalists are not certain in what epoch he lived, some guessing 600 BC, others about 300 AD; he is said to have been born in Salatura in Gandhara, an Indian district west of the Indus. His grammar is composed in the form of 3,996 slokas or sutras arranged in eight chapters, the aphorisms extremely brief, and long study is often required in order to ascertain Panini’s meanings. Grammar with him was a science studied for its own sake, and investigated with the most minute criticism.
pegasus ::: n. --> A winged horse fabled to have sprung from the body of Medusa when she was slain. He is noted for causing, with a blow of his hoof, Hippocrene, the inspiring fountain of the Muses, to spring from Mount Helicon. On this account he is, in modern times, associated with the Muses, and with ideas of poetic inspiration.
A northen constellation near the vernal equinoctial point. Its three brightest stars, with the brightest star of Andromeda, form the square of Pegasus.
poetry ::: “All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Human and Divine
poetry ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Human and Divine
pragmatic ideality ::: an inspirational form of logistic ideality which, applied to the field of trikaladr.s.t.i and tapas, takes the present actuality as a passing circumstance and "claims to go altogether beyond it, to create with a certain large freedom according to the Will".
pragmatic intuitivity ::: the second form of intuitivity, corresponding on the level of the intuitive mind to the pragmatic reason on the intellectual plane; it is related to inspirational mentality and gives the perception of the "powers and forces which attempt to create a future not bound by the probabilities of the present".
Pragmatism: (Gr. pragma, things done) Owes its inception as a movement of philosophy to C. S. Peirce and William James, but approximations to it can be found in many earlier thinkers, including (according to Peirce and James) Socrates and Aristotle, Berkeley and Hume. Concerning a closer precursor, Shadworth Hodgson, James says that he "keeps insisting that realities are only what they are 'known as' ". Kant actually uses the word "pragmatic" to characterize "counsels of prudence" as distinct from "rules of skill" and "commands of morality" (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 40). His principle of the primacy of practical reason is also an anticipation of pragmatism. It was reflection on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason which originally led Peirce to formulate the view that the muddles of metaphysics can be cleared up if one attends to the practical consequences of ideas. The pragmatic maxim was first stated by Peirce in 1878 (Popular Science Monthly) "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object". A clearer formulation by the same author reads: "In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception, and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception". This is often expressed briefly, viz.: The meaning of a proposition is its logical (or physical) consequences. The principle is not merely logical. It is also admonitory in Baconian style "Pragmatism is the principle that everv theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose onlv meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the impentive mood". (Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, 5.18.) Although Peirce's maxim has been an inspiration not only to later pragmatists, but to operationalists as well, Peirce felt that it might easily be misapplied, so as to eliminate important doctrines of science -- doctrines, presumably, which hive no ascertainable practical consequences.
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.
preran.a ::: inspiration, especially when it "comes as the actual word prerana . . . revealing its meaning"; inspiration as part of the linguistic faculty (bhas.asakti), giving the meanings of unknown words; writing in various languages received by inspiration.
prophecy ::: “If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past.
prophet ::: 1. A person who speaks by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed. 2. A person who predicts the future. prophet"s, prophets. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adjective.) prophet-passion, prophet-speech.
prophetic ::: “The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Divine and Human
Psychography Soul-writing; coined by theosophical writers on occult phenomena for various kinds of inspirational or phenomenally produced writing. In its highest sense it may mean writing under the influence of inspiration from a high source, whether within or without the nature of the writer, as when one writes things which in his ordinary state of mind he would be incapable of rising to. Or it may refer to physical mediumship, where the writing is produced unconsciously by the astrally controlled hand of the medium, and the ideas come from some source in the astral light. It can also include automatic writing of various kinds, and writing by precipitation. As regards the advisability of seeking or cultivating such powers, any practice which involves a surrender of control, either of the mind or the body, to an extraneous influence is detrimental. A writer in full possession of his faculties may by sincere aspiration draw upon higher sources within himself or upon the aid given by those Helpers who stand ready to respond to such aspirations. Self-deception, however, is one of the commonest failings of human nature.
Puraka: Inspiration; inhalation of breath.
Pusa yingluo benye jing. (J. Bosatsu yoraku hongokyo; K. Posal yongnak ponop kyong 菩薩瓔珞本業經). In Chinese, "Book of the Original Acts that Adorn the Bodhisattva," in two rolls, translation attributed to ZHU FONIAN (fl. c. 390); a Chinese indigenous sutra (see APOCRYPHA) often known by its abbreviated title of Yingluo jing. The Yingluo jing was particularly influential in the writings of CHAN and TIANTAI exegetes, including such seminal scholastic figures as TIANTAI ZHIYI, who cited the sutra especially in conjunction with discussions of the BODHISATTVA MĀRGA and Mahāyāna VINAYA. The Yingluo jing is perhaps best known for its attempt to synthesize the variant schemata of the Buddhist path (mārga) into a comprehensive regimen of fifty-two BODHISATTVA stages: the ten faiths, the ten abidings, the ten practices, the ten transferences, and the ten grounds (see C. DAsABHuMI; BHuMI); these then culminate in the two stages of buddhahood, virtual or equal enlightenment (dengjue) and sublime enlightenment (miaojue), which the Yingluo jing calls respectively the immaculate stage (wugou di, S. *amalabhumi) and the sublime-training stage (miaoxue di). The Yingluo jing is one of the first texts formally to include the ten faiths in its prescribed mārga schema, as a preliminary level prior to the initiation onto the bodhisattva path proper, which is said to occur at the time of the first arousal of the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA) on the first level of the ten abidings. The text therefore adds an additional ten steps to the forty-two named stages of the path outlined in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA (C. Huayan jing), providing a complete fifty-two-stage path, one of the most comprehensive accounts of the mārga to be found in East Asian Buddhist literature. The Yingluo jing also offers one of the most widely cited descriptions of the threefold classification of Buddhist morality (C. sanju jingji; S. sĪLATRAYA), a categorization of precepts found typically in YOGĀCĀRA-oriented materials. The Yingluo jing describes these as (1) the moral code that maintains both the discipline and the deportments (= S. SAMVARAsĪLA) through the ten perfections (PĀRAMITĀ); (2) the moral code that accumulates wholesome dharmas (= S. kusaladharmasaMgrāhaka) through the eighty-four thousand teachings; and (3) the moral code that aids all sentient beings (= S. SATTVĀRTHAKRIYĀ), through exercising loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (viz. the four BRAHMAVIHĀRA). The Yingluo jing specifies that these three categories of precepts are the foundation of morality for all bodhisattvas. The provenance and authorship of the Pusa yingluo benye jing have long been matters of controversy. In the fifth-century Buddhist catalogue CHU SANZANG JI JI, the compiler Sengyou lists the Pusa yingluo benye jing among miscellaneous works by anonymous translators. In the 594 scriptural catalogue Zhongjing mulu, the scripture is ascribed to Zhu Fonian, while the LIDAI SANBAO JI instead claims that the text was translated by the dhyāna master Zhiyan in 427. Later cataloguers generally accept the attribution to Zhu Fonian, though some note that the translation style differs markedly from that found in other of his renderings. The attribution to Zhu Fonian is also suspect because it includes passages and doctrines that seem to derive from other indigenous Chinese sutras, such as the RENWANG JING, FANWANG JING, etc., as well as passages that appear in earlier Chinese translations of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, PUSA BENYE JING, SHENGMAN JING, Pusa dichi jing, and DA ZHIDU LUN. Both internal and external evidence therefore suggests that the Yingluo jing is a Chinese apocryphon from the fifth century. ¶ The Pusa yingluo benye jing should be distinguished from the Pusa benye jing ("Basic Endeavors of the Bodhisattvas"), translated by ZHI QIAN (fl. c. 220-252), an authentic translation that offers one of the earliest accounts of the ten stages (S. dasavihāra, DAsABHuMI) translated into Chinese. (It is usually known by its abbreviated title of Benye jing.) This text seems to combine the accounts of the ten bodhisattva stages found in the GAndAVYuHA (viz., AvataMsakasutra) and the MAHĀVASTU and may have been the inspiration for the composition of this indigenous Chinese sutra. (Zhu Fonian also translated a Pusa yingluo jing, which may be how his name became associated with this apocryphal Pusa yingluo benye jing.)
Qol (Hebrew) Qōl Also Kol. Voice, sound; rumor. Bath Qol (daughter of the voice) is an ancient Hebrew reference to inspiration or afflatus, whether arising within the prophet himself or heard from a source without him.
quote :::Inspiration is the inner light which reflects itself upon the heart of man; the purer the heart is from rust, like a clean mirror, the more clearly inspiration can be reflected in it. To receive inspirations clearly the heart should be prepared by proper training. A heart soiled with rust is never capable of receiving them. There are five kinds of inspiration:
quote :::Inspirations are reflected upon mankind in five ways:
quote :::There is a still greater and deeper experience: when a person is in a wilderness, near rocks in the desert, where there is no sound even of birds or beasts, when there is absolute silence. In the East, did not all the prophets from the time of Abraham, Moses, David, and in the time of Christ and Muhammad, all the prophets of the Old Testament and the New, and of the Qur'an, receive their inspiration from the same source?
Rāma IV. (Mongkut) (1804-1868). Thai monarch who spent twenty-seven years as a monk before becoming king of Siam. As a monk between 1824 and 1851 (his ordination name was VajiraNāna), Mongkut's studies led him to conclude that the VINAYA was not being strictly observed by the Thai SAMGHA and that many rituals performed by monks did not derive from the Buddha's teachings. In 1830, he organized a small group of reformist monks called the THAMMAYUT nikai (P. Dhammayuttikanikāya), "the group that adheres strictly to the dharma," in contrast to what came to be known as the MAHANIKAI (P. Mahānikāya), the "great congregation" of monks who continued to follow the then-normative practices of Thai Buddhism. To establish this new reform tradition of Thai Buddhism, Mongkut drew on what he considered to be a pure ordination lineage from the Mon people of Burma (Myanmar). Prince Mongkut also sought to produce an authentic recension of the Pāli canon after finding the extant editions deficient and incomplete. His new movement emphasized study of the tipitaka (S. TRIPItIKA) as the basis for understanding Buddhist doctrine and rejected as unorthodox many Buddhist texts popular in Thai Buddhism (such as the Traiphumikatha as well as the JĀTAKA tales). The Thammayut movement also stressed proper monastic discipline, particularly details such as the correct way of wearing the robes (TRICĪVARA) and carrying the alms bowl (PĀTRA), as well as the proper demarcation of monastic space (SĪMĀ). Mongkut's reforms began a trend that led to the SAnGHA ADMINISTRATION ACT, passed in 1902, establishing uniform practices for all monks throughout the country. Mongkut had considerable interaction with Western missionaries and was sensitive to their bias regarding Christianity's supposed superiority over Buddhism because of its affinities for science and technology. In possible response to this European influence, Mongkut and the Thammayut movement also emphasized the rational aspects of Buddhism that sought to make their religion compatible with science and modernity. Mongkut eventually became abbot of WAT BOWONNIWET (Wat Bovoranives) in the Thai capital of Bangkok, which continues to be the headquarters of the Thammayut sect. After Mongkut ascended to the throne, the Thammayut continued to be closely associated with the royal court; the majority of Thai monks, however, have remained in the Mahanikai order. Rāma IV, to the chagrin of many Thais, is the historical (if fanciful) figure behind Anna Leonowens's memoir about her experience in the Thai court as tutor to Mongkut's children, which became the inspiration for Margaret Landon's book Anna and the King of Siam and the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I.
rang stong gzhan stong. (rang dong shen dong). In Tibetan, lit. "self-emptiness, other-emptiness," an important and persistent philosophical debate in Tibetan Buddhism, dating to the fifteenth century. The opposing factions are the DGE LUGS sect on one side and the JO NANG sect on the other, with support from certain BKA' BRGYUD and RNYING MA authors. The debate concerns issues fundamental to their understanding of what constituted enlightenment and the path to its achievement. For the Dge lugs, the most profound of all Buddhist doctrines is that all phenomena in the universe are empty of an intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA), that the constituents of experience are not naturally endowed with a defining characteristic. Emptiness (suNYATĀ) for the Dge lugs is the fact that phenomena do not exist in and of themselves; emptiness is instead the lack of intrinsic existence. The Dge lugs then, are proponents of "self-emptiness," and argue that the hypostatized factor that an object in reality lacks (i.e., is empty of) is wrongly believed by the unenlightened to be intrinsic to the object itself. Everything, from physical forms to the omniscient mind of the Buddha, is thus equally empty. This emptiness is described by the Dge lugs as a non-affirming or simple negation (PRASAJYAPRATIsEDHA), an absence with nothing else implied in its place. From this perspective, the Dge lugs judge the sutras of the second of the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma as described in the SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA, "the dharma wheel of signlessness" (ALAKsAnADHARMACAKRA), to contain the definitive expression of the Buddha's most profound intention. By contrast, the Jo nang look for inspiration to the third turning of the wheel, "the dharma wheel for ascertaining the ultimate" (PARAMĀRTHAVINIsCAYADHARMACAKRA; see also *SUVIBHAKTADHARMACAKRA), especially to those statements that describe the nonduality of subject and object to be the consummate nature (PARINIsPANNA) and the understanding of that nonduality to be the highest wisdom. They describe this wisdom in substantialist terms, calling it eternal, self-arisen, and truly established. This wisdom consciousness exists autonomously and is thus not empty in the way that emptiness is understood by the Dge lugs. Instead, this wisdom consciousness is empty in the sense that it is devoid of all afflictions and conventional factors, which are extraneous to its true nature. Hence, the Jo nang speak of the "emptiness of the other," the absence of extrinsic and extraneous qualities. The Dge lugs cannot deny the presence of statements in the MAHĀYĀNA canon that speak of the TATHĀGATAGARBHA as permanent, pure, blissful, and endowed with self. But they argue that such statements are provisional, another example of the Buddha's expedient means of attracting to the faith those who find such a description appealing. The true tathāgatagarbha, they claim, is the emptiness of the mind; it is this factor, present in all sentient beings, that offers the possibility of transformation into an enlightened buddha. This is the view of CANDRAKĪRTI, they say, whom they regard as the supreme interpreter of the doctrine of emptiness. The Jo nang do not deny that this is Candrakīrti's view, but they deny Candrakīrti the rank of premier expositor of NĀGĀRJUNA's thought. For them, Candrakīrti teaches an emptiness which is a mere negation of true existence, which they equate with nihilism, or else a preliminary stage of negation that precedes an understanding of the highest wisdom. Nor do they deny that such an exposition is also to be found in Nāgārjuna's philosophical corpus (YUKTIKĀYA). But those texts, they claim, do not represent Nāgārjuna's final view, which is expressed instead in his devotional corpus (STAVAKĀYA), notably the DHARMADHĀTUSTAVA ("Praise of the Sphere of Reality"), with its more positive exposition of the nature of reality. Those who would deny its ultimate existence, such as Candrakīrti, they classify as "one-sided Madhyamakas" (phyogs gcig pa'i dbu ma pa) as opposed to the "great Madhyamakas" (DBU MA PA CHEN PO), among whom they would include the Nāgārjuna of the four hymns and ĀRYADEVA, as well as thinkers whom the Dge lugs classify as YOGĀCĀRA or SVĀTANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA: e.g., ASAnGA, VASUBANDHU, MAITREYANĀTHA, and sĀNTARAKsITA. The Dge lugs attempt to demonstrate that the nature of reality praised by Nāgārjuna in his hymns is the same emptiness that he describes in his philosophical writings.
Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal ::: (humour) Back in the good old days - the Golden Era of computers, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called Real Men and out that Real Men don't relate to anything, and aren't afraid of being impersonal.)But, as usual, times change. We are faced today with a world in which little old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12-year-old kids can blow danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high-school students with TRASH-80s.There is a clear need to point out the differences between the typical high-school junior Pac-Man player and a Real Programmer. If this difference is why it would be a mistake to replace the Real Programmers on their staff with 12-year-old Pac-Man players (at a considerable salary savings).LANGUAGESThe easiest way to tell a Real Programmer from the crowd is by the programming language he (or she) uses. Real Programmers use Fortran. Quiche Eaters use need all these abstract concepts to get their jobs done - they are perfectly happy with a keypunch, a Fortran IV compiler, and a beer.Real Programmers do List Processing in Fortran.Real Programmers do String Manipulation in Fortran.Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in Fortran.Real Programmers do Artificial Intelligence programs in Fortran.If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in assembly language. If you can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing.STRUCTURED PROGRAMMINGThe academics in computer science have gotten into the structured programming rut over the past several years. They claim that programs are more easily in the world won't help you solve a problem like that - it takes actual talent. Some quick observations on Real Programmers and Structured Programming:Real Programmers aren't afraid to use GOTOs.Real Programmers can write five-page-long DO loops without getting confused.Real Programmers like Arithmetic IF statements - they make the code more interesting.Real Programmers write self-modifying code, especially if they can save 20 nanoseconds in the middle of a tight loop.Real Programmers don't need comments - the code is obvious.Since Fortran doesn't have a structured IF, REPEAT ... UNTIL, or CASE statement, Real Programmers don't have to worry about not using them. Besides, they can be simulated when necessary using assigned GOTOs.Data Structures have also gotten a lot of press lately. Abstract Data Types, Structures, Pointers, Lists, and Strings have become popular in certain circles. Languages, as we all know, have implicit typing based on the first letter of the (six character) variable name.OPERATING SYSTEMSWhat kind of operating system is used by a Real Programmer? CP/M? God forbid - CP/M, after all, is basically a toy operating system. Even little old ladies and grade school students can understand and use CP/M.Unix is a lot more complicated of course - the typical Unix hacker never can remember what the PRINT command is called this week - but when it gets right systems: they send jokes around the world on UUCP-net and write adventure games and research papers.No, your Real Programmer uses OS 370. A good programmer can find and understand the description of the IJK305I error he just got in his JCL manual. A great outstanding programmer can find bugs buried in a 6 megabyte core dump without using a hex calculator. (I have actually seen this done.)OS is a truly remarkable operating system. It's possible to destroy days of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness in the programming staff is people claim there is a Time Sharing system that runs on OS 370, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion that they were mistaken.PROGRAMMING TOOLSWhat kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front panel of the computer. Back the first operating system for the CDC7600 in on the front panel from memory when it was first powered on. Seymore, needless to say, is a Real Programmer.One of my favorite Real Programmers was a systems programmer for Texas Instruments. One day he got a long distance call from a user whose system had includes a keypunch and lineprinter in his toolkit, he can get along with just a front panel and a telephone in emergencies.In some companies, text editing no longer consists of ten engineers standing in line to use an 029 keypunch. In fact, the building I work in doesn't contain a system is called SmallTalk, and would certainly not talk to the computer with a mouse.Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into editors running on more reasonably named operating systems - Emacs and VI being two. The the Real Programmer wants a you asked for it, you got it text editor - complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. TECO, to be precise.It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more entertaining will probably destroy your program, or even worse - introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine.For this reason, Real Programmers are reluctant to actually edit a program that is close to working. They find it much easier to just patch the binary object Programmer to do the job - no Quiche Eating structured programmer would even know where to start. This is called job security.Some programming tools NOT used by Real Programmers:Fortran preprocessors like MORTRAN and RATFOR. The Cuisinarts of programming - great for making Quiche. See comments above on structured programming.Source language debuggers. Real Programmers can read core dumps.Compilers with array bounds checking. They stifle creativity, destroy most of the interesting uses for EQUIVALENCE, and make it impossible to modify the operating system code with negative subscripts. Worst of all, bounds checking is inefficient.Source code maintenance systems. A Real Programmer keeps his code locked up in a card file, because it implies that its owner cannot leave his important programs unguarded [5].THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORKWhere does the typical Real Programmer work? What kind of programs are worthy of the efforts of so talented an individual? You can be sure that no Real or sorting mailing lists for People magazine. A Real Programmer wants tasks of earth-shaking importance (literally!).Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers.Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding Russian transmissions.It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies.Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operating systems for cruise missiles.Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter.The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a gravity assist trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This trajectory passes within 80 +/-3 kilometers of the surface of Mars. Nobody is going to trust a Pascal program (or a Pascal programmer) for navigation to these tolerances.As you can tell, many of the world's Real Programmers work for the U.S. Government - mainly the Defense Department. This is as it should be. Recently, programmers and Quiche Eaters alike.) Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.The Real Programmer might compromise his principles and work on something slightly more trivial than the destruction of life as we know it, providing Fortran, so there are a fair number of people doing graphics in order to avoid having to write COBOL programs.THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAYGenerally, the Real Programmer plays the same way he works - with computers. He is constantly amazed that his employer actually pays him to do what he would be breath of fresh air and a beer or two. Some tips on recognizing Real Programmers away from the computer room:At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones in the corner talking about operating system security and how to get around it.At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the plays against his simulations printed on 11 by 14 fanfold paper.At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing flowcharts in the sand.At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying Poor George, he almost had the sort routine working before the coronary.In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the one who insists on running the cans past the laser checkout scanner himself, because he never could trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time.THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITATWhat sort of environment does the Real Programmer function best in? This is an important question for the managers of Real Programmers. Considering the amount of money it costs to keep one on the staff, it's best to put him (or her) in an environment where he can get his work done.The typical Real Programmer lives in front of a computer terminal. Surrounding this terminal are:Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked on, piled in roughly chronological order on every flat surface in the office.Some half-dozen or so partly filled cups of cold coffee. Occasionally, there will be cigarette butts floating in the coffee. In some cases, the cups will contain Orange Crush.Unless he is very good, there will be copies of the OS JCL manual and the Principles of Operation open to some particularly interesting pages.Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year 1969.Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for peanut butter filled cheese bars - the type that are made pre-stale at the bakery so they can't get any worse while waiting in the vending machine.Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of double-stuff Oreos for special occasions.Underneath the Oreos is a flowcharting template, left there by the previous occupant of the office. (Real Programmers write programs, not documentation. Leave that to the maintenance people.)The Real Programmer is capable of working 30, 40, even 50 hours at a stretch, under intense pressure. In fact, he prefers it that way. Bad response time project done on time, but creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation. In general:No Real Programmer works 9 to 5 (unless it's the ones at night).Real Programmers don't wear neckties.Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes.Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch [9].A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name. He does, however, know the entire ASCII (or EBCDIC) code table.Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores aren't open at three in the morning. Real Programmers survive on Twinkies and coffee.THE FUTUREWhat of the future? It is a matter of some concern to Real Programmers that the latest generation of computer programmers are not being brought up with the same ever learning Fortran! Are we destined to become an industry of Unix hackers and Pascal programmers?From my experience, I can only report that the future is bright for Real Programmers everywhere. Neither OS 370 nor Fortran show any signs of dying out, one of them has a way of converting itself back into a Fortran 66 compiler at the drop of an option card - to compile DO loops like God meant them to be.Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once was. The latest release of Unix has the potential of an operating system worthy of any Real in - like having the best parts of Fortran and assembly language in one place. (Not to mention some of the more creative uses for
Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal "humour" Back in the good old days - the "Golden Era" of computers, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called "Real Men" and "Quiche Eaters" in the literature). During this period, the Real Men were the ones that understood computer programming, and the Quiche Eaters were the ones that didn't. A real computer programmer said things like "DO 10 I=1,10" and "ABEND" (they actually talked in capital letters, you understand), and the rest of the world said things like "computers are too complicated for me" and "I can't relate to computers - they're so impersonal". (A previous work [1] points out that Real Men don't "relate" to anything, and aren't afraid of being impersonal.) But, as usual, times change. We are faced today with a world in which little old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12-year-old kids can blow Real Men out of the water playing Asteroids and Pac-Man, and anyone can buy and even understand their very own Personal Computer. The Real Programmer is in danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high-school students with {TRASH-80s}. There is a clear need to point out the differences between the typical high-school junior Pac-Man player and a Real Programmer. If this difference is made clear, it will give these kids something to aspire to -- a role model, a Father Figure. It will also help explain to the employers of Real Programmers why it would be a mistake to replace the Real Programmers on their staff with 12-year-old Pac-Man players (at a considerable salary savings). LANGUAGES The easiest way to tell a Real Programmer from the crowd is by the programming language he (or she) uses. Real Programmers use {Fortran}. Quiche Eaters use {Pascal}. Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of Pascal, gave a talk once at which he was asked how to pronounce his name. He replied, "You can either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or call me by value, 'Worth'." One can tell immediately from this comment that Nicklaus Wirth is a Quiche Eater. The only parameter passing mechanism endorsed by Real Programmers is call-by-value-return, as implemented in the {IBM 370} {Fortran-G} and H compilers. Real programmers don't need all these abstract concepts to get their jobs done - they are perfectly happy with a {keypunch}, a {Fortran IV} {compiler}, and a beer. Real Programmers do List Processing in Fortran. Real Programmers do String Manipulation in Fortran. Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in Fortran. Real Programmers do {Artificial Intelligence} programs in Fortran. If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in {assembly language}. If you can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing. STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING The academics in computer science have gotten into the "structured programming" rut over the past several years. They claim that programs are more easily understood if the programmer uses some special language constructs and techniques. They don't all agree on exactly which constructs, of course, and the examples they use to show their particular point of view invariably fit on a single page of some obscure journal or another - clearly not enough of an example to convince anyone. When I got out of school, I thought I was the best programmer in the world. I could write an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program, use five different computer languages, and create 1000-line programs that WORKED. (Really!) Then I got out into the Real World. My first task in the Real World was to read and understand a 200,000-line Fortran program, then speed it up by a factor of two. Any Real Programmer will tell you that all the Structured Coding in the world won't help you solve a problem like that - it takes actual talent. Some quick observations on Real Programmers and Structured Programming: Real Programmers aren't afraid to use {GOTOs}. Real Programmers can write five-page-long DO loops without getting confused. Real Programmers like Arithmetic IF statements - they make the code more interesting. Real Programmers write self-modifying code, especially if they can save 20 {nanoseconds} in the middle of a tight loop. Real Programmers don't need comments - the code is obvious. Since Fortran doesn't have a structured IF, REPEAT ... UNTIL, or CASE statement, Real Programmers don't have to worry about not using them. Besides, they can be simulated when necessary using {assigned GOTOs}. Data Structures have also gotten a lot of press lately. Abstract Data Types, Structures, Pointers, Lists, and Strings have become popular in certain circles. Wirth (the above-mentioned Quiche Eater) actually wrote an entire book [2] contending that you could write a program based on data structures, instead of the other way around. As all Real Programmers know, the only useful data structure is the Array. Strings, lists, structures, sets - these are all special cases of arrays and can be treated that way just as easily without messing up your programing language with all sorts of complications. The worst thing about fancy data types is that you have to declare them, and Real Programming Languages, as we all know, have implicit typing based on the first letter of the (six character) variable name. OPERATING SYSTEMS What kind of operating system is used by a Real Programmer? CP/M? God forbid - CP/M, after all, is basically a toy operating system. Even little old ladies and grade school students can understand and use CP/M. Unix is a lot more complicated of course - the typical Unix hacker never can remember what the PRINT command is called this week - but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. People don't do Serious Work on Unix systems: they send jokes around the world on {UUCP}-net and write adventure games and research papers. No, your Real Programmer uses OS 370. A good programmer can find and understand the description of the IJK305I error he just got in his JCL manual. A great programmer can write JCL without referring to the manual at all. A truly outstanding programmer can find bugs buried in a 6 megabyte {core dump} without using a hex calculator. (I have actually seen this done.) OS is a truly remarkable operating system. It's possible to destroy days of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness in the programming staff is encouraged. The best way to approach the system is through a keypunch. Some people claim there is a Time Sharing system that runs on OS 370, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion that they were mistaken. PROGRAMMING TOOLS What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front panel of the computer. Back in the days when computers had front panels, this was actually done occasionally. Your typical Real Programmer knew the entire bootstrap loader by memory in hex, and toggled it in whenever it got destroyed by his program. (Back then, memory was memory - it didn't go away when the power went off. Today, memory either forgets things when you don't want it to, or remembers things long after they're better forgotten.) Legend has it that {Seymore Cray}, inventor of the Cray I supercomputer and most of Control Data's computers, actually toggled the first operating system for the CDC7600 in on the front panel from memory when it was first powered on. Seymore, needless to say, is a Real Programmer. One of my favorite Real Programmers was a systems programmer for Texas Instruments. One day he got a long distance call from a user whose system had crashed in the middle of saving some important work. Jim was able to repair the damage over the phone, getting the user to toggle in disk I/O instructions at the front panel, repairing system tables in hex, reading register contents back over the phone. The moral of this story: while a Real Programmer usually includes a keypunch and lineprinter in his toolkit, he can get along with just a front panel and a telephone in emergencies. In some companies, text editing no longer consists of ten engineers standing in line to use an 029 keypunch. In fact, the building I work in doesn't contain a single keypunch. The Real Programmer in this situation has to do his work with a "text editor" program. Most systems supply several text editors to select from, and the Real Programmer must be careful to pick one that reflects his personal style. Many people believe that the best text editors in the world were written at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for use on their Alto and Dorado computers [3]. Unfortunately, no Real Programmer would ever use a computer whose operating system is called SmallTalk, and would certainly not talk to the computer with a mouse. Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into editors running on more reasonably named operating systems - {Emacs} and {VI} being two. The problem with these editors is that Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor - complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. TECO, to be precise. It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more entertaining games to play with TECO is to type your name in as a command line and try to guess what it does. Just about any possible typing error while talking with TECO will probably destroy your program, or even worse - introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine. For this reason, Real Programmers are reluctant to actually edit a program that is close to working. They find it much easier to just patch the binary {object code} directly, using a wonderful program called SUPERZAP (or its equivalent on non-IBM machines). This works so well that many working programs on IBM systems bear no relation to the original Fortran code. In many cases, the original source code is no longer available. When it comes time to fix a program like this, no manager would even think of sending anything less than a Real Programmer to do the job - no Quiche Eating structured programmer would even know where to start. This is called "job security". Some programming tools NOT used by Real Programmers: Fortran preprocessors like {MORTRAN} and {RATFOR}. The Cuisinarts of programming - great for making Quiche. See comments above on structured programming. Source language debuggers. Real Programmers can read core dumps. Compilers with array bounds checking. They stifle creativity, destroy most of the interesting uses for EQUIVALENCE, and make it impossible to modify the operating system code with negative subscripts. Worst of all, bounds checking is inefficient. Source code maintenance systems. A Real Programmer keeps his code locked up in a card file, because it implies that its owner cannot leave his important programs unguarded [5]. THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORK Where does the typical Real Programmer work? What kind of programs are worthy of the efforts of so talented an individual? You can be sure that no Real Programmer would be caught dead writing accounts-receivable programs in {COBOL}, or sorting {mailing lists} for People magazine. A Real Programmer wants tasks of earth-shaking importance (literally!). Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers. Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding Russian transmissions. It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies. Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operating systems for cruise missiles. Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation - hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern-matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter. The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a gravity assist trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This trajectory passes within 80 +/-3 kilometers of the surface of Mars. Nobody is going to trust a Pascal program (or a Pascal programmer) for navigation to these tolerances. As you can tell, many of the world's Real Programmers work for the U.S. Government - mainly the Defense Department. This is as it should be. Recently, however, a black cloud has formed on the Real Programmer horizon. It seems that some highly placed Quiche Eaters at the Defense Department decided that all Defense programs should be written in some grand unified language called "ADA" ((C), DoD). For a while, it seemed that ADA was destined to become a language that went against all the precepts of Real Programming - a language with structure, a language with data types, {strong typing}, and semicolons. In short, a language designed to cripple the creativity of the typical Real Programmer. Fortunately, the language adopted by DoD has enough interesting features to make it approachable -- it's incredibly complex, includes methods for messing with the operating system and rearranging memory, and Edsgar Dijkstra doesn't like it [6]. (Dijkstra, as I'm sure you know, was the author of "GoTos Considered Harmful" - a landmark work in programming methodology, applauded by Pascal programmers and Quiche Eaters alike.) Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language. The Real Programmer might compromise his principles and work on something slightly more trivial than the destruction of life as we know it, providing there's enough money in it. There are several Real Programmers building video games at Atari, for example. (But not playing them - a Real Programmer knows how to beat the machine every time: no challenge in that.) Everyone working at LucasFilm is a Real Programmer. (It would be crazy to turn down the money of fifty million Star Trek fans.) The proportion of Real Programmers in Computer Graphics is somewhat lower than the norm, mostly because nobody has found a use for computer graphics yet. On the other hand, all computer graphics is done in Fortran, so there are a fair number of people doing graphics in order to avoid having to write COBOL programs. THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAY Generally, the Real Programmer plays the same way he works - with computers. He is constantly amazed that his employer actually pays him to do what he would be doing for fun anyway (although he is careful not to express this opinion out loud). Occasionally, the Real Programmer does step out of the office for a breath of fresh air and a beer or two. Some tips on recognizing Real Programmers away from the computer room: At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones in the corner talking about operating system security and how to get around it. At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the plays against his simulations printed on 11 by 14 fanfold paper. At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing flowcharts in the sand. At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying "Poor George, he almost had the sort routine working before the coronary." In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the one who insists on running the cans past the laser checkout scanner himself, because he never could trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time. THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT What sort of environment does the Real Programmer function best in? This is an important question for the managers of Real Programmers. Considering the amount of money it costs to keep one on the staff, it's best to put him (or her) in an environment where he can get his work done. The typical Real Programmer lives in front of a computer terminal. Surrounding this terminal are: Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked on, piled in roughly chronological order on every flat surface in the office. Some half-dozen or so partly filled cups of cold coffee. Occasionally, there will be cigarette butts floating in the coffee. In some cases, the cups will contain Orange Crush. Unless he is very good, there will be copies of the OS JCL manual and the Principles of Operation open to some particularly interesting pages. Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year 1969. Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for peanut butter filled cheese bars - the type that are made pre-stale at the bakery so they can't get any worse while waiting in the vending machine. Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of double-stuff Oreos for special occasions. Underneath the Oreos is a flowcharting template, left there by the previous occupant of the office. (Real Programmers write programs, not documentation. Leave that to the maintenance people.) The Real Programmer is capable of working 30, 40, even 50 hours at a stretch, under intense pressure. In fact, he prefers it that way. Bad response time doesn't bother the Real Programmer - it gives him a chance to catch a little sleep between compiles. If there is not enough schedule pressure on the Real Programmer, he tends to make things more challenging by working on some small but interesting part of the problem for the first nine weeks, then finishing the rest in the last week, in two or three 50-hour marathons. This not only impresses the hell out of his manager, who was despairing of ever getting the project done on time, but creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation. In general: No Real Programmer works 9 to 5 (unless it's the ones at night). Real Programmers don't wear neckties. Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes. Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch [9]. A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name. He does, however, know the entire {ASCII} (or EBCDIC) code table. Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores aren't open at three in the morning. Real Programmers survive on Twinkies and coffee. THE FUTURE What of the future? It is a matter of some concern to Real Programmers that the latest generation of computer programmers are not being brought up with the same outlook on life as their elders. Many of them have never seen a computer with a front panel. Hardly anyone graduating from school these days can do hex arithmetic without a calculator. College graduates these days are soft - protected from the realities of programming by source level debuggers, text editors that count parentheses, and "user friendly" operating systems. Worst of all, some of these alleged "computer scientists" manage to get degrees without ever learning Fortran! Are we destined to become an industry of Unix hackers and Pascal programmers? From my experience, I can only report that the future is bright for Real Programmers everywhere. Neither OS 370 nor Fortran show any signs of dying out, despite all the efforts of Pascal programmers the world over. Even more subtle tricks, like adding structured coding constructs to Fortran have failed. Oh sure, some computer vendors have come out with Fortran 77 compilers, but every one of them has a way of converting itself back into a Fortran 66 compiler at the drop of an option card - to compile DO loops like God meant them to be. Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once was. The latest release of Unix has the potential of an operating system worthy of any Real Programmer - two different and subtly incompatible user interfaces, an arcane and complicated teletype driver, virtual memory. If you ignore the fact that it's "structured", even 'C' programming can be appreciated by the Real Programmer: after all, there's no type checking, variable names are seven (ten? eight?) characters long, and the added bonus of the Pointer data type is thrown in - like having the best parts of Fortran and assembly language in one place. (Not to mention some of the more creative uses for
revealing by divine inspiration.
revelational-inspirational ::: having the nature of revelatory inspiration.
revelatory inspirational ideality; revelatory inspirational vijñana ::: same as revelatory inspired logistis.
revelatory inspiration ::: inspiration filled with revelation; same as revelatory inspired logistis.
revelatory ::: having the nature of revelation (dr.s.t.i), as it acts on the level of revelatory logistis or another level of ideality or intuitive mind, often in combination with intuition or inspiration; (in 1920) sometimes equivalent to full revelatory, sometimes to lower revelatory.
revelatory inspired ::: having the nature of revelatory inspiration.
revelatory inspired logistis ::: the highest form of inspired logistis, in which inspiration is filled with revelation.
rogue "games" [Unix] A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported to other Unix systems. The original BSD "curses(3)" screen-handling package was hacked together by Ken Arnold to support "rogue(6)" and has since become one of Unix's most important and heavily used application libraries. Nethack, Omega, Larn, and an entire subgenre of computer dungeon games all took off from the inspiration provided by "rogue(6)". See also {nethack}. [{Jargon File}]
rogue ::: (games) [Unix] A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported to other Unix systems. The subgenre of computer dungeon games all took off from the inspiration provided by rogue(6). See also nethack.[Jargon File]
Romanticism: As a general philosophical movement, romanticism is best understood as the initial phase of German Idealism, serving as a transition from Kant to Hegel, and flourishing chiefly between 1775 and 1815. It is associated primarily with the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Fried, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, with Schelhng as its culmination and most typical figure. The philosophical point of departure for romanticism is the Kantian philosophy, and romanticism shares with all German Idealism both the fundamental purpose of extending knowledge to the realm of noumena, and the fundamental doctrine that all reality is ultimately spiritual, derivative from a living spirit and so knowable by the human spirit. The essence of philosophical romanticism as expressed by Schelhng, that which differentiates it from other types of Idealism, resides in its conception of Spirit; upon this depend its metaphysical account of nature and man, and its epistemological doctrine of the proper method for investigating and understanding reality. Romanticism holds that Spirit, or the Absolute, is essentially creative; the ultimate ground of all things is primarily an urge to self-expression, and all that it has brought into being is but a means to its fuller self-realization. If the Absolute of Fichte is a moralist, and that of Hegel a logician, then that of the romanticists is primarily an artist. From this basic view there springs a metaphysic that interprets the universe in terms of the concepts of evolution, process, life, and consciousness. The world of nature is one manifestation of Spirit, man is another and a higher such manifestation, for in man Spirit seeks to become conscious of its own work. The metaphysical process is the process by which the Absolute seeks to realize itself, and all particular things are but phases within it. Hence, the epistemology of romanticism is exclusively emotional and intuitive, stressing the necessity for fullness of experience and depth of feeling if reality is to be understood. Reason, being artificial and analytical, is inadequate to the task of comprehending the Absolute; knowing is living, and the philosopher must approach nature through inspiration, longing, and sympathy.
Ruach Hakodesh (lit. “holy spirit”) ::: Divine inspiration
rūh ::: breath, wind, inspiration; breath of life; spirit; soul; human life; essence; divine inspiration, revelation. The ancient Semitic roots (which also led to the Hebrew Ruach and Aramaic Ruha)
sahityasmr.ti (sahityasmriti) ::: literary memory, the ability to recall sahityasmrti passages of poetry or other literature "not by effort to remember . . . but by inspiration" or any action of a "higher memory" by which "things are . . . remembered permanently without committing them to heart".
sambhala. (T. bde 'byung). Often spelled Shambhala. In the texts associated with the KĀLACAKRATANTRA, the kingdom of sambhala is said to be located north of the Himālayan range. It is a land devoted to the practice of the Kālacakratantra, which the Buddha himself had entrusted to sambhala's king SUCANDRA, who had requested that the Buddha set forth the tantra. The kingdom of sambhala is shaped like a giant lotus and is filled with sandalwood forests and lotus lakes, all encircled by a massive range of snowy peaks. In the center of the kingdom is the capital, Kalapa, where the luster of the palaces, made from gold, silver, and jewels, outshines the moon; the walls of the palaces are plated with mirrors that reflect a light so bright that night is like day. In the very center of the city is the MAndALA of the buddha Kālacakra. The inhabitants of the 960 million villages of sambhala are ruled by a beneficent king, called the Kalkin. The laypeople are all beautiful and wealthy, free of sickness and poverty; the monks maintain their precepts without the slightest infraction. They are naturally intelligent and virtuous, devoted to the practice of the VAJRAYĀNA, although all authentic forms of Indian Buddhism are preserved. The majority of those reborn there attain buddhahood during their lifetime in sambhala. The Kālacakratantra also predicts an apocalyptic war. In the year 2425 CE, the barbarians (generally identified as Muslims) and demons who have destroyed Buddhism in India will set out to invade sambhala. The twenty-fifth Kalkin, Raudracakrin, will lead his armies out of his kingdom and into India, where they will meet the forces of evil in a great battle, from which the forces of Buddhism will emerge victorious. The victory will usher in a golden age in which human life span will increase, crops will grow without being cultivated, and the entire population of the earth will devote itself to the practice of Buddhism. Given the importance of the Kālacakratantra in Tibetan Buddhism, sambhala figures heavily in Tibetan Buddhist belief and practice; in the DGE LUGS sect, it is said that the PAn CHEN LAMAs are reborn as kings of sambhala. There is also a genre of guidebooks (lam yig) that provide the route to sambhala. The location of sambhala has long been a subject of fascination in the West. sambhala plays an important role in the Theosophy of HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY, and the Russian Theosophist Nicholas Roerich led two expeditions in search of sambhala. The name sambhala is considered the likely inspiration of "Shangri-La," described in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon.
Sarasvati, Saraswati (Sanskrit) Sarasvatī The ethereal, the elegant one; the divine consort or wife of Brahma, his feminine alter ego, a later form or aspect of Vach (voice or the Word), a title of the Third Logos in Greece as well as in India. This parallels the Bath Qol (daughter of the voice, daughter of the Word) of mystical Hebrew thought, which can be taken either as the feminine aspect of the Logos itself, or as its daughter — the inspiration flowing forth from, or the feminine or vehicular side of, the Logos. The goddess of hidden learning and esoteric wisdom, Sarasvati is usually shown riding on a peacock with its tail spread. She is similar to the Gnostic Sophia, to the Sephirah of the Hebrew Qabbalah, and to the Holy Ghost of the Christians.
Sarasvati (Saraswati) ::: "she of the stream, of the flowing movement"; [Ved.]: the streaming current and the word of inspiration of the Truth; the goddess of the Word; [Puranas]: the Muse and goddess of wisdom, learning and the arts and crafts.
Sarvāstivāda. (T. Thams cad yod par smra ba; C. Shuo yiqieyou bu/Sapoduo bu; J. Setsuissaiubu/Satsubatabu; K. Sorilch'eyu pu/Salbada pu 一切有部/薩婆多部). In Sanskrit, "Teaching that All Exists," one of the most influential of all the mainstream (that is, non-Mahāyāna) schools of Indian Buddhism, named after its doctrine that all conditioned factors (DHARMA) continue to exist (sarvam asti) throughout all three time periods (TRIKĀLA) of past, present, and future. The Sarvāstivāda had one of the most elaborate ABHIDHARMA canons (ABHIDHARMAPItAKA) in all of Buddhism and the school was especially known for its distinctive and influential dharma theory. The Sarvāstivāda identified seventy-five dharmas that the school held were substantially existent (dravyasat) and endowed with intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA): viz., the five sense organs (INDRIYA), the five sense objects, nonmanifest materiality (AVIJNAPTIRuPA), mind (CITTA), forty-six mental concomitants (CAITTA), fourteen conditioned forces dissociated from thought (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKĀRA), and three unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA) factors. Although the conditioned dharmas always existed, they still were impermanent and thus still moved between temporal periods because of specific "forces dissociated from thought" (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKĀRA): the "compounded characteristics" (SAMSKṚTALAKsAnA, CATURLAKsAnA) of origination (JĀTI), continuance (STHITI), "senescence" or decay (JARĀ), and "desinence," viz., extinction (ANITYATĀ). In the Sarvāstivāda treatment of causality, these four characteristics were forces that exerted real power over compounded objects, escorting those objects along the causal path until the force "desinence" finally extinguished them; this rather tortured explanation was necessary in order to explain how factors that the Sarvāstivāda school posited continued to exist in all three time periods yet still appeared to undergo change. Even after enlightenment, those dharmas still continued to exist, although they were then effectively "canceled out" through the force of the "nonanalytical suppressions" (APRATISAMKHYĀNIRODHA), which kept in check the production of all types of dharmas, ensuring that they remained positioned in future mode forever and were never again able to arise in the present. This distinctive dharma theory of the Sarvāstivāda was probably what the MADHYAMAKA philosopher NĀGĀRJUNA was reacting against in his clarion call that all dharmas were devoid of intrinsic existence (NIḤSVABHĀVA) and thus characterized by emptiness (suNYATĀ). The Sarvāstivāda school's elaborate abhidharma was also the inspiration for the still more intricate "Mahāyāna abhidharma" of the YOGĀCĀRA school (see BAIFA), which drew much of its classification scheme and many of its specific dharmas directly from the Sarvāstivāda. In describing the path of the ARHAT, the Sarvāstivāda set forth a five-stage path system (PANCAMĀRGA, of accumulation/equipment, preparation, vision, cultivation, and no further learning) for the ARHAT and asserted that the BODHISATTVA practices six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) in the course of his training. This five-stage path was also adopted by the Yogācāra in its own theory of the bodhisattva MĀRGA. The Sarvāstivāda developed an elaborate view of the Buddha and the events of his life, as represented in the famous LALITAVISTARA. In its view of death and rebirth, Sarvāstivāda accepted the reality of the "intermediate state" (ANTARĀBHAVA) between rebirths, which in the Sarvāstivāda analysis could range from instantaneous rebirth, to rebirth after a week, indeterminate duration, and as many as forty-nine days; the latter figure seems to have become dominant in later traditions, including Mahāyāna, after it was adopted by the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA and the YOGĀCĀRABHuMI. The Sarvāstivāda was one of the main subgroups of the STHAVIRANIKĀYA (School of the Elders), which split with the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA in the first centuries following the Buddha's death. The Sarvāstivāda evolved as one of the three major subdivisions of the Sthaviranikāya, perhaps as early as a century or two following the first schism, but certainly no later than the first century CE. Sarvāstivāda was one of the most enduring and widespread of the mainstream Buddhist schools. It was especially important in northern India in such influential Buddhist regions as KASHMIR and GANDHĀRA and eventually along the SILK ROAD in some of the Indo-European petty kingdoms of the Tarim River basin, such as KUCHA. Its geographical location along the major overland trade routes also led to it becoming the major mainstream school known to East Asian Buddhism. The Sarvāstivāda school includes an important subgroup, the VAIBHĀsIKA ("Followers of the Vibhāsā"), who were the ĀBHIDHARMIKAs associated with the Sarvāstivāda school, especially in Kashmir in northwestern India but also in Gandhāra and even BACTRIA. Because these masters considered their teachings to be elaborations of doctrines found in the encyclopedic Sarvāstivāda abhidharma treatise, the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, they typically referred to themselves as Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāsika or simply Vaibhāsika. This group was later also distinguished from the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA ("Root Sarvāstivāda"), a distinction that may have originated in a dispute over VINAYA recensions between the northwestern Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāsika school in Kashmir and Gandhāra and the Sarvāstivāda school of MATHURĀ in north-central India. The Mulasarvāstivāda is best known for its massive MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA, one of the oldest and by far the largest (by up to a factor of four) of the major monastic codes (see VINAYAPItAKA) of the mainstream Buddhist schools; because of its eclectic content, it functioned almost as a proto-canon. The Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya is the monastic code still followed today in the Tibetan traditions of Buddhism. See also SAUTRĀNTIKA.
SCL "language" 1. {System Control Language}. 2. Symbolic Communication Language. Designed primarily for the manipulation of symbolic formulas. Featured pattern matching (which was partly the inspiration for SNOBOL), string operations in buffers, and automatic storage management. "A Language for Symbolic Communication", C.Y. Lee et al, Tech Mem 62-3344-4, Bell Labs, Sept 1962.
SCL ::: (language) 1. System Control Language.2. Symbolic Communication Language. Designed primarily for the manipulation of symbolic formulas. Featured pattern matching (which was partly the inspiration Language for Symbolic Communication, C.Y. Lee et al, Tech Mem 62-3344-4, Bell Labs, Sept 1962.
Seventy-seven poems attributed to Taliesin come down, supposedly from the 6th century, though critics maintain that they are forgeries of the 12th or 13th. But the poetry of the later centuries is exceedingly different from the poetry of the Cynfeirdd — Talesin, Myrddin Gwyllt, Llywarch Hen, and Aneurin — said to have lived in the 6th century. Of these four, the first two are mystical and Druidical. The verse forms are simple, the rhythm is lofty: the thought, when it is apparent — for the language is exceedingly archaic and difficult — is in the grand manner. Twelfth and 13th century poetry on the other hand is ultra-tortuous in form — the extreme old age of a literature, when thought and inspiration are gone, and only delight in curious form remains — while the subject matter is practically always the Bard’s praise of his chieftain. Purely literary criticism would most certainly place the Cynfeirdd many centuries earlier than the 12th century poets.
Shandao. (J. Zendo; K. Sondo 善導) (613-681). In Chinese, "Guide to Virtue"; putative third patriarch of the Chinese PURE LAND tradition; also known as Great Master Zhongnan. At an early age, Shandao became a monk under a certain DHARMA master Mingsheng (d.u.), with whom he studied the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA; he later devoted himself to the study of the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING, which became one of his major inspirations. In 641, Shandao visited the monk DAOCHUO (562-645) at the monastery of Xuanzhongsi, where he is said to have cultivated vaipulya repentance (fangdeng canfa). Shandao also continued to train himself there in the visualization practices prescribed in the Guan Wuliangshou jing, which led to a profound vision of the buddha AMITĀBHA's PURE LAND (JINGTU) of SUKHĀVATĪ. Shandao subsequently eschewed philosophical exegesis and instead devoted himself to continued recitation of the Buddha's name (NIANFO) and visualization of the pure land as detailed in the Guan jing. After Daochuo's death, he remained in the Zongnan mountains before eventually moving to the Chinese capital of Chang'an, where he had great success in propagating the pure land teachings at the monastery of Guangmingsi. Shandao is also known to have painted numerous images of the pure land that appeared in his vision and presented them to his devotees. He was also famous for his continuous chanting of the AMITĀBHASuTRA. Shandao's influential commentary on the Guan Wuliangshou jing was favored by the Japanese monk HoNEN, whose teachings were the basis of the Japanese pure land tradition of JoDOSHu.
Shobogenzo. (正法眼藏). In Japanese, "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye"; the magnum opus of the Japanese ZEN master DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253); the title refers to the Zen (C. CHAN) school, which is considered to be the repository of the insights of the buddha sĀKYAMUNI himself, transmitted through the lineage of the CHAN patriarchs (ZUSHI) starting with MAHĀKĀsYAPA. A work bearing the same title (C. ZHENGFAYANZANG) by the eminent Song-dynasty Chinese monk DAHUI ZONGGAO was probably the inspiration for Dogen's own title. Dogen's oeuvre contains two works with this title. The first is a collection of 301 koan (C. GONG'AN) cases, composed in literary Chinese, known as the Shinji Shobogenzo or the Mana Shobogenzo. The second is a collection of essays written in Japanese, known as the Kana [viz., "vernacular"] Shobogenzo, which is the better known of the two and which will be the focus of this account. The Shobogenzo is a collection of individual essays and treatises that Dogen composed throughout his eventful career. Its earliest included treatise is the BENDoWA composed in 1231 and the latest is the Hachidainingaku composed in 1253, the year of Dogen's death. Although the Shobogenzo seems to have been all but forgotten after Dogen's death, later successors in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition, such as MANZAN DoHAKU (1636-1715), TENKEI DENSON (1648-1735), and MENZAN ZUIHo (1683-1769), and the layman ouchi Seiran (1845-1918) rediscovered the text and their influential commentaries on it helped to make Dogen's magnum opus the central scripture of the Soto Zen tradition. Six different editions of the Shobogenzo are known to exist: the "original" volume edited by Dogen in seventy-five rolls, the twelve-roll Yokoji edition, the sixty-roll Eiheiji edition edited by Giun (1253-1333), the eighty-four roll edition edited by Bonsei (d. 1427) in 1419, the eighty-nine roll edition edited by Manzan Dohaku (1636-1715) in 1684 at Daishoji, and the ninety-five roll edition edited by Kozen (1627-1693) in 1690 at Eiheiji. The seventy-five roll edition is today the most widely consulted and cited. Many of the essays were originally sermons delivered by Dogen, such that some are written by him and others were recorded by his disciples. Late in his life, he began to revise the essays, completing the revision of twelve of them before his death. The essays are renowned for their subtle and elliptical style, clever word play, and sometimes enigmatic meanings. Part of their difficulty arises from the fact that Dogen quotes liberally from Buddhist sutras and the works of Chinese masters, but also interprets these passages quite ingeniously. Dogen also invented a number of Buddhist neologisms that were largely unique to him, including creative "mis"-readings of original Chinese passages. For example, in his famous essay "Uji" ("Being Time"), Dogen reads the quotidian Chinese compound youshi ("at a certain time") to suggest the identity of "being" (C. you, J. u) and "time" (C. shi, J. ji): i.e., since impermanency governs all compounded things, those things are in fact time itself. The text includes extensive discussions of the foundations of Zen thought, the meaning and significance of awakening (SATORI), as well as detailed instructions on the ritual procedures for performing sitting meditation (J. ZAZEN; C. ZUOCHAN), as in the chapter FUKAN ZAZENGI. The Shobogenzo remains a source of great interest to scholars and practitioners of Zen. See also SoToSHu.
sigh ::: v. i. --> To inhale a larger quantity of air than usual, and immediately expel it; to make a deep single audible respiration, especially as the result or involuntary expression of fatigue, exhaustion, grief, sorrow, or the like.
Hence, to lament; to grieve.
To make a sound like sighing.
A deep and prolonged audible inspiration or respiration of air, as when fatigued or grieved; the act of sighing.
Sign: In astrology, one of the twelve divisions of the Zodiac. The annual revolution of the Earth round the Sun is divided into the 360° of a circle; the subdivisions of the circle into 12 equal arcs, distinguished by names, are known as the Signs of the Zodiac. They no longer bear any relationship to the constellations of the same name. (Cf. house.) The 12 Signs are: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. These twelve signs are generally divided into four basic groups: The Inspirational Group—the Fire signs; the Emotional Group—the Water signs; the Mental Group—the Air signs; the Practical Group—the Earth signs. These are termed the Elements, or Triplicities—since three signs are embraced in each group, as follows:
Silent Watcher ::: A term used in modern theosophical esoteric philosophy to signify a highly advanced spiritual entity whois, as it were, the summit or supreme chief of a spiritual-psychological hierarchy composed of beingsbeneath him and working under the Silent Watcher's direct inspiration and guidance. The SilentWatchers, therefore, are relatively numerous, because every hierarchy, large or small, high or low, has asits own particular hierarch or supreme head a Silent Watcher. There are human Silent Watchers, andthere is a Silent Watcher for every globe of our planetary chain. There is likewise a Silent Watcher of thesolar system of vastly loftier state or stage, etc."Silent Watcher" is a graphic phrase, and describes with fair accuracy the predominant trait orcharacteristic of such a spiritual being -- one who through evolution having practically gainedomniscience or perfect knowledge of all that he can learn in any one sphere of the kosmos, instead ofpursuing his evolutionary path forwards to still higher realms, remains in order to help the multitudes andhosts of less progressed entities trailing behind him. There he remains at his self-imposed task, waitingand watching and helping and inspiring, and so far as we humans are concerned, in the utter silences ofspiritual compassion. Thence the term Silent Watcher. He can learn nothing more from the particularsphere of life through which he has now passed, and the secrets of which he knows by heart. For the timebeing and for ages he has renounced all individual evolution for himself out of pure pity and highcompassion for those beneath him.
Silent Watcher, In theosophy, highly advanced spiritual entities, each the summit of a spiritual-psychological hierarchy composed of beings working under their direct inspiration and guidance. Every hierarchy, high or low, has a Silent Watcher as its own supreme head. “There are human ‘Silent Watchers,’ and there is a ‘Silent Watcher’ for every globe of our Planetary Chain. There is likewise a Silent Watcher of the solar system of vastly loftier state or stage . . .” He is “one who through evolution having practically gained omniscience or perfect knowledge of all that he can learn in any one sphere of the kosmos, instead of pursuing his evolutionary path forwards to still higher realms, remains in order to help the multitudes and hosts of less progressed entities trailing behind him. There he remains at his self-imposed task, waiting and watching and helping and inspiring, and so far as we humans are concerned, in the utter silences of spiritual compassion. . . . He can learn nothing more from the particular sphere of life through which he has now passed, and the secrets of which he knows by heart. For the time being and for ages he has renounced all individual evolution for himself out of pure pity and high compassion for those beneath him” (OG 156). See also WATCHER
sixthsense ::: Sixth Sense A popular term for ESP, also known as intuition or inspiration, it is an ability to perceive things in ways which transcend the use of our traditional five senses.
sobbing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Sob ::: n. --> A series of short, convulsive inspirations, the glottis being suddenly closed so that little or no air enters into the lungs.
Sophia; Means "wisdom". Like the Logos this is a primal form. While the Logos is personified as male, Sophia is female. Logos has a direct and intellectual basis for guidance, Sophia is inspirational (sometimes even sensual). The basic idea is comparable to the Shekinah, or "Holy Spirit".
Soulless Beings ::: "We elbow soulless men in the streets at every turn," wrote H. P. Blavatsky. This is an actual fact. Thestatement does not mean that those whom we thus elbow have no soul. The significance is that thespiritual part of these human beings is sleeping, not awake. They are animate humans with an animateworking brain-mind, an animal mind, but otherwise "soulless" in the sense that the soul is inactive,sleeping; and this is also just what Pythagoras meant when he spoke of the "living dead." They areeverywhere, these people. We elbow them, just as H. P. Blavatsky says, at every turn. The eyes may bephysically bright, and filled with the vital physical fire, but they lack soul; they lack tenderness, thefervid yet gentle warmth of the living flame of inspiration within. Sometimes impersonal love willawaken the soul in a man or in a woman; sometimes it will kill it if the love become selfish and gross.The streets are filled with such "soulless" people; but the phrase soulless people does not mean "lostsouls." The latter is again something else. The term soulless people therefore is a technical term. It meansmen and women who are still connected, but usually quite unconsciously, with the monad, the spiritualessence within them, but who are not self-consciously so connected. They live very largely in thebrain-mind and in the fields of sensuous consciousness. They turn with pleasure to the frivolities of life.They have the ordinary feelings of honor, etc., because it is conventional and good breeding so to havethem; but the deep inner fire of yearning, the living warmth that comes from being more or less at onewith the god within, they know not. Hence, they are "soulless," because the soul is not working with fieryenergy in and through them.A lost soul, on the other hand, means an entity who through various rebirths, it may be a dozen, or moreor less, has been slowly following the "easy descent to Avernus," and in whom the threads ofcommunication with the spirit within have been snapped one after the other. Vice will do this, continuousvice. Hate snaps these spiritual threads more quickly than anything else perhaps. Selfishness, the parentof hate, is the root of all human evil; and therefore a lost soul is one who is not merely soulless in theordinary theosophical usage of the word, but is one who has lost the last link, the last delicate thread ofconsciousness, connecting him with his inner god. He will continue "the easy descent," passing fromhuman birth to an inferior human birth, and then to one still more inferior, until finally the degenerateastral monad -- all that remains of the human being that once was -- may even enter the body of somebeast to which it feels attracted (and this is one side of the teaching of transmigration, which has been sobadly misunderstood in the Occident); some finally go even to plants perhaps, at the last, and willultimately vanish. The astral monad will then have faded out. Such lost souls are exceedingly rare,fortunately; but they are not what we call soulless people.If the student will remember the fact that when a human being is filled with the living spiritual andintellectual fiery energies flowing into his brain-mind from his inner god, he is then an insouled being, hewill readily understand that when these fiery energies can no longer reach the brain-mind and manifest ina man's life, there is thus produced what is called a soulless being. A good man, honorable, loyal,compassionate, aspiring, gentle, and true-hearted, and a student of wisdom, is an "insouled" man; abuddha is one who is fully, completely insouled; and there are all the intermediate grades between.
spirometer ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring the vital capacity of the lungs, or the volume of air which can be expelled from the chest after the deepest possible inspiration. Cf. Pneumatometer.
srauta ::: of the nature of sruti or inspirational knowledge; inspired; srauta short for srauta vijñana. srauta vij srauta ñana
sravaṁsi ::: inspirations. sravamsi
sravas ::: "hearing"; fame; revealed knowledge, the knowledge which comes by inspiration. [Ved.] ::: sravamsi [plural], inspirations.
Sri Aurobindo: "Finally, we have the goddess Dakshina who may well be a female form of Daksha, himself a god and afterwards in the Purana one of the Prajapatis, the original progenitors, — we have Dakshina associated with the manifestation of knowledge and sometimes almost identified with Usha, the divine Dawn, who is the bringer of illumination. I shall suggest that Dakshina like the more famous Ila, Saraswati and Sarama, is one of four goddesses representing the four faculties of the Ritam or Truth-consciousness, — Ila representing truth-vision or revelation, Saraswati truth-audition, inspiration, the divine word, Sarama intuition, Dakshina the separative intuitional discrimination.” *The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past. ::: Footnote: In this sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.]” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge; it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: “The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijñâna and which we may describe in our modern turn of language as the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind. There 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.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Divine and Human
srutamagha ::: full in inspiration. [R . g Veda 8.93.1]
sruti (Shruti) ::: hearing, spiritual audience, inspiration; an inspired Scripture.
sruti (shruti; sruti; çruti) ::: hearing; inspiration, a faculty of jñana which "is of the nature of truth hearing: it is an immediate reception of the very voice of the truth, it readily brings the word that perfectly embodies it and it carries something more than the light of its idea; there is seized some stream of its inner reality and vivid arriving movement of its substance". It is an element in all the inspirational and interpretative forms of the logistic ideality and is the essence of the srauta vijñana.
sruti-smr.ti (sruti-smriti) ::: a combination of sruti (inspiration) and sruti-smrti smr.ti (intuition and discrimination).
sruti ::: sruti (inspiration) acting on a basis of smr.ti (intuition and discrimination).
stertorous ::: a. --> Characterized by a deep snoring, which accompaines inspiration in some diseases, especially apoplexy; hence, hoarsely breathing; snoring.
Sudhana. (T. Nor bzang; C. Shancai; J. Zenzai; K. Sonjae 善財). A youth who is the major protagonist of the GAndAVYuHA, the final section of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. The story of Sudhana's search is related in the AvataMsakasutra's massive final chapter, the "Entrance into the Dharmadhātu" (C. Ru fajie pin), which also circulated independently as the GAndAVYuHA. On the instructions of the BODHISATTVA MANJUsRĪ, Sudhana sets out to the south in search of a spiritual mentor (KALYĀnAMITRA), ultimately encountering fifty-two beings (sometimes counted as fifty-three, because MaNjusrī is repeated) including the future buddha MAITREYA, as well as the bodhisattvas AVALOKITEsVARA and MaNjusrī; twenty of his teachers are female, including the Buddha's mother MAHĀMĀYĀ. His final teacher is the bodhisattva SAMANTABHADRA, who sets forth in the famous BHADRACARĪPRAnIDHĀNA the ten vows he took to realize and access the DHARMADHĀTU, which thereby enable him to benefit sentient beings. After this encounter, Sudhana attains enlightenment and roams freely himself in the dharmadhātu. Sudhana's pilgrimage has been the inspiration for much East Asian Buddhist art and his statue often appears at the side of Buddhist altars as a boy bowing to the Buddha.
Sumangala. (Venerable Hikkaduva Sri Sumangala Nayaka Mahāthera) (1827-1911). Sumangala, whose given name was Niclaus, was born in the town of Hikkaduwa in the Galle District of southern Sri Lanka. Sumangala received his early education at the local village temple and, at age thirteen, began his monastic education at Totagamuwa. He received full ordination from the Malwatte chapter in Kandy in 1848. Sumangala is considered to be one of the most influential Pāli scholars of his time. He took a significant role in the Sinhalese Buddhist revival, especially in Colombo. He helped GUnĀNANDA prepare for the famous Panadura debate. An accomplished scholar, Sumangala studied Buddhist history, arithmetic, and archeology; he also knew Sinhala, Pāli, Sanskrit, and English. In 1867 he received the title Sripada from the British government, making him the high priest of Adam's Peak (Mt. Sumanakuta). The principal and founder of Vidyodaya College, Sumangala worked with Colonel HENRY STEEL OLCOTT and together they established Ananda College and Mahinda College in Colombo and Dharmaraja College in Kandy during the early 1890s. These schools helped to revitalize Buddhist education, which had dwindled under British colonialism. In 1891, Sumangala became the president of the Bodh Gaya Maha Bodhi Society in Colombo. SUMAnGALA was an inspirational figure for ANAGĀRIKA DHARMAPĀLA and the next generation of Sinhalese Buddhist scholars.
Taixu. (太) (1889-1947). In Chinese, "Grand Voidness"; a leading figure in the Chinese Buddhist revival during the first half of the twentieth century. Taixu was ordained at the age of fourteen, purportedly because he wanted to acquire the supernatural powers of the buddhas. He studied under the famous Chinese monk, "Eight Fingers" (Bazhi Toutou), so called because he had burned off one finger of each hand in reverence to the Buddha, and achieved an awakening when reading a PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ SuTRA. In 1908, he joined a group of radicals, including other Buddhist monks, intent on revolution. In 1911, he organized the first of many groups (many of them short-lived) to revitalize Buddhism during this time of national crisis following the fall of the Qing dynasty. In 1912, he was involved in a failed attempt to turn the famous monastery of Chinshansi into a modern school for monks. After this disgrace, beginning in 1914, he went into retreat for three years, during which time he studied Buddhist scriptures and formulated plans to revitalize Buddhism, outlined in such works as his 1915 Zhengli sengqie zhidu lun ("The Reorganization of the SAMGHA System"). He drafted a number of such plans over the remainder of his career, although none was ever implemented. In general, these plans called for improved and modernized education for monks and their participation in community and governmental affairs. He believed that Buddhism had become ossified in China and needed to be reformed into a force that would both inspire and improve society. In his view, for an effective reform of the monastic system to take place, Chinese Buddhists had to be educated according to the same standards as those in other Buddhist countries, beginning with Japan. For Taixu, the revival of Chinese Buddhism entailed starting a dialogue with the Buddhist traditions of other Asian countries; hence, a modern Buddhism had to reach out to these traditions and incorporate their intuitions and original insights. It was from these initial ideas that, during the 1920s, Taixu developed a strong interest in Japanese MIKKYo and Tibetan VAJRAYĀNA, as well as in the THERAVĀDA tradition of Sri Lanka. Taixu's participation in the "Revival of Tantra" (mijiao chongxing) debates with Wang Hongyuan (1876-1937), a Chinese convert to Japanese SHINGON, demonstrated his eclectic ideas about the reformation of Chinese Buddhism. The first of Taixu's activities after his return to public life was the founding of the Bodhi Society (Jueshe) in Shanghai in 1918. He was involved in the publication of a wide variety of Buddhist periodicals, such as "Masses Enlightenment Weekly," "Sound of Enlightenment," "Buddhist Critic," "New Buddhist Youth," "Modern SaMgha," "Mind's Light," and the most enduring, "Sound of the Tides" (Haichaoyin). In 1922, he founded the Wuchang Buddhist Institute, where he hoped to produce a new generation of Buddhist leaders in China. In 1923, he founded the first of several "world Buddhist organizations," as a result of which he began to travel and lecture widely, becoming well known in Europe and America. He encouraged several of his students to learn the languages and traditions of Buddhist Asia. Among his students who went abroad in Tibet and Sri Lanka, FAZUN was the most accomplished in making several commentaries of late Indian Buddhism available to the Chinese public, thus fostering a comparison between the historical and doctrinal developments of Buddhism in China and in Tibet. In 1928 in Paris, Taixu donated funds for the establishment of the World Buddhist Institute, devoted to the unification of Buddhism and science; it would eventually be renamed Les Amis du Bouddhisme. He lectured in Sri Lanka and arranged an exchange program under which Chinese monks would study there. In 1929, he organized the Chinese Buddhist Society, which would eventually attract millions of members. During the Japanese occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s, Taixu followed the Nationalist government into retreat in Sichuan. In this period, as a result of his efforts to internationalize Chinese Buddhism, Taixu founded two branches of the Wuchang Institute of Buddhist Studies specializing in Pāli and Tibetan Buddhism: the Pāli Language Institute in Xi'an, and the Sino-Tibetan Institute in Chongqing. In 1937, at the Sino-Tibetan Institute, in his famous essay "Wo de fojiao geming shibai shi" ("History of My Failed Buddhist Revolutions"), Taixu began an earnest self-reflection on his lifelong efforts to reform Chinese Buddhism, deeming them a failure in three domains: conceiving a Buddhist revolution, globalizing Buddhist education, and reorganizing the Chinese Buddhist Association. When the first global Buddhist organization, the WORLD FELLOWSHIP OF BUDDHISTS, was founded in 1950, Taixu, who had died three years earlier, was credited as its inspiration. His insights would eventually be developed and implemented by later generations of Buddhists in China and Taiwan. His collected works were published in sixty-four volumes. Several of the leading figures of modern and contemporary Chinese and Taiwanese Buddhism were close disciples of Taixu, including Fazun (1902-1980), Yinshun (1905-2005), Shengyan (1930-2009), and Xingyun (1927-).
tathāgatagarbha. (T. de bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po; C. rulaizang; J. nyoraizo; K. yoraejang 如來藏). In Sanskrit, variously translated as "womb of the TATHĀGATAs," "matrix of the tathāgatas," "embryo of the tathāgatas," "essence of the tathāgatas"; the term probably means "containing a tathāgatha." It is more imprecisely interpreted as the "buddha-nature," viz., the potential to achieve buddhahood that, according to some MAHĀYĀNA schools, is inherent in all sentient beings. The tathāgatagarbha is the topic of several important Mahāyāna sutras, including the TATHĀGATAGARBHASuTRA (with its famous nine similes about the state), the sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA, the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, and the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA (where it is identified with the ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA), as well as the important Indian sĀSTRA, the RATNAGOTRAVIBHĀGA (also known as the Uttaratantra), with a commentary by ASAnGA. The concept is also central to such East Asian apocryphal scriptures as the DASHENG QIXIN LUN and the KŬMGANG SAMMAE KYoNG. The concept of tathāgatagarbha seems to have evolved from a relatively straightforward inspiration that all beings are capable of achieving buddhahood to a more complex doctrine of an almost genetic determination that all beings would eventually become buddhas; the Lankāvatāra goes so far as to describe the tathāgatagarbha itself as possessing the thirty-two marks of a superman (MAHĀPURUsALAKsAnA). Tathāgatagarbha thought seeks to answer the question of why ignorant beings are able to become enlightened by suggesting that this capacity is something innate in the minds of all sentient beings, which has become concealed by adventitious afflictions (ĀGANTUKAKLEsA) that are extrinsic to the mind. "Concealment" (S. saMdhi/abhisaMdhi; C. yinfu) here suggests that the tathāgatagarbha by the presence of the afflictions; or, second, it is an active agent of liberation, which secrets itself away inside the minds of sentient beings so as to inspire them toward enlightenment. The former passive sense is more common in Indian materials; the latter sense of tathāgatagarbha as an active soteriological potency is more typical of East Asian presentations of the concept. Tathāgatagarbha thought could thus claim that enlightenment need involve nothing more rigorous than simply relinquishing the mistaken notion that one is deluded and accepting the fact of one's inherent enlightenment (see also BENJUE; HONGAKU). The notion of tathāgatagarbha was a topic of extensive commentary and debate in India, Tibet, and East Asia. It was not the case, for example, that all Mahāyāna exegetes asserted that all sentient beings possess the tathāgatagarbha and thus the capacity for enlightenment; indeed, the FAXIANG ZONG, an East Asian strand of YOGĀCĀRA, famously asserted that some beings could so completely lose all aspiration for enlightenment that they would become "incorrigible" (ICCHANTIKA) and thus be forever incapable of liberation. There was also substantial debate as to the precise nature of the tathāgathagarbha, especially because some of its descriptions made it seem similar to the notion of a perduring self (ĀTMAN), a doctrine that is anathema to most schools of Buddhism. The srīmālādevīsiMhanāda, for example, described the tathāgatagarbha as endowed with four "perfect qualities" (GUnAPĀRAMITĀ): permanence, purity, bliss, and self, but states that this "self" is different from the "self" (ĀTMAN) propounded by the non-Buddhists. In an effort to avoid any such associations, CANDRAKĪRTI explains that the tathāgatagarbha is not to be understood as an independent quality but rather refers to the emptiness (suNYATĀ) of the mind; it is this emptiness, with which all beings are endowed, that serves as the potential for achieving buddhahood. In Tibet, Candrakīrti's view was taken up by the DGE LUGS sect, while the more literal view of the tathāgatagarbha as an ultimately real nature obscured by conventional contaminants was asserted most famously by the JO NANG. Both the extensive influence of the doctrine and the controversy it provoked points to an ongoing tension in the Mahāyāna between the more apophatic discourse on emptiness, found especially in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras, and the more substantialist descriptions of the ultimate reality implied by such terms as tathāgatagarbha, DHARMADHĀTU, and DHARMAKĀYA. The term is also central to the larger question of whether enlightenment is something to be achieved through a sequence of practices or something to be revealed in a flash of insight (see DUNWU). See also HIHAN BUKKYo.
Tawajjoh (A) Sufi concentration practice in which the mureed opens up for the inspiration of the chain (silsilah) of Murshids or one of them.
"That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc., etc., are always wandering about (in thought-waves or otherwise), seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects — another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different, make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off saying, ‘O this unready animal!" and goes to another who promptly welcomes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, ‘I, I have done this". Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you like — nothing more.” Letters on Yoga
“That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc., etc., are always wandering about (in thought-waves or otherwise), seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects—another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different, make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off saying, ‘O this unready animal!’ and goes to another who promptly welcomes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, ‘I, I have done this’. Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you like—nothing more.” Letters on Yoga
The evident meaning must be connected with the old occult thought that wine, or the mead of the northern peoples where the grape and soma were unknown or uncultivated, all had the meaning of the inspiration of initiation, a kind of ecstasy of vision and knowledge brought about through initiation, of which the physical intoxication of wine, mead, or the soma juice has all the lower and materialized aspect, every spiritual thing having its material counterpart, every right-hand thought or rule in occultism having its left-hand or sorcerer perversion or counterpart. Thus in the highest initiation, even today and from immemorial time, the holy drink or potation was entirely mystical, and had a dozen of these significances, all bound up together; yet despite this fact, for some of the lower initiations where a student found difficulty in throwing off the physical and astral influences, a harmless — when administered rightly — drug or drink was given which temporarily stupefied the lower quaternary; but it is to be noted that this substitute of the physical drink came about when neophytes began to find it very difficult to do what their more spiritual forerunners had done: raising themselves solely by inner aspiration up to inspiration, by inner insight up to the epopteia or vision.
The field of vision, like every other field of activity of the human mind, is a mixed world and there is in it not only truth but much half-inith and error. For the rash and unwary to enter into it may bring confusion and misleading inspiration and false voices, and it is safer to have some sure guidance from those who know and have spiritual and psychic experience One must look at this field calmly and with discrimination, but to shut the gates and reject this or other supraphysical experiences is to limit oneself and arrest the inner development.
The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 27, Page: 26-27
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.
The mystical drink has been known in all ages and among all peoples. The ancient Teutonic tribes, whether of the Germanic or Anglo-Saxons, spoke of their divine mead, the drink of the gods. The Hindus spoke of Soma, the direct distillation from the moon and from the overseeing and guiding eye of the sun; the Greeks of the Homeric age spoke of ambrosia or nectar, a drink of the gods which renewed their understanding and gave them inspiration as well. Another branch of the Greeks belonging to the Dionysian and Orphic branches of mystical thought, spoke equally mystically of the mystic wine, and also of the mystic cereal, partaken of during the Mysteries, and it is from this last that the mystical wine and cereal or bread of the Christians was taken over almost completely from the Dionysian Eucharist, only among Christians even from quite early times it became degraded into actual blood and flesh of Jesus.
Theomancy [from Greek theos god + manteia divination] Divination by divine inspiration; more commonly, divination by means of oracles, such as at Delphi in ancient Greece.
Theopathy [from Greek theos god + pathos experience, feeling] The seventh stage of initiation in the Mysteries, where the candidate becomes a selfless channel for communion with his inner god; the third and last stage of spiritual development — the first being theophany, the second theopneusty. The sense of theopathy, originally used in the Greek Mysteries, was that the adept “suffered” the full influence of the god within him, becoming a selfless, consenting channel for the divine power pouring through him, in utter disregard of the personal self. Because of the immense personal renunciation involved, such an adept was said to suffer — meaning to bear or carry the divinity within. The second of these three initiatory grades, theopneusty, was the same as the third, but in less full degree, and signified that the initiate received the inspiration from above-within and, as it were, was breathed into from above, but did not carry the full load of the spiritual fire or inspirational flow. The first stage, theophany, was by comparison a temporary occurrence and signified the appearance of one’s divinity to the initiant’s self-conscious perception; the neophyte met his own inner god face to face, and the appearance or theophany lasted for a greater or less time depending upon various circumstances.
theopneustic ::: a. --> Given by the inspiration of the Spirit of God.
Theopneusty: Divine inspiration.
Theopneusty [from Greek theos god + pneo breathe] Divine inspiration or inbreathing; signifying in the ancient Greek Mysteries a stage in initiation, coming between theophany and theopathy, where the candidate received the inspiration of his own inner god, but did not bear the full load of the inspirational flow to the extent that took place in theopathy.
theopneusty ::: n. --> Divine inspiration; the supernatural influence of the Divine Spirit in qualifying men to receive and communicate revealed truth.
The original, pure Bacchic rites pertained to high initiation, in which the candidate becomes conscious of his oneness with divinity. Thus Bacchus, with his symbolic serpent and wine, stands for divine inspiration. But when the keys of the sacred science were lost and symbols were interpreted literally, the rites degenerated and often became profligate. Bacchus-Dionysos also figures as the inspirer of dramatic and representative art, inspiring the individual with the divine afflatus or mystic frenzy. Originally this meant the inner communion of the candidate with his own inner god and the consequent inspiration; on a lower plane it signifies the fleeting inspiration of poet and artist, and finally it degenerated into hysteria and morbid psychic states.
The Platonic philosophy of art and aesthetics stresses, as might be expected, the value of the reasonable imitation of Ideal realities rather than the photographic imitation of sense things and individual experiences. All beautiful things participate in the Idea of beauty (Symposium and Phaedrus). The artist is frequently described as a man carried away by his inspiration, akin to the fool; yet art requires reason and the artist must learn to contemplate the world of Ideas. Fine art is not radically distinguished from useful art. In both the Republic and the Laws, art is subordinated to the good of the state, and those forms of art which are effeminate, asocial, inimical to the morale of the citizens, are sternly excluded from the ideal state.
"There are different kinds of knowledge. One is inspiration, i.e. something that comes out of the knowledge planes like a flash and opens up the mind to the Truth in a moment. That is inspiration. It easily takes the form of words as when a poet writes or a speaker speaks, as people say, from inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
“There are different kinds of knowledge. One is inspiration, i.e. something that comes out of the knowledge planes like a flash and opens up the mind to the Truth in a moment. That is inspiration. It easily takes the form of words as when a poet writes or a speaker speaks, as people say, from inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
There is a close connection in thought with the theosophic and Hindu teaching of the atman or paramatman — Brahman, the egg out of which the universe is born, filling the universe with divine and spiritual inspirations and dwelling in and working through the innumerable hierarchies of minor beings which compose and build that hierarchy, and which indeed are the universe. Another parallel is the Pythagorean teaching of Monas monadum (monad of monads). In the Qabbalah itself the correspondence is to Kether the Crown, out of which all the other, lower hierarchical grades flow emanationally. This Kether, the highest of the Sephiroth, is the Macroprosopus (the great or immense cosmic face) — an intuition of which may be gained by looking into the violet dome of night begemmed with worlds and instinct with life; the Chaldean ’Arikh ’Anpin (the vast countenance of nature), hiding the indwelling spirit. Kether, Macroprosopus, ’Arikh ’Anpin, and ’Adam Qadmon are but different manners of expressing the same hierarchical acme or originant which thus is the manifested vehicle of the Qabbalistic ’eyn soph, the parabrahman of the Vedantists, or the Boundless. Speaking of this phrase, Blavatsky remarks that it “denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it would read, ‘One is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life’ ” (SD 1:130n). See also ARBA-IL
The Vedic seers seem to speak of two primary faculties of the "truthconscious" soul; they are Sight and Hearing, by which is intended direct operations of an inherent Knowledge describable as truth-vision and truth-audition and
reflected from far-off in our human mentality by the faculties of revelation and inspiration.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 183, 133
“This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek Ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Brahma, or the place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. . . . We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest ‘spirit’ of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his ‘irrational soul,’ or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.
(this love story was the inspiration of an Eric Clapton love song called Layla)
Thou Vast One, send unto me the inspiration
Thumoeides (Greek) [from thymos passional soul + eidos form] The name given by Plato to a division of the psychomental nature, the animal or passional soul, kama-manas, in contrast with a still lower division of kama-manas which he called epithumetikon (appetitive, or that which has appetite for). Above both these, which together comprise what other Greek philosophers called the psyche, is the nous, the seat of inspiration, intuition, the highest intellection, and similar noble attributes or faculties, corresponding to the buddhi-manas or atma-buddhi-manas.
Thus was formed the Great Brotherhood or Great White Lodge, which has remained on earth to this day in its secret retreat, known in Hindu legends as Sambhala. From time to time messengers are sent forth from this Brotherhood into the world, and these emissaries impart the holy doctrine of which they are the carriers to those who prove themselves ready, fit, and worthy to receive it. Such centers of esoteric training and communication have always been called the Mysteries, or Mystery schools; and the emissaries establish new centers or Mystery schools when and where it is found proper to do so. Every race and nation has had its teachers and their esoteric centers; the one fundamental doctrine of the heart was taught alike in them all, albeit after different manners, in different languages, and by different approaches, according to the psychological readiness and the needs of the people to whom these emissaries came. In later times, when these Mystery schools had to a greater or less degree lost the original impress and inspiration of the first communication, they were called sacerdotal colleges, or even temple-colleges or in ancient Greece the Mysteries. Such esoteric centers, where the original and archaic doctrine is taught, exist even today.
To be an Aristotelian under such extremely complicated circumstances was the problem that St. Thomas set himself. What he did reduced itself fundamentally to three points: (a) He showed the Platonic orientation of St. Augustine's thought, the limitations that St. Augustine himself placed on his Platonism, and he inferred from this that St. Augustine could not be made the patron of the highly elaborated and sophisticated Platonism that an Ibn Gebirol expounded in his Fons Vitae or an Avicenna in his commentaries on the metaphysics and psychology of Aristotle. (b) Having singled out Plato as the thinker to search out behind St. Augustine, and having really eliminated St. Augustine from the Platonic controversies of the thirteenth century, St. Thomas is then concerned to diagnose the Platonic inspiration of the various commentators of Aristotle, and to separate what is to him the authentic Aristotle from those Platonic aberrations. In this sense, the philosophical activity of St. Thomas in the thirteenth century can be understood as a systematic critique and elimination of Platonism in metaphysics, psychology and epistemology. The Platonic World of Ideas is translated into a theory of substantial principles in a world of stable and intelligible individuals; the Platonic man, who was scarcely more than an incarcerated spirit, became a rational animal, containing within his being an interior economy which presented in a rational system his mysterious nature as a reality existing on the confines of two worlds, spirit and matter; the Platonic theory of knowledge (at least in the version of the Meno rather than that of the later dialogues where the doctrine of division is more prominent), which was regularly beset with the difficulty of accounting for the origin and the truth of knowledge, was translated into a theory of abstraction in which sensible experience enters as a necessary moment into the explanation of the origin, the growth and the use of knowledge, and in which the intelligible structure of sensible being becomes the measure of the truth of knowledge and of knowing.
torch-bearer ::: one who leads or inspires, imparting knowledge, truth, inspiration, etc. to others. **torch-bearers.**
uninspired intuition ::: intuition not uplifted by inspiration (or revelation), the lowest form of intuitional ideality. untelepathic trik trikaladrsti
Vajradhara (Sanskrit) Vajradhara Diamond-holder; the First Logos, supreme buddha, or adi-buddha, equivalent to the Tibetan dorjechang. “As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of manifestation his heart — the ‘diamond heart,’ Vajrasattva (Dorjesempa)” (SD 1:571). Vajra here expresses the indestructibility and spiritually adamantine quality of this “One unknown, without beginning or end” — unknown to the average worldly person, but recognized by full initiates as the source of their divine inspiration and intuitions.
van.i ::: voice; speech; "a word, a message or an inspiration that devani scends to us from above", sometimes seeming to be "a voice of the Self or of the Ishwara"; a voice conveying a message, often of the nature of guidance or prediction, from a divine or other source, usually distinguished from sūks.ma vak (subtle speech) which does not come "from above", but is heard "outside" (though there is also an "external" van.i). vvani
Vedic Religion: Or the Religion of the Vedas (q.v.). It is thoroughly cosmological, inspirational and ritualistic, priest and sacrifice playing an important role. It started with belief in different gods, such as Indra, Agni, Surya, Vishnu, Ushas, the Maruts, usually interpreted as symbolizing the forces of nature, but with the development of Hinduism it deteriorated into a worship of thousands of gods corresponding to the diversification of function and status in the complex social organism. Accompanying there was a pronounced tendency toward magic even in Vedic times, while the more elevated thoughts which have found expression in magnificent praises of the one or the other deity finally became crystallized in the philosophic thought of the Upanishads (q.v.). There is a distinct break, however, between Vedic culture with its free and autochthonous religious consciousness and the rigidly caste and custom controlled religion as we know it in India today, as also the religion of bhakti (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Vine A symbol of inspiration and of spiritual fertility, both as a tree with many branches and as the producer of grapes and wine. It was sacred to Dionysus-Bacchus when that god and his wine stood for spiritual inspiration and when the only kind of inspiration was artificial stimulation of the lower vital centers. It occurs frequently in the Old Testament, and in John (15:1, 5) we read: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandmen . . . I am the vine, ye are the branches.” Osiris-Isis is said to have taught humanity the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry, as well as other sciences and arts.
wabbit /wab'it/ [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy wabbit!"] 1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978; this may have descended (if only by inspiration) from hack called RABBITS reported from 1969 on a Burroughs 55000 at the University of Washington Computer Center. The program would make two copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashing the system. 2. By extension, any hack that includes infinite self-replication but is not a {virus} or {worm}. See {fork bomb} and {rabbit job}, see also {cookie monster}. [{Jargon File}]
wahy ::: divine revelation; inspiration; suggestion; indication; saying something in a whisper
Wang Yang-ming: (Wang Shou-jen, Wang Poan, 1473-1529) Was a count, a cabinet member, and a general credited with many successful campaigns against invaders and rebels. Drawing his inspiration from the teachings of Lu Hsiangshan, he developed Neo-Confucianism (li hsuch) on the basis of the doctrine of the Mind (hsin hsuch). His complete works, Wang Yang-ming Ch'uan-chi (partial Eng. tr. by F. G. Henke: The Philosophy of Wang Yang Ming) consist of 38 chuans in several volumes. -- W.T.C.
What we mean by inspiration is that the impetus to poetic creation and utterance comes to us from a superconscient source above the ordinary mentality, so that what is written seems not to be the fabrication of the brain-mind, but something more sovereign breathed or poured in from above.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 26, Page: 423
whoop ::: n. --> The hoopoe.
A shout of pursuit or of war; a very of eagerness, enthusiasm, enjoyment, vengeance, terror, or the like; an halloo; a hoot, or cry, as of an owl.
A loud, shrill, prolonged sound or sonorous inspiration, as in whooping cough. ::: v. i.
wind-broken ::: a. --> Having the power of breathing impaired by the rupture, dilatation, or running together of air cells of the lungs, so that while the inspiration is by one effort, the expiration is by two; affected with pulmonary emphysema or with heaves; -- said of a horse.
Wine Used as an emblem of life and spirit, as in the Mysteries, where at one stage of the initiatory rites wine and bread were offered to the candidate as symbols of spirit and body, the meaning being the same as that conveyed elsewhere by fire and water, or blood and flesh. It was necessary for the aspirant to be perfected in both ways. The rite was very early adopted from the Dionysian Mysteries by the Christian churches in the sacrament of the Eucharist where wine represents the blood of Christ, and the bread his body. Wine is also connected in the same mystical manner with the Greek god Dionysos or Bacchus, for this divinity represented the Christos or initiator, teacher, and savior of mankind; and thus wine stands for inspiration and holy enthusiasm, varying from divine inspiration and spiritual quickening all down the scale to merely phrenetic exaltation, and even when grossly degenerate, orgiastic, and drunken excitement, such as marked the degraded forms of Bacchic worship.
Work and silence ::: A sort of stepping backward into some- thing silent and observant within which is not involved in the action, yet sees and can shed Its light upon it. There are then two parts of the being, one inner looking at and witnessing and knowing, the other executive and Instrumeotai and doing. This gives not only freedom but power — and in this inner being one can get into touch with the Divine not through mental activity but through tbe substance of tbe being, by a certah inward touch, perception, reception, receiving abo the right inspiration or intuition of the work.
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1:Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working. ~ Pablo Picasso, #KEYS
2:When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it. ~ Sigmund Freud, #KEYS
3:There are three sources of belief: reason, custom, inspiration. ~ Blaise Pascal, #KEYS
4:Inspiration is for amateurs ~ the rest of us just show up and get to work. ~ Chuck Close, #KEYS
5:Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
~ Stephen King, On Writing,#KEYS
6:The svapna-siddha attains perfection by means of dream inspiration. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
7:One has to pursue devout practices steadily. Otherwise, the little divine inspiration which you have, gets confused and lost. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
8:Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration - I don't think you can go wrong." ~ Ella Fitzgerald, #KEYS
9:The religious teachers of all countries and races receive their inspiration from one almighty source. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
10:The intellect reaches a certain limit, beyond which it cannot go, while one possessed of inspiration and certainty can proceed beyond that limit. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
11:The nature of poetry is to soar on the wings of the inspiration to the highest intensities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I, #KEYS
12:Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work, #KEYS
13:Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain" ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, #KEYS
14:My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know it exists.
~ Nikola Tesla,#KEYS
15:Drsti and sruti, sight and hearing, revelation and inspiration are the two chief powers of that supramental faculty which belongs to the old Vedic idea of the Truth, the Ritam. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
16:Intuition and inspiration are not only spiritual in their essence, they are the characteristic means of all spiritual vision and utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - V, #KEYS
17:Mind's voices mimicked inspiration's stress,
Its ictus of infallibility,
Its speed and lightning heaven-leap of the Gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
18: Agni is the energy of consciousness, Varuna is the vastness of consciousness, Mitra is the harmony. Ila is the revelation, Saraswati inspiration, Bharati is the Goddess of the Divine Word. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, 04, 10.04 - Transfiguration, #KEYS
19:Important truths are learned only in silence." ~ Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, (1743-1803), French philosopher, he was an influential of the mystic and human mind evolution and became the inspiration for the founding of the Martinist Order, Wikipedia., #KEYS
20:An overmastering impulse is not necessarily an inspiration of true guidance; in following always such impulses one is more likely to become a creature of random caprices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Nature of the Vital, #KEYS
21:All mystics speak the same language, for they come from the same country." ~ Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, (1743 - 1803) French philosopher, an influential of the mystic and human mind evolution and became the inspiration for the founding of the Martinist Order, Wikipedia., #KEYS
22:The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
23:It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #KEYS
24:He listens for Inspiration's postman knock
And takes delivery of the priceless gift
A little spoilt by the receiver mind
Or mixed with the manufacture of his brain; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
25:Fire and enthusiasm must be in our blood. I believe we have it. Intellect is great indeed, but it stops within certain bounds. It is through the heart, & the heart alone, that inspiration comes. It is through the feelings that the highest secrets are reached. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
26:Inspiration with her lightning feet,
A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
27:As a student who has no idea of dharma and no mind training, you decide to commit to the path and to train yourself. As you train your mind, you begin to see all kinds of things. What you see is not so much the inspiration of a glimpse of enlightenment, or buddha nature. Instead, the first thing you see is what is wrong with samsara. ~ Chogyam Trungpa, #KEYS
28:The highest inspiration brings the intrinsic word, the spiritual mantra; but even where the inspiration is less than that, has a certain vagueness or fluidity of outline, you cannot say of such mystic poetry that it has no inspiration, not the inspired word at all. Where there is no inspiration, there can be no poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
29:Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Works, #KEYS
30:But imagine this same vital power of expression, with the inspiration coming from far above-the highest inspiration possible, when all the heavens open before us-then that becomes wonderful. There are certain passages of César Franck, certain passages of Beethoven, certain passages of Bach, there are pieces by others also which have this inspiration and power.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS
31:The High-Subtle Self ::: "...cognitive style- actual intuition and literal inspiration, archetypal Form, audible illumination, revelations of light and sound affective elements- rapture, bliss, ecstatic release into superconsciousness motivational/conative factors-karuna, compassion, overwhelming love and gratefulness temporal mode- transtemporal, moving into eternity mode of self- archetypal-divine, overself, overmind." ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project pg.80, #KEYS
32:...to do the integral yoga one must first resolve to surrender entirely to the Divine, there is no other way, this is the way. But after that one must have the five psychological virtues, five psychological perfections and we say that the perfections are 1.Sincerity or Transparency 2.Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine) 3.Devotion or Gratitude 4.Courage or Inspiration 5.Endurance or Perseverance
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,#KEYS
33:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an intuitive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self, the inmost reality of things and with its truth and with the divine soul-forms of it, the Godheads which are born from the living Truth. Or, let us say, it is a supreme rhythmic language which seizes hold upon all that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, #KEYS
34: The faculty of knowledge of the Rishis was based on this subtle realisation. And this subtle realisation has its different levels, classifications and variations which the Vedic seers have termed Ila, Saraswati, Sarama and Dakshina. These four names have been plausibly interpreted as sruti (Revelation), smrti (Inspiration), bodhi (Intuition) and viveka (Discrimination). We are not going to probe further into the mystery. We just want to point out the difference between the outlook of the ancients and that of the moderns. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, 08, 36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas, #KEYS
35:It is in the silence of the mind that the strongest and freest action can come, e.g. the writing of a book, poetry, inspired speech etc. When the mind is active it interferes with the inspiration, puts in its own small ideas which get mixed up with the inspiration or starts something from a lower level or simply stops the inspiration altogether by bubbling up with all sorts of mere mental suggestions. So also intuitions or action etc. can come more easily when the ordinary inferior movement of the mind is not there. It is also in the silence of the mind that it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, from the psychic or from the higher consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
36:the central notion of the Veda :::
The sense of the first two verses is clear enough when we know Saraswati to be that power of the Truth which we call inspiration. Inspiration from the Truth purifies by getting rid of all falsehood, for all sin according to the Indian idea is merely falsehood, wrongly inspired emotion, wrongly directed will and action. The central idea of life and ourselves from which we start is a falsehood and all else is falsified by it. Truth comes to us as a light, a voice, compelling a change of thought, imposing a new discernment of ourselves and all around us. Truth of thought creates truth of vision and truth of vision forms in us truth of being, and out of truth of being (satyam) flows naturally truth of emotion, will and action. This is indeed the central notion of the Veda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret Of The Veda,#KEYS
37: There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distri bute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, 1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #KEYS
38:there is a special personal tie between you and me, between all who have turned to the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and myself, - and, it is well understood, distance does not count here, you may be in France, you may be at the other end of the world or in Pondicherry, this tie is always true and living. And each time there comes a call, each time there is a need for me to know so that I may send out a force, an inspiration, a protection or any other thing, a sort of message comes to me all of a sudden and I do the needful. These communications reach me evidently at any moment, and you must have seen me more than once stop suddenly in the middle of a sentence or work; it is because something comes to me, a communication and I concentrate. With those whom I have accepted as disciples, to whom I have said Yes, there is more than a tie, there is an emanation of me. This emanation warns me whenever it is necessary and tells me what is happening. Indeed I receive intimations constantly
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
39:Few poets can keep for a very long time a sustained level of the highest inspiration. The best poetry does not usually come by streams except in poets of a supreme greatness though there may be in others than the greatest long-continued wingings at a considerable height. The very best comes by intermittent drops, though sometimes three or four gleaming drops at a time. Even in the greatest poets, even in those with the most opulent flow of riches like Shakespeare, the very best is comparatively rare. All statements are subject to qualification. What Lawrence states1 is true in principle, but in practice most poets have to sustain the inspiration by industry. Milton in his later days used to write every day fifty lines; Virgil nine which he corrected and recorrected till it was within half way of what he wanted. In other words he used to write under any conditions and pull at his inspiration till it came. Usually the best lines, passages, etc. come like that.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Inspiration and Effort - II,#KEYS
40: The fourth group: Saraswati, the wealth of the fullest inspiration of the complete Truth, signifies speedy and rhythmic truth. She is the divine hearing. No doubt, we see and meet the Truth with our divine vision, but to make, the Truth active and dynamic and fill the creation with the power of Truth we needs must take the help of divine hearing. As the truth possesses a form, even so it has a name. It is precisely because of form and name that the truth becomes concrete. The form of truth is Visible in the divine vision, the name of truth in the divine hearing. Saraswati gives the divine name and Ila gives the divine form to the truth. Under the inspiration of Saraswati the truth casts aside all untruths. Hence she is called Pavaka(the Purifier). Above the mind there abides the vast ocean of Truth. We have neither any knowledge nor any experience of it. In a sense, we are quite unconscious of it. Saraswati raises the intelligence into the vast ocean of Truth and purifies it Afterwards she brings it down to our understanding. She manifests the complete knowledge in all its facets and make them living. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, 08, 36.08 - A Commentary on the First Six Suktas of Rigveda, #KEYS
41:Directly on awakening, preferably at dawn, the initiate goes to the place of invocation. Figuring to himself as he goes that being born anew each day brings with it the chance of greater rebirth, first he banishes the temple of his mind by ritual or by some magical trance. Then he unveils some token or symbol or sigil which represents to him the Holy Guardian Angel. This symbol he will likely have to change during the great work as the inspiration begins to move him. Next he invokes an image of the Angel into his minds eye. It may be considered as a luminous duplicate of ones own form standing in front of or behind one, or simply as a ball of brilliant light above ones head. Then he formulates his aspirations in what manner he will, humbling himself in prayer or exalting himself in loud proclamation as his need be. The best form of this invocation is spoken spontaneously from the heart, and if halting at first, will prove itself in time. He is aiming to establish a set of ideas and images which correspond to the nature of his genius, and at the same time receive inspiration from that source. As the magician begins to manifest more of his true will, the Augoeides will reveal images, names, and spiritual principles by which it can be drawn into greater manifestation.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
42:The supramental memory is different from the mental, not a storing up of past knowledge and experience, but an abiding presence of knowledge that can be brought forward or, more characteristically, offers itself, when it is needed: it is not dependent on attention or on conscious reception, for the things of the past not known actually or not observed can be called up from latency by an action which is yet essentially a remembrance. Especially on a certain level all knowledge presents itself as a remembering, because all is latent or inherent in the self of supermind. The future like the past presents itself to knowledge in the supermind as a memory of the preknown. The imagination transformed in the supermind acts on one side as a power of true image and symbol, always all image or index of some value or significance or other truth of being, on the other as an inspiration or interpretative seeing of possibilities and potentialities not less true than actual or realised things. These are put in their place either by an attendant intuitive or interpretative judgment or by one inherent in the vision of the image, symbol or potentiality, or by a supereminent revelation of that which is behind the image or symbol or which determines the potential and the actual and their relations and, it may be, overrides and overpasses them, imposing ultimate truths and supreme certitudes.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
43:Inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can command it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its levels. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes Gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,-for then there is no difficulty,-I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspiration's incertitudes.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Inspiration and Effort - I,#KEYS
44:37 - Some say Krishna never lived, he is a myth. They mean on earth; for if Brindavan existed nowhere, the Bhagavat (6) could not have been written. - Sri Aurobindo
Does Brindavan exist anywhere else than on earth?
The whole earth and everything it contains is a kind of concentration, a condensation of something which exists in other worlds invisible to the material eye. Each thing manifested here has its principle, idea or essence somewhere in the subtler regions. This is an indispensable condition for the manifestation. And the importance of the manifestation will always depend on the origin of the thing manifested.
In the world of the gods there is an ideal and harmonious Brindavan of which the earthly Brindavan is but a deformation and a caricature.
Those who are developed inwardly, either in their senses or in their minds, perceive these realities which are invisible (to the ordinary man) and receive their inspiration from them.
So the writer or writers of the Bhagavat were certainly in contact with a whole inner world that is well and truly real and existent, where they saw and experienced everything they have described or revealed.
Whether Krishna existed or not in a human form, living on earth, is only of very secondary importance (except perhaps from an exclusively historical point of view), for Krishna is a real, living and active being; and his influence has been one of the great factors in the progress and transformation of the earth.
8 June 1960
(6 The story of Krishna, as related in the Bhagavat Purana.) ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.60-61),#KEYS
45: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
46:When, in last week's aphorism, Sri Aurobindo opposed - as one might say - "knowledge" to "Wisdom", he was speaking of knowledge as it is lived in the average human consciousness, the knowledge which is obtained through effort and mental development, whereas here, on the contrary, the knowledge he speaks of is the essential Knowledge, the supramental divine Knowledge, Knowledge by identity. And this is why he describes it here as "vast and eternal", which clearly indicates that it is not human knowledge as we normally understand it.
Many people have asked why Sri Aurobindo said that the river is "slender". This is an expressive image which creates a striking contrast between the immensity of the divine, supramental Knowledge - the origin of this inspiration, which is infinite - and what a human mind can perceive of it and receive from it.
Even when you are in contact with these domains, the portion, so to say, which you perceive, is minimal, slender. It is like a tiny little stream or a few falling drops and these drops are so pure, so brilliant, so complete in themselves, that they give you the sense of a marvellous inspiration, the impression that you have reached infinite domains and risen very high above the ordinary human condition. And yet this is nothing in comparison with what is still to be perceived.
I have also been asked if the psychic being or psychic consciousness is the medium through which the inspiration is perceived.
Generally, yes. The first contact you have with higher regions is a psychic one. Certainly, before an inner psychic opening is achieved, it is difficult to have these inspirations. It can happen as an exception and under exceptional conditions as a grace, but the true contact comes through the psychic; because the psychic consciousness is certainly the medium with the greatest affinity with the divine Truth. ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS
47:Disciple : What part does breathing exercise - Pranayama - play in bringing about the higher consciousness?
Sri Aurobindo : It sets the Pranic - vital - currents free and removes dullness of the brain so that the higher consciousness can come down. Pranayama does not bring dullness in the brain. My own experience, on the contrary, is that brain becomes illumined. When I was practising Pranayama at Baroda, I used to do it for about five hours in the day, - three hours in the morning and two in the evening. I found that the mind began to work with great illumination and power. I used to write poetry in those days. Before the Pranayama practice, usually I wrote five to eight lines per day; and about two hundred lines in a month. After the practice I could write 200 lines within half an hour. That was not the only result. Formerly my memory was dull. But after this practice I found that when the inspiration came I could remember all the lines in their order and write them down correctly at any time. Along with these enhanced functionings I could see an electrical activity all round the brain, and I could feel that it was made up of a subtle substance. I could feel everything as the working of that substance. That was far from your carbon-dioxide!
Disciple : How is it that Pranayama develops mental capacities? What part does it play in bringing about the higher consciousness?
Sri Aurobindo : It is the Pranic - vital - currents which sustain mental activity. When these currents are changed by Pranayama, they bring about a change in the brain. The cause of dullness of the brain is some obstruction in it which does not allow the higher thought to be communicated to it. When this obstruction is removed the higher mental being is able to communicate its action easily to the brain. When the higher consciousness is attained the brain does not become dull. My experience is that it becomes illumined.
~ Sri Aurobindo, A B Purani, Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, 19-9-1926,#KEYS
48:Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition left in one, it would hardly be possible completely to set aside the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly convulses and upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy―describes the simple fact. One hears―one does not seek; one takes―one does not ask who gives. A thought suddenly flashes up like lightening; it comes with necessity, without faltering. I have never had any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now involuntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and titillations descending to one's very toes. There is a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as antitheses to the rest, but are produced and required as necessary shades of color in such an overflow of light. There is an instinct of rhythmic relations which embraces a whole world of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and tension). Everything happens quite involuntary, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the figures and similes is the most remarkable thing; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expression. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's own phrases, as if all things came to one, and offered themselves as similes. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra [trans. Thomas_Common] (1999), #KEYS
49:Many men think and write through inspiration. From where does it come?
Many! That is indeed a wonderful thing. I did not think there have been so many.... So?
Poets, when they write poems...
Ah! Inspirations come from very many different places. There are inspirations that may be very material, there are inspirations that may be vital, there are inspirations that come from all kinds of mental planes, and there are very, very rare inspirations that come from the higher mind or from a still higher region. All inspirations do not come from the same place. Hence, to be inspired does not necessarily mean that one is a higher be- ing.... One may be inspired also to do and say many stupid things!
What does "inspired" mean?
It means receiving something which is beyond you, which was not within you; to open yourself to an influence which is outside your individual conscious being.
Indeed, one can have also an inspiration to commit a murder! In countries where they decapitate murderers, cut off their heads, this causes a very brutal death which throws out the vital being, not allowing it the time to decompose for coming out of the body; the vital being is violently thrown out of the body, with all its impulses; and generally it goes and lodges itself in one of those present there, men half horrified, half with a kind of unhealthy curiosity. That makes the opening and it enters within. Statistics have proved that most young murderers admit that the impulse came to them when they were present at the death of another murderer. It was an "inspiration", but of a detestable kind.
Fundamentally it is a moment of openness to something which was not within your personal consciousness, which comes from outside and rushes into you and makes you do something. This is the widest formula that can be given.
Now, generally, when people say: "Oh! he is an inspired poet", it means he has received something from high above and expressed it in a remarkable manneR But one should rather say that his inspiration is of a high quality. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS
50:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218, #KEYS
51:Vijnana, true ideation, called ritam, truth or vedas, knowledge in the Vedas, acts in human mind by four separate functions; revelation, termed drishti, sight; inspiration termed sruti,hearing; and the two faculties of discernment, smriti, memory,which are intuition, termed ketu, and discrimination, termed daksha, division, or viveka, separation. By drishti we see ourselves the truth face to face, in its own form, nature or self-existence; by sruti we hear the name, sound or word by which the truth is expressed & immediately suggested to the knowledge; by ketu we distinguish a truth presented to us behind a veil whether of result or process, as Newton discovered the law of gravitation hidden behind the fall of the apple; by viveka we distinguish between various truths and are able to put them in their right place, order and relation to each other, or, if presented with mingled truth & error, separate the truth from the falsehood. Agni Jatavedas is termed in the Veda vivichi, he who has the viveka, who separates truth from falsehood; but this is only a special action of the fourth ideal faculty & in its wider scope, it is daksha, that which divides & rightly distributes truth in its multiform aspects. The ensemble of the four faculties is Vedas or divine knowledge. When man is rising out of the limited & error-besieged mental principle, the faculty most useful to him, most indispensable is daksha or viveka. Drishti of Vijnana transmuted into terms of mind has become observation, sruti appears as imagination, intuition as intelligent perception, viveka as reasoning & intellectual judgment and all of these are liable to the constant touch of error. Human buddhi, intellect, is a distorted shadow of the true ideative faculties. As we return from these shadows to their ideal substance viveka or daksha must be our constant companion; for viveka alone can get rid of the habit of mental error, prevent observation being replaced by false illumination, imagination by false inspiration, intelligence by false intuition, judgment & reason by false discernment. The first sign of human advance out of the anritam of mind to the ritam of the ideal faculty is the growing action of a luminous right discernment which fixes instantly on the truth, feels instantly the presence of error. The fullness, the manhana of this viveka is the foundation & safeguard of Ritam or Vedas. The first great movement of Agni Jatavedas is to transform by the divine will in mental activity his lower smoke-covered activity into the bright clearness & fullness of the ideal discernment. Agne adbhuta kratw a dakshasya manhana.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns To The Mystic Fire, 717,#KEYS
52:EVOCATION
Evocation is the art of dealing with magical beings or entities by various acts which create or contact them and allow one to conjure and command them with pacts and exorcism. These beings have a legion of names drawn from the demonology of many cultures: elementals, familiars, incubi, succubi, bud-wills, demons, automata, atavisms, wraiths, spirits, and so on. Entities may be bound to talismans, places, animals, objects, persons, incense smoke, or be mobile in the aether. It is not the case that such entities are limited to obsessions and complexes in the human mind. Although such beings customarily have their origin in the mind, they may be budded off and attached to objects and places in the form of ghosts, spirits, or "vibrations," or may exert action at a distance in the form of fetishes, familiars, or poltergeists. These beings consist of a portion of Kia or the life force attached to some aetheric matter, the whole of which may or may not be attached to ordinary matter.
Evocation may be further defined as the summoning or creation of such partial beings to accomplish some purpose. They may be used to cause change in oneself, change in others, or change in the universe. The advantages of using a semi-independent being rather than trying to effect a transformation directly by will are several: the entity will continue to fulfill its function independently of the magician until its life force dissipates. Being semi-sentient, it can adapt itself to a task in that a non-conscious simple spell cannot. During moments of the possession by certain entities the magician may be the recipient of inspirations, abilities, and knowledge not normally accessible to him.
Entities may be drawn from three sources - those which are discovered clairvoyantly, those whose characteristics are given in grimoires of spirits and demons, and those which the magician may wish to create himself.
In all cases establishing a relationship with the spirit follows a similar process of evocation. Firstly the attributes of the entity, its type, scope, name, appearance and characteristics must be placed in the mind or made known to the mind. Automatic drawing or writing, where a stylus is allowed to move under inspiration across a surface, may help to uncover the nature of a clairvoyantly discovered being. In the case of a created being the following procedure is used: the magician assembles the ingredients of a composite sigil of the being's desired attributes. For example, to create an elemental to assist him with divination, the appropriate symbols might be chosen and made into a sigil such as the one shown in figure 4.
A name and an image, and if desired, a characteristic number can also be selected for the elemental.
Secondly, the will and perception are focused as intently as possible (by some gnostic method) on the elemental's sigils or characteristics so that these take on a portion of the magician's life force and begin autonomous existence. In the case of preexisting beings, this operation serves to bind the entity to the magician's will.
This is customarily followed by some form of self-banishing, or even exorcism, to restore the magician's consciousness to normal before he goes forth.
An entity of a low order with little more than a singular task to perform can be left to fulfill its destiny with no further interference from its master. If at any time it is necessary to terminate it, its sigil or material basis should be destroyed and its mental image destroyed or reabsorbed by visualization. For more powerful and independent beings, the conjuration and exorcism must be in proportion to the power of the ritual which originally evoked them. To control such beings, the magicians may have to re-enter the gnostic state to the same depth as before in order to draw their power. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
53:AUGOEIDES:
The magicians most important invocation is that of his Genius, Daemon, True Will, or Augoeides. This operation is traditionally known as attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is sometimes known as the Magnum Opus or Great Work.
The Augoeides may be defined as the most perfect vehicle of Kia on the plane of duality. As the avatar of Kia on earth, the Augoeides represents the true will, the raison detre of the magician, his purpose in existing. The discovery of ones true will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger, since a false identification leads to obsession and madness. The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is usually a lengthy one. The magician is attempting a progressive metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence. Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes along. Life is less the meaningless accident it seems. Kia has incarnated in these particular conditions of duality for some purpose. The inertia of previous existences propels Kia into new forms of manifestation. Each incarnation represents a task, or a puzzle to be solved, on the way to some greater form of completion.
The key to this puzzle is in the phenomena of the plane of duality in which we find ourselves. We are, as it were, trapped in a labyrinth or maze. The only thing to do is move about and keep a close watch on the way the walls turn. In a completely chaotic universe such as this one, there are no accidents. Everything is signifcant. Move a single grain of sand on a distant shore and the entire future history of the world will eventually be changed. A person doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe and seems possessed of amazing good luck. In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation, the magician vows to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally.
To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion created by our shallow awareness.
Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself. Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god within.
Directly on awakening, preferably at dawn, the initiate goes to the place of invocation. Figuring to himself as he goes that being born anew each day brings with it the chance of greater rebirth, first he banishes the temple of his mind by ritual or by some magical trance. Then he unveils some token or symbol or sigil which represents to him the Holy Guardian Angel. This symbol he will likely have to change during the great work as the inspiration begins to move him. Next he invokes an image of the Angel into his minds eye. It may be considered as a luminous duplicate of ones own form standing in front of or behind one, or simply as a ball of brilliant light above ones head. Then he formulates his aspirations in what manner he will, humbling himself in prayer or exalting himself in loud proclamation as his need be. The best form of this invocation is spoken spontaneously from the heart, and if halting at first, will prove itself in time. He is aiming to establish a set of ideas and images which correspond to the nature of his genius, and at the same time receive inspiration from that source. As the magician begins to manifest more of his true will, the Augoeides will reveal images, names, and spiritual principles by which it can be drawn into greater manifestation. Having communicated with the invoked form, the magician should draw it into himself and go forth to live in the way he hath willed.
The ritual may be concluded with an aspiration to the wisdom of silence by a brief concentration on the sigil of the Augoeides, but never by banishing. Periodically more elaborate forms of ritual, using more powerful forms of gnosis, may be employed. At the end of the day, there should be an accounting and fresh resolution made. Though every day be a catalog of failure, there should be no sense of sin or guilt. Magic is the raising of the whole individual in perfect balance to the power of Infinity, and such feelings are symptomatic of imbalance. If any unnecessary or imbalanced scraps of ego become identified with the genius by mistake, then disaster awaits. The life force flows directly into these complexes and bloats them into grotesque monsters variously known as the demon Choronzon. Some magicians attempting to go too fast with this invocation have failed to banish this demon, and have gone spectacularly insane as a result.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
54:To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?
Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.
Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the heaven of our mentality.
Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.
Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.
Each of these primary deities has others associated with him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature, there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood, - and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses, - this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, - this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering, - this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya. For the whole bliss of Soma to be established perfectly in our nature a happy and enlightened and unmaimed condition of mind, vitality and body are necessary. This condition is given to us by the twin Ashwins; wedded to the daughter of Light, drinkers of honey, bringers of perfect satisfactions, healers of maim and malady they occupy our parts of knowledge and parts of action and prepare our mental, vital and physical being for an easy and victorious ascension.
Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.
There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.
The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels, - in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Doctrine of the Mystics,#KEYS
55:This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divine - not the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our soul's strength execute.
It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [111-114],#KEYS
56:
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
57: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:Inspiration is what keeps us well. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 2:Inspiration follows aspiration. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 3:Inspiration and genius -one and the same. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 4:Inspiration is God making contact with itself. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 5:I believe in intuition and inspiration. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 6:Inspiration is always a surprising visitor. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 7:Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 8:The glow of inspiration warms us; it is a holy rapture. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 9:Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 10:Success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration! ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove 11:Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working. ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove 12:In life, you need either inspiration or desperation. ~ tony-robbins, @wisdomtrove 13:To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 14:Terror has its inspiration, as well as competition. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 15:One of the secrets to success is ideas mixed with inspiration ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 16:Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 17:Me personally as a man is nothing without the inspiration of JAH ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 18:Better to seek change by inspiration, than out of desperation. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 19:When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 20:It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 21:Genius defined: of inspiration 1% percent, of perspiration, 99%. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove 22:Wealth is not a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of inspiration. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 23:Who can ever measure the benefit of a mother's inspiration? ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 24:Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 25:Peak performers replace depletion with inspiration on a daily basis. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 26:Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove 27:Without such inspiration, we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 28:Breathing control gives man strength, vitality, inspiration, and magic powers. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 29:The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 30:Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove 31:We generally change ourselves for one of two reasons: inspiration or desperation. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 32:Mountaintops are for views and inspiration, but fruit is grown in the valleys. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 33:I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated I would be a damn fool. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 34:Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 35:[When asked what was the inspiration for most of her work:] Need of money, dear. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 36:While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 37:You can choose to be a drag and a burden, or an inspiration and encouragement. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 38:Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 39:The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 40:In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 41:The glow of inspiration warms us; this holy rapture springs from the seeds of the Divine mind sown in man. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 42:I pledged to work for righteousness. God's given me inspiration. God's the boss, he tell me what to do. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 43:Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 44:I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 45:Her Inspiration: Secrets to Help You Work Smart, Be Successful, and Have Fun. Book by Mina Parker, 2008. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 46:I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o'clock every day. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 47:That inspiration comes, does not depend on me. The only thing I can do is make sure it catches me working. ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove 48:I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 49:Enthusiasm, if fuelled by inspiration and perseverance, travels with passion and its destination is excellence. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 50:Be a perpetual beginner. Always be inspired. It is that attitude of inspiration and belief that creates energy. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 51:Commitment and creativity cannot be captured and handcuffed. Inspiration cannot be jailed. The heart cannot be contained. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 52:The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 53:It is the first line that gives the inspiration and then it's like riding a bull. Either you just stick with it, or you don't. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 54:I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments, gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration, and faith. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 55:Any novel of importance has a purpose. If only the "purpose" be large enough, and not at outs with the passional inspiration. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 56:Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove 57:I don't know anything about inspiration because I don't know what inspiration is; I've heard about it, but I never saw it. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 58:Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 59:All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 60:Inspiration can come from anywhere - an image, a comment, something that's happened to me or someone I know. It's hard to know exactly. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 61:The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on it divine inspiration. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 62:The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the AEolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 63:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 64:People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 65:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 66:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 67:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 68:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 69:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ frida-kahlo, @wisdomtrove 70:The art of land warfare is an art of genius, of inspiration. On the sea nothing is genius or inspiration; everything is positive or empiric. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 71:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ richard-pryor, @wisdomtrove 72:There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 73:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ audrey-hepburn, @wisdomtrove 74:When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 75:Dreams that are realized become an inspiration for new endeavor. It is in the power to make the dream good that we find the hope of this world. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 76:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 77:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ arthur-rubinstein, @wisdomtrove 78:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 79:When we know deep down that we're acting with integrity despite impulses to do otherwise, we feel gates of higher energy and inspiration open inside of us. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 80:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove 81:Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life? ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 82:The stories of past courage... can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 83:Wherever you go, go with inspiration and aspiration. Whatever you do, do with love and concern. Whomever you see, see with purity's beauty And responsibility's glory. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 84:Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 85:Nobody until very recently would have thought that their husband was supposed to be their best friend, confidante, intellectual soul mate, co-parent, inspiration. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 86:One of the most modern pretenders to inspiration is the Book of Mormon. I could not blame you should you laugh outright while I read aloud a page from that farrago. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 87:Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 88:Do not work self into a state of over-anxiety at the changes that will be found, or attempt to use up the strength and vitality ... Forget not the sources of thine inspiration. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 89:What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God's name, leave uncredited. At your peril do not try believing that! ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 90:While I find inspiration in real life, the actual stories are, thankfully, works of fiction - which, given the considerable turmoil in my character's lives, is probably a good thing! ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 91:Inner silence promotes clarity of mind. It makes us value the inner world. It trains us to go inside to the source of peace and inspiration when we are faced with problems and challenges. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 92:All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and contours. You feel the inspiration of its possibilities and the wonder of its mysteries. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 93:We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration and style themselves Evangelicals? ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 94:Laughter, song, and dance create emotional and spiritual connection; they remind us of the one thing that truly matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration, or healing: We are not alone. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 95:I am a man of prayer and meditation. I feel inspiration is of paramount importance. If I can inspire someone, and if that person also can inspire me, then we can do many good things for the betterment of this world. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 96:Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 97:An intellectual, heartless man never becomes an inspired man. It is always the heart that speaks in the man of love; it discovers a greater instrument than intellect can give you, the instrument of inspiration. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 98:When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman? ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 99:The inspiration of a single book has made preachers, poets, philosophers, authors, and statesmen. On the other hand, the demoralization of a single book has sometimes made infidels, profligates, and criminals. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 100:Inspiration is just about everywhere you can look, if you’re looking for it. That’s the key: to keep your eyes open. Too often we miss beautiful sources of inspiration, because we’re too busy thinking about other things. ~ leo-babauta, @wisdomtrove 101:The darkest moments of our lives are not to be buried and forgotten, rather they are a memory to be called upon for inspiration to remind us of the unrelenting human spirit and our capacity to overcome the intolerable ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 102:The inspiration for my novels comes from the depths of a creative well, based on asking myself questions over and over. I try to write something different each time I sit down to write; I try to surprise the readers. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 103:To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 104:As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 105:Silence is the great teacher and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 106:The first merit of pictures is the effect which they can produce upon the mind; ‚Äî and the first step of a sensible man should be to receive involuntary effects from them. Pleasure and inspiration first, analysis afterward. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 107:Music is inspiration, soulful inspiration. It inspires the human in us. Music is manifestation, fruitful manifestation. It manifests the divine in us. Music is satisfaction, supreme satisfaction. It satisfies the Pilot Supreme in us. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 108:The more we see that any action springs not from the motive of obedience, the more evident is it that it is a temptation of the enemy; for when God sends an inspiration, the very first effect of it is to infuse a spirit of docility. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 109:Inspiration is finding something else that is divinely inspired (people, nature, amazing ideas), having that inspiration breathed into you (breath' is the root of inspiration'), and then taking action on it. Creating, doing, inspiring others. ~ leo-babauta, @wisdomtrove 110:I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person's whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 111:The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 112:Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 113:Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 114:If we are fortunate, we one day find that person who impacts our world in such a way that our life is never the same again. By chance, or by design, we met that someone who offers the support, encouragement, and inspiration to become more than we ever thought possible. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 115:I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 116:OUR INSPIRATION: Billy Graham, July 2, 1962 úWorld events are moving very rapidly now. I pick up the Bible in one hand, and I pick up the newspaper in the other. And I read almost the same words in the newspaper as I read in the Bible. Itôs being fulfilled every day round about us. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 117:Real meditation we get from within or from a spiritual Master. We can never get it from books. From books we can get inspiration or an inner approach to the fulfilment of our outer life. But in order to have true meditation we have to go deep within or follow the guidance of a spiritual Master. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 118:When you make people angry, they act in accordance with their baser instincts, often violently and irrationally. When you inspire people, they act in accordance with their higher instincts, sensibly and rationally. Also, anger is transient, whereas inspiration sometimes has a life-long effect. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 119:Every creative genius has been a channel. Every masterwork has been created through the channeling process. Great works are not created by the personality alone. They arise from a deep inspiration on the universal level, and are then expressed and brought into form through the individual personality. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove 120:There is no such thing as a boring person: everyone has stories and insights worth sharing. While on the road, we let our phones or laptops take up our attention. By doing that, we might miss out on the chance to learn and absorb ideas and inspiration from an unexpected source: our fellow travelers. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 121:I've always wanted to be part of something that would radically change the world. . . . People forget the power of inspiration. All of humanity went to the moon with the Apollo missions. The issue was cost. There was no chance to build a base and create frequent flights. That's the problem I would like to solve. ~ elon-musk, @wisdomtrove 122:Describing laughter: The sound is produced by a deep inspiration followed by short, interrupted, spasmodic contractions of the chest, and especially the diaphragm... the mouth is open more or less widely, with the corners drawn much backwards, as well as a little upwards; and the upper lip is somewhat raised. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 123:The rich, sweet smell of the hayricks rose to his chamber window; the hundred perfumes of the little flower-garden beneath scented the air around; the deep-green meadows shone in the morning dew that glistened on every leaf as it trembled in the gentle air: and the birds sang as if every sparkling drop were a fountain of inspiration to them. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 124:What is wanted in architecture, as in so many things, is a man. ... One suggestion might be made-no profession in England has done its duty until it has furnished a victim. ... Even our boasted navy never achieved a great victory until we shot an admiral. Suppose an architect were hanged? Terror has its inspiration, as well as competition. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 125:With the Holy Mother as the centre of inspiration, a Math is to be established on the eastern bank of the Ganga. . . . On the other side of the Ganga a big plot of land will be acquired, where unmarried girls or Brahmacharini widows will live; devout married women will also be allowed to stay now and then. Men will have no concern with this Math. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 126:To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America; with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 127:This world, this universe which our senses feel, or our mind thinks, is but one atom, so to say, of the Infinite, projected on to the plane of consciousness; and within that narrow limit, defined by the network of consciousness, works our reason, and not beyond. Therefore, there must be some other instrument to take us beyond, and that instrument is called inspiration. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 128:Museums and art stores are also sources of pleasure and inspiration. Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble; and yet it is true that I derive genuine pleasure from touching great works of art. As my finger tips trace line and curve, they discover the thought and emotion which the artist has portrayed. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 129:Were I to solve problems for others they would remain stagnant; they would never grow. It would be a great injustice to them. My approach is to help with cause rather than effect. When I help others, it is by instilling within them the inspiration to work out problems by themselves. If you feed a man a meal, you only feed him for a day-but if you teach a man to grow food, you feed him for a lifetime. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 130:What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophesy or as poesy... should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open up new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 131:Jesus has to be and become ever more the center of my life. It is not enough that Jesus is my teacher, my guide, my source of inspiration. It is not even enough that he is my companion on they journey, my friend and my brother. Jesus must become the heart of my heart, the fire of my life, the love of my soul, the bridegroom of my spirit. He must become my only thought, my only concern, my only desire. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 132:The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 133:Reverence for life . . . does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful . . . the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many. . . . It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 134:There are three means of believing& 135:Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 136:In all the known history of Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result no culture of greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 137:Inspiration is a divine element inside our life. When we are inspired, we try to climb up the Himalayas. When we are inspired, we try to swim the English Channel. When we are in spired, we go from one country to another country to inspire people and to be inspired by them. I feel that when we inspire humanity, we automatically become good citizens of the world. This is my philosophy. My weightlifting feats I have done solely to inspire humanity. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 138:Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments - often ordinary moments. Sometimes we miss out on the bursts of joy because we're too busy chasing down the extraordinary moments. Other times we're so afraid of the dark we don't dare let ourselves enjoy the light. A joyful life is not a floodlight of joy. That would eventually become unbearable. I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude and inspiration ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 139:We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall - which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 140:A child is an eager observer and is particularly attracted by the actions of the adults and wants to imitate them. In this regard an adult can have a kind of mission. He can be an inspiration for the child's actions, a kind of open book wherein a child can learn how to direct his own movements. But an adult, if he is to afford proper guidance, must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 141:The world we live in pictures a pie with only so many pieces, and if other people have more you have less, and you have to compete with other people in order to try to get ahead. You have to sell yourself at every available opportunity. The shift, the enlightened shift, has to do with a movement from competition to collaboration, from sales to service, from ambition to inspiration, and to a belief in scarcity to a belief in abundance as an eternal spiritual quality. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 142:It’s one thing to make a pronouncement in a moment of inspiration about what you intend to manifest in your life or what kind of person you intend to become. It’s quite another thing to make a commitment to holding that vision regardless of what difficulties or obstacles may surface. Holding the vision involves an unwillingness to compromise what you’re visualizing for yourself. It means being willing to suffer through criticism and what appears to be an uncooperative universe. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 143:As everyone knows, the ancients before Aristotle did not consider the dream a product of the dreaming mind, but a divine inspiration, and in ancient times the two antagonistic streams, which one finds throughout in the estimates of dream life, were already noticeable. They distinguished between true and valuable dreams, sent to the dreamer to warn him or to foretell the future, and vain, fraudulent, and empty dreams, the object of which was to misguide or lead him to destruction. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 144:In whatever area in life one may meet the challenges of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience - the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient - they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 145:I’ve had that kind of experience myself: I’m looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what’. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. It’s like measles - you can’t show other people exactly where the passion comes from. It’s curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 146:I have in this War a burning private grudge ‚ which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 147:A mind that is accustomed to repeatedly dissolving in its source or essence becomes progressively saturated with its inherent peace. When such a mind rises again from the ocean of awareness, its activity makes that peace available to humanity. Such a mind may also be inspired by knowledge that is not simply a continuation of the past but comes directly form its unconditioned essence. This inspiration brings creativity and new possibilities into whatever sphere of knowledge or activity in which that mind operates. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 148:Every age has its dreams, its symbols of romance. Past generations were moved by the graceful power of the great windjammers, by the distant whistle of locomotives pounding through the night, by the caravans leaving on the Golden Road to Samarkand, by quinqueremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir . . . Our grandchildren will likewise have their inspiration-among the equatorial stars. They will be able to look up at the night sky and watch the stately procession of the Ports of Earth-the strange new harbors where the ships of space make their planetfalls and their departures. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 149:A Blessing; May the light of your soul guide you; May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart; May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul; May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work; May your work never weary you; May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement; May you be present in what you do. May you never become lost in the bland absences; May the day never burden; May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises; May evening find you gracious and fulfilled; May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected; May your soul calm, console and renew you. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Don't waste inspiration ~ Salman Khan, #NFDB
2:mystic finding inspiration ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
3:took inspiration from work ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
4:Inspiration is for Strangers... ~ Unknown, #NFDB
5:That way of inspiration ~ Hilda Doolittle, #NFDB
6:Inspiration gives no warnings, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
7:Inspiration is for amateurs. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
8:Inspiration starts somewhere. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
9:Inspiration is for amateurs. ~ Daniel Coyle, #NFDB
10:Inspiration is like love. ~ Chris J Anderson, #NFDB
11:Inspiration in desperation. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
12:Inspiration is intention obeyed. ~ Emily Carr, #NFDB
13:Inspiration before intercourse. ~ Lisa Kessler, #NFDB
14:Bob Seger was a huge inspiration. ~ Eric Church, #NFDB
15:Inspiration is everywhere. ~ Charlotte Eriksson, #NFDB
16:I find inspiration in everything. ~ Concha Buika, #NFDB
17:Out of routine comes inspiration. ~ Mark Kostabi, #NFDB
18:If you need inspiration, don't do it. ~ Elon Musk, #NFDB
19:Most obstacles are inspiration. ~ Millard Drexler, #NFDB
20:My greatest inspiration is memory. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
21:I find my inspiration in myself. ~ Thelonious Monk, #NFDB
22:Insomnia is my greatest inspiration. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
23:Inspiration is cross-pollinating. ~ Marian Bantjes, #NFDB
24:Suffering is key to inspiration. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
25:Travel is the ultimate inspiration. ~ Michael Kors, #NFDB
26:Inspiration is what keeps us well. ~ James Redfield, #NFDB
27:Inspiration is the key to everything. ~ Olivia Wilde, #NFDB
28:Babyface is definitely a big inspiration. ~ Taio Cruz, #NFDB
29:Celine Dion is my major inspiration. ~ Jackie Evancho, #NFDB
30:Inspiration follows aspiration. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
31:My inspiration is love and history. ~ Waris Ahluwalia, #NFDB
32:Ask for nothing less than inspiration. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
33:Be the inspiration you want to see in others ~ Sabrina, #NFDB
34:Creativity is Inspiration having fun ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
35:Inspiration and genius -one and the same. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
36:Inspiration and genius--one and the same. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
37:Inspiration gives no warnings. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
38:Inspiration gives no warnings. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB
39:It is not inspiration; it is expiration. ~ Jean Cocteau, #NFDB
40:My tears had given me an inspiration. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
41:All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal. ~ Miles Davis, #NFDB
42:For me, love is happiness and inspiration. ~ Leona Lewis, #NFDB
43:I'm always looking for inspiration. ~ Alicia Silverstone, #NFDB
44:It's inspiration that counts, not the drill. ~ Hugo Ball, #NFDB
45:She is my inspiration. My muse. My obsession. ~ Amy Plum, #NFDB
46:I get inspiration from my everyday life. ~ Hayao Miyazaki, #NFDB
47:Inspiration is God making contact with itself. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
48:Inspiration strikes at very funny times. ~ Gillian Jacobs, #NFDB
49:My daughter is my greatest inspiration. ~ Whitney Houston, #NFDB
50:One day you'll be an inspiration at others. ~ Demi Lovato, #NFDB
51:You can look anywhere and find inspiration. ~ Frank Gehry, #NFDB
52:Angelina Jolie is my style inspiration. ~ Adrianne Palicki, #NFDB
53:He was absurd to the point of inspiration. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
54:I like the inspiration of the first take. ~ Clint Eastwood, #NFDB
55:Inspiration is nothing without work. ~ William Morris Hunt, #NFDB
56:Inspiration is often the child of desperation. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
57:The ultimate inspiration is the deadline. ~ Nolan Bushnell, #NFDB
58:Embrace the inspiration of people’s success. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
59:Fathers can find great inspiration in faith. ~ Bruce Feiler, #NFDB
60:I let people down easy with inspiration. ~ David Hasselhoff, #NFDB
61:I'm tired of ignorance held up as inspiration. ~ Phil Plait, #NFDB
62:Observation capitalizes inspiration. ~ Alex Faickney Osborn, #NFDB
63:Wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
64:Every great inspiration is but an experiment. ~ Charles Ives, #NFDB
65:Inspiration comes of working every day. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
66:Inspiration is always a surprising visitor. ~ John O Donohue, #NFDB
67:Inspiration is the opportunity of genius. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
68:My dads music was a great inspiration to me. ~ Julian Lennon, #NFDB
69:Give me inspiration over information. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson, #NFDB
70:Great inspiration makes great scientists. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
71:Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
72:Routine is the housekeeper of inspiration ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
73:Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration. ~ Roald Dahl, #NFDB
74:Inspiration is found everywhere if you look hard enough. ~ RZA, #NFDB
75:Money has never been a huge inspiration for me. ~ Ryan Kwanten, #NFDB
76:Nelson Mandela stands as an inspiration to us all ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
77:The glow of inspiration warms us; it is a holy rapture. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
78:Discipline is the servant of inspiration. ~ Bebe Moore Campbell, #NFDB
79:Don't park... Arrival is the death of inspiration. ~ Ernst Haas, #NFDB
80:Humans do inspiration; machines do validation. ~ Alistair Croll, #NFDB
81:My friends are a huge part of my inspiration. ~ Waris Ahluwalia, #NFDB
82:You look for inspiration, I do, that got me going. ~ Peter Berg, #NFDB
83:Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
84:Inspiration takes many forms, but it's rarely pure. ~ Hilton Als, #NFDB
85:One reads not for information, but inspiration. ~ Wayne Teasdale, #NFDB
86:Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
87:When inspiration is silent reason tires quickly. ~ Roger Zelazny, #NFDB
88:Inspiration comes from all different places. ~ Jeffrey Katzenberg, #NFDB
89:Inspiration is finding something that excites you. ~ Connie Smith, #NFDB
90:The OTHER Serenity Prayer 🌿 Eleanor Brownn ~ Amen! ~ #Inspiration, #NFDB
91:[Castro is] a source of inspiration to the world. ~ Naomi Campbell, #NFDB
92:Human requirements are the inspiration for art. ~ Stephen Gardiner, #NFDB
93:In life you need either inspiration or desperation. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
94:Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
95:Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
96:Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. ~ Stephen Leacock, #NFDB
97:Success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration! ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
98:The beauty of inspiration is its unpredictable timing. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
99:Doggedness in art is no substitute for inspiration. ~ Benjamin Wood, #NFDB
100:Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while working. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
101:Inspiration existis, but it has to find us working. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
102:Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
103:Inspiration is solitary, never consecutive. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, #NFDB
104:Traveling is also a big inspiration for me. ~ Donavon Frankenreiter, #NFDB
105:All this talk about inspiration and moment is nonsense. ~ M F Husain, #NFDB
106:Being a husband and a dad is my inspiration. ~ Donavon Frankenreiter, #NFDB
107:In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up. ~ Larry Niven, #NFDB
108:Inspiration exists, but you have to find it working. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
109:Inspiration in matters of taste will not come twice. ~ Andre Maurois, #NFDB
110:Inspiration is a joke, real artists sit down and work ~ Tara Donovan, #NFDB
111:Inspiration means breathing in. Breathing in God. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
112:Invention is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
113:Nature is the inspiration for all ornamentation ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, #NFDB
114:Quotes are nothing but inspiration for the uninspired ~ Richard Kemp, #NFDB
115:The pain was brilliant, like a poisonous inspiration. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
116:You can't express inspiration without skill. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch, #NFDB
117:You can't give if your cup of inspiration isn't full. ~ Isabel Lucas, #NFDB
118:I don't wait for inspiration. Writing is my job. ~ Gail Carson Levine, #NFDB
119:Inspiration fires you up; motivation keeps you burning. ~ Stuart Aken, #NFDB
120:Like a lot of what happens in novels, inspiration is ~ Stanley Elkin, #NFDB
121:Michael Jackson was my inspiration. Love and blessings. ~ Miley Cyrus, #NFDB
122:Antagonism, pure nitro-charged agro, fuels inspiration. ~ Steven Tyler, #NFDB
123:Failure is the inspiration of tomorrow's entrepreneurs. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
124:Genius is not inspired. Inspiration is perspiration. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
125:I believe in a higher power. I believe in inspiration. ~ Janet Jackson, #NFDB
126:In life, you need either inspiration or desperation. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
127:It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
128:My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director. ~ Cole Porter, #NFDB
129:To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration ~ William Blake, #NFDB
130:Why Read? “Read to refill the wells of inspiration, ~ J Oswald Sanders, #NFDB
131:Don’t wait for inspiration; create a framework for it. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
132:Everyone's looking to the urban scene for inspiration now. ~ Robin Gibb, #NFDB
133:I find inspiration in literally just about everything. ~ Josh McDermitt, #NFDB
134:Keep the inspiration alive and reach for what you want ~ Anamika Mishra, #NFDB
135:Terror has its inspiration, as well as competition. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
136:One of the secrets to success is ideas mixed with inspiration ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
137:Photography is 10% inspiration and 90% moving furniture. ~ Helmut Newton, #NFDB
138:She's my teacher, my adviser, my greatest inspiration. ~ Whitney Houston, #NFDB
139:What good is inspiration if it's not backed up by action? ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
140:When I finally started to heal, that was the inspiration. ~ Laura Prepon, #NFDB
141:When the inspiration comes, let everything else go! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
142:When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
143:Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work. ~ George Gershwin, #NFDB
144:Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
145:Education brings about opportunity, and in turn inspiration. ~ Bill Frist, #NFDB
146:Ernest Hemingway was the author I drew inspiration from. ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
147:I don't wanna be a role model. I'd like to be an inspiration. ~ Tairrie B, #NFDB
148:Japan, for me, will always be my inspiration source. ~ Nicola Formichetti, #NFDB
149:My father was my greatest inspiration. He was a lunatic. ~ Spike Milligan, #NFDB
150:No man was ever great without divine inspiration. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
151:Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information. ~ Man Ray, #NFDB
152:To be someone's inspiration is the biggest goal in my life. ~ Demi Lovato, #NFDB
153:Confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to the possessor. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
154:Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
155:Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
156:He is gifted with genius who knoweth much by natural inspiration. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
157:I believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
158:If your job is inspiration you have to go at it at all costs. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
159:Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
160:There is no higher qualification than genuine inspiration. ~ Tama J Kieves, #NFDB
161:You just need to recognize inspiration when it strikes. ~ Julianne MacLean, #NFDB
162:Don’t wait for inspiration. She’s a fickle tart. Just write. ~ Ruth Bavetta, #NFDB
163:Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
164:Inspiration is the impact of a fact on a well-prepared mind ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
165:I still to this day get the most inspiration from rap lyrics. ~ Ezra Koenig, #NFDB
166:I travel a lot, but I don't come away with new inspiration. ~ Edward Ruscha, #NFDB
167:Millions of pages cloaked in dust and inspiration and wisdom. ~ Sarah Noffke, #NFDB
168:My inspiration are the woman, friendship, and loneliness. ~ Enrique Iglesias, #NFDB
169:The inspiration you seek is already within you. Be silent and listen. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
170:When the mind is allowed to relax, inspiration often follows. ~ Phil Jackson, #NFDB
171:Why do people watch fights?... They watch it for inspiration. ~ Greg Jackson, #NFDB
172:Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action. ~ Willem Dafoe, #NFDB
173:Conformity is the inspiration of much second-rate virtue. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett, #NFDB
174:Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
175:He's been an inspiration for me since the Olympics 1996. ~ Wladimir Klitschko, #NFDB
176:Innovation = Inspiration + Perspiration + Perseverance. ~ Juan Roman Riquelme, #NFDB
177:Inspiration and work ethic - they ride right next to each other. ~ Jack White, #NFDB
178:Inspiration will always sing; inspiration will never explain. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
179:Me personally as a man is nothing without the inspiration of JAH ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
180:My ideas and creativity are the sources of inspiration for me. ~ Yayoi Kusama, #NFDB
181:One bold inspiration choreographs a dance with promise. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher, #NFDB
182:See obstacles as opportunities. See obstacles as inspiration. ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
183:The ironies in the commonplace are my inspiration and delight. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
184:Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination. ~ Louise Brooks, #NFDB
185:You can find inspiration when you're not even looking for it. ~ Judy Woodruff, #NFDB
186:Genius is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent perspiration. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
187:Pravin Tambe is bigger inspiration than me for young cricketers ~ Rahul Dravid, #NFDB
188:What They Know + What They See + What They Feel = Inspiration ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
189:When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
190:Disappointment is an endless wellspring of comedy inspiration. ~ Martin Freeman, #NFDB
191:he carried "a pencil and paper with him in case inspiration struck. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
192:I don't believe in the word 'inspiration', you just have to do it. ~ Will Alsop, #NFDB
193:If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
194:I have always looked to movies and theatre for inspiration. ~ David Copperfield, #NFDB
195:Information doesn't mean a thing to people without inspiration. ~ Bernie Siegel, #NFDB
196:It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
197:Nothing great was ever accomplished without inspiration. See ~ Earl Nightingale, #NFDB
198:People either make things or they don't. Inspiration is a poster. ~ Merlin Mann, #NFDB
199:The Koran is an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror. ~ Geert Wilders, #NFDB
200:There are three sources of belief: reason, custom, inspiration. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
201:When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
202:You are the equal of the idol who has given you your inspiration ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
203:you are the equal of the idol who has given you your inspiration ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
204:Your mental attitude is your motivation and your inspiration. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer, #NFDB
205:Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
206:I find motivation and inspiration and hope in information. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher, #NFDB
207:I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, #NFDB
208:Inspiration doesn't always come in chronological order. ~ Gina Marinello Sweeney, #NFDB
209:Inspiration is that state in which mind and heart are connected. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
210:I think to get society to act as a whole, people need inspiration. ~ Chip Giller, #NFDB
211:Often you cannot wait for inspiration—it needs to be sought out. ~ Dean F Wilson, #NFDB
212:The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
213:There are lots of things that I'm always pulling inspiration from. ~ Tom DeLonge, #NFDB
214:There are three sources of belief: reason, custom, inspiration. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
215:Wealth is not a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of inspiration. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
216:You can find inspiration for man's behaviour wherever you look. ~ Marilyn Manson, #NFDB
217:All the inspiration I ever needed was a phone call from a producer. ~ Cole Porter, #NFDB
218:If you don't give inspiration an opportunity, it will never arrive. ~ Ethan Hawke, #NFDB
219:If you're going to be an artist, real life is your inspiration. ~ Madonna Ciccone, #NFDB
220:Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry. ~ Alexander Pushkin, #NFDB
221:Inspiration is the seed of imagination, where great ideas bloom ~ Jennifer Sodini, #NFDB
222:Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
223:You can't wait for inspiration,you have to go after it will a club. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
224:A lot of my inspiration is reactionary to images I see in the media. ~ Pieter Hugo, #NFDB
225:Genius defined: of inspiration 1% percent, of perspiration, 99%. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
226:I don't wait for inspiration. I get up and write every day. ~ Cathy Marie Buchanan, #NFDB
227:I get my fuel and inspiration from children, they are our future. ~ David Batstone, #NFDB
228:Inspiration comes and goes, creativity is the result of practice. ~ Phil Cousineau, #NFDB
229:Inspiration is all around us. Don't let the brain limit the mind . ~ Lisi Harrison, #NFDB
230:Inspiration is an excuse for doing something you already want to do. ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
231:Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
232:Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
233:ROBIN SHARMA DAILY INSPIRATION from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
234:Sometimes inspiration strikes; other times you have to hunt it down. ~ Nina LaCour, #NFDB
235:You can't really do anything creative without a source of inspiration. ~ J Tillman, #NFDB
236:You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
237:You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
238:You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
239:You don’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
240:Amateurs wait for inspiration. The real pros get up and go to work. ~ Harvey Mackay, #NFDB
241:Definitely my wife and my kid [are my biggest inspiration]. ~ Donavon Frankenreiter, #NFDB
242:Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
243:if the hacker is a creator, we have to take inspiration into account. ~ Paul Graham, #NFDB
244:If you're waiting for inspiration, you'll wait until you're dead. ~ Kurt Braunohler, #NFDB
245:I have inspiration and feelings of being alive most every day I live ~ Judy Collins, #NFDB
246:I look at someone like Giggsy and he is an inspiration to all of us. ~ Phil Neville, #NFDB
247:Inspiration? - a hoax fabricated by poets for their self-importance. ~ Jean Anouilh, #NFDB
248:Inspiration without perspiration leads to frustration and stagnation. ~ Bill Bright, #NFDB
249:It was a sudden inspiration. But inspiration never came without a reason. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
250:Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more. ~ Benjamin Cardozo, #NFDB
251:No life is well-rounded without the subtle inspiration of beauty. ~ Beatrix Farrand, #NFDB
252:Once the inspiration comes, that directs where the perspiration goes. ~ Carole King, #NFDB
253:Peak performers replace depletion with inspiration on a daily basis. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
254:You cannot wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
255:And we feel motivation only when we feel enough emotional inspiration. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
256:I could never live without artwork. It's a constant inspiration. ~ Narciso Rodriguez, #NFDB
257:If you lack inspiration simply begin...inspiration will follow. ~ Mary Anne O Connor, #NFDB
258:Inspiration is a sustainable internal glow which pulls you forward. ~ Thomas Leonard, #NFDB
259:'Inspiration' is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
260:Inspiration springs more readily from knowledge than from ignorance. ~ Horace Kallen, #NFDB
261:Love is a constant source of inspiration, surprise, and wonderment. ~ Gloria Estefan, #NFDB
262:We each need to find our own inspiration. Sometimes it is not easy. ~ Hayao Miyazaki, #NFDB
263:You could say that I have no inspiration, that I only need to paint. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
264:A box is more a coffin for the human spirit than an inspiration. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, #NFDB
265:education without inspiration is only recipe for desperation ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
266:I read a lot of different stuff, but I keep being open to inspiration. ~ Pete Carroll, #NFDB
267:Success flows from perspiration, and inspiration from diligence and effort. ~ Amos Oz, #NFDB
268:The inspiration you seekis already within You.Be Silent and Listen. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #NFDB
269:We talk to God--that is prayer; God talks to us--that is inspiration. ~ H Emilie Cady, #NFDB
270:A novel is achieved with hard work, the short story with inspiration. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
271:For me, our beaches have always been a source of personal inspiration. ~ Thomas Carper, #NFDB
272:Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
273:Inspiration is everywhere! I think you just have to have your eyes open. ~ LeAnn Rimes, #NFDB
274:Inspiration is like love. You don’t get it by pursuing it directly. ~ Chris J Anderson, #NFDB
275:#Intuition (is) perception via the unconcious ~ Carl Jung #quote #jungian #inspiration, #NFDB
276:It isn't that inspiration doesn't exist, but it comes only with writing. ~ John Braine, #NFDB
277:Learn to love your haters, they are a wonderful source of inspiration. ~ Habeeb Akande, #NFDB
278:Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves. ~ Shelby Foote, #NFDB
279:Motion Picture Soundtrack on Kid A was another Coltrane inspiration. ~ Colin Greenwood, #NFDB
280:Music, art, landscape - these are all things I draw inspiration from. ~ Josh McDermitt, #NFDB
281:Not exactly but I get inspiration from stories which are unconventional. ~ Anil Kapoor, #NFDB
282:The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
283:education without inspiration is only a recipe for desperation ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
284:Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
285:Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust. ~ Primo Levi, #NFDB
286:Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind. ~ Johannes Brahms, #NFDB
287:Writing is a discipline, and you have to stay at it. Inspiration will come. ~ Sam Barry, #NFDB
288:Beauty and inspiration can be found in any natural place of the earth. ~ Akiane Kramarik, #NFDB
289:If you wait for inspiration to write you're not a writer, you're a waiter. ~ Dan Poynter, #NFDB
290:Imagination is the door to inspiration and the basis of all thought. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
291:I'm more focused on giving solutions and inspiration more than anything. ~ Nipsey Hussle, #NFDB
292:Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. ~ Ned Rorem, #NFDB
293:Inspiration for my music just comes from, you know, my life experiences. ~ Avril Lavigne, #NFDB
294:Like all writers, my greatest inspiration, my ultimate muse, is a deadline. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
295:Most of my horror inspiration is really older stuff and really new stuff. ~ Joe Swanberg, #NFDB
296:My inspiration was the game itself, not any individual player in it. ~ Nomar Garciaparra, #NFDB
297:Photography is 90% sheer, brutal drudgery! The other 10% is inspiration!! ~ Brett Weston, #NFDB
298:That which takes us by surprise-moments of happiness-that is inspiration. ~ Agnes Martin, #NFDB
299:We look up for inspiration, down for desperation, right and left for information. ~ Tyga, #NFDB
300:Without such inspiration, we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. ~ Walt Disney, #NFDB
301:Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration, ~ William Poundstone, #NFDB
302:I get my inspiration from young stylish girls I see all over my travels. ~ Olivia Palermo, #NFDB
303:Inspiration comes in the middle of the night when you should be doing homework. ~ Amy Lee, #NFDB
304:Inspiration doesn't respond to meeting requests. You can't schedule greatness. ~ Jay Baer, #NFDB
305:Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy. ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
306:No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
307:Success is causing the world around you to aspire to your inspiration. ~ Chris Oyakhilome, #NFDB
308:The bigger your mission becomes, the greater inspiration you will be given. ~ Ryuho Okawa, #NFDB
309:The first inspiration I ever had was the cosmos, the planetary system. ~ Alexander Calder, #NFDB
310:The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
311:The success of every single woman is the inspiration for another. ~ Diane von Furstenberg, #NFDB
312:The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else. ~ Vikram Seth, #NFDB
313:When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
314:Works of art are not born in flashes of inspiration but in daily fidelity. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
315:You always hope that the cloak of inspiration will fall, and you'll be O.K. ~ Gary Oldman, #NFDB
316:Art, inspiration, love, they're all so easy to dissect. To explain away. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
317:Elvis is iconic; a lot of performers today look to that for inspiration. ~ Beyonce Knowles, #NFDB
318:I always get inspiration from whatever characters say about my character. ~ Robert Englund, #NFDB
319:inspiration is an excuse for doing something you already want to do. Lucifer ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
320:Inspiration is not purely passive, but does favor the prepared mind. ~ Scott Barry Kaufman, #NFDB
321:Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Etc. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
322:Inspiration on its own was shallow; you had to back it up with hard work. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
323:There are little gems all around us that can hold glimmers of inspiration. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
324:All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way. ~ Marina Abramovic, #NFDB
325:He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
326:I'm afraid, ha, ha, I find more inspiration in the Marquis de Sade. ~ Christopher Isherwood, #NFDB
327:Inspiration knocks now and again, but spite bangs on the door all year long. ~ T Kingfisher, #NFDB
328:Now my inspiration but it won’t last and we’ll be just a photograph—i ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
329:Take your inspiration from wherever you find it, no matter how ridiculous. ~ Roy H Williams, #NFDB
330:The Spirit of God breathes inspiration, while the carnal mind breeds vanity. ~ Fred C White, #NFDB
331:Fiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination. ~ Luke Taylor, #NFDB
332:I believe in the relation between photography and music; And thats my inspiration. ~ Man Ray, #NFDB
333:I get inspiration everywhere - by my friends, my family, and mostly love. ~ Leighton Meester, #NFDB
334:Inspiration quite frequently arrives as a surprise. The key is being open to it. ~ Tori Amos, #NFDB
335:I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images. ~ Bill Viola, #NFDB
336:Make your art a gift of inspiration to others to work toward better things. ~ Richard Schmid, #NFDB
337:VISIONEERING = INSPIRATION + CONVICTION + ACTION + DETERMINATION + COMPLETION ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
338:We generally change ourselves for one of two reasons: inspiration or desperation. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
339:When it come to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
340:I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
341:I'm of the ilk of writers that feels you have to be open to the inspiration. ~ Sara Bareilles, #NFDB
342:Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance. ~ Jean Anouilh, #NFDB
343:Mountaintops are for views and inspiration, but fruit is grown in the valleys. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
344:My inspiration can come from anything - films, the street, paparazzi pictures. ~ Craig McDean, #NFDB
345:Waiting for inspiration is like standing at the airport waiting for a train. ~ Leigh Michaels, #NFDB
346:When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
347:You don't get tired of muffins, but you don't find inspiration in them. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
348:Barbie has always been an inspiration. Dressing her was part of ever girl's dream. ~ Reem Acra, #NFDB
349:I don't believe in inspiration. I write when I can't avoid writing anymore. ~ Aleksandar Hemon, #NFDB
350:I feel like you only need one moment of inspiration to turn your life around. ~ DeVon Franklin, #NFDB
351:"If everything around you seems dark, look again, you may be the light." - Rumi ~ #Inspiration, #NFDB
352:My manager said the next best inspiration to heartbreak is travel, and it's true. ~ Beth Orton, #NFDB
353:To make profound changes in your life, you need either inspiration or desperation. ~ Hal Elrod, #NFDB
354:Books matter. They are an inspiration, an escape. Something bigger than we are... ~ Lucy Dillon, #NFDB
355:Check you out,' said Magnus. 'My famous boyfriend, inspiration to the masses. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
356:If faith requires you to foreclose on an inspiration, surely it is not faith. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
357:I get a lot of my inspiration from my family, but I never got to meet my dad's dad. ~ Guy Fieri, #NFDB
358:I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated I would be a damn fool. ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
359:Inspiration is in seeing a part of the whole with the part of the whole in you. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
360:Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Etc. Your ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
361:There never was a great soul that did not have some divine inspiration. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
362:What gets projects done for me is not inspiration. It's curiosity and rigor. ~ Andrew Zuckerman, #NFDB
363:Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
364:I connect the psychedelic dimension to the dimension of inspiration and dream. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
365:I have always had a mystical attitude toward inspiration. Thats my nature. ~ Madison Smartt Bell, #NFDB
366:Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
367:I prefer milk because I am a Prohibitionist, but I do not go to it for inspiration. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
368:Most, if not all, creativity is born out of perspiration rather than inspiration. ~ Blaine Hogan, #NFDB
369:This book is for: those who take action and those who provide the inspiration ~ Chris Guillebeau, #NFDB
370:A different way is to cooperate fully, humbly, and joyfully with inspiration. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
371:A lot of songs are inspiration and help people through pain, grief and loss. ~ Olivia Newton John, #NFDB
372:Inspiration is always trying to work with me. So I sit there and I work, too. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
373:she doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in anticipation of its apparition. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
374:There’s only one thing in life, and that’s the continual renewal of inspiration. ~ Diana Vreeland, #NFDB
375:Wake up; the world is waiting for your sunny energy. You are the inspiration for many. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
376:[When asked what was the inspiration for most of her work:] Need of money, dear. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
377:A writer's inspiration is not just to create. He must eat three times a day. ~ Pierre Beaumarchais, #NFDB
378:Celebrity inspiration: Mark Ruffalo, if he were a failure. Lifestyle/Job/Personality ~ Jessi Klein, #NFDB
379:If women become too much like men, men lose purpose, meaning, and inspiration in life. ~ John Gray, #NFDB
380:I never played music, but it's an important thing ... the studying, the inspiration. ~ Kevin James, #NFDB
381:I notice inspiration when it comes by. I don't sit down at my desk and try to write. ~ Gary Panter, #NFDB
382:Inspiration gives you a desire. Decision makes it an intention. Action makes it real. ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
383:Open to me, so that I may open.
Provide me your inspiration
So that I might see mine. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
384:The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
385:There's just so much out there and so much inspiration... I just want to be tasteful. ~ ASAP Rocky, #NFDB
386:To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry. ~ Mahmoud Darwish, #NFDB
387:A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all. ~ Rita Mae Brown, #NFDB
388:Being independent... is being innovative out of inspiration as well as necessity. ~ Martin Scorsese, #NFDB
389:Directing, I get all kinds of inspiration. It's working with people. It's a lot more fun. ~ Ang Lee, #NFDB
390:Ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
391:I travel the garden of music, thru inspiration. It's a large, very large garden, seen? ~ Peter Tosh, #NFDB
392:Leadership is about inspiration with character, not manipulation with position! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
393:To me, it's all about inspiration. What gets me creatively excited is a challenge. ~ Bill Skarsgard, #NFDB
394:While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
395:You get your inspiration - suggestions - wherever you have to, even from your mother. ~ Vikram Seth, #NFDB
396:Beware of direct inspiration. It leads too quickly to repetitions of what inspired you. ~ Ernst Haas, #NFDB
397:Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you. ~ H Jackson Brown Jr, #NFDB
398:I always saw what the girls were doing, the supermodels, and they were my inspiration. ~ David Gandy, #NFDB
399:La science, aujourd'hui, cherchera une source d'inspiration au-dessus d'elle ou périra ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
400:May you find INSPIRATION in the big picture, but may you find LOVE in the details. ~ Adrienne Maloof, #NFDB
401:The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
402:The universe is always sending you inspiration, you just have to listen and allow. ~ Linda Armstrong, #NFDB
403:We don't have education, we have inspiration; if I was educated I would be a damn fool. ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
404:You can find inspiration in everything. If you can't, then you're not looking properly. ~ Paul Smith, #NFDB
405:Inspiration, move me brightly, light the song with sense and color, hold away despair ~ Robert Hunter, #NFDB
406:Inspiration, without action, is merely entertainment. ACT on your inspiration today! ~ Mary Morrissey, #NFDB
407:Keep working. Don't wait for inspiration. Work inspires inspiration. Keep working. ~ Michael Crichton, #NFDB
408:The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it. He ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
409:Today, I find inspiration in music, art, traveling the world, and meeting new people. ~ Nastia Liukin, #NFDB
410:We must now learn to draw inspiration from the tangible miracles that surround us. ~ Umberto Boccioni, #NFDB
411:Ballast yourself with reality and throw yourself into the sea . The sea is inspiration . ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
412:Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
413:Inspiration is like perspiration. It tends to strike at the most inopportune of times. ~ Max Hawthorne, #NFDB
414:Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: "Every day!" ~ Aaron Copland, #NFDB
415:The lazy will always attribute genius to some 'inspiration' that comes for mere waiting. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
416:waiting for inspiration to write is like standing at the airport waiting for a train. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
417:We all face adversity and tragedy and need inspiration and motivation to Keep Rolling. ~ Steve Gleason, #NFDB
418:Any band on their first couple records is just trying to keep up with their inspiration. ~ Joshua Homme, #NFDB
419:Do not seek after love, but simply remove the barriers you have built against it. - Rumi ~ #Inspiration, #NFDB
420:I don't get my inspiration from books or a painting. I get it from the women I meet. ~ Carolina Herrera, #NFDB
421:I love Pinterest, so I got a little inspiration from there - I'm obsessed with cookies. ~ Devon Windsor, #NFDB
422:Inspiration is the gift of those who have experienced life at its most defined moments. ~ Sasha Azevedo, #NFDB
423:Music in general and lately opera in particular fills my soul with hope and inspiration. ~ China Forbes, #NFDB
424:My father beat me with a curtain rod when I was nine, (That was) the inspiration for Creep ~ Thom Yorke, #NFDB
425:The grandeur of the acts of men are measured by the inspiration from which they spring. ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
426:The muse, or the inspiration, does not just show up, it requires sweat as an offering. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
427:The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa, #NFDB
428:At dawn of man, many words of inspiration.
At the end, there will be words of revelation. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
429:Inspiration comes from displacement. Get out of your comfort zone, the rewards are legion. ~ Bob Lefsetz, #NFDB
430:We are now on the threshold of a newer movement, with a newer hope and a new inspiration. ~ James Larkin, #NFDB
431:When you change yourself, you inspire others, and this inspiration changes the world. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
432:But opposing evil requires inspiration by what is sound rather than by what is resonant. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
433:Excellence isn't achieved without inspiration and perspiration. You've got to have both. ~ George Foreman, #NFDB
434:For all the tenure of humans on Earth, the night sky had been a companion and an inspiration. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
435:Good leaders don't tell people what to do, they give teams capability and inspiration. ~ Jeffrey R Immelt, #NFDB
436:I'm just a simple man standing alone with my old brushes, asking God for inspiration. ~ Peter Paul Rubens, #NFDB
437:Let us beware of common folk, common sense, sentiment, inspiration, and the obvious. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
438:All of my books are made of sweat, blood, laughter, cat hair, chocolate and inspiration. ~ Julie Anne Long, #NFDB
439:Fashion is inspired by youth and nostalgia and draws inspiration from the best of the past. ~ Lana Del Rey, #NFDB
440:Growing up I never got into comic books at all. I didn't have any inspiration for it. ~ Scarlett Johansson, #NFDB
441:In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
442:I probably get more inspiration for human stories and idiosyncrasies than I do animal stories. ~ Jim Davis, #NFDB
443:The book is there for inspiration and as a foundation, the fundamentals on which to build. ~ Thomas Keller, #NFDB
444:I didn't know what it felt like until now"
"To be someone's inspiration??"
"To be seen. ~ Mimi Strong,#NFDB
445:It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we mistake panic for inspiration. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
446:London's where I was brought up. It's where my heart is and where I get my inspiration. ~ Alexander McQueen, #NFDB
447:Motion Before Motivation: It means you get started FIRST, then FEEL the Inspiration to keep going. ~ Mike D, #NFDB
448:Penetration seems a kind of inspiration; it gives me an idea of prophecy. ~ Fulke Greville 1st Baron Brooke, #NFDB
449:We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
450:Writing a novel is like building a wall brick by brick; only amateurs believe in inspiration. ~ Frank Yerby, #NFDB
451:Animals are a continuous source of inspiration and wonder to me. I would love to play a dog. ~ James Ransone, #NFDB
452:any motion whatsoever beats inertia, because inspiration will always be drawn to motion. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
453:Books are the heart of any home, and I spend hours going through books for design inspiration. ~ Nate Berkus, #NFDB
454:Good Gad, Weaver. That look upon your face is one of inspiration. I hardly know you any longer. ~ David Liss, #NFDB
455:Having ideas is not the same thing as being creative. Creation is execution, not inspiration. ~ Kevin Ashton, #NFDB
456:I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women. ~ Ruth Benedict, #NFDB
457:I want to have a cultural impact. I want to be an inspiration, to show people what can be done. ~ Puff Daddy, #NFDB
458:My life. The life I'm living that's where all my inspiration comes from. Real life experiences. ~ Fred Durst, #NFDB
459:Please don’t look at me as inspiration on how to handle depression. God, I’ve been a mess. ~ Elizabeth Reyes, #NFDB
460:Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
461:Time counts us out and flesh fades, but death cannot touch the inspiration we leave behind. ~ Zachary Koukol, #NFDB
462:I go to a lot of stand-up comedy. I find more inspiration from observational stuff than from rap. ~ Riz Ahmed, #NFDB
463:Inspiration and information without personal application will never amount to transformation ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
464:Inspiration comes from the heart. The letter ‘I’ is the heart of F”I”RST… (F Inspiration R S T). ~ Dean Kamen, #NFDB
465:I think inspiration is always around; it's just a question of whether or not you're noticing it. ~ John Green, #NFDB
466:The groups, though, were my inspiration way back then. I liked Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers. ~ Eddie Floyd, #NFDB
467:There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
468:but I say give me rain, rain, rain on the shingle roof for roses and inspiration every time ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
469:Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
470:Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
471:Inspiration and information without personal application will never amount to transformation. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
472:Inspiration. From real life. I open my eyes and I travel and I look. And I read everything. ~ Erik Spiekermann, #NFDB
473:Inspiration may sometimes fail to show up for work in the morning, but determination never does. ~ K M Weiland, #NFDB
474:Mainly he appears in people's reveries and dreams for the purpose of inspiration and comfort. ~ Dolores Cannon, #NFDB
475:The activity of painting: A thrilling tussle between the artist's materials and his inspiration. ~ Mervyn Levy, #NFDB
476:Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
~ Stephen King, On Writing,#NFDB
477:Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill for inspiration/and then sing about the grief. ~ Bono, #NFDB
478:My wife Ricky is my muse. Her personal style and natural beauty have always been my inspiration. ~ Ralph Lauren, #NFDB
479:The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
480:This one Corbusier lamp was like, my greatest inspiration ... I'm a minimalist in a rapper's body. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
481:To make profound changes in your life, you need either inspiration or desperation. —ANTHONY ROBBINS ~ Hal Elrod, #NFDB
482:You explained to me that inspiration is born of stillness, and creativity comes from movement. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
483:Gems from the Turkish poet ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #JoyTrain #Joy #Love #Peace #Inspiration RT @arunbhar @BethFratesMD, #NFDB
484:Giving inspiration to a lawyer, Sharpe thought sourly, was like feeding fine brandy to a rat. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
485:Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries. ~ Patty Duke, #NFDB
486:I use other cookbooks for inspiration. I must say I tend to cook from my own cookbooks for parties. ~ Ina Garten, #NFDB
487:The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls 'inspiration.' ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
488:The desire to have an eternal life is the greatest inspiration we get from an eternal road! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
489:Inspiration is constantly in the air. It's up to us to develop the sensitivity to pick up on it. ~ Herbie Hancock, #NFDB
490:I try to think about me, as an audience member, and it [inspiration for movies] comes from there. ~ Alexandre Aja, #NFDB
491:nothing is original. steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination ~ Jim Jarmusch, #NFDB
492:The glow of inspiration warms us; this holy rapture springs from the seeds of the Divine mind sown in man. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
493:A lot of my hair and makeup, and everything I pull for inspiration, is [drawn] from old photographs. ~ Emmy Rossum, #NFDB
494:Being receptive to what is happening around me gives me inspiration and feeds my desire to create. ~ Jake T Austin, #NFDB
495:I didn't take inspiration from other photographers, which in a way helped to find my own images. ~ Peter Lindbergh, #NFDB
496:I draw inspiration from everything. I draw a lot from love, from hate, from anger, from happiness ~ Greyson Chance, #NFDB
497:I find as much inspiration from the forerunners of jazz as I do the modern-day innovators of jazz. ~ John Scofield, #NFDB
498:Nothing can make me happy. Happiness and inspiration are what I bring to life, not what I purchase. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
499:Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. ~ Jim Jarmusch, #NFDB
500:Reality is not an inspiration for literature. At its best, literature is an inspiration for reality. ~ Romain Gary, #NFDB
501:When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration. ~ Robert Bresson, #NFDB
502:During a test, people look up for inspiration, down in desperation, and left and right for information. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
503:If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today. ~ Barry Mann, #NFDB
504:I think a lot of songwriters would agree that it's often easier to find inspiration in misery. ~ Grant Lee Phillips, #NFDB
505:When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best -- that is inspiration. ~ Robert Bresson, #NFDB
506:Elizabeth I was my favourite monarch though, what an inspiration, she did great things for women. ~ Kirsty Gallacher, #NFDB
507:For me my biggest inspiration is trying to make music that effects me as much as the music made by my heroes. ~ Moby, #NFDB
508:I'm trying to write for people my age. And my inspiration over the years has changed dramatically. ~ John Mellencamp, #NFDB
509:Inspiration comes from within yourself. One has to be positive. When you're positive, good things happen. ~ Deep Roy, #NFDB
510:I pledged to work for righteousness. God's given me inspiration. God's the boss, he tell me what to do. ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
511:Remember, inspiration unused is merely entertainment. To get new results, you need to take new actions. ~ David Bach, #NFDB
512:The single thing all women need in the world is inspiration, and inspiration comes from storytelling. ~ Zainab Salbi, #NFDB
513:Emotions infuse everything with meaning and are the main inspiration of cognition, also in our lives. ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB
514:If inspiration is allowed to unexpectedly enter you, it is also allowed to unexpectedly exit you. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
515:Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
516:The world has lost a great musician who will always be an inspiration to me and those at OBEY GIANT. ~ Shepard Fairey, #NFDB
517:Wong Kar-Wai is a really great inspiration. He's always referred to as the Jimi Hendrix of filmmaking. ~ Gus Van Sant, #NFDB
518:Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
519:Inspiration is for amateurs. professionals work everyday. Personally the best inspiration is a deadline. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
520:In the nineteenth century the more grandiose word inspiration began to replace the word idea in the arts. ~ Lukas Foss, #NFDB
521:Maybe you were the inspiration, but inspiration is an excuse for doing something you already want to do. ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
522:Q: What is creativity? A: The relationship between a human being and the mysteries of inspiration. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
523:After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration. ~ Tracy Chapman, #NFDB
524:Do work you love and are passionate about, look outside of the world of graphic design for inspiration. ~ Jessica Walsh, #NFDB
525:I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
526:I have my own style that happens to be different from everyone else in Hollywood. My inspiration is me. ~ Avril Lavigne, #NFDB
527:Inspiration comes from everywhere: books, art, people on the street. It is an interior process for me. ~ Colleen Atwood, #NFDB
528:Intuition is neither a feeling, an inspiration nor a disorderly sympathy but a fully developed method. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
529:I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
530:Nature is my manifestation of God.
I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright,#NFDB
531:People of India who work day and night, they are my inspiration. I look at them and I work even harder. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
532:The difference between fanfic and a "real" novel is that fanfic is honest about its inspiration. ~ Mary Robinette Kowal, #NFDB
533:When women hear each other's stories, told from the heart, it gives us inspiration to keep on going. ~ Elizabeth Lesser, #NFDB
534:A day in a man’s life is constructed according to whether he accepts or rejects flashes of inspiration. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa, #NFDB
535:Bold, breakthrough change requires leaders at all levels who can demonstrate courage and inspiration. ~ David S Pottruck, #NFDB
536:Invention is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Thomas Edison I don't design clothes, I design dreams. ~ Ralph Lauren, #NFDB
537:It was Ba's inspiration which helped me reach the heights of my inner self. She was my priceless jewel. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
538:Obama's folksy come-on is as bad as Madonna's faux British - and both are in need of fresh inspiration. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
539:Prayer ought to be short and pure, unless it be prolonged by the inspiration of Divine grace. ~ Saint Benedict of Nursia, #NFDB
540:The blues are what I've turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life. ~ Eric Clapton, #NFDB
541:Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great. ~ Ned Rorem, #NFDB
542:If the Bible is true, it needs no inspiration, and - if not true, inspiration can do it no good. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
543:Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words. ~ Franz Liszt, #NFDB
544:I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o'clock every day. ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
545:[I] take inspiration from kids. ... They're very honest in how they act and how they are in the world. ~ Daniel Radcliffe, #NFDB
546:It's best to incorporate a broadly eclectic point of view, and let whatever moves you be your inspiration. ~ Wendy Carlos, #NFDB
547:Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners. ~ Herbie Hancock, #NFDB
548:There's a poster with Thomas Edison's quote: GENIUS IS 1 PERCENT INSPIRATION AND 99 PERCENT PERSPIRATION. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
549:To me, the creative inspiration is endless and coming in all sorts of different directions at all times. ~ Kreesha Turner, #NFDB
550:…to the inspiration of necessity, we owe half the wise, beautiful, and useful blessings of the world. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
551:You've been my inspiration, through the lies you were the truth. My world is a better place because of you. ~ Celine Dion, #NFDB
552:Every great inspiration is but an experiment - though every experiment we know, is not a great inspiration. ~ Charles Ives, #NFDB
553:I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost ~ Guillermo Cabrera Infante, #NFDB
554:I don't believe in writer's block or waiting for inspiration. If you're a writer, you sit down and write. ~ Elmore Leonard, #NFDB
555:I think that creative people, wherever they are, in any field, take inspiration wherever they can find it. ~ Simon de Pury, #NFDB
556:My original inspiration was my mom: a few years after the death of my dad, she started dating one my teachers! ~ Meg Cabot, #NFDB
557:One of the things I try to be very careful of is not taking a movie when I know I have no inspiration left. ~ Trevor Rabin, #NFDB
558:That inspiration comes, does not depend on me. The only thing I can do is make sure it catches me working. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
559:That talk of inspiration is sheer nonsense; there is no such thing. It is a mere matter of craftsmanship. ~ William Morris, #NFDB
560:The judgment of music, like the inspiration for it, must come slow and measured, if it comes with truth. ~ Lillian Hellman, #NFDB
561:Tiny personality changes here and there inspire growth in us constantly. Inspiration leads to enthusiasm. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
562:Whatever it was that I felt was the weak link in my previous project gave me inspiration for the next one. ~ Joni Mitchell, #NFDB
563:I believe in intuition and inspiration...at times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
564:I really do believe that God is love, one of deep affection and grace and forgiveness and inspiration. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
565:I think Oprah who is the height of aspiration and inspiration recognizes something in me that is germane. ~ Rosie O Donnell, #NFDB
566:May the trees continue to thrive and flourish on this earth, filling our hearts with joy and inspiration. ~ Stephanie Kaza, #NFDB
567:My inspiration came from the land, ... and, of course, from Paul Klee . . . and the poetics of his paintings. ~ Renzo Piano, #NFDB
568:We provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other's pearl making. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch, #NFDB
569:A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling. ~ Caspar David Friedrich, #NFDB
570:He who does not arrive at the Intuition of these Truths by means of Ecstasy knows only the name of Inspiration. ~ Al-Ghazali, #NFDB
571:I get so much inspiration from people working hard at music, even though it's nothing to do with what I do. ~ Tom Scharpling, #NFDB
572:I know it's simple, but my main inspiration is just my love of music. I know that sounds overly naive. But it's true. ~ Moby, #NFDB
573:It is all about technique. The great mistake of this century is to put inspiration and creativity first. ~ Vivienne Westwood, #NFDB
574:Marry Ann; and at the end of a week you'll find no more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
575:My inspiration comes from that and so I wrote ‘Killing Jesus,’ because I think I was directed to write that. ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
576:Poem in other words may or may not result from inspiration but must (in reader and author alike) produce it-- ~ Franz Wright, #NFDB
577:The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
578:The many sounds of Memphis shaped my early musical career and continue to be an inspiration to this day. ~ Justin Timberlake, #NFDB
579:When the present is full of gloom, the past becomes haven of refuge that provides relief and inspiration. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
580:And in that half-asleep state, moments before waking, when inspiration meets the practicality of day, I knew. ~ Erec Stebbins, #NFDB
581:Genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else. It is that you are ready to receive the inspiration. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
582:IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
583:Inspiration
and information
without personal
application
will never amount to
transformation. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,#NFDB
584:Reaching a 'creative' state of mind thru positive action is considered preferable to waiting for 'inspiration'. ~ Minor White, #NFDB
585:That's an inspiration for all women to see a woman thinking and moving differently from those around her. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, #NFDB
586:The willingness to listen and act on your inspiration is imperative if you're going to live the life you desire. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
587:What is indispensable to inspiration? ...sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
588:You are most certainly the inspiration for all of today's rock 'n' roll guitarists. Your music is timeless. ~ Smokey Robinson, #NFDB
589:You never know where your influences are going to come from, or where you're going to find your inspiration. ~ Page McConnell, #NFDB
590:Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence. ~ Jean Cocteau, #NFDB
591:Ballot papers do not define leaders. Leadership is defined by conviction, vision, passion and inspiration. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
592:Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
593:Enthusiasm, if fueled by inspiration and perseverance, travels with passion and its destination is excellence. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
594:I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines. Nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation. ~ Harry Shearer, #NFDB
595:I can't really write unless I'm full of inspiration. And even then I can't write unless I have some alone time. ~ Brett Dennen, #NFDB
596:I got into science because I thought that, with inspiration and hard work, I could figure out how life works. ~ Randy Schekman, #NFDB
597:Love isn't just a feeling. It's an art. And like any art, it takes not only inspiration but also a lot of work. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
598:Sitting around waiting for inspiration is for amateurs. If you’re a professional, you show up every day at work. ~ Mara Altman, #NFDB
599:The inspiration of a noble cause enables men to do things they did not dream themselves capable of before ~ Joshua Chamberlain, #NFDB
600:Che Guevara's life is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom. We will always honor his memory. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
601:How can one deduce the cause of "Hamlet" or "Saint Matthew's Passion"? What is the cause of inspiration? ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
602:I take inspiration from everything around me, also relationships and friends. And the inside of my crazy head. ~ Ellie Goulding, #NFDB
603:Love isn’t just a feeling; it’s an art. And like any art, it takes not only inspiration, but also a lot of work. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
604:Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration. ~ Ralph Keyes, #NFDB
605:The technical afterthoughts of a truly great one can appear to be divine inspiration to the lesser artist. When ~ Josh Waitzkin, #NFDB
606:Be a perpetual beginner. Always be inspired. It is that attitude of inspiration and belief that creates energy. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
607:Don't just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
...
Action--> Inspiration --> Motivation ~ Mark Manson,#NFDB
608:(Hamilton’s lifelong habit of talking sotto voce while pacing lent him an air of either inspiration or madness.) A ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
609:One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled. ~ Charles de Lint, #NFDB
610:People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
611:Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
612:The beloved is already in our being, as thirst and "otherness." Being is eroticism. Inspiration is that strange ~ Octavio Paz, #NFDB
613:The knack is to find your own inspiration, and take it on a journey to create work that is personal and revealing. ~ Martin Parr, #NFDB
614:When I was much younger and still competing in gymnastics, I could rarely find inspiration outside of the sport. ~ Nastia Liukin, #NFDB
615:As if the night has been created for the writers and as if the silence of it is the very inspiration itself! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
616:If you can't find your inspiration by walking around the block one time, go around two times-but never three. ~ Robert Motherwell, #NFDB
617:I've loved George Michael for as long as I can remember. He was an absolute inspiration. Always ahead of his time. ~ Gary Lineker, #NFDB
618:Nature is my main source of inspiration - I will never stop taking hints from what I call 'the greatest artist' ~ Roberto Cavalli, #NFDB
619:...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
620:There can never be enough written about heroic acts and heroic people, we all need the inspiration they give us. ~ Carey V Azzara, #NFDB
621:We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
-Sir Winston Churchill ~ Aleatha Romig,#NFDB
622:I am working for the victims of Africa, they are African like me. That's where I get my inspiration and my pride. ~ Fatou Bensouda, #NFDB
623:I believe in divine inspiration and things like that and I really relish a good, attentive, participating audience. ~ John Mahoney, #NFDB
624:I don't have a career, I have a life. Don't think of a career, think about your passion and look for inspiration. ~ Philippe Petit, #NFDB
625:Inez? I'm sorry I bit you," he said with sincere regret, and then inspiration made him add, "Bastien made me do it. ~ Lynsay Sands, #NFDB
626:Leadership is providing inspiration and vision, then developing and empowering others to achieve this vision. ~ Marshall Goldsmith, #NFDB
627:From the great Jack London: “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” What inspires you? ~ Gayle Lynds, #NFDB
628:Inspiration is external and motivation is internal. It is up to me to provide the switch and you to flip it on! ~ Tricia Cunningham, #NFDB
629:I would love to meet Kelly Clarkson and if I get the chance to I would tell her thank you so much for the inspiration. ~ Thia Megia, #NFDB
630:Japanese movie "Be With You" served as inspiration for "Love Box." I couldn't fill up the album with just my experiences. ~ Seungri, #NFDB
631:Jinnah is a constant source of inspiration for all those who are fighting against racial and group discrimination. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
632:Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning. ~ Igor Stravinsky, #NFDB
633:Let my inspiration flow, in token lines suggesting rhythm, that will not forsake me, till my tale is told and done. ~ Robert Hunter, #NFDB
634:My inspiration is life. My family, my friends, travelling, books, music, love, food, fashion. What inspires you? ~ Leighton Meester, #NFDB
635:We Virginians do not go to the storied shrines of the past to do worship but rather to gain inspiration. ~ Douglas Southall Freeman, #NFDB
636:before. He wore a look of stern sadness and infinite pity. "As I expected," he murmured, with that hissing inspiration ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
637:Forget the idea that inspiration will come to you like a flash of lightning. It's much more about hard graft. ~ Mark Anthony Turnage, #NFDB
638:For women, I take inspiration from strong women with good aesthetics and integrity, and a little tomboy influence. ~ Johan Lindeberg, #NFDB
639:I believe strongly in inspiration, inspiration literally meaning full of the spirit. I do believe that it comes to you. ~ Jimmy Webb, #NFDB
640:It is strange to talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
641:You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing that while not writing. ~ Josip Novakovich, #NFDB
642:Any job very well done that has been carried out by a person who is fully dedicated is always a source of inspiration. ~ Carlos Ghosn, #NFDB
643:I am constantly drawing inspiration from everything I see-the places I travel, the people I know and the movies I see. ~ Ralph Lauren, #NFDB
644:I have real admiration for chefs who can maintain an edge and find new inspiration in their cooking after many years. ~ Daniel Boulud, #NFDB
645:My family has been my biggest inspiration - they are true role models in my life and career and they always will be. ~ Hrithik Roshan, #NFDB
646:As much as I make my music for me, I make it for the people who rock with me and follow me. They're the inspiration behind it. ~ Torae, #NFDB
647:But in a fit of inspiration he’d fashioned a balaclava from a Tesco carrier bag – the handles tied beneath his chin. ~ Stuart MacBride, #NFDB
648:Commitment and creativity cannot be captured and handcuffed. Inspiration cannot be jailed. The heart cannot be contained. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
649:Every experience of love, bliss, belonging, inspiration, and insight provides a stepping stone back to your true self. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
650:Every idea occurs while you are working. If you are sitting around waiting for inspiration, you could sit there forever. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
651:If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works most of the time. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
652:Keeping stationary drains your brain, but moving around shows you new things, new inspiration, and keeps the blood moving. ~ Daphne Oz, #NFDB
653:Not only does the democratic state of mind stem from the inspiration of the Gospel, but it cannot exist without it. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
654:Whether you are running a business, an industry, or a nation - what is needed are insight, integrity, and inspiration. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
655:Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration? ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
656:You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing than while not writing... ~ Josip Novakovich, #NFDB
657:Dreams are not without meaning wherever they may come from — from fantasy, from the elements, or from another inspiration. ~ Paracelsus, #NFDB
658:Even a dream as inspiration doesn't mean anything unless you then find that it's sparked an actual story with a plot. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
659:If the inspiration is genuine and it's coming from the right place, that's what I like and want to be a part of. ~ Joseph Gordon Levitt, #NFDB
660:Inspiration can't be performed. It's an audience response to authenticity, courage, selfless work, and genuine wisdom. ~ Chris Anderson, #NFDB
661:I still weave dreams, finding inspiration wherever I can and looking for romance in the real, not the digital, world ~ Grace Coddington, #NFDB
662:My heart lies in music and acting, however, my inspiration comes from adrenaline rush I get from sports... and life. ~ Alexander Ludwig, #NFDB
663:Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration. ~ Tori Amos, #NFDB
664:The writers secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience. ~ Orhan Pamuk, #NFDB
665:Impressionism means taking inspiration directly from nature, trusting your senses rather than what you think you know. ~ Michael McClure, #NFDB
666:I take a lot of inspiration from the people I work with, and having many collaborators keeps me challenged and inspired. ~ Nick Blaemire, #NFDB
667:Onscreen, babies and animals are my inspiration. They're so alive and there and not messed up in the head the way I am. ~ Cate Blanchett, #NFDB
668:Prayer and faith are bound together. Faith is the inspiration for prayer, and prayer is the expression of that faith. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
669:Schopenhauer’s saying, that “a man can do as he will, but not will as he will,” has been an inspiration to me since my ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
670:We should take heart from our own experience and performance. In a cynical world we have become an inspiration to many. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
671:What is true genius, if not the perfect balance of inspiration and perseverence? CHEULGU KIM Ancient Truths for a New Age ~ C S Friedman, #NFDB
672:When Lady Gaga says I am her inspiration, you reach kids between 12 and 18. Now I am like a brand - jeans, Coca-Cola. ~ Marina Abramovic, #NFDB
673:Life is three hours journey; childhood, adulthood & old-hood; filled with inspiration, perspiration and desperation. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
674:Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
675:My father is an absolute inspiration and such a gifted filmmaker. I have learned and continue to learn so much from him. ~ Hrithik Roshan, #NFDB
676:The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
677:Why is it that we understand that playing the cello will require work but we relegate writing to the magic of inspiration? ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
678:After Iron Man came out, Favreau began talking up Musk’s role as the inspiration for Downey’s interpretation of Tony Stark. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
679:As long as we have Netfix, Turner Classic Movies, Amazon, YouTube, and bookstores, there is no excuse ever to lack inspiration. ~ Tim Gunn, #NFDB
680:Exercise often moves us straight from stagnation to inspiration, from problem to solution, from self-pity to self-respect. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
681:I feel like a slave, and in a way like an artist, because I need to get inspiration everyday, from everything and everyone. ~ Sonia Rykiel, #NFDB
682:It is the first line that gives the inspiration and then it's like riding a bull. Either you just stick with it, or you don't. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
683:It's not until I hear songs that I've done, that I realize how much of an inspiration music from the '60s and '70s has been. ~ Alicia Keys, #NFDB
684:I've always been a fan of music. I would say I'm a fan of late '90s to early 2000s rap. That's where I get all my inspiration from. ~ Tyga, #NFDB
685:Most of the writers I like just intimidate and humble me but in that there's a good deal of inspiration to be had as well. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
686:Sometimes you have to search for inspiration with characters, and other times, they just drop out of the sky and arrive. ~ Dylan McDermott, #NFDB
687:The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
688:After that, Thomas had told her, he felt that Allander drew his inspiration from some source beyond Thomas’s comprehension. ~ Gregg Hurwitz, #NFDB
689:Anything difficult you do, anything thought to be impossible you achieved is always a great inspiration for the world! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
690:Don't search for inspiration when you have a task to do; Just start your work and you will see that it will soon find you. ~ Charles Ghigna, #NFDB
691:I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments, gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration, and faith. ~ Brene Brown, #NFDB
692:If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, boy, choose learning. It works more of the time. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
693:Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods. ~ Elaine de Kooning, #NFDB
694:Inspiration is there all the time. For everyone whose mind is not clouded over with thoughts whether they realize it or not. ~ Agnes Martin, #NFDB
695:I work my inspiration til I find a spark of life in it
I draw on it
I siphon it
I earn my multi-hyphenate. ~ Lin Manuel Miranda,#NFDB
696:My mom has always been a huge inspiration. She was a single mom raising two kids in New York. Now that is full-on all the time. ~ Kim Raver, #NFDB
697:My wife has been my greatest earthly inspiration. She excels in eloquence, the poetry of words, empathy and graciousness. ~ George W Romney, #NFDB
698:One should use great care to select an employer who will be an inspiration, and who is, himself, intelligent and successful ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
699:The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind one of the surest proofs of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
700:The grandeur of the acts of men are measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a God within. ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
701:The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs. ~ Plato, #NFDB
702:The path to inspiration starts upon the trails we've known; each stumbling block is not a rock, but just a stepping stone. ~ Charles Ghigna, #NFDB
703:Where do you get inspiration for your books?
I tell myself I can't have another cup of coffee till I thought of an idea. ~ Douglas Adams,#NFDB
704:Any novel of importance has a purpose. If only the "purpose" be large enough, and not at outs with the passional inspiration. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
705:Everybody needs some inspiration, Everybody needs some motivation, mix it up with some imagination, and use your natural gifts. ~ Ray Davies, #NFDB
706:His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
707:I can speak for most songwriters - those breakup love songs are so easy to write, as far as the inspiration and all that. ~ Lucinda Williams, #NFDB
708:If you’re constantly open to inspiration, it will come to you. The worst thing a man can do is pressure himself into an idea. ~ Thom Browne, #NFDB
709:I learned how to capture lightness of spirit while photographing you. You were my muse, my inspiration for all those shots. ~ Jill Santopolo, #NFDB
710:Inspiration: A peculiar effect of divine flatulence emitted by the Holy Spirit which hisses into the ears of a few chosen of God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
711:Inspiration is allowed to do whatever it wants to, in fact, and it is never obliged to justify its motives to any of us. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
712:integral yoga aims at “opening the springs of creative inspiration hidden in the human psyche” and the “active participation ~ Mark Stephens, #NFDB
713:the unknown is not our enemy. If we make room for it instead of shunning it, the unknown can bring inspiration and originality. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
714:Wherever I go, may I learn and love as much as I can in every moment. Wherever I am, may I be open to inspiration and truth. ~ Gay Hendricks, #NFDB
715:I can never be Michael Jackson or do what he did, but he is definitely a good inspiration: I want to give the kids that feeling. ~ The Weeknd, #NFDB
716:I don't know anything about inspiration because I don't know what inspiration is; I've heard about it, but I never saw it. ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
717:If something inspires you, try and hold on to that inspiration because if you lose that inspiration, what do you have left? ~ Charlie Benante, #NFDB
718:Inspiration can come from anywhere. But I do love actors. I wish I could drop a bunch of names, but there are just too many. ~ Kevin Corrigan, #NFDB
719:Inspiration is for amateurs,’ the artist Chuck Close once memorably observed. ‘The rest of us just show up and get to work. ~ Oliver Burkeman, #NFDB
720:It does wonders for my own psyche to turn envy into inspiration. No matter how successful we become, we're never above that. ~ Hillman Curtis, #NFDB
721:Over endless crystalline waves travelled the sparkling scent of triumph, of limitless possibilities, of strength and inspiration. ~ Jan Moran, #NFDB
722:Science sometimes falls short when trying to fathom the depths of our essence - and our inspiration comes from that essence. ~ Lance Secretan, #NFDB
723:Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration. ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
724:I don't really want people looking to me for inspiration. I just want to be a sign along the way that points toward Heaven. ~ Bethany Hamilton, #NFDB
725:I draw creative juices from everywhere. I'm so visually inspired. I would watch old movies a lot to get inspiration for clothes. ~ Cindy Meehl, #NFDB
726:Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
727:'m the inspiration for picking it up off the floor after it fell off the stool and figuring out a way to make it still work. ~ Trisha Yearwood, #NFDB
728:Personally speaking there's only so long you can go from film to film to film. There's an inspiration an actor gets from the stage. ~ Jude Law, #NFDB
729:All great enterprises are about logistics. Not genius or inspiration or flights of imagination, skill or cunning, but logistics. ~ Tom McCarthy, #NFDB
730:Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
731:Einstein once said, “I believe in intuition and inspiration…. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. ~ Janet Lansbury, #NFDB
732:I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
733:Sometimes I'm in the studio, sometimes I'm not. It's about delivering the music to the artist, but it's also about the inspiration. ~ DJ Khaled, #NFDB
734:We speak of ‘inspiration,’ and the word should be taken literally. There really is inspiration and expiration of Being. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
735:Behind every story of inspiration is a story of training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You must be willing to pay the price, ~ T R Ragan, #NFDB
736:I don't have a mentor in the strict definition. I take as much advice and inspiration as I can from the people I am close to. ~ Natalie Massenet, #NFDB
737:inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time ~ Brenda Ueland, #NFDB
738:It is never wrong to inspire, for Jesus Christ became an inspiration to many who had been given the tag of condemnation ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
739:New York is a glorious place for clearing your head and finding inspiration. Every time you step outside, you live a dozen lives. ~ Lindsey Kelk, #NFDB
740:Thank you Prince for all of your inspiration and sharing your increadible talents with the world. You will be incredibly missed. ~ Lindsay Lohan, #NFDB
741:When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, we literally make way for inspiration and 'good, orderly direction' to enter. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
742:writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
743:a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does and not from what he imagines himself doing. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
744:I never really paid much attention to music that was going on in the UK. I was always looking towards the States for my inspiration. ~ Albert Lee, #NFDB
745:In every painting a whole is mysteriously enclosed, a whole life of tortures, doubts, of hours of enthusiasm and inspiration. ~ Wassily Kandinsky, #NFDB
746:Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time. ~ Brenda Ueland, #NFDB
747:Oh, Spring! I want to go out and feel you and get inspiration. My old things seem dead. I want fresh contacts, more vital searching. ~ Emily Carr, #NFDB
748:Relaxation is the prerequisite for that inner expansion that allows a person to express the source of inspiration and joy within. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
749:Social justice has always been a part of my inspiration. For example, when the Vietnam War was going on, I wrote a song about that. ~ Jimmy Cliff, #NFDB
750:That's all a man can hope for during his lifetime - to set an example - and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history. ~ William McKinley, #NFDB
751:Even now I often ask myself: perhaps love produces a feeling of inspiration similar to that experienced by an artist or a poet? ~ Chingiz Aitmatov, #NFDB
752:Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter. ~ Brad Henry, #NFDB
753:I get a lot of inspiration from Japanese manga, especially shoujo which tends to have elaborate and fantastical adventure plots. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
754:Inspiration has to be natural for me, not so considered, I am not saying that is right or wrong, it's simply what works for me. ~ Justin Broadrick, #NFDB
755:I think I'm a born storyteller. Inspiration is all around me. I can read a newspaper article and come up with an idea for a book. ~ Jackie Collins, #NFDB
756:I think Radiohead and Outkast are the two modern popular groups who you can actually say that about. We take inspiration from everywhere. ~ Eyedea, #NFDB
757:Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong. ~ Ella Fitzgerald, #NFDB
758:Out of routine comes inspiration. That's the idea, anyway. To grasp what's exceptional, you first have to know what's routine. ~ Michael Kimmelman, #NFDB
759:Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration. AT ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
760:Whether ideas like this are inspiration or insomnia, I don’t know,” he writes in his journal. “I do things by sixth sense.” Patton ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
761:Why is this generation looking to aging icons like John Lennon and Bob Dylan for inspiration? Why not raising up their own icons? ~ Tucker Carlson, #NFDB
762:An indispensable anthology of hope and inspiration. Put away your Prozac, and pick up The Impossible Will Take a Little While. ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
763:Difference between motivation and inspiration - Motivation is external and short lived. Inspiration is internal and lifelong ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
764:Everything can draw inspiration: a vintage cloth, a book, a street-when I was in Japan, I was deeply inspired by Japanese pharmacies. ~ Renzo Rosso, #NFDB
765:Fiction can never be superior to truth; the latter is a source of inspiration to us, richer and more fruitful than the former. The ~ Ann Weisgarber, #NFDB
766:I get inspiration, a lot of times, from very commonplace things that just strike a chord and develop themselves in the subconscious. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
767:I get my inspiration from books, pictures, art. I might find a vintage scarf and say, "I think this should be our color palette." ~ Jessica Simpson, #NFDB
768:My inspiration is coming more and more from the way I feel and the gratitude I feel. The older you get the more humility you have. ~ Louie Anderson, #NFDB
769:One girl was the inspiration for me singing 'Cry Me A River' on 'The X Factor.' That was my payback to her because she was unfaithful. ~ Liam Payne, #NFDB
770:There are artists, true performers that have come before me who have been a big inspiration to me. I hope I do the same for others. ~ Janet Jackson, #NFDB
771:With the way I like to work, I always have to draw [inspiration] from somewhere, and the best place to take from is your own life. ~ Michael Eklund, #NFDB
772:...writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
773:America, and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world. ~ Stephen Harper, #NFDB
774:For me, songwriting is something that I have to do ritually. I don't just wait for inspiration; I try to write a little bit every day. ~ Sean Lennon, #NFDB
775:God didn't come down and tell me; I had to find it out through many years of experience. The work came first; the inspiration came later. ~ Ida Rolf, #NFDB
776:God would first, by this inspiration of his Spirit, have wrought in our hearts that holy love without which none can enter into glory. ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
777:If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration. ~ Janet Fitch, #NFDB
778:Our author warns us that inspiration, enthusiasm, earnestness, even honesty about what one believes is no guarantee of truth. ~ Ben Witherington III, #NFDB
779:The inspiration for my illusions comes from many places. Most often they come from my dreams, or an everyday occurrence in life. ~ David Copperfield, #NFDB
780:The Long Goodbye' is one book I like to read over and over again, and it was an enormous inspiration for 'All The Wrong Questions'. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
781:The problem with epiphanies is the next day they feel like they happened to someone else. Inspiration will get you nowhere in life. ~ Scott Hutchins, #NFDB
782:A human being is a vessel that God has built for himself and filled with his inspiration so that his works are perfected in it. ~ Hildegard of Bingen, #NFDB
783:And what great writers actually pass on is not so much their words, but they hand on their breath at their moments of inspiration. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
784:I have to keep inspiration close to me. I'm always on YouTube looking at the greats or anything that can give me the spark that I need. ~ Earl Thomas, #NFDB
785:Inspiration thing is important, to teach the kids that JFK is not an airport, RFK's not a stadium, Martin Luther King ain't a street ~ Kinky Friedman, #NFDB
786:Inspiration without intellect is useless and dangerous; and the poet will be able to perform few wonders, when he is astonished by wonders. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
787:New York was the inspiration for The Heart of Rock and Roll and Workin for a Livin. There are a lot of songs in the streets of New York. ~ Huey Lewis, #NFDB
788:That's where you have to look for your inspiration. Don't separate the rest of your life - who you are, what you love - from your work. ~ Frank Gehry, #NFDB
789:The excitement of creating is followed by desperate self-doubt. Courage and inspiration compete with discouragement and despair. ~ Diana Pavlac Glyer, #NFDB
790:The way I cook it's more like mad science. There's a lot of inspiration and dramatic failure with the occasional gorgeous success. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
791:The writer cannot abandon himself simply to inspiration, and feign innocence vis a vis language, because language is never innocent. ~ Juan Goytisolo, #NFDB
792:Tis light translateth night; 'tis inspiration Expounds experience; 'tis the west explains The east; 'tis time unfolds Eternity. ~ Philip James Bailey, #NFDB
793:When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration. ~ Van Morrison, #NFDB
794:Artists know that diligence counts as much, if not more, as inspiration; in art, as in politics, patience counts as much as revolution. ~ Tony Kushner, #NFDB
795:I am magnetically drawn to images, whether they’re paintings, photographs, film, or video. They are all lodestones of inspiration to me. ~ Twyla Tharp, #NFDB
796:I feel like there's a young generation of producers who are taking inspiration from dubstep but trying to push it in other directions. ~ Kieran Hebden, #NFDB
797:I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
798:In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle. ~ Sri Yukteswar Giri, #NFDB
799:Inspiration comes only to those who seek it with humility toward their own achievements and reverence toward the achievements of God. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
800:Inspiration leads to invention. Tenacity is the breeding ground for inspiration. There can be no invention in the absence of tenacity. ~ Momofuku Ando, #NFDB
801:I think we are living in pretty scary times and people are looking for inspiration and are also more open to the spiritual possibilities. ~ Eva Mendes, #NFDB
802:It is my faith and conviction that the Constitution came not alone of the brain and purpose of man, but of the inspiration of God. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
803:Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
804:There are riches enough for all of us, no matter our abilities or circumstances. It is only the inspiration that requires summoning. ~ Robert D Kaplan, #NFDB
805:There is no necessity for a technique or formula for meditation. Inner feeling, or inner knowing, is the silent voice of inspiration. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
806:To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible? ~ Queen Elizabeth II, #NFDB
807:Where do you get the inspiration for your books?
I tell myself I can't have another cup of coffee till I've thought of an idea. ~ Douglas Adams,#NFDB
808:Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks. ~ Johann Gottfried Herder, #NFDB
809:Accordingly the Northern races of Europe found their inspiration in the Bible; and the enthusiasm for it has not yet quite faded away. ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
810:Creativity in any form stimulates creativity in every form, music, arts, literature... I find inspiration in anything. It's all the same. ~ Marc Jacobs, #NFDB
811:from the beginning—building a routine is all about persistence and consistency. Don’t wait for inspiration; create a framework for it. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
812:I am going to take one day a month to visit non-technology companies to learn and get inspiration from other industries and organizations. ~ Clara Shih, #NFDB
813:If you don’t want your followers to give up in disgust, your inspiration needs to be in the service of goals that are at least attainable. ~ Kevin Drum, #NFDB
814:I have found that hunger improves my sense of smell and gives inspiration a clean passage. In any case my nerves would not allow me to eat. ~ Eli Brown, #NFDB
815:I take the outline from a real person as inspiration, but the in-line is totally made up. Which is why I usually invent imaginary names. ~ Dana Spiotta, #NFDB
816:Old unhealthy thoughts can block off inspiration and motivation. Dropping them releases a strong flow of power through the mind. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
817:That's being yourself. Chasing wherever inspiration goes, even if it's radically different from the thing that people know you as. ~ Lin Manuel Miranda, #NFDB
818:The greatest source of inspiration for me has been my wife; she is the love of my life, my best friend, and my most ardent supporter. ~ Sebastian Roche, #NFDB
819:All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
820:I don't find inspiration by just sitting down with a guitar anymore. I lost that. I started being so interested in other kinds of music. ~ Justin Vernon, #NFDB
821:In Roslyn, Pennsylvania, we started our real-life family circus. They provided the inspiration for my cartoons. I provided the perspiration. ~ Bil Keane, #NFDB
822:My friends are my inspiration, and all of them are true friends that support me. On a daily basis, I know that I have my friends to rely on. ~ Reem Acra, #NFDB
823:When Nike says, just do it, that's a message of empowerment. Why aren't the rest of us speaking to young people in a voice of inspiration? ~ Naomi Klein, #NFDB
824:Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it? ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
825:I am still attracted to stories about people who are considered to be on the outside of society. I still seek inspiration from those stories. ~ Mira Nair, #NFDB
826:I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
827:In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
828:Inspiration can come from anywhere - an image, a comment, something that's happened to me or someone I know. It's hard to know exactly. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
829:My fear, as an American, is that our own actions are going to contribute to an inspiration for terrorists to want to harm us or kill us. ~ Jeremy Scahill, #NFDB
830:Writing is done by someone. It is not, like some mythical goddess, a skill that springs forth, full grown from the genes of inspiration. ~ Leonard Bishop, #NFDB
831:A lot of my inspiration comes from the movies and TV, watching other people doing things that I one day hope to have the opportunity to do. ~ Robbie Amell, #NFDB
832:Be around people who can keep your energy and inspiration high. While you can make progress alone, it's so much easier when you have support. ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
833:I never work with one inspiration in mind. I like to take things from everywhere and piece it together. It's never a theme or a trick. ~ Narciso Rodriguez, #NFDB
834:In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds, the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
835:I've always been aggressive and an underdog, and my dad was worried that I would always be that: constantly seeking inspiration from negativity. ~ Doseone, #NFDB
836:My mother taught me about the power of inspiration and courage, and she did it with a strength and a passion that I wish could be bottled. ~ Carly Fiorina, #NFDB
837:The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on it divine inspiration. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
838:The flame of inspiration needs to be encouraged. Put a glass around that small candle and protect it from discouragement or ridicule. ~ Mary Higgins Clark, #NFDB
839:The nature of poetry is to soar on the wings of the inspiration to the highest intensities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I, #NFDB
840:The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the AEolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
841:The worst question really comes from the attitude of the asker and it usually comes in the form of "What was your inspiration for the film?" ~ Jay Duplass, #NFDB
842:This is what I always tell my filmmakers-you have to do tons of research, because you don't know where the inspiration is going come from. ~ John Lasseter, #NFDB
843:...whenever there is inspiration...and enthusiasm...there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
844:Every time you express a complaint about how difficult and tiresome it is to be creative, inspiration takes another step away from you, ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
845:For me, the main inspiration to write a story or novel is the voice of its central character, or the narrative voice of the story itself. ~ Scott Bradfield, #NFDB
846:I have three kids. I was blessed with very supportive parents and some close friends, and the people closest to me are my inspiration. ~ Christopher Gorham, #NFDB
847:I love to experiment with fashion. A lot of my inspiration comes from my mom. She is fearless with fashion! I love colors and anything daring. ~ Neon Hitch, #NFDB
848:In an artistic sense, he wasn’t inspiration for a song; he was the silence in between the words. A gorgeous note followed by a poignant pause. ~ Lane Hayes, #NFDB
849:inspiration is no guarantee of truth, any more than a profound religious experience is a guarantee that it comes from a good source. ~ Ben Witherington III, #NFDB
850:Inspiration more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of an artist is to listen to the work. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
851:My holy of holies in the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love and absolute freedom-freedom from force and falsehood. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
852:Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Parnassus, Preface (1874), #NFDB
853:There's nothing like a little fear or hunger to motivate one's inspiration. To take that away from a young artist can offer quite a disservice. ~ Ken Danby, #NFDB
854:ventilator cycles from expiration to inspiration as well as whether the patient is able to breathe spontaneously ( Table 57–5 and Figure 57–1 ) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
855:As far as current inspiration, I'm listenting to a lot of flamenco, because the techniques used for flamenco can be adapted to playing bass. ~ Billy Sheehan, #NFDB
856:Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this [live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth]. ~ Plato, #NFDB
857:Not by wisdom do they [poets] make what they compose, but by a gift of nature and an inspiration similar to that of the diviners and the oracles. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
858:Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
859:Rise above your circumstances, change the world one person at a time starting with you, and be the inspiration you’ve been searching for. ~ Lindsey Stirling, #NFDB
860:The writing life is punctuated by words, sentences, paragraph & pages. And by spurts of elation, inspiration, rejection & despair. ~ Mark Rubinstein, #NFDB
861:Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Earliest reference to the madness or divine inspiration of poets. ~ Democritus, #NFDB
862:As I grow older part of my emotional survival plan must be to actively seek inspiration instead of passively waiting for it to find me. ~ Bebe Moore Campbell, #NFDB
863:I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
864:I am very interested in human-interest stories emerging from modern India. I get my inspiration and daily dose by reading the Hindustan Times. ~ Vikas Swarup, #NFDB
865:Inspiration is a tool and a trap. If you're going to be inspired by anyone, be inspired by people who have been exactly where you are now. ~ Douglas Copeland, #NFDB
866:I think that's the important thing - being aware of that inspiration and being able to interpret it into something that's meaningful for you. ~ Thomas Keller, #NFDB
867:Not in government or force, not in slavery or war, but in the creative, and thereby spiritual, power of freedom, shall our inspiration be found. ~ F A Harper, #NFDB
868:Telling stories, making them come alive is what makes me come alive. So I try to live a life where sharing this vital search of inspiration is a must. ~ Soko, #NFDB
869:The amazing heroic women in labor, they are the truest inspiration, and when they push their babies into the light... I am astonished every time. ~ Robin Lim, #NFDB
870:To “seek inspiration” has always seemed to me a ridiculous and absurd fancy: inspiration cannot be sought out; it must find the poet. For ~ Alexander Pushkin, #NFDB
871:I don't believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. Some of the time you know you're cooking, and the rest of the time, you just do it. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
872:Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long. ~ Leonard Bernstein, #NFDB
873:I worked on a number of projects that were used by millions of people and that also served as inspiration to what we now call "crowd-sourcing." ~ Luis von Ahn, #NFDB
874:My reason and inspiration to lose weight and stay fit is my youngest son, Anant, who is fighting obesity. I would like to be an example for him. ~ Nita Ambani, #NFDB
875:The only character I ever remember actually creating in a flash of inspiration was George Liquor. God planted that in my head in an instant. ~ John Kricfalusi, #NFDB
876:Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to
moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written
in it? ~ Richard Dawkins,#NFDB
877:People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
878:The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration. ~ Paul Brunton, #NFDB
879:The thoughts of great men are the common heritage of humanity and let our countrymen receive inspiration and guidance from these thoughts. ~ Bhagat Puran Singh, #NFDB
880:The world turned out to be a whole lot bigger than my dad. The relationship could be changed to make this an inspiration to a certain situation. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
881:Well, when it comes to inspiration, I come from San Diego originally - it's an un-media-hyped, sleepy sort of town, big on beach culture you know? ~ Gary Jules, #NFDB
882:A writer should not wait for inspiration; it won't come. Inspiration is fueled by the act of writing, by the sweat of the effort, by the work. ~ Mark Rubinstein, #NFDB
883:I feel like the blues is actually some kind of documentary of the past and the present - and something to give people inspiration for the future. ~ Willie Dixon, #NFDB
884:I find a ton of inspiration from the artists that I'm writing with, that I'm playing shows with, and that I'm sitting down and having coffee with. ~ Chuck Ragan, #NFDB
885:I guess my inspiration is this - I like to pretend that every story that ever happened to 'Batman' was real and is part of this one guy's life. ~ Grant Morrison, #NFDB
886:I've always looked to other women for inspiration and kicks. When a woman stands up and does her thing, it never ceases to excite and inspire me. ~ Neneh Cherry, #NFDB
887:I've been very fortunate to work for great people - so even when the political process gets ugly, I find inspiration in the people around me. ~ Stephanie Cutter, #NFDB
888:No U.S. president can “fix” education, no law can systematize inspiration, and no amount of funding, policy or resources can structure passion. ~ Oliver DeMille, #NFDB
889:Religion has at one time or another been thought to fill four main roles in human life: explanation, exhortation, consolation and inspiration. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
890:We must be steady enough in ourselves, to be open and to let the winds of life blow through us, to be our breath, our inspiration . . . ~ Mary Caroline Richards, #NFDB
891:We need to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation. We have lost our way. And it begins with inspiration. It begins with leadership. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
892:We're taught to be ashamed of confusion, anger, fear and sadness, and to me they're of equal value to happiness, excitement and inspiration. ~ Alanis Morissette, #NFDB
893:Devotion is about you. Maybe you use another object as inspiration, but you change your quality; you walk more joyfully, gently upon this planet. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
894:I definitely take inspiration from runway trends but also throughout my travels, I see editorials all over in all of the different publications. ~ Olivia Palermo, #NFDB
895:Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work, #NFDB
896:Nothing like an orange and olive green-striped couch sitting on orange carpet and surrounded by dark wood paneling to get the inspiration rolling. ~ Erynn Mangum, #NFDB
897:The art of land warfare is an art of genius, of inspiration. On the sea nothing is genius or inspiration; everything is positive or empiric. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
898:These two “speech communities,” as it were, are Hurston’s great sources of inspiration not only in her novels but also in her autobiography. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB
899:We all listened to a lot of recorded music, especially American jazz, modern jazz, and that's where our studies were and our inspiration came from. ~ Evan Parker, #NFDB
900:Believing in the cause creates your conviction. Believing in your vision fuels your inspiration. Believing in your people builds your motivation. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
901:Cobden was the greatest statesman and prophet of the century. His speeches are an inspiration. A man whose disciple I am willing to confess I am. ~ Richard Cobden, #NFDB
902:How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their inspiration ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
903:I have a lot of appetites and try to revel in almost everything, so inspiration can even come from a well-appointed submarine sandwich, you know? ~ Patrick Fabian, #NFDB
904:In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.” Because ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
905:Inspiration is one thing and you can't control it, but hard work is what keeps the ship moving. Good luck means, work hard. Keep up the good work. ~ Kevin Eubanks, #NFDB
906:Looking for a cricket quote for inspiration? Or, maybe a cricket quote to make you laugh? Check out this collection of the best cricket quotations. ~ John Arlott, #NFDB
907:May all people here find inspiration and strength to build a future of reconciliation, justice and peace for all the children of this beloved land. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
908:Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. ~ Hunter S Thompson, #NFDB
909:My father really taught me that you really develop the habit of writing and you sit down at the same time every day, you don't wait for inspiration. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
910:The amateur only works when inspiration strikes. The pro sits down every day and puts in steady work. The key is steady. Not irregular or extreme. ~ Darius Foroux, #NFDB
911:There are really three parts to the creative process. First there is inspiration, then there is the execution, and finally there is the release. ~ Eddie Van Halen, #NFDB
912:To what end, he wondered, had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a man with feelings of inspiration one day and insignificance the next? ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
913:Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses. ~ Amy Tan, #NFDB
914:You can be moved by an animated film and not by a live action film. There could be great inspiration in and humanity in that animated story. ~ Geoffrey S Fletcher, #NFDB
915:You know, sometimes I get moments of inspiration when I'm writing something and then the task seems so daunting that it just kind of scares me away. ~ Adam Pascal, #NFDB
916:Any alternative culture that inspires a lot of passion and inspiration is also in danger of being set in its ways, almost from the moment it's born. ~ Jello Biafra, #NFDB
917:Everybody needs inspiration Everbody needs a song. A beautiful melody, When the night's so long. Cause there is no guarantee, That this life is easy. ~ Miley Cyrus, #NFDB
918:I loved her; I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to do her some injury, to force her to keep some memory of me. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
919:Misinterpretation leads me to inspiration and creativity because I think my brain is trying to figure out some information that I'm confused about. ~ Michel Gondry, #NFDB
920:Observing life, living through it. As you experience life some events call upon you to suffer through them and that's what brings inspiration. ~ Andrey Zvyagintsev, #NFDB
921:When you build a city near no mountains and no ocean, you get materialism and traditional religion. People have too much time and lack inspiration. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
922:Wikipedia is forcing people to accept the stone-cold bummer that knowledge is produced and constructed by argument rather than by divine inspiration. ~ Clay Shirky, #NFDB
923:British comedy - which has been a big inspiration to me for many years - is very different to Australian comedy and different again to American comedy. ~ Jason Gann, #NFDB
924:I hate everything approaching temperamental inspiration,'sacred fire'and all those attributes of genius which serve only as cloaks for untidy minds. ~ Piet Mondrian, #NFDB
925:Inspiration may come from many places but motivation - the love of life, daily drive and the will to thrive - that must come from you from within ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru, #NFDB
926:I really think the Bible is a baseline where all stories come from. All of the zillion stories in the Bible provide inspiration for everything. ~ Emmanuelle Chriqui, #NFDB
927:I've been lucky enough that I can gather all sorts of experiences and find inspiration by traveling around and by spending time with people I admire. ~ Bonnie Raitt, #NFDB
928:I would never be innovative enough to "blaze my own trail," I'm just trying to be interesting. So I don't look to anyone else as far as inspiration. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
929:Lock yourself up in your room or go out in the woods where you an be alone. When you are alone the universe talks to you in flashes of inspiration. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
930:My parents are my inspiration. Believe it or not, they're my personal coaches. After every game I still call them and get their take on how I played. ~ Vince Carter, #NFDB
931:When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy. ~ Margaret Fuller, #NFDB
932:You can start something, do it, and believe that that's what you're doing, but then the inspiration comes and it's like, "Nope, this is what it is." ~ Lenny Kravitz, #NFDB
933:You can wait forever for the muse to sit on your shoulder, but most of the time you know what has to be done and inspiration is not going to help you. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
934:At 35, I'm thinking, Oh, I don't have any of that initial inspiration that I had before, all that angst. I always thought I would burn out very quickly. ~ Ariel Pink, #NFDB
935:Cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be Revelation. ~ Eileen Caddy, #NFDB
936:Die Liebe ist nicht nur ein Gefühl; sie ist eine Kunst. Und wie bei jeder Kunst reicht nicht allein die Inspiration, es ist auch viel Arbeit vonnöten. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
937:Dreams that are realized become an inspiration for new endeavor. It is in the power to make the dream good that we find the hope of this world. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
938:I have worked enough and I am happy to be touring the country speaking about living with MS to give people inspiration and motivation to help themselves. ~ Teri Garr, #NFDB
939:I kind of got inspired by [William] Wordsworth and [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge - I went the old traditional way of finding inspiration, I guess. ~ Eliot Paulina Sumner, #NFDB
940:Inspiration is being motivated by a person or idea. Motivation is being inspired by an object. When people are inspired, they don't need motivation. ~ Thomas Leonard, #NFDB
941:learned decades ago that if I ignore my inspired calling, my life is bumpy. When I decide to follow my inspiration, life is smooth. I prefer the latter. ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
942:Love is above wisdom, just as the Virgin is above the snake. For her everything is inspiration. She doesn’t bother judging what is good and what evil. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
943:Never ask for approval in your work. Life is your own, inspiration is your own, you create alone, and the results are your own - and that's good enough. ~ David Luiz, #NFDB
944:Diana Ross is a big inspiration to all of us. We all grew up watching everything about her - her mike placement, her grace, her style and her class. ~ Beyonce Knowles, #NFDB
945:I suppose that’s all a man can hope for during his lifetime,’ nodded Horus, ‘to set an example, and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history ~ Graham McNeill, #NFDB
946:Over the years, I've traveled to many places for inspiration and research, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina, California, and Hawaii. ~ Jennifer Chiaverini, #NFDB
947:You know, there's such a very thin dividing line between inspiration and obsession that sometimes it's very hard to decide which side we're really on. ~ Barnes Wallis, #NFDB
948:I know that they [Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Florence Griffith-Joyner and even Wilma Rudolph] have paved the way and they have been a source of inspiration. ~ Allyson Felix, #NFDB
949:It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
950:The writing of You've Got a Friend was one of the most incredible experiences because it was mostly inspiration. It just came to me almost as we hear it. ~ Carole King, #NFDB
951:We live and we learn through awen (Welsh word, meaning flowing or poetic inspiration, more on that later), through inspiration from nature. You ~ Joanna van der Hoeven, #NFDB
952:Be inspiration. Be true. Be adventurous. We only have one life to live,and to honor my father, I plan to live each day as if it's my final chapter. ~ Brittainy C Cherry, #NFDB
953:Don't loaf around and wait for inspiration. Light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it, you will get something that looks remarkably like it. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
954:Espero la cosecha de mi sueño sirva como inspiracion a todos!” he enthused via Twitter. “I hope the harvest of my dream serves as inspiration to all! ~ Gustavo Arellano, #NFDB
955:I have made the Bhagwad Gita as the main source of my inspiration and guide for the purpose of scientific investigations and formation of my theories. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
956:I just hope that our fans are people who are inspired by music, and just use our music as a background or inspiration for whatever it is they do. ~ Maynard James Keenan, #NFDB
957:it can be beneficial to disconnect from certain sources of information and streams of content so that you can cultivate a more curated flow of inspiration. ~ Todd Henry, #NFDB
958:There are five stages of meditation, each one leading gradually into the next: concentration, meditation, contemplation, illumination, and inspiration. ~ Benjamin Creme, #NFDB
959:What to do when inspiration doesn't come; be careful not to spook, get the wind up, force things into position. You must wait around until the idea comes. ~ John Huston, #NFDB
960:Your brand is the value and magic that's not in your bottle, body or box. It's the inspiration, incense, intent and impact before, within and beyond. ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru, #NFDB
961:All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original. ~ Samuel R Delany, #NFDB
962:As they say, real legends never die. Tupac is huge; he's an inspiration. Arguably, he's probably the biggest, most analyzed and loved artist of all time. ~ Annie Ilonzeh, #NFDB
963:I'd seen the current stage production and the 1975 production of Chicago. I liked them both very much, but I didn't use them necessarily as inspiration. ~ Colleen Atwood, #NFDB
964:If it comes out sounding like Dixieland jazz or classical or punk or rock or even slightly metal, that's because that's where I'm going to find inspiration. ~ Ben Harper, #NFDB
965:If somebody asked me about my inspiration I would say that it's not the peopleand it's not the things, it's travel and experiencing different environments. ~ Marc Newson, #NFDB
966:Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it's not liable to ever happen. More often than not, work is salvation. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
967:It is a shortsighted priesthood leader who doesn't see the value in calling upon the sisters to share the understanding and inspiration they possess. ~ M Russell Ballard, #NFDB
968:I was born with the devil in me,' [Holmes] wrote. 'I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
969:All of us need to be in touch with a mysterious, tantalizing source of inspiration that teases our sense of wonder and goads us on to life’s next adventure. ~ Rob Brezsny, #NFDB
970:Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
971:Fashion takes its inspiration from society and everyday life, which is the same for everyone, and this is perhaps the reason why certain elements recur. ~ Stefano Gabbana, #NFDB
972:I am interested in the idea of 'taste.' And by 'taste,' I mean opinion, inspiration and the craft of creating a personality through fabric and design. ~ Olivier Theyskens, #NFDB
973:I don't take much stock of detectives in novels - chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them. That's just inspiration: not business. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
974:I kind of took inspiration from my time in Paris. That was kind of the real time when I discovered European fashion. It's stuck with me since University. ~ Olivia Palermo, #NFDB
975:I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
976:Look back on past accomplishments and victories and draw inspiration from them. Stay focused on encouraging thoughts—thoughts of hope and thoughts of faith. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
977:One ends up relying on pure musical inspiration, and failing that, the music won't lead to anything good, or it will alienate all but the most die-hard fans. ~ Boris Vian, #NFDB
978:The most beautiful thing in the world is, precisely, the conjunction of learning and inspiration. Oh, the passion for research and the joy of discovery! ~ Wanda Landowska, #NFDB
979:Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet. ~ Martin Scorsese, #NFDB
980:Frankly, neither president [Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter] was an inspiring figure; so, maybe their lack of inspiration by the founders shouldn't surprise us. ~ Paul Kengor, #NFDB
981:Leadership is an art expressed by the demonstration of characters worthy of immitation, emulation and inspiration. It is neither a title nor a postion. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
982:Of course, I had a paradigm of a certain city in my head when I wrote these stories, a city that inspired my imagination, but it was only inspiration. ~ Said Sayrafiezadeh, #NFDB
983:The spirit of Edison, not Einstein, still governed their image of the scientist. Perspiration, not inspiration. Mathematics was unfathomable and unreliable. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
984:Al Gore, you've been a real inspiration. But a lot of other people who preach the global warming gospel aren't out to save the world. They're out to run it. ~ Jesse Ventura, #NFDB
985:I’m using Mao as my inspiration. “Cast away illusions. Prepare for struggle.” I’m back in business, baby. You don’t know you’re stuck until you get moving. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
986:Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it. ~ Joan Armatrading, #NFDB
987:Inspiration is hogwash. My work comes directly out of my loves and hates. Muses don't whisper in my ear, and ideas don't flow over my body like a cool rain. ~ James Victore, #NFDB
988:Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. ~ Aaron Copland, #NFDB
989:My inner guidance is there for me to call on anytime I need or want extra clarity, wisdom, knowledge, support, creative inspiration, love, or companionship. ~ Shakti Gawain, #NFDB
990:My mum told me to have patience. It's about realising that when things aren't going the way you want them to, or you don't have inspiration, it will come. ~ Vanessa Paradis, #NFDB
991:To me the question of inspiration is an exercise in hindsight. The truth is inspiration is mysterious at the time. I don't think it's ever a rational process. ~ Julia Leigh, #NFDB
992:Whatever the drawbacks and failures I am convinced that in years to come humanity will look back to Soviet achievements as a source of profound inspiration ~ Ronnie Kasrils, #NFDB
993:But when it comes to creativity, the unknown is not our enemy. If we make room for it instead of shunning it, the unknown can bring inspiration and originality. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
994:In Latin America in general, and Cuba in particular, poets have been the inspiration behind struggles for independence, struggles for freedom of all sorts. ~ Margarita Engle, #NFDB
995:Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression. ~ Arthur Erickson, #NFDB
996:It takes courage to live your dream and bounce back up when you have been knocked down. Your dreams give you the energy and inspiration to live a great life. ~ Justin Langer, #NFDB
997:This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities, and duties that you aren’t receptive to inspiration. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
998:When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back! ~ Judy Collins, #NFDB
999:Any writer who waits for inspiration to strike will never finish a book. Inspiration is all very well but it will never replace sheer dogged determination. ~ Barbara Michaels, #NFDB
1000:A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1001:Before you live, love. Before you expire, inspire. Let your love be an inspiration to someone to also love another and together we build up a happy world! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1002:Inspiration, in its rich variety, must be present in any discussion about Africa. We need role models - they are essential to the advancement of our society. ~ Richard Attias, #NFDB
1003:I really want to work on a record of mine and I'm just getting inspiration from different sources like one of my favourite bands, Led Zeppelin, and Radiohead. ~ Chris Johnson, #NFDB
1004:It was a very emotional dinner... Everyone shared personal stories about her and gave her words of encouragement and inspiration. Everyone tried to remain positive. ~ Lil Kim, #NFDB
1005:Problems created by ignorance are always solved by information. The best information is an inspiration that brings an end to the belief “it’s impossible”! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1006:Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them. ~ Win Butler, #NFDB
1007:The idea itself is the ten percent inspiration; the hammering it into a viable, successful, memorable story is the ninety percent perspiration that follows. ~ Chris Claremont, #NFDB
1008:The Seeker, The Search, The Sacred by Guy Finley is a very wise book, filled with inspiration to help you dramatically improve your life. I highly recommend it. ~ Daniel Amen, #NFDB
1009:True inspiration overrides all fears. When you are inspired, you enter a trance state and can accomplish things that you may never have felt capable of doing. ~ Bernie Siegel, #NFDB
1010:You always draw inspiration from your family or your parents if they've proven to be inspirational. My mother is someone who's always been inspirational to me. ~ Dustin Clare, #NFDB
1011:He grows daily more capable of following any inspiration without technical effort, and also of letting inspiration come to him through meticulous observation. ~ Eugen Herrigel, #NFDB
1012:I am a big admirer of Sachin and his personality. He is a source of inspiration for the country and just looking at his photographs gives a lot of positive vibes. ~ A R Rahman, #NFDB
1013:I get a lot of inspiration from research in mythology and folklore, I find that stories people told each other thousands of years ago are still relevant now. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1014:I had come to revere the Italian designers, just like the kid in Breaking Away reveres the Italian bikers,” recalled Jobs, “so it was an amazing inspiration. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1015:Inspiration without action is really entertainment. So while something can be very inspiring it is not transformative until you actually do something with it. ~ Mary Morrissey, #NFDB
1016:It blurred the lines between lust and inspiration in a way we’ve always intuitively known they should be blurred, because desire underlies every act of creation. ~ Leah Raeder, #NFDB
1017:Kids can have great passion and great ability but if you have the facilities for your particular sport that can give you the inspiration to become a sportsman. ~ David Beckham, #NFDB
1018:One of the tutors let it slip when we were talking about the difference between revelation, inspiration, creativity and madness. How can we know which is which? ~ James Runcie, #NFDB
1019:That's the beauty of song writing. You never know when inspiration will come or how it will hit, you just gotta kinda grasp a hold of it and make sense of it somehow. ~ Kimbra, #NFDB
1020:Books may be written in all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration may enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river in the middle of a town. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1021:Genius is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent perspiration.” To make great ideas a reality, we must act, experiment, fail, adapt, and learn on a daily basis. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
1022:I don't believe in inspiration that arrives like a bolt from the blue ... It seems to me that the more motivated I am by what I film, the more objectively I film. ~ Agnes Varda, #NFDB
1023:I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1024:Roosevelt's humor was broad, his manner friendly. Of wit there was little; of philosophy, none. What did he possess? Intuition, inspiration, love of adventure. ~ Emanuel Celler, #NFDB
1025:The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the outlaw, the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
1026:The Psalms of the Bible, because of positive biblical warrant, their inherent excellence, and their divine inspiration, are to be sung in the public worship of God, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1027:We cannot underestimate the power of the different art forms, and the correspondences between them, which are an unending source of inspiration and enrichment. ~ Helene Grimaud, #NFDB
1028:When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty. And when Steven Pressfield was writing The War of Art, she had her hands all over him. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1029:Any motion whatsoever beats inertia, because inspiration will always be drawn to motion. So wave your arms around. Make something. Do something. Do anything. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1030:As a teenager I was crazy about David Bowie. He was a huge inspiration for me. I dressed a little bit crazily in school and dyed my hair every colour under the sun. ~ Clive Owen, #NFDB
1031:convinced is the biblical doctrine on the great subject of the inspiration of Scripture. In making this confession and presenting this commentary, we hope to dispel ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1032:I do work too hard sometimes, but my mom is such an inspiration. She tells me to 'chill out' and not take things so seriously. She will say: 'Go and have a massage.' ~ Josh Peck, #NFDB
1033:I'm horrible at concepts. My life is random and my inspiration is random. But it's all written in a very specific time frame that says a lot about my life at the time. ~ Oh Land, #NFDB
1034:I'm tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact. ~ Phil Plait, #NFDB
1035:Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play. ~ Jean Cocteau, #NFDB
1036:I used to want to be fully observational, but I'm just not that kind of writer. My process always changes depending on how, when, and where inspiration stiles me. ~ Brett Dennen, #NFDB
1037:My love of R&B and hip-hop has influenced my life not even as a musician, but generally in terms of growing up and looking to America as an inspiration. ~ James Vincent McMorrow, #NFDB
1038:Rosa Parks' courage, determination, and tenacity continue to be an inspiration to all those committed to non-violent protest and change nearly half a century later. ~ Bob Filner, #NFDB
1039:The beauty of inspiration for me is that you can't predict when it's coming. I like that it just pops up out of nowhere. You just have to be open to its arrival. ~ Scout Niblett, #NFDB
1040:But if you don't understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
1041:Everybody needs inspiration
Everbody needs a song.
A beautiful melody,
When the night's so long.
Cause there is no guarantee,
That this life is easy. ~ Miley Cyrus,#NFDB
1042:I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn't expecting perfection any more, just hoping for an occasional inspiration. ~ Neil Diamond, #NFDB
1043:I viddied that thinking is for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use like inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
1044:Prayer is the atmosphere of revelation, in the strict and central sense of that word. It is the climate in which God's manifestation bursts open into inspiration. ~ Peter Forsyth, #NFDB
1045:What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
1046:When I stopped trying to write songs, that's when I'm able to begin writing songs. You have to just use your life, and the things around you for your inspiration. ~ Lenny Kravitz, #NFDB
1047:Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
1048:Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. As a result, a genius is often a talented person who has simply done all of his homework. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
1049:Humankind has always had access to Shadow -- dreams, nightmares, legends, inspiration, Humanity taps into Shadow every day. And when we die, we pass into Twilight. ~ Erin Kellison, #NFDB
1050:I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact. ~ Philip Plait, #NFDB
1051:It's important to balance the drudgery with inspiration. It's a nightmare if you are just existing in the present project - you don't feel a sense of your own growth. ~ Peter Wolf, #NFDB
1052:Maybe it has something to do with being a reporter for a long time that I don't look to newspapers and television and so forth for inspiration most of the time. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
1053:The key to writing is concentration, not inspiration. It requires deep attention to your characters, to the world they live in, and to the story you have to tell. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1054:The observation of nature is part of an artist's life, it enlarges his form [and] knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration. ~ Henry Moore, #NFDB
1055:The pictures in the library book had provided the idea, hunger and darkness had given me the inspiration, and I'd set out myself on this long, amazing journey. ~ William Kamkwamba, #NFDB
1056:The really inspired person is never inspired: he's always inspired: he doesn't go looking for inspiration and he doesn't get up in arms about artistic technique. ~ Raymond Queneau, #NFDB
1057:The stories of past courage... can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
1058:You need more than your own wisdom in rearing [your children]. You need the help of the Lord. Pray for that help and follow the inspiration which you receive. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
1059:Action that comes from the feeling of inspiration is action that will produce good results, for you are allowing the Laws of Attraction of the Universe to carry you. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1060:Because silence is the birthplace of happiness. Silence is where we get our bursts of inspiration, our tender feelings of compassion and empathy, our sense of love. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1061:Concentration is inspiration. You must be completely overtaken by your work and your subject. Only then do all your influences and experience come up to the surface. ~ Cesar Chavez, #NFDB
1062:For me, books have been a life-long resource-to learning, laughter, solace, excitement, inspiration. At your library, the world awaits you, free for the asking. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1063:Inspiration and confidence and conviction and craft and knowledge are not what make writing possible. It's exactly the other way around. Writing makes them possible. ~ Stephen Koch, #NFDB
1064:People often ask where I get my inspiration from, and I always say I have no good answer because, well, inspiration comes from everywhere: people, places, memories. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
1065:Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life? ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1066:This was all the inspiration it took: We put 100 percent of ourselves in the lines. We personally take care of everything, from fulfillment to answering the mail. ~ Connie Sellecca, #NFDB
1067:Wherever you go, go with inspiration and aspiration. Whatever you do, do with love and concern. Whomever you see, see with purity's beauty And responsibility's glory. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1068:You didn't change me. You simply showed me the way to be. So thank you, Neva Shilling, for living your faith in the face of hardship. You are a true inspiration. ~ Kim Vogel Sawyer, #NFDB
1069:All fiction is based on some form of reality—otherwise we would never have the inspiration or knowledge to dream up the realistic situations we portray with our words. ~ Rene Folsom, #NFDB
1070:As one creative (Chris Wilkins?) remarked to a planner:“You and I both drink from the same well of inspiration. The difference is that you get to piss in it first. ~ Rory Sutherland, #NFDB
1071:At each stage...entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. ~ Poul Anderson, #NFDB
1072:Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
1073:Dreams, though, are just one kind of inspiration - no more or less special than something in a newspaper article or from the world around you sparking inspiration. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
1074:Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label 'inspiration'. ~ Norman Lindsay, #NFDB
1075:Go and work on that dream as long as it takes to achieve something worthwhile. And then humbly come and share what you’ve learned. Inspiration can’t be performed. ~ Chris J Anderson, #NFDB
1076:I like to go to the clubs. As long as the environment permits, and it's not too knuckleheadish, I'm there, I go to the club. Because that's where you get inspiration from. ~ Lil Jon, #NFDB
1077:Is there any progress in horticulture? If not, it is dead, uninspiring. We cannot live in the past good as it is; we must draw our inspiration from the future. ~ Liberty Hyde Bailey, #NFDB
1078:It's absurd for anybody to look around and hear the acts and artists who cite us as an inspiration, and then tell me that we're not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. ~ Paul Stanley, #NFDB
1079:I would like to be called an inspiration to people, not a role model - because I make mistakes like everybody else. When I'm offstage, I'm just like everybody else. ~ Britney Spears, #NFDB
1080:Only by pairing knowledge with inspiration will art evolve. Without these conditions any musician will remain a flawed artist, if one may speak of an artist at all. ~ Hector Berlioz, #NFDB
1081:Preaching for life change requires far less information and more application. Less explanation and more inspiration. Less first century and more twenty-first century. ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
1082:Since I was eight years old, I went to Trinity. I mean, I listened to Reverend Wright since I was a kid and I always heard him preach sermons of love and inspiration. ~ Will Ferrell, #NFDB
1083:The inspiration was this great group of 40 or 50 relatives, sometimes for Thanksgiving or Passover or something and my brothers would just go up and make them laugh. ~ Billy Crystal, #NFDB
1084:WE ALL HAVE ideas. Ideas are immortal. They last forever. What doesn’t last forever is inspiration. Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1085:Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it's easy to understand the inspiration for its anger as well as its impatience. ~ Eric Alterman, #NFDB
1086:inspiration is receiving a message from the Divine and then acting on it. Intention works and brings results; inspiration works and brings miracles. Which do you prefer? ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
1087:I think it is important to stay open to the world around you, so that you are constantly in a state of growth and evolution, which can only happen through inspiration. ~ Cara Santana, #NFDB
1088:I've always disliked words like inspiration. Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an engineering problem. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
1089:My wife and family, to say the least, are the center of my life; they are my grounding. I don't want to sound schmaltzy, but they are my inspiration and you name it. ~ Bill de Blasio, #NFDB
1090:Nobody until very recently would have thought that their husband was supposed to be their best friend, confidante, intellectual soul mate, co-parent, inspiration. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1091:Poets should be law-givers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code, and the day's work. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1092:You're always trying to find new stuff and new inspiration. If you don't really push and you don't try something that feels exciting, then it's not worth doing. ~ Hamilton Leithauser, #NFDB
1093:A landscape clean and crisp in form and colour, rich in inspiration is all that an artist could wish for, begging to be used, and full of inherent possibilities. ~ Franklin Carmichael, #NFDB
1094:I believe we need to attract a new generation of the best and brightest to public service and I believe that government can be a source of inspiration, not degradation. ~ Andrew Cuomo, #NFDB
1095:In English, the sounds and melodies I created were an inspiration to me, and words came to me as I explored the sounds, and from there I was able expand on the meaning. ~ Utada Hikaru, #NFDB
1096:like a squirrel hoarding chestnuts, we should store up our moments of happiness and triumph so that in a crisis we can draw upon these memories for help and inspiration. ~ Tim Sanders, #NFDB
1097:One of the most modern pretenders to inspiration is the Book of Mormon. I could not blame you should you laugh outright while I read aloud a page from that farrago. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1098:Ultimately, I think writing is a mixture of craft, inspiration, and being incredibly, courageously explorative with yourself - and being brutally honest, too. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman, #NFDB
1099:Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. ~ Jack Layton, #NFDB
1100:I confess, that very different from you, I do find sometimes scientific inspiration in mysticism ... but this is counterbalanced by an immediate sense for mathematics. ~ Wolfgang Pauli, #NFDB
1101:I'd like to think that the notion of inspiration will transcend cultural things that are going on. There's something classic about this movie that I'm hoping reaches kids. ~ Rob Morrow, #NFDB
1102:If we are to continue to have the freedoms that came of the inspiration of the Almighty to our Founding Fathers, we must return to the God who is their true Author. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
1103:I would never claim divine inspiration, but Christ has proven Himself true so often, I believe I can say with all confidence that He has greater things just ahead for you. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1104:The job of the parent is not to impose his or her will on the child, but to get the child to listen to his or her own inner voice. Inspiration, not just prescription. ~ Shmuley Boteach, #NFDB
1105:When I say I get inspiration from my real life, I think of my real life as extending about 300 meters radius around me. So what I see in that area is what inspires me. ~ Hayao Miyazaki, #NFDB
1106:All the truly great stand-ups say, "I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I'm doing my work." To me, in the end, the surest thing is work. ~ Patton Oswalt, #NFDB
1107:A part of my kind of design and inspiration ethos is that I carry around a leather notebook and I sketch in it, doodle in it, write notes in it and I put pictures in it. ~ John Varvatos, #NFDB
1108:At the end of the day—or, really, from the beginning—building a routine is all about persistence and consistency. Don’t wait for inspiration; create a framework for it. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
1109:Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it." - Jack London ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1110:Here’s what the moment of inspiration did. It assembled these cultural meanings in this particular package for this particular group at this particular cultural moment. ~ Debbie Millman, #NFDB
1111:Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1112:I regard Abraham as my ancestor. Some of the greatest inspiration I have got has come from what we call the Old Testament prophets and what Jews would say "our prophets." ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
1113:My inspiration's coming from nature, I love nature and all the expressions, I love art, I love expressions of beauty. It's part of my life, being engaged in the moment. ~ Rickson Gracie, #NFDB
1114:people tend to condense the origin stories of their best ideas into tidy narratives, forgetting the messy, convoluted routes to inspiration that they actually followed. ~ Steven Johnson, #NFDB
1115:What made him stand out, to some as an inspiration, to others as an oddity, and to others as an offense, was that he did not hope that God heard his prayers, but knew it. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1116:What shall I do, singer and first-born, in a world where the deepest black is grey, and inspiration is kept in a thermos? with all this immensity in a measured world? ~ Marina Tsvetaeva, #NFDB
1117:An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
1118:My creative juices only flow freely in the dark. My mind is like a mushroom: if you shine the light of the one true church on it, well then, inspiration may not spore at all. ~ Jess Kidd, #NFDB
1119:My inspiration comes from the message Duke Ellington gave - you are unique, be yourself, put out that thing that is you, then use your work ethic and produce great music. ~ Kenny Burrell, #NFDB
1120:The mind gathers its grain in all fields, storing it against a time of need, then suddenly it bursts into awareness, which men call inspiration or second sight or a gift. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
1121:The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form. ~ Carol Ann Duffy, #NFDB
1122:There is a voice in the Universe urging us to remember our purpose for being on this great Earth. This is the voice of inspiration, which is within each and every one of us. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
1123:When you stay “in-form” (in your body and the material world), you’re rewarded with information. But move beyond form (transform to spirit) and you’ll receive inspiration. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1124:All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1125:Back in the day, before the worldwide web of temptation, there used to be that thing called inspiration. Then the spirit was perpetually displaced by trivia and vanity search. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1126:I have wonderful band mates that make music that I'm forced to listen to for hours on end until I come up with verses, and that in itself is an inspiration - they're awesome. ~ Nikki Jean, #NFDB
1127:I listen to old Idaho, and there are moments of true inspiration there. I think the music is speaking on its own a little bit more. It's evolving, it's not losing its heart. ~ Jeff Martin, #NFDB
1128:I'm an audience member first. My inspiration is still based on hunger. Often, when people try to tell me "nobody wants that story; I'm like bullshit because I want it." ~ Victoria Mahoney, #NFDB
1129:I travel a lot, and being in different countries and a part of cultures, that's just such a huge inspiration for music, and one way or another, you get influenced. ~ Donavon Frankenreiter, #NFDB
1130:My inspiration always comes from different places. Sometimes it's a piece of music or being in nature or seeing a film or reading a magazine. I find inspiration everywhere. ~ Marie Forleo, #NFDB
1131:Genius does not seem to derive any great support from syllogisms. Its carriage is free; its manner has a touch of inspiration. We see it come, but we never see it walk. ~ Joseph de Maistre, #NFDB
1132:I can't stress how much my daughter is an inspiration to stay sober. When I come home and she opens those big blue eyes at me, it's the most amazing feeling I could ever feel. ~ A J McLean, #NFDB
1133:Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything. I go into my office every day that I'm in Brighton and work. Whether I feel like it or not is irrelevant. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
1134:Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognized for some time. ~ Samuel Butler, #NFDB
1135:Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. AARON COPLAND All ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
1136:Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, #NFDB
1137:So she was to be savagely heartbroken and then poisoned by one of their cook’s noxious herbal brews in the space of a few hours? Dante would find inspiration in this day. ~ Julie Anne Long, #NFDB
1138:There is a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride, beyond mere skill, almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art - which is art. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1139:To give herself a measure of credible autonomy, she had decided to invent a husband. Then, in a subsequent flash of inspiration, she had just as quickly killed him off. ~ Tracy Anne Warren, #NFDB
1140:Working inspires inspiration. Keep working. If you succeed, keep working. If you fail, keep working. If you are interested, keep working. If you are bored, keep working. ~ Michael Crichton, #NFDB
1141:You know later in life I was inspired to sing and that would've been Aretha, Chaka Khan, Mariah - the typical divas were the inspiration. I've always enjoyed all those singers. ~ Anastacia, #NFDB
1142:During the most painful times of my treatment, Rocky was an inspiration because he reminded me: It's not how hard you it. It's how hard you get hit...and keep moving forward. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
1143:If you want to write, start writing now in your own home town and write every day as hard as you can; do not think you have to go to Paris and wait for inspiration to strike. ~ Thomas Wolfe, #NFDB
1144:Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. The least of man's original emanation is better than the best of borrowed thought. ~ Albert Pinkham Ryder, #NFDB
1145:[I want to be] Something that really touched you - and as far as image and change goes, I just really want a lot of people to respect my music and treat me... [as] inspiration. ~ ASAP Rocky, #NFDB
1146:Just the example Delaware State University graduates set by the way they live their lives, should be an inspiration to other high school students to go to Delaware State. ~ Michael N Castle, #NFDB
1147:Mind’s voices mimicked inspiration’s stress,
Its ictus of infallibility,
Its speed and lightning heaven-leap of the Gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#NFDB
1148:Our misery. This suppression of our rational mind is the source of inspiration. Suffering takes us out of our rational self-control and lets the divine channel through us. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1149:People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two. ~ Sara Sheridan, #NFDB
1150:Perpetual inspiration from the Holy Spirit is as necessary to a life of goodness, holiness, and happiness as the perpetual respiration of air is necessary to animal life. It ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1151:Surrounding yourself with creative, imaginative people is a good strategy for success whether you're an entrepreneur seeking innovation or an artist looking for inspiration. ~ Harvey Mackay, #NFDB
1152:There are so many young talented actors today whose work I respect and admire - Ryan Gosling is probably primary among them. I take inspiration from so many amazing actors. ~ Daniel Sunjata, #NFDB
1153:We conventionally associate dream inspiration with the creative arts, but the canon of scientific breakthroughs contains many revolutionary ideas that originated in dreams. ~ Steven Johnson, #NFDB
1154:Adidas is a very personal inspiration to me. It has enriched my creative life. It's an exchange between different cultures, different ideas, and most of all, it is teamwork. ~ Yohji Yamamoto, #NFDB
1155:A team's inspiration comes from individuals' aspirations. The combined quality of individual passions makes a team's impact to excel. When you are in a team, play a part! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1156:Do not work self into a state of over-anxiety at the changes that will be found, or attempt to use up the strength and vitality ... Forget not the sources of thine inspiration. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
1157:I honestly just love being in my studio working on music. That's all the inspiration I need. And I don't write with an end result in mind, I just write for the simple love of writing. ~ Moby, #NFDB
1158:There's a whole range of sources of inspiration for the drawings and stories. They come from dreams, hallucinations, pop songs, or other things I see in the world around me. ~ Ryan McGinness, #NFDB
1159:What is knowledge?
It is inspiration. It is a call to battle. It is a reminder that there is nothing which cannot be achieved. It is humanity in all its forms, in my heart. ~ Claire North,#NFDB
1160:Wherever you go, go with inspiration and aspiration.
Whatever you do, do with love and concern.
Whomever you see, see with purity's beauty
And responsibility's glory. ~ Sri Chinmoy,#NFDB
1161:In the earlier days I did most of the song writing by myself, and I got to a place in my life where I felt it was necessary to go outside my box and get some outside inspiration. ~ Jason Wade, #NFDB
1162:It is sometimes pretended that the League of Nations was an American inspiration forced and foisted upon Europe against its froward inclination. The facts are different. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1163:It's not a collection! You know nothing of inspiration. Of beauty. From the hands and heart flow eternal truth and beauty.
And from both spew ugliness and betrayal. ~ Erica Spindler,#NFDB
1164:I've never been a big fan of subtle art. I like art that gets deep into my head and starts my brain spinning with new ideas and inspiration and my whole body is full of energy. ~ Jello Biafra, #NFDB
1165:People need what they think of as a poem to be read at their bar mitzvah, their wedding, a funeral, whatever. And people are looking for hope and inspiration. I understand that. ~ Joan Larkin, #NFDB
1166:Sometimes I had to force the overpainting of three corners almost without any feeling for shape, almost without inspiration, only to find my way back, to get out of this hell. ~ Arnulf Rainer, #NFDB
1167:Music breeds its own inspiration. You can only do it by doing it. You may not feel like it, but you push yourself. It's a work process. Or just improvise. Something will come. ~ Burt Bacharach, #NFDB
1168:We shall find the abstract equivalent for all forms & elements in the universe, then we shall combine them in sculptural constructions according to the mood of our inspiration. ~ Giacomo Balla, #NFDB
1169:All inspiration comes from a higher power. The body is a shell. The creative spot is from God - You hear voices, everybody does. When you get older, you refer to it as intuition. ~ Eddie Murphy, #NFDB
1170:A saying from the Hindu scriptures is: “In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1171:Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. ~ Paul Hawken, #NFDB
1172:I really started hanging out with Steve [Murphy, the inspiration for Holbrook's character] a lot. I got educated that way. It was crash course. You learn as quickly as possible. ~ Boyd Holbrook, #NFDB
1173:I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better when you can get it. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1174:There's a group of 12 oak trees on my property in California that I call 'my disciples.' Their branches form a canopy over the ground, and I sit underneath them for inspiration. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1175:We can take further inspiration from the example of CEO Bill Gates, who regularly (and famously) takes a regular week off from his daily duties at Microsoft simply to think and read ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1176:You can’t just wait around for inspiration to strike—you have to aggressively pursue it by asking probing questions and mining your environment for the raw materials of brilliance. ~ Todd Henry, #NFDB
1177:Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally. ~ Cat Stevens, #NFDB
1178:I really think about the times that I've been through with my husband and all the stuff that we've been through together, and I think to those moments for inspiration for the role. ~ Deborah Cox, #NFDB
1179:Motivation is when you get hold of an idea and carry it through to its conclusion, inspiration is the reverse. An idea gets hold of you and carries you where you are intended to go. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
1180:Our father taught us how to play. He's also our biggest inspiration and he opened our ears to a lot of older music, like Richie Valens, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, and Fats Domino. ~ Henry Garza, #NFDB
1181:What came from him, if emanate is not the better word, was a force that bore inspiration, spread confidence in the dignity of life, and even gave sometimes a presence to silence. ~ Beryl Markham, #NFDB
1182:When you learn how to control your mind, you open a door to the vastness of creativity, inspiration, and brilliance that is just behind the clutter of those untamed thoughts. Through ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
1183:Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
1184:Inspiration is a message-in-a-bo ttle from the distant shore, a window into the other world, a tap of the muse's finger, the grace of the gods. It comes when you least expect it. ~ Phil Cousineau, #NFDB
1185:It's a funny thing with the inspiration thing. There's always loads of music around that I absolutely love and films going back to when I started making film music in the mid-80's. ~ Steven Price, #NFDB
1186:I want to be remembered as a person who felt there was no limitation to what the human body and mind can do and be the inspiration to lead people to do things they never hoped to do. ~ Carl Lewis, #NFDB
1187:What I'm looking for in my career, you know? You're looking for those lightning bolts of inspiration where someone says something that sparks an idea or suggests something strange. ~ Drew Goddard, #NFDB
1188:I'd like to provide information, inspiration, and access to whatever goods and services are needed to make it super easy for everyone to change their lifestyle to a sustainable one. ~ Daryl Hannah, #NFDB
1189:inspiration will always try its best to work with you—but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1190:Mary Kom is a woman who stood up alone in a male-dominated field and fought for her rights and what she believed in. Her story is an inspiration for every young person out there. ~ Priyanka Chopra, #NFDB
1191:Milton Berle is an inspiration to every young person that wants to get into show business. Hard work, perseverance, and discipline: all the things you need...when you have no talent. ~ Dean Martin, #NFDB
1192:What I'm interested in doing after I get out of the presidency is to make sure that I'm working with that next generation so that they understand you can't just rely on inspiration. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1193:When we find inspiration, we need to take action for ourselves and for our communities. Even if it means making a hard choice, or cutting out something and leaving it in your past. ~ Aron Ralston, #NFDB
1194:I think we're an inspiration to young people, to know they can be honest and not run away from influences that are not jazz. We're definitely breeding a new wave of jazz, for real. ~ Robert Glasper, #NFDB
1195:MY INSPIRATION FOR THIS LIMITED EDITION DESIGN WAS BASED ON THE LEGACY OF HENNESSY AS A BRAND. TO ME, HENNESSY HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT QUALITY, AUTHENTICITY, TRADITION, AND ELEGANCE. ~ Shepard Fairey, #NFDB
1196:There is no finer company than inspiration, but its very goodness will leave you heartsick when it goes. So do not waste time asking it to wipe its feet. Embrace it at the treshold. ~ Benjamin Wood, #NFDB
1197:What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God's name, leave uncredited. At your peril do not try believing that! ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
1198:Actually, I feel music becoming more and more important. It's a big source of inspiration. With what's going on in the world, we feel almost desperate. Music also brings you peace. ~ Cecilia Bartoli, #NFDB
1199:Getting comments like that from even the young people at the shows who probably aren't singers, the girls who just tell me that I'm an inspiration to them, for one reason or another. ~ Wanda Jackson, #NFDB
1200:I'm married to an artist. I get a lot of inspiration from art, from the lighting in art, from the compositions in art, from the textures, and all of that. I'm always playing with it. ~ Fred Schepisi, #NFDB
1201:Oregon is an inspiration. Whether you come to it, or are born to it, you become entranced by our state's beauty, the opportunity she affords, and the independent spirit of her citizens. ~ Tom McCall, #NFDB
1202:Shiva becomes the destroyer, acquiring strength and inspiration from his consort Shakti, who is both Gauri, radiant goddess of eroticism, and Kali, dark goddess of extermination. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1203:All of them - my father, mother, step-mother, and grandmother - were all wonderful actors and performers and they are an inspiration to me, both in their craft and in their humanity. ~ James Cromwell, #NFDB
1204:As an artist, I'm really inspired by everything around me - from travel and art, to friends and family, social voices in media and politics. I get a lot of inspiration from daily life. ~ Cara Santana, #NFDB
1205:I don't wait for inspiration. I'm not, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I'm sure that if it is going to turn up, my having started work is the precondition of its arrival. ~ Quentin Blake, #NFDB
1206:I've always been a mythology lover, and so I took a great deal of inspiration from the tales of various dark gods and popular versions of Hell from the Greeks and the Norse stories. ~ Michael Boatman, #NFDB
1207:One, don't wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it's going? ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
1208:One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going? ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
1209:Steve Rom's bravery is unique. Faced with life-threatening circumstances, he focused his determination and spirit to defeat an unbeatable disease. Steve's story is an inspiration to all. ~ Fred Dryer, #NFDB
1210:There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."
(Keynote speech at Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, 2006) ~ Madeleine K Albright,#NFDB
1211:When I hear the same formula being used over and over, I get bored. Just as huge pop artists have taken inspiration from things that are happening at the moment, I do the same with my music. ~ Katy B, #NFDB
1212:Any kid will tell you that, yes, their music is both an escape and a survival mechanism, and that sometimes the music givesbthem hope and inspiration. It doesn't just placate and pacify. ~ David Byrne, #NFDB
1213:I am getting some good offers still. Some nice things are coming my way just as they always have, so unless I lose my inspiration or there is too much drool to wipe, I will keep going. ~ Robert Duvall, #NFDB
1214:I believe Fernand Point is one of the last true gourmands of the 20th century. His ruminations are extraordinary and thought-provoking. He has been an inspiration for legions of chefs. ~ Thomas Keller, #NFDB
1215:It's not complicated: we have no guarantees for the future; we can't rewind the past; we must live in the present. Use the past for wisdom...and the future for inspiration. Live now! ~ Patrick Lindsay, #NFDB
1216:Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come. ~ George Gershwin, #NFDB
1217:Poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1218:While I find inspiration in real life, the actual stories are, thankfully, works of fiction - which, given the considerable turmoil in my character's lives, is probably a good thing! ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
1219:You can't force inspiration. It's like trying to catch a butterfly with a hoop but no net. If you keep your mind open and receptive, though, one day a butterfly will land on your finger. ~ Chuck Jones, #NFDB
1220:A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
1221:If there are people in your organization who feel they are not free to suggest ideas, you lose. Do not discount ideas from unexpected sources. Inspiration can, and does, come from anywhere. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1222:If you look at the course of my career, from 'Touched by an Angel,' to 'The Bible' series, you can see a thread of hope and inspiration. It's what I love to do and it's what I'm all about ~ Roma Downey, #NFDB
1223:If you're not inspired and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived and I don't like to write music that's contrived. ~ Halsey, #NFDB
1224:I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz. ~ Sonny Rollins, #NFDB
1225:It's strange that we still believe in inspiration when, compared to earlier ages, we seem to believe in so little. Inspiration may be the one bit of God we haven't managed to kill off. ~ Patricia Hampl, #NFDB
1226:Thank you, baby, for being my rock, my safe place to land, my inspiration, and my heart. No matter what, snaring you as a husband will always remain my greatest achievement. I love you. ~ Zathyn Priest, #NFDB
1227:What shall I do, singer and first-born, in a
world where the deepest black is grey,
and inspiration is kept in a thermos?
with all this immensity
in a measured world? ~ Marina Tsvetaeva,#NFDB
1228:You just need to recognize inspiration when it strikes. And be brave. Don’t lose faith in the good things, even when life is tough. The good things come in waves, along with the bad. ~ Julianne MacLean, #NFDB
1229:Any writer takes inspiration from what they read and watch, and over their career works on forming their own voice. I think it was probably Stephen King who made me want to become a writer. ~ Tim Lebbon, #NFDB
1230:A saying from the Hindu scriptures is: “In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.” Because ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1231:Fat people are not here as a foil to boost your own self-esteem. Fat people are not your inspiration poem. Fat people can be competent, beautiful, talented, and proud without your approval. ~ Lindy West, #NFDB
1232:Fat people are not here as a foil to boost your own self-esteem. Fat people are not your inspiration porn. Fat people can be competent, beautiful, talented, and proud without your approval. ~ Lindy West, #NFDB
1233:If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
1234:The prophets, who were very many, proclaim and declare the one God; for, being filled with the inspiration of the one God, they predicted things to come, with agreeing and harmonious voice. ~ Lactantius, #NFDB
1235:The whole inspiration of our civilization springs from the teachings of Christ and the lessons of the prophets. To read the Bible for these fundamentals is a necessity of American life. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
1236:What shall I do, singer and first-born, in a
world where the deepest black is grey,
and inspiration is kept in a thermos?
with all this immensity
in a measured world? ~ Marina Tsvetaeva,#NFDB
1237:You know, Johnny Depp has always been a massive inspiration for me and he's somebody who has produced an incredible amount of work, and every single piece that he does is amazing. ~ Jamie Campbell Bower, #NFDB
1238:I know that the nice shines I have on is going to pass. The nice cars will pass. All that will stay is the music and the work. That's where I get the inspiration to help people out and work ~ Wyclef Jean, #NFDB
1239:Inner silence promotes clarity of mind; It makes us value the inner world; It trains us to go inside to the source of peace and inspiration when we are faced with problems and challenges. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1240:They aren’t wealthy creatives because they feel inspired to create every day. They are wealthy creatives because they work every day regardless of their mood or inspiration level. ~ Genevieve Parker Hill, #NFDB
1241:Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes. ~ Bjorn Ulvaeus, #NFDB
1242:A cloudy morning does not signify that the entire day is gonna be rainy! What's pressing you down today has nothing to change about your great future! Let patience be your inspiration. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1243:I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a word of inspiration. It is the badge of poverty, the signal of distress. Cheap merchandise means cheap men and cheap men mean a cheap country. ~ William McKinley, #NFDB
1244:The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1245:When the artist activates his being, awakens to his surroundings, and sets himself the task of creating, connections are made out of conscious awareness that return coalesced as inspiration. ~ Eric Maisel, #NFDB
1246:A man who can't find anything to inspire himself in this world is the stupidest man! Look around, the moonlight, the sunset, the gleams on the sea, everything is an inspiration for us! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1247:Any serious man or woman in search of spiritual ideas will find a surprising challenge and an authentic source of inspiration and intellectual nourishment in the writings of Paul Brunton. ~ Jacob Needleman, #NFDB
1248:Ellen Langer’s work has been an inspiration to me for years. Counterclockwise, her latest book, will change the way you think about your health – for the better. It’s simply fabulous. ~ Christiane Northrup, #NFDB
1249:I like people-watching and getting inspiration from the unique people who dont follow any fashion tides. From 12-year-olds who have full freedom, to 86-year-old ladies with a ton of class. ~ Rila Fukushima, #NFDB
1250:I procrastinate, and I push writing to the last available moment, because I don't like to settle on anything. I guess you can call it indecision or you can call it holding out for inspiration. ~ Ariel Pink, #NFDB
1251:I would think, to me, growing up in the south, growing up with all the gospel music, singing in the church and having that rhythm and blues - the blues background was my big inspiration. ~ Jackie DeShannon, #NFDB
1252:We cannot overlook the importance of wild country as source of inspiration, to which we give expression in writing, in poetry, drawing and painting, in mountaineering, or in just being there. ~ Olaus Murie, #NFDB
1253:When an actor is completely absorbed by some profoundly moving objective so that he throws his whole being passionately into its execution, he reaches a state we call inspiration. ~ Constantin Stanislavski, #NFDB
1254:When I'm writing I've been playing something for a couple of hours and I'm almost in a trance. At two or three in the morning you can actually see bits inspiration floating about and grab them. ~ Kate Bush, #NFDB
1255:Kairos is the inspiration for the Cretan chestnut “Opportunity makes thieves.” What matters is the timing, not the target—seize any opportunity, even if it’s not the one you planned. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
1256:My inspiration is always love and history, and my passion to a fault is craftsmanship and responsibility. Those are the simplest things. It goes beyond jewelry. It's every part of my life. ~ Waris Ahluwalia, #NFDB
1257:The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
1258:There is no shortage of external inspiration. Open your eyes and look and you'll be dazzled by it. But it's nothing if you fail to see the magic, wonder and potential that resides within. ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru, #NFDB
1259:I am impressed by the way Annie Kevans captured the different types of beauties that have been my inspiration and my muses from my grandmother to artists like David Bowie and Boy George. ~ Jean Paul Gaultier, #NFDB
1260:I could be mistaken, but I believe the majority of artists are perverts, and that inspiration springs from the seat of perversity; that smooth stretch of consciousness between the balls and ass. ~ James Jean, #NFDB
1261:Life: in all it's pain, misery, grandiosity and glory. I sing for myself, yet if others truly find inspiration through my words, then I have accidently done something brilliant in my life. ~ John O Callaghan, #NFDB
1262:None but a poet can understand a poet; none but a romantic spirit transported with poetry and consecrated in the Holy of Holies an comprehend what the ordained utters out of his inspiration. ~ E T A Hoffmann, #NFDB
1263:Nonetheless, writing regularly, inspiration or no, is not a bad way to eventually get into an inspired mood; the plane has to bump along the runway for a while before it finally takes off. ~ Alice W Flaherty, #NFDB
1264:Thank you, Wes... You've been a great inspiration. You are like a conductor. You are like a composer... You inspire us, all of us... If it wasn't for you...I couldn't have done it this way. ~ Milena Canonero, #NFDB
1265:The whole point of working and practicing your whole life is so that you're ready when that moment arrives; when the inspiration arrives, you are ready to be at the disposal of inspiration. ~ John McLaughlin, #NFDB
1266:How'd you come up with cemetery?" Julian asked Nick.
"Call it divine inspiration."
"Yeah, I'm betting God was invoked a lot last night," JD said under his breath.
"Shhh," Kelly begged. ~ Abigail Roux,#NFDB
1267:I can't tell you how many people say they were turned off from science because of a science teacher that completely sucked out all the inspiration and enthusiasm they had for the course. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1268:I really just want to be an inspiration. I'm a regular guy, that had a dream, that came from a small town, that wanted to play guitar and just liked playing. I want to encourage people. ~ Kerry James Marshall, #NFDB
1269:My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know it exists.
~ Nikola Tesla,#NFDB
1270:My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom--freedom from violence and falsehood, no matter how the last two manifest themselves. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1271:Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information. ~ Man Ray, #NFDB
1272:Success: a marvelous stimulant, bubbling with inspiration and incitement. But for all except the few who are strong and steadfast, there lurks beneath the effervescence a subtle poison. ~ Samuel Hopkins Adams, #NFDB
1273:The dreamer can have no desires, for he has everything ; he is above desire, he is surfeited, he is himself the artist creating his life at every hour, guided only by his own inspiration. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1274:The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer's sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration. ~ Adam Johnson, #NFDB
1275:When I'm writing I've been playing something for a couple of hours and I'm almost in a trance. At two or three in the morning you can actually see bits of inspiration floating about and grab them. ~ Kate Bush, #NFDB
1276:You don’t live in London. You play London - to win. That’s why we’re all here. It is a city full of contestants, each chasing one of a million possible prizes: wealth, love, fame. Inspiration. ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
1277:Family, community, and the realm of the private self - your mind, body, and spirit - are all important sources of the inspiration, support, and ideas we all need to lead the lives we want. ~ Stewart D Friedman, #NFDB
1278:He said that the music—its order and precision—helped him find the patterns in things—the way through the confusion of events and opinions to direction, to order, and beyond, to inspiration. ~ Geraldine Brooks, #NFDB
1279:I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1280:Inspired by words you have to create images to tell the story, while it's much more difficult to find your own images with a film for inspiration, because someone has already done it for you. ~ Peter Lindbergh, #NFDB
1281:Intuition and inspiration are not only spiritual in their essence, they are the characteristic means of all spiritual vision and utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - V, #NFDB
1282:Learn the writer's craft, write regularly, grow to love the practice for its own sake-and inspiration will either come on a particular day or it won't, but you'll have prepared the way for it. ~ Dennis Palumbo, #NFDB
1283:One night, Don Henley called, and I told him, 'I'm washing dishes and bike shorts.' He said, 'It's in the domestic exercises of life that one will find the biggest inspiration.' And he was right. ~ Sheryl Crow, #NFDB
1284:The process of creation can be unpredictable and, in some way, similar to love: the brightest waves of inspiration may sometimes occur in wrong timing, wrong places, or even with wrong people. ~ Sahara Sanders, #NFDB
1285:As a filmmaker, I always took my inspiration from a filmmaker named Marcel Ophüls, who said, "I always have a point of view, but the trick is showing how hard it is to come to that point of view." ~ Alex Gibney, #NFDB
1286:Leaving golf aside for the moment, I'd choose Roger Federer as a sporting role model, Muhammad Ali for a sporting and non-sporting role model and Nelson Mandela as a true and lasting inspiration. ~ Rory McIlroy, #NFDB
1287:Of course, if you have thought up to now that an actor relies merely on inspiration you will have to change your mind. Talent without work is nothing more than raw unfinished material. ~ Constantin Stanislavski, #NFDB
1288:When the standard of success becomes merely acting—when any result is regarded as progress and important, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite—we propel ourselves ahead. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1289:I believe that inspiration will always try its best to work with you—but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1290:Like, why do any of us become obsessed with the stuff we become obsessed with? The stuff that kind of defines who we are. Is it some kind of destiny, or more like a flash of inspiration?" -Lula ~ Meagan Brothers, #NFDB
1291:We all face difficulties of our own, and how comforting it is to immerse yourself in a book - my book, any book, any romance. It's entertainment, it's escape, and it can even be an inspiration! ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
1292:When you meet someone who is good for you, they won't fill you with insecurities by focusing on your flaws. They'll fill you with inspiration, because they'll focus on all the best parts of you. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
1293:When you meet someone who is good for you, they won’t fill you with insecurities by focusing on your flaws. They’ll fill you with inspiration, because they’ll focus on all the best parts of you. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
1294:As one reads Hegel one realizes how much inspiration Hitler, like Marx, drew from him, even if it was at second hand. Above all else, Hegel in his theory of “heroes,” those great agents who are ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
1295:Creating and sharing beautiful things has provided me with the inspiration that we can do things we never thought we could do and that we will get to see wonderful things we never thought we would see. ~ Rob Bell, #NFDB
1296:I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour. ~ Edgar Degas, #NFDB
1297:I began thinking about the idea of a 24 hour concert. What if you tied songs to certain hours of the day - creating a 24 hour world of lyric and melody. So that was the inspiration for this project. ~ Jon Foreman, #NFDB
1298:In my entire life growing up I've never heard my dad say an unkind word about anyone. My father has always taken the high road in life and to me he's a complete inspiration without being a pushover. ~ Hugh Panaro, #NFDB
1299:Music and books were my inspiration too. I read avidly as a kid. And that's the beautiful thing about books and music and even movies, is that you can actually escape. You can go into other worlds. ~ Gavin Friday, #NFDB
1300:Stanley Kubrick was a big inspiration. People accuse me of never using my own material. But when did Kubrick? You look at his films and they are completely unique... completely separate entities. ~ Frank Darabont, #NFDB
1301:Thou speakest with true inspiration, Bansir. Thou bringeth to my mind a new understanding. Thou makest me to realize the reason why we have never found any measure of wealth. We never sought it. ~ George S Clason, #NFDB
1302:You can't imagine hip-hop without the Black Panthers. Today, hopefully, the movement can be an inspiration to people. These were people who made mistakes but they were trying to change things. ~ Stanley Nelson Jr, #NFDB
1303:You don't know when inspiration is going to come. But you have to be aware of what's going on around you, so that at any moment, when inspiration happens, you're ready for it and you interpret it. ~ Thomas Keller, #NFDB
1304:I have no doubt he’s swayed many people with such fanciful thoughts. Hope for a future that seems lost. Inspiration in a bleak world with nothing to offer. He is a natural leader. A talented orator. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
1305:In 1933 the students of the Oxford Union, under the inspiration of a Mr. Joad, passed their ever-shameful resolution, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1306:Inspiration can hit you in the head at any time in any context. It could happen in a conversation. Talking to someone at a party, you can get an idea. But you've got to remember those inspirations. ~ James Cameron, #NFDB
1307:Inspiration is the greatest gift because it opens your life to many new possibilities. Each day becomes more meaningful, and your life is enhanced when your actions are guided by what inspires you. ~ Bernie Siegel, #NFDB
1308:I thought: If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
1309:My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
1310:My brother was always in bands and on the road when I was a kid and he was my inspiration. He never made it with a big band, in fact he never made a record. Here he is fifty-something years old. ~ Jimmy Chamberlin, #NFDB
1311:Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1312:Predictions can sound really good if you're good with words and can express them eloquently and give people ideas and inspiration in their head. But I'm not really good at that, so I don't want to. ~ Steve Wozniak, #NFDB
1313:The hope of a Christian is inseparable from his faith. Whoever believes in the Divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures must hope that the religion of Jesus shall prevail throughout the earth. ~ John Quincy Adams, #NFDB
1314:All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn´t come fast enough. Instead of being open, you´re closed up tight. That´s the worst sin of all - the sin of omission. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
1315:A lot of inspiration comes from the sounds that we are attracted to when we come across them in our experiments and may lead us into a certain direction because of inherent possibilities we hear in them. ~ Tim Gane, #NFDB
1316:Bono is my inspiration - not only as a rock star but as a humanitarian. We aren't just put on this earth to sell records. Maybe it's because of my upbringing, but I do consider myself a moral guy. ~ Jesse McCartney, #NFDB
1317:Do not worry about the incarnation of ideas. If you are a poet, your works will contain them without your knowledge - they will be both moral and national if you follow your inspiration freely. ~ Vissarion Belinsky, #NFDB
1318:Edward was at the stage of drunkenness in which the ego glows like a coal, and brilliant people become more inspired, but in which dull people, fired by the same inspiration, become only more dull. ~ William Styron, #NFDB
1319:Greatness is more than potential. It is the execution of that potential. Beyond the raw talent. You need the appropriate training. You need the discipline. You need the inspiration. You need the drive. ~ Eric Burns, #NFDB
1320:I like to think I've been a good example and an inspiration to some people. And some people say that about me, but I'm just going about my work and doing what I do best. I'm a very professional 'Me.' ~ Dolly Parton, #NFDB
1321:Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way. ~ Ted Sizer, #NFDB
1322:We do not consider our principles as dogmas contained in books that are said to come from heaven. We derive our inspiration, not from heaven, or from an unseen world, but directly from life. ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, #NFDB
1323:All the songwriters that I worked with said they'd like to work with me again. Such things serve as much inspiration for me. I regard myself a melody maker so it made me happy to be recognized for my work. ~ Seungri, #NFDB
1324:As Jane Austen once wrote in her diary, "I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am." And Madeleine L'Engle observed, "Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it. ~ Jim Denney, #NFDB
1325:He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration, in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1326:I always try to remind myself that I am having an affair with my creativity, and I make an effort to present myself to inspiration like somebody you might actually want to have an affair with—not ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1327:Idealists, workers of thought, unite to show how inspiration and genius walk in step with the progress of the machine, of aircraft, of industry, of trade, of the sciences, of electricity. ~ Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, #NFDB
1328:I find inspiration everywhere. I love challenges and my favorite thing is to find something ridiculous and be like "if it's all that I have available to me, I am gonna make it look the best that I can". ~ Beth Ditto, #NFDB
1329:If I was writing during that window, then I imagine that the story was likely late as well and absolutely needed to be finished, so once again I met with inspiration at the corner of Late and Hurry up. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1330:If you are ordinary but hungry to obey God, may you find inspiration and encouragement in these pages. May you find the strength to say yes and be launched into your very own amazing story. —Beth Clark ~ Katie Davis, #NFDB
1331:My guitar player calls the process of writing lyrics based on another story, "filling up the well" when you can get inspiration from other people's art without stealing, more being influenced by it. ~ Lydia Loveless, #NFDB
1332:The central question was how to trick tourists into coming to Grozny voluntarily. For inspiration, I studied pamphlets from the tourist bureaus of other urban hellscapes: Baghdad, Pyongyang, Houston. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
1333:This President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America. This President puts his faith in government. We put our faith in the American people. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
1334:Williams doesn’t look for motivation. He doesn’t wait for inspiration. He gets up every morning and practices the discipline of writing. He doesn’t expect it to be perfect. He just expects it to be done. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1335:Inspiration demands the active cooperation of the intellect joined with enthusiasm, and it is under such conditions that marvelous conceptions, with all that is excellent and divine, come into being. ~ Giorgio Vasari, #NFDB
1336:I usually begin a poem in longhand. I like to sit where I have a nice view, ideally, although I worked on haiku this weekend at an airport. I'm not one to romanticize inspiration. I try to get to the work. ~ Pat Mora, #NFDB
1337:Leaders die, products become obsolete, markets change, new technologies emerge, and management fads come and go, but core ideology in a great company endures as a source of guidance and inspiration. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
1338:Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
1339:All I know for certain is that this is how I want to spend my life—collaborating to the best of my ability with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1340:Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table and your bottom on the chair and start sweating. Choose a theme, an idea, and squeeze your brain until it hurts. That’s called inspiration. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
1341:Inspiration is not about some disembodied ethereal voice dictating words or notes to a catatonic host. It’s a collaborative process, a holy give-and-take, a partnership between Creator and creator. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1342:It is already a great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable force we call inspiration. ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
1343:Ocean's remarkable stories, depth of commitment, and eloquent communication make him a fantastic resource for conferences, universities, and indeed everyone who wants a potent dose of grounded inspiration. ~ Van Jones, #NFDB
1344:The electro scene is all over the clubs now: groups like Duck Sauce, Empire of the Sun, even MGMT. But I get inspiration from everywhere. I'll go to the gym and put on old albums - Guns N' Roses or old Jay-Z. ~ Fergie, #NFDB
1345:Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table, your bottom on the chair and you start sweating. Choose a theme, an idea, and squeeze your brain until it hurts. That's called inspiration. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
1346:The bible is a source of great inspiration to me. It is a textbook of metaphysics. Within the bible are keys to personal growth, and lessons in personal actualization. The bible is a spiritual masterpiece. ~ John Fante, #NFDB
1347:There is one great beauty in idealized romance: reading it can make no one worse than he is, while it may help thousands to a cleaner life and higher inspiration than they ever before have known. ~ Gene Stratton Porter, #NFDB
1348:Lil Wayne would probably be a big musical inspiration for me, because growing up I was just the biggest Wayne fan and being able to be signed to him and watch his whole journey to the peak of his career is great. ~ Tyga, #NFDB
1349:Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas. ~ Damien Hirst, #NFDB
1350:My grandfather gave me inspiration to cook, and love food and flavors. My Aunt Raffie, gave me creativity and the inspiration to create new things. My mother inspires me to find simplicity in food. ~ Giada De Laurentiis, #NFDB
1351:Perhaps its love’s separation that gives a writer that special mood, that inspiration he needs?” He lifted a hand to his chin. “Perhaps it is why they say the greater the distance, the greater the love? ~ Frank Scozzari, #NFDB
1352:The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. That afternoon nothing new came to Thea Kronborg, no enlightenment, no inspiration. She merely ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
1353:Think about how rare it is for anyone to encounter a teacher who can open you up to the notion that there is an infinite amount of meaning and possibility and inspiration in the smallest thing before you. ~ Greil Marcus, #NFDB
1354:Different periods, different cultures - it's just the way my mind works. My music is that way as well. There's a foundation but the inspiration comes from everywhere. I've been influenced by so many things. ~ Erykah Badu, #NFDB
1355:In every sphere of human activity there are sources of inspiration whose perfection, far from discouraging us, in fact whets our enthusiasm by holding out an admirable vision of that to which we aspire. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
1356:Sometimes it seems like "pain" is too obvious a place to turn for inspiration. Pain isn't always deep, anyway. Sometimes it's awful and that's it. Or boring. Surely other things can be as profound as pain. ~ Ellen Forney, #NFDB
1357:We are not peddlers of the fashionable. We believe that good design defies fashion, is truly innovative, eminently sensible, yet a source of inspiration to those who have the pleasure of living with it. ~ Arthur Erickson, #NFDB
1358:We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration and style themselves Evangelicals? ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
1359:We travel to learn; and I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own. ~ Maria Mitchell, #NFDB
1360:Wherever we are, God's in that moment, God's speaking to us, and if we've just got our ears open and our antennas up, there's no lack of inspiration. He's not silent. We just have to be listening. ~ Steven Curtis Chapman, #NFDB
1361:Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that's really worthwhile. ~ Jim Carrey, #NFDB
1362:Every piece has its own identity which we develop by the rule 'We know no limits.' We follow the inspiration of the moment and don't worry if what we're playing is alternative, progressive or fusion rock. ~ Page McConnell, #NFDB
1363:For me, Islam is a moral reference point, a source of inspiration to work collectively with people, to love people and to help them, to concentrate on universal values of mercy, co-operation and tolerance. ~ Wadah Khanfar, #NFDB
1364:I'm definitely influenced by lots of different things - from music, from reading, from I don't know... I have a lot of different sources of inspiration that I tap into when I need to get something done. ~ Marko Djurdjevic, #NFDB
1365:It is baffling to reflect that what men call honour does not correspond always to Christian ethics. Honour is often influenced by that element of pride which plays so large a part in its inspiration. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1366:Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream was stuck for inspiration when faced with a few lines on the back of a card. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1367:The inspiration of the Bible refers then to the divine superintendence of Scripture, preserving it from the intrusion of human error. It refers to God’s preserving his Word through the words of human authors. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1368:Thus, on this World Refugee Day, let us take time to recognize and draw inspiration from these ordinary people who have shown such extraordinary courage - the world's millions of refugees and displaced. ~ Antonio Guterres, #NFDB
1369:We need to feel the cheer and inspiration of meeting each other, we need to gain the courage and fresh life that comes from the mingling of congenial souls, of those working for the same ends. ~ Josephine St Pierre Ruffin, #NFDB
1370:I do lead a careful diet, I don't overeat, I have fruit and vegetables every day and I drink a lot of water. And my darling wife keeps me so young it is ridiculous. Being with her is an inspiration as well. ~ Bruce Forsyth, #NFDB
1371:I don't believe in anarchy, because it will ultimately amount to the power of the bully, with weapons. Gandhi is my life's inspiration: passive resistance. I don't want to live in the Thunderdome with Mad Max. ~ John Lydon, #NFDB
1372:I think you can find a lot of joy and inspiration through food. I think when you find depression and sadness and hopelessness, many times it's connected to certain food and access to quality and nutrition. ~ Adrian Grenier, #NFDB
1373:Movies always fascinated me. They are an endless source of inspiration. There are countless images by great directors that made a profound impression on me, and I see film as a sublime example of teamwork. ~ Giorgio Armani, #NFDB
1374:Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You’re not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
1375:So, the combination of looking at lots of different people and how they react to each other and how they relate to each other and waiting for that inspiration is the thing that allows me to keep writing. ~ Joan Armatrading, #NFDB
1376:The artist must yield himself to his own inspiration... I should compose with utter confidence a subject that set my musical blood going, even though it were condemned by all other artists as anti-musical. ~ Giuseppe Verdi, #NFDB
1377:The spirit of sacrifice and selflessness of the defence forces is an inspiration for all Indians. Strong armed forces are necessary for an atmosphere of peace, amity, harmony and brotherhood in the country. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1378:I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as satisfied that it is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament. ~ Benjamin Rush, #NFDB
1379:If that condition of mind and soul, which we call inspiration, lasted long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument be shattered into fragments. ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
1380:Laughter, song, and dance create emotional and spiritual connection; they remind us of the one thing that truly matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration, or healing: We are not alone. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1381:Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1382:There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman! No human being is unimportant. My inspiration comes in opening opportunities that all alike may be free to live life to the fullest. ~ Samuel Gompers, #NFDB
1383:A joyful life is not a floodlight of joy. That would eventually become unbearable.
I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration, and faith. ~ Bren Brown,#NFDB
1384:Art and science were in German hands. Apart from the new artistic trash, which might easily have been produced by a negro tribe, all genuine artistic inspiration came from the German section of the population. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1385:Instead of running from our emotions or being swept away by their initial gusts, we should learn to sit with them, become at peace with their unique flavors, and ultimately discover deep pools of inspiration. ~ Josh Waitzkin, #NFDB
1386:I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
1387:Laughter, song, and dance create emotional and spiritual connection; they remind us of the one thing that truly matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration, or healing: We are not alone. ~ Brene Brown, #NFDB
1388:Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything. ~ John Lydon, #NFDB
1389:Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself. ~ Billy Joel, #NFDB
1390:I deny that art can be taught, or, in other words, maintain that art is completely individual, and that the talent of each artist is but the result of his own inspiration and his own study of past tradition. ~ Gustave Courbet, #NFDB
1391:In general I think the inspiration was to think about all those movies that I saw as a kid and never knew they were remakes, because I know there's probably another kid going to watch Evil Dead who has no idea. ~ Fede Alvarez, #NFDB
1392:It is time we in Scotland put England in its proper place and instead of our leaning on England and taking inspiration from her, we should lean and turn to Europe, for it is there our future prosperity lies. ~ Hugh MacDiarmid, #NFDB
1393:My inspiration is my life, what I see happening around me. It can be history and, quite often, plain traditional fairy tales. But I never adapt; I nourish myself with old stories, and then create my own tales. ~ Michel Ocelot, #NFDB
1394:None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
1395:People don't need to find reasons to justify their not giving. What they need to find is the inspiration to give. And those who don't, but could afford to, are missing out on one of wealth's greatest luxuries. ~ Andrew Tobias, #NFDB
1396:The key to maintaining your inspiration in the day-to-day work of meditation practice is to approach it as play—a happy opportunity to master practical skills, to raise questions, experiment, and explore. ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu, #NFDB
1397:Yogi's been an inspiration to me, not only because of his baseball skills, but of course for the enduring mark he left on the English language. Some in the press corps think he might even be my speechwriter. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
1398:A realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1399:I admire the strength and courage of all young people faced with difficult situations in life. You are an inspiration to me and so many people around you, as you overcome challenges and come out of it stronger. ~ Fearne Cotton, #NFDB
1400:I am actually looking most forward to seeing the country again. It's a wonderful town and the wilderness around there is beautiful. The falls there were an inspiration in my book My Side of the Mountain ~ Jean Craighead George, #NFDB
1401:the logical approach to getting where we want to go, or making things happen the way we'd like them to happen, is to operate off guided inspiration instead of the negative vibrations of social-conscious stress. ~ Lynn Grabhorn, #NFDB
1402:The stories of past courage can define that ingredient- they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot provide courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
1403:As much as I love performing, nothing juices me up creatively like being in my own studio for an extended period. Songs, ideas, even paintings are pouring out of me. My inspiration and usual subject matter: life. ~ Adrian Belew, #NFDB
1404:DJ Tiesto was my first inspiration. I heard him play at the Olympics in 2004 and from that moment on I knew I wanted to make music and become a DJ. I made a bootleg of a track by Enrique Iglesias called Tonight. ~ Martin Garrix, #NFDB
1405:I loved Queen, Journey, Fleetwood Mac, and people like Barbara Streisand. The thing with me is that classical music was also an inspiration. I took piano lessons at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels for 10 years. ~ Lara Fabian, #NFDB
1406:Information and inspiration are everywhere... history, art, architecture, everything an illustrator needs. Europe is, after all, the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture. ~ John Howe, #NFDB
1407:Messi is the best player on the planet and he keeps on improving at Barça, now the best team in the world. What Messi does on and off the pitch is an inspiration for children who dream of becoming a footballer. ~ Novak Djokovic, #NFDB
1408:Social activism has gone mainstream. A new generation of philanthropic leaders such as Bill and Melinda Gates, and Bono are providing inspiration, guidance, and billions of dollars through their global foundations. ~ Willow Bay, #NFDB
1409:The doctrine of inspiration declares that God enabled the human writers of Scripture to be agents of divine revelation, so that what they wrote was not only their writing but in a higher sense the very Word of God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1410:For people who live in the imagination, there is no lack of subjects. To seek for the exact moment at which inspiration comes is false. Imagination floods us with suggestions all the time, from all directions. ~ Federico Fellini, #NFDB
1411:Ho’oponopono sees each problem not as an ordeal, but as an opportunity. Problems are just replayed memories of the past showing up to give us one more chance to see with the eyes of love and to act from inspiration. ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
1412:kept going. I knew by now that creation was a game of stamina as much as inspiration, and that each failed effort would eventually teach in combination with some stray additional thought the answer that I needed. ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
1413:Modern medicine has tended to look back to Hippocrates and Galen as the only ancient source and inspiration of modern medical practice. But this presents a very incomplete picture. As one physician pointed out, ~ Morton T Kelsey, #NFDB
1414:Success consists in felicity of verbal expression, which every so often may result from a quick flash of inspiration but as a rule involves a patient search... for the sentence in which every word is unalterable. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
1415:basing an entire system of social, political and economic control on the vague, all-too-easily misinterpreted words of a single person claiming divine inspiration is probably not actually all that smart, now, is it. ~ John Scalzi, #NFDB
1416:I am a man of prayer and meditation. I feel inspiration is of paramount importance. If I can inspire someone, and if that person also can inspire me, then we can do many good things for the betterment of this world. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1417:Love and respect woman. Look to her not only for comfort, but for strength and inspiration and the doubling of your intellectual and moral powers. Blot out from your mind any idea of superiority; you have none. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini, #NFDB
1418:The good teacher discovers the natural gifts of his pupils and liberates them by the stimulating influence of the inspiration that he can impart. The true leader makes his followers twice the men they were before. ~ Stephen Neill, #NFDB
1419:Watching Ray Harryhausen's films growing up was a pure joy. He brought legends to life and he became a legend himself. And I am sure that future generations of animators will continue to look to him for inspiration. ~ Joe Letteri, #NFDB
1420:When you look out of a window, when you look at anything, you know what you're seeing? Yourself. A thing can only look beautiful or romantic or inspiring only if the beauty or romance or inspiration is inside you. ~ Fredric Brown, #NFDB
1421:1.2) On Gender of Gods & Goddesses:"Well, perhaps it is under their inspiration that Nature made (the gender differentiation). It is certainly not because it appeared on earth that it is like that with the gods.." ~ The Mother, #NFDB
1422:Action → Inspiration → Motivation If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do something—anything, really—and then harness the reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1423:An intellectual, heartless man never becomes an inspired man. It is always the heart that speaks in the man of love; it discovers a greater instrument than intellect can give you, the instrument of inspiration. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1424:First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. ~ Octavia E Butler, #NFDB
1425:From you we have learned what we, at least, value, to separate Church and State; and from you we gather inspiration at all times in our devotion to learning, to religious liberty, and to individual and National freedom. ~ Seth Low, #NFDB
1426:In poor environment, I find great inspiration. Many of the men and women whom I admire as artists, the things they write, the songs they sing, the admission is filled with inspired moments to overcome oppression. ~ Harry Belafonte, #NFDB
1427:When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman? ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, #NFDB
1428:Working with children with autism has provided me with an opportunity to see the world in a different way. I see them strive to overcome obstacles and persevere, and learn to persevere myself. They are my inspiration. ~ Clay Aiken, #NFDB
1429:Your ego is your embodiment and your self is your potentiality and that's what you listen to when you listen for the voice of inspiration and the voice of 'What am I here for? What can I possibly make of myself?' ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1430:All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point? ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1431:Among life's sweetest blessings is fellowship with men and women whose ideals and aspirations are high and noble. Next to a sense of kinship with God comes the helpfulness, encouragement, and inspiration of friends. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
1432:Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication - particularly communication by sea that enabled people to get inspiration and ideas from each other and to exchange basic raw materials. ~ Thor Heyerdahl, #NFDB
1433:In a belated moment of inspiration, I decided to finish it with the announcement that with this column I was bringing to a happy conclusion a long and worthy life without the sad necessity of having to die. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
1434:I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art. ~ Louis Kahn, #NFDB
1435:I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration. A book, especially a longer book, it's a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It's a vision of the whole thing. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
1436:Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration. ~ James Connolly, #NFDB
1437:[My father] did every kind of work imaginable from painting to shoveling to herding cattle. And he's always been such an inspiration to me because of the very kinds of things that he did and the kind of life he lived. ~ Johnny Cash, #NFDB
1438:Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1439:The inspiration of a single book has made preachers, poets, philosophers, authors, and statesmen. On the other hand, the demoralization of a single book has sometimes made infidels, profligates, and criminals. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1440:You can believe that you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master, but something far more interesting—its partner—and that the two of you are working together toward something intriguing and worthwhile. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1441:God is immutable and cannot be manipulated into granting favors, or seduced by bargaining or adulation. Worship benefits the worshipper by reinforcing commitment and inspiration. God is still, silent, and unmoving. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
1442:"Hafiz will always hold a lantern with galaxies blooming inside and will always guide your soul to the divine warmth and inspiration of our Beloved’s tent." ~ HafizAs long as our ideas are the same, we will never be apart.-Gurdjieff, #NFDB
1443:I've never been able to force a novel. I always had the sense something being given to me. You can't sit around and wait until inspiration strikes, but neither can you force into being something that isn't there. ~ Margaret Laurence, #NFDB
1444:Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1445:When we were studying at the Royal Antwerp Academy, we were taught to seek inspiration from everyone, everything and everywhere. My parents and grandparents were also a great inspiration for me at a very young age. ~ Dries van Noten, #NFDB
1446:Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don't believe too much into inspiration, only I'm waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It's a little too easy to say that. ~ Karl Lagerfeld, #NFDB
1447:Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1448:I follow my inspiration to wherever it goes. I do want the fans to feel the fun and excitement about it, and I like for people to be able to make their own interpretations about my work. I don't like to overexplain it. ~ Jeremy Scott, #NFDB
1449:I think the inspiration came from the fans. Whenever I'm online or whenever I get a chance to really communicate with the fans and the audience, they always say that they would love to have all of the remixes on one CD. ~ Deborah Cox, #NFDB
1450:Singapore gives 10% "white space" time to all of its teachers to come up with their own innovations outside of the official curriculum. This encourages teachers to turn to their colleagues for inspiration and ideas. ~ Andy Hargreaves, #NFDB
1451:Steve Jobs was an iconic entrepreneur and businessman whose impact on technology was felt beyond Silicon Valley. He will be remembered for the innovation he brought to market and the inspiration he brought to the world. ~ Meg Whitman, #NFDB
1452:The questions you ask consistently will create either enervation or enjoyment, indignation or inspiration, misery or magic. Ask the questions that will uplift your spirit and push you along the path of human excellence ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1453:The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it's the music that I want to hear- that's my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings. ~ Ikue Mori, #NFDB
1454:An overmastering impulse is not necessarily an inspiration of true guidance; in following always such impulses one is more likely to become a creature of random caprices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Nature of the Vital, #NFDB
1455:Emotions in this country right now are running very high. Sometimes that emotion is translated into inspiration, sometimes into criticism. We've heard some of that tonight. But it's still part of the American way of life. ~ Matt Lauer, #NFDB
1456:If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world. ~ Alan Bradley, #NFDB
1457:The darkest moments of our lives are not to be buried and forgotten, rather they are a memory to be called upon for inspiration to remind us of the unrelenting human spirit and our capacity to overcome the intolerable ~ Vince Lombardi, #NFDB
1458:The inspiration for my novels comes from the depths of a creative well, based on asking myself questions over and over. I try to write something different each time I sit down to write; I try to surprise the readers. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
1459:Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1460:Laughter, song, and dance create emotional and spiritual connection; they remind us of the one thing that truly matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration, or healing: We are not alone. Ironically, ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1461:My great strength, which I very much believe in, is family. For me, family doesn't simply mean components of DNA. I mean family in the sense of siblings. My mom and my sisters are the energy and inspiration in my life. ~ Riccardo Tisci, #NFDB
1462:The inspiration for my work comes from areas spanning the stark regions of Newfoundland to the lush and fertile valleys of the South. The landscapes offer me form; the people I've met in these places give them color. ~ Peter Sculthorpe, #NFDB
1463:The things they have actually accomplished all over America should be an inspiration to every reasonable person and an everlasting answer to all the grievous insults that have been heaped on the heads of the unemployed. ~ Harry Hopkins, #NFDB
1464:You can't be successful if you are good at hiding yourself! Be success minded; think about uncovering what you know, what you have, and what you have to know for the comfort, inspiration and enlightenment of others! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1465:Of course, you must follow your inspiration and do full-heartedly the work which you feel you must do. It goes without saying that whatever you choose you must do it steadily and persistently if you want to obtain a result. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
1466:Part of Michael's uniqueness, I think, comes from the fact that he worked with music. He had a tape which he gave me with many different compositions, really eclectic. These pieces of music were sources of inspiration. ~ Madeleine Stowe, #NFDB
1467:Can't decide which life or career path is right for you? Maybe you don't have to! In The Renaissance Soul, Margaret Lobenstine offers inspiration, advice, and practical tips for people with more than one burning passion. ~ Laurence Boldt, #NFDB
1468:Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1469:Every writer scrounges for inspiration in different places, and there's no shame in raiding the headlines. It's necessary, in fact, when attempting contemporary satire. Sharp-edged humor relies on topical reference points. ~ Carl Hiaasen, #NFDB
1470:I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized. ~ Haim Ginott, #NFDB
1471:If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.” I ~ Alan Bradley, #NFDB
1472:Plato said: 'He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.' ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1473:Akhenaten could have possibly been the ancient Egyptian figure onto whom authority descended (either by self proclaimed inspiration or any other means) to literally and physically cut off the link with the upper heavens. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1474:I left my novels for better times, when I could dedicate the energy and enjoy the inspiration I feel while planning them; like the most delicious cherries on a cake one left for later so they can be savored to the utmost. ~ Sahara Sanders, #NFDB
1475:In fact, my methodology is based on the idea of waiting for when inspiration arrives for the actors. And that means that the light, the cinematography, everything has to be ready for that moment, so they don't have to wait. ~ Albert Serra, #NFDB
1476:I was feeling miserable physically, in a lot of pain to the point where it was almost crippling me, especially creatively. I decided to take that and use it as an inspiration for getting out of bed and making something again. ~ Frank Iero, #NFDB
1477:One is distracted by this notion that there is such an thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I'm not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff to come up with my payload ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
1478:Plato said: ‘He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.' ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1479:The inspiration really comes first from the character and the story. That vision of what the story is, and what the character is, the world that they inhabit and what the story wants to tell. That's really what inspires me. ~ Keanu Reeves, #NFDB
1480:a quote from the venerable martial artist Bruce Lee, which he hoped would serve as inspiration: “There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.” I ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
1481:I grew up with my older brother listening to hip hop, and Jay-Z was the main person I listened to. When it comes to his word play, he's just out of this world. That's my biggest inspiration when it comes to writing lyrics. ~ Tinchy Stryder, #NFDB
1482:Inspiration was a temperamental guest. It dropped in unannounced, then left without so much as a goodbye, slipping out a window in the dead of night or sauntering out the front door, leaving the house empty, drafty, and cold. ~ Eric Wilson, #NFDB
1483:I think that's given inspiration to other musicians. I know, particularly through the 90s, a lot of bands would cite Rush as an influence. I don't think it was so much our music, but more the way we really stuck to our guns. ~ Alex Lifeson, #NFDB
1484:The belief that every human soul was the child of God, and capable of direct inspiration from the Father of all, without mediator or priestly intervention, or sacramental instrumentality, was fatal to all privilege and rank. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1485:The inspiration came suddenly again to surrender to the Mother. It was quite unexpected: And so somehow I made a surrender to the Mother. Then I had an experience of overwhelming love. Waves of love sort of flowed into me. ~ Venerable Bede, #NFDB
1486:The popularity of the Internet and using it as an available resource has really changed the way chefs kind of gather information and look for inspiration. To me, a food trend is potentially a lot of people following an idea. ~ Grant Achatz, #NFDB
1487:The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of thehuman mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstacy. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1488:As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not. ~ Carl Van Vechten, #NFDB
1489:I'm sure that writing isn't a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can't be taught, it can't be what you use in teaching. ~ Robert Lowell, #NFDB
1490:Joseph Campbell was so conversant with the world of wonders that he awakened the potential for wonder in everyone he touched. He unbuttoned the secret earth for us and let the inexhaustible inspiration of Being stream through. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1491:Leadership is built on inspirations. Inspiration does both the theoretical and the practical job. By inspiration, people are not only informed to know what is right. But they are also convinced to always do what’s right. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1492:My number one inspiration was my mother. She worked two jobs and had breakfast and dinner prepared. I essentially called my mother, The Lion. She's fierce and she's proud. I'd like to think some of that rubbed off on me. ~ Christopher Judge, #NFDB
1493:There's a great place for good Christian children's books. After the upcoming projects I'm working on, I'd like to turn my attention back to children's books. Maybe with a granddaughter I'll have more inspiration and new ideas. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1494:As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1495:EMBARKING on the spiritual journey is like getting into a very small boat and setting out on the ocean to search for unknown lands. With wholehearted practice comes inspiration, but sooner or later we will also encounter fear. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
1496:Inspiration is everywhere so don't get trapped in reading and watching too much. Get out. Talk to people, friends, family, loved ones. Draw inspiration from everyday life. It has inexhaustible references and is always original. ~ Arnold Arre, #NFDB
1497:The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. ~ Pearl S Buck, #NFDB
1498:As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others. ~ Edward Weston, #NFDB
1499:Either we believe in a God who can do anything, or we must accept a Christian faith that’s non-miraculous; and that does away with the inspiration of the Bible, the virgin birth, and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1500:I do not believe I can no longer dress people, but it's more about dressing their insides. Everyone is affected by healthcare. Everyone is affected by education. And for me, a personal inspiration is the preservation of culture. ~ Donna Karan, #NFDB
358 Integral Yoga
41 Poetry
24 Occultism
22 Philosophy
19 Christianity
9 Yoga
9 Psychology
9 Fiction
8 Education
5 Islam
5 Baha i Faith
2 Hinduism
1 Sufism
1 Science
1 Mysticism
1 Alchemy
261 Sri Aurobindo
119 The Mother
74 Nolini Kanta Gupta
66 Satprem
15 A B Purani
13 William Wordsworth
10 Saint Augustine of Hippo
9 Aldous Huxley
7 Plato
7 H P Lovecraft
7 Carl Jung
6 Nirodbaran
6 James George Frazer
5 Sri Ramakrishna
5 Peter J Carroll
5 Muhammad
5 Baha u llah
4 Aleister Crowley
3 Walt Whitman
3 Swami Vivekananda
3 Rudolf Steiner
3 Plotinus
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
3 Khwaja Abdullah Ansari
3 Kabir
3 Jordan Peterson
3 John Keats
3 Jalaluddin Rumi
3 George Van Vrekhem
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Percy Bysshe Shelley
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 Henry David Thoreau
2 Friedrich Schiller
82 Record of Yoga
40 The Synthesis Of Yoga
25 Letters On Poetry And Art
17 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
15 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
13 Wordsworth - Poems
12 The Life Divine
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
11 Agenda Vol 02
9 The Perennial Philosophy
9 Questions And Answers 1953
9 Letters On Yoga II
8 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
8 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
8 On Education
8 Letters On Yoga IV
8 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
8 Agenda Vol 03
7 The Secret Of The Veda
7 The Human Cycle
7 Savitri
7 Lovecraft - Poems
7 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
7 City of God
7 Agenda Vol 07
6 Vedic and Philological Studies
6 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
6 The Golden Bough
6 Questions And Answers 1955
6 Prayers And Meditations
6 Mysterium Coniunctionis
5 Words Of The Mother II
5 Quran
5 Liber Null
5 Agenda Vol 08
5 Agenda Vol 06
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
4 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
4 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
4 On the Way to Supermanhood
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
4 Agenda Vol 10
4 Agenda Vol 05
4 Agenda Vol 04
4 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
3 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
3 The Book of Certitude
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Talks
3 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
3 Questions And Answers 1954
3 Preparing for the Miraculous
3 Maps of Meaning
3 Liber ABA
3 Letters On Yoga III
3 Keats - Poems
3 Isha Upanishad
3 Essays On The Gita
3 Essays Divine And Human
3 Agenda Vol 12
2 Whitman - Poems
2 Walden
2 Twilight of the Idols
2 The Blue Cliff Records
2 The Bible
2 Some Answers From The Mother
2 Shelley - Poems
2 Schiller - Poems
2 Raja-Yoga
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 Magick Without Tears
2 Letters On Yoga I
2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
2 Hymn of the Universe
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Faust
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Agenda Vol 13
2 Agenda Vol 11
2 Agenda Vol 09
2 Agenda Vol 01
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
For true knowledge comes of, and means, identity of being. All other knowledge may be an apprehension of things but not comprehension. In the former, the knower stands apart from the object and so can envisage only the outskirts, the contour, the surface nature; the mind is capable of this alone. But comprehension means an embracing and penetration which is possible when the knower identifies himself with the object. And when we are so identified we not merely know the object, but becoming it in our consciousness, we love it and live it.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
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.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Sun is the first and the most immediate source of light that man has and needs. He is the presiding deity of our waking consciousness and has his seat in the eyecakusa ditya, ditya caku bhtvakii prviat. The eye is the representative of the senses; it is the sense par excellence. In truth, sense-perception is the initial light with which we have to guide us, it is the light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets for us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon. So when the Moon sets, the Fire is kindled. It is the light of the ardent and aspiring heart, the glow of an inner urge, the instincts and inspirations of our secret life-will. Here we come into touch with a source of knowledge and realization, a guidance more direct than the mind and much deeper than the sense-perception. Still this light partakes more of heat than of pure luminosity; it is, one may say, incandescent feeling, but not vision. We must probe deeper, mount higherreach heights and profundities that are serene and transparent. The Fire is to be quieted and silenced, says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth: an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth the Wordreaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is clothing, though a luminous clothinghiramayam ptram When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
II. The Four Oblations
--
Fire represents the Heart. It is that which gives the inner motive to the forces of life, it is the secret inspiration and aspiration that drive the movements of life. It is the heat of consciousness, the ardour of our central being that lives in the Truth and accepts nothing, nothing but the Truth. It is the pure and primal energy of our divine essence, driving ever upward and onward life's course of evolution.
Air is Mind, the world of thought, of conscious formation; it is where life-movements are taken up and given a shape or articulate formula for an organised expression. The forms here have not, however, the concrete rigidity of Matter, but are pliant and variable and fluidin fact, they are more in the nature of possibilities, rather than actualities. The Vedic Maruts are thought-gods, and lndra (the Luminous Mind), their king, is called the Fashioner of perfect forms.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Keshab was the leader of the Brahmo Samaj, one of the two great movements that, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, played an important part in shaping the course of the renascence of India. The founder of the Brahmo movement had been the great Raja Rammohan Roy (1774-1833). Though born in an orthodox brahmin family, Rammohan Roy had shown great sympathy for Islam and Christianity. He had gone to Tibet in search of the Buddhist mysteries. He had extracted from Christianity its ethical system, but had rejected the divinity of Christ as he had denied the Hindu Incarnations. The religion of Islam influenced him, to a great extent, in the formulation of his monotheistic doctrines. But he always went back to the Vedas for his spiritual inspiration. The Brahmo Samaj, which he founded in 1828, was dedicated to the "worship and adoration of the Eternal, the Unsearchable, the Immutable Being, who is the Author and Preserver of the Universe". The Samaj was open to all without distinction of colour, creed, caste, nation, or religion.
The real organizer of the Samaj was Devendranath Tagore (1817-1905), the father of the poet Rabindranath. His physical and spiritual beauty, aristocratic aloofness, penetrating intellect, and poetic sensibility made him the foremost leader of the educated Bengalis. These addressed him by the respectful epithet of Maharshi, the "Great Seer". The Maharshi was a Sanskrit scholar and, unlike Raja Rammohan Roy, drew his inspiration entirely from the Upanishads. He was an implacable enemy of image worship ship and also fought to stop the infiltration of Christian ideas into the Samaj. He gave the movement its faith and ritual. Under his influence the Brahmo Samaj professed One Self-existent Supreme Being who had created the universe out of nothing, the God of Truth, Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, and Power, the Eternal and Omnipotent, the One without a Second. Man should love Him and do His will, believe in Him and worship Him, and thus merit salvation in the world to come.
By far the ablest leader of the Brahmo movement was Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884). Unlike Raja Rammohan Roy and Devendranath Tagore, Keshab was born of a middle-class Bengali family and had been brought up in an English school. He did not know Sanskrit and very soon broke away from the popular Hindu religion. Even at an early age he came under the spell of Christ and professed to have experienced the special favour of John the Baptist, Christ, and St. Paul. When he strove to introduce Christ to the Brahmo Samaj, a rupture became inevitable with Devendranath. In 1868 Keshab broke with the older leader and founded the Brahmo Samaj of India, Devendra retaining leadership of the first Brahmo Samaj, now called the Adi Samaj.
--
The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. Born and brought up in a simple village, without any formal education, and taught by the orthodox holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opportunity to study the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western education on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, renunciation being to him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos he learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God and the world. Educated young men were influenced more by the Western philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not dismayed, for he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he expounded to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious disciplines, yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their tastes and temperaments.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Do such psychological conceptions correspond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They form the governing principles of our highest possible state of consciousness, our widest possible range of existence. There is, we say, a harmony of supreme faculties, corresponding roughly to the psychological faculties of revelation, inspiration and intuition, yet acting not in the intuitive reason or the divine mind, but on a still higher plane, which see Truth directly face to face, or rather live in the truth of things both universal and transcendent and are its formulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as man is at present apparently constituted, superhuman states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence, self-awareness and self-delight7 is, indeed, the metaphysical description of the supreme Atman, the self-formulation, to our awakened knowledge, of the Unknowable whether conceived as a pure Impersonality or as a cosmic Personality manifesting the universe. But in Yoga they are regarded also in their psychological aspects as states of subjective existence to which our waking consciousness is now alien, but which dwell in us in a superconscious plane and to which, therefore, we may always ascend.
For, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instruments (karan.a), this crowning manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a deformation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital forces and actions to the aspect of Will or Force assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Give me peace, energy and inspiration.
Learn to drink from the eternal source; it contains everything.
--
can prepare yourself for a higher inspiration. You were going
round and round in the same forms; something new had to
--
true inspiration. That is why you should write only when you
feel that the inspiration is there.
20 July 1938
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In silence lies the source of the highest inspirations.
Identification with the Divine is our goal; I don't see why
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet what can be more poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the integral force to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Immortality, things that touch, that are at the very root of life and reality? What can most concern man, what can strike the deepest fount in him, unless it is the mystery of his own being, the why and the whither of it all? But mankind has been taught and trained to live merely or mostly on earth, and poetry has been treated as the expression of human joys and sorrows the tears in mortal things of which Virgil spoke. The savour of earth, the thrill of the flesh has been too sweet for us and we have forgotten other sweetnesses. It is always the human element that we seek in poetry, but we fail to recognise that what we obtain in this way is humanity in its lower degrees, its surface formulations, at its minimum magnitude.
We do not say that poets have never sung of God and Soul and things transcendent. Poets have always done that. But what I say is this that presentation of spiritual truths, as they are in their own home, in other words, treated philosophically and yet in a supreme poetic manner, has always been a rarity. We have, indeed, in India the Gita and the Upanishads, great philosophical poems, if there were any. But for one thing they are on dizzy heights out of the reach of common man and for another they are idolised more as philosophy than as poetry. Doubtless, our Vaishnava poets sang of God and Love Divine; and Rabindranath, in one sense, a typical modern Vaishnava, did the same. And their songs are masterpieces. But are they not all human, too human, as the mad prophet would say? In them it is the human significance, the human manner that touches and moves us the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not clothed them in human symbols and allegories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular life: he presents them in their nakedness, just as they are seen and realised. He has not sought to tone down the rigour of truth with contrivances that easily charm and captivate the common human mind and heart. Nor has he indulged like so many poet philosophers in vague generalisations and colourless or too colourful truisms that do not embody a clear thought or rounded idea, a radiant judgment. Sri Aurobindo has given us in his poetry thoughts that are clear-cut, ideas beautifully chiselledhe is always luminously forceful.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
both so idealise, etherealize, almost spiritualise the earth and the flesh that they seem ostensibly only a vesture of something else behind, something mysterious and other-worldly, something other than, even just opposite to what they actually are or appear to be. That is the mystique of the senses which is a very characteristic feature of some of the best poetic inspirations of France. Baudelaire too, the Satanic poet, by the sheer intensity of sympathy and sincerity, pierces as it were into the soul of things and makes the ugly, the unclean, the diseased, the sordid throb and glow with an almost celestial light. Here is the Baudelairean manner:
Tout casss
--
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the noumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this movement the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern manner. Wordsworth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
--
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
The earliest preoccupation of man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the world and worldly things, he referred all that to the other world, thought of gods and goddesses, of after-death and other where. That also will be his last and ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way, when he has passed through a process of purification and growth, a "sea-change". For although religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or behind the world, it is married too much to man's actual worldly nature and carries always with it the shadow of profanity.
--
To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:
"Flyaway, far from these morbid miasmas, go and purify yourself in the higher air and drink, like a pure and divine liquor, the clear fire that fills the limpid spaces."18
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
\t:Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,
A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit of the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed to satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transform. We know that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason. Its great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if you mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and the humanists. Its motto was first, "The proper study of mankind is man" and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of knowledge, the highest deity in manla Desse Raison. And it is precisely against these two basic principles that the new age has entered its protest. In face of Humanism, Nietzsche has posited the Superman and in face of Reason Bergson has posited Intuition.
The worship of man as something essentially and exclusively human necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, viz the deification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that is passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche says, "All our modern world is captured in the net of the Alexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical man, armed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original ancestor is Socrates." Indeed, it may be generally asserted that the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and logical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far, wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind the spirit, the Gods and the Beyonds.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his consciousness withdraws from the normal mental consciousness and becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that superior consciousness the artist's mentalityhis ideas and dispositions, his judgments and valuations and acquisitions, in other words, his normal psychological make-upserves as a channel, an instrument, a medium for transcription. Now, there are two stages, or rather two lines of activity in the processus, for they may be overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret or subtle worldWords-worth's "recollected in tranquillity"and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of words and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives and records and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune with what it has to receive and record; otherwise the transcription becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or confused echo, a poor show. The supreme creators are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the instrumental faculties offer the least resistance and record with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to come down and waited for an opportunity.
Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their inspiration: they look upon themselves more or less as mere instruments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond their normal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are, however, for them not a mere metaphor but concrete realities. To what extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost inanimate, instrumentnothing more than a mirror or a sensitive photographic plateis illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge. His Kubla Khan, as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the rest having gone completely out of his memory; in other words, the poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or recording instrument was faulty and failed him. Indeed, it is a common experience to hear in sleep verses or musical tunes and what seem then to be very beautiful things, but which leave no trace on the brain and are not recalled in memory.
Still, it must be noted that Coleridge is a rare example, for the recording apparatus is not usually so faithful but puts up its own formations that disturb and alter the perfection of the original. The passivity or neutrality of the intermediary is relative, and there are infinite grades of it. Even when the larger waves that play in it in the normal waking state are quieted down, smaller ripples of unconscious or half-conscious habitual formations are thrown up and they are sufficient to cause the scattering and dispersal of the pure light from above.
--
The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
Not only so, the future development of the poetic consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate but form part of one and indivisible movement. Historically, human consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to self-consciousness; man's creative and artistic genius too has moved pari passu in the same direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious, that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them spontaneously, without effort, without reflection, they do not seem to know the whence and wherefore and whither of it all, they know only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when man had not yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became more and more conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is called "primitives", the later one, that of conscious artists, usually goes by the name of "classicists." Modern creators have gone one step farther in the direction of self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An unconscious artist in the sense of the "primitives" is almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern world. All are scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate, purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has cost something of the old-world spontaneity and supremacy of utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot comm and the tide to roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy and new orientation discovered.
--
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
Genius had to be generally more or less unconscious in the past, because the instrument was not ready, was clogged as it were with its own lower grade movements; the higher inspiration had very often to bypass it, or rob it of its serviceable materials without its knowledge, in an almost clandestine way. Wherever it was awake and vigilant, we have seen it causing a diminution in the poetic potential. And yet even so, it was being prepared for a greater role, a higher destiny it is to fulfil in the future. A conscious and full participation of a refined and transparent and enriched instrument in the delivery of superconscious truth and beauty will surely mean not only a new but the very acme of aesthetic creation. We thus foresee the age of spiritual art in which the sense of creative beauty in man will find its culmination. Such an art was only an exception, something secondary or even tertiary, kept in the background, suggested here and there as a novel strain, called "mystic" to express its unfamiliar nature-unless, of course, it was openly and obviously scriptural and religious.
I have spoken of the source of inspiration as essentially and originally being a super-consciousness or over-consciousness. But to be more precise and accurate I should add another source, an inner consciousness. As the super-consciousness is imaged as lying above the normal consciousness, so the inner consciousness may be described as lying behind or within it. The movement of the inner consciousness has found expression more often and more largely than that of over-consciousness in the artistic creation of the past : and that was in keeping with the nature of the old-world inspiration, for the inspiration that comes from the inner consciousness, which can be considered as the lyrical inspiration, tends to be naturally more "spontaneous", less conscious, since it does not at all go by the path of the head, it evades that as much as possible and goes by the path of the heart.
But the evolutionary urge, as I have said, has always been to bring down or instil more and more light and self-consciousness into the depths of the heart too: and the first result has been an intellectualisation, a rationalisation of the consciousness, a movement of scientific observation and criticism which very naturally leads to a desiccation of the poetic enthusiasm and fervour. But a period of transcendence is in gestation. All efforts of modern poets and craftsmen, even those that seem apparently queer, bizarre and futile, are at bottom a travail for this transcendence, including those that seem contradictory to it.
Whether the original and true source of the poet's inspiration lies deep within or high above, all depends upon the mediating instrument the mind (in its most general sense) and speech for a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing consciousness demanded also a conscious development and remoulding of these two factors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the consciousness meant inevitably a movement towards the spiritual element in things. And that means, we have said, a twofold change in the future poet's make-up. First as regards the substance. The revolutionary shift that we notice in modern poets towards a completely new domain of subject-matter is a signpost that more is meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities that are dealt with do not in their outward form give the real trend of things. In and through all these major and constant preoccupation of our poets is "the pain of the present and the passion for the future": they are, as already stated, more prophets than poets, but prophets for the moment crying in the wildernessalthough some have chosen the path of denial and revolt. They are all looking ahead or beyond or deep down, always yearning for another truth and reality which will explain, justify and transmute the present calvary of human living. Such an acute tension of consciousness has necessitated an overhauling of the vehicle of expression too, the creation of a mode of expressing the inexpressible. For that is indeed what human consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of man's evolution. For everything, almost everything that can be normally expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is possible: that is the history of man's aesthetic creativity. Now the eye probes into the unexpressed world; for the artist too the Upanishadic problem has cropped up:
By whom impelled does the mind fall to its target, what is the agent that is behind the eye and sees through the eyes, what is the hearing and what the speech that their respective sense organs do not and cannot convey and record adequately or at all?
--
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,
--
Ifso long the poet was more or less a passive, a half-conscious or unconscious intermediary between the higher and the lower lights and delights, his role in the future will be better fulfilled when he becomes fully aware of it and consciously moulds and directs his creative energies. The poet is and has to be the harbinger and minstrel of unheard-of melodies: he is the fashioner of the creative word that brings down and embodies the deepest aspirations and experiences of the human consciousness. The poet is a missionary: he is missioned by Divine Beauty to radiate upon earth something of her charm and wizardry. The fullness of his role he can only play up when he is fully conscious for it is under that condition that all obstructing and obscuring elements lying across the path of inspiration can be completely and wholly eradicated: the instrument purified and tempered and transmuted can hold and express golden truths and beauties and puissances that otherwise escape the too human mould.
"The Last Voyage" by Charles Williams-A Little Book of Modern Verse, (Faber and Faber).
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And a lower and more facile inspiration tempts the poet and he often speaks with a raucous voice, even as the Arch-tempter sought to lure the Divine Word made flesh:
... Shrieking voices
--
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This is entirely another way of understandingits not an ascent, not even a descent nor an inspiration it must be what Sri Aurobindo calls a revelation. Its the meeting of this subconscious notationthis something which has remained buried within, held down so as not to manifest, but which suddenly surges forth to meet the light streaming down from above, this very vast state of consciousness that excludes nothing and from it springs forth a lightoh, a resplendence of light!like a new explanation of the world, or of that part of the world not yet explained.
And this is the true way of knowing.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its a lack of plasticity in the mind, and they are bound by the expression of things; for them, words are rigid. Sri Aurobindo explained it so well in The Secret of the Veda; he shows how language evolves and how, before, it was very supple and evocative. For example, one could at once think of a river and of inspiration. Sri Aurobindo also gives the example of a sailboat and the forward march of life. And he says that for those of the Vedic age it was quite natural, the two could go together, superimposed; it was merely a way of looking at the same thing from two sides, whereas now, when a word is said, we think only of this word all by itself, and to get a clear picture we need a whole literary or poetic imagery (with explanations to boot!). Thats exactly the case with these children; theyre at a stage where everything is rigid. Such is the product of modern education. It even extracts the subtlest nuance between two words and FIXES it: And above all, dont make any mistake, dont use this word for that word, for otherwise your writings no good. But its just the opposite.
(silence)
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, I am disrupting their work I know perfectly well that I am disrupting their domination of the world! All these vital beings have taken possession of the whole of Matter (Mother touches her body)life and action and have made it their domain, this is evident. But they are beings of the lower vital, for they seemed artificial they didnt express any higher form, but an entire range of artificial mechanisms, artificial will, artificial organization, all deriving from their own imagination and not at all from a higher inspiration.1 The symbol was very clear.
And I saw my own domain through them and through it all; I saw my domain: I can see it!, I said. But no sooner would I start on my way than the path would be lost, I no longer saw it, I couldnt see anymore where I was going. It became almost impossible to get my bearings there: hundreds and thousands of people, thingsutter confusion. An incoherent immensity and violent, what violence!
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To finish this reading and assimilate it quietly. I dont feel capable of writing at all, unless I can receive the inspiration.
But you will receive it!
0 1961-07-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother remarks in passing that the inspiration coming to her from Sri Aurobindo when she writes is sometimes in French and sometimes in English, and adds:)
Sri Aurobindo told me he had been French in a previous life and that French flowed back to him like a spontaneous memoryhe understood all the subtleties of French.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont feel any inspiration.
Do you have a question?
--
But behind it all, the original problem remains unresolved: Why has it become like this? Why this deformation? Why has it all been deformed? There are some very beautiful things behind, very intense, infinitely more powerful than we ourselves can even bear, marvelous things. But why has it all become so dreadful here? Thats what comes up immediatelyits why I told you I had no inspiration.
It is.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These people had always been very intimate with Sri Aurobindo, so they asked: Why, why, Why? He replied, It will be explained to you. I had no intention of explaining anything, and I left the room with him, but Datta began speaking. (She was an Englishwoman who had left Europe with me; she stayed here until her deatha person who received inspirations.) She said she felt Sri Aurobindo speaking through her and she explained everything: that Krishna had incarnated and that Sri Aurobindo was now going to do an intensive sadhana for the descent of the Supermind; that it meant Krishnas adherence to the Supramental Descent upon earth and that, as Sri Aurobindo would now be too occupied to deal with people, he had put me in charge and I would be doing all the work.
This was in 1926.
0 1961-08-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here (Mother gives some flowers), this is the Generosity1 of inspiration, and this is the crowning achievement [Divine Love2].
So, petit, everything all right? Yes?
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have noticed that the true inspiration doesnt come when one is very, very anxious, nor even when you have a very intense aspiration, but (how to put it?) when you succumb in a smile, and it all goes blank. Then theres nothing; but if you know how to curb impatience (simply delighting in His beatitude, even if ages passdelighting in His beatitude), then suddenly, when you least expect itflash! Thats IT!
This has happened to me very, very oftensuddenly, poff! And with such certainty!
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is not surprising, therefore, that exegetes have seen the Vedas primarily as a collection of propitiatory rites centered around sacrificial fires and obscure incantations to Nature divinities (water, fire, dawn, the moon, the sun, etc.), for bringing rain and rich harvests to the tribes, male progeny, blessings upon their journeys or protection against the thieves of the sunas though these shepherds were barbarous enough to fear that one inauspicious day their sun might no longer rise, stolen away once and for all. Only here and there, in a few of the more modern hymns, was there the apparently inadvertent intrusion of a few luminous passages that might have justifiedjust barely the respect which the Upanishads, at the beginning of recorded history, accorded to the Veda. In Indian tradition, the Upanishads had become the real Veda, the Book of Knowledge, while the Veda, product of a still stammering humanity, was a Book of Worksacclaimed by everyone, to be sure, as the venerable Authority, but no longer listened to. With Sri Aurobindo we might ask why the Upanishads, whose depth of wisdom the whole world has acknowledged, could claim to take inspiration from the Veda if the latter contained no more than a tapestry of primitive rites; or how it happened that humanity could pass so abruptly from these so-called stammerings to the manifold richness of the Upanishadic Age; or how we in the West were able to evolve from the simplicity of Arcadian shepherds to the wisdom of Greek philosophers. We cannot assume that there was nothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads.5
***
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If that (Mother indicates the head) could only keep quiet! There is tremendous tension there (the temples). When you have problems that need solving, if you could just raise your consciousness and receive the indication, receive the inspiration from above. And keep that (the head) quiet, quiet, quietthis tension is what tires you out!
You know, two or three minutes of silence can do a lot, and it doesnt take much time.
0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, its not me, I didnt think that myself, but it came to me several times. So I wondered if inspiration was coming, after all, but you Were fighting against it. That would be more than enough to make you tired!
But you see, Id been struggling for four or five days with no results. Well, this morning. I was angry yesterday, angry with you
--
It would be interesting, if it were possible thats precisely what I mean when I say: no links, no train of logic, no continuity; these are always, always mental. An inspiration, an intuition, a revelation always comes, poff!, leaving a score of things unsaidgaps to be filled in with spiritual experience.
If you start to explain, it falls flattheres no help for it.
0 1961-12-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When Mother was asked for a New Year message, the first inspiration that came to her when she began to 'look' at the coming year was this:
'If the Lord wills that a calamity befall you, why should you protest? Take it as a blessing and in fact it will become one.'
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And so long as you can keep that absolute immobility in the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pureit comes pure. When you can catch and hold onto this while youre speaking, then what comes to you is unmixed too, it stays pure.
This is an extremely delicate functioning, probably because were not used to it the slightest movement, the slightest mental vibration disrupts everything. But as long as it lasts, its perfectly pure. And in a supramentalized life this has to be the CONSTANT state. Mentalized will should no longer intervene; because you may well have a spiritual will, your life may be the constant expression of spiritual will (its what happens to all who feel themselves guided by the Divine within), but it still comes through a mental transcription. Well, as long as its that way, its not the supramental life. The supramental life NO LONGER goes through the mind the mind is an immobile zone of transmission. The least little twitch is enough to upset everything.
0 1962-02-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But theres probably no link with this in your consciousness; there must be gaps on the way back, so you dont remember. You receive it only as an inspiration, not through your regular continuous consciousness.
That will come, because I always. Simply by going back and forth like that, a path is created.
0 1962-03-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I like the form of your expression very, very much. It contains something deep, very supple and polished at the same timelike a lovely, finely chiseled statue. There is profound inspiration and a rhythm, a harmony, which I like very much. I really enjoyed reading your first book2the kind of enjoyment that comes from discovering beautiful forms, an original way of looking at things and expressing them. I appreciated it tremendously. Immediately, spontaneously, I ranked you as a true writer.
There you have it. I didnt think it was necessary to keep telling you all these things. But its true.
0 1962-06-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, I didnt want to go to the Himalayas for inspiration Im quite aware that inspiration can come anywhere! No, it wasnt for that, but for.
Your health?
0 1962-07-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, for me too. Writing it was more intense; I have no sense of inspiration with this one.
My idea was to stick to the bare facts, to tell stories from Sri Aurobindos life, the Ashram, things like that.
--
Oh, you know, I dont think much of the inspirations Im getting! I mean, I know it could just as well be something elseits not the inevitable.
Thats no problem the public isnt touched by inspiration. But what you write here is for intelligent people with inquiring minds, interested in ideasis there such a public?
But after this prologue, I intend to tackle the problem practically, to speak of the moment when people reach the limits of the mind, when they start going round in circles and find nothing; then I will tell them of zones beyond the mind, and of what can be discovered when one goes within: mental silence. Ill talk about a practical discipline. That was my idea. My idea isnt to give an abstract explanation but to take up yoga from a practical angle: try to do this, and heres what you may expectmental transformation, change in the vital, dreams, etc. All practical things. Id like to explore the psychological aspect.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
People now talk of spiritualizing politics. Its result will be, if there be any permanent result, some kind of Indianized Bolshevism. Even to that kind of work I have no objection. Let each man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours the spiritual power into all these impure forms the water of the Causal ocean into raw vesselsei ther the raw vessels will break and the water will be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is endowed with life and made powerful, he may play the part of the devotee Hanuman and do much work for Rama,2 so long as that life and that power remain. But what we want in the Temple of India is not Hanuman, but the god, the avatar, Rama himself.
We can mix with all, but in order to draw all into the true path, keeping intact the spirit and form of our ideal. If we do not do that we shall lose our direction and the real work will not be done. If we remain individually everywhere, something will be done indeed; but if we remain everywhere as parts of a Samgha, a hundred times more will be done. As yet that time has not come. If we try to give a form hastily, it may not be the exact thing we want. The Samgha will at first be in unconcentrated form. Those who have the ideal will be united but work in different places. Afterwards, they will form something like a spiritual commune and make a compact Samgha. They will then give all their work a shape according to the demand of the spirit and the need of the agenot a bound and rigid form, not an achalayatana3, but a free form which will spread out like the sea, mould itself into many waves and surround a thing here, overflood a thing there and finally take all into itself. As we go on doing this there will be established a spiritual community. This is my present idea. As yet it has not been fully developed. All is in Gods hands; whatever He makes us do, that we shall do.
0 1962-09-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, Ill concentrate on it just as Sri Aurobindo said it in English, using French words. Then Ill see if something comes WITHOUT changing anything that is, if the same inspiration he had comes in French. It will be an interesting thing to do. If I can do one, two, three lines a day, thats all I need; I will spend one hour every day like that.
I dont have anything in mind. All I know is that being in that light above gives me great joy. For it is a supramental lighta supramental light of aesthetic beauty, and very, very harmonious.
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo is speaking here of knowledge through inspiration or revelation. In other words, when something suddenly descends and illuminates your understanding: all of a sudden, you feel you know a certain thing for the very first time, because it comes to you directly from the domain of Light, the domain of true knowledge, and it comes with all its innate force of truthit illuminates you. And indeed, when youve just received it, it seems as though nothing could resist that Light. And if you make sure to let it work in you, it brings about as much transformation as it can in its own domain.
It is a fairly common experience. When it occurs, and for some time afterwards (not very long), everything seems to organize itself quite naturally around that Light. Then, little by little, it blends with all the rest. The intellectual awareness of it remains, formulated in one way or another that much is left but its like an empty husk. It no longer has the driving force that transforms all movements of the being in the image of that Light. And this is what Sri Aurobindo means: the world moves fast, the Lord moves ever forward, and all that remains is but a trail He leaves in His wake: it no longer has the same instantaneous and almighty force it had at the MOMENT He projected it into the world.
0 1963-03-13, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I believe its his Messageall the rest is preparation, while Savitri is the Message. Unfortunately, there were two morons here who fancied correcting himwhile he was alive! (A. especially, hes a poet.) Hence all those Letters on Poetry Sri Aurobindo wrote. Ive always refused to read them I find it outrageous. He was forced to explain a whole poetic technique the very idea! Its just the contrary: it comes down from above, and AFTERWARDS you explain. Like a punch in sawdust: inspiration comes down, and afterwards you explain why its all arranged as it is but that just doesnt interest me!
(silence)
0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same with people who get cured. That I know, to some extent: the Power acts so forcefully that it is almost miraculousat a distance. The Power I am very conscious of the Power. But, I must say, I find it doesnt act here so well as it does far away. On government or national matters, on the terrestrial atmosphere, on great movements, also as inspirations on the level of thought (in certain people, to realize certain things), the Power is very clear. Also to save people or cure themit acts very strongly. But much more at a distance than here! (Although the receptivity has increased since I withdrew because, necessarily, it gave people the urge to find inside something they no longer had outside.) But here, the response is very erratic. And to distinguish between the proportion that comes from faith, sincerity, simplicity, and what comes from the Power Some people I am able to save (naturally, in my view, its because they COULD be saved), this is something that for a very long time I have been able to foresee. But now I dont try to know: it comes like this (gesture like a flash). If, for instance, I am told, So and so has fallen ill, well, immediately I know if he will recover (first if its nothing, some passing trouble), if he will recover, if it will take some time and struggle and difficulties, or if its fatalautomatically. And without trying to know, without even trying: the two things come together.2 This capacity has developed, first because I have more peace, and because, having more peace, things follow a more normal course. But there were two or three little instances where I said to the Lord (gesture of presenting something, palms open upward), I asked Him to do a certain thing, and then (not very often, it doesnt happen to me often; at times it comes as a necessity, a necessity to present the thing with a commentfrom morning to evening and evening to morning I present everything constantly, thats my movement [same gesture of presenting something] but here, there is a comment, as if I were asking, Couldnt this be done?), and then the result: yes, immediately. But I am not the one who presents the thing, you see: its just the way it is, it just happens that way, like everything else.3 So my conclusion is that its part of the Plan, I mean, a certain vibration is necessary, enters [into Mother], intervenes, and No stories to tell, mon petit! Nothing to fill people with enthusiasm or give them trust, nothing.
Three or four days ago, a very nice man, whom I like a lot, who has been very useful, fell ill. (He has in fact been ill for a long time, and he is struggling; for all sorts of reasons of family, milieu, activities and so on, he isnt taken care of the way he should be, he doesnt take care of his body the way he should.) He had a first attack and I saw him afterwards. But I saw him full of life: his body was full of life and of will to live. So I said, No need to worry. Then after some time, maybe not even a month, another attack, caused not by the same thing but by its consequences. I receive a letter in which I am informed that he has been taken to the hospital. I was surprised, I said, But no! He has in himself the will to live, so why? Why has this happened? The moment I was informed and made the contact, he recovered with fantastic speed! Almost in a few hours. He had been rushed to the hospital, they thought it was most serious, and two days later he was back home. The hospital doctor said, Why, he has received a new life! But thats not correct: I had put him back in contact with his bodys will, which, for some reason or other, he had forgotten. Things like that, yes, theyre very clear, they take place very consciously but anyway, nothing worth talking about!
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But hes an intellectual, he may have received some inspiration on the intellectual level.
Is your letter from France?
--
Well, similar things may have happened elsewhere and some people may have received inspirationswe cannot say.
Its clear that wherever there is a receptivity, the Force acts, theres no doubt.
0 1963-11-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Muses?! [Satprem is taken aback] I believe in inspiration.
Because I saw It was so precise, so concrete, material, that for a moment I wondered whether it was physical or not. There was only the arm and shoulder of someone who stood behind you, but veiled, that is, as if behind a mist so as not to be seen. It was a womans arm, very young, a very milky white, and a little roundednot fat (!), but without angles. There was a hand and an arm, very white-skinneda milky white and I could see the beginning of a sort of silver dress. She had words and sheets of paper, and she was arranging words on the sheets, and then the words were written in black on the sheetsshe had the words and the sheets separately, and she arranged the words on the sheets and then put the sheets in front of you. She was standing behind you. But not a vague and imprecise vision, it was very, very material. (smiling) So I wondered if you have a Muse?
--
They are certainly the beings that were in the past taken for the Muses, the genii of inspiration. They are the genii of the form. Not so much for what has to be said as for the way to say it.
They are a pleasant company; there is a sense of harmony, something that doesnt clash. Its a company that gives the feeling that everything unfolds harmoniouslywhich isnt all that common!
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For instance, M. was greatly interested in my story about Ganapati, and I saw that there was a connection between him and Ganapati, so I told him, But turn to him and he will give you the right inspiration. And since then M. has been perfect, really; all that he can do he does to the utmost of his ability. So all this is very good.
But there is a considerable difference between the real fact, that is, what this body [Mothers body] represents, and Xs conception. He has always remained all the way down. This is what, in fact, had ruined his health for a time. And the odd thing is that every time he was ill and CONSENTED to inform me, he was instantly curedhe KNOWS this, but still his first instinct is always to turn to the gods with his ordinary puja.
0 1964-11-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It begins with something he calls aspirationoh, its beautiful! I have rarely heard something with so pure and so beautiful an inspiration. All of a sudden, a sound comes, which is exactly the sound you hear up above. And it isnt too mixed (the fault I find with all classical music is all the accompaniment which is there to give more substance, but which spoils the purity of the inspiration: to me, its padding), well, with Sunil, the padding isnt there. He doesnt claim to be making music, of course, and the padding isnt there, so its truly beautiful.
I have decided not to play this year for January 1st. Even last year, I very much hesitated to play because I was absolutely conscious of the inadequacy the poorness and inadequacyof the physical instrument; but there was a sort of reasonable wisdom which knew how a refusal to play would be interpreted [by the disciples], so I playedwithout satisfaction, and it wasnt worth much. But the music I heard yesterday was so much THAT, SO much what I would like to play, that I said to myself, Well, now it would be unreasonable to want to keep in a personal manifestation something that has a much better means of expression [Sunil]. So I have decided to say No for January 1st. But I will see if Sunil couldnt prepare something on the theme of next years message, something that would be recorded and played for everyone, in an anonymous wayno need to say, Its by this or that person, its music, thats all.
0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And that vitalwhich was used to being at the helm, to governing everything, to deciding everything, anyway it was the master of the house the vital must first begin with detachment, which generally, when it isnt very refined, turns into disgust. A general detachment. Then all at once (sometimes all at once, sometimes slowly), it feels that the impulse, the inspiration must come from within, that nothing must come from outside anymore and excite it. And then, if it has goodwill, it turns within and begins to ask for the inspiration, the Command and the Direction; and after that, it can start doing work again.
For some people, it takes years; for others, its done very quicklyit depends on the quality of the vital. If its a refined vital, of a higher quality, it goes quickly; if it is something very brutish, which goes like a bulldog or a buffalo, it takes a little more time.
0 1964-12-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All human music always has padding. They have an inspiration, and in between theres a gap, so they fill it up with their musical knowledge. But this morning, it came straight from above and there was no padding. It was very fine.
Only, I didnt even make an effort to remember; I thought, It will come, but it didnt!
0 1965-01-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an old Playground Talk of March 8, 1951, in which Mother spoke of the being that possessed and guided Hitler: Hitler was in contact with a being whom he considered to be the Supreme: that being would come and give him advice and tell him all that he had to do. Hitler would withdraw into solitude and wait long enough to come into contact with his guide and receive inspirations from him which he would afterwards carry out very faithfully. That being whom Hitler took for the Supreme was quite simply an Asura, the one called in occultism the Lord of Falsehood, and he proclaimed himself to be the Lord of Nations. He had a resplendent appearance and could pull the wool over anyones eyes, except one who truly had occult knowledge and could thus see what was there, behind the appearance. He could have deluded anyone, he was so splendid. He generally appeared to Hitler wearing a breast-plate and a silver helmet (with a sort of flame coming out of his head), and there was around him an atmosphere of dazzling light, so dazzling that Hitler could hardly look at him. He would tell him all that he had to dohe would play with him as with a monkey or a mouse. He had set his mind on making Hitler do all possible kinds of folly until the day when he would come a cropper, which is what happened. But there are many cases like that one, on a smaller scale, naturally. Hitler was a very good medium, he had great mediumistic capacities, but he lacked intelligence and discernment. That being could tell him anything and he would swallow it all. Thats what prodded him on little by little. And that being would do that as a pastime, he didnt take life seriously. For those beings, people are very small things with which they play as a cat plays with a mouse, until the day when they eat them up.)
I knew that being very well (for other reasons the story would be too long to tell), and once, I knew he was going to visit Hitler I went before he did: I took his appearance, it was very easy. Then I said to Hitler, Go and attack Russia. I dont exactly remember the words or the details, but the fact was that I told him, Go In order to have the supreme victory, go and attack Russia. That was the end of Hitler. He believed it and did ittwo days later, we got the news of the attack.1 And then, the next day, that is, when I came back from Hitler, I met that being and told him, Ive done your job! Naturally enough, he was furious!
0 1965-02-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Peoples inspirations shouldnt be contradicted, I feel them as very living, and so the Force acts (gesture far away in space).
And when they give, it opens them inwardly: it creates in themselves a possibility of receiving.
0 1965-03-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a rather curious development. For some time now, but more and more precisely, when I hear something, when someone reads something to me or I listen to some music or am told of some event, immediately something vibrates: the origin of the activity or the level on which its taking place or the origin of the inspiration is automatically translated as a vibration in one of the centers. And then, depending on the quality of the vibration, its something constructive or negative; and when at some point it makes contact, however slightly, with a domain of Truth, there is (how can I explain?) like the spark of a vibration of Ananda. And the thought is absolutely silent, still, nothingnothing (Mother opens her hands Upward in a gesture of complete offering). But this perception is growing increasingly precise. And thats how I know: I know the source of the inspiration, where the action is located and the quality of the thing.
What precision! Oh, an infinitesimal precision, in the details.
0 1965-06-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I must tell you that I was born in a family in which nobody smoked: my father had never smoked and neither had his brothersanyway, no one smoked. So since my early childhood, I hadnt been used to others smoking. Later, when I lived with artists Artists smoke, of course (it seems it gives them inspiration!), but I detested the smell. I didnt say anything because I didnt want to be unpleasant, but I detested it. Then I came hereSri Aurobindo smoked. He smoked deliberately, he smoked in order to say: one can do the yoga while smoking, I say one can smoke and do the yoga, and I smoke. And he smoked. And naturally all the disciples smoked, since Sri Aurobindo smoked. For some time, I even gave them pocket money so they could buy cigars (they smoked cigarsit was ghastly!). Then I came to live in Sri Aurobindos house, we spoke freely, and one day I told him, How awful the smell of smoke is! (laughing) Its disgusting! So he said to me, Oh, you dont like the smell? Oh, no! I said, Not only that, but I had to make a yogic effort to stop it from making me feel sick! The next day, he had stopped. It was over, he never smoked again. That was kind. It wasnt on principle, it was because he didnt want to impose the smell on me. But I had never said anything: it was simply because he asked me just like that, while talking, so I told him. And when he stopped smoking, everyone had to stop toosmoking wasnt allowed anymore, since he didnt smoke anymore.
No, for those who dont smoke (laughing), others smoke is very
0 1965-07-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The inspiration of it all was that vein of gold?
Yes. It was light, not gold. It was a light like a strip (gesture). Then one is bathed in that and one is very happy.
0 1966-03-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And there are kinds of messengers that are sent into the earth atmosphere to convey orders or inspiration or a particular knowledge.
For some time now, whenever I think of terrestrial or Indian circumstances, I have a sort of repeated impression of the calm before the storm.
0 1966-05-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but inspiration is hard to pull down!
(Mother laughs)
0 1966-06-25, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, some people have heard his music, and in Russia, France and the U.S.A. as well, they have asked for permission to copy it and spread it around. And the strange thing is that those people dont know one another, but they have all had the same impression: tomorrows music. So to those who have asked Ive answered, Have some patience, in two years well give you a musical monument. Its much better to begin with a major work, because it immediately gives the position, otherwise you might think its passing little inspirationsnot that: something that strikes you on the head and makes you bow before it.
I read out the lines (in English, naturally), and with that he does the music. And the words are probably mixed in with the music, as he always does. But then, my reading is simply the clearest possible pronunciation, with the full understanding of whats being said, and WITHOUT A SINGLE INTONATION. I think I have succeeded, because at a weeks interval (I dont read every day), the timbre of the voice is always the same.
0 1966-09-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am not saying anything officially; because I have said and always repeat that politics is in complete Falsehood, based on Falsehood, and I am not dealing with it, meaning that I am not in politics, I dont want to be but that doesnt stop me from seeing clearly! People have come and asked me (from every side, by the way) for my opinion, view or advice; I said, No, I dont deal in politics. You see, all diplomacy is absolutely based on a DELIBERATE Falsehood. As long as it is like that, theres no hope: the inspirations will always come from the wrong side; inspirations, impulsions, ideas, everything will always come from the wrong sidewhich means the inescapable blunder, for everyone. A few rare individuals feel that and are aware of it, and they are half desperate because nobody listens to them.
Unfortunately, following the present tendencies, for Auroville they are trying to get UNESCOS support (!) I, of course, knew beforeh and that those [UNESCO] people couldnt understand, but they are trying. Because everywhere people (its a sort of superstition), everywhere people say, No, Ill open my purse strings only with UNESCOs approval and encouragement I am talking about those whose contri bution matters, lots of people, so
0 1966-10-12, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But today And limitless, you know, outside time, outside spacemagnificent! The great, great repose. And when you are here, its always like that. That must be where you draw your inspiration from. It must be from there. Its good! (Mother laughs) And very pleasant, I dont know how to explain. Very pleasant. And absolutely silent, but conscious, very conscious, and in perfect tranquillitylight, light, light, nothing but that: the essence of light.
The ascending curve went beyond that, into those regions Thon had given that barbarous name of pathetism. When one went beyond and entered those regions, then there was it was the Supreme outside the creation, beyond the creation. Thats where I saw the representative form of the new creation (and that was before I ever heard anything about Sri Aurobindo and the Supermind), thats where I saw the form that must succeed the human form, like the symbolic representation of the new creation. That was two or three years before I heard of Sri Aurobindo and met him. So when he told me about the supramental creation, I said to him (laughing), But of course, I know, I saw it up there!
0 1966-12-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, theres a problem that has often tormented me, I often wonder about it. When you write, is inspiration simply a global thing, like a form of light, and you pull a certain general vibration down, or does everything already exist and it simply comesdoes everything exist exactly word for word?
I dont think so.
--
You understand, what comes is something that arousesit arouses words or gets clothed in words. Then it depends: it may arouse different words. And its in a universal storehouse, not necessarily an individual one; its not necessarily individual since it can be clothed in words. Languages are such narrow things, while that is universal. What could I call it? Its not the soul but the spirit of the thing (though its more concrete than that): its the POWER of the thing. And because of the quality of the power, the best quality of words is attracted. Its inspiration that arouses the words; the inspired person isnt the one who finds or adapts them, not at all: its inspiration that AROUSES the words.
But I understand what you mean. You want to know if its something ready-made, ready-prepared, which you pull down as it is. (Mother remains silent). That exists in a realm far higher than words. For example, I have often received something like that (gesture from above), direct, then I translate it; I dont try to find it (the more silent I am, the more powerful and concrete it growspowerfully concrete), but I often see, as coming from Sri Aurobindo, something that adds a correction, a precision (rarely an addition, its not that: its only in the form, especially in the line of precision); the first expression is a little hazy, then it becomes more precise. And I dont try to find it, I dont strive, there isnt any mental activity: its always like this (even, still gesture to the forehead), and its always in this [stillness] that it comes: suddenly it comesplop! plop! I say, Oh! and note it down.
--
But that inspiration comes from the highest region, the region beyond all individualizations. Thats why its something we find difficult to formulate and explain. Its complete, perfect in itself, but it doesnt have anything of the character of our mental formulation, not at all; it doesnt even have the character of a formulated idea. And its absolutely imperative, absolutely. But then, as soon as it touches the mental zone, it seems to attract words. My impression is that the more silent I am, the more precise it is; in other words, the more inactive the mind is, the more precise the expression. So thats what it is, its that force coming down and attracting words. Its not even ideas (it doesnt come through the region of ideas): its an experience, its something living which comes and which, to take expression, catches hold of words. What came on Sunday was like that: I was asked that question on the Grace, then I was seized by a concentrated, extremely strong silence for maybe a minute (not even that long), and it came. Then I spoke. I heard myself speaking. But then it clearly came through Sri Aurobindo.
If it were already written, fully ready somewhere, you couldnt change anything in it; when it was there you would feel its perfect in itself and you cant change anything in it.
--
But thats what Ive told you, its that direct inspiration. Because if you knew how imperative what comes from above is! All thoughts appear neutral, powerless
Yes.
0 1966-12-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Whats necessary isnt to destroy, its to become the master of the expression of your inspiration. You must be the master, that is to say, you mustnt receive the thing as it comes and write it as it comes. You must receive the inspiration and be conscious of the phenomenon of expression. Then it will be perfect.
I was in the habit of being motionless and letting things flow down.
Yes, but your mind is active the mind is active. You see, Sri Aurobindo could do it because his mind no longer existed; it was perfectly, perfectly still and inspiration went through it as through pure air. But your mind In fact, thats the discipline you have to do, because your mind is in the habit of becoming active again. Its good if what comes from above goes through like that, but on condition that the mind be perfectly still. If you like, to put things differently, its to learn to keep your mind still, while writing at the same time.
***
0 1967-02-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So what should be done there (and what I am trying to do) is the same work of receptive silence and to let inspiration, the inspirational consciousness, gather the necessary elements. For that we must be very tranquil. We must be very supple, in the sense of surrendered; I mean, allow as little habitual activity as possible to mix inbe almost like an automaton. But with the full perception of the consciousness trying to be expressed, so that nothing gets mixed in with it. Thats the most important thing: to receive this consciousness and hold it like really like something sacred, without anything getting mixed in with it, like that. So then, there is a problem of attraction, we could say, and of concretization in the formula.4 I always tell myself that if I knew many languages, it would make use of all that; unfortunately I know only two (I know only two thoroughly) and I have only very superficial and minimal glimpses of two or three others thats not enough. Only, I have been in contact with very different methods: the method of the Far East and the Sanskrit method, and of course the methods of the West. It does give a sort of base, but its not sufficient I am at the opposite extreme from erudition. I have always felt that erudition shrivels up thoughtit parches the brain. (But I have great respect for scholars, oh! indeed, and I seek their advice, but for myself it wont do!)
Once, very long ago, when Sri Aurobindo was telling me about himself, that is, of his childhood, his education, I put the question to him, I asked him, Why am I, as an individual being, so mediocre? I can do anything; all that I have tried to do I have done, but never in a superior way: always like this (gesture to an average level). Then he answered me (at the time I took it as a kindness or commiseration), Thats because it gives great supplenessa great suppleness and a vast scope; because those who have perfection are concentrated and specialized. As I said, I took it simply like a caress to comfort a child. But now I realize that the most important thing is not to have any fixity: nothing should be set, definitive, like the sense of a perfection in the realization that puts a total stop to the forward march. The sense of incapacity (with the meaning I said of mediocrity, of something by no means exceptional) leaves you in a sort of expectation (gesture of aspiration upward) of something better. And then, the most important thing is supplenesssuppleness, suppleness. Suppleness and breadth: reject nothing as useless or bad or inferiornothing; set nothing up as really superior and beautifulnothing. Remain ever open, ever open.
0 1967-06-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the difficulty is to find the someone, because it should be a man who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly to begin with, who is capable of receiving his inspirations directly (a very difficult condition), and has at the same time a very strong character with a powera contagious power and a force that can arouse the inert masses. For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.
There was a man who would have donenot fully well, not with enough breadth of mind to fully understand Sri Aurobindo, but very straight and stronghe was assassinated in Kashmir.
--
It wasnt perfect, it was a stopgap, but anyway he would have done. But now Among the young people whom I dont know? What is needed is power combined with that breadth of mind capable of understanding Sri Aurobindos inspiration and transmitting it; and along with that, vital power. The two things together.
And its not something for tomorrow: its for right now, thats the problem, because the danger is there.
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is not a question of designation but of inspiration
Yes, because he says light music, but Ive heard light music that I found exceedingly lovely! Even some pieces of film music that were magnificent, and on the other hand some classical pieces, oh, how boring! So
0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this physical mind, which Sri Aurobindo said was an impossibility, that it was something that goes round in circles and would go on turning round forever, without consciousness, precisely, like a sort of machine, this physical mind has been converted, it has fallen silent, and in silence it has received inspiration from the Consciousness. And it has started praying again: the same prayers that were earlier in the mind.
I quite understand all that can take place in you, but
0 1967-11-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He must have told you! And for you, it will come back like this (gesture from within); one day, all of a sudden, it will re-emerge from deep within you. I even saw that (the experience was rather complete), I saw it go within, and saw that one day it would re-emerge and would simply be like an inspiration or a revelation, or even simply like a knowledge: Ah! So thats how it is!
Very amusing.
0 1968-03-13, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats speculation, what we might call an inspiration. But it still belongs to the upper realm.
Now and then, one feels as if within an hairs breadth of all-powerfulness: one is just on the verge ah! (Mother makes the gesture of catching the thing) But then it fades away.
0 1968-09-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, but as soon as I want to work, it gets veiled, as if something were cutting me off: I cant catch the inspiration, its blocked. Then if I insist, I get headaches and aching eyes.
Youve caught my disease!
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
5) Should we let the individual initiative manifest freely, personal action be impelled by inspiration and intuition, and turn down any suggestion which the individual concerned does not feel to be good?
To be viable, this would demand that all Auroville workers should be yogis, conscious of the Divine Truth.
0 1969-04-02, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The trouble is that all these people take their desires for inspirations. And then I have this difficulty with Auroville too, thats why I take every opportunity to repeat to them (they all keep saying that they come to Auroville to be free), I answer them that one can be free only if one is united with the Supreme; and to be united with the Supreme, one must have no more desires!
Oh, all that [i.e., desires] was necessary, but one cant remain stuck there.
0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(F.B.:) Theres a group which sings something rather humorous, and at the end they say, O Mother, tell me more, tell me more Its fantastic! Because the inspiration is so pure, and they really ask, O Mother, tell me more
(Mother laughs)
0 1969-12-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He is nice. As a matter of fact, I have something in this connection. Yesterday I had the visit of Paolo and N., both of them, and Paolo explained to me a sort of inspiration he had about Auroville. I found it very beautiful, very good, and important. So I told him, You must absolutely tell Mother about it directly. So when could you see Paolo?
Will I hear him? Because the difficulty is that people dont know how to speak; they speak too fast, and I cant follow.
--
Yes, when he spoke to me, at any rate, I felt the inspiration and the thing which was really to come.
It Is ready to come! As for me, Ive known it for a long time. Its there (gesture above), waiting.
0 1970-01-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He explained something I found very beautiful and would like to submit to you. As a matter of fact, when you spoke of that Center, you said, I dont know whether the walls will have a slope or the roof. You seemed, to hesitate. Then Paolo said he received a kind of inspiration and saw something very simple, like a big shell with one part emerging above the ground and another part buried underground. He drew a sort of sketch which Id like to show you.
Did he see R. also? Because R. had two ideas, he came to see me with two ideas, and I told him which of the two I liked better. But nothing is decided yet. R. has to draw a sketch of his ideas. So Ill see what Paolo says and then Ill tell you R.s ideas.
(Satprem unrolls a plan) So you see, this is the outside, which would simply be like a shell. The inside is exactly as you saw it: that big bare carpet, and the ball at the center. What determined Paolos inspiration is that you said one would have to go underground and then to reemerge inside. So he had the idea of going deep down through a spiral staircase here, which would climb back up, and once here, there would be a series of staircases fanning out in every direction (in the lower part of the shell) and ending inside the temple itself. Then, the whole lower part would be in black marble while the higher part would be in simple white marble. The whole thing is like a big bud, you see, as if growing out of the earth.
Image 3
--
Well let the dust settle. Because, you understand, to accept those changes I must be sure that the origin of the inspiration is of the same quality as mine. For the execution, I know very well that we need people who know the job and do the work, but for the inspiration, I must be sure that the origin of the inspiration is AT LEAST as high as mine. And I am not sure, because I saw so clearly. With Paolos ideas, I saw the mixture straight away. His ideas are all mental ideas, I can assure you because for me thats very easy to see. Well, all of them bring along the same MIXTURE as with anything thats done in the world. And so whats the use of doing that over and over and over again?
Something bothers me. Entering underground is very good, but that huge underground? (Mother pulls a face)
--
The bodythis bodyis undergoing a discipline, you know, oh, terrible. But it doesnt complain, its happy, it asks for it. And it sees how we are full of VERY SMALL THINGS that are ceaselessly hindering the action of the Force. Well, the first thing is to get rid of all that. We must be like this (gesture of surrender, open) and receive the Force. Then all inspirations will come, and not only inspirations but the MEANS of execution, and the TRUE THING. Otherwise
And since not all of them are quite ready, I do what the Consciousness does: I apply the Pressure and say nothing I wait (Mother laughs).
0 1970-06-06, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother comments:) Sri Aurobindo calls divine mind the prototype of the mental function that is totally and perfectly surrendered to the Divine and functions under the divine inspiration alone.
If a human being lives only by and for the Divine, his mind necessarily becomes a divine mind.
0 1971-05-08, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But even those who might have a power. Look how it is: certain people could have a power, they would just have to have the true inspiration theyre afraid of it, mon petit! They reject the true inspiration, because they think that things have to follow their natural courseso-called natural.
Humanity rejects the true miracle. It only believes in.
0 1971-05-26, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It landed on me. Then she said with a kind of forcefulness that affected me very much, Oh, yes I know, its very easy to mistake what comes from the subconscient for an inspiration.
Oh!
0 1971-12-18, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have the impression that for about a year now there has been no creative force coming into meno inspiration and no creative force. I was speaking about it with Sujata a few days ago, and she had a vision: she saw something like two enormous silver doorswhich were closed. So I dont know, I wonder what that means. Why that closure?
(after a silence)
0 1972-02-16, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Personally, of all those I have read, its the book that has helped me the most. It comes from a very high and very universal inspiration, in the sense that it will remain new for a long time to come.
(silence)
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I deeply hope, Sir, that Sri Aurobindos works will be a new source of inspiration for you.
With my best and most considerate regards,
02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A mind that is not rigidly limited to the ratiocinative process, but has been remoulded in the light and rhythm of inspiration and intuition and revelation and other higher sources still beyond becomes at once a transfigured vessel, an apt instrument to incarnate and dynamise in the physical and material field truths and realities that normally lie far and above. Something of the kind, though in a small measure, happens, for example, in a poet or an artist. A poet who moves by vision and inspiration is not, at least need not be, devoid of mind: the mind in ills case is not annihilated or even kept in abeyance, but sublimated, undergoing a reorientation and reorganisation, acquiring a new magnitude. Even if there is a suspension of the ratiocinative faculty, it would not mean a suspension of the mental power in itself, but rather an enhancement in a new degree. The same may happen to the other parts and planes of human consciousness and existence.
Of course, if one chooses, one can sidetrack these intervening ranges of consciousness between the Spirit and Matter, and strike something like a chord line between the two; but also one need not follow this bare straight ascetic line of ascension; one can pursue a wider, a circular or global movement which not only arrives but fulfils. The latter is Nature's method of activity, Nature being all reality. The exclusive line is meant for individuals, and even as such it has a value and sense in the global view, for this too is contri butory to the total urge and its total consummation.
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
Humanists once affirmed that nothing that concerned man was alien to them, all came within their domain. The spiritual man too can make the affirmation with the same or even a greater emphasis. Indeed the spiritual consciousness in the highest degree and greatest compass must needs govern and fashion man in his entire being, in all his members and functions. The ideal, as we have said, has seldom been accepted; generally it has been considered as a chimera and an impossibility. That is why, we repeat, even to this day the world has its cup of misery full to the brimaniryam asukham.
--
When man was a dweller of the forest,a jungle man,akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order asks only one thing of man, namely, to be strong and powerful, that is to say, fierce, ruthless, cruel and regimented. Regimentation can be said to be the very characteristic of the order, the regimentation of a pack of wild dogs or wolves. A particular country, nation or raceit is Germany in Europe and, in her wake, Japan in Asiais to be the sovereign nation or master race (Herrenvolk); the rest of mankindo ther countries and peoplesshould be pushed back to the status of servants and slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. What the helots were in ancient times, what the serfs were in the mediaeval ages, and what the subject peoples were under the worst forms of modern imperialism, even so will be the entire mankind under the new overlordship, or something still worse. For whatever might have been the external conditions in those ages and systems, the upward aspirations of man were never doubted or questioned they were fully respected and honoured. The New Order has pulled all that down and cast them to the winds. Furthermore in the new regime, it is not merely the slaves that suffer in a degraded condition, the masters also, as individuals, fare no better. The individual here has no respect, no freedom or personal value. This society or community of the masters even will be like a bee-hive or an ant-hill; the individuals are merely functional units, they are but screws and bolts and nuts and wheels in a huge relentless machinery. The higher and inner realities, the spontaneous inspirations and self-creations of a free soulart, poetry, literaturesweetness and light the good and the beautifulare to be banished for ever; they are to be regarded as things of luxury which enervate the heart, diminish the life-force, distort Nature's own virility. Man perhaps would be the worshipper of Science, but of that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life.
Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its over-shadowing menaceeven though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstancesyet, because of the stand they have taken, now bear the fate of the world on their shoulders, carry the whole future of humanity in their march. It is of course agreed that to have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being. He does not change, his is a hardened mould, a settled immutable form of a particular consciousness, a definite pattern of qualities and activitiesgunakarma. Asura-nature means a fundamental ego-centricism, violent and concentrated self-will. Change is possible for the human being; he can go downward, but he can move upward too, if he chooses. In the Puranas a distinction has been made between the domain of enjoyment and the domain of action. Man is the domain of action par excellence; by him and through him evolve new and fresh lines of activity and impulsion. The domain of enjoyment, on the other hand, is where we reap the fruits of our past Karma; it is the result of an accumulated drive of all that we have done, of all the movements we have initiated and carried out. It is a status of being where there is only enjoyment, not of becoming where there can be development and new creation. It is a condition of gestation, as it were; there is no new Karma, no initiative or change in the stuff of the consciousness. The Asuras are bhogamaya purusha, beings of enjoyment; their domain is a cumulus of enjoyings. They cannot strike out a fresh line of activity, put forth a new mode of energy that can work out a growth or transformation of nature. Their consciousness is an immutable entity. The Asuras do not mend, they can only end. Man can certainly acquire or imbibe Asuric force or Asura-like qualities and impulsions; externally he can often act very much like the Asura; and yet there is a difference. Along with the dross that soils and obscures human nature, there is something more, a clarity that opens to a higher light, an inner core of noble metal which does not submit to any inferior influence. There is this something More in man which always inspires and enables him to break away from the Asuric nature. Moreover, though there may be an outer resemblance between the Asuric qualities of man and the Asuric qualities of the Asura, there is an intrinsic different, a difference in tone and temper, in rhythm and vibration, proceeding as they do, from different sources. However cruel, hard, selfish, egocentric man may be, he knows, he admitsat times, if hot always, at heart, if not openly, subconsciously, if not wholly consciously that such is not the ideal way, that these qualities are not qualifications, they are unworthy elements and have to be discarded. But the Asura is ruthless, because he regards ruthlessness as the right thing, as the perfect thing, it is an integral part of his swabhava and swadharma, his law of being and his highest good. Violence is the ornament of his character.
02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
About the Word, the mystery which Dirghatama unveils is an extraordinary revelationso curious, so illuminating. In later times many lines of spiritual discipline have adopted his scheme and spread it far and wide. Dirghatama himself was an uncommon wizard of words. The truths he saw and clothed in mantras have attained, as I have already said, general celebrity. He says: "The Word is off our categories. It has four stations or levels or gradations." The Rishi continues: "Three of them are unmanifested, unbodied; only the fourth one is manifest and bodied, on the tongue of man." This terminology embodying a fundamental principle has had many commentaries and explanations. Of these the most well-known is that given by the Tantras. They have named the fourfold words as (1) par, supreme; (2) payant, the seeing one; (3) madhyam, the middle one or the one within and (4) vaikhar, the articulate word. In modern language we may say that the first one is the self-vibration of the Supreme Being or Consciousness; the second is the vibration of the higher-mind or the pure intelligence; the third is the vibration of the inner heart; and the fourth the vibration of physical sound, of voice. In philosophical terms of current English we may name these as (1) revelatory, (2) intuitive, (3) inspirational and (4) vocal.
Now in conclusion I will just speak of the fundamental vision of the rishi. His entire realisation, the whole Veda of his life, he has, it appears, pressed into one single k We have heard it said that the entire range of all scriptures is epitomised in the Gita and the Gita' itself is epitomised in one slokasarvadharmn parityajya... Even so we may say that Rishi Dirghatama has summarised his experience, at least the fundamental basic one, and put it into a sutra. It is the famous k with which he opens his long hymn to Surya:
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
An inspiration and a lyric cry,
The moments came with ecstasy on their wings;
02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A lying inspiration fell and dark
A new order substitutes for the divine.
02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
She conspired with inspiration's sister brood
To fill thought's skies with glimmering nebulae.
02.10 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is a call for all the parts of the being to precipitate to the very foundation of the being, coalesce and evoke a wild and weird, doleful and discordant symphonya painful cry. Unrealised dreams, that had faded into oblivion, are now like possessed beings and hang like bats on darkling branches:they are about to begin their phantom dance. Even so, the body, the material precipitate into which they gather, gives them a basic unity. These elements with their ardour and zeal kindle a common Fire. There is a divine Flame, Agni, burning within the flesh, burning brighter and brighter, making the bones whiter and whiter, as it were the purificatory Flame,Pvaka, of which the Vedic Rishis spoke, Master of the House, ghapati, dwelling in the inner heart of the human being, impelling it to rise to purer and larger Truth. But here our modern poet replaces the Heart by the Liver and makes of this organ the central altar of human aspiration and inspiration. We may remember in this connection that the French poet Baudelaire gave a similar high position and functionto the other collateral organ, the spleen. The modern Bengali poet considers that man's consciousness, even his poetic inspiration, is soaked in the secretion of that bilious organ. For man's destiny here upon earth is not delight but grief, not sweetness but gall and bitterness; there is no consolation, no satisfaction here; there is only thirst, no generosity but narrowness, no consideration for others, but a huge sinister egoism.
The cry of our poet is a cry literally deprifundis, a deep cavernous voice surging, spectral and yet sirenlike, out of the unfathomed underground abysses.
02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
He names her Douve, perhaps in memory of his first master Jouve, and addresses her as Sombre Lumire (Dark Light). He evidently means his poetic inspiration; his vision of the other shore is that of the world of his poetic experiences and realisations. But the nature of the contents of that world is very characteristic. They are apparently qualities and objects fundamentally spiritualtransparent fire and even motionless silence. Yes, that world is of wind and fire (compare our world of Tapas) and yet calm and tranquil. So the poet sings:
Douve sera ton nom au loin parmi les pierres,
--
inspiration, according to the poet, is not the high swell of garrulousness and anxious effort. It is the solid bedrock underground when all the surface effusions have ebbed awaya shadowy dark strong tranquil repose.
A modern English poetRobert Graves -worships a White Goddess. But from the description he gives of the lady, she would appear to be more black than white; for she seems to be intimately connected with the affairs that is to say the mysteries of Hades and Hecate, underground worlds and midnight rites. She incarnates as the sow, although a white sow, she flows as the sap within plants and rises as passion and lust in man.
02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For a long time I had a strong desire to meet Aurobindo. It has just been fulfilled... At the very first sight I could realise that he had been seeking for the soul and had gained it, and through this long process of realisation had accumulated within him a silent power of inspiration. His face was radiant with an inner light. .. I felt that the utterance of the ancient Rishi spoke from him of that equanimity which gives the human soul its freedom of entrance into the All. I said to him, 'You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you. India will speak through your voice to the world, 'Hearken to me'... Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him:
'Aurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath. Today I saw him in a deeper atmosphere of a reticent richness of wisdom and again sang to him in silence:
03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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
03.02 - Aspects of Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Science indeed gave a very decided turn to the slowly advancing humanity. It brought with it something that meant in the march of evolution a saltum, a leap wide and clear; it landed man all of a sudden into a new world, a new state of consciousness. It is this state of consciousness, the fundamental way of being, inculcated by the scientific spirit that is of capital importance and possesses a survival value. It is not the content of Science, but its intent, not its riches, but its secret inspiration, its motive power, that will give us a right understanding of the change it has effected. The material aspect of the event has lost much of its value; the mechanical inventions and discoveries, bringing in their train a revolution in the external organization of life, have become a matter of course, and almost a matter of the past. But the reactions set up in the consciousness itself, the variations brought about in the very stuff and constitution of life still maintain a potency for the future and are to be counted.
The scientific spirit, in one word, is rationalisationrationalisation of Mind as well as of Life. With regard to Mind, rationalisation means to get knowledge exclusively on the data of the senses; it is the formulation, in laws and principles, of facts observed by the physical organs, these laws and principles being the categories of the arranging, classifying, generalising faculty, called reason; its methodology also demands that the laws are to be as few as possible embracing as many facts as possible. Rationalisation of life means the government of life in accordance with these laws, so that the wastage in natural life due to the diversity and disparity off acts may be eliminated, at least minimised, and all movements of life ordered and organised in view of a single and constant purpose (which is perhaps the enhancement of the value of life). This rationalisation means further, in effect, mechanisation or efficiency, as its protagonists would prefer to call it. However, mechanistic efficiency, whether in the matter of knowledge or of lifeof mind or of morals was the motto of the early period of the gospel of science, the age of Huxley and Haeckel, of Bentham and the Mills. The formula no longer holds good either in the field of pure knowledge or in its application to life; it does not embody the aspiration and outlook of the contemporary mind, in spite of such inveterate rationalists as Russell and Wells or even Shaw (in Back to Methuselah, for example), who seem to be already becoming an anachronism in the present age.
03.02 - The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the face of established opinion and tradition (and in the wake of the prophetic poet) I propose to demonstrate that Philosophy has as much claim to be called an art, as any other orthodox art, painting or sculpture or music or architecture. I do not refer to the element of philosophyperhaps the very large element of philosophy that is imbedded and ingrained in every Art; I speak of Philosophy by itself as a distinct type of au thentic art. I mean that Philosophy is composed or created in the same way as any other art and the philosopher is moved and driven by the inspiration and impulsion of a genuine artist. Now, what is Art? Please do not be perturbed by the question. I am not trying to enter into the philosophy the metaphysicsof it, but only into the science the physicsof it. Whatever else it may be, the sine qua non, the minimum requisite of art is that it must be a thing of beauty, that is to say, it must possess a beautiful form. Even the Vedic Rishi says that the poet by his poetic power created a heavenly formkavi kavitva divi rpam asajat. As a matter of fact, a supreme beauty of form has often marked the very apex of artistic creation. Now, what does the Philosopher do? The sculptor hews beautiful forms out of marble, the poet fashions beautiful forms out of words, the musician shapes beautiful forms out of sounds. And the philosopher? The philosopher, I submit, builds beautiful forms out of thoughts and concepts. Thoughts and concepts are the raw materials out of which the artist philosopher creates mosaics and patterns and designs architectonic edifices. For what else are philosophic systems? A system means, above all, a form of beauty, symmetrical and harmonious, a unified whole, rounded and polished and firmly holding together. Even as in Art, truth, bare sheer truth is not the object of philosophical inquiry either. Has it not been considered sufficient for a truth to be philosophically true, if it is consistent, if it does not involve self-contradiction? The equation runs: Truth=Self-consistency; Error=Self-contradiction. To discover the absolute truth is not the philosopher's taskit is an ambitious enterprise as futile and as much of a my as the pursuit of absolute space, absolute time or absolute motion in Science. Philosophy has nothing more to doand nothing lessthan to evolve or build up a system, in other words, a self-consistent whole (of concepts, in this case). Art also does exactly the same thing. Self-contradiction means at bottom, want of harmony, balance, symmetry, unity, and self-consistency means the contrary of these things the two terms used by philosophy are only the logical formulation of an essentially aesthetic value.
Take, for example, the philosophical system of Kant or of Hegel or of our own Shankara. What a beautiful edifice of thought each one has reared! How cogent and compact, organised and poised and finely modelled! Shankara's reminds me of a tower, strong and slender, mounting straight and tapering into a vanishing point among the clouds; it has the characteristic linear movement of Indian melody. On the otherhand, the march of the Kantian Critiques or of the Hegelian Dialectic has a broader base and involves a composite strain, a balancing of contraries, a blending of diverse notes: thereis something here of the amplitude and comprehensiveness of harmonic architecture (without perhaps a corresponding degree of altitude).
03.04 - The Other Aspect of European Culture, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is it meant that "Mediaeval obscurantism" was Europe's supreme ideal and that the cry should be: "Back to the Dark Age, into the gloom of Mystic superstitions and Churchian dogmas?" Now, one cannot deny that there was much of obscurantism and darkness in that period of Europe's evolution. And the revolt launched against it by the heralds of the Modern Age was inevitable and justified to some extent; but to say that unadulterated superstition was what constituted the very substance of Middle Age Culture and that the whole thing was more or less a nightmare, is only to land into another sort of superstition and obscurantism. The best when corrupt does become the worst. The truth of the matter is that in its decline the Middle Age clung to and elaborated only the formal aspect of its culture, leaving aside its inner realisation, its living inspiration. The Renaissance was a movement of reaction and correction against the lifeless formalism, the dry scholasticism of a decadent Middle Age; it sought to infuse a new vitality, by giving a new outlook and intuition to Europe's moribund soul. But, in fact, it has gone a little too far in its career of correction. In its violent enthusiasm to pull down the worn-out edifice of the past and to build anew for the future, it has almost gone to the length of digging up the solid foundation and erasing the fundamental ground-plan upon which Europe's real life and culture reposed and can still safely repose.
If then Europe can cut across the snares that Modernism has spread all about her and get behind the surface turmoils and ebullitions and seek that which she herself once knew and esteemed as the one thing needful, then will she really see what the East means, then only will she find the bond of indissoluble unity with Asia. For the Truth that Europe carried in her bosom is much bigger than anything she ever suspected even in her best days. And she carried it not with the full illumination and power of a Master, but rather in the twilight consciousness of a servant or a devotee. The Truth in its purity flowed there for the most part much under the main current of life, and its formulations in life were not its direct expressions and embodiments but echoes and images. It is Asia who grasps the Truth with the hand of the Master, the Truth in its full and absolute truth and it is Asia who can show in fact and life how to embody it integrally.
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Vivekananda pointed out that one should rather think of one's duties, how best to accomplish them and leave the rights to take care of themselves. Such an attitude would give a man the correct outlook, the correct poise, the correct inspiration in living the collective life. Instead of each one demanding and claiming what one regards as one's dues and consequently scrambling and fighting for them (and most often not getting them or getting at a ruinous expensewhat made Arjuna cry, "What shall I do with the kingdom and all if in gaining it I lose everything that makes it worth having ?") if one were content with knowing one's duty and doing it with a single mind, not only would there be peace and amity on earth, but also none would be deprived of anything that is really due to him.
It may be answered that there does not seem to be any special virtue in the word "duty"; for, the crimes committed under that ensign are not less numerous or violent than those inspired by the ideal of Rights. It was once considered in some religions to be the duty of the faithful to kill or coerce or convert as many as possible of another faith; it was the bounden duty of the good shepherd to burn and flay the heretic. And in recent times the ceremony of "purge" be-speaks of the same compulsion of the sense of duty in the consciousness of modern Messiahs. But the true name of the thing in all these cases is not duty, but fanaticism.
--
The real truth is that a group has the soul the spiritual being that is put into it. How can that be done? It is done by the individual, in and through the individual. Not a single individual perhaps, but a few, a select body, a small minority who by their conscious will and illumined endeavour form the strong nucleus that builds up automatically and inevitably the larger organisation instinct with its spirit and dharma. In fact all collective organisations are made in the same way. The form that a society takes is given to it by the ideology of one man or of a few men. All depends upon the truth and reality, the depth and fecundity of the inspiration and vision, whether it will last a day or be the eternal law of life, whether it will be a curse for mankind or work for its supreme good. Naturally, the higher the aim, the more radical the remedy envisaged, the greater the difficulty that has to be surmounted. An aggregate always tends to live and move on a lower level of consciousness than the individual's. It is easy to organise a society on forces and passions that belong to the lower nature of manalthough it can be questioned whether such a society will last very long or conduce to the good or happiness of man.
On the other hand, although difficult, it may not prove impossible to cast the nature, character and reactions of the aggregate into the mould prepared out of spiritual realities by those who have realised and lived them. Some theocratic social organisations, at least for a time, during the period of their apogee illustrate the feasibility of such a consummation. Only, in the present age, when all foundations seem to be shaking, when all principles on which we stood till now are crumbling down, when even fundamentalsthose that were considered as suchcan no more give assurance, well, in such a revolutionary age, one has perforce to be radical and revolutionary to the extreme: we have to go deep down and beyond, beyond the shifting sands of more or less surface realities to the un-shaking bed-rock, the rock of ages.
03.07 - The Sunlit Path, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Like the individual, nations too have their sunlit path and the path of the doldrum as well. So long as a nation keeps to the truth of its inner being, follows its natural line of development, remains faithful to its secret godhead, it will have chosen that good part which will bring it divine blessings and fulfilment. But sometimes a nation has the stupidity to deny its self, to run after an ignis fatuus, a mymrga, then grief and sorrow and frustration lie ahead. We are afraid India did take such a wrong step when she refused to see the great purpose behind the present war and tried to avoid contri buting her mite to the evolutionary Force at work. On the other hand Britain in a moment of supreme crisis, that meant literally life or death, not only to herself or to other nations, but to humanity itself, had the good fortune to be led by the right inspiration, the whole nation rose as one man and swore allegiance to the cause of humanity and the gods. That was how she was saved and that was how she acquired a new merit and a fresh lease of life. Unlike Britain, France bowed down and accepted what should not have been accepted and cut herself adrift from her inner life and truth, the result was five years of hell. Fortunately, the hell in the end proved to be a purgatory, but what a purgatory! For there were souls who were willing to pay the price and did pay it to the full cash and nett. So France has been given the chance again to turn round and take up the thread of her life where it snapped.
Once more another crisis seems to be looming before the nations, once more the choice has to be made and acted upon. In our weakness it is natural and easy to invoke God, to feel the presence of a higher Guidance, to trust in a heavenly light; but it is in our strength that we must know whose strength it is, and in whose strength it is that we conquer.
03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Hinduism, one may even say, Indianism, has cast Buddhism out of India, the mother country, to the wonder of many. Buddhism came to rub out the dead deposits and accretions on the parent body and in doing so it often rubbed on the raw and against the grain. Hinduism had to accept the corrections; in the process it had to absorb, however, many elements contrary to its nature, even antipathic to its soul. Buddha was accepted as an Avatar; he was given a divine status in the Hindu Pantheon. Divested, apparently, of all heterodoxical and controversial appendages, he was anointed with the sole sufficing aspect of supreme kindness, universal compassion. Even so, in and through this Assumption, not a little of the peculiarly Buddhist inspiration entered the original organism. The most drastic and of far-reaching consequence was the inauguration and idolisation of monastic life, which has become since then in Indian conception, the summum bonum, the supreme goal of human existence. It was not without reason that India's older and truer tradition cried out against Shankara being a crypto-Buddhist (pracchanna bauddha), who was yet one of the most consistent and violent critics of Buddhism.
Life is an expression of the Divine Presence, earth is the field of labour for the godssuch was the original old-world Vedic view. It was the Buddhist dispensation that made life an inferior truth, a complex of unreality and decreed that the highest aim of man is to disappear from life after life's fitful fever to sleep well that seems to have been the motto given.
03.09 - Sectarianism or Loyalty, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Uddhava might have had numberless teachers and instructors, but the Guru of his soul was Sri Krishna alone, none other. We may learn many things from many places, from books, from nature, from persons; intuitions and inspirations may come from many quarters, inside and outside, but the central guidance flows from one source only and one must be careful to keep it unmixed, undefiled, clear and pure. When one means nothing more than playing with ideas and persons and places, there is no harm in being a globe-trotter; but as soon as one becomes serious, means business, one automatically stops short, finds and sticks to his Ishta, even like the Gopis of Sri Krishna who declared unequivocally that they would not move out of Brindaban even by a single step.
***
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.
03.11 - Modernist Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The modernist may chew well, but, I, am afraid, he feeds upon the husk, the chaff, the offal. Not that these things too cannot be incorporated in the poetic scheme; the spirit of poetry is catholic enough and does not disdain them, but can transfigure them into things of eternal beauty. Still how to characterise an inspiration that is wholly or even largely pre-occupied with such objects? Is it not sure evidence that the inspiration is a low and slow flame and does not possess the transfiguring white heat? Bottrall's own lines do not seem to have that quality, it is merely a lessona rhetorical lesson, at bestin poetics.
A poeta true poetdoes not compose to exemplify a theory; he creates out of the fullness of an inner experience. It may be very true that the modern poetic spirit is seeking a new path, a new organisation, a "new order", as it were, in the poetic realm: the past forms and formulae do not encompass or satisfy its present inner urge. But solution of the problem does not lie in a sort of mechanical fabrication of novelties. A new creation is new, that is to say, fresh and living, not because of skilful manipulation of externals, but because of a new, a fresh and living inspiration. The fountain has to be dug deep and the revivifying waters released.
It is a simple truth that we state and it is precisely this that we have missed in the present age. Chaucer created a new poetic world, Shakespeare created another, Milton yet a third, the RomanticsWordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byroneach of them has a whole world to his credit. But this they achieved, not because of any theory they held or did not hold, but because each of them delved deep and struck open an unfathomed and unspoilt Pierian spring. And this is how it should be. In this age, even in this age of modernism, a few poets have actually shown how or what that can be,a Tagore, a Yeats or A.E., by the bulk of their work, others of lesser envergure, in brief scattered strophes and stanzassuch lines, for example, from Eliot
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We may follow a little more closely the march of the centuries in their undulating movement. The creative intelligence of the Renaissance too belonged to a region of the higher mind, a kind of inspirational mind. It had not the altitude or even the depth of the Greek mind nor its subtler resonances: but it regained and re-established and carried to a new degree the spirit of inquiry and curiosity, an appreciation of human motives and preoccupations, a rational understanding of man and the mechanism of the world. The original intuitive fiat, the imaginative brilliance, the spirit of adventure (in the mental as well as the physical world) that inspired the epoch gradually dwindled: it gave place to an age of consolidation, organisation, stabilisation the classical age. The seventeenth century Europe marked another peak of Europe's civilisation. That is the Augustan Age to which we have referred. The following century marked a further decline of the Intuition and higher imagination and we come to the eighteenth century terre terre rationalism. Great figures still adorned that agestalwarts that either stuck to the prevailing norm and gave it a kind of stagnant nobility or already leaned towards the new light that was dawning once more. Pope and Johnson, Montesquieu and Voltaire are its high-lights. The nineteenth century brought in another crest wave with a special gift to mankind; apparently it was a reaction to the rigid classicism and dry rationalism of the preceding age, but it came burdened with a more positive mission. Its magic name was Romanticism. Man opened his heart, his higher feeling and nobler emotional surge, his subtler sensibility and a general sweep of his vital being to the truths and realities of his own nature and of the cosmic nature. Not the clear white and transparent almost glaring light of reason and logic, of the brain mind, but the rosy or rainbow tint of the emotive and aspiring personality that seeks in and through the cosmic panorama and dreams of
A light that was ne'er on sea or land. . .
04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet mankind has always sought for an integral, an all comprehending fulfilment, a truth and a realisation that would go round his entire existence. Man has always aspired, in the midst of the transience and imperfection that the world is, for something stable and perfect, in the heart of disharmony for some core of perfect harmony. He termed it God, Atman, Summum Bonum and he sought it sometimes, as he thought necessary, even at the cost of the world and the life, if it is to be found elsewhere. Man aspired also always to find this habitation of his made somewhat better. Dissatisfied with his present state, he sought to mould it, remake it, put into it something which his aspiration and inspiration called the True, the Beautiful, the Good. There was always this double aspiration in man, one of ascent and the other of descent, one vertical and the other horizontal, one leading up and beyondtotally beyond, in its extreme urge the other probing into the mystery locked up there below, releasing the power to reform or recreate the world, although he was not always sure whether it was a power of mind or of matter.
This double aspiration has found its expression and symbol in the East and the West, each concentrating on one line, sometimes even to the neglect or denial of the other. But this division or incompatibility need not be there and must not be there. A new conception of the Spirit and a new conception of Matter are gaining ground more and more, moving towards a true synthesis of the two, making for the creation of a new world and a new human type.
04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire must have been the original source of the inspiration that moved later on Spengler and Toynbee and others to posit a life-line for nations and races and mark its various stages of growth and evolution. The general theory put in a nutshell would be like this: mankind is composed of groups or aggregates of individuals and each has a life-history of its own even like an individual human being, in other words, an inescapable cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and disintegration. All groupspeoples; races, nationshave to pass through these destined stages, although, naturally, at different times and with a varying tempo. The view implies two conclusions or rather postulates:(l) that whatever is born must die, there is no resurrection or rejuvenation, neither in the individual nor in the collective life and (2) that humanity remains on the whole more or less the same, there is no global progress: there is no continued march forward towards a kingdom of heaven upon earth, even as there has not been a decline and deterioration from some Golden Age in the past.
Is this so, in point of fact or is it bound to be so, in point of theory? What are the facts? There are at least two human groups or peoples extant that seem to point to a different conclusion. I speak of China and especially of India. Egypt and Greece and Rome, the Minoans, the early Mesopotamians had their day. They rose, they lived, they died and are no more. But India and China, although almost contemporaneous with any of those earliest civilisations, have not vanished; they continue still today. In respect of India at least it cannot be said that she is not today, is totally different from what she was in her Vedic epoch or even in her Harappa and Mohenjo-daro days, in the sense that modern Egypt is not the Egypt of the Pharaohs, nor the Greece of Venizelos the Greece of Pericles.
05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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
05.04 - The Immortal Person, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The individualisation of the mind, its organisation as a special formation, as a vehicle of the true light, the light of the Psychic consciousness is comparatively easy for a man. Mind is the first member of the lower sphere that is taken up and dealt with by the soul; for it is the highest and the most characteristic element in man and less dense and less subject to the darkness inherent in human nature. The mental individual persists the longest after the dissolution of the body, it survives and may survive very long the disruption of the vital being. This vital being is next in the rung to be taken up, organised and individualised by and around the psychic being. The organisation of the vital being in view of a particular object or aim in ordinary life is common enough: the purpose is limited, the scope restricted. Great men of action have done it and one has to do it more or less to be successful in life. This, however, may be called organisation; it is not individualisation in the true sense, much less personalisation. A limb is individualised, personalised only when it is an instrument and formation of the soul consciousness, the psychic being. And the vital is not easily amenable to such a role. For, it is the dynamic element, the effective power of life and it has acquired a strong nature and a definite function in its earthly relations. Naturally, there is a secret drive and an occult inspiration behind over-riding or guiding all immediate and apparent forces and happenings: in and through these the shape of things to come is being built up. In the meanwhile, however, actually the vital is an executive agent of the lower consciousness: it is an anonymous force of universal nature canalised into a temporary figure that is the normal individual man. The individualisation of the vital being would mean an immortal formulation of an immortal soul as energy consciousness with a specific role for the Divine to play. It maintains its identity, its personality independent of the vicissitudes of the physical body: it continues to function as a divine being, a godhead, to work for mankind and the world. The popular legend has imaged this phenomenon in the mystic figure of an immortal Aswatthama and Vibhishana still wandering in earth's atmosphere.
Finally, it is the turn of the body to become individualised, personalised, that is to say, when it takes up the disposition and configurationof the psychic person and individual. The first stage is that of a subtle body individualised, a radiant form of etherealised elements consisting of the concentrated light particles of the divine consciousness of the Psyche. This too is an immortalisation of the personal identity which can be achieved and is achieved by the gnostic man who is to come, who will wholly psychicise and divinise his personality. The second stage is the reorganisation and individualisation of the material sheath itself. The very cells of the body are impregnated with the radiant substance of the supreme spiritual consciousness; they live the life of the spiritual individual, the personal divine embodied in the individual. When the whole process is gone through and the work clone, the individual body, physically too, shares in and attains the immortality of the soul. The body is firm enough to maintain its physical identity and yet plastic enough to change in the manner and to the degree demanded of it at any time.
05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This faculty of direct knowledge, however, is not such a rare thing as it may appear to be. Indeed if we step outside the circumscribed limits of pure science instances crowd upon us, even in our normal life, which would compel one to conclude that the rational and sensory process is only a fringe and a very small part of a much greater and wider form of knowing. Poets and artists, we all know, are familiar only with that form: without intuition and inspiration they are nothing. Apart from that, modern inquiries and observations have established beyond doubt certain facts of extra-sensory, suprarational perceptionof clairvoyance and clairaudience, of prophecy, of vision into the future as well as into the past. Not only these unorthodox faculties of knowledge, but dynamic powers that almost negate or flout the usual laws of science have been demonstrated to exist and can be and are used by man. The Indian yogic discipline speaks of the eight siddhis, super-natural powers attained by the Yogi when he learns to control nature by the force of his consciousness. Once upon a time these facts were challenged as facts in the scientific world, but it is too late now in the day to deny them their right of existence. Only Science, to maintain its scientific prestige, usually tries to explain such phenomena in the material way, but with no great success. In the end she seems to say these freaks do not come within her purview and she is not concerned with them. However, that is not for us also the subject for discussion for the moment.
The first point then we seek to make out is that even from a rigid positivist stand a form of knowledge that is not strictly positivist has to be accepted. Next, if we come to the content of the knowledge that is being gained, it is found one is being slowly and inevitably led into a world which is also hardly positivistic. We have in our study of the physical world come in close contact with two disconcerting facts or two ends of one fact the infinitely small and the infinitely large. They have disturbed considerably the normal view of things, the view that dominated Science till yesterday. The laws that hold good for the ordinary sensible magnitudes fail totally, in the case of the infinite magnitudes (whether big or small). In the infinite we begin squaring the circle.
05.08 - True Charity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Charity is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow men, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and privations and calamities. And if something is done to alleviate them, it is as it should be, activities in that direction deserve full encouragement. But this does not go far enough, does not touch the root of the matter. It is the human way of dealing with things and must naturally be very limited in its scope and efficacy. There is a higher, a diviner way the way of the Spirit for the cure of earthly ills, cure and not mere alleviation. That was the secret inspiration behind the message of the Christ and the Buddha.
It is not true that when one's wants are met, one always becomes or remains happy; all paupers are not unhappy, nor are the affluent invariably happy. Happiness is a quality that depends upon something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly proportional to material well-being. Unhappiness too is a psychological entity and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality and consequently of the physical beingdue to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not create ittruly they are created by it. That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their distressbhajasva mm.
05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We may try to illustrate by examples, although it is a rather dangerous game and may tend to put into a too rigid and' mathematical formula something that is living and variable. Still it will serve to give a clearer picture of the matter. Napoleon, evidently was a child of Mahakali; and Caesar seems to have been fashioned largely by the principle of Maheshwari; while Christ or Chaitanya are clearly emanations in the line of Mahalakshmi. Constructive geniuses, on the other hand, like the great statesman Colbert, for example, or Louis XIV, Ie grand monarque, himself belong to a family (or gotra, as we say in India) that originated from Mahasaraswati. Poets and artists again, although generally they belong to the clan of Mahalakshmi, can be regrouped according to the principle that predominates in each, the godhead that presides over the inspiration in each. The large breath in Homer and Valmiki, the high and noble style of their movement, the dignity and vastness that compose their consciousness affiliate them naturally to the Maheshwari line. A Dante, on the other hand, or a Byron has something in his matter and manner that make us think of the stamp of Mahakali. Virgil or Petrarch, Shelley or our Tagore seem to be emanations of Beauty, Harmony, LoveMahalakshmi. And the perfect artisanship of Mahasaraswati has found its especial embodiment in Horace and Racine and our Kalidasa. Michael Angelo in his fury of inspirations seems to have been impelled by Mahakali, while Mahalakshmi sheds her genial favour upon Raphael and Titian; and the meticulous care and the detailed surety in a Tintoretto makes us think of Mahasaraswati's grace. Mahasaraswati too seems to have especially favoured Leonardo da Vinci, although a brooding presence of Maheshwari also seems to be intermixed there.
For it must be remembered that the human soul after all is not a simple and unilateral being, it is a little cosmos in itself. The soul is not merely a point or a single ray of light come down straight from its divine archetype or from the Divine himself, it is also a developing fire that increases and enriches itself through the multiple experiences of an evolutionary progressionit not only grows in height but extends in wideness also. Even though it may originally emanate from one principle and Personality, it takes in for its development and fulfilment influences and elements from the others also. Indeed, we know that the Four primal personalities of the Divine are not separate and distinct as they may appear to the human mind which cannot understand distinction without disparity. The Vedic gods themselves are so linked together, so interpenetrate one another that finally it is asserted that there is only one existence, only it is given many names. All the divine personalities are aspects of the Divine blended and fused together. Even so the human soul, being a replica of the Divine, cannot but be a complex of many personalities and often it may be difficult and even harmful to find and fix upon a dominant personality. The full flowering of the human soul, its perfect divinisation demands the realisation of a many-aspected personality, the very richness of the Divine within it.
06.02 - Darkness to Light, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You may not be able to do the ideal things at a given moment. You may not comm and the perfect gesture that is expected of you in a set of circumstances; the Divine may seem to be veiled from you and you do not hear the direct voice. But it does not matter. What is expected of you is to do your best, do the best' that you are capable of at that moment. That highest that is present to you, the summit available for the time and under the circumstances that should be the source and inspiration of your act. Act on the heights where you stand and aspire for still higher heights.
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07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Mind's voices mimicked inspiration's stress,
Its ictus of infallibility,
07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And inspiration comes from the Unknown;
But only reason and sense he feels as sure,
07.06 - Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He listens for inspiration's postman knock
And takes delivery of the priceless gift
07.28 - Personal Effort and Will, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Supposing under given circumstances a work has come upon you. Take an artist, for example, a painter. He has an inspiration and has decided to do a painting. He knows very well that if he has not the inspiration he will not be able to do anything good, the painting would be nothing more than a daub. If he were simply passive, with neither effort nor will, he would tell the Divine: Here I leave the palette, the brush and the canvas, you will do the painting now. But the Divine does not act in that way. The painter himself must arrange everything, concentrate upon his subject, put all his will upon a perfect execution. On the other hand, if he has not the inspiration, he may take all the trouble and yet the result be nothing more than a work like other thousands of examples. You must feel what your painting is to express and know or find out how to express it. A great painter often gets a very exact vision of the painting he is to do. He has the vision and he sets himself to work out the vision. He labours day by day, with a will and consciousness, to reproduce as exactly as possible what he sees clearly with his inner sight. He works for the Divine; his surrender is active and dynamic. For the poet too it is the same thing. Anyone who wants to do something for the Divine, it is the same.
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07.42 - The Nature and Destiny of Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life. In other words, the artist must be able to enter into communion with the Divine and receive the inspiration as to what should be the form or forms for the material realisation of the divine beauty. At the same time, in expressing true beauty in the physical, he also sets an example, becomes an instrument of education... Art not only creates beauty, but educates the taste of people to find true beauty, the essential beauty that expresses the divine truth. That is the true role of art. But between that and what it is now there is a great difference.
The decline comes in the normal course of evolution which follows a spiral movement. From the beginning of the last century to the middle of it, art became totally a debased thing, commercial, obscure, ignorant, something very far from its true nature and function. But the spirit of art cannot die; only as it rose as a movement of protest or revolt, the forms it chose were equally bizarre. In attempting to counteract the general debasing of taste it went to the other extreme, as is the character of all movements of nature. One was a servile copy of nature, it was pointed out or not even that. In those days it used to be called photographic art, if one were to condemn it: But now it is no longer a term of condemnation, for photography has developed into a consummate art. Neither could it be truly called realism, for there are realistic paintings which belong to a very high order. That art was conventional, artificial, I lifeless. Now the reaction to this movement said: we do not concern ourselves with physical life any more, the reality as we see with outward eyes is no longer our business; we want instead to express the vital life, the mental life. Hence came a whole host of reformers and rebelscubists, surrealists, futurists and so onwho sought to create art with their head. They forgot the simple truth that in art it is not the head that commands, but the feeling of beauty in the heart. So art landed into the most absurd, ridiculous and frightful of worlds. Indeed with the two wars behind us we have gone further in that direction. Each war has brought down a world in decomposition. And now we seem to be in the very heart of chaos.
07.43 - Music Its Origin and Nature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Music, you must remember, like any other art, is a means for expressing somethingsome idea, some feeling, some emotion, a certain aspiration and so on. There is even a domain where all these movements exist and from where they are brought down under a musical form. A good composer with some inspiration would produce good music; he is then called a good musician. A bad musician can have also a good inspiration, he can receive something from the higher domain, but possessing no musical capacity, he would produce only what is very commonplace, very ordinary and uninteresting. However, if you go beyond, precisely over to this place where lies the origin of music, get to the idea, the emotion, the inspiration behind, you can then taste of these things without being held back by the form. Still this musical form can be joined on to what is behind or beyond the form; for it is that which originally inspired the musician to compose. Of course, there are instances where no inspiration exists, where the source is only a kind of sound mechanics, which is not, in any case, always interesting. What I mean is this that there is an inner state in which the outer form is not the most important thing: there lies the origin of music, the inspiration that is beyond. It is trite to say, but one often forgets that it is not sound that makes music, the sound has to express something.
There is a music that is quite mechanical and has no inspiration. There are musicians who play with great virtuosity, that is to say, they have mastered the technique and execute faultlessly the most complicated and rapid movements. It is music perhaps, but it expresses nothing; it is like a machine. It is clever, there is much skill, but it is uninteresting, soulless. The most important thing, not only in music, but in all human creations, in all that man does even, is, I repeat, the inspiration behind. The execution naturally is expected to be on a par with the inspiration; but to express truly well, one must have truly great things to express. It is not to say that technique is not necessary; on the contrary, one must possess a very good technique; it is even indispensable. Only it is not the one thing indispensable, not is it as important as the inspiration. For the essential quality of music comes from the region where it has its source.
Source or origin means the thing without which an object would not exist. Nothing can manifest upon earth physically unless it has its source in a higher truth. Thus material existence has its source and inspiration in the vital, the vital in its turn has behind it the mental, the mental has the overmental and so on. If the universe were a flat object, having its origin in itself, it would quickly cease to exist. (That is perhaps what Science means when it postulates the impossibility of perpetual motion). It is because there is a higher source which inspires it, a secret energy that drives it towards manifestation that Life continues: otherwise it would exhaust itself very soon.
There is a graded scale in the source of music. A whole category of music is there that comes from the higher vital, for example: it is very catching, perhaps even a little vulgar, something that twines round your nerves, as it were, and twists them. It catches you somewhere about your loinsnavel centre and charms you in its way. As there is a vital music there is also what can be called psychic music coming from quite a different source; there is further a music which has spiritual origin. In its own region this higher music is very magnificent; it seizes you deeply and carries you away somewhere else. But if you were to express it perfectlyexecute ityou would have to pass this music too through the vital. Your music coming from high may nevertheless fall absolutely flat in the execution, if you do not have that intensity of vital vibration which alone can give it its power and splendour. I knew people who had very high inspiration, but their music turned to be quite commonplace, because their vital did not move. Their spiritual practice put their vital almost completely to sleep; yes, it was literally asleep and did not work at all. Their music thus came straight into the physical. If you could get behind and catch the source, you would see that there was really something marvellous even there, although externally it was not forceful or effective. What came out was a poor little melody, very thin, having nothing of the power of harmony which is there when one can bring into play the vital energy. If one could put all this power of vibration that belongs to that vital into the music of higher origin we would have the music of a genius. Indeed, for music and for all artistic creation, in fact, for literature, for poetry, for painting, etc. an intermediary is needed. Whatever one does in these domains depends doubtless for its intrinsic value upon the source of the inspiration, upon the plane or the height where one stands. But the value of the execution depends upon the strength of the vital that expresses the inspiration. For a complete genius both are necessary. The combination is rare, generally it is the one or the other, more often it is the vital that predominates and overshadows.
When the vital only is there, you have the music of caf concert and cinema. It is extraordinarily clever and at the same time extraordinarily commonplace, even vulgar. Since, however, it is so clever, it catches hold of your brain, haunts your memory, rings in (or wrings) your nerves; it becomes so difficult to get rid of its influence, precisely because it is done so well, so cleverly. It is made vitally with vital vibrations, but what is behind is not, to say the least, wholesome. Now imagine the same vital power of expression joined to the inspiration coming from above, say, the highest possible inspiration when the entire heaven seems to open out, then it is music indeed; Some things in Csar Franck, some in Beethoven, some in Bach, some in some others possess this sovereignty. But after all it is only a moment, it comes for a moment and does not abide. There is not a single artist whose whole work is executed at such a pitch. The inspiration comes like a flash of lightning, most often it lasts just long enough to be grasped and held in a few snatches.
Something similar to that experience may happen to you when your consciousness is all attentive and concentrated; you feel suddenly that you are being carried aloft, that all your energies are gathered and lifted up, as if your head has opened out and you are thrown into the free air, into the far spaces of extraordinary heights and magnificent lights. The experience gives you in a few seconds what one may in the normal course of things achieve after many years of difficult yoga. Only immediately after the experience you drop down below upon the earth, because the basis has not been built; even you may begin to doubt whether you really had the experience. Still the consciousness has been prepared, something definitive has been done and remains.
07.44 - Music Indian and European, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The difference is both in regard to the source and the expression and in an inverse way. In European music a very highspiritual inspiration is a rare thing. The psychic source also is very rare. But if at all, it is a very high spiritual source, or otherwise it is the vital that is the source. The expression is always there, apart from some exceptions naturally, but it is almost always vital, because the source is very often purely vital. At times, as I said, it comes from high above, then it is really marvellous. At times, more rarely, it is psychic: something of it was there in the religious music, but it is not frequent. Indian music, on the other hand, almost always, that is to say, when we have good musicians, has a psychic source, the source, for example, of the Ragas. It does not come from the top heights, it has rather an inner and intimate origin. But it has very rarely a sufficient vital body. I have heard a good deal of Indian music, quite a good deal indeed. I came across very rarely any that has a great vital force, not more than four or five times. But I have heard quite often that with a psychic inspiration behind. It is music directly translated from the inner into the physical. To listen you must concentrate, as it is something very thin, very fine and tenuous, having nothing of the vital vibration with its strong intense resonances. You can glide into it, let yourself be carried along the flow, entering the psychic source. It has that effect, it acts something like an intoxication, something that takes you into a kind of trance. If you listen well and are attentive and let yourself go, you slowly glide and dip, dip into the psychic consciousness; but if you remain in the external consciousness, such a thin stream expresses itself there that the vital gives no response and finds it extremely flat and monotonous. If, however, along with the psychic vibration there were also a vital force expressing it, the result would be interesting indeed.
I like this kind of music, with a theme, a single theme moving and developing gradually with variations: countless variations playing out the same constant theme, variations branching out and coming back again to the original basic theme. In Europe too there was something of the kind in its otherwise very different style. Bach had it, Mozart too. In modern times some musicians like Debussy, Raval and the Russian Borodine and a few others have caught something of it. You take a certain number of notes, in a certain relation and upon that scheme you play variations, almost an infinite number of variations. It is marvellous: it takes you deep inside and, if you are ready, gives you the consciousness of the psychic, something that draws you back from the external physical consciousness and links you with something other-where within.
08.13 - Thought and Imagination, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thought the Creator Poetry and Poetic inspiration
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightThought and Imagination
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Thought the Creator Poetry and Poetic inspiration
08.14 - Poetry and Poetic Inspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:08.14 - Poetry and Poetic inspiration
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightPoetry and Poetic inspiration
Poetry and Poetic inspiration
I have said: "Poetry is sensuality of the mind". How is it so? It is because poetry is in relation with the forms and images of ideasforms, images, sensations, impressions, emotions attached to ideas are the sensual or, if you prefer to call it, the sensuous side of things. All such relations are sensuousness. And poetry concerns itself with this idea of mind and thought. It approaches the world of ideas through their appearances, through the play of sensations and emotions around them. It is not like philosophy or metaphysics which endeavours to look into the inside of ideas. Poetry, on the other hand, cannot be poetry unless it evokes, that is to say, unless it gives a form, a sensuous form to the idea. I have used an epigrammatic phrase to express this truth and even chosen the stronger word to give an edge to it. People are called sensual when they are occupied solely with the sensations of the physical life, with the forms and formations and movements of the material world, when they live with their senses and enjoy the things of the senses. The same tendency instead of going out towards the external life, the physical world, when it turns towards objects of the mind, towards ideas gives rise to poetry. Poetry is a world under the aspect of the beauty of form. It expresses the beauty of an idea, the harmony or rhythm of a thought, giving all that a concrete shape or image: it becomes a play of images, a play of sounds, a play of words. Thus instead of a sensuality of matter, we have a sensuality of the mind. I have not taken the word in a pejorative sense, nor in a moral sense; it is simply descriptive.
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If you mean by inspiration that the poet does not think when he writes a poem, that is to say, he has gone beyond all thought, has made his mind silent, silent and immobile, has opened himself to inner or higher regions and writes almost automatically, well, such a thing happens perhaps once a thousand years. It is not a common phenomenon. A Yogi has the power to do that. What you normally mean, however, by an inspired poet is something quite different. People who have some kind of genius, who have an opening into other and higher regions are called "inspired" ; persons who have made some discovery are also included in that category. Each time you are in relation with a thing belonging to a domain superior to the normal human consciousness, you are inspired. And when you are not totally bound to the very ordinary level you do receive " inspirations" from above. It is the same in the case of a poet. The source of his creation is elsewhere up above the ordinary mind; for that he need not possess an empty vacant mind.
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08.15 - Divine Living, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Poetry and Poetic inspiration Perfection and Progress
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightDivine Living
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Poetry and Poetic inspiration Perfection and Progress
08.24 - On Food, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
How does fasting bring about a state of receptivity?
10.04 - Transfiguration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Agni is the energy of consciousness, Varuna is the vastness of consciousness, Mitra is the harmony. Ila is the revelation, Saraswati inspiration, Bharati is the Goddess of the Divine Word.
In the mental world we meet abstractions, lifeless ideas, forms without a soul. In reality, however, all movements in man, all forces in nature are more than mere movements and forces, they are personalities, embodiments of conscious beings. Indeed the Puranic tradition has elaborated this conception almost to its extreme limit. Those people crowded the world with an infinite number of Gods and Goddesses. They speak of 33 crores of Gods. The earth is the playfield of all godlings.
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed. It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Source of Divine inspiration.
They whom God hath endued with insight will readily recognize that the precepts laid down by God constitute the highest means for the maintenance of order in the world and the security of its peoples. He that turneth away from them is accounted among the abject and foolish. We, verily, have commanded you to refuse the dictates of your evil passions and corrupt desires, and not to transgress the bounds which the Pen of the Most High hath fixed, for these are the breath of life unto all created things. The seas of Divine wisdom and Divine utterance have risen under the breath of the breeze of the All-Merciful. Hasten to drink your fill, O men of understanding! They that have violated the Covenant of God by breaking His commandments, and have turned back on their heels, these have erred grievously in the sight of God, the All-Possessing, the Most High.
1.00 - PRELUDE AT THE THEATRE, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Securely works his inspiration.
Then pluck up heart, and give us sterling coin!
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What need to talk of inspiration?
'Tis no companion of Delay.
1.011 - Hud, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
37. “And build the Ark, under Our eyes, and with Our inspiration, and do not address Me regarding those who did wrong; they are to be drowned.”
38. As he was building the ark, whenever some of his people passed by him, they ridiculed him. He said, “If you ridicule us, we will ridicule you, just as you ridicule.”
10.15 - The Evolution of Language, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man began to possess, to acquire intuitions and inspirations, that is to say, movements of consciousness that lie beyond the frame given by the sense-mind. These new perceptions could naturally be expressed with difficulty through what one may call the earth-nurtured or earth-bound language. The aerial luminous character of the mystic consciousness is always said to be beyond speech, beyond even mental formulation.
And yet poets, mystic poets have always sought to express themselves, to express something of their experience and illumination through the word, the human tongue. It is extremely interesting to see how a material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life is being turned into an instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators (kavi-kratu). They take the materials from ordinary normal life, familiar objects and happenings but use them as images and allegories putting into them a new sense and a new light. Also they give a new, unfamiliar turn to their utterance, a new syntax, sometimes uncommon construction and novel vocabulary to the language itself so that it has even the appearance of something very irregular and twisted and obscure. Indeed obscurity itself in the expression, in the form of the language has often been taken as the very sign of the higher and hidden experience and illumination.
10.17 - Miracles: Their True Significance, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A miracle is nothing but the intervention of a force from another plane of consciousness. It must be recognised at the very outset that the physical plane of existence is not the only reality, there are many other planes superimposed' one upon another, each having its own special consciousness and power, its own laws of being and action. Obviously we all know apart from the material or physical being there is the vital being, the life-force and there is the mental being, the mind-force. And there are many other levels like these. A miracle happens, that is to say, a material formation behaves in an abnormal way because a force has come down from the vital region and has influenced or taken control of the material object. So the material object instead of obeying the material law is obliged to obey a vital law which is of a much greater potency. Yogis who do miracles possess this vital power, they have acquired it through a regular discipline and training. Spirit-calling, table-turning, even curing diseases and ailments in a moment and many other activities of the kind are manifestations of very elementary energies of life. From the occult point of view these are very crude and rudimentary examples of what a different kind of force can achieve on a different plane. Even the vital plane possesses deeper and higher energies whose action on the material plane is of deeper and higher category. A deeper or higher vital power can change radically your character and long-standing habits, help to mould them into a different, nobler and more beautiful pattern. The mind too is capable of performing miracles, a strong mental energy can dictate its terms to life and even to the body. Only the miracles here are not of a dazzling kind that astound or confound you. They have a subtler composition, yet they belong to the same category. In the mind itself miracles happen also when a higher light, a superior consciousness intuition, inspiration, revelationdescends into the normal mental working and creates there a thing that is abnormal in beauty and truth and reality. Thus for example, a matter of fact mind is seen turned into a fine poet or a workaday hand is transmuted into a consummate artist.
A miracle can be said to be doubly a miracle; first of all, because it means an intervention from another plane, a superior level of being, and secondly because the process or the action of the intervention is not deployed or staged out but is occult and telescoped, the result being almost simultaneous with the pressure of the moving force. .
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
human being. This form is also the inspiration of the knowl-
edge at the base of the occult schemata of the world, e.g. the
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live,if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers,and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
verses of power, not of an ordinary but of a divine inspiration
and source. The name given to these sages was Kavi, which
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He is not thinking of the Nature-Power presiding over the outer element of fire or of the fire of the ceremonial sacrifice. Or he speaks of Saraswati as one who impels the words of Truth and awakes to right thinkings or as one opulent with the thought: Saraswati awakes to consciousness or makes us conscious of the "Great Ocean and illumines all our thoughts." It is surely not the River Goddess whom he is thus hymning but the Power, theRiver if you will, of inspiration, the word of the Truth, bringing its light into our thoughts, building up in us that Truth, an inner knowledge. The Gods constantly stand out in their psychological functions; the sacrifice is the outer symbol of an inner work, an inner interchange between the gods and men, - man givingwhat he has, the gods giving in return the horses of power, the herds of light, the heroes of Strength to be his retinue, winning for him victory in his battle with the hosts of Darkness, Vritras, Dasyus, Panis. When the Rishi says, "Let us become conscious whether by the War-Horse or by the Word of a Strength beyond men", his words have either a mystic significance or they have no coherent meaning at all. In the portions translated in this book we have many mystic verses and whole hymns which, however mystic, tear the veil off the outer sacrificial images covering the real sense of the Veda. "Thought", says the Rishi, "has nourished for us human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens; it is the milch-cow which milks of itself the wealth of many forms" - the many kinds of wealth, cows, horses and the rest for which the sacrificer prays; evidently this is no material wealth, it is something which Thought, the Thought embodied in the Mantra, can give and it is the result of the same Thought that nourishes our human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens. A process of divinisation, and of a bringing down of great and luminous riches, treasures won from the Gods by the inner work of sacrifice, is hinted at in terms necessarily covert but still for one who knows how to read these secret words, nin.ya vacamsi, sufficiently expressive, kavaye nivacana. Again, Night and Dawn the eternal sisters are like "joyful weaving women weaving the weft of our perfected works into the form of a sacrifice."
Again, words with a mystic form and meaning, but there
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hearing as Sruti. It is in this sense of inspiration or inspired
knowledge that we can take it in the esoteric meaning of the
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speaking of inspirations which rise up to the Truth above or
bring down the Truth to us. This is the method we can apply
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by revelation and inspiration, an immortality towards which
the soul has to rise. We have to find our way to that, to get into
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Baal Shem Tov in the first half of the eighteenth century is sufficiently important to warrant some mention here. For although Chassidism, as that movement was called, derives its enthusiasm from contact with nature and the great out-doors of the Carpathians, it has its primary literary origin and significant inspiration in the books which consti- tute the Qabalah. Chassidism gave the doctrines of the
Aohar to the " Am ha-aretz " in a way in which no previous set of Rabbis had succeeded in doing, and it would, more- over, appear that the Practical Qabalah received a con- siderable impetus at the same time. For we find that
1.01 - Meeting the Master - Authors first meeting, December 1918, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
All the energies of the leaders were taken up by the freedom movement. Only a few among them attempted to see beyond the horizon of political freedom some ideal of human perfection; for, after all, freedom is not the ultimate goal but a condition for the expression of the cultural Spirit of India. In Swami Shraddhananda, Pandit Madanmohan Malavia, Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi to name some leaders we see the double aspect of the inspiration. Among all the visions of perfection of the human spirit on earth, I found the synthetic and integral vision of Sri Aurobindo the most rational and the most satisfying. It meets the need of the individual and collective life of man today. It is the international form of the fundamental elements of Indian culture. It is, Dr. S. K. Maitra says, the message which holds out hope in a world of despair.
This aspect of Sri Aurobindo's vision attracted me as much as the natural affinity which I had felt on seeing him. I found on making a serious study of the Arya that it led me to very rational conclusions with regard to the solutions of the deepest problems of life. I opened correspondence with him and in 1916, with his permission, began to translate the Arya into Gujarati.
But, though I had seen him from a distance and felt an unaccountable familiarity with him, still I had not yet met him personally. When the question of putting into execution the revolutionary plan which Sri Aurobindo had given to my brother, the late C. B. Purani, at Baroda in 1907, arose, I thought it better to obtain Sri Aurobindo's consent to it. Barindra, his brother, had given the formula for preparing bombs to my brother, and I was also very impatient to begin the work. But still we thought it necessary to consult the great leader who had given us the inspiration, as the lives of many young men were involved in the plan.
I had an introduction to Sj. V. V. S. Aiyar who was then staying at Pondicherry. It was in December 1918 that I reached Pondicherry. I did not stay long with Mr. Aiyar. I took up my bundle of books mainly the Arya and went to No. 41, Rue Franois Martin, the Arya office, which was also Sri Aurobindo's residence. The house looked a little queer, on the right side, as one entered, were a few plantain trees and by their side a heap of broken tiles. On the left, at the edge of the open courtyard, four doors giving entrance to four rooms were seen. The verandah outside was wide. It was about eight in the morning. The time for meeting Sri Aurobindo was fixed at three o'clock in the afternoon. I waited all the time in the house, occasionally chatting with the two inmates who were there.
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"But it was you who gave us the inspiration and the start for revolutionary activity. Why do you now refuse to give your consent to its execution ?" I asked.
"Because I have done the work and I know its difficulties. Young men come forward to join the movement, driven by idealism and enthusiasm. But these elements do not last long. It becomes very difficult to observe and extract discipline. Small groups begin to form within the organisation, rivalries grow between groups and even between individuals. There is competition for leadership. The agents of the Government generally manage to join these organisations from the very beginning. And so the organisations are unable to act effectively. Sometimes they sink so low as to quarrel even for money," he said calmly.
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The second proof of the existence of these windows in the heart, is that no individual is destitute of these spiritual susceptibilities and of the faculty of thought and reflection. For instance every individual knows by inspiration, things which he has neither seen nor heard, though he knows not from whence or by what means he understands them. Still, notwithstanding the heart belongs to the invisible world, so long as it is absorbed in the contemplation of the sensible world, it is shut out and restrained from contemplating the invisible and spiritual world.
Think not, thou seeker after the divine mysteries! that the window of the heart is never opened except in sleep and after death. On the contrary, if a person calls into exercise, in perfection, holy zeal and austerities, and purifies his heart from the defilement of blameable affections, and then sits down in a retired spot, abandons the use of his external senses, and occupies himself with calling out "O God ! O God!" his heart will come into harmony with the invisible world, he will no longer receive notions from the material world, and nothing will be present in his heart but the exalted God. In this revelation of the invisible world, the windows of the heart are opened, and what others may have seen in a dream, he in this state sees in reality. The spirits of angels and prophets are manifested to him and he holds intercourse with them. The hidden things of earth and heaven are uncovered to him, and to whomsoever these things are revealed, mighty wonders are shown, that are beyond description. As the prophet of God says: "I turned towards the earth, and I saw the east and the west." And God says in his word: "And thus we caused Abraham to see the kingdom of heaven and earth,"1 which is an example of this kind of revelation. [25] Probably the knowledge of all the prophets was obtained in this way, for it was not obtained by learning....
1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
have missed or only imperfectly grasped so that they deal either with subsidiary and inferior aspects of the truth of things or can merely prepare less evolved minds for the heights to which we have arrived. And we are still prone to force upon ourselves or others the whole sacred mass of the book or gospel we admire, insisting that all shall be accepted as eternally valid truth and no iota or underline or diaeresis denied its part of the plenary inspiration.
It may therefore be useful in approaching an ancient Scripture, such as the Veda, Upanishads or Gita, to indicate precisely the spirit in which we approach it and what exactly we think we may derive from it that is of value to humanity and its future. First of all, there is undoubtedly a Truth one and eternal which we are seeking, from which all other truth derives, by the light of which all other truth finds its right place, explanation and relation to the scheme of knowledge. But precisely for that reason it cannot be shut up in a single trenchant formula, it is not likely to be found in its entirety or in all its bearings in any single philosophy or scripture or uttered altogether and for ever by any one teacher, thinker, prophet or Avatar. Nor has it been wholly found by us if our view of it necessitates the intolerant exclusion of the truth underlying other systems; for when we reject passionately, we mean simply that we cannot appreciate and explain. Secondly, this Truth, though it is one and eternal, expresses itself in Time and through the mind of man; therefore every Scripture must necessarily contain two elements, one temporary, perishable, belonging to the ideas of the period and country in which it was produced, the other eternal and imperishable and applicable in all ages and countries. Moreover, in the statement of the Truth the actual form given to it, the system and arrangement, the metaphysical and intellectual mould, the precise expression used must be largely subject to the mutations of Time and cease to have the same force; for the human intellect modifies itself always; continually dividing and putting together it is obliged to shift its divisions continually and to rearrange its syntheses; it is always leaving old expression and symbol for new or, if it uses the old, it so changes its connotation or at least
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
I am not competent, nor is this the place to discuss the doctrinal differences between Buddhism and Hinduism. Let it suffice to point out that, when he insisted that human beings are by nature non-Atman, the Buddha was evidently speaking about the personal self and not the universal Self. The Brahman controversialists, who appear in certain of the Pali scriptures, never so much as mention the Vedanta doctrine of the identity of Atman and Godhead and the non-identity of ego and Atman. What they maintain and Gautama denies is the substantial nature and eternal persistence of the individual psyche. As an unintelligent man seeks for the abode of music in the body of the lute, so does he look for a soul within the skandhas (the material and psychic aggregates, of which the individual mind-body is composed). About the existence of the Atman that is Brahman, as about most other metaphysical matters, the Buddha declines to speak, on the ground that such discussions do not tend to edification or spiritual progress among the members of a monastic order, such as he had founded. But though it has its dangers, though it may become the most absorbing, because the most serious and noblest, of distractions, metaphysical thinking is unavoidable and finally necessary. Even the Hinayanists found this, and the later Mahayanists were to develop, in connection with the practice of their religion, a splendid and imposing system of cosmological, ethical and psychological thought. This system was based upon the postulates of a strict idealism and professed to dispense with the idea of God. But moral and spiritual experience was too strong for philosophical theory, and under the inspiration of direct experience, the writers of the Mahayana sutras found themselves using all their ingenuity to explain why the Tathagata and the Bodhisattvas display an infinite charity towards beings that do not really exist. At the same time they stretched the framework of subjective idealism so as to make room for Universal Mind; qualified the idea of soullessness with the doctrine that, if purified, the individual mind can identify itself with the Universal Mind or Buddha-womb; and, while maintaining godlessness, asserted that this realizable Universal Mind is the inner consciousness of the eternal Buddha and that the Buddha-mind is associated with a great compassionate heart which desires the liberation of every sentient being and bestows divine grace on all who make a serious effort to achieve mans final end. In a word, despite their inauspicious vocabulary, the best of the Mahayana sutras contain an au thentic formulation of the Perennial Philosophya formulation which in some respects (as we shall see when we come to the section, God in the World) is more complete than any other.
In India, as in Persia, Mohammedan thought came to be enriched by the doctrine that God is immanent as well as transcendent, while to Mohammedan practice were added the moral disciplines and spiritual exercises, by means of which the soul is prepared for contemplation or the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. It is a significant historical fact that the poet-saint Kabir is claimed as a co-religionist both by Moslems and Hindus. The politics of those whose goal is beyond time are always pacific; it is the idolaters of past and future, of reactionary memory and Utopian dream, who do the persecuting and make the wars.
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga.
Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity - this is the spirit of the Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity, "The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind
1.020 - Ta-Ha, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
38. When We inspired your mother with the inspiration.
39. `Put him in the chest; then cast him into the river. The river will wash him to shore, where an enemy of Mine and an enemy of his will pick him up. And I have bestowed upon you love from Me, so that you may be reared before My eye.
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114. Exalted is God, the True King. Do not be hasty with the Quran before its inspiration to you is concluded, and say, “My Lord, increase me in knowledge.”
115. And We covenanted with Adam before, but he forgot, and We found in him no resolve.
1.021 - The Prophets, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
45. Say, “I am warning you through inspiration.” But the deaf cannot hear the call when they are being warned.
46. And when a breath of your Lord’s punishment touches them, they say, “Woe to us, we were truly wicked.”
1.023 - The Believers, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
27. So We inspired him: “Build the Ark under Our observation and by Our inspiration. And when Our decree comes to pass, and the oven boils over, load into it two pairs of every kind, together with your family, except those of them against whom the word has already been pronounced. And do not speak to me concerning those who did wrong; for they are to be drowned.”
28. Then, when you and those with you are settled in the Ark, say, “Praise be to God, who has saved us from the wrongdoing people.”
1.02.4.1 - The Worlds - Surya, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
2 Intuition (revelation, inspiration, intuitive perception, intuitive discrimination) is
Vijnana working in mind under the conditions and in the forms of mind. Gnosis or true
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It has been said that all great things are mysteries. They are not calculated effects produced logically by imagined causes, but are mysteries, which is another way of saying that all of this is unthinkable by the human mind. Knowledge somehow arises. One fine morning we get up and find that we are fired with a love for God. What has happened to us? Why is it that we suddenly we say, "Oh, today I am something different." Why we are something different today? From where has this inspiration come? Nobody knows what has happened. If we read the lives of great masters, sages and saints, we will find that they were all suddenly fired with a longing which they could not explain, and no one can explain ordinarily. That knowledge, that aspiration, that love of God has not come from books. It has not come from any imaginable source. It has simply come that is all. How? Nobody knows.
Inasmuch as it is a super-logical mystery, there would be no necessity on our part to investigate the causes thereof and the methods thereof, logically or scientifically, beyond a certain limit, though logical and scientific thinking is a help to corroborate the presence of this aspiration. The aspiration is already present within us. It is not created by logical thinking and, therefore, such logical thinking is only a bulwark that we create to reinforce the aspiration that is already there. We already have a faith in God. We already believe that God-realisation is the goal of life. This belief has taken possession of us already, and now all that we do is only an ancillary process which is contri butory to streng thening this aspiration and enabling it to become more and more potent and influential in our daily life. We cannot create a concept of God by any amount of effort.
1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Vedanta and Yoga to life. To many who take their knowledge of Hinduism secondh and this may seem a doubtful definition. It is ordinarily supposed by "practical" minds that Vedanta as a guide to life and Yoga as a method of spiritual communion are dangerous things which lead men away from action to abstraction. We leave aside those who regard all such beliefs as mysticism, self-delusion or imposture; but even those who reverence and believe in the high things of Hinduism have the impression that one must remove oneself from a full human activity in order to live the spiritual life. Yet the spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. It is a delusion to suppose that Vedanta contains no inspiration to life, no rule of conduct, and is purely metaphysical and quietistic. On the contrary, the highest morality of which humanity is capable finds its one perfect basis and justification in the teachings of the Upanishads and the Gita. The characteristic doctrines of the Gita are nothing if they are not a law of life, a dharma, and even the most transcendental aspirations of the
Vedanta presuppose a preparation in life, for it is only through life that one can reach to immortality. The opposite opinion is due to certain tendencies which have bulked large in the history and temperament of our race. The ultimate goal of our religion is emancipation from the bondage of material Nature and freedom from individual rebirth, and certain souls, among the highest we have known, have been drawn by the attraction of the final hush and purity to dissociate themselves from life and bodily action in order more swiftly and easily to reach the goal. Standing like
1.02 - Meditating on Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
The sadhana continues with verses praising Taras qualities and requesting her inspiration for our spiritual practice. These verses, recited while we
visualize Tara in front of us, focus our attention on her enlightened qualities. The more we reect upon Taras wonderful qualities, the more we will
1.02 - Meeting the Master - Authors second meeting, March 1921, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The Prabartak Sangh was started at Chandernagore by Motilal Roy and others under the inspiration of Sri Aurobindo. In the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo life is accepted as the field for the manifestation of the Divine. Its main aim is not liberation merely but the manifestation of divine perfection. In his vision not only the individual but the collectivity also is a term of the Divine. Acceptance of life includes the collective life. There is a deeper reason for accepting life. In his vision of the Reality Sri Aurobindo shows the rationality and the inevitability of an ascent by man to a higher consciousness than Mind. This ascent to the Higher Consciousness must lead to its descent in man. If the new element, the Supermind, is to become a permanent part of the earth-consciousness, then not only should it descend into the lowest plane of physical consciousness the subconscient but it must become a part of the collective consciousness on earth.
I asked him many questions about the organisation of a collective life based on spiritual aspiration.
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I bowed down to him. When I got up to look at his face, I found he had already gone to the entrance of his room and, through the one door, I saw him turning his face towards me with a smile. I felt a great elation when I boarded the train: for, here was a guide who had already attained the Divine Consciousness, was conscious about it, and yet whose detachment and discrimination were so perfect, whose sincerity so profound, that he knew what had still to be attained and could go on unobtrusively doing his hard work for mankind. External forms had a secondary place in his scale of values. In an effort so great is embodied some divine inspiration; to be called to such an ideal was itself the greatest good fortune.
The freedom of India, about which he had assured me, came, and I was fortunate to live to see it arrive on his own auspicious birthday, the 15th of August 1947.I had been out and now it was to Pondicherry that I was returning.
1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
12:In the ordinary paths of Yoga the method used for dealing with these conflicting materials is direct and simple. One or another of the principal psychological forces in us is selected as our single means for attaining to the Divine; the rest is quieted into inertia or left to starve in its smallness. The Bhakta, seizing on the emotional forces of the being, the intense activities of the heart, abides concentrated in the love of God, gathered up as into a single one-pointed tongue of fire; he is indifferent to the activities of thought, throws behind him the importunities of the reason, cares nothing for the mind's thirst for knowledge. All the knowledge he needs is his faith and the inspirations that well up from a heart in communion with the Divine. He has no use for any will to works that is not turned to the direct worship of the Beloved or the service of the temple. The man of Knowledge, self-confined by a deliberate choice to the force and activities of discriminative thought, finds release in the mind's inward-drawn endeavour. He concentrates on the idea of the self, succeeds by a subtle inner discernment in distinguishing its silent presence amid the veiling activities of Nature, and through the perceptive idea arrives at the concrete spiritual experience. He is indifferent to the play of the emotions, deaf to the hunger-call of passion, closed to the activities of Life, -- the more blessed he, the sooner they fall away from him and leave him free, still and mute, the eternal non-doer. The body is his stumbling-block, the vital functions are his enemies; if their demands can be reduced to a minimum, that is his great good fortune. The endless difficulties that arise from the environing world are dismissed by erecting firmly against them a defence of outer physical and inner spiritual solitude; safe behind a wall of inner silence, he remains impassive and untouched by the world and by others. To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine, to walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion of the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues the only chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive concentration comes sovereignly to our rescue.
13:But for the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga this inner or this outer solitude can only be incidents or periods in his spiritual progress. Accepting life, he has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others'; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe.
1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
When we read modern books on embryology, botany, or zool- ogy, we feel a sense of despair in finding ourselves immediately forced to plunge into a cold intellectuality. Although the life and the development of nature are not essentially intellectual, we have to deliberately and consciously set aside every artistic ele- ment. Once weve read a book on botany written according to strict scientific rules, our first task as teachers is to rid ourselves of everything we found there. Obviously, we have to assimilate the information about botanical processes, and the sacrifice of learn- ing from such books is necessary; but in order to educate children between the change of teeth and puberty, we have to eliminate what we found there, transforming everything into artistic, imagi- nal forms through our own artistic activity and sensibility. What- ever lives in our thoughts about nature has to fly on the wings of artistic inspiration and be transformed into images that then come before the soul of the child.
Artistically shaping our instruction for children between the change of teeth and puberty is all that we should be concerned with in the metamorphosis of education for our time and the near future. If the first period of childhood requires a priestly element in education, the second requires an artistic element. What are we really doing when we educate a person in the second stage of life? The individuality journeying from an earlier earthly life and from the spiritual world is trying gradually to develop and permeate a second self. Our job is to assist in this process; we incorporate what we do with the child as teachers into the forces that inter- wove with spirit and soul to shape the second self with a unique and individual character. Again, the consciousness of this cosmic context needs to act as an enlivening impulse, running through our teaching methods and the everyday conditions of education. We cant contrive what needs to be done; we can only allow it to happen through the influence of the children themselves on their teachers.
1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
the ability to come quickly to terms with himself, for he must here find his higher self in the truest sense of the word. He must rapidly decide in all things to listen to the inspiration of the spirit. There is no time for doubt or hesitation. Every moment of hesitation would prove that he was still unfit. Whatever prevents him from listening to the voice of the spirit must be courageously overcome. It is a question of showing presence of mind in this situation, and the training at this stage is concerned with the perfect development of this quality. All the accustomed inducements to act or even to think now cease. In order not to remain inactive he must not lose himself, for only within himself can he find the one central point of vantage where he can gain a firm hold. No one on reading this, without further acquaintance with these matters, should feel an antipathy for this principle of being thrown back on oneself, for success in this trial brings with it a moment of supreme happiness.
At this stage, no less than at the others, ordinary life is itself an esoteric training for many. For anyone having reached the point of being able, when suddenly confronted with some task
10.35 - The Moral and the Spiritual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The sense of sin is the fundamental inspiration behind some religious disciplines, even the sense of something irrevocably bad or something irreparable; for that gives a stronger impetus, a more dynamic urge to the spur of the religious consciousness. The sense of something irreparable, a final doom, has before it the vision of an eternal hell, the Lord of hell and his hosts and his captives. Upon this basic picture of Hell has loomed out Dante's vision of Paradise.
The Indian consciousness did not consider anything essentially evil, anything irrevocably and eternally condemned to perdition. Even the Asura, the anti-Divine is viewed, in the last analysis of things, also as an aspect, a formation of the Divine himself. Diti and Aditi are sisters, twin aspects of the same Supreme Being. All the legends in narrating the life history of the Asura describe his end as a submission to the Divine Will and a merging in Him. An entire life of bitter hostility culminates in the same degree of love for the Divine. The process of enmity seems to have a deeper occult meaning conducive to the more perfect union with the Divine. We know in Savitri how Sri Aurobindo speaks of Death as only a mask of Immortality.
10.37 - The Golden Bridge, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The recoil from the brute facts of life, the concrete living realities has affected even the world of artistic creation. We are very much familiar with what has been called abstract art, that is to say, art denuded of all content. The supreme art today is this sketch of bare skeletoneven a skeleton, not in its organised form but merely dismembered bits strewn about. Even poetry, the art that is perhaps most bound to the sense pattern, as no other, so indissolubly married to sense-life, seems to be giving way to the new impact and inspiration. A poetry devoid of all thought-content, pure of all sentiment and understandable imagery is being worked out in the laboratory, as it were, a new poetry made of a bizarre combination of tones and syllables with a changed form too in regard to arrangement of lines and phrases. It is the pure form that is aimed at the very essence, it is said, what is quintessential!
In other words, mind, that is to say, the rational mind on which stands man's superiority has now been so developed, developed along a single line, has specialised itself so much that it has almost defeated its own purpose. Today it has entered a cul-de-sac, a blind alley where it has bogged itself and does not know where and how to move.
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
ordering, placing, disposing, giving form in the moment of inspiration and how strictly and subtly he
obeys thousandforld laws precisely then, laws that precisely on account of their hardness and
1.03 - Hymns of Gritsamada, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7. O Fire, give us the vast possessions, the thousandfold riches; open to inspiration like gates the plenitude; make Earth and Heaven turned to the Beyond by the Word. The Dawns have broken into splendour as if there shone the brilliant world of the Sun.
6 Or, like a thing of delight in his shining beauty,
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1. Fire is to us as our first father and to him must rise our call when he is kindled by man in the seat of his aspiration. He puts on glory and beauty like a robe; he is our Horse of swiftness full of inspiration to be groomed by us, he is the immortal wide in knowledge.
2. May Fire in the rich diversity of his lights, the immortal wide in knowledge, hearken to my cry in all its words. Two tawny horses bear him or two that are red or ruddy in glow. Oh, one widely borne has been created.
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The discrimination therefore is not rational but automatic by an inner perception. There is also a faculty called revelation which represents the Truth in terms of figures; there is also inspiration which is heard as a voice either in the mind or in the heart. Even this is a very hard practice. One has to be on guard against the lower movements like self-sufficiency, vanity etc., and reject them.
Athavale: I want to know what should be the way of my family life. Should I observe Brahmacharya?
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This man must first of all ascertain whether it is his brother who is communicating with him. And secondly, how does he know that what the spirit writes or says, is under my inspiration?
Generally what happens in such cases is that the spirit tells just the thing that is present in the subconscious part of the medium; the spirit that communicates knows it and gives it out; or if someone present at the planchette has some thought in his subconscious or conscious being the spirit gives it out.
--
A young man from Tinnevelly, knowing Sanskrit, came this morning and wanted to see Sri Aurobindo. He said he had received inspiration from par shakti to go to Sri Aurobindo who is Bhagawan. He was directly going up the staircase without asking anyone when he was stopped. It seemed that he had been fasting for some days; he brought fruits to offer to Sri Aurobindo.
Disciple: Like the other man, shall I send this one to Ramana Maharshi ?
--
The man who came with the inspiration from Para Shakti was finally seen by Sri Aurobindo who found that his physical and vital beings were weak and his mind lacked discretion. He therefore decided to send him back. "These parts the physical, the vital and the mental are the basis; unless the ground is there no structure can be raised on it," he said.
A wire was sent in reply to Krishnashashi asking him not to come to Pondicherry. (Krishnashashi, a sadhak from Chittagong, had become deranged in mind.) Another wire was sent to a disciple at Calcutta to stop Krishnashashi from proceeding to Pondicherry.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Some people measure the worth of good actions only by their natural qualities or their difficulty, giving the preference to what is conspicuous or brilliant. Such men forget that Christian virtues, which are Gods inspirations, should be viewed from the side of grace, not that of nature. The dignity and difficulty of a good action certainly affects what is technically called its accidental worth, but all its essential worth comes from love alone.
Jean Pierre Camus
1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
and inspiration from an asuric power, the Lord of Falsehood
who calls himself Lord of the Nations. It was at the inspira-
1.03 - Reading, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
However much we may admire the orators occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. _There_ are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can _hear_ him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can
_understand_ him.
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Already in the practical dealing with life there are advanced progressive tendencies which take their inspiration from this profounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet been firmly accomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first feeling out towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant activities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of nations in Europe and the stirrings and changes within the nations which preceded and followed it, were rather the result of a confused half struggle half effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and the new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West. The latter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were necessarily impelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand upon life; the world was moving towards a monstrously perfect organisation of the Will-to-live and the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out in the clash of War and has now found or is finding new forms of life for itself which show better its governing idea and motive. The Asuric or even Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision was due to this formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force of servile intelligence and reasoning contrivance subjected to it as instrument and the genius of an accomplished materialistic Science as its Djinn, its giant worker of huge, gross and soulless miracles. The War was the bursting of the explosive force so created and, even though it strewed the world with ruins, its after results may well have prepared the collapse, as they have certainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant disorder, of the monstrous combination which produced it, and by that salutary ruin are emptying the field of human life of the principal obstacles to a truer development towards a higher goal.
Behind it all the hope of the race lies in those infant and as yet subordinate tendencies which carry in them the seed of a new subjective and psychic dealing of man with his own being, with his fellow-men and with the ordering of his individual and social life. The characteristic note of these tendencies may be seen in the new ideas about the education and upbringing of the child that became strongly current in the pre-war era. Formerly, education was merely a mechanical forcing of the childs nature into arbitrary grooves of training and knowledge in which his individual subjectivity was the last thing considered, and his family upbringing was a constant repression and compulsory shaping of his habits, his thoughts, his character into the mould fixed for them by the conventional ideas or individual interests and ideals of the teachers and parents. The discovery that education must be a bringing out of the childs own intellectual and moral capacities to their highest possible value and must be based on the psychology of the child-nature was a step forward towards a more healthy because a more subjective system; but it still fell short because it still regarded him as an object to be handled and moulded by the teacher, to be educated. But at least there was a glimmering of the realisation that each human being is a self-developing soul and that the business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised what this soul is or that the true secret, whether with child or man, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real psychic entity within. That, if we ever give it a chance to come forward, and still more if we call it into the foreground as the leader of the march set in our front, will itself take up most of the business of education out of our hands and develop the capacity of the psychological being towards a realisation of its potentialities of which our present mechanical view of life and man and external routine methods of dealing with them prevent us from having any experience or forming any conception. These new educational methods are on the straight way to this truer dealing. The closer touch attempted with the psychical entity behind the vital and physical mentality and an increasing reliance on its possibilities must lead to the ultimate discovery that man is inwardly a soul and a conscious power of the Divine and that the evocation of this real man within is the right object of education and indeed of all human life if it would find and live according to the hidden Truth and deepest law of its own being. That was the knowledge which the ancients sought to express through religious and social symbolism, and subjectivism is a road of return to the lost knowledge. First deepening mans inner experience, restoring perhaps on an unprecedented scale insight and self-knowledge to the race, it must end by revolutionising his social and collective self-expression.
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Bacchus, another name of Dionysius for purposes of worship, is the god of intoxication, of inspiration, a giver
THE SEPHIROS 57
1.042 - Consultation, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
51. It is not for any human that God should speak to him, except by inspiration, or from behind a veil, or by sending a messenger to reveal by His permission whatever He wills. He is All-High, All-Wise.
52. We thus inspired you spiritually, by Our command. You did not know what the Scripture is, nor what faith is, but We made it a light, with which We guide whomever We will of Our servants. You surely guide to a straight path.
1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "There are two classes of. yogis: the bahudakas and the kutichakas. The bahudakas roam about visiting various holy places and have not yet found peace of mind. But the kutichakas, having visited all the sacred places, have quieted their minds. Feeling serene and peaceful, they settle down in one place and no longer move about. In that one place they are happy; they don't feel the need of going to any sacred place. If one of them ever visits a place of pilgrimage, it is only for the purpose of new inspiration.
"I had to practise each religion for a time - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity. Furthermore, I followed the paths of the Saktas, Vaishnavas, and Vedantists. I realized that there is only one God toward whom all are travelling; but the paths are different.
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"But one undoubtedly finds inspiration in a holy place. I accompanied Mathur Babu to Vrindvan. Hriday and the ladies of Mathur's family were in our party. No sooner did I see the Kaliyadaman Ghat than a divine emotion surged up within me. I was completely overwhelmed. Hriday used to ba the me there as if I were a small child.
"In the dusk I would walk on the bank of the Jamuna when the cattle returned along the sandy banks from their pastures. At the very sight of those cows the thought of Krishna would flash in my mind. I would run along like a madman, crying: 'Oh, where is Krishna? Where is my Krishna?'
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is in the literature of Mahayana and especially of Zen Buddhism that we find the best account of the psychology of the man for whom Samsara and Nirvana, time and eternity, are one and the same. More systematically perhaps than any other religion, the Buddhism of the Far East teaches the way to spiritual Knowledge in its fulness as well as in its heights, in and through the world as well as in and through the soul. In this context we may point to a highly significant fact, which is that the incomparable landscape painting of China and Japan was essentially a religious art, inspired by Taoism and Zen Buddhism; in Europe, on the contrary, landscape painting and the poetry of nature worship were secular arts which arose when Christianity was in decline, and derived little or no inspiration from Christian ideals.
Blind, deaf, dumb!
1.04 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4. Travellers with surrender to the plane of the godhead, seekers of inspired knowledge, they won an inviolate inspiration,
they held the sacrificial Names and had delight in thy happy
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
for the inspiration of hope and fear. The actual or transcendent object, in and of itself insofar as such
a thing can be considered is the sum total of its explored properties, plus that which remains unexplored
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what is called research and that no knowledge can be obtained from revelation, intuition or inspiration.
He says, furthermore, that there is no appeal beyond reason418 (grounded directly in observation, one
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elements of the entire experiential universe. Light is illumination, inspiration; darkness, ignorance and
degeneration. Light is the newly risen sun, the eternal victor of the endless cyclical battle with the serpent
1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationists, scientists, organisers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for which the nation has been long famous. A people may be highly gifted in the subjective capacities, and yet if it neglects to cultivate this lower side of our complex nature, it will fail to build that bridge between the idea and imagination and the world of facts, between the vision and the force, which makes realisation possible; its higher powers may become a joy and inspiration to the world, but it will never take possession of its own world until it has learned the humbler lesson. In Germany the bridge was there, though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of the scholars and organisers. The misapplication by Treitschke of the teaching of Nietzsche to national and international uses which would have profoundly disgusted the philosopher himself, is an example of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there was. For more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective introspection on herself and things and ideas in search of the truth of her own being and of the world, and for another half-century a patient eye of scientific research on the objective means for organising what she had or thought she had gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful and enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were precisely the very central lines on which to go wrong is to miss the goal.
It may be said, indeed, that the last result of the something done the war, the collapse, the fierce reaction towards the rigid, armoured, aggressive, formidable Nazi State,is not only discouraging enough, but a clear warning to abandon that path and go back to older and safer ways. But the misuse of great powers is no argument against their right use. To go back is impossible; the attempt is always, indeed, an illusion; we have all to do the same thing which Germany has attempted, but to take care not to do it likewise. Therefore we must look beyond the red mist of blood of the War and the dark fuliginous confusion and chaos which now oppress the world to see why and where was the failure. For her failure which became evident by the turn her action took and was converted for the time being into total collapse, was clear even then to the dispassionate thinker who seeks only the truth. That befell her which sometimes befalls the seeker on the path of Yoga, the art of conscious self-finding,a path exposed to far profounder perils than beset ordinarily the average man,when he follows a false light to his spiritual ruin. She had mistaken her vital ego for herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said, like the Asura, I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament, and become attached with a Titanic force to these; especially she had said, I am my life and body, and than that there can be no greater mistake for man or nation. The soul of man or nation is something more and diviner than that; it is greater than its instruments and cannot be shut up in a physical, a vital, a mental or a temperamental formula. So to confine it, even though the false formation be embodied in the armour-plated social body of a huge collective human dinosaurus, can only stifle the growth of the inner Reality and end in decay or the extinction that overtakes all that is unplastic and unadaptable.
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
She was always out of sympathy with certain mechanical contrivances like the radio, gramophone and ceiling-fan. The radio was allowed in Sri Aurobindo's room only after the war had taken a full-blooded turn. His bedroom had no fan, in spite of considerable heat. The sitting-room had a table-fan. Only after the accident a table-fan was installed near Sri Aurobindo's bed which was not very effective in reducing the stuffiness of the room, closed as it was on the east, west and south. Hence the need of small hand-fans during his walk. It was only after the room had undergone thorough repairs and the old beams were replaced by new solid ones that a ceiling-fan came into operation. Till then the Mother feared that a ceiling-fan would be a risk to the old ceiling. This shows how the Mother guarded against all eventualities, inner as well as outer, and gave as little handle as possible to so-called accidents. She knew very well that shrewd and subtle occult forces were actively engaged in causing them grievous harm. Who could have imagined that Sri Aurobindo would meet with a serious accident in his own room at an unwary moment? He had asserted very firmly that their life was a battlefield in a very real sense and that the Mother and himself were actively waging a continuous war against the adverse forces. "The fact that it was being waged from a closed room made it no less real and serious." She said once that illnesses in their case are much more difficult to cure than in the case of sadhaks because of the concentrated attack of the adverse forces. I may mention in passing that the Mother was not only vigilant regarding Sri Aurobindo against all possible outer attacks and accidents, she is also cognizant of the welfare of the sadhaks. During an epidemic in the town, sadhaks are warned not to take any food from outside. All our raw vegetables and fruits are washed in an antiseptic solution before being cooked or eaten and many other precautions are taken to avoid any outbreak in the Ashram. The inspiration behind the origin of the sadhak Ganpatram's Cottage Restaurant came from the Mother, I was told. She did not want the Ashram children to take food from outside and fall ill; so she called him one day and asked him to open a restaurant only for the Ashram children and prepare food under strict hygienic conditions.
If the Mother was thus equipped with all necessities for Sri Aurobindo's comfort, Sri Aurobindo on his part was as solicitous about the Mother's well-being. He followed closely all her outer activities and enveloped her with an aura of protection against the dark forces. His accident was due, he said, to his being busy protecting the Mother and unmindful about himself, under the assumption that the adverse forces would not dare to attack him. "That was my mistake," he said. The Mother herself could take any risk, launch upon any adventure, for she had entire faith and reliance upon Sri Aurobindo's mighty force and protection. Anybody who has come in contact with the Mother knows that her dynamic nature makes light of all difficulties and dangers and she is the least concerned about herself 'when some special work has to be done. At one time her health suffered from a chronic trouble, indicated by a swelling of the feet. I observed that every time the Mother entered or left the room, Sri Aurobindo's eyes were fixed on her feet till after a number of years the limbs regained their normalcy. Not about her health alone, about all her movements and activities the Mother always used to keep him informed: before going to the meditation and after it, before going for a drive and after it, or before seeing any visitor, she would come and see him. Sri Aurobindo also would inquire about her from Champaklal, whether she had finished her food and gone to bed or not, and as I have said, until she had retired, he kept awake. If by chance she was late in returning from a drive Sri Aurobindo would inquire again and again. As the Mother's routine was crammed with activities, quite often she used to be late for her meal. Sometimes she would report the fact. But he would never interfere with her activities, only mildly suggest some change if necessary. Imposition of rules, compulsion of any sort was against his nature, either on the Mother or on sadhaks. So is it with the Mother. Sri Aurobindo did not want us to detain her in any way. He would cut short his walk, or hurry his meal to suit her convenience.
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I come now to the last of her day's activities that I have witnessed as well as heard about from others. It was one of the strangest I could think of and could be taken up by her alone, for her inspiration comes from to quote Nishikanto's phrase a "God-white source" riot from human reason. I mean her evening meditation and Pranam. I have already made a reference to them. The meditation started in a very reasonable manner at about 8.00 p.m. She would go down and, standing in the middle of the lower part of the staircase, give a silent meditation to all sitting below for about half an hour; then she would come up, look in on Sri Aurobindo, and come back after a while with his supper. Once she said to him, "After a long time, the gods have come to the meditation." This recalls Sri Aurobindo's verses:
Calm faces of the gods on backgrounds vast,
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Saraswati is known to us in the Purana,the Muse with her feet on the thousand leaved lotus of the mind, the goddess of thought, learning, poetry, of all that is high in mind and its knowledge. But, so far as we can understand from the Purana, she is the goddess of mind only, of intellect & imagination and their perceptions & inspirations. Things spiritual & the mightier supra-mental energies & illuminations belong not to her, but to other powers. Well, we meet Saraswati in the Vedas;and if she is the same goddess as our Puranic & modern protectress of learning & the arts, the Personality of the Intellect, then we have a starting pointwe know that the Vedic Rishis had other than naturalistic conceptions & could call to higher powers than the thunder-flash & the storm-wind. But there is a difficultySaraswati is the name of a river, of several rivers in India, for the very name means flowing, gliding or streaming, and the Europeans identify it with a river in the Punjab. We must be careful therefore, whenever we come across the name, to be sure which of these two is mentioned or invoked, the sweet-streaming Muse or the material river.
The first passage in which Saraswati is mentioned, is the third hymn of the first Mandala, the hymn of Madhuchchhanda Vaisvamitra, in which the Aswins, Indra, the Visve devah and Saraswati are successively invokedapparently in order to conduct an ordinary material sacrifice? That is the thing that has to be seen,to be understood. What is Saraswati, whether as a Muse or a river, doing at the Soma-offering? Or is she there as the architect of the hymn, the weaver of the Riks?
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But he is not content with the inner sacrifice. He wishes to pour out this strength & joy in action on the world, on his fellows, on the peoples, therefore he calls to the Visve Devah to come, A gata!all the gods in general who help man and busy themselves in supporting his multitudinous & manifold action. They are kindly, omasas, they are charshanidhrito, holders or supporters of all our actions, especially actions that require effort, (it is in this sense that I take charshani, again on good philological grounds), they are to distribute this nectar to all or to divide it among themselves for the action,dasvanso may have either force,for Madhuchchhanda wishes not only to possess, but to give, to distribute, he is dashush. Omasas charshanidhrito visve devasa a gata, daswanso dashushah sutam. He goes on, Visve devaso apturah sutam a ganta turnayah Usra iva swasarani. Visve devaso asridha ehimayaso adruhah, Medham jushanta vahnayah. O you all-gods who are energetic in works, come to the nectar distilled, ye swift ones, (or, come swiftly), like calves to their own stalls,(so at least we must translate this last phrase, till we can get the real meaning, for I do not believe this is the real or, at any rate, the only meaning). O you all-gods unfaltering, with wide capacity of strength, ye who harm not, attach yourselves to the offering as its supporters. And then come the lines about Saraswati. For although Indra can sustain for a moment or for a time he is at present a mental, not an ideal force; it is Saraswati full of the vijnana, of mahas, guiding by it the understanding in all its ways who can give to all these gods the supporting knowledge, light and truth which will confirm and uphold the delight, the mental strength & supply inexhaustibly from the Ocean of Mahas the beneficent & joy-giving action,Saraswati, goddess of inspiration, the flowing goddess who is the intermediary & channel by which divine truth, divine joy, divine being descend through the door of knowledge into this human receptacle. In a word, she is our inspirer, our awakener, our lurer towards Immortality. It is immortality that Madhuchchhandas prepares for himself & the people who do sacrifice to Heaven, devayantah. The Soma-streams he speaks of are evidently no intoxicating vegetable juices; he calls them ayavah, life-forces; & elsewhere amritam, nectar of immortality; somasah, wine-draughts of bliss & internal well being. It is the clear Yogic idea of the amritam, the divine nectar which flows into the system at a certain stage of Yogic practice & gives pure health, pure strength & pure physical joy to the body as a basis for a pure mental & spiritual vigour and activity.
We have therefore as a result of a long and careful examination the clear conviction that certainly in this poem of Madhuchchhanda, probably in others of his hymns, perhaps in all we have an invocation to subjective Nature powers, a symbolic sacrifice, a spiritual, moral & subjective effort & purpose. And if many other suktas in this & other Mandalas confirm the evidence of this third hymn of the Rigveda, shall we not say that here we have the true Veda as the Rishis understood it and that this was the reason why all the ancient thinkers looked on the hymns with so deep-seated a reverence that even after they came to be used merely as ceremonial liturgies at a material sacrifice, even after the Buddha impatiently flung them aside, the writer of the Gita had to look beyond them & Shankara respectfully put them on the shelf of neglect as useless for spiritual purposes, even after they have ceased to be used and almost to be read, the most spiritual nation on the face of the earth still tenaciously, by a sort of divine instinct, clings to them as its supreme Scriptures & refers back all its spirituality and higher knowledge to the Vedas? Let us proceed and see whether this is not the truest as well as the noblest reading of the riddle the real root of Gods purpose in maintaining this our ancient faith and millennial tradition.
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divinenot the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
essential source of inspiration for all who want to follow
in his footsteps. The battle on the field of the Kurus is the
1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
In their analysis of man, the Qabalists found that hand in hand with the physical body man had an automatic- or habit-forming or desire-consciousness, which gave him im- petus and volition in certain directions. It took care of the functions of his organism to which conscious attention was seldom directed, such as the circulation of the blood, the beating of the heart, and the involuntary motions of the diaphragm resulting in the inspiration and expiration of breath. They also noted the faculty of reason and criticism, the power whereby a man proceeds from premisses to con- clusion. And above and beyond this w r as the Spiritual entity who used this body, who used this desire and rational consciousness.
It should be obvious to ordinary analysis, too, that there appear in man these three distinct " lives ". There is, to state the preceding paragraph in a slightly different way, the life of the body, with its host of desires and instincts, and in all the wonderful working machinery of the body.
1.05 - Hsueh Feng's Grain of Rice, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
refer to him, as well as to his inspiration and lineage. According to
tradition, when the Fifth Patriarch Hung Jen wanted to appoint a
1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4. Travellers with surrender to the plane of the godhead, seek-ers of inspired knowledge, they won an inviolate inspiration, they held the sacrificial Names and had delight in thy happy vision.
5. The peoples increase thee on the earth; both kinds of riches of men increase thee. O Fire, our pilot through the battle, thou art the deliverer whom we must know, ever a father and mother to human beings.
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11. O thou who art filled with inspiration and a passer of barriers, O thou who hast extended earth and heaven by the wideness of thy light and thy inspired discoveries of knowledge, shine wider yet in us with thy large and solid and opulent amassings, O Fire.
12. O Prince of Riches, fix always in us that in which are the Gods, settle here many herds for the begotten son. In us may there be the happy things of true inspiration and the multitude of the large impulsions from which evil is far.
13. O King, O Fire, let me enjoy by thee and thy princehood of the riches many riches in many ways; for, O Fire of many blessings, there are many treasures for thy worshipper in thee, the King.
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1. O Fire, thou travellest like a friend to the glory where is our home. O wide-seeing Prince of the Treasure, thou nurturest our inspiration and our growth.
2. Men who see aspire to thee with the word and the sacrifice. To thee comes the all-seeing Horse that crosses the mid-world, the Horse that no wolf tears.
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5. When man gives to thee with the sacrifice and the fuel and with his spoken words and his chants of illumination, he becomes, O Immortal, O Son of Force, a mind of knowledge among mortals and shines with the riches and inspiration and light.
6. Missioned create that swiftly, O Fire. Force is thine, resist with thy force our confronters. When revealed by thy lights, thou art formulated by our words, rejoice in the far-sounding thought of thy adorer.
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3. He among mortals is fed on inspiration, the illumined who gives with his word to the Fire, the seer whom the Fire of the brilliant illuminations settles by his luminous safeguardings in the conquest of the Pen where are the herds of the Light.
4. Fire of the blackened trail in his very birth has filled wide earth and heaven with his far-seeing light. Now has Fire that makes pure been seen by his bright flame even through much darkness of the billowing Night.
5. Found, O Fire, for us and the masters of plenty by thy safeguardings packed with the plenitudes a treasure of richly brilliant kinds; for these are they who surpass all others in their opulence and inspiration and hero-mights.
6. O Fire, yearn to the sacrifice that the bringer of the offering casts to thee; found the rapture. Hold firm in the Bharadwajas the perfect purification; guard them in their seizing of the riches of the quest.
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5. O Fire, O Son of Force, found for men, that they may grow, happy riches of inspiration with strength of its hero keepers, - many herds, thy creation in thy might, but now a food for the wolf and the foe and the destroyer.
6. O Son of Force, become the vast speaker within us; give us the Son of our begetting, give us all that is packed with the plenitudes; let me enjoy by my every word satisfaction of fullness. May we revel in the rapture, strong with the strength of the Heroes, living a hundred winters.
1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
--
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
1.05 - MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
to us. When we speak of values, we speak under the inspiration, and
through the optics of life: life itself urges us to determine values:
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
proceed from the inspiration of a higher world. He owes this knowledge to his first personal glimpse into this higher world. The so-called initiates of humanity now become vested with reality for him.
These, then, are the gifts which the student owes to his development at this stage: insight into his higher self; insight into the doctrine of the incarnation of this higher being in a lower; insight into the laws by which life in the physical world is regulated according to its spiritual connections, that is, the law of karma; and finally, insight into the existence of the great initiates.
1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But if this is to be the character of the rapid evolution from a mental to a spiritual being contemplated by the integral Yoga, a question arises full of many perplexities but of great dynamic importance. How are we to deal with life and works as they now are, with the activities proper to our still unchanged human nature? An ascension towards a greater consciousness, an occupation of our mind, life and body by its powers has been accepted as the outstanding object of the Yoga: but still life here, not some other life elsewhere, is proposed as the immediate field of the action of the Spirit, -- a transformation, not an annihilation of our instrumental being and nature. What then becomes of the present activities of our being, activities of the mind turned towards knowledge and the expression of knowledge, activities of our emotional and sensational parts, activities of outward conduct, creation, production, the will turned towards mastery over men, things, life, the world, the forces of Nature? Are they to be abandoned and to be replaced by some other way of living in which a spiritualised consciousness can find its true expression and figure. Are they to be maintained as they are in their outward appearance, but transformed by an inner spirit in the act or enlarged in scope arid liberated into new forms by a reversal of consciousness such as was seen on earth when man took up the vital activities of the animal to mentalise and extend and transfigure them by the infusion of reason, thinking will, refined emotions, an organised intelligence? Or is there to be an abandonment in part, a preservation only of such of them as can bear a spiritual change and, for the rest, the creation of a new life expressive, in its form no less than in its inspiration and motive-force, of the unity, wideness, peace, joy and harmony of the liberated spirit? It is this problem most of all that has exercised most the minds of those who have tried to trace the paths that lead from the human to the Divine in the long journey of the Yoga.
Every kind of solution has been offered from the entire abandonment of works and life, so far as that is physically possible, to the acceptance of life as it is but with a new spirit animating and uplifting its movements, in appearance the same as they were but changed in the spirit behind them and therefore in their inner significance. The extreme solution insisted on by the world-shunning ascetic or the inward-turned ecstatical and self-oblivious mystic is evidently foreign to the purpose of an integral Yoga; for if we are to realise the Divine in the world, it cannot be done by leaving aside the world-action and action itself altogether. At a less high pitch it was laid down by the religious mind in ancient times that one should keep only such actions as are in their nature part of the seeking, service or cult of the Divine and such others as are attached to these or, in addition, those that are indispensable to the ordinary setting of life but done in a religious spirit and according to the injunctions of traditional religion and Scripture. But this is too formalist a rule for the fulfilment of the free spirit in works, and it is besides professedly no more than a provisional solution for tiding over the transition from life in the world to a life in the Beyond which still remains the sole ultimate purpose. An integral Yoga must lean rather to the catholic injunction of the Gita that even the liberated soul, living in the Truth, should still do all the works of life so that the plan of the universal evolution under a secret divine leading may not languish or suffer. But if all works are to be done with the same forms and on the same lines as they are now done in the Ignorance, our gain is only inward and our life in danger of becoming the dubious and ambiguous formula of an inner Light doing the works of an outer Twilight, the perfect Spirit expressing itself in a mould of imperfection foreign to its own divine nature. If no better can be done for a time, -and during a long period of transition something like this does inevitably happen, -- then so it must remain till things are ready and the spirit within is powerful enough to impose its own forms on the life of the body and the world outside; but this can be accepted only as a transitional stage and not as our soul's ideal or the ultimate goal of the passage.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
protective enclave of history. In consequence, he suffers re-exposure to the terrible unknown. Such reexposure engenders mortal terror, but allows for union with possibility allows for inspiration,
reconstruction, and advancement. It is the disintegration and disinhibition of meaning (preceding its
--
secular inspiration might be less rigid than generally assumed. George Puttenham, writing in the 1580s, pointed to
the etymology of poet as maker, which implied for him an analogy between the poets creative power and the
1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
supposed to have received a special inspiration from the Mura-muras,
are bled by an old and influential man with a sharp flint; and the
1.05 - The New Consciousness, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
And we begin to be struck by a first peculiarity. These indications coming to us, these perceptions or sudden pressures, have nothing in common whatsoever with those coming from above when pursuing the path of ascent: they are not revelations, not inspirations or visions or illuminations, not the flashes and thunder of the higher planes of the mind. They seem, rather, to be a very humble and material functioning, one concerned with the tiniest detail, the slightest passing breath, this street corner, that automatic gesture, these thousand little comings and goings. It looks almost like a functioning at ground level.
But at the beginning this functioning is still unsure. We are constantly snatched back by the old machinery, the habit of mulling over thoughts, judging, deducing, calculating, and immediately it is as if a veil fell, a screen came between the quiet clarity behind and the arduous whirlwind here: communications are jammed. Again we have to take a step back and find the comfortable expanse and it is irritating, uncommunicative and apparently indifferent to our fate, opposing a neutral silence, an unrelieved blankness to the question we send it and which would yet call for an immediate answer. So we yield once more; we start up the machine again only to realize that everything was blank behind so we would not move in front, and that the time for an answer had not yet come. We keep stumbling along and persisting, trustful but awkward outwardly (or in front), when circumstances would call for swiftness and efficiency, and those who work with the old reason may scoff, as perhaps the old veteran anthropoid scoffed at the clumsiness of the apprentice man: we miss the branch. We fall and pick ourselves up. We go on. But gradually, as our demechanization gains ground, grows sure-footed and more perfect, the communications become clearer, the perceptions more accurate and precise. We begin to unravel a whole jumbled network that had previously seemed like logic itself. From within the tranquil clarity, we notice a multitude of movements rising from below, from outside, from others; it is a mixture of vibrations, a cacophony of minuscule impulses, a battlefield, an arena filled with obscure contenders, blind drives, dark flashes, microscopic and stubborn wills. And all of a sudden, in all that muddle falls a tiny little drop from our quiet river without our wanting it or trying or even asking for it and everything loosens up, smoothes out, disappears, dissolves. That face there in front of us, this grating little circumstance, that knot of difficulty, this stubborn resistance vanishes, melts away, smoothes out, opens up as if by magic. We begin to enter mastery.
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo also sent messages through Mr. Shiva Rao to Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru that Cripps' offer should be accepted unconditionally. Lastly, he sent his envoy to Delhi to appeal to the Congress leaders for its acceptance, for sanity and wisdom to prevail. At this crucial moment Sri Aurobindo could not remain a passive witness to the folly that was about to be committed. His seer-vision saw that the Proposals had come on a wave of divine inspiration. The scene is still fresh in our memory. It was the evening hour. Sri Aurobindo was sitting on the edge of his bed just before his daily walking exercise. All of us were present; Duraiswamy, the distinguished Madras lawyer and disciple, was selected as the envoy, perhaps because he was a friend of Rajagopalachari, one of the prominent Congress leaders. He was to start for Delhi that very night. He came for Sri Aurobindo's blessings, lay prostrate before him, got up and stood looking at the Master with folded hands and then departed.
He was carrying with him an urgent appeal by Sri Aurobindo to the Congress Working Committee. Sisir Kumar Mitra reports in The Liberator, "the viewpoints which Sri Aurobindo instructed his envoy to place before the Congress leaders...(1) Japan's imperialism being young and based on industrial and military power and moving westward, was a greater menace to India than the British imperialism which was old, which the country had learnt to deal with and which was on the way to elimination. (2) It would be better to get into the saddle and not be particular about the legal basis of the power. Once the power came into our hands and we occupied seats of power, we could establish our positions and assert ourselves. (3) The proposed Cabinet would provide opportunities for the Congress and the Muslims to understand each other and pull together for the country's good, especially at that time of the crisis. (4) The Hindu Mahasabha also being represented, the Hindus, as such would have a chance of proving their capacity to govern India not only for the benefit of the Hindus but for the whole country. (5) The main problem was to organise the strength of India in order to repel the threatened aggression."
1.06 - Agni and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(the Greek kratos) effective of action. Psychologically this power effective of action is the will. The word may also mean mind or intellect and Sayana admits thought or knowledge as a possible sense for kratu. Sravas means literally hearing and from this primary significance is derived its secondary sense, "fame". But, psychologically, the idea of hearing leads up in Sanskrit to another sense which we find in sravan.a, sruti, sruta, - revealed knowledge, the knowledge which comes by inspiration. Dr.s.t.i and sruti, sight and hearing, revelation and inspiration are the two chief powers of that supra-mental faculty which belongs to the old Vedic idea of the Truth, the Ritam. The word sravas is not recognised by the lexicographers in this sense, but it is accepted in the sense of a hymn, - the inspired word of the
Veda. This indicates clearly that at one time it conveyed the idea of inspiration or of something inspired, whether word or knowledge. This significance, then, we are entitled to give it, provisionally at least, in the present passage; for the other sense of fame is entirely incoherent and meaningless in the context.
Again the word namas is also capable of a psychological sense; for it means literally "bending down" and is applied to the act of adoring submission to the deity rendered physically by the prostration of the body. When therefore the Rishi speaks of "bearing obeisance to Agni by the thought" we can hardly doubt that he gives to namas the psychological sense of the inward prostration, the act of submission or surrender to the deity.
--
"May Agni, priest of the offering whose will towards action is that of the seer, who is true, most rich in varied inspiration, come, a god with the gods.
The Secret of the Veda
--
Who, then, is this god Agni to whom language of so mystic a fervour is addressed, to whom functions so vast and profound are ascribed? Who is this guardian of the Truth, who is in his act its illumination, whose will in the act is the will of a seer possessed of a divine wisdom governing his richly varied inspiration? What is the Truth that he guards? And what is this good that he creates for the giver who comes always to him in thought day and night bearing as his sacrifice submission and self-surrender? Is it gold and horses and cattle that he brings or is it some diviner riches?
It is not the sacrificial Fire that is capable of these functions, nor can it be any material flame or principle of physical heat and light. Yet throughout the symbol of the sacrificial Fire is maintained. It is evident that we are in the presence of a mystic symbolism to which the fire, the sacrifice, the priest are only outward figures of a deeper teaching and yet figures which it was thought necessary to maintain and to hold constantly in front.
--
This is the obvious sense of the word kavikratuh., he whose active will or power of effectivity is that of the seer, - works, that is to say, with the knowledge which comes by the truth-consciousness and in which there is no misapplication or error. The epithets that follow confirm this interpretation. Agni is satya, true in his being; perfect possession of his own truth and the essential truth of things gives him the power to apply it perfectly in all act and movement of force. He has both the satyam and the r.tam. Moreover, he is citrasravastamah.; from the Ritam there proceeds a fullness of richly luminous and varied inspirations which give the capacity for doing the perfect work. For all these are epithets of Agni as the hotr., the priest of the sacrifice, he who performs the offering. Therefore it is the power of Agni to apply the Truth in the work (karma or apas) symbolised by the sacrifice, that makes him the object of human invocation.
The importance of the sacrificial fire in the outward ritual corresponds to the importance of this inward force of unified Light and Power in the inward rite by which there is communication and interchange between the mortal and the Immortal. Agni is elsewhere frequently described as the envoy, duta, the medium of that communication and interchange.
1.06 - Dhyana and Samadhi, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The Yogi teaches that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge, beyond reasoning, comes to man. Metaphysical and transcendental knowledge comes to that man. This state of going beyond reason, transcending ordinary human nature, may sometimes come by chance to a man who does not understand its science; he, as it were, stumbles upon it. When he stumbles upon it, he generally interprets it as coming from outside. So this explains why an inspiration, or transcendental knowledge, may be the same in different countries, but in one country it will seem to come through an angel, and in another through a Deva, and in a third through God. What does it mean? It means that the mind brought the knowledge by its own nature, and that the finding of the knowledge was interpreted according to the belief and education of the person through whom it came. The real fact is that these various men, as it were, stumbled upon this superconscious state.
The Yogi says there is a great danger in stumbling upon this state. In a good many cases there is the danger of the brain being deranged, and, as a rule, you will find that all those men, however great they were, who had stumbled upon this superconscious state without understanding it, groped in the dark, and generally had, along with their knowledge, some quaint superstition. They opened themselves to hallucinations. Mohammed claimed that the Angel Gabriel came to him in a cave one day and took him on the heavenly horse, Harak, and he visited the heavens. But with all that, Mohammed spoke some wonderful truths. If you read the Koran, you find the most wonderful truths mixed with superstitions. How will you explain it? That man was inspired, no doubt, but that inspiration was, as it were, stumbled upon. He was not a trained Yogi, and did not know the reason of what he was doing. Think of the good Mohammed did to the world, and think of the great evil that has been done through his fanaticism! Think of the millions massacred through his teachings, mothers bereft of their children, children made orphans, whole countries destroyed, millions upon millions of people killed!
So we see this danger by studying the lives of great teachers like Mohammed and others. Yet we find, at the same time, that they were all inspired. Whenever a prophet got into the superconscious state by heightening his emotional nature, he brought away from it not only some truths, but some fanaticism also, some superstition which injured the world as much as the greatness of the teaching helped. To get any reason out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly, by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition. We must take up the study of the superconscious state just as any other science. On reason we must have to lay our foundation, we must follow reason as far as it leads, and when reason fails, reason itself will show us the way to the highest plane. When you hear a man say, "I am inspired," and then talk irrationally, reject it. Why? Because these three states instinct, reason, and superconsciousness, or the unconscious, conscious, and superconscious states belong to one and the same mind. There are not three minds in one man, but one state of it develops into the others. Instinct develops into reason, and reason into the transcendental consciousness; therefore, not one of the states contradicts the others. Real inspiration never contradicts reason, but fulfils it. Just as you find the great prophets saying, "I come not to destroy but to fulfil," so inspiration always comes to fulfil reason, and is in harmony with it.
All the different steps in Yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the superconscious state, or Samadhi. Furthermore, this is a most vital point to understand, that inspiration is as much in every man's nature as it was in that of the ancient prophets. These prophets were not unique; they were men as you or I. They were great Yogis. They had gained this superconsciousness, and you and I can get the same. They were not peculiar people. The very fact that one man ever reached that state, proves that it is possible for every man to do so. Not only is it possible, but every man must, eventually, get to that state, and that is religion. Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth, until we experience it ourselves. You cannot hope to make a man a surgeon by simply giving him a few books. You cannot satisfy my curiosity to see a country by showing me a map; I must have actual experience. Maps can only create curiosity in us to get more perfect knowledge. Beyond that, they have no value whatever. Clinging to books only degenerates the human mind. Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book! Millions of people have been killed because they did not believe what the books said, because they would not see all the knowledge of God within the covers of a book. Of course this killing and murdering has gone by, but the world is still tremendously bound up in a belief in books.
In order to reach the superconscious state in a scientific manner it is necessary to pass through the various steps of Raja-Yoga I have been teaching. After Pratyhra and Dhran, we come to Dhyna, meditation. When the mind has been trained to remain fixed on a certain internal or external location, there comes to it the power of flowing in an unbroken current, as it were, towards that point. This state is called Dhyana. When one has so intensified the power of Dhyana as to be able to reject the external part of perception and remain meditating only on the internal part, the meaning, that state is called Samadhi. The three Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi together, are called Samyama. That is, if the mind can first concentrate upon an object, and then is able to continue in that concentration for a length of time, and then, by continued concentration, to dwell only on the internal part of the perception of which the object was the effect, everything comes under the control of such a mind.
1.06 - Hymns of Parashara, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
he chooses inspiration as a king an unaging councillor. He
4 Or, he is a light difficult to kindle;
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
First, that she should do all that belonged to her to do by any law, human or Divine. Secondly, that she was to refrain from doing those things that were forbidden her by human or Divine Law, or by Divine inspiration. Thirdly, that she should bear with as much patience or resignation as possible all crosses and contradictions to her natural will, which were inflicted by the hand of God. Such, for instance, were aridities, temptations, afflictions or bodily pain, sickness and infirmity; or again, the loss of friends or want of necessaries and comforts. All this was to be endured patiently, whether the crosses came direct from God or by means of His creatures. These indeed were mortifications enough for Dame Gertrude, or for any other soul, and there was no need for anyone to advise or impose others.
Augustine Baker
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It is by long obedience and hard work that the artist comes to unforced spontaneity and consummate mastery. Knowing that he can never create anything on his own account, out of the top layers, so to speak, of his personal consciousness, he submits obediently to the workings of inspiration; and knowing that the medium in which he works has its own self-nature, which must not be ignored or violently overriden, he makes himself its patient servant and, in this way, achieves perfect freedom of expression. But life is also an art, and the man who would become a consummate artist in living must follow, on all the levels of his being, the same procedure as that by which the painter or the sculptor or any other craftsman comes to his own more limited perfection.
Prince Huis cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his knife, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every whshh of rent flesh, every chhk of the chopper, was in perfect harmonyrhythmical like the Dance of the Mulberry Grove, simultaneous like the chords of the Ching Shou.
1.06 - Wealth and Government, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The various forms of government can stay as they are; that is only of secondary importance. But whatever the social status of the men in power, they should receive their inspiration from those who have realised the Truth and have no other will than that of the Supreme.
17 September 1959
1.06 - Yun Men's Every Day is a Good Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
since the source inspiration of his family is like this, when Yun
Men utters a phrase, it must be returned to the source. Any
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
meaning makes our mind open and receptive so that the inspiration and
teachings of the Buddha can enter and grow.
--
The Tibetan word that is usually translated as blessing or inspiration
can more literally be translated as to transform into magnicence. We are
--
we ask Tara for her help and inspiration. We also say to ourselves, Im making myself ready to receive the enlightening inuence of Tara and of all the
Buddhas. I want to follow the path and do the meditations necessary to
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the incarnation--commonly known as inspiration or
possession--reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather than in
--
The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is world-wide.
Certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a
--
(under the inspiration of the spirit), the priest was always
considered as sacred as the god, and was called, during this period,
--
But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every
part of the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology
--
of producing temporary inspiration, because they are perhaps less
known than some others, and because we shall have occasion to refer
to them later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is by
sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple of
--
The other mode of producing temporary inspiration, to which I shall
here refer, consists in the use of a sacred tree or plant. Thus in
1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I pass now to a third passage, also instructive, also full of that depth and fine knowledge of the movements of the higher consciousness which every Yogin must find in the Veda. It is in the 9th hymn of the Mandala and forms the seventh verse of that hymn. Sam gomad Indra vajavad asme prithu sravo brihat, visvayur dhehi akshitam. The only crucial question in this verse is the signification of sravas.With our modern ideas the sentence seems to us to demand that sravas should be translated here fame. Sravas is undoubtedly the same word as the Greek xo (originally xFo); it means a thing heard, rumour, report, & thence fame. If we take it in that sense, we shall have to translate Arrange for us, O universal life, a luminous and solid, wide & great fame unimpaired. I dismiss at once the idea that go & vaja can here signify cattle and food or wealth. A herded & fooded or wealthy fame to express a fame for wealth of cattle & food is a forceful turn of expression we might expect to find in Aeschylus or in Shakespeare; but I should hesitate, except in case of clear necessity, to admit it in the Veda or in any Sanscrit style of composition; for such expressions have always been alien to the Indian intellect. Our stylistic vagaries have been of another kind. But is luminous & solid fame much better? I shall suggest another meaning for sravas which will give as usual a deeper sense to the whole passage without our needing to depart by a hairs breadth from the etymological significance of the words. Sruti in Sanscrit is a technical term, originally, for the means by which Vedic knowledge is acquired, inspiration in the suprarational mind; srutam is the knowledge of Veda. Similarly, we have in Vedic Sanscrit the forms srut and sravas. I take srut to mean inspired knowledge in the act of reception, sravas the thing acquired by the reception, inspired knowledge. Gomad immediately assumes its usual meaning illuminated, full of illumination. Vaja I take throughout the Veda as a technical Vedic expression for that substantiality of being-consciousness which is the basis of all special manifestation of being & power, all utayah & vibhutayahit means by etymology extended being in force, va or v to exist or move in extension and the vocable j which always gives the idea of force or brilliance or decisiveness in action or manifestation or contact. I shall accept no meaning which is inconsistent with this fundamental significance. Moreover the tendency of the old commentators to make all possible words, vaja, ritam etc mean sacrifice or food, must be rejected,although a justification in etymology might always be made out for the effort. Vaja means substance in being, substance, plenty, strength, solidity, steadfastness. Here it obviously means full of substance, just as gomad full of luminousness,not in the sense arthavat, but with another & psychological connotation. I translate then, O Indra, life of all, order for us an inspired knowledge full of illumination & substance, wide & great and unimpaired. Anyone acquainted with Yoga will at once be struck by the peculiar & exact appropriateness of all these epithets; they will admit him at once by sympathy into the very heart of Madhuchchhandas experience & unite him in soul with that ancient son of Visvamitra. When Mahas, the supra-rational principle, begins with some clearness to work in Yoga, not on its own level, not swe dame, but in the mind, it works at first through the principle of Srutinot Smriti or Drishti, but this Sruti is feeble & limited in its range, it is not prithu; broken & scattered in its working even when the range is wide, not unlimited in continuity, not brihat; not pouring in a flood of light, not gomat, but coming as a flash in the darkness, often with a pale glimmer like the first feebleness of dawn; not supported by a strong steady force & foundation of being, Sat, in manifestation, not vajavad, but working without foundation, in a void, like secondh and glimpses of Sat in nothingness, in vacuum, in Asat; and, therefore, easily impaired, easily lost hold of, easily stolen by the Panis or the Vritras. All these defects Madhuchchhanda has noticed in his own experience; his prayer is for an inspired knowledge which shall be full & free & perfect, not marred even in a small degree by these deficiencies.
The combination of go & vaja occurs again in the eleventh hymn where the seer writes Purvir Indrasya ratayo na vi dasyanti utayah, yadi vajasya gomatah stotribhyo manhate magham. The former delights of Indra, those first established his (new &larger) expansions of being do not destroy or scatter, when to his praisers he enlarges the mass of their illuminated substance or strength of being. Here again we have Madhuchchhandas deep experience & his fine & subtle knowledge. It is a common experience in Yoga that the ananda and siddhi first established, is destroyed in the effort or movement towards a larger fullness of being, knowledge or delight, and a period of crisis intervenes in which there is a rending & scattering of joy & light, a period of darkness, confusion & trouble painful to all & dangerous except to the strongest. Can these crises, difficulties, perilous conditions of soul be avoided? Yes, says Madhuchchhandas in effect, when you deliver yourself with devotion into the care of Indra, he comes to your help, he removes that limitation, that concentration in detail, in the alpam, the little, that consequent necessity of losing hold of one thing in order to give yourself to another, he increases the magha, the vijnanamay state of mahattwa or relative non-limitation in the finite which shows itself by an increase of fundamental force of being filled with higher illumination. That support of vaja prevents us from falling from what we have gained; there is sufficient substance of being expressed in us to provide for the new utayah without sacrificing the joys already established; there is sufficient luminousness of mind to prevent darkness, obscuration & misery supervening. Thus we see still the same symbolic sense, the same depth, the same experience as true to the Yogin today as to Madhuchchhandas thousands of years ago.
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
In another letter of the same year: "The poem was originally written from a lower level, a mixture perhaps of the inner mind, psychic, poetic intelligence, sublimised vital, afterwards with the Higher Mind, often illumined and intuitivised, intervening. Most of the stuff of the first Book is new or else the old so altered as to be no more what it was; the best of the old has sometimes been kept almost intact because it had already the higher inspiration. Moreover, there have been made several successive revisions, each trying to lift the general level higher and higher towards a possible Overmind poetry. As it now stands there is a general Overmind influence, I believe, sometimes coming fully through, sometimes colouring the poetry of the other higher planes fused together, sometimes lifting any one of these higher planes to its highest or the psychic, poetic intelligence or vital towards them."
Sri Aurobindo, sitting on the bed, used to dictate Savitri to Nirod.
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My initiation by him into English poetry rendered the scribe's work congenial as well as convenient. If I missed some words, I would ask again, but sometimes I put down what I thought I heard correct. Later on, after his passing away, experts found the meaning of some words to be dubious, ambiguous, or even wrong. There was faulty punctuation in abundance. Sometimes Sri Aurobindo did not dictate the punctuation and I didn't ask. One couldn't always remind the poet while he was dictating, of the necessity of punctuation, and thus put a curb on his flow. People asked whether I used shorthand for transcribing. There was no need for it at all, for the dictation was very slow and at times halted, waiting for inspiration, I suppose. I don't know what the nature was of Milton's dictation, but one thing was certain: Sri Aurobindo had not Milton's temper, and I didn't suffer his daughter's fate!
The tempo of the work was subsequently speeded up and it proceeded smoothly without break till the seal of incomplete completion was put about two weeks before the November Darshan of 1950. Very probably he had taken the decision to withdraw from this world of the sad music of humanity and leave in compensation his divine music of Savitri. A curious incident has stuck in my memory. One day he continued working even beyond 1.30 p.m. a rare occurrence and that was the day I was invited for lunch at a friend's place. I thought I would certainly be free by 2 p.m. but no, he seemed to be unusually inspired! I believe I was showing some signs of restlessness at which he remarked, "What's the matter?" I don't remember whether I kept quiet or told him the truth. He, however, shut shop soon after. This incident reminds me strongly of Champaklal's valuable admonition that those who want to serve the Divine must have no personal ties or strings.
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This is roughly the story of the grand epic Savitri traced from the earliest conception to its final consummation. Undoubtedly the first three Books were of a much higher level of inspiration and nearer perfection than the rest, for with ample leisure, and working by himself he could devote more time and care to that end, which unfortunately could not be said about the rest of the Books. Apart from the different versions I have mentioned, there is a huge mass of manuscripts which we have left unclassified since they are in fragments[4] all of which testifies to the immense labour of a god that has gone into the building of the magnificent epic. For a future research scholar, when Savitri earns as wide a recognition as, for instance, Dante's or Homer's epic, if not more, a very interesting work remains to be done; going into the minutest detail, he would show where new lines or passages have been added, or where one line slightly changed becomes an overhead line, or how another line after various changes comes back to its original version, etc., etc. I was chosen as a scribe probably because I didn't have all these gifts, so that I could, like a passive instrument, jot down faithfully whatever was dictated while Amal would have raised doubts, argued with him or been lost in sheer admiration of the beauty and the grandeur! Dilip would have started quoting line after line in rapturous ecstasy before the poem had come out! I submit no apology, nor am I conscience-stricken for my failures, for he knew what was the worth of his instrument. I am only grateful to him for being able to serve him with the very faculty which he had evolved and developed in me.
We can at last see how from among scattered seeds a single huge banyan tree has grown and spread itself to the transcendent and the cosmic infinite and excites our perpetual wonder. I wish I could provide a more faithful and vivid picture of its daily growth, a branch here, an offshoot there, trimming the old twigs, reviving the dying ones, discarding the outworn crowding branches till there soared up into the sky a majestic vision under whose perennial shade the world can repose awhile, in its long journey to the Eternal. To show how he expanded the poem I may quote one long new passage which he appended to the end of Book II, Canto VI, The Kingdoms and the Godheads of the Greater Life:
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I desist from giving my own impression of the incomparable epic. I have no such competence and though I have been made a poet by the Master I leave it to more efficient authorities. One fact alone makes me dumb with a reverent awe and exalted admiration: the colossal labour Sri Aurobindo put forth to build this unique structure. It reminds me of one of those majestic ancient temples like Konarak or of a Gothic cathedral like Notre Dame before which you stand and stare in speechless ecstasy, your soul takes a flight beyond time and space. Before I knew much about Sri Aurobindo, I asked him in my foolish way, why, himself being the master of inspiration and having all higher planes at his command, sending inspiration to others, should he still have to work so hard? With his consciousness entirely silent, he had only to hitch to the right source and words, images, ideas would tumble down in a Brahmaputra of inspiration! To which he answered in his habitual indulgent tone, perhaps a bit piqued by my facile observation: "The highest planes are not so accommodating as all that. If they were so, why should it be so difficult to bring down and organise the supermind in the physical consciousness? What happy-go-lucky fancy-web-spinning ignoramuses you all are. You speak of silence, consciousness, overmental, supramental, etc. as if they were so many electric buttons you have only to press and there you are. It may be one day, but meanwhile I have to discover everything about the working of all possible modes of electricity, all the laws, possibilities, perils, etc., construct roads of connection and communication, make the whole far-wiring system, try to find out how it can be made foolproof and all that in the course of a single lifetime. And I have to do it while my blessed disciples are firing off their gay or gloomy a priori reasonings at me from a position of entire irresponsibility and expecting me to divulge everything to them not in hints but at length. Lord God in omnibus!"
Then, with regard to hard labour on Savitri, he wrote: "That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular if part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact, Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished; but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment."
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
With Keatss statement in its secondary meaning the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy would certainly disagree. The experience of beauty in art or in nature may be qualitatively akin to the immediate, unitive experience of the divine Ground or Godhead; but it is not the same as that experience, and the particular beauty-fact experienced, though partaking in some sort of the divine nature, is at several removes from the Godhead. The poet, the nature lover, the aesthete are granted apprehensions of Reality analogous to those vouchsafed to the selfless contemplative; but because they have not troubled to make themselves perfectly selfless, they are incapable of knowing the divine Beauty in its fulness, as it is in itself. The poet is born with the capacity of arranging words in such a way that something of the quality of the graces and inspirations he has received can make itself felt to other human beings in the white spaces, so to speak, between the lines of his verse. This is a great and precious gift; but if the poet remains content with his gift, if he persists in worshipping the beauty in art and nature without going on to make himself capable, through selflessness, of apprehending Beauty as it is in the divine Ground, then he is only an idolater. True, his idolatry is among the highest of which human beings are capable; but an idolatry, none the less, it remains.
The experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested, compounded equally of joy and consciousness, free from admixture of any other perception, the very twin brother of mystical experience, and the very life of it is super-sensuous wonder It is enjoyed by those who are competent thereto, in identity, just as the form of God is itself the joy with which it is recognized.
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Non-rational creatures do not look before or after, but live in the animal eternity of a perpetual present; instinct is their animal grace and constant inspiration; and they are never tempted to live otherwise than in accord with their own animal dharma, or immanent law. Thanks to his reasoning powers and to the instrument of reason, language, man (in his merely human condition) lives nostalgically, apprehensively and hopefully in the past and future as well as in the present; has no instincts to tell him what to do; must rely on personal cleverness, rather than on inspiration from the divine Nature of Things; finds himself in a condition of chronic civil war between passion and prudence and, on a higher level of awareness and ethical sensibility, between egotism and dawning spirituality. But this wearisome condition of humanity is the indispensable prerequisite of enlightenment and deliverance. Man must live in time in order to be able to advance into eternity, no longer on the animal, but on the spiritual level; he must be conscious of himself as a separate ego in order to be able consciously to transcend separate selfhood; he must do battle with the lower self in order that he may become identified with that higher Self within him, which is akin to the divine Not-Self; and finally he must make use of his cleverness in order to pass beyond cleverness to the intellectual vision of Truth, the immediate, unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Reason and its works are not and cannot be a proximate means of union with God. The proximate means is intellect, in the scholastic sense of the word, or spirit. In the last analysis the use and purpose of reason is to create the internal and external conditions favour able to its own transfiguration by and into spirit. It is the lamp by which it finds the way to go beyond itself. We see, then, that as a means to a proximate means to an End, discursive reasoning is of enormous value. But if, in our pride and madness, we treat it as a proximate means to the divine End (as so many religious people have done and still do), or if, denying the existence of an eternal End, we regard it as at once the means to Progress and its ever-receding goal in time, cleverness becomes the enemy, a source of spiritual blindness, moral evil and social disaster. At no period in history has cleverness been so highly valued or, in certain directions, so widely and efficiently trained as at the present time. And at no time have intellectual vision and spirituality been less esteemed, or the End to which they are proximate means less widely and less earnestly sought for. Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line; because we have considerable power over inanimate nature, we are convinced that we are the self-sufficient masters of our fate and captains of our souls; and because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace and personal happiness.
In Wu Chng-ns extraordinary masterpiece (so admirably translated by Mr. Arthur Waley) there is an episode, at once comical and profound, in which Monkey (who, in the allegory, is the incarnation of human cleverness) gets to heaven and there causes so much trouble that at last Buddha has to be called in to deal with him. It ends in the following passage.
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Experience as the source of inspiration and knowledge, we only have recourse to true scientific principle for, as Julian
Huxley has expressed it in What Dare I Think ? : " the most important characteristic of the scientific method is its constant reference back to experience in the search for knowledge ".
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
:::For the sense of being which in calm hour arises, we know not how, in the Soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. . . . Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom. . . . We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. . . .
:::The relations of the Soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the center of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away-means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it-one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their center by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles disappear.
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The third, to which it usually opens only in a great aspiration for progress, comes to it from above by the infusion and absorption of spiritual forces and inspiration.
To these sources men always strive more or less to add another, which is for them at the same time the source of most of their torments and misfortunes. It is the interchange of vital forces with their fellows, usually in groups of two, which they most often mistake for love, but which is only the attraction between two forces that take pleasure in mutual interchange.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What then is maho arnas? Is it the great sea of general being, substance of general existence out of which the substance of thought & speech are formed? It is possible; but such an interpretation is not entirely in consonance with the context of this passage. The suggestion I shall advance will therefore be different. Mahas, as a neuter adjective, means great,maho arnas, the great water; but mahas may be equally a noun and then maho arnas will mean Mahas the sea. In some passages again, mahas is genitive singular or accusative plural of a noun mah; maho arnas may well be the flowing stream or flood of Mah, as in the expression vasvo arnavam, the sea of substance, in a later Sukta.We are therefore likely to remain in doubt unless we can find an actual symbolic use of either word Mah or Mahas in a psychological sense which would justify us in supposing this Maho Arnas to be a sea of substance of knowledge rather than vaguely the sea of general substance of being. For this is the significance which alone entirely suits the actual phraseology of the last Rik of the Sukta. We find our clue in the Taittiriya Upanishad. It is said there that there are three recognised vyahritis of the Veda, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swah, but the Rishi Mahachamasya affirmed a fourth. The name of this doubtful fourth vyahriti is Mahas. Now the mystic vyahritis of the Veda are the shabdas or sacred words expressing objectively the three worlds, subjectively mentalised material being, mentalised vital being & pure mental being, the three manifest states of our phenomenal consciousness. Mahas, therefore, must express a fourth state of being, which is so much superior to the other three or so much beyond the ordinary attainment of our actual human consciousness that it is hardly considered in Vedic thought a vyahriti, whatever one or two thinkers may have held to the contrary. What do we know of this Mahas from Vedantic or later sources? Bhuh, Bhuvah, Swar of the Veda rest substantially upon the Annam, Prana, Manas, matter, life & mind of the Upanishads. But the Upanishads speak of a fourth state of being immediately aboveManas, preceding it therefore & containing it, Vijnanam, ideal knowledge, and a fifth immediately above Vijnanam, Ananda or Bliss. Physically, these five are the pancha kshitayah, five earths or dwelling-places, of the Rig Veda and they are the pancha koshas, five sheaths or bodies of the Upanishads. But in our later Yogic systems we recognise seven earths, seven standing grounds of the soul on which it experiences phenomenal existence. The Purana gives us their names [the names of the two beyond the five already mentioned], Tapas and Satya, Energy&Truth. They are the outward expressions of the two psychological principles, Self-Awareness &Self-Being (Chit&Sat) which with Ananda, Self-Bliss, are the triune appearance in the soul of the supreme Existence which the Vedanta calls Brahman. Sat, Chit & Ananda constitute to Vedantic thought the parardha or spiritual higher half [of] our existence; in less imaginative language, we are in our supreme existence self-existence, self-awareness & self-delight. Annam, Prana & Manas constitute to Vedantic thought the aparardha or lower half; again, in more abstract speech, we are in our lower phenomenal existence mind, life & matter. Vijnana is the link; standing in ideal knowledge we are aware, looking upward, of our spiritual existence, looking downward, we pour it out into the three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvah & Swar, mental, vital & material existence, the phenomenal symbols of our self-expression. Objectively vijnana becomes mahat, the great, wide or extended state of phenomenal being,called also brihat, likewise signifying vast or great,into which says the Gita, the Self or Lord casts his seed as into a womb in order to engender all these objects & creatures. The Self, standing in vijnanam or mahat, is called the Mahan Atma, the great Self; so that, if we apply the significance [of] these terms to the Vedic words mah, mahas, mahi, mahn, then, even accepting mahas as an adjective and maho arnas in the sense of the great Ocean, it may very well be the ocean of the ideal or pure ideative state of existence in true knowledge which is intended, the great ocean slumbering in our humanity and awakened by the divine inspiration of Saraswati. But have we at all the right to read these high, strange & subtle ideas of a later mysticism into the primitive accents of the Veda? Let us at least support for a while that hypothesis. We may very well ask, if not from the Vedic forefa thers, whence did the Aryan thinkers get these striking images, this rich & concrete expression of the most abstract ideas and persist in them even after the Indian mind had rarefied & lifted its capacity to the height of the most difficult severities & abstractions known to any metaphysical thinking? Our hypothesis of a Vedic origin remains not only a possible suggestion but the one hypothesis in lawful possession of the field, unless a foreign source or a later mixed ideation can be proved. At present this later ideation may be assumed, it has not been & cannot be proved. The agelong tradition of India assigns the Veda as the source & substance of our theosophies; Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishad & Purana as only the interpretation & later expression; the burden of disproof rests on those who negative the tradition.
Vjebhir vjinvat and maho arnas are therefore fixed in their significance. The word vashtu in the tenth Rik offers a difficulty. It is equivalent to vahatu, says the Brahmana; to kmayatu, says Sayana; but, deferring to the opinion of the Brahmana, he adds that it means really kmayitw vahatu. Undoubtedly the root va means in classical Sanscrit to desire; but from the evidence of the classical Sanscrit we have it established that in more ancient times its ordinary meaning must have been to subdue or control; for although the verb has lost this sense in the later language, almost all its derivatives bear that meaning & the sense of wish, will or desire only persists in a few of them, va, wish and possibly va, a woman. It is this sense which agrees best with the context of the tenth rik and is concealed in the vahatu of the Brahmanas. There is no other difficulty of interpretation in the passage.
What then is it that Madhuchchhanda, son of Viswamitra, has to say in this Sukta of the goddess of inspiration, speech and knowledge? He does not directly address her, but he assigns to this deity the general control, support and illumination of the sacrifice he is performing. Let Saraswati he says control our Yajna. The epithets which fill the Rik must express either the permanent & characteristic qualities in her which fit her for this high office of control or the possible & suitable qualities with which he wishes her to be equipped in the performance of that office. First, pvak. She is the great purifier. It is as we shall see not a literary inspiration he invokes, but a divine inspiration, an inspiration of truths and right thoughts and, it may be, right feelings. Saraswati by this inspiration, by this inspired truth & knowledge & right feeling, is asked to purify, first, the mental state of the Yogin; for a mind unpurified cannot hold the light from on high. Knowledge purifies, says the Gita, meaning the higher spiritual knowledge which comes by ruti, divine inspiration; there is nothing in the whole world so pure as knowledge: Saraswati who purifies, Pvak Saraswat. Vjebhir vjin vat. She is full of substantial energy, stored with a great variety in substance of knowledge, chitraravastama, as is said in another hymn of the strong god Agni. The inspiration & resultant knowledge prayed for is not that of any isolated truth or slight awakening, but a great substance of knowledge & a high plenty of inspiration; the mental state has to be filled with this strong & copious substance of Saraswati.Dhiyvasuh. She is rich in understanding. Dh in the Veda is the buddhi, the faculty of reason that understands, discerns & holds knowledge. This inspiration has to be based on a great intellectual capacity which supports & holds the flood of the inspiration. Thus rich, thus strong & plenteous, thus purifying the divine inspiration has to hold & govern the Sacrifice.
The thought passes on in the eleventh Rik from the prayer to the fulfilment. Yajnam dadhe Saraswat. Saraswati upholds the Yajna; she has accepted the office of governance & already upbears in her strength the action of the sacrifice. In that action she is Chodayitr unritnm, chetant sumatnm. That great luminous impulse of inspiration in which the truths of being start to light of themselves and are captured and possessed by the mind, that spiritual enlightenment and awakening in which right thoughts & right seeing become spontaneously the substance of our purified mental state, proceed from Saraswati & are already being poured by her into the system, like the Aryan stream into the Indus. Mati means any activity of the mind; right thoughts in the intellect, right feelings in the heart, right perceptions in the sensational mind, sumati may embrace any or all of these associations; in another context, by a different turn of the prefix, it may express kindly thoughts, friendly feelings, happy perceptions.
In the last Rik the source of this great illumination is indicated. Spiritual knowledge is not natural to the mind; it is in us a higher faculty concealed & sleeping, not active to our consciousness. It is only when the inspiration of a divine enlightenment,Saraswat ketun, in the concrete Vedic language,seizes on that self-luminous faculty & directs a ray of it into our understanding that we receive the high truths, the great illuminations which raise us above our normal humanity. But it is not an isolated illumination with which this son of Viswamitra intends to be satisfied. The position for him is that the human perception & reason, but asleep, sushupta, achetana, on the level of the pure ideal knowledge. He wishes it to awake to the divine knowledge & his whole mental state to be illumined by it. The divine inspiration has to awaken to conscious activity this great water now lying still & veiled in our humanity. This great awakening Saraswati now in the action of the Sacrifice effects for MadhuchchhandasMaho arnah prachetayati. The instrument is ketu, enlightening perception. With the knowledge that now streams into the mind from the ocean of divine knowledge all the ideas of the understanding in their various & many-branching activity are possessed and illumined. Dhiyo viv vi rjati. She illumines variously or in various directions, or, less probably, she entirely illumines, all the activities of the understanding. This invasion & illumination of his whole mental state by the state of divine knowledge, with its spontaneous manifestation of high truths, right thoughts, right feelings, the ritam jyotih, is the culmination of this sacrifice of Madhuchchhandas.
Shall we suppose that a sacrifice with such a governance, such circumstances & such a crowning experience is the material offering of the Soma wine into a material fire on a material altar? Every expression in the text cries out against such an impossibility. This sacrifice must be a mental, moral subjective activity of which the Soma-offering is only a material symbol. We see at once that the Gita was not reading a later gloss into the Vedic idea in its description of the many kinds of Yajna in its [fourth] chapter. The modern Yoga and the ancient Yajna are one idea; there is only this difference that the Vedic Rishis regarded all the material & internal riches that came by Yoga as the gift of the gods to be offered to them again so that they may again increase them & supremely enrich our lives with all the boons that they, our friends, helpers, masters of world-evolution are so eager to shower upon us, the vessels & instruments of that evolution. The whole Vedic theory is succinctly stated in two slokas of the Gita. (III.10, 11)
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Greatly has this short passage helped us. It has shown us the true physiognomy of Saraswati as the goddess of inspiration & inspired knowledge & the true nature of the Vedic Yajna; it has fixed the great Vedic terms, vja, dh & ketu; but above all it has given us a firm foundation for a religious & spiritual interpretation of Veda, a brilliant starting point for an inquiry into its truth & its ancient secret. We can now hope to be delivered from the obscuration of Veda by the ritualists & its modern degradation into the document of a primitive & barbarous religion. Its higher & truer sense shows itself in this brief passage like the dim line of land seen on the far horizon.
The metre of the Vedic hymns depends as in English on the number of syllables in the line, quantity only entering in [as] an element of rhythmic variation. The sign marks a naturally long a, i, u,to which e & o must be added. Vowels followed by a double consonant are long as in Latin & Greek. V & y are often interpreted as separate short syllables as if they were u and i.
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We can now examine the functioning of the Visvadevas as they are revealed to us in these three riks of the ancient Veda: Come, says the Rishi, O Visvadevas who in your benignity uphold the activities of men, come, distributing the nectar-offering of the giver. O Visvadevas, swift to effect, come to the nectar-offering, hastening like mornings to the days (or, like lovers to their paramours). O Visvadevas, who stumble not in your work, for you are mighty for all activity and do no hurt, cleave in heart to the sacrifice & be its upbearers. The sense is clear & simple. The kindly gods who support man in his action & development, are to arrive; they are to give abroad the nectar-offering which is now given to them, to pour it out on the world in joy-giving activities of mind or body, for that is the relation of gods & men, as we see in the Gita, giving out whatever is given to them in an abundant mutual helpfulness. Swiftly have they to effect the many-sided action prepared for them, hastening to the joy of the offering of Ananda as a lover hastens to the joy of his mistress. They will not stumble or fail in any action entrusted to them, for they have full capacity for their great world-functions, nor, for the like reason, will they impair the force of the joy or the strength in the activity by misuse, therefore let them put their hearts into the sacrifice of action and upbear it by this unfaltering strength. Swiftness, variety, intensity, even a fierce intensity of joy & thought & action is the note throughout, but yet a faultless activity, fixed in its variety, unstumbling in its swiftness, not hurting the strength, light & joy by its fierceness or violent expenditure of energydhishnya, asridhah, adruhah. That which ensures this steadiness & unfaltering gait, is the control of the mental power which is the agent of the action & the holder of the joy by the understanding. Indra is dhiyeshita. But what will ensure the understanding itself from error & swerving? It is the divine inspiration, Saraswati, rich with mental substance & clearness, who will keep the system purified, uphold sovereignly the Yajna, & illumine all the actions of the understanding, by awakening with the high divine perception, daivyena ketun, the great sea of ideal knowledge above. For this ideal knowledge, as we shall see, is the satyam, ritam, brihat; it is wide expansion of being & therefore utmost capacity of power, bliss & knowledge; it is the unobscured light of direct & unerring truth, and it is the unstumbling, unswerving fixity of spontaneous Right & Law.
We have gathered much from this brief hymn, one of the deepest in thought in the Veda. If our construction is correct, then this at least appears that the Veda is no loose, empty & tawdry collection of vague images & shallow superstitions, but there are some portions of it at least which present a clear, well-knit writing full of meaning & stored with ideas. We have the work of sages & thinkers, rishayah, kavayah, manshinah, subtle practical psychologists & great Yogins, not the work of savage medicine-men evolving out of primitive barbarism the first glimpses of an embryonic culture in the half-coherent fumble, the meaningless ritual of a worship of personified rain, wind, fire, sun & constellations. The gods of the Veda have a clear & fixed personality & functions & its conceptions are founded on a fairly advanced knowledge & theory at least of our subjective nature. Nor when we look at the clearness, fixity & frequently psychological nature of the functions of the Greek gods, Apollo, Hermes, Pallas, Aphrodite, [have we] the right to expect anything less from the ancestors of the far more subtle-minded, philosophical & spiritual Indian nation.
1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
16:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, later. But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single comm and or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels.
17:In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother
1.08 - The Synthesis of Movement, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
This is why the physical life, the individuals participation in the universal light of consciousness has always been considered by popular intuition no less than by the inspiration of poets and thinkers the supreme and sacred boon and all birth is celebrated as a victory, for it is indeed a victory of life and light over the obscurity of the inconscient.
So long as that underworld of subconscient forces whose sole issue is the narrow door opened by physical life on this infinite is not exhausted, the creatures first duty of solidarity and of charity to the creature is to awaken it to the plenitude of existence and light, to enlarge the field of this life that liberates.
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
When two of our perceptions do not contradict each other, we call it proof. I hear something, and if it contradicts something already perceived, I begin to fight it out, and do not believe it. There are also three kinds of proof. Pratyaksha, direct perception; whatever we see and feel, is proof, if there has been nothing to delude the senses. I see the world; that is sufficient proof that it exists. Secondly, Anumna, inference; you see a sign, and from the sign you come to the thing signified. Thirdly, ptavkya, the direct evidence of the Yogis, of those who have seen the truth. We are all of us struggling towards knowledge. But you and I have to struggle hard, and come to knowledge through a long tedious process of reasoning, but the Yogi, the pure one, has gone beyond all this. Before his mind, the past, the present, and the future are alike, one book for him to read; he does not require to go through the tedious processes for knowledge we have to; his words are proof, because he sees knowledge in himself. These, for instance, are the authors of the sacred scriptures; therefore the scriptures are proof. If any such persons are living now their words will be proof. Other philosophers go into long discussions about Aptavakya and they say, "What is the proof of their words?" The proof is their direct perception. Because whatever I see is proof, and whatever you see is proof, if it does not contradict any past knowledge. There is knowledge beyond the senses, and whenever it does not contradict reason and past human experience, that knowledge is proof. Any madman may come into this room and say he sees angels around him; that would not be proof. In the first place, it must be true knowledge, and secondly, it must not contradict past knowledge, and thirdly, it must depend upon the character of the man who gives it out. I hear it said that the character of the man is not of so much importance as what he may say; we must first hear what he says. This may be true in other things. A man may be wicked, and yet make an astronomical discovery, but in religion it is different, because no impure man will ever have the power to reach the truths of religion. Therefore we have first of all to see that the man who declares himself to be an pta is a perfectly unselfish and holy person; secondly, that he has reached beyond the senses; and thirdly, that what he says does not contradict the past knowledge of humanity. Any new discovery of truth does not contradict the past truth, but fits into it. And fourthly, that truth must have a possibility of verification. If a man says, "I have seen a vision," and tells me that I have no right to see it, I believe him not. Everyone must have the power to see it for himself. No one who sells his knowledge is an Apta. All these conditions must be fulfilled; you must first see that the man is pure, and that he has no selfish motive; that he has no thirst for gain or fame. Secondly, he must show that he is superconscious. He must give us something that we cannot get from our senses, and which is for the benefit of the world. Thirdly, we must see that it does not contradict other truths; if it contradicts other scientific truths reject it at once. Fourthly, the man should never be singular; he should only represent what all men can attain. The three sorts of proof are, then, direct sense-perception, inference, and the words of an Apta. I cannot translate this word into English. It is not the word "inspired", because inspiration is believed to come from outside, while this knowledge comes from the man himself. The literal meaning is "attained".
8. Indiscrimination is false knowledge not established in real nature.
1.09 - Saraswati and Her Consorts, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
spiritual, from a purely naturalistic to an increasingly ethical and psychological view of Nature and the world and the gods - and this, though by no means certain, is for the present the accepted view,1 - we must suppose that the Vedic poets were at least already advancing from the physical and naturalistic conception of the Gods to the ethical and the spiritual. But Saraswati is not only the goddess of inspiration, she is at one and the same time one of the seven rivers of the early Aryan world. The question at once arises, whence came this extraordinary identification? And how does the connection of the two ideas present itself in the
Vedic hymns? And there is more; for Saraswati is important not only in herself but by her connections. Before proceeding farther let us cast a rapid and cursory glance at them to see what they can teach us.
The association of a river with the poetical inspiration occurs also in the Greek mythology; but there the Muses are not conceived of as rivers; they are only connected in a not very intelligible fashion with a particular earthly stream. This stream is the river Hippocrene, the fountain of the Horse, and to account for its name we have a legend that it sprang from the hoof of the divine horse Pegasus; for he smote the rock with his hoof and the waters of inspiration gushed out where the mountain had been thus smitten. Was this legend merely a Greek fairy tale or had it any special meaning? And it is evident that if it had any meaning, it must, since it obviously refers to a psychological phenomenon, the birth of the waters of inspiration, have had a psychological meaning; it must have been an attempt to put into concrete figures certain psychological facts.
We may note that the word Pegasus, if we transliterate it into the original Aryan phonetics, becomes Pajasa and is obviously connected with the Sanskrit pajas, which meant originally force,
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movement, or sometimes footing. In Greek itself it is connected with pege, a stream. There is, therefore, in the terms of this legend a constant association with the image of a forceful movement of inspiration. If we turn to Vedic symbols we see that the Ashwa or Horse is an image of the great dynamic force of
Life, of the vital and nervous energy, and is constantly coupled with other images that symbolise the consciousness. Adri, the hill or rock, is a symbol of formal existence and especially of the physical nature and it is out of this hill or rock that the herds of the Sun are released and the waters flow. The streams of the madhu, the honey, the Soma, are said also to be milked out of this Hill or Rock. The stroke of the Horse's hoof on the rock releasing the waters of inspiration would thus become a very obvious psychological image. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the old Greeks and Indians were incapable either of such psychological observation or of putting it into the poetical and mystic imagery which was the very body of the ancient
Mysteries.
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Valahan, the Vedic slayer of Vala, the enemy who keeps for himself the Light. But this would take us beyond the limits of our subject. Nor does this interpretation of the Pegasus legend carry us any farther than to indicate the natural turn of imagination of the Ancients and the way in which they came to figure the stream of inspiration as an actual stream of flowing water.
Saraswati means, "she of the stream, the flowing movement", and is therefore a natural name both for a river and for the goddess of inspiration. But by what process of thought or association does the general idea of the river of inspiration come to be associated with a particular earthly stream? And in the Veda it is not a question of one river which by its surroundings, natural and legendary, might seem more fitly associated with the idea of sacred inspiration than any other. For here it is a question not of one, but of seven rivers always associated together in the minds of the Rishis and all of them released together by
The Secret of the Veda
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It is clear and will become yet clearer that these three goddesses have closely connected functions akin to the inspirational power of Saraswati. Saraswati is the Word, the inspiration, as
I suggest, that comes from the Ritam, the Truth-consciousness.
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Saraswati comes to our rescue against the last absurd supposition, but it negatives equally the naturalistic interpretation. This characterisation of Mahi, Saraswati's companion in the sacrifice, the sister of the goddess of inspiration, entirely identified with her in the later mythology, is one proof among a hundred others that light in the Veda is a symbol of knowledge, of spiritual illumination. Surya is the Lord of the supreme Sight, the vast
Light, br.haj jyotih., or, as it is sometimes called, the true Light, r.tam jyotih.. And the connection between the words r.tam and br.hat is constant in the Veda.
1.09 - Talks, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
With Sri Aurobindo's gradual recovery the time of the talks also changed. They were held mostly during his sponging and later during his bath. As the years passed, the original stream of abundance began to get thinner and thinner till in the last years there was practically a silent attendance on a silent Presence. Either we had exhausted all topics and a satiation had followed and dried up all our inspiration or Sri Aurobindo had withdrawn his inner gesture of approval. Only when Dr. Manilal arrived from Baroda, the still atmosphere quickened with life for a while but he too would soon lapse into a quiescent mood.
About the range and variety of the talks the readers have now got a fair idea from our books. They show Sri Aurobindo's encyclopaedic knowledge and bear out the truth of his remark that if he wrote all that he knew, it Would be ten times more than what he had already written. He had serious or sublime subjects in mind, but I am referring even to ordinary matters of life. Dr. Ramachandra once told me that he had had a racy discussion with the Guru on horse-racing! Much more striking was the ease and freedom in which the talks were held and on either side there was no feeling of constraint or sanctimonious awe putting a check on our impulses. We forgot the sublime Guru-shishya relationship and became long-standing friends. It was quite a different Sri Aurobindo from what he was at other hours of the day. The high, serene and silent snow on the Himalayan peaks had melted down into a quiet and cool gurgling stream. Hold the pure sanctified waters in your hands, sprinkle them over the body, drink them or play with them like a child. How perennially fresh and diversely rich, sparkling always with his ready wit and humour! But the stream flowed, as I said, only at some particular time and not for a long period. Again the grand, serene and silent Presence on the peaks! One could say that the austere "cloak of a reclining God", the robe of silence had slipped down and brought to our view the body of a human godhead. But he would put on the robe of silence again; yet both the visions had their unfailing charm and grandeur.
1.09 - The Greater Self, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Gradually, he entered an all, but, oh, quite an odd all, which had nothing to do with a cosmic or transcendent or dazzling consciousness yet which was like a million little bursts of gold, fleeting, elusive, almost mocking. Perhaps we should say a microscopic consciousness? and warm: a sudden sweetness of recognition, an eruption of gratefulness, an incomprehensible flush of tenderness, as if it were living, vibrating, responding in every corner and every direction. Strangely, when a question arose, or a doubt, or an uncertainty about something or someone, a problem about a course of action, an anxiety about what to do or not to do, it seemed as if the answer came to him as living facts not as an illumination or inspiration, a revelation or thought, nothing of that sort: a material answer in external circumstances, as though the earth itself, like itself, supplied the answer. As if the very circumstances came and took his hand and said, Here, you see? And not great circumstances, not sensational flashes: very little facts, while going from one end of the street to the other. All of a sudden the thing came to him, the person or the encounter, the money, the book, or the unexpected development the living answer. Or, on the contrary, when he was so much hoping for certain news (if he had not yet been cured of the disease of hope), when he was looking forward to some arrangement, a peaceful retreat, a clear-cut solution, he was suddenly engulfed in a still greater chaos, as if everything turned against him people, things, circumstances or he fell ill, met with an accident, opened the door to an old weakness and seemed to be treading the old road of suffering again. Then, two hours or two days or two months after, he realized that that adversity was exactly what was needed, which led, by a circuitous route, to a goal larger than he had foreseen; that that illness had purified his substance, cut him off from a wrong course, and brought him back, lighter, onto the sunlit path; that that fall had exposed old hiding places in himself and clarified his heart; that that unfortunate encounter was a perfection of exactness to bring forth a whole new network of possibilities or impossibilities to overcome; and that everything concurred meticulously to prepare his strength, his breadth, his extreme swiftness, through a thousand and one detours the all prepared him for the all. He then begins to experience a succession of unbelievable little miracles, of strange happenings, bewildering coincidences... as if, really, everything knew, each thing knew what it had to do and went straight to its microscopic goal amidst millions of passersby and trifling events. At first, the seeker does not believe it; he shrugs his shoulders and dismisses it, then he opens one eye, then the other, and doubts his own amazement. It is of such microscopic exactness, such fabulously unbelievable precision in the midst of this gigantic crisscrossing of lives and things and circumstances, that it is simply impossible it is like an explosion of total knowledge embracing in one fell swoop this ant walking down Main Street and the thousands of passersby and all their possible itineraries, all their particular circumstances past, present and future to create this unique conjunction, this incredible perfect little second in which everything accords and agrees, is inevitably, and provides the unique answer to a unique question.
And the same thing happens again and again; the coincidences multiply. Chance gradually reveals an innumerable smile or, perhaps, another self, a great self, which knows its totality, and each fragment of its totality and each second of its world, as much as our body knows the least quiver of its cells, and the passing fly, and the rhythm of its heart. With eyes wide open, the seeker begins to enter an innumerable wonder. The world is a single body, the earth, a single consciousness in motion. But not a body whose consciousness is centered in a few gray cells upstairs: an innumerable consciousness centered everywhere and as total in a little ephemeral cell as in the gesture that will alter the destiny of nations. In each point consciousness answers consciousness. The seeker has left the cutting little truths of the mind, the dogmatic and geometric lines of thought. He enters an inexpressible fullness of view, a comprehensive truth in which each fragment has its meaning and each second, its smile, each darkness, its light, each harshness, its awaiting sweetness. He gropingly discovers the honeycombs covered by the rock.22 Each fall is a degree of widening, each footstep, a blossoming of the inevitable efflorescence, each adversity, a lever of the future. Being wrong is a crack in our armor through which a flame of pure love shines which understands everything.
11.02 - The Golden Life-line, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To live in the soul is to live in eternity with the vision and inspiration of the eternal. It is living in the mind and the vital and the body that turns and binds one to the past renders one a slave to mortality.
The units of this higher chain of consciousness are free from all drag of the past or hold of the present: their being is turned automatically towards the future, the Great Event to which all creation moves; for that is the truth of its inmost reality: the inspiration of its movements comes from that intimate source. The units of one's own life, all its moments share in this freedom and this life- inspiration and all together form the wonderful harmony of the golden chain. The units are not separated or isolated from each otherfreedom of the individual here does not mean isolation: it is a close union, indeed, it is an indivisible unity for all units, all individual formations are identical, for in a sense all are identified with the only reality, the one supreme consciousness.
The soul-consciousness is the golden thread running through the chain of light and when it comes forward and becomes dynamic it gradually engulfs and purifies what was its covering, the life, the mind and the body and reforms them in its own light and energy expressing and embodying its divine truth and fulfilment here below.
1.1.04 - Philosophy, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is a good instrument like logic, but like logic it breaks down before it reaches the goal. Neither ought to be allowed to do more than take us some way and then leave us. Others think that a fine judgment can arrive at the true balance. It does, for a time; but the next generation upsets that fine balancing, consenting to a coarser test or demanding a finer. The religious prefer inspiration, but inspiration is like the lightning, brilliantly illuminating only a given reach of country and leaving the rest in darkness intensified by the sharpness of that light. Vast is our error if we mistake that bit of country for the whole universe.
Is there then no instrument of knowledge that can give us the heart of truth and provide us with the key word of existence?
11.04 - The Triple Cord, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
These threefold limitations are repeated in each of the statuses of being or consciousness. Thus the mind has a mental being, a vital being and a physical being. So the mind has mental limitations and vital limitations and also physical limitations. The mind's mental limitations are its notions and concepts, constructed ideas and fabricated comprehensions. The mind bound by its reasoning faculties, its deductive system, its syllogistic scheme, all that scaffolding has to go if the new light is to penetrate and illumine it with the new consciousness. The mind has also a vital element, when it moves according to its inspiration, as it is called sometimes, but it is only an ignorant inspiration, it is only another name for "mood," for fancy. True inspiration is not a blind mental rush but something clear and steady and yet forceful and self-poised. Again, the mind has its physical element too: the physical mind is the mind controlled by the senses, the impressions of the senses; its structure is patterned according to the impact of the physical and material objects. A clear, free physical mind embodies the pattern of the movements of the higher consciousness, not of the sense-dominated consciousness.
Even like the mind, the vital too has its threefold knots according to the three elements that constitute it. First, there is a mind in the vital, it is called mental-vital, there is a vital in the vital, it is the vital proper, and there is a physical vital. The mental-vital means the field of sentiment and feeling and emotion, the vital proper is the field of passion, the intensity and even ferocity of its urge, and finally, the physical vital, which is the field of outward impulsion and drive, the push towards physical act and execution. Last, the physical too has the same threefold knots, first in the mental physical, second in the vital physical and thirdly in the physical physical, that is, the physical proper. The mind in the physical is the purely brain operation, the primitive original percepts that brain-cells emanate. The vital in the physical means the record of the nerves, more or less that are sensations. Lastly, the physical physical means the most mechanical, the inertial reactions of matter.
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Perpetual inspiration is as necessary to the life of goodness, holiness and happiness as perpetual respiration is necessary to animal life.
William Law
Conversely, of course, the life of goodness, holiness and beatitude is a necessary condition of perpetual inspiration. The relations between action and contemplation, ethics and spirituality, are circular and reciprocal. Each is at once cause and effect.
It was when the Great Way declined that human kindness and morality arose.
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Chinese verbs are tenseless. This statement as to a hypothetical event in history refers at the same time to the present and the future. It means simply this: that with the rise of self-consciousness, animal grace is no longer sufficient for the conduct of life, and must be supplemented by conscious and deliberate choices between right and wrongchoices which have to be made in the light of a clearly formulated ethical code. But, as the Taoist sages are never tired of repeating, codes of ethics and deliberate choices made by the surface will are only a second best. The individualized will and the superficial intelligence are to be used for the purpose of recapturing the old animal relation to Tao, but on a higher, spiritual level. The goal is perpetual inspiration from sources beyond the personal self; and the means are human kindness and morality, leading to the charity, which is unitive knowledge of Tao, as at once the Ground and Logos.
Lord, Thou has given me my being of such a nature that it can continually make itself more able to receive thy grace and goodness. And this power, which I have of Thee, wherein I have a living image of thine almighty power, is free will. By this I can either enlarge or restrict my capacity for Thy grace.
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The artists inspiration may be either a human or a spiritual grace, or a mixture of both. High artistic achievement is impossible without at least those forms of intellectual, emotional and physical mortification appropriate to the kind of art which is being practised. Over and above this course of what may be called professional mortification, some artists have practised the kind of self-naughting which is the indispensable pre-condition of the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Fra Angelico, for example, prepared himself for his work by means of prayer and meditation; and from the foregoing extract from Chuang Tzu we see how essentially religious (and not merely professional) was the Taoist craftsmans approach to his art.
Here we may remark in passing that mechanization is incompatible with inspiration. The artisan could do and often did do a thoroughly bad job. But if, like Ching, the chief carpenter, he cared for his art and were ready to do what was necessary to make himself docile to inspiration, he could and sometimes did do a job so good that it seemed as though of supernatural execution. Among the many and enormous advantages of efficient automatic machinery is this: it is completely fool-proof. But every gain has to be paid for. The automatic machine is fool-proof; but just because it is fool-proof it is also grace-proof. The man who tends such a machine is impervious to every form of aesthetic inspiration, whether of human or of genuinely spiritual origin. Industry without art is brutality. But actually Ruskin maligns the brutes. The industrious bird or insect is inspired, when it works, by the infallible animal grace of instinctby Tao as it manifests itself on the level immediately above the physiological. The industrial worker at his fool-proof and grace-proof machine does his job in a man-made universe of punctual automataa universe that lies entirely beyond the pale of Tao on any level, brutal, human or spiritual.
In this context we may mention those sudden theophanies which are sometimes vouchsafed to children and sometimes to adults, who may be poets or Philistines, learned or unsophisticated, but who have this in common, that they have done nothing at all to prepare for what has happened to them. These gratuitous graces, which have inspired much literary and pictorial art, some splendid and some (where inspiration was not seconded by native talent) pathetically inadequate, seem generally to belong to one or other of two main classessudden and profoundly impressive perception of ultimate Reality as Love, Light and Bliss, and a no less impressive perception of it as dark, awe-inspiring and inscrutable Power. In memorable forms, Wordsworth has recorded his own experience of both these aspects of the divine Ground.
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
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Our free will can hinder the course of inspiration, and when the favourable gale of Gods grace swells the sails of our soul, it is in our power to refuse consent and thereby hinder the effect of the winds favour; but when our spirit sails along and makes its voyage prosperously, it is not we who make the gale of inspiration blow for us, nor we who make our sails swell with it, nor we who give motion to the ship of our heart; but we simply receive the gale, consent to its motion and let our ship sail under it, not hindering it by our resistance.
St. Franois de Sales
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For those who take pleasure in theological speculations based upon scriptural texts and dogmatic postulates, there are the thousands of pages of Catholic and Protestant controversy upon grace, works, faith and justification. And for students of comparative religion there are scholarly commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, on the works of Ramanuja and those later Vaishnavites, whose doctrine of grace bears a striking resemblance to that of Luther; there are histories of Buddhism which duly trace the development of that religion from the Hinayanist doctrine that salvation is the fruit of strenuous self-help to the Mahayanist doctrine that it cannot be achieved without the grace of the Primordial Buddha, whose inner consciousness and great compassionate heart constitute the eternal Suchness of things. For the rest of us, the foregoing quotations from writers within the Christian and early Taoist tradition provide, it seems to me, an adequate account of the observable facts of grace and inspiration and their relation to the observable facts of free will.
next chapter: 1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL
1.10 - Laughter Of The Gods, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
I complained: inspiration is very wanton in its nature. I know nothing of its reason of arrival and departure. It has no railway time-table.
Sri Aurobindo: No reason. Only unreason or super-reason. Keep your end up and it will arrive again, and some day perhaps after jack-in-the-boxing like that sufficiently, one day it will sit down and say, "Here I am for good. Send for the priest and let us be married." With these things that is the law and the rule and the reason and rhyme of it and everything.
1.10 - Mantra Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
6. Repetition of Sarasvati Mantra OM Sarasvatyai Namah will bestow on you wisdom and good intelligence. You will get inspiration and compose poems. Repetition of Om Sri Mahalakshmyai Namah will confer on you wealth and remove poverty. Ganesha Mantra will remove any obstacle in any undertaking. Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra will remove accidents, incurable diseases and bestow long life and immortality. It is a Moksha Mantra too.
7. Repetition of Subrahmanya Mantra Om Saravanabhavaya Namah will give success in any undertaking and make you glorious. It will drive off the evil influences and evil spirits. Repetition of Sri Hanuman Mantra, Om Hanumanthaya Namah will bestow victory and strength. Repetition of Panchadasakshara and Sodasakshara (Sri Vidya) will give you wealth, power, freedom, etc. It will give you whatever you want. You must learn this Vidya from a Guru alone.
1.10 - The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Saraswati to be that power of the Truth which we call inspiration. inspiration from the Truth purifies by getting rid of all falsehood, for all sin according to the Indian idea is merely falsehood, wrongly inspired emotion, wrongly directed will and action. The central idea of life and ourselves from which we start is a falsehood and all else is falsified by it. Truth comes to us as a light, a voice, compelling a change of thought, imposing a new discernment of ourselves and all around us. Truth of thought creates truth of vision and truth of vision forms in us truth of being, and out of truth of being (satyam) flows naturally truth of emotion, will and action. This is indeed the central notion of the Veda.
Saraswati, the inspiration, is full of her luminous plenitudes, rich in substance of thought. She upholds the Sacrifice, the offering of the mortal being's activities to the divine by awakening his consciousness so that it assumes right states of emotion and right movements of thought in accordance with the Truth from which she pours her illuminations and by impelling in it the rise
The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers
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Saraswati by the constant action of the inspiration awakens the
Truth to consciousness in our thoughts.
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"the great river", as Sayana seems to understand, the physical river in the Punjab, we get an incoherence of thought and expression which is impossible except in a nightmare or a lunatic asylum. But it is possible to suppose that it means the great flood of inspiration and that there is no reference to the great ocean of the Truth-Consciousness. Elsewhere, however, there is repeated reference to the gods working by the vast power of the great flood (mahna mahato arn.avasya) where there is no reference to Saraswati and it is improbable that she should be meant. It is true that in the Vedic writings Saraswati is spoken of as the secret self of Indra, - an expression, we may observe, that is void of sense if Saraswati is only a northern river and
Indra the god of the sky, but has a very profound and striking significance if Indra be the illumined Mind and Saraswati the inspiration that proceeds from the hidden plane of the supra-
102
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Thus we find that both Veda and Purana use the same symbolic images; the ocean is for them the image of infinite and eternal existence. We find also that the image of the river or flowing current is used to symbolise a stream of conscious being. We find that Saraswati, one of the seven rivers, is the river of inspiration flowing from the Truth-consciousness. We have the right then to suppose that the other six rivers are also psychological symbols.
But we need not depend entirely on hypothesis and inference, however strong and entirely convincing. As in the hymn of Vamadeva we have seen that the rivers, ghr.tasya dharah., are there not rivers of clarified butter or rivers of physical water, but psychological symbols, so we find in other hymns the same compelling evidence as to the image of the seven rivers. For this purpose I will examine one more hymn, the first Sukta of the third Mandala sung by the Rishi Vishwamitra to the god Agni; for here he speaks of the seven rivers in language as remarkable and unmistakable as the language of Vamadeva about the rivers of clarity. We shall find precisely the same ideas recurring in quite different contexts in the chants of these two sacred singers.
1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Spiritual inspiration comes from God
MASTER (to the devotees): "Both worldliness and liberation depend on God's will. It is God alone who has kept man in the world in a state of ignorance; and man will be free when God, of His own sweet will, calls him to Himself. It is like the mother calling the child at meal-time, when he is out playing. When the time comes for setting a man free, God makes him seek the company of holy men. Further, it is God who makes him restless for spiritual life."
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The modern world cares little for orthodox Hindu opinion, for the opinion of its Pandits or for the ancient authority of its received guides; putting these things aside as the heavy and now useless baggage of the dead past it moves on free and unhampered to its objective, seeking ever fresh vistas of undiscovered knowledge. But a Hindu writer, still holding the faith of his ancestors, owes a certain debt to the immediate past, not so much as to hamper his free enquiry and outlook upon truth, but enough to demand from him a certain respect for whatever in it is really respectworthy and some attempt to satisfy his coreligionists that in opening out a fresh outlook on ancient knowledge he is not uprooting truths that are essential to their common religion. Nothing in those truths compels us to accept the plenary authority of Sayana or the ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas. The hymns of the Veda are, for us, inspired truth and therefore infallible; it follows that the only interpretative authority on them which can claim also to be infallible is one which itself works by the faculty of divine inspiration. The only works for which the ordinary tradition claims this equal authority are the Brahmanas, Aranyakas & Upanishads. Even among these authorities, if we accept them as all and equally inspired and authoritative, and on this point Hindus are not in entire agreement,the Brahmanas which deal with the ceremonial detail of Vedic sacrifice, are authoritative for the ritual only; for the inner sense the Upanishads are the fit authority. Sayana can lay claim to no such sanctity for his opinions. He is no ancient Rishi, nor even an inspired religious teacher, but a grammarian and scholar writing in the twelfth century after Christ several millenniums subsequent to the Rishis to whom Veda was revealed. By his virtues & defects as a scholar his interpretation must be judged. His erudition is vast, his industry colossal; he has so occupied the field that everyone who approaches the Veda must pass to it under his shadow; his commentary is a mine of knowledge about Vedic Sanscrit and full of useful hints for the interpretation of Veda. But there the tale of his merits ends. Other qualities are needed for a successful Vedic commentary which in Sayana are conspicuous by their absence; and his defects as a critic are almost as colossal as his industry and erudition. He is not a disinterested mind seeking impartially the truth of Veda but a professor of the ritualistic school of interpretation intent upon reading the traditional ceremonial sense into the sacred hymns; even so he is totally wanting in consistency, coherence and settled method. Not only is he frequently uncertain of himself, halts and qualifies his interpretation with an alternative or not having the full courage of his ritualistic rendering introduces it as a mere possibility,these would be meritorious failings,but he wavers in a much more extraordinary fashion, forcing the ritualistic sense of a word or passage where it cannot possibly hold, abandoning it unaccountably where it can well be sustained. The Vedas are masterpieces of flawless literary style and logical connection. But Sayana, like many great scholars, is guiltless of literary taste and has not the least sense of what is or is not possible to a good writer. His interpretation of any given term is seldom consistent even in similar passages of different hymns, but he will go yet farther and give two entirely different renderings to the same word though occurring in successive riks & in an obviously connected strain of thought. The rhythm and balance of a sentence is nothing to him, he will destroy it ruthlessly in order to get over a difficulty of interpretation; he will disturb the arrangement of a sentence sometimes in the most impossible manner, connecting absolutely disconnected words, breaking up inseparable connections, inserting a second and alien sentence in between the head & tail of the first, and creating a barbarous complexity & confusion where the symbolic movement of the Rishis, unequalled in its golden ease, lucidity and straightforwardness, demands an equal lucidity & straightforwardness in the commentator. A certain rough coherence of thought he attempts to keep, but his rendering makes oftenest a clumsy sense & not unoften no ascertainable sense at all; while he has no scruple in breaking up the coherence entirely in favour of his ritualism. These are, after all, faults common in a scholastic mentality, but even were they less prominent & persistent in him than I have found them to be, they liberate us from all necessity for an exaggerated deference to his authority as an interpreter. Nor, indeed, were Sayana an ideal commentator, could he possibly be relied upon to give us the true sense of Veda; for the language of these hymns, whatever the exact date of their Rishis, goes back to an immense antiquity and long before Sayana the right sense of many Vedic words and the right clue to many Vedic allusions and symbols were lost to the scholars of India. Much indeed survived in tradition, but more had been lost or disfigured, and the two master clues, intellectual & spiritual, on which we can yet rely for the recovery of these losses, a sound philology and the renewal in ourselves of the experiences which form the subject of the Vedic hymns, were the one entirely wanting, the other grown more & more inaccessible with time not only to the Pandit but to the philosopher. Even in our days the sound philology is yet wanting, though the seeds have been sown & even the first beginnings made; nor are the Vedic experiences any longer pursued in their entirety by the Indian Yogins who have learned to follow in this Kali Yuga less difficult paths and more modern systems.
But the ritualistic interpretation of the Rigveda does not stand on the authority of Sayana alone. It is justified by Shankaracharyas rigid division of karmakanda and jnanakanda and by a long tradition dating back to the propaganda of Buddha which found in the Vedic hymns a great system of ceremonial or effective sacrifice and little or nothing more. Even the Brahmanas in their great mass & minuteness seem to bear unwavering testimony to the pure ritualism of the Veda. But the Brahmanas are in their nature rubrics of directions to the priests for the right performance of the outward Vedic sacrifice,that system of symbolic & effective offerings to the gods of Soma-wine, clarified butter or consecrated animals in which the complex religion of the Veda embodied itself for material worship,rubrics accompanied by speculative explanations of old ill-understood details & the popular myths & traditions that had sprung up from obscure allusions in the hymns. Whatever we may think of the Brahmanas, they merely affirm the side of outward ritualism which had grown in a huge & cumbrous mass round the first simple rites of the Vedic Rishis; they do not exclude the existence of deeper meanings & higher purposes in the ancient Scripture. Not only so, but they practically affirm them by including in the Aranyakas compositions of a wholly different spirit & purpose, the Upanishads, compositions professedly intended to bring out the spiritual gist and drift of the earlier Veda. It is clear therefore that to the knowledge or belief of the men of those times the Vedas had a double aspect, an aspect of outward and effective ritual, believed also to be symbolical,for the Brahmanas are continually striving to find a mystic symbolism in the most obvious details of the sacrifice, and an aspect of highest & divine truth hidden behind these symbols. The Upanishads themselves have always been known as Vedanta. This word is nowadays often used & spoken of as if it meant the end of Veda, in the sense that here historically the religious development commenced in the Rigveda culminated; but obviously it means the culmination of Veda in a very different sense, the ultimate and highest knowledge & fulfilment towards which the practices & strivings of the Vedic Rishis mounted, extricated from the voluminous mass of the Vedic poems and presented according to the inner realisation of great Rishis like Yajnavalkya & Janaka in a more modern style and language. It is used much in the sense in which Madhuchchhandas, son of Viswamitra, says of Indra, Ath te antamnm vidyma sumatnm, Then may we know something of thy ultimate right thinkings, meaning obviously not the latest, but the supreme truths, the ultimate realisations. Undoubtedly, this was what the authors of the Upanishads themselves saw in their work, statements of supreme truth of Veda, truth therefore contained in the ancient mantras. In this belief they appeal always to Vedic authority and quote the language of Veda either to justify their own statements of thought or to express that thought itself in the old solemn and sacred language. And with regard to this there are spoken these Riks.
1.1.1.01 - Three Elements of Poetic Creation, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Poetry, or at any rate a truly poetic poetry, comes always from some subtle plane through the creative vital and uses the outer mind and other external instruments for transmission only. There are three elements in the production of poetry; there is the original source of inspiration, there is the vital force of creative beauty which contri butes its own substance and impetus and often determines the form, except when that also comes ready made from the original sources; there is, finally, the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet. The most genuine and perfect poetry is written when the original source is able to throw its inspiration pure and undiminished into the vital and there takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives from the godheads of the inner or the superior spaces. When the vital mind and emotion are too active and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less au thentic. Finally, if the outer consciousness is too lethargic and blocks the transmission or too active and makes its own version, then you have the poetry that fails or is at best a creditable mental manufacture. It is the interference of these two parts either by obstruction or by too great an activity of their own or by both together that causes the difficulty and labour of writing. There would be no difficulty if the inspiration came through without obstruction or interference in a pure transcript that is what happens in a poets highest or freest moments when he writes not at all out of his own external human mind, but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods.
The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind widenesses. To get the Overmind inspiration is so rare that there are only a few lines or short passages in all poetic literature that give at least some appearance or reflection of it. When the source of inspiration is in the heart or the psychic there is more easily a good will in the vital channel, the flow is spontaneous; the inspiration takes at once its true form and speech and is transmitted without any interference or only a minimum of interference by the brain-mind, that great spoiler of the higher or deeper splendours. It is the character of the lyrical inspiration, to flow in a jet out of the beingwhe ther it comes from the vital or the psychic, it is usually spontaneous, for these are the two most powerfully impelling and compelling parts of the nature. When on the contrary the source of inspiration is in the creative poetic intelligence or even the higher mind or the illumined mind, the poetry which comes from this quarter is always apt to be arrested by the outer intellect, our habitual thought-production engine. This intellect is an absurdly overactive part of the nature; it always thinks that nothing can be well done unless it puts its finger into the pie and therefore it instinctively interferes with the inspiration, blocks half or more than half of it and labours to substitute its own inferior and toilsome productions for the true speech and rhythm that ought to have come. The poet labours in anguish to get the one true word, the au thentic rhythm, the real divine substance of what he has to say, while all the time it is waiting complete and ready behind; but it is denied free transmission by some part of the transmitting agency which prefers to translate and is not willing merely to receive and transcribe. When one gets something through from the illumined mind, then there is likely to come to birth work that is really fine and great. When there comes with labour or without it something reasonably like what the poetic intelligence wanted to say, then there is something fine or adequate, though it may not be great unless there is an intervention from the higher levels. But when the outer brain is at work trying to fashion out of itself or to give its own version of what the higher sources are trying to pour down, then there results a manufacture or something quite inadequate or faulty or, at the best, good on the whole, but not the thing that ought to have come.
2 June 1931
1.1.1.03 - Creative Power and the Human Instrument, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A poem may pre-exist in the timeless as all creation pre-exists there or else in some plane where the past, present and future exist together. But it is not necessary to presuppose anything of the kind to explain the phenomena of inspiration. All is here a matter of formation or creation. By the contact with the source of inspiration the creative Power at one level or another and the human instrument, receptacle or channel get into contact. That is the essential point, all the rest depends upon the individual case. If the substance, rhythm, form, words come down all together ready-formed from the plane of poetic creation, that is the perfect type of inspiration; it may give its own spontaneous gift or it may give something which corresponds to the idea or the aspiration of the poet, but in either case the human being is only a channel or receptacle, although he feels the joy of the creation and the joy of the vea, enthousiasmos, elation of the inrush and the passage. On the other hand it may be that the creative source sends down the substance or stuff, the force and the idea, but the language, rhythm etc. are formed somewhere in the instrument; he has to find the human transcription of something that is there in diviner essence above; then there is an illumination or excitement, a conscious labour of creation swift or slow, hampered or facile. Something of the language may be supplied by the mind or vital, something may break through from somewhere behind the veil, from whatever source gets into touch with the transcribing mind in the liberating or stimulating excitement or uplifting of the consciousness. Or a line or lines may come through from some plane and the poet excited to creation may build around them constructing his material or getting it from any source he can tap. There are many possibilities of this nature. There is also the possibility of an inspiration not from above, but from somewhere within on the ordinary levels, some inner mind, emotional vital etc. which the mind practised in poetical technique works out according to its habitual faculty. Here again in a different way similar phenomena, similar variations may arise.
As for the language, the tongue in which the poem comes or the whole lines from above, that offers no real difficulty. It all depends on the contact between the creative Power and the instrument or channel, the Power will naturally choose the language of the instrument or channel, that to which it is accustomed and can therefore readily hear and receive. The Power itself is not limited and can use any language, but although it is possible for things to come through in a language unknown or ill-known I have seen several instances of the formerit is not a usual case, since the sa
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If the parts of a poem come from different planes, it is because one starts from some high plane but the connecting consciousness cannot receive uninterruptedly from there and as soon as it flickers or wavers it comes down to a lower, perhaps without noticing it, or the lower comes in to supply the continuation of the flow or on the contrary the consciousness starts from a lower plane and is lifted in the vea, perhaps occasionally, perhaps more continuously higher for a time or else the higher force attracted by the creative will breaks through or touches or catches up the less exalted inspiration towards or into itself. I am speaking here especially of the overhead planes where this is quite natural; for the Overmind for instance is the ultimate source of intuition, illumination or heightened power of the planes immediately below it. It can lift them up into its own greater intensity or give out of its intensity to them or touch or combine their powers together with something of its own greater poweror they can receive or draw something from it or from each other. On the lower planes beginning from the mental downwards there can also be such variations or combinations, but the working is not the same, for the different powers here stand more on a footing of equality whether they stand apart from each other, each working in its own right, or cooperate.
29 April 1937
1.1.1.04 - Joy of Poetic Creation, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Poetry takes its start from any plane of the consciousness, but, like all art, one might even say all creation, it must be passed through the vital, the life-soul, gather from it a certain force for manifestation if it is to be itself alive. And as there is always a joy in creation, that joy along with a certain enthousiasmosnot enthusiasm, if you please, but an invasion and exultation of creative force and creative ecstasy, nandamaya veamust always be there, whatever the source. But where the inspiration comes from the linking of the vital creative instrument to a deeper psychic experience, that imparts another kind of intensive originality and peculiar individual power, a subtle and delicate perfection, a linking on to something that is at once fine to etheriality and potent, intense as fire yet full of sweetness. But this is exceedingly rare in its absolute quality,poetry as an expression of mind and life is common, poetry of the mind and life touched by the soul and given a spiritual fineness is to be found but more rare; the pure psychic note in poetry breaks through only once in a way, in a brief lyric, a sudden line, a luminous passage. It was indeed because this linking-on took place that the true poetic faculty suddenly awoke in you,for it was not there before, at least on the surface. The joy you feel, therefore, was no doubt partly the simple joy of creation, but there comes also into it the joy of expression of the psychic being which was seeking for an outlet since your boyhood. It is this inner expression that makes the writing of poetry a part of sadhana.
29 May 1931
1.1.1.05 - Essence of Inspiration, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.1.1.05 - Essence of inspiration
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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There can be inspiration also without wordsa certain intensity in the light and force and substance of the knowledge is the essence of inspiration.
18 June 1933
1.1.1.06 - Inspiration and Effort, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.1.1.06 - inspiration and Effort
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can comm and it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its level. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,for then there is no difficulty,I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspirations incertitudes.
26 January 1932
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Merciful heavens, what a splashing and floundering! When you miss a verse or a poem, it is better to wait in an entire quietude about it (with only a silent expectation) until the true inspiration comes, and not to thrash the inner air vainly for possible variantslike that the true form is much more likely to come, as people go to sleep on a problem and find it solved when they awake. Otherwise, you are likely to have only a series of misses, the half-gods of the semi-poetic mind continually intervening with their false enthusiasms and misleading voices.
11 July 1931
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Few poets can keep for a very long time a sustained level of the highest inspiration. The best poetry does not usually come by streams except in poets of a supreme greatness though there may be in others than the greatest long-continued wingings at a considerable height. The very best comes by intermittent drops, though sometimes three or four gleaming drops at a time. Even in the greatest poets, even in those with the most opulent flow of riches like Shakespeare, the very best is comparatively rare.
13 February 1936
1.1.1.09 - Correction by Second Inspiration, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.1.1.09 - Correction by Second inspiration
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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It is a second inspiration which has come in improving on the first. When the improving is done by the mind and not by a pure inspiration, then the retouches spoil more often than they perfect.
8 August 1936
11.11 - The Ideal Centre, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Once when the Mother was asked by a group of disciples to give permission and blessings for opening a centre, She said in answer: "To open a centre is not sufficient in itself. It must be the pure hearth of perfect sincerity, in a total consecration to the Divine." This is the first motto or mantra that should be inscribed on the tablet of the inner constitution of every group organisation. It states the basic spirit, the true inspiration that should initiate the work and guide it through. The second mantra is embodied in these words of Sri Aurobindo: "Love the Mother: Always behave as if She was looking at you, for indeed She is always present." These are words that should be kept always bright and blazing in the heart of each and every one. It gives the source and origin of the inspiration, the single fount of all movements collective and individual. And a third mantra not less living or less urgent has been given by the Mother: "Let us work as we pray, for indeed work is the body's best prayer to the Divine." Here we learn of the way, the process that is to be followed, the skill as it were, for realising the goal.
And for a final comprehension and direction we are to remember these words of Sri Aurobindo: "All problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony."
11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Standing on the mental plane, immured within the dimensions of Reason and mental intelligence, it is not easy to contemplate the type of consciousness that will be; even as it was difficult for the ape to envisage the advent of his successor, man. But certain characteristic signs, rudimentary or fragmentary movements of the higher status are visible in the mental consciousness even as it is: the ape likewise was not without a glimmer of Reason and logic, even the faculty of ratiocination that seems to be the exclusive property of man. There is, for example, a movement we call Intuition, so different from Reason to which even Scientists and Mathematicians acknowledge their debt of gratitude for so many of their discoveries and inventions. There is also the other analogous movement called inspiration that rules the poet and the artist disclosing to them a world of beauty and reality that is not available to the normal human consciousness. Again, there is yet another group of human beings at the top of the ladder of evolutionmystics and sageswho see the truth, possess the truth direct through a luminous immediacy of perception, called Revelation. Now, all these functionings of consciousness that happen frequently enough within the domain of normal humanity are still expressions of a higher mode of consciousness: they are not the product or play of Reason or logical intelligence which marks the character, the differentia of human consciousness.
But, as at present, these are mere glimmers and glimpses from elsewhere and man has no comm and or control over them. They are beyond the habitual conscious will, they come and go as they like, happy visitations from another world, they do not abide our question and are not at our beck and call. The Supermind, on the contrary, is in full possession of that consciousness of which these are faint beginnings and distant echoes. The Superman will be born when man has risen above his mind and emerged into the supramental consciousness.
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Lastly, another point and we have done. It is that all human efforts in the past in any realm or domain towards a higher life has been contri butory to this supreme consummation that Sri Aurobindo envisages as coming or sure to come. It is very often asserted that human nature is irremediable and although we may try at a little amelioration of his instinctive life, especially as a social being, there can be no permanent or radical cure of the original sin of Ignorance and Inconscience with which his earthly nature is branded. Reformers, idealists, even saints and sages have seen and sought to counter the evilsome tried to get rid of it, others round it: but it is still there, as rampant as ever, apparently with no effect upon it. For one thing, evil was sought to be cured by its opposite, the good, but the good that belongs to the level of consciousness to which evil too belongs. In other words, we tried to deal with the world and treat it with the force of the Mind, even though in some cases, the mind was a high or even the highest spiritual mind. To touch the roots of the malady that extend into our deepest fibres, our most material being, dead inconscience, one must rise to the very source of consciousness, the creative truth-consciousness: the Supermind alone can transform the earth, transfigure the earthly life. In the second place, the past attempts did not all go in vain: they were preparations, the first ground-work, on various levels and in various domains of human life and consciousness where the light infiltrated, to whatever extent it may be and things, and forces were shaken and reshuffled to admit of other forces and inspirations; if nothing else, at least the possibility was created.
Sri Aurobindo's aim, we have said, is not an individual fulfilment, however glorious and successful it might be, and not merely the fulfilment of one limb only of the individual however deep and high. Sri Aurobindo embraced the whole man and the whole society. A fulfilled life in society upon earth the highest and completest life possible, not only possible but inevitable to the human being that is the work for which he laboured. Man's mind and intelligence, his life energy, his body-form are all taken up, purified of the lower formulation, remoulded into the mode and pattern of the supramental truth-consciousness: he becomes a complete, integral perfect being expressing and embodying in all his limbs and movements the supreme reality made of utter truth and knowledge and power and delight. This being his individual life, his collective or social life too would figure the same pattern. A new society in which men have found their soul and soul function is a harmonious, a unitary body, com posed of individuals who by living each one in his self live in all and living in all each one lives in his self. Likewise, an aggregate of such societiesa society of nations, as it is already called somewhat in a prophetic vein,will also be an inherently harmonious and unified, even a unitary body too, since all these larger units will express through their corporate life each in its own special way the glory and greatness of the Divine Consciousness.
1.11 - A STREET, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Craving the speech of inspiration,
And call this ardor, so supernal,
1.1.1 - The Mind and Other Levels of Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Mind and inspiration
There are different kinds of knowledge. One is inspiration, i.e. something that comes out of the Knowledge planes like a flash and opens up the mind to the Truth in a moment. That is inspiration. It easily takes the form of words as when a poet writes or a speaker speaks, as people say, from inspiration.
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The pure inspiration and conception is something quite different [from ordinary thought]it comes from deep within or from high above. This is the lower vital mind at work making formations. When the calmness is there all sorts of things may rise on the surface they have not to be accepted, but simply looked at. In time the calmness will be so developed as to quell the vital and outer mind also and in that complete quietude the true perceptions will come.
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1.11 - The Seven Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
varied inspiration." Agni is the Deva, the All-Seer, manifested as conscious-force or, as it would be called in modern language,
Divine or Cosmic Will, first hidden and building up the eternal worlds, then manifest, "born", building up in man the Truth and the Immortality.
1.1.2.01 - Sources of Inspiration and Variety, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.1.2.01 - Sources of inspiration and Variety
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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If there were not different sources of inspiration, every poet would write the same thing and in the same way as every other, which would be deplorable. Each draws from a different realm and therefore a different kind and manner of inspirationexcept of course those who make a school and all write on the same lines.
18 July 1936
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Different sources of inspiration may express differently the same thing. I cant say what plane is imaged in the poem [submitted by the correspondent]. Planes are big regions of being with all sorts of things in them.
17 October 1936
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
to recover by revelation and inspiration an absolute expression
of Truth which already exists in the Infinite above our mental
1.12 - God Departs, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The revision of Savitri was going on apace with regular unabated vigour. Book after Book was getting done and fascicules of them released for publication. Some 400-500 lines of The Book of Everlasting Day were dictated on successive days, since we could not spare more than an hour a day for the monumental work and that too had often to be cut short to meet other demands. We were, nevertheless, progressing quite steadily. I marvelled at the smooth spontaneous flow of verse after verse of remarkable beauty. Once I had complained to him in my correspondence why, having all the planes of inspiration at his command, should he still labour like us mortals at his Savitri.Why should not the inspiration burst out like the "champagne bottle"? Now I witnessed that miracle and imagined that it also must have been the way Valmiki composed his Ramayana. At this rate, I thought, Savitri would not take long to finish. On everyone's lips was the eager query, "How far are you with Savitri?"
But Savitri, as I have mentioned, was not his sole preoccupation. Many other adventitious tasks were thrust upon him and he did not say "No" to them out of the magnanimity of his divine nature.
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"I who had depended so much on Sri Aurobindo in all my writing work when he had woken to inspiration the labouring poet, stirred to literary insight the fumbling critic, shaped out of absolute nothing the political commentator I who had almost every day despatched to him some piece of writing for consideration felt a void at the thought that he would not be in that room of his, listening so patiently to my poetry or prose and sending me by letter or telegram his precious guidance. A fellow-sadhak, Udar, spoke to the Mother about my plight. On December 12, the inmates of the Ashram met her again and each received from her hands a photograph of Sri Aurobindo taken after his passing. It was dusk, as far as I recollect. She must have seen a certain helplessness on my face. Smiling as she alone can do, she looked me in the eyes and said, 'Nothing has changed. Call for inspiration and help as you have always done. You will get everything from Sri Aurobindo as before.'"
Champaklal remained sitting at the foot of the bed day and night. The Mother gave him a good quantity of milk to drink at night that was all for physical sustenance.
1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The apprentice superman does not believe in suffering. He believes in enrichment through joy; he believes in Harmony. He does not believe in education; he believes in the power of truth in the heart of all things and all beings he only helps that truth to grow with as little interference as possible. He trusts in the powers of that truth. He knows that man always moves toward his goal, inexorably, despite everything he is told or taught he only tries to suppress that despite. He simply waters that little sapling of truth and then again, with some caution, for some saplings prefer a sandy and rocky soil. But, at least, in that City or rather, laboratory of the future the child will be born in less stifling conditions. He will not be brainwashed, met at every street corner by screaming posters, corrupted by television or poisoned by vulgar movies, not burdened by all the vibrations of anxiety, fear or desire that his mother may have conscientiously accumulated in her womb through entertaining reading, debilitating films or a torn home life for everything is recorded, the slightest vibration, the least shock; everything enters the embryo freely, remains and accumulates there. The Greeks knew this well, and the Egyptians and the Indians, who used to surround the mother with special conditions of beauty and harmony so that the breath of the gods could pervade each day and each breath of the child, so that everything could be an inspiration of truth. And when the mother and father decided to have a child, they did it as a prayer, a sacrifice for incarnating the gods of the future. It takes only a spark of aspiration, a flame of entreaty, a luminous breath in the mother's heart for the same light to answer and come down, the identical flame, the kindred intensity of life if we are gray and dull, we will summon only the grayness and nothingness of millions of lifeless men.
The child of that City will be born with a flame, consciously, voluntarily, without having to undo millennia of animality or abysses of prejudice. He will not be told incessantly that he has to earn a living, for nobody will earn a living in the City of the Future, nobody will have money. Living will be devoted to serving the Truth, each according to his capacity or talent, and the only earnings will be joy. He will not be deluged with musts and must-nots; he will only be shown the immediate sadness of not listening to the right little note. He will not be tormented with the idea of finding a job, being a success, outranking others, passing or failing grades, for nobody succeeds or fails in the City of the Future, nobody has a job, nobody takes precedence over anybody; one does the one job of pursuing a clear little note that lights up everything, does everything for one, takes care of everything for one, unites everything in its tranquil harmony, and whose only success is to be in accord with itself and with the whole. He will not learn to depend on a teacher, a book or a machine, but to rely on that little flame inside, that sprightly little flowing that guides his steps, prompts a discovery, leads by chance to an experience and brings out knowledge effortlessly. And he will learn to cultivate the powers of his body the way others today cultivate the powers of push buttons. His faculties will not be confined in ready-made forms of vision and comprehension; in him will be fostered a vision that has nothing to do with the eyes, a comprehension that is not from books, dreams of other worlds that prepare tomorrow's, direct communications and instant intuitions and subtle senses. And if machines are still used in the City of the Future, he will be told that they are temporary crutches until we find in our own heart the source of the pure Power which will one day transmute matter as we now transmute a blank sheet of paper into a green prairie with the stroke of a pencil. He will be taught the Look, the true and potent look, the look that creates, that changes everything he will be taught to use his own powers and to believe in his power of truth, and that the purer and clearer he is, in harmony with the Law, the more matter responds to Truth. And, instead of entering a prison, the child will grow up in an atmosphere of natural oneness, free of you, me, yours or mine, where he will not have been taught constantly to put up screens and mental barriers, but to be consciously what he unconsciously has been since the beginning of time: to extend himself into all that is and lives, to feel in all that feels, to comprehend through an identical more profound breathing, through a silence that carries everything, to recognize the same little flame everywhere, to love the same clear little flowing everywhere, and to be the self everywhere, behind a thousand different faces and in a thousand musics that are a single music.
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Constantly and unknowingly, we receive influences and inspirations from these higher, superconscious regions, which express themselves inside us as ideas, ideals, aspirations, or works of art; they secretly mold our life, our future. Similarly, we constantly and unknowingly receive vital and subtle-physical vibrations, which determine our emotional life and relationship with the world every moment of the day. We are enclosed in an individual, personal body only through a stubborn visual delusion; in fact, we are porous throughout and ba the in universal forces, like an anemone in the sea: Man twitters intellectually (=foolishly) about the surface results and attributes them all to his "noble self," ignoring the fact that his noble self is hidden far away from his own vision behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions.183 Our sole freedom is to lift ourselves to higher planes through individual evolution. Our only role is to transcribe and materially embody the truths of the plane we belong to. Two important points, which apply to every plane of consciousness, from the highest to the lowest, deserve to be underscored in order for us better to understand the mechanism of the universe. First, these planes do not depend upon us or upon what we think of them any more than the sea depends on the anemone; they exist independently of man. Modern psychology, for which all the levels of being are mixed together in a so-called collective unconscious, like some big magician's hat from which to draw archetypes and neuroses at random, betrays in this respect a serious lack of vision: first, because the forces of these planes are not at all unconscious (except to us), but very conscious, definitely more so than we are; and secondly, because these forces are not "collective," in the sense that they are no more a human product than the sea is the product of the anemone; it is rather the frontal man who is the product of that Immensity behind. The gradations of consciousness are universal states not dependent on the outlook of the subjective personality; rather the outlook of the subjective personality is determined by the grade of consciousness in which it is organized according to its typal nature or its evolutionary stage.184 Naturally, it is only human to reverse the order of things and put ourselves in the center of the world. But this is not a matter of theory, always debatable, but of experience, which everyone can have. If we go out of our body and consciously enter these planes, we realize that they exist outside us, just as the entire world exists outside Manhattan, with forces and beings and even places that have nothing in common with our earthly world; entire civilizations have attested to this, stating it, engraving it, or painting it on their walls or in their temples, civilizations that were perhaps less ingenious than ours, but certainly not less intelligent.
The second important point concerns the conscious forces and beings that occupy these planes. Here we must clearly draw a line between the superstition, or even hoax, arising from our "collective" contri bution, and the truth. As usual, the two are closely intermingled.
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What essentially distinguishes the works that come from this plane is what Sri Aurobindo calls a luminous sweep, a sudden flooding of light. The vibration is unlike any other, always eliciting a kind of shock, and then something keeps vibrating long afterward, like a tuning fork. Nevertheless, it seldom remains pure through the entire work, for the movement of the work follows that of consciousness, with its highs and lows, unless it is created even through a special discipline. The last three lines in the Shakespearean passage quoted above fall away from the illumined overhead inspiration; they contain some vital and also some ordinary mental consciousness.
Along with its beauty, we are also discovering the limits of the illumined mind: illumined poetry produces streams of images and revelatory words (because vision, and even hearing, often open at this stage), almost an avalanche of luxuriant, sometimes incoherent images, as if the consciousness were hard put to contain the flood of light and unaccustomed intensity; it is overwhelmed. Enthusiasm easily changes into exhilaration, and if the rest of the being has not been sufficiently prepared and purified, any of the lower parts can seize hold of the descending light and force and use them for their own ends; this is a frequent snare. Whenever the lower parts of the being, especially the vital, seize upon the luminous flood, they harden it, dramatize it, distort it. There is still power, but compelling and hard while the essence of the illumined mind is joy. Here we could cite the names of many poets and creative geniuses. 193 Furthermore, the substance of the illumined mind is not truly transparent, but only translucent; its light is diffused, somewhat as if it could feel the truth everywhere without concretely touching it; hence the frequent instances of incoherence and vagueness. It is only the beginning of a new birth. Before going higher, more purification is necessary, and above all more peace, more natural equilibrium, and more silence. The higher we ascend in consciousness, the sturdier the equilibrium required.
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193 - It may be worthwhile to stress the great differences between an individual who receives occasional inspirations or illuminations, often of an unreliable nature, and one who has systematically developed his consciousness, so that he can settle at will on any level of consciousness, remain there as long as he wishes, and receive without distortion the corresponding inspirations and illuminations. This is the task of the integral yoga.
d) The Intuitive Mind
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It is a cosmic consciousness, but with no loss of the individual. Instead of rejecting everything to soar to celestial heights, the seeker has patiently ascended each step of his being, so that the bottom remains linked to the top without any break. The overmind is the world of the gods, the source of inspiration of the great founders of religions. This is where all the religions we know were born; they all derive from an overmental experience in one of its countless aspects. For a religion or revelation, a spiritual experience, belongs to a certain plane; it does not come from God's thunders or from nowhere; those who incarnate the particular revelation have not conceived it from nothing: the overmind is their source. It is also the source of the higher artistic creations. But we must remember that, although it is the summit, it is still a mental plane.
When consciousness rises to that plane, it no longer sees "point by point," but calmly in great masses.198 There is no longer the diffused light of the illumined mind or the isolated flashes of the intuitive mind, but, to quote the wonderful Vedic phrase, "an ocean of stable lightnings." The consciousness is no longer limited to the brief present moment or the narrow range of its visual field; it is unsealed, seeing in a single glance large extensions of space and time.199 The essential difference with other planes lies in the evenness, the almost complete uniformity of the light. In a particularly receptive illumined mind one would see, for example, a bluish background with sudden jets of light, intuitive flashes, or moving luminous eruptions, sometimes even great overmental downpours, but it would be a fluctuating play of light, nothing stable. This is the usual condition of the greatest poets we know; they attain a certain level of rhythm, a particular poetic luminousness, and from time to time they touch upon higher regions and return with those rare dazzling lines (or musical phrases) that are repeated generation after generation like an open sesame. The illumined mind is generally the base (an already very high base), and the overmind a divine kingdom one gains access to in moments of grace.
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This line by Virgil, which Sri Aurobindo has cited as foremost among inspirations of an overmental origin, owes its overmental quality not to the meaning of the words but to the rhythm that precedes the words and follows them, as if they were inscribed on a backdrop of eternity or, rather, by Eternity itself. So, too, this line by Leopardi does not owe its greatness to the meaning but to that something so subtly more than the meaning, which quivers behind it:
Insano indegno mistero delle cose.
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Selfishness and partiality are very inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world; but in the doctrines of religion they are of a baser nature. Now, this is the greatest evil that the division of the church has brought forth; it raises in every communion a selfish, partial orthodoxy, which consists in courageously defending all that it has, and condemning all that it has not. And thus every champion is trained up in defense of their own truth, their own learning and their own church, and he has the most merit, the most honour, who likes everything, defends everything, among themselves, and leaves nothing uncensored in those that are of a different communion. Now, how can truth and goodness and union and religion be more struck at than by such defenders of it? If you ask why the great Bishop of Meaux wrote so many learned books against all parts of the Reformation, it is because he was born in France and bred up in the bosom of Mother Church. Had he been born in England, had Oxford or Cambridge been his Alma Mater, he might have rivalled our great Bishop Stillingfleet, and would have wrote as many learned folios against the Church of Rome as he has done. And yet I will venture to say that if each Church could produce but one man apiece that had the piety of an apostle and the impartial love of the first Christians in the first Church at Jerusalem, that a Protestant and a Papist of this stamp would not want half a sheet of paper to hold their articles of union, nor be half an hour before they were of one religion. If, therefore, it should be said that churches are divided, estranged and made unfriendly to one another by a learning, a logic, a history, a criticism in the hands of partiality, it would be saying that which each particular church too much proves to be true. Ask why even the best amongst the Catholics are very shy of owning the validity of the orders of our Church; it is because they are afraid of removing any odium from the Reformation. Ask why no Protestants anywhere touch upon the benefit or necessity of celibacy in those who are separated from worldly business to preach the gospel; it is because that would be seeming to lessen the Roman error of not suffering marriage in her clergy. Ask why even the most worthy and pious among the clergy of the Established Church are afraid to assert the sufficiency of the Divine Light, the necessity of seeking only the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit; it is because the Quakers, who have broke off from the church, have made this doctrine their corner-stone. If we loved truth as such, if we sought for it for its own sake, if we loved our neighbour as ourselves, if we desired nothing by our religion but to be acceptable to God, if we equally desired the salvation of all men, if we were afraid of error only because of its harmful nature to us and our fellow-creatures, then nothing of this spirit could have any place in us.
There is therefore a catholic spirit, a communion of saints in the love of God and all goodness, which no one can learn from that which is called orthodoxy in particular churches, but is only to be had by a total dying to all worldly views, by a pure love of God, and by such an unction from above as delivers the mind from all selfishness and makes it love truth and goodness with an equality of affection in every man, whether he is Christian, Jew or Gentile. He that would obtain this divine and catholic spirit in this disordered, divided state of things, and live in a divided part of the church without partaking of its division, must have these three truths deeply fixed in his mind. First, that universal love, which gives the whole strength of the heart to God, and makes us love every man as we love ourselves, is the noblest, the most divine, the Godlike state of the soul, and is the utmost perfection to which the most perfect religion can raise us; and that no religion does any man any good but so far as it brings this perfection of love into him. This truth will show us that true orthodoxy can nowhere be found but in a pure disinterested love of God and our neighbour. Second, that in this present divided state of the church, truth itself is torn and divided asunder; and that, therefore, he can be the only true catholic who has more of truth and less of error than is hedged in by any divided part. This truth will enable us to live in a divided part unhurt by its division, and keep us in a true liberty and fitness to be edified and assisted by all the good that we hear or see in any other part of the church. Thirdly, he must always have in mind this great truth, that it is the glory of the Divine Justice to have no respect of parties or persons, but to stand equally disposed to that which is right and wrong as well in the Jew as in the Gentile. He therefore that would like as God likes, and condemn as God condemns, must have neither the eyes of the Papist nor the Protestant; he must like no truth the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyan were very zealous for it, nor have the less aversion to any error, because Dr. Trapp or George Fox had brought it forth.
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
spiritual attitude. "Through divine inspiration she knew how
the Son is the innermost core [medulla] of the Father's heart."
1.13 - Reason and Religion, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The deepest heart, the inmost essence of religion, apart from its outward machinery of creed, cult, ceremony and symbol, is the search for God and the finding of God. Its aspiration is to discover the Infinite, the Absolute, the One, the Divine, who is all these things and yet no abstraction but a Being. Its work is a sincere living out of the true and intimate relations between man and God, relations of unity, relations of difference, relations of an illuminated knowledge, an ecstatic love and delight, an absolute surrender and service, a casting of every part of our existence out of its normal status into an uprush of man towards the Divine and a descent of the Divine into man. All this has nothing to do with the realm of reason or its normal activities; its aim, its sphere, its process is suprarational. The knowledge of God is not to be gained by weighing the feeble arguments of reason for or against his existence: it is to be gained only by a self-transcending and absolute consecration, aspiration and experience. Nor does that experience proceed by anything like rational scientific experiment or rational philosophic thinking. Even in those parts of religious discipline which seem most to resemble scientific experiment, the method is a verification of things which exceed the reason and its timid scope. Even in those parts of religious knowledge which seem most to resemble intellectual operations, the illuminating faculties are not imagination, logic and rational judgment, but revelations, inspirations, intuitions, intuitive discernments that leap down to us from a plane of suprarational light. The love of God is an infinite and absolute feeling which does not admit of any rational limitation and does not use a language of rational worship and adoration; the delight in God is that peace and bliss which passes all understanding. The surrender to God is the surrender of the whole being to a suprarational light, will, power and love and his service takes no account of the compromises with life which the practical reason of man uses as the best part of its method in the ordinary conduct of mundane existence. Wherever religion really finds itself, wherever it opens itself to its own spirit,there is plenty of that sort of religious practice which is halting, imperfect, half-sincere, only half-sure of itself and in which reason can get in a word,its way is absolute and its fruits are ineffable.
Reason has indeed a part to play in relation to this highest field of our religious being and experience, but that part is quite secondary and subordinate. It cannot lay down the law for the religious life, it cannot determine in its own right the system of divine knowledge; it cannot school and lesson the divine love and delight; it cannot set bounds to spiritual experience or lay its yoke upon the action of the spiritual man. Its sole legitimate sphere is to explain as best it can, in its own language and to the rational and intellectual parts of man, the truths, the experiences, the laws of our suprarational and spiritual existence. That has been the work of spiritual philosophy in the East andmuch more crudely and imperfectly doneof theology in the West, a work of great importance at moments like the present when the intellect of mankind after a long wandering is again turning towards the search for the Divine. Here there must inevitably enter a part of those operations proper to the intellect, logical reasoning, inferences from the data given by rational experience, analogies drawn from our knowledge of the apparent facts of existence, appeals even to the physical truths of science, all the apparatus of the intelligent mind in its ordinary workings. But this is the weakest part of spiritual philosophy. It convinces the rational mind only where the intellect is already predisposed to belief, and even if it convinces, it cannot give the true knowledge. Reason is safest when it is content to take the profound truths and experiences of the spiritual being and the spiritual life, just as they are given to it, and throw them into such form, order and language as will make them the most intelligible or the least unintelligible to the reasoning mind. Even then it is not quite safe, for it is apt to harden the order into an intellectual system and to present the form as if it were the essence. And, at best, it has to use a language which is not the very tongue of the suprarational truth but its inadequate translation and, since it is not the ordinary tongue either of the rational intelligence, it is open to non-understanding or misunderstanding by the ordinary reason of mankind. It is well-known to the experience of the spiritual seeker that even the highest philosophising cannot give a true inner knowledge, is not the spiritual light, does not open the gates of experience. All it can do is to address the consciousness of man through his intellect and, when it has done, to say, I have tried to give you the truth in a form and system which will make it intelligible and possible to you; if you are intellectually convinced or attracted, you can now seek the real knowledge, but you must seek it by other means which are beyond my province.
1.13 - The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Another error that has to be guarded against is also one to which our mentality is easily prone; it is to take some higher intermediate consciousness or even any kind of supernormal consciousness for the supermind. To reach supermind it is not enough to go above the ordinary movements of the human mind; it is not enough to receive a greater light, a greater power, a greater joy or to develop capacities of knowledge, sight, effective will that surpass the normal range of the human being. All light is not the light of the spirit, still less is all light the light of the supermind; the mind, the vital, the physical itself have lights of their own, as yet hidden, which can be very inspiring, exalting, informative, powerfully executive. A breaking out into the cosmic consciousness may also bring in an immense enlargement of the consciousness and power. An opening into the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, any range of the subliminal consciousness, can liberate an activity of abnormal or supernormal powers of knowledge, action or experience which the uninstructed mind can easily mistake for spiritual revelations, inspirations, intuitions. An opening upward into the greater ranges of the higher mental being can bring down much light and force creating
284
1.14 - The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
In all that we have said hitherto concerning philosophy, we have scarcely touched on many matters that occupy a great space in the writings of most philosophers. Most philosophers--or, at any rate, very many--profess to be able to prove, by _a priori_ metaphysical reasoning, such things as the fundamental dogmas of religion, the essential rationality of the universe, the illusoriness of matter, the unreality of all evil, and so on. There can be no doubt that the hope of finding reason to believe such theses as these has been the chief inspiration of many life-long students of philosophy. This hope, I believe, is vain. It would seem that knowledge concerning the universe as a whole is not to be obtained by metaphysics, and that the proposed proofs that, in virtue of the laws of logic such and such things _must_ exist and such and such others cannot, are not capable of surviving a critical scrutiny. In this chapter we shall briefly consider the kind of way in which such reasoning is attempted, with a view to discovering whether we can hope that it may be valid.
The great representative, in modern times, of the kind of view which we wish to examine, was Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel's philosophy is very difficult, and commentators differ as to the true interpretation of it.
1.14 - The Supermind as Creator, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:There are subordinate, but important details. The Vedic seers seem to speak of two primary faculties of the "truthconscious" soul; they are Sight and Hearing, by which is intended direct operations of an inherent Knowledge describable as truth-vision and truth-audition and reflected from far-off in our human mentality by the faculties of revelation and inspiration. Besides, a distinction seems to be made in the operations of the Supermind between knowledge by a comprehending and pervading consciousness which is very near to subjective knowledge by identity and knowledge by a projecting, confronting, apprehending consciousness which is the beginning of objective cognition. These are the Vedic clues. And we may accept from this ancient experience the subsidiary term "truthconsciousness" to delimit the connotation of the more elastic phrase, Supermind.
7:We see at once that such a consciousness, described by such characteristics, must be an intermediate formulation which refers back to a term above it and forward to another below it; we see at the same time that it is evidently the link and means by which the inferior develops out of the superior and should equally be the link and means by which it may develop back again towards its source. The term above is the unitarian or indivisible consciousness of pure Sachchidananda in which there are no separating distinctions; the term below is the analytic or dividing consciousness of Mind which can only know by separation and distinction and has at the most a vague and secondary apprehension of unity and infinity, - for, though it can synthetise its divisions, it cannot arrive at a true totality. Between them is this comprehensive and creative consciousness, by its power of pervading and intimately comprehending knowledge the child of that self-awareness by identity which is the poise of the Brahman and by its power of projecting, confronting, apprehending knowledge parent of that awareness by distinction which is the process of the Mind.
1.14 - The Suprarational Beauty, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But again this is true only in restricted bounds or, if anywhere entirely true, then only on a middle plane of our aesthetic seeking and activity. Where the greatest and most powerful creation of beauty is accomplished and its appreciation and enjoyment rise to the highest pitch, the rational is always surpassed and left behind. The creation of beauty in poetry and art does not fall within the sovereignty or even within the sphere of the reason. The intellect is not the poet, the artist, the creator within us; creation comes by a suprarational influx of light and power which must work always, if it is to do its best, by vision and inspiration. It may use the intellect for certain of its operations, but in proportion as it subjects itself to the intellect, it loses in power and force of vision and diminishes the splendour and truth of the beauty it creates. The intellect may take hold of the influx, moderate and repress the divine enthusiasm of creation and force it to obey the prudence of its dictates, but in doing so it brings down the work to its own inferior level, and the lowering is in proportion to the intellectual interference. For by itself the intelligence can only achieve talent, though it may be a high and even, if sufficiently helped from above, a surpassing talent. Genius, the true creator, is always suprarational in its nature and its instrumentation even when it seems to be doing the work of the reason; it is most itself, most exalted in its work, most sustained in the power, depth, height and beauty of its achievement when it is least touched by, least mixed with any control of the mere intellectuality and least often drops from its heights of vision and inspiration into reliance upon the always mechanical process of intellectual construction. Art-creation which accepts the canons of the reason and works within the limits laid down by it, may be great, beautiful and powerful; for genius can preserve its power even when it labours in shackles and refuses to put forth all its resources: but when it proceeds by means of the intellect, it constructs, but does not create. It may construct well and with a good and faultless workmanship, but its success is formal and not of the spirit, a success of technique and not the embodiment of the imperishable truth of beauty seized in its inner reality, its divine delight, its appeal to a supreme source of ecstasy, Ananda.
There have been periods of artistic creation, ages of reason, in which the rational and intellectual tendency has prevailed in poetry and art; there have even been nations which in their great formative periods of art and literature have set up reason and a meticulous taste as the sovereign powers of their aesthetic activity. At their best these periods have achieved work of a certain greatness, but predominantly of an intellectual greatness and perfection of technique rather than achievements of a supreme inspired and revealing beauty; indeed their very aim has been not the discovery of the deeper truth of beauty, but truth of ideas and truth of reason, a critical rather than a true creative aim. Their leading object has been an intellectual criticism of life and nature elevated by a consummate poetical rhythm and diction rather than a revelation of God and man and life and nature in inspired forms of artistic beauty. But great art is not satisfied with representing the intellectual truth of things, which is always their superficial or exterior truth; it seeks for a deeper and original truth which escapes the eye of the mere sense or the mere reason, the soul in them, the unseen reality which is not that of their form and process but of their spirit. This it seizes and expresses by form and idea, but a significant form, which is not merely a faithful and just or a harmonious reproduction of outward Nature, and a revelatory idea, not the idea which is merely correct, elegantly right or fully satisfying to the reason and taste. Always the truth it seeks is first and foremost the truth of beauty,not, again, the formal beauty alone or the beauty of proportion and right process which is what the sense and the reason seek, but the soul of beauty which is hidden from the ordinary eye and the ordinary mind and revealed in its fullness only to the unsealed vision of the poet and artist in man who can seize the secret significances of the universal poet and artist, the divine creator who dwells as their soul and spirit in the forms he has created.
The art-creation which lays a supreme stress on reason and taste and on perfection and purity of a technique constructed in obedience to the canons of reason and taste, claimed for itself the name of classical art; but the claim, like the too trenchant distinction on which it rests, is of doubtful validity. The spirit of the real, the great classical art and poetry is to bring out what is universal and subordinate individual expression to universal truth and beauty, just as the spirit of romantic art and poetry is to bring out what is striking and individual and this it often does so powerfully or with so vivid an emphasis as to throw into the background of its creation the universal, on which yet all true art romantic or classical builds and fills in its forms. In truth, all great art has carried in it both a classical and a romantic as well as a realistic element,understanding realism in the sense of the prominent bringing out of the external truth of things, not the perverse inverted romanticism of the real which brings into exaggerated prominence the ugly, common or morbid and puts that forward as the whole truth of life. The type of art to which a great creative work belongs is determined by the prominence it gives to one element and the subdual of the others into subordination to its reigning spirit. But classical art also works by a large vision and inspiration, not by the process of the intellect. The lower kind of classical art and literature,if classical it be and not rather, as it often is, pseudo-classical, intellectually imitative of the external form and process of the classical,may achieve work of considerable, though a much lesser power, but of an essentially inferior scope and nature; for to that inferiority it is self-condemned by its principle of intellectual construction. Almost always it speedily degenerates into the formal or academic, empty of real beauty, void of life and power, imprisoned in its slavery to form and imagining that when a certain form has been followed, certain canons of construction satisfied, certain rhetorical rules or technical principles obeyed, all has been achieved. It ceases to be art and becomes a cold and mechanical workmanship.
This predominance given to reason and taste first and foremost, sometimes even almost alone, in the creation and appreciation of beauty arises from a temper of mind which is critical rather than creative; and in regard to creation its theory falls into a capital error. All artistic work in order to be perfect must indeed have in the very act of creation the guidance of an inner power of discrimination constantly selecting and rejecting in accordance with a principle of truth and beauty which remains always faithful to a harmony, a proportion, an intimate relation of the form to the idea; there is at the same time an exact fidelity of the idea to the spirit, nature and inner body of the thing of beauty which has been revealed to the soul and the mind, its svarpa and svabhva. Therefore this discriminating inner sense rejects all that is foreign, superfluous, otiose, all that is a mere diversion distractive and deformative, excessive or defective, while it selects and finds sovereignly all that can bring out the full truth, the utter beauty, the inmost power. But this discrimination is not that of the critical intellect, nor is the harmony, proportion, relation it observes that which can be fixed by any set law of the critical reason; it exists in the very nature and truth of the thing itself, the creation itself, in its secret inner law of beauty and harmony which can be seized by vision, not by intellectual analysis. The discrimination which works in the creator is therefore not an intellectual self-criticism or an obedience to rules imposed on him from outside by any intellectual canons, but itself creative, intuitive, a part of the vision, involved in and inseparable from the act of creation. It comes as part of that influx of power and light from above which by its divine enthusiasm lifts the faculties into their intense suprarational working. When it fails, when it is betrayed by the lower executive instruments rational or infrarational, and this happens when these cease to be passive and insist on obtruding their own demands or vagaries,the work is flawed and a subsequent act of self-criticism becomes necessary. But in correcting his work the artist who attempts to do it by rule and intellectual process, uses a false or at any rate an inferior method and cannot do his best. He ought rather to call to his aid the intuitive critical vision and embody it in a fresh act of inspired creation or recreation after bringing himself back by its means into harmony with the light and law of his original creative initiation. The critical intellect has no direct or independent part in the means of the inspired creator of beauty.
1.14 - The Victory Over Death, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
At first it is just a little flame in the mind, something groping about in search of a vaster inspiration, a greater truth, a purer knowledge, which soars, soars, and would as soon cut away all the weight of the world, the hindrances, the bonds and tangles of the earth. It soars and sometimes emerges, pure, sharp, upon summits of white light where everything is forever known and true but the earth, meanwhile, remains false; life and body remain in the dark conflict, and die and decay. So this white little flame begins to take in the heart. It yearns to love, to heal, to save. It gropes about in the dark, helps a fellowman, gives assistance, offers itself and sings a song that would like to embrace all, contain all, take all life into its heart. It is already a warmer and denser flame, but its minutes of illumination are like a pale and fragile firefly on an ocean of obscure life. It is constantly quenched, engulfed, swept under the wave and under our own waves of obscurity nothing is changed and life continues in its rut. So the seeker decides to drive this fire, this ardent truth, into his every moment and gesture, into his sleep and into his days, into his good and into his evil, into his whole life, so that everything may be purified, consumed by that fire so that something else may be born at last, a truer life, a truer being. He enters upon the path of the superman. And the fire continues to grow. It goes down and down the degrees of the being, plunges into the subconscious caves, dislodges the gray elf, dislodges the misery within, and burns more and more continuously, powerfully, as if stoked by the obscure pressure. It is already a body almost in our likeness, vermillion-red in color, already verging on gold. But it is still fluctuating and precarious; it lacks a fundamental base, a permanent foundation. So the seeker decides to drive this fire into his substance and body. He wants his own matter to reflect the Truth, to incarnate the Truth; he wants the outside to radiate as the inside. He enters upon the path of the supramental being. For, in truth, this growing self of fire, this ardent body which bears more and more resemblance to our divine archetype, our brother of light up above, and which seems to exceed us on all sides and even to radiate all around with an already orange vibration, is the very body that will form the supramental being. It is the next earthly substance, harder than the diamond and yet more fluid than the gas, said Sri Aurobindo.44 It is the spiritual condensation of the great Energy before it becomes matter.
But how to induce this fire into our matter, how to effect the passage, or transfusion, of this dark and mortal body to that ardent and immortal one? The work is in progress; it is difficult to talk about. We will not really know how it is done until it is done. No one knows the country or the way to it since no one has ever gotten there. No one has ever made a supramental body! But it will be made, as inevitably as man and the ape and the millipede were already made in the great golden Seed of the world. This is the last adventure of the earth, or maybe the first of a more marvelous series on a new earth of truth. We do not know the secret; we only know in what direction to walk though knowing the direction is perhaps already knowing the secret, since it unfolds under our steps and is formed by walking it.
1.15 - The Suprarational Good, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the ethical being like the rest is a growth and a seeking towards the absolute, the divine, which can only be attained securely in the suprarational. It seeks after an absolute purity, an absolute right, an absolute truth, an absolute strength, an absolute love and self-giving, and it is most satisfied when it can get them in absolute measure, without limit, curb or compromise, divinely, infinitely, in a sort of godhead and transfiguration of the ethical being. The reason is chiefly concerned with what it best understands, the apparent process, the machinery, the outward act, its result and effect, its circumstance, occasion and motive; by these it judges the morality of the action and the morality of the doer. But the developed ethical being knows instinctively that it is an inner something which it seeks and the outward act is only a means of bringing out and manifesting within ourselves by its psychological effects that inner absolute and eternal entity. The value of our actions lies not so much in their apparent nature and outward result as in their help towards the growth of the Divine within us. It is difficult, even impossible to justify upon outward grounds the absolute justice, absolute right, absolute purity, love or selflessness of an action or course of action; for action is always relative, it is mixed and uncertain in its results, perplexed in its occasions. But it is possible to relate the inner being to the eternal and absolute good, to make our sense and will full of it so as to act out of its impulsion or its intuitions and inspirations. That is what the ethical being labours towards and the higher ethical man increasingly attains to in his inner efforts.
In fact ethics is not in its essence a calculation of good and evil in the action or a laboured effort to be blameless according to the standards of the world,those are only crude appearances,it is an attempt to grow into the divine nature. Its parts of purity are an aspiration towards the inalienable purity of Gods being; its parts of truth and right are a seeking after conscious unity with the law of the divine knowledge and will; its parts of sympathy and charity are a movement towards the infinity and universality of the divine love; its parts of strength and manhood are an edification of the divine strength and power. That is the heart of its meaning. Its high fulfilment comes when the being of the man undergoes this transfiguration; then it is not his actions that standardise his nature but his nature that gives value to his actions; then he is no longer laboriously virtuous, artificially moral, but naturally divine. Actively, too, he is fulfilled and consummated when he is not led or moved either by the infrarational impulses or the rational intelligence and will, but inspired and piloted by the divine knowledge and will made conscious in his nature. And that can only be done, first by communication of the truth of these things through the intuitive mind as it purifies itself progressively from the invasion of egoism, self-interest, desire, passion and all kinds of self-will, finally through the suprarational light and power, no longer communicated but present and in possession of his being. Such was the supreme aim of the ancient sages who had the wisdom which rational man and rational society have rejected because it was too high a truth for the comprehension of the reason and for the powers of the normal limited human will too bold and immense, too infinite an effort.
1.1.5 - Thought and Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is no difficulty about explaining [how a thought rejected by one person gets picked up by another]. You are as naive and ignorant as a newborn lamb. That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc. etc. are always wandering about (in thought waves or otherwise) seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejectsano ther takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off, crying O this unready animal! and goes to another who promptly annexes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, I, I have done this. Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you likenothing more.
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It is in the silence of the mind that the strongest and freest action can come, e.g. the writing of a book, poetry, inspired speech etc. When the mind is active it interferes with the inspiration, puts in its own small ideas which get mixed up with the inspiration or starts something from a lower level or simply stops the inspiration altogether by bubbling up with all sorts of mere mental suggestions. So also intuitions or action etc. can come more easily when the ordinary inferior movement of the mind is not there. It is also in the silence of the mind that it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, from the psychic or from the higher consciousness.
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1.15 - Truth, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
There is a wide difference between knowledge and wisdom and it is much easier to win knowledge than wisdom. Wisdom depends, not in the least, on knowledge, although both are identical up to a certain degree. The source of wisdom is in God, that is to say, in the causal principle (the akasa) on all planes of the material, astral, and mental worlds. Therefore wisdom does not depend on mind and memory but on the maturity, purity and perfection of the individual personality. Wisdom could also be considered as a developmental stage of the ego. Therefore, insights are not passed on thought the mind, but and this particularly through intuition or inspiration. The degree of wisdom is therefore determined by the state of development of the individual.
This will not mean, of course, that we ought to neglect knowledge; on the contrary, knowledge and wisdom must go hand in hand. The adept will therefore endeavour to get on in knowledge as well as in wisdom, for neither of the two must lag behind in development.
1.16 - Man, A Transitional Being, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
with consequences which vary in each case.306 And Sri Aurobindo added: The intellect is an absurdly overactive part of the nature; it always thinks that nothing can be well done unless it puts its finger into the pie and therefore it instinctively interferes with the inspiration, blocks half or more than half of it and labours to substitute its own inferior and toilsome productions for the true speech and rhythm that ought to have come. The poet labours in anguish to get the one true word, the au thentic rhythm, the real divine substance of what he has to say, while all the time it is waiting complete and ready behind.307 But effort helps, the disciple protested again, and by dint of beating one's brains, the inspiration comes.
Exactly! When any real effect is produced, it is not because of the beating and the hammering, but because an inspiration slips down between the raising of the hammer and the falling and gets in under cover of the beastly noise.308 After writing so many books for his disciples, Sri Aurobindo finally avowed that the sole purpose of books 305
306
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and philosophies was not really to enlighten the mind, but to silence it so that it can experience things directly and receive direct inspirations.
He summed up the role of the mind in the evolutionary process as follows: Mind is a clumsy interlude between Nature's vast and precise subconscient action and the vaster infallible superconscient action of the Godhead. There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness.309
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
It is possible, however, to have some idea in advance of the major problems confronting the seeker. When Agni burns in our mind, in our moments of inspiration, we know it creates a great tension, an almost physical heat. When it burns in our heart, in our soul-moments, we know that our breast feels like a red-hot hearth, hot enough for the skin to change color and to such a degree that even an inexperienced eye can perceive a kind of glowing radiance around the yogi. When Agni burns in our vital, and as we call the force or open to the cosmic world, there is likewise a kind of concentrated pulsation at the level of the navel, almost a tremor of fever throughout the body (since a large amount of force is entering through a tiny channel). But what about the warm gold dust, this wine of lightning,368 in the cells of the body?
It begins to boil everywhere, says the Mother in her simple language,
1.18 - The Infrarational Age of the Cycle, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This may well lead to an age, if the development of reason is strongest, of great individual thinkers who seize on some idea of life and its origins and laws and erect that into a philosophy, of critical minds standing isolated above the mass who judge life, not yet with a luminous largeness, a minute flexibility of understanding or a clear and comprehensive profundity, but still with power of intelligence, insight, acuteness, perhaps even a preeminent social thinker here and there who, taking advantage of some crisis or disturbance, is able to get the society to modify or reconstruct itself on the basis of some clearly rational and intelligent principle. Such an age seems to be represented by the traditions of the beginnings of Greek civilisation, or rather the beginnings of its mobile and progressive period. Or if spirituality predominates, there will be great mystics capable of delving into the profound and still occult psychological possibilities of our nature who will divine and realise the truth of the self and spirit in man and, even though they keep these things secret and imparted only to a small number of initiates, may yet succeed in deepening with them the crude forms of the popular life. Even such a development is obscurely indicated in the old traditions of the mysteries. In prehistoric India we see it take a peculiar and unique turn which determined the whole future trend of the society and made Indian civilisation a thing apart and of its own kind in the history of the human race. But these things are only a first beginning of light in the midst of a humanity which is still infrarational as well as infra-spiritual and, even when it undergoes the influence of these precursors, responds only obscurely to their inspirations and without any clearly intelligent or awakened spiritual reception of what they impart or impose. It still turns everything into infrarational form and disfiguring tradition and lives spiritually by ill-understood ceremonial and disguising symbol. It feels obscurely the higher things, tries to live them in its own stumbling way, but it does not yet understand; it cannot lay hold either on the intellectual form or the spiritual heart of their significance.
As reason and spirituality develop, they begin to become a larger and more diffused force, less intense perhaps, but wider and more effective on the mass. The mystics become the sowers of the seed of an immense spiritual development in which whole classes of society and even men from all classes seek the light, as happened in India in the age of the Upanishads. The solitary individual thinkers are replaced by a great number of writers, poets, thinkers, rhetoricians, sophists, scientific inquirers, who pour out a profuse flood of acute speculation and inquiry stimulating the thought-habit and creating even in the mass a generalised activity of the intelligence,as happened in Greece in the age of the sophists. The spiritual development, arising uncurbed by reason in an infrarational society, has often a tendency to outrun at first the rational and intellectual movement. For the greatest illuminating force of the infrarational man, as he develops, is an inferior intuition, an instinctively intuitional sight arising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from this to an intensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper spiritual intuition which outleaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the individual man. But for humanity at large this movement cannot last; the mind and intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of the race may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent mental being. Therefore we see that the reason in its growth either does away with the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece, or accepts it but spins out around its first data and activities a vast web of the workings of the intelligence, so that, as in India, the early mystic seer is replaced by the philosopher-mystic, the religious thinker and even the philosopher pure and simple.
1.2.03 - The Interpretation of Scripture, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The spirit who lies concealed behind the material world, has given us, through the inspiration of great seers, the Scriptures as helpers and guides to unapparent truth, lamps of great power that send their rays into the darkness of the unknown beyond which He dwells, tamasah parastat. They are guides to knowledge, brief indications to enlighten us on our path, not substitutes for thought and experience. They are shabdam Brahma, the Word, the oral expression of God, not the thing to be known itself nor the knowledge of Him. Shabdam has three elements, the word, the meaning and the spirit. The word is a symbol, vak or nama; we have to find the artha, the meaning or form of thought which the symbol indicates. But the meaning itself is only the indication of something deeper which the thought seeks to convey to the intellectual conception. For not only words, but ideas also are eventually no more than symbols of a knowledge which is beyond ideas and words. Therefore it comes that no idea by itself is wholly true. There is indeed a rupa, some concrete or abstract form of knowledge, answering to every name, and it is that which the meaning must present to the intellect. We say a form of knowledge, because according to our philosophy, all things are forms of an essentially unknowable existence which reveals them as forms of knowledge to the essential awareness in its Self, its Atman or Spirit, the Chit in the Sat. But beyond nama and rupa is swarupa, the essential figure of Truth, which we cannot know with the intellect, but only with a higher faculty.
And every swarupa is itself only a symbol of the one essential existence which can only be known by its symbols because in its ultimate reality it defies logic and exceeds perception, - God.
12.04 - Love and Death, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One of the earliest poems of Sri Aurobindoa juvenile workhas the title Love and Death. This is indeed the central theme, the core of the inspiration running through the whole of his poetic world culminating in the grand symphony of Savitri. As a matter of fact his vision and the mission of his life are epitomised in those three words, namely 'Love conquering Death.'
I shall leave aside his other works and take up his dramas, his five complete major dramas in which the theme has been developed and the problem set and solved in somewhat different ways but always leading to the same conclusion 'Love conquering Death.'
1.20 - The Hound of Heaven, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Light and Darkness, Sarama who leads in the search for the radiant herds and discovers both the path and the secret hold in the mountain must be a forerunner of the dawn of Truth in the human mind. And if we ask ourselves what power among the truth-finding faculties it is that thus discovers out of the darkness of the unknown in our being the truth that is hidden in it, we at once think of the intuition. For Sarama is not Saraswati, she is not the inspiration, even though the names are similar. Saraswati gives the full flood of the knowledge; she is or awakens the great stream, maho arn.ah., and illumines with plenitude all the thoughts, dhiyo visva vi rajati. Saraswati possesses and is the flood of the Truth; Sarama is the traveller and seeker on its path who does not herself possess but rather finds that which is lost.
Neither is she the plenary word of the revelation, the Teacher of man like the goddess Ila; for even when what she seeks is found, she does not take possession but only gives the message to the seers and their divine helpers who have still to fight for the possession of the light that has been discovered.
1.2.1.04 - Mystic Poetry, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Mystic poetry can be written from any plane, provided the writer gets an inspiration from the inner consciousness whether mind, vital or subtle physical.
20 October 1936
1.2.1.11 - Mystic Poetry and Spiritual Poetry, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I do not remember the context of the passage you quote from The Future Poetry,1 but I suppose I meant to contrast the veiled utterance of what is usually called mystic poetry with the luminous and assured clarity of the fully expressed spiritual experience. I did not mean to contrast it with the mental clarity which is aimed at usually by poetry in which the intelligence or thinking mind is consulted at each step. The concreteness of intellectual imaged description is one thing and spiritual concreteness is another. Two birds, companions, seated on one tree, but one eats the fruit, the other eats not but watches his fellow that has an illumining spiritual clarity and concreteness to one who has had the experience, but mentally and intellectually it might mean anything or nothing. Poetry uttered with the spiritual clarity may be compared to sunlight poetry uttered with the mystic veil to moonlight. But it was not my intention to deny beauty, power or value to the moonlight. Note that I have distinguished between two kinds of mysticism, one in which the realisation or experience is vague, though inspiringly vague, the other in which the experience is revelatory and intimate, but the utterance it finds is veiled by the image, not thoroughly revealed by it. I do not know to which Tagores recent poetry belongs, I have not read it. The latter kind of poetry (where there is the intimate experience) can be of great power and value witness Blake. Revelation is greater than inspiration it brings the direct knowledge and seeing, inspiration gives the expression, but the two are not always equal. There is even an inspiration without revelation, when one gets the word but the thing remains behind the veil; the transcribing consciousness expresses something with power, like a medium, of which it has not itself the direct sight or the living possession. It is better to get the sight of the thing itself than merely express it by an inspiration which comes from behind the veil, but this kind of poetry too has often a great light and power in it. The highest inspiration brings the intrinsic word, the spiritual mantra; but even where the inspiration is less than that, has a certain vagueness or fluidity of outline, you cannot say of such mystic poetry that it has no inspiration, not the inspired word at all. Where there is no inspiration, there can be no poetry.
10 June 1936
"...mysticism in its unfavourable or lesser sense comes when either we glimpse but do not intimately realise the now secret things of the spirit or, realising, yet cannot find their direct language, their intrinsic way of utterance, and have to use obscurely luminous hints or a thick drapery of symbol, when we have the revelation, but not the inspiration, the sight but not the word."Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, volume 26 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, pp. 213-14.
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1.21 - IDOLATRY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
As a piece of psychological analysis this is admirable. Its only defect is one of omission; for it neglects to take into account those influxes from the eternal order into the temporal, which are called grace or inspiration. Grace and inspiration are given when, and to the extent to which, a human being gives up self-will and abandons himself, moment by moment, through constant recollectedness and non-attachment, to the will of God. As well as the animal and spiritual graces, whose source is the divine Nature of Things, there are human pseudo-gracessuch as, for example, the accessions of strength and virtue that follow self-devotion to some form of political or moral idolatry. To distinguish the true grace from the false is often difficult; but as time and circumstances reveal the full extent of their consequences on the soul, discrimination becomes possible even to observers having no special gifts of insight. Where the grace is genuinely supernatural, an amelioration in one aspect of the total personality is not paid for by atrophy or deterioration elsewhere. The virtue which is accompanied and perfected by the love and knowledge of God is something quite different from the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees which, for Christ, was among the worst of moral evils. Hardness, fanaticism, uncharitableness and spiritual pridethese are the ordinary by-products of a course of stoical self-improvement by means of personal effort, either unassisted or, if assisted, seconded only by the pseudo-graces which are given when the individual devotes himself to the achievement of an end which is not his true end, when the goal is not God, but merely a magnified projection of his own favourite ideas or moral excellences. The idolatrous worship of ethical values in and for themselves defeats its own objectand defeats it not only because, as Arnold insists, there is a lack of all-round development, but also and above all because even the highest forms of moral idolatry are God-eclipsing and therefore guarantee the idolater against the enlightening and liberating knowledge of Reality.
next chapter: 1.22 - EMOTIONALISM
1.21 - The Spiritual Aim and Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But it will not seek to enforce even this one uplifting dogma by any external compulsion upon the lower members of mans natural being; for that is nigraha, a repressive contraction of the nature which may lead to an apparent suppression of the evil, but not to a real and healthy growth of the good; it will rather hold up this creed and ideal as a light and inspiration to all his members to grow into the godhead from within themselves, to become freely divine. Neither in the individual nor in the society will it seek to imprison, wall in, repress, impoverish, but to let in the widest air and the highest light. A large liberty will be the law of a spiritual society and the increase of freedom a sign of the growth of human society towards the possibility of true spiritualisation. To spiritualise in this sense a society of slaves, slaves of power, slaves of authority, slaves of custom, slaves of dogma, slaves of all sorts of imposed laws which they live under rather than live by them, slaves internally of their own weakness, ignorance and passions from whose worst effect they seek or need to be protected by another and external slavery, can never be a successful endeavour. They must shake off their fetters first in order to be fit for a higher freedom. Not that man has not to wear many a yoke in his progress upward; but only the yoke which he accepts because it represents, the more perfectly the better, the highest inner law of his nature and its aspiration, will be entirely helpful to him. The rest buy their good results at a heavy cost and may retard as much as or even more than they accelerate his progress.
The spiritual aim will recognise that man as he grows in his being must have as much free space as possible for all its members to grow in their own strength, to find out themselves and their potentialities. In their freedom they will err, because experience comes through many errors, but each has in itself a divine principle and they will find it out, disengage its presence, significance and law as their experience of themselves deepens and increases. Thus true spirituality will not lay a yoke upon science and philosophy or compel them to square their conclusions with any statement of dogmatic religious or even of assured spiritual truth, as some of the old religions attempted, vainly, ignorantly, with an unspiritual obstinacy and arrogance. Each part of mans being has its own dharma which it must follow and will follow in the end, put on it what fetters you please. The dharma of science, thought and philosophy is to seek for truth by the intellect dispassionately, without prepossession and prejudgment, with no other first propositions than the law of thought and observation itself imposes. Science and philosophy are not bound to square their observations and conclusions with any current ideas of religious dogma or ethical rule or aesthetic prejudice. In the end, if left free in their action, they will find the unity of Truth with Good and Beauty and God and give these a greater meaning than any dogmatic religion or any formal ethics or any narrower aesthetic idea can give us. But meanwhile they must be left free even to deny God and good and beauty if they will, if their sincere observation of things so points them. For all these rejections must come round in the end of their circling and return to a larger truth of the things they refuse. Often we find atheism both in individual and society a necessary passage to deeper religious and spiritual truth: one has sometimes to deny God in order to find him; the finding is inevitable at the end of all earnest scepticism and denial.
1.22 - The Problem of Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:The first of these four positions, the source of all this progressive relation between Consciousness and Force, is their poise in the being of Sachchidananda where they are one; for there the Force is consciousness of being working itself out without ever ceasing to be consciousness and the Consciousness is similarly luminous Force of being eternally aware of itself and of its own Delight and never ceasing to be this power of utter light and self-possession. The second relation is that of material Nature; it is the poise of being in the material universe which is the great denial of Sachchidananda by Himself: for here there is the utter apparent separation of Force from Consciousness, the specious miracle of the all-governing and infallible Inconscient which is only the mask but which modern knowledge has mistaken for the real face of the cosmic Deity. The third relation is the poise of being in Mind and in the Life which we see emerging out of this denial, bewildered by it, struggling - without any possibility of cessation by submission, but also without any clear knowledge or instinct of a victorious solution - against the thousand and one problems involved in this perplexing apparition of man the half-potent conscient being out of the omnipotent Inconscience of the material universe. The fourth relation is the poise of being in Supermind: it is the fulfilled existence which will eventually solve all this complex problem created by the partial affirmation emerging out of the total denial; and it must needs solve it in the only possible way, by the complete affirmation fulfilling all that was secretly there contained in potentiality and intended in fact of evolution behind the mask of the great denial. That is the real life of the real Man towards which this partial life and partial unfulfilled manhood is striving forward with a perfect knowledge and guidance in the so-called Inconscient within us, but in our conscient parts with only a dim and struggling prevision, with fragments of realisation, with glimpses of the ideal, with flashes of revelation and inspiration in the poet and the prophet, the seer and the transcendentalist, the mystic and the thinker, the great intellects and the great souls of humanity.
7:From the data we have now before us we can see that the difficulties which arise from the imperfect poise of Consciousness and Force in man in his present status of mind and life are principally three. First, he is aware only of a small part of his own being: his surface mentality, his surface life, his surface physical being is all that he knows and he does not know even all of that; below is the occult surge of his subconscious and his subliminal mind, his subconscious and his subliminal life-impulses, his subconscious corporeality, all that large part of himself which he does not know and cannot govern, but which rather knows and governs him. For, existence and consciousness and force being one, we can only have some real power over so much of our existence as we are identified with by self-awareness; the rest must be governed by its own consciousness which is subliminal to our surface mind and life and body. And yet, the two being one movement and not two separate movements, the larger and more potent part of ourselves must govern and determine in the mass the smaller and less powerful; therefore we are governed by the subconscient and subliminal even in our conscious existence and in our very self-mastery and self-direction we are only instruments of what seems to us the Inconscient within us.
1.2.3 - The Power of Expression and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.
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1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
succession of rain-makers; and in virtue of this inspiration a
successful rain-maker enjoys very great power and is consulted on
1.25 - On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
24. The foul fiend whispered praise into the heart of an ascetic who was striving for blessed humility, but by divine inspiration he contrived to conquer the guile of the spirits by a pious ruse. He rose and wrote on the wall of his cell the names of the highest virtues in order, that is: perfect love, angelic humility, pure prayer, inviolable chastity and others like these. And so when thoughts of vainglory began to praise him, he said to them: Let us go and be judged. Then, going to the wall, he read the names and cried to himself: When you possess all these, then you will know how far you still are from God!
25. We cannot describe the power and essence of this sun, humility, but from its properties and effects we can explain its intrinsic nature.
1.27 - CONTEMPLATION, ACTION AND SOCIAL UTILITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Similar views are expressed by Al-Ghazzali, who regards the mystics not only as the ultimate source of our knowledge of the soul and its capacities and defects, but as the salt which preserves human societies from decay. In the time of the philosophers, he writes, as at every other period, there existed some of these fervent mystics. God does not deprive this world of them, for they are its sustainers. It is they who, dying to themselves, become capable of perpetual inspiration and so are made the instruments through which divine grace is mediated to those whose unregenerate nature is impervious to the delicate touches of the Spirit.
next chapter: 2.00 - BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Still the phenomena of inspiration, of revelatory vision or of intuitive perception and intuitive discernment, surpassing our less illumined or less powerful normal mind-action, are there and their origin is unmistakable. Finally, there is the vast and multitudinous field of mystic and spiritual experience, and here the gates already lie wide open to the possibility of extending our consciousness beyond its present limits, - unless, indeed, by an obscurantism that refuses to inquire or an attachment to our boundaries of mental normality we shut them or turn away from the vistas they open before us. But in our present investigation we cannot afford to neglect the possibilities which these domains of mankind's endeavour bring near to us, or the added knowledge of oneself and of the veiled Reality which is their gift to human mind, the greater light which arms them with the right to act upon us and is the innate power of their existence.
5:There are two successive movements of consciousness, difficult but well within our capacity, by which we can have access to the superior gradations of our conscious existence. There is first a movement inward by which, instead of living in our surface mind, we break the wall between our external and our now subliminal self; this can be brought about by a gradual effort and discipline or by a vehement transition, sometimes a forceful involuntary rupture, - the latter by no means safe for the limited human mind accustomed to live securely only within its normal limits, - but in either way, safe or unsafe, the thing can be done. What we discover within this secret part of ourselves is an inner being, a soul, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner subtle-physical entity which is much larger in its potentialities, more plastic, more powerful, more capable of a manifold knowledge and dynamism than our surface mind, life or body; especially, it is capable of a direct communication with the universal forces, movements, objects of the cosmos, a direct feeling and opening to them, a direct action on them and even a widening of itself beyond the limits of the personal mind, the personal life, the body, so that it feels itself more and more a universal being no longer limited by the existing walls of our too narrow mental, vital, physical existence. This widening can extend itself to a complete entry into the consciousness of cosmic Mind, into unity with the universal Life, even into a oneness with universal Matter. That, however, is still an identification either with a diminished cosmic truth or with the cosmic Ignorance.
13.03 - A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Supermind is of Course the last and ultimate or other wise the first and original Support and inspiration of all other levels of being and living. Apart from this fundamental, this one source of sustenance, each intermediary level depends directly and leans upon the one that lies just above it, over arches it as it were. Thus speaking of the major intermediaries, the Overmind is under the direct control and guidance of the over-arching Supermind. And Overmind itself over-arches, broods over the mind and from behind guides and controls it. The Mind has evolved primarily because of the pressure of the Overmind standing immediately above it in the hierarchy of the grades of existence. And because of this constant ruling presence of the Overmind, the mind in man is a progressive entity unveiling powers lent or delegated to it, sent down into it from the Overmind. The animal, on the contrary, is not a progressive being like man, for the Overmind does not reach it. The animal is not in contact with the Overmind. It is in contact, a somewhat precarious contact, with the Mind. Something of the Mental has made an inroad into him, into his vital texture. It is to be noted that the mind in the animal is of a different kind from the human mind: it is only in the domesticated animals, the animals living in the neighbourhood of man, having contact with him, that something of the human mind percolates Or is imbibed. As I have said, the human mind has developed and is developing fast, specially in recent years, to an extraordinary degree, in the domain of physical science leading to discoveries that appear so subtle and distant, far off as almost to be out of reach of his normal means of experience. Discoveries of other kinds, hints and intimations with regard to other forms and fields of knowledge and experience are explained most logically and adequately by the fact of an interruption or intervention of another type of consciousness into the present constitution of the human mind. We are referring to the influence of the Overmind, gradually becoming more and more explicit, extensive and effective, the immediately directing power, the guide of the new age. And this naturally because of the operative presence, in and through the Overmind, of the Supramental upon earth and in earth.
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1.3.03 - Quiet and Calm, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The mind has to be silent and you have to become aware of the inspiration as it comes and its source and of the mixture that comes on the way. The more the mind becomes quiet, the more all this is possible.
All quietude of the mind makes good conditions for the receptivity to act.
1.31 - Adonis in Cyprus, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the effect of wine, to the direct inspiration of a deity. Certainly
at Jerusalem the regular clergy of the temple prophesied to the
1.34 - Continues the same subject. This is very suitable for reading after the reception of the Most Holy Sacrament., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
love. This is a great inspiration, and makes us wish that, in whichever direction we turn our eyes,
we could see the picture. What can we look upon that is better or more attractive to the sight than
1.37 - Oriential Religions in the West, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
for divine inspiration, the mangling of the body, the theory of a
new birth and the remission of sins through the shedding of blood,
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
He may, for a brief period, remain in their contact and, thereby drawing inspiration and guidance, get himself thoroughly awakened to the consciousness of the indwelling Reality. It would be well for him to depart from them before the light and inspiration that he has received diminishes or disappears.
MAY TURN SCOFFERS:
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Silence is the true upadesa. It is the perfect upadesa. It is suited only for the most advanced seeker. The others are unable to draw full inspiration from it. Therefore they require words to explain the Truth.
But Truth is beyond words. It does not admit of explanation. All that is possible to do is only to indicate It. How is that to be done?
1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
"He may, for a brief period, remain in their contact and, thereby drawing inspiration and guidance, get himself thoroughly awakened to the consciousness of the indwelling Reality. It would be well for him to depart from them before the light and inspiration that he has received diminishes or disappears.
MAY TURN SCOFFERS:
1.49 - Thelemic Morality, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Neschamah is an entirely different proposition. One of Tiphareth's prime assets is the influence, through the path of "The Lovers," from Binah. The son's milk from the Great Mother. (From his Father, Chiah, Chokmah, he inherits the infinite possibilities of Nuit, through the path of H, "The Star;" and from his "God," Kether, the Divine Consciousness, the direct inspiration, guidance, and ward of his Holy Guardian Angel, through the path of Gimel, the Moon, "The Priestess.")[94]
Neschamah, then, will not be influenced by Ruach, except in so far as it is explained or interpreted by Ruach. These "instincts" are implanted from on high, not from below; they would be imperative were one always sure of having received them pure, and interpreted them aright.
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Silence is the true upadesa. It is the perfect upadesa. It is suited only for the most advanced seeker. The others are unable to draw full inspiration from it. Therefore they require words to explain the Truth.
But Truth is beyond words. It does not admit of explanation. All that is possible to do is only to indicate It. How is that to be done?
1.57 - Public Scapegoats, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
of these men exhibited more than usual symptoms of inspiration or
insanity, and wandered solitary up and down the woods, like the Gond
1.72 - Education, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Books are not the only medium even of learning; more, what they teach is partial, prejudiced, meagre, sterile, uncertain, and alien to reality. It follows that all the best books are those which make no pretence to accuracy: poetry, theatre, fiction. All others date. Another point is that Truth abides above and aloof from intellectual expression, and consequently those books which bear the Magic Keys of the Portal of the Intelligible by dint of inspiration and suggestion come more nearly to grips with Reality than those whose appeal is only to the Intellect. "Didactic" poetry, "realistic" plays and novels, are contradictions in terms.
P.P.S. One more effort: the above reminds me that I have said no word about the other side of the medal. There are many children who cannot be educated at all in any sense of the word. It is an abonin- able waste of both of them and of the teacher to push against brick walls.
1912 11 02p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How many times a day, still, I act without my action being consecrated to Thee; I at once become aware of it by an indefinable uneasiness which is translated in the sensibility of my body by a pang in my heart. I then make my action objective to myself and it seems to me ridiculous, childish or blameworthy; I deplore it, for a moment I am sad, until I dive into Thee and, there losing myself with a childs confidence, await from Thee the inspiration and strength needed to set right the error in me and around me,two things that are one; for I have now a constant and precise perception of the universal unity determining an absolute interdependence of all actions.
***
1914 02 17p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
O Lord, how ardently my aspiration rises to Thee: give us the full consciousness of Thy law, the constant perception of Thy will, so that our decision may be Thy decision and our life solely consecrated to Thy service and as perfect an expression as possible of Thy inspiration.
O Lord, dispel all darkness, all blindness; may every one enjoy the calm certitude that Thy divine illumination brings!
1914 03 23p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one recourse; to unite as perfectly as possible with the highest and purest light that one can conceive, to identify ones consciousness as completely as possible with the absolute Consciousness, to strive to receive all inspirations from that Consciousness alone so as to foster as best one can its manifestation upon earth, and, trusting in its power, to regard all events with serenity.
Since everything is necessarily mixed in the present manifestation, the wisest thing is to do ones best, striving towards an ever higher light and to resign oneself to the fact that absolute perfection is for the moment unrealisable.
1914 06 13p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All nature in full conscious activity, all vibrant with Thy sovereign forces, responds to their inspiration and wants to be illumined and transfigured by them
Thou art the Master of the world, the sole Reality.
1914 06 24p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is always wrong to want to evaluate the future or even to foresee it by the thought we have about it, for this thought is the present, it is in its very impersonality the translation of present relations which are necessarily not the future relations between all the elements of the terrestrial problem. Deducing future circumstances from present ones is a mental activity of the nature of reasoning, even if the deduction takes place in the subconscient and is translated in the being into the form of intuition; but reasoning is a human faculty, that is, it is individual; its inspirations do not come from the infinite, the unlimited, the Divine. It is only in the Omniscience, only when one is at once What knows, what is to be known and the power of knowing that one can become conscious of all relations, past, present and future; but in this state there is no longer a past, present or future, all is eternally. The order of manifestation of all these relations does not solely depend upon the supreme impulsion, the divine Law, it depends also upon the resistance put up against this law by the most external world; from the combination of the two there comes forth the manifestation and so far as it is at present possible for me to know, this combination is in a way undetermined. This is what makes the play, the unexpectedness of the play.
***
1914 12 10p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it not a great folly to become identified with one form of thought, one mental construction, however vast and powerful it may be, to the point of making it the living centre of ones being, ones experience and activity? Truth is eternally beyond all that we can think or say of it. To endeavour to find the most suitable expression, the one best adapted to this truth, is of course a useful task, even an indispensable one for the integrality of ones own development and that of all humanity; but one must always feel free in front of this expression, have ones centre of consciousness above it, in the reality which, despite the grandeur, the beauty, the perfection of a mental formula, always eludes every formula. The world is not what we think it to be. The importance of the idea we have of it lies in its effect on our attitude towards action; and this attitude may come from a much deeper, truer, more unchanging inspiration than that resulting from a mental construction, however powerful it may be. To feel in oneself the will to express for men the eternal Truth in a completer, higher, more exact form than all those which have preceded it, is good; but on condition that one does not identify ones self with this work to the point of being its slave and losing before it all independence and self-control. It is just an activity and nothing more, whatever may be its importance from the earthly point of view; but it must not be forgotten that it is relative like all activities and that we should not allow it to disturb our deep peace and that immutable calm which alone lets the divine forces manifest through us without any deformation.
O Lord, my prayer is not formulated, but Thou hearest it.
1929-04-21 - Visions, seeing and interpretation - Dreams and dreaml and - Dreamless sleep - Visions and formulation - Surrender, passive and of the will - Meditation and progress - Entering the spiritual life, a plunge into the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have a will and you can offer that will. Take the example of becoming conscious of your nights. If you take the attitude of passive surrender, you would say, When it is the Divine Will that I should become conscious, then I shall become conscious. On the other hand, if you offer your will to the Divine, you begin to will, you say, I will become conscious of my nights. You have the will that it should be done; you do not sit down idle and wait. The surrender comes in when you take the attitude that says, I give my will to the Divine. I intensely want to become conscious of my nights, I have not the knowledge, let the Divine Will work it out for me. Your will must continue to act steadily, not in the way of choosing a particular action or demanding a particular object, but as an ardent aspiration concentrated upon the end to be achieved. This is the first step. If you are vigilant, if your attention is alert, you will certainly receive something in the form of an inspiration of what is to be done and that you must forthwith proceed to do. Only, you must remember that to surrender is to accept whatever is the result of your action, though the result may be quite different from what you expect. On the other hand, if your surrender is passive, you will do nothing and try nothing; you will simply go to sleep and wait for a miracle.
Now to know whether your will or desire is in agreement with the Divine Will or not, you must look and see whether you have an answer or have no answer, whether you feel supported or contradicted, not by the mind or the vital or the body, but by that something which is always there deep in the inner being, in your heart.
1929-06-09 - Nature of religion - Religion and the spiritual life - Descent of Divine Truth and Force - To be sure of your religion, country, family-choose your own - Religion and numbers, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This attitude is natural to the religious mind; but it is just that which makes religion stand in the way of the spiritual life. The articles and dogmas of a religion are mind-made things and, if you cling to them and shut yourself up in a code of life made out for you, you do not know and cannot know the truth of the Spirit that lies beyond all codes and dogmas, wide and large and free. When you stop at a religious creed and tie yourself in it, taking it for the only truth in the world, you stop the advance and widening of your inner soul. But if you look at religion from another angle, it need not always be an obstacle to all men. If you regard it as one of the higher activities of humanity and if you can see in it the aspirations of man without ignoring the imperfection of all man-made things, it may well be a kind of help for you to approach the spiritual life. Taking it up in a serious and earnest spirit, you can try to find out what truth is there, what aspiration lies hidden in it, what divine inspiration has undergone transformation and deformation here by the human mind and a human organisation, and with an appropriate mental stand you can get religion even as it is to throw some light on your way and to lend some support to your spiritual endeavour.
In all religions we find invariably a certain number of people who possess a great emotional capacity and are full of a real and ardent aspiration, but have a very simple mind and do not feel the need of approaching the Divine through knowledge. For such natures religion has a use and it is even necessary for them; for, through external forms, like the ceremonies of the Church, it offers a kind of support and help to their inner spiritual aspiration. In every religion there are some who have evolved a high spiritual life. But it is not the religion that gave them their spirituality; it is they who have put their spirituality into the religion. Put anywhere else, born into any other cult, they would have found there and lived there the same spiritual life. It is their own capacity, it is some power of their inner being and not the religion they profess that has made them what they are. This power in their nature is such that religion to them does not become a slavery or a bondage. Only as they have not a strong, clear and active mind, they need to believe in this or that creed as absolutely true and to give themselves up to it without any disturbing question or doubt. I have met in all religions people of this kind and it would be a crime to disturb their faith. For them religion is not an obstacle. An obstacle for those who can go farther, it may be a help for those who cannot, but are yet able to travel a certain distance on the paths of the Spirit. Religion has been an impulse to the worst things and the best; if the fiercest wars have been waged and the most hideous persecutions carried on in its name, it has stimulated too supreme heroism and self-sacrifice in its cause. Along with philosophy it marks the limit the human mind has reached in its highest activities. It is an impediment and a chain if you are a slave to its outer body; if you know how to use its inner substance, it can be your jumping-board into the realm of the Spirit.
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Each time that something of the Divine Truth and the Divine Force comes down to manifest upon earth, some change is effected in the earths atmosphere. In the descent, those who are receptive are awakened to some inspiration from it, some touch, some beginning of sight. If they were capable of holding and expressing rightly what they receive, they would say, A great force has come down; I am in contact with it and what I understand of it, I will tell you. But most of them are not capable of that, because they have small minds. They get illumined, possessed, as it were, and cry, I have the Divine Truth, I possess it whole and entire. There are now upon earth at least two dozen Christs, if not as many Buddhas; India alone can supply any number of Avatars, not to speak of minor manifestations. But in this way, the whole thing begins to look grotesque; but if you see what is behind, it is not so stupid as it seems at the first glance. The truth is that the human personality has come in contact with some Being, some Power, and under the influence of education and tradition calls it Buddha or Christ or by any other familiar name. It is difficult to affirm that it was Buddha himself or the very Christ with whom there was the contact, but none can assert either that the inspiration did not come from that which inspired the Christ or the Buddha. These human vessels may very well have received the inspiration from some such source. If they were modest and simple, they would be content to say that much and no more; they would say, I have received this inspiration from such and such a Great One, but instead they proclaim, I am that Great One. I knew one who affirmed that he was both Christ and Buddha! He had received something, had experienced a truth, had seen the Divine Presence in himself and in others. But the experience was too strong for him, the truth too great. He became half crazy and the next day went out into the streets, proclaiming that in him Christ and Buddha had become one.
One Divine Consciousness is here working through all these beings, preparing its way through all these manifestations. At this day it is here at work upon earth more powerfully than it has ever been before. There are some who receive its touch in some way, or to some degree; but what they receive they distort, they make their own thing out of it. Others feel the touch but cannot bear the force and go mad under the pressure. But some have the capacity to receive and the strength to bear, and it is they who will become the vessels of the full knowledge, the chosen instruments and agents.
1929-06-23 - Knowledge of the Yogi - Knowledge and the Supermind - Methods of changing the condition of the body - Meditation, aspiration, sincerity, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 earths memory.
1929-07-28 - Art and Yoga - Art and life - Music, dance - World of Harmony, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is one way in which Yoga may stop the artists productive impulse. If the origin of his art is in the vital world, once he becomes a Yogi he will lose his inspiration or, rather, the source from which his inspiration used to come will inspire him no more, for then the vital world appears in its true light; it puts on its true value, and that value is very relative. Most of those who call themselves artists draw their inspiration from the vital world only; and it carries in it no high or great significance. But when a true artist, one who looks for his creative source to a higher world, turns to Yoga, he will find that his inspiration becomes more direct and powerful and his expression clearer and deeper. Of those who possess a true value the power of Yoga will increase the value, but from one who has only some false appearance of art even that appearance will vanish or else lose its appeal. To one earnest in Yoga, the first simple truth that strikes his opening vision is that what he does is a very relative thing in comparison with the universal manifestation, the universal movement. But an artist is usually vain and looks on himself as a highly important personage, a kind of demigod in the human world. Many artists say that if they did not believe what they do to be of a supreme importance, they would not be able to do it. But I have known some whose inspiration was from a higher world and yet they did not believe that what they did was of so immense an importance. That is nearer the spirit of true art. If a man is truly led to express himself in art, it is the way the Divine has chosen to manifest in him, and then by Yoga his art will gain and not lose. But there is all the question: is the artist appointed by the Divine or self-appointed?
But if one does Yoga can he rise to such heights as Shakespeare or Shelley? There has been no such instance.
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Art is nothing less in its fundamental truth than the aspect of beauty of the Divine manifestation. Perhaps, looking from this standpoint, there will be found very few true artists; but still there are some and these can very well be considered as Yogis. For like a Yogi an artist goes into deep contemplation to await and receive his inspiration. To create something truly beautiful, he has first to see it within, to realise it as a whole in his inner consciousness; only when so found, seen, held within, can he execute it outwardly; he creates according to this greater inner vision. This too is a kind of yogic discipline, for by it he enters into intimate communion with the inner worlds. A man like Leonardo da Vinci was a Yogi and nothing else. And he was, if not the greatest, at least one of the greatest painters,although his art did not stop at painting alone.
Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, a mushroom art, such as is operatic music. Most of the artistic productions we come across are of this kind and at best interesting from the point of view of technique. I do not say that even operatic music cannot be used as a medium of a higher art expression; for whatever the form, it can be made to serve a deeper purpose. All depends on the thing itself, on how it is used, on what is behind it. There is nothing that cannot be used for the Divine purposejust as anything can pretend to be the Divine and yet be of the mushroom species.
Among the great modern musicians there have been several whose consciousness, when they created, came into touch with a higher consciousness. Csar Franck played on the organ as one inspired; he had an opening into the psychic life and he was conscious of it and to a great extent expressed it. Beethoven, when he composed the Ninth Symphony, had the vision of an opening into a higher world and of the descent of a higher world into this earthly plane. Wagner had strong and powerful intimations of the occult world; he had the instinct of occultism and the sense of the occult and through it he received his greatest inspirations. But he worked mainly on the vital level and his mind came in constantly to interfere and mechanised his inspiration. His work for the greater part is too mixed, too often obscure and heavy, although powerful. But when he could cross the vital and the mental levels and reach a higher world, some of the glimpses he had were of an exceptional beauty, as in Parsifal, in some parts of Tristan and Iseult and most in its last great Act.
Look again at what the moderns have made of the dance; compare it with what the dance once was. The dance was once one of the highest expressions of the inner life; it was associated with religion and it was an important limb in sacred ceremony, in the celebration of festivals, in the adoration of the Divine. In some countries it reached a very high degree of beauty and an extraordinary perfection. In Japan they kept up the tradition of the dance as a part of the religious life and, because the strict sense of beauty and art is a natural possession of the Japanese, they did not allow it to degenerate into something of lesser significance and smaller purpose. It was the same in India. It is true that in our days there have been attempts to resuscitate the ancient Greek and other dances; but the religious sense is missing in all such resurrections and they look more like rhythmic gymnastics than dance.
1951-01-15 - Sincerity - inner discernment - inner light. Evil and imbalance. Consciousness and instruments., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take an example. You are in your body with your deepest ideal but you find yourself before a school class and you have to teach something to the students. Well, this light is up there, this light of consciousness, but when you have to explain to your class the science you have to teach, is it more convenient to have a fund of knowledge or will the inspiration be such that you will not need this fund of knowledge? What is your personal experience?You find, dont you, that there are days when everything goes wellyou are eloquent, your students listen to you and understand you easily. But there are other days when what you have to teach does not come, they do not listen to you that is, you are bored and are boring. This means that in the former case your consciousness is awake and concentrated upon what you are doing, while in the second it is more or less asleepyou are left to your most external means. But in this case, if you have a fund of knowledge you can tell your students something; if you have a mind trained, prepared, a good instrument responding well when you want to make use of it, and if you have also gathered all necessary notes and notions all will go very well. But if you have nothing in your head and, besides, you are not in contact with your higher consciousness, then you have no other recourse than to take a book and read out your lessonyou will be obliged to make use of someone elses mind.
Take games. There too you find days when everything goes well; you have done nothing special previously, but even so you succeed in everything; but if you have practised well beforehand, the result is still more magnificent. If, for example, you find yourself facing someone who has trained himself slowly, seriously, with patience and endurance, and who all of a sudden has a strong aspiration, well, this one will beat you in spite of your aspiration unless your aspiration is very much superior to that of your adversary. If you have opposite you someone who knows only the technique of the game but has no conscious aspiration, while you are in a fully conscious state, evidently it is you who will defeat him because the quality of consciousness is superior to the quality of technique. But one cannot replace the other. The one which is superior is more important, granted, but you must also have nerves which respond quickly, spontaneous movements; you must know all the secrets of the game to be able to play perfectly. You must have both the things. What is higher is the consciousness which enables you to make the right movement at the right moment but it is not exclusive. When you seek perfection, you must not neglect the one under the pretext that you have the other.
1951-02-10 - Liberty and license - surrender makes you free - Men in authority as representatives of the divine Truth - Work as offering - total surrender needs time - Effort and inspiration - will and patience, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1951-02-10 - Liberty and license - surrender makes you free - Men in authority as representatives of the divine Truth - Work as offering - total surrender needs time - Effort and inspiration - will and patience
author class:The Mother
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You see, individual, human authority, like the authority of a father of the family, of a teacher, of the head of a state, is a symbolic thing. They have no real authority but authority is given to them to enable them to fulfil a role in social life as it now is, that is to say, a social life founded upon falsehood and not at all on truth, for truth means unity and society is founded on division. There are people who work out their role, their function, their symbol more or less wellnobody is faultless, all is mixed in this world. But he who takes his role seriously, tries to fill it as honestly as possible, may receive inspirations which enable him to play his part a little more truly than an ordinary man. If the teacher who gives marks kept in mind that he was the representative of the divine truth, if he constantly took sufficient trouble to be in tune with the divine Will as much as this is possible for him, well, that could be very useful; for the ordinary teacher acts according to his personal preferenceswhat he does not like, what he likes, etc.and he belongs to the general falsehood, but if at the time of giving marks, the teacher tries sincerely to put himself in harmony with a truth deeper than his small narrow consciousness, he may serve as an intermediary of this truth and, as such, help his students to become conscious of this truth within themselves.
This is precisely one of the things that I wanted to tell you. Education is a sacerdocy, teaching is a sacerdocy, and to be at the head of a State is a sacerdocy. Then, if the person who fulfils this role aspires to fulfil it in the highest and the most true way, the general condition of the world can become much better. Unfortunately, most people never think about this at all, they fill their role somehownot to speak of the innumerable people who work only to earn money, but in this case their activity is altogether rotten, naturally. That was my very first basis in forming the Ashram: that the work done here be an offering to the Divine.
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You must be attentive, silent, must await the inner inspiration, not do anything from external reactions, you must be moved by the light that comes from above, constantly, regularly, must act only under the inspiration of that light and nothing else. Never to think, never to question, never to ask Should I do this or that?, but to know, to see, to hear. To act with an inner certitude without questioning and without doubting, because the decision does not come from you, it comes from above. Well, this may come very soon or one may have to wait perhaps a long time that depends upon ones previous preparation, upon many things. Till then you must will and will with persistence, and above all never lose patience or courage. If necessary, repeat the same thing a thousand times, knowing that perhaps the thousandth time you will realise the result.
You are not all of a single piece. Your present body is often an accident. If you have within you a conscious soul which has influenced the formation of your body, you are infinitely better prepared than someone, a soul, which falls head foremost into a body without knowing where it is going; in this latter case much hard work is needed to lift up the consciousness which has thus fallen into obscurity. The inner preparation may come from previous lives or from the present life; or you have reached a turning-point in your integral growth and are in just the right relation with the circumstances necessary for the last step to be taken. But this does not mean that you have not lived a thousand times before reaching this turning-point.
1951-02-17 - False visions - Offering ones will - Equilibrium - progress - maturity - Ardent self-giving- perfecting the instrument - Difficulties, a help in total realisation - paradoxes - Sincerity - spontaneous meditation, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you are vigilant, if your attention is alert, you will certainly receivean inspiration of what is to be done and that you must forthwith proceed to do.
Questions and Answers 1929 (21 April)
When I told you just a while ago that you must aspire with a great ardour to do the best possible, at every moment the best thing possible, you could have asked me, That is all very well. But how to know? Well, it is not necessary to know! If you take this attitude with sincerity, you will know at each moment what you have to do, and it is this which is so wonderful! According to your sincerity, the inspiration is more and more precise, more and more exact.
Only you must remember that to surrender is to accept whatever is the result of your action, though the result may be quite different from what you expect. On the other hand, if your surrender is passive, you will do nothing and try nothing; you will simply go to sleep and wait for a miracle.
1951-03-05 - Disasters- the forces of Nature - Story of the charity Bazar - Liberation and law - Dealing with the mind and vital- methods, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The functioning is not the same with everyone. There are people who have a great light in the mind (or think they have it!), they know things, they know how the world and others ought to behave and, moreover, they are sure that they, they are very far on the road, but when they begin to act they are more stupid than the little street urchin. Why? Because it is not the mind which has decided, and even if it has decided, it is not the mind which has executed; what has executed does not recognise at all the authority of the mind, but tells it: Leave me alone, dont bother me! I act according to my own inspiration! Then, what are you going to do? Try to give a lesson to your mind? You may always try, but it is not sure that you will succeed. It is not an easy problem. Human nature is very unstable; after having thought in one way, it thinks in another; after having felt in one way, it feels in another, and so on; nothing lasts: the good not longer than the bad; the bad, a little longer than the good! But anyway, this does not last indefinitely. So, if you have the patience to wait, surely it will change!
But everything returns!
1951-03-08 - Silencing the mind - changing the nature - Reincarnation- choice - Psychic, higher beings gods incarnating - Incarnation of vital beings - the Lord of Falsehood - Hitler - Possession and madness, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Not long ago there was a historical instance, that of Hitler, who was in contact with a being whom he considered to be the Supreme: this being came and gave him advice, told him all that he had to do. Hitler used to retire into solitude and remain there as long as it was necessary to come into contact with his guide and receive from him inspirations which he carried out later very faithfully. This being which Hitler took for the Supreme was quite plainly an Asura, one who is called the Lord of Falsehood in occultism, but who proclaimed himself the Lord of the Nations. He had a shining appearance, he could mislead anybody except one who really had occult knowledge and could see what was there behind the appearance. He would have deceived anybody, he was truly splendid. Generally he used to appear to Hitler wearing a silver cuirass and helmet; a kind of flame came out of his head and there was an atmosphere of dazzling light around him, so dazzling that Hitler could hardly look at him. He used to tell Hitler everything that had to be donehe played with him as with a monkey or a mouse. He had decided clearly to make Hitler commit all possible extravagances till the day he would break his neck, which did happen. But cases like this are frequent, though on a smaller scale, of course.
Hitler was a very good medium, he had great mediumistic capacities, but he lacked intelligence and discrimination. This being could tell him anything whatever and he swallowed it all. It was he who pushed Hitler little by little. And he was doing this as a distraction, he did not take life seriously. For these beings men are very tiny things with whom they play, as a cat plays with a mouse, till finally they eat them up.
1951-03-14 - Plasticity - Conditions for knowing the Divine Will - Illness - microbes - Fear - body-reflexes - The best possible happens - Theories of Creation - True knowledge - a work to do - the Ashram, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because in the large majority of men, the body receives its inspirations from the subconscient, it is under the influence of the subconscient. All the fears driven out from the active consciousness go and take refuge there and then, naturally, they have to be chased out from the subconscient and uprooted from there.
Why does one feel afraid?
1951-04-09 - Modern Art - Trend of art in Europe in the twentieth century - Effect of the Wars - descent of vital worlds - Formation of character - If there is another war, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is the relation between art and yoga? Can the artist and the yogi have the same source of inspiration? (Mother turns to a disciple:) Amrita, will you tell us what relation there is between art and yoga?
A beautiful relation. Art can be a yoga and yoga is an art.
1951-04-12 - Japan, its art, landscapes, life, etc - Fairy-lore of Japan - Culture- its spiral movement - Indian and European- the spiritual life - Art and Truth, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are people who say that certain arts are physical. If you frequent artists, painters, they will tell you that sculpture, oh! it is laborious, because sculptors work with the very matter, and painting may be considered not much of an intellectual art by a musician. The truth is that in all arts everything depends upon the artist, and what he does depends upon the state of consciousness in which he is. A sculptor may be an extremely spiritual man and his production extremely spiritual also, if he knows how to express his experience. And a poet can be quite a commonplace materialist if he does not receive his inspiration from a higher state. It is the mind which makes little categories (this is more convenient for it), but that does not resemble the truth very much.
You have said that Wagner had an intuition of the occult and that to have spiritual power one must conquer sexuality. In fact, Wagner had the intuition of this victory to be achieved, for in The Ring of the Niebelungen there is a treasure hidden at the bottom of a river. Three nymphs guard the treasure and to take it one must renounce all desire for love and woman.
1953-03-25, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Many people accept certain theories, some of which are very convenient, and they say, Everything is the result of the divine Will; others say, The Divine is everywhere and in everything and does everything; yet others say, My will is one with the divine Will, it is He who inspires me. Indeed, there are many theories and they say that. Naturally, their ego is as alive. They do all that they want to do, saying, It is the Divine who is doing it in me. Whatever is supplied by their brain is the divine Will. It is not a personal inspiration: Everything is the result of the divine Will. It is not I who am acting, it is the Divine who is acting through me. They do all that they wish to do. There are many people like that. Therefore I said, Do not use the Divine as a pretty cloak to hide your desires.
The question is to be sincere. If you are not sincere, do not begin Yoga.
1953-05-13, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the will is something altogether different. It is the capacity to concentrate on everything one does, do it as best one can and not stop doing it unless one receives a very precise intimation that it is finished. It is difficult to explain it to you. But suppose, for example, through a concurrence of circumstances, a work comes into your hands. Take an artist who has in one way or another got an inspiration and resolved to paint a picture. He knows very well that if he has no inspiration and is not sustained by forces other than his own, he will do nothing much. It will look more like a daub than a painting. He knows this. But it has been settled, the painting is to be done; there may be many reasons for that, but the painting has to be done. Then if he had the passive attitude, well, he would place his palette, his colours, his brushes, his canvas and then sit down in front of it and say to the Divine: Now you are going to paint. But the Divine does not do things this way. The painter himself must take up everything and arrange everything, concentrate on his subject, find the forms, the colours that will express it and put his whole will for a more and more perfect execution. His will must be there all the time. But he has to keep the sense that he must be open to the inspiration, he will not forget that in spite of all his knowledge of the technique, in spite of the care he takes to arrange, organise and prepare his colours, his forms, his design, in spite of all that, if he has no inspiration, it will be one picture among a million others and it will not be very interesting. He does not forget. He attempts, he tries to see, to feel what he wants his painting to express and in what way it should be expressed. He has his colours, he has his brushes, he has his model, he has made his sketch which he will enlarge and make into a picture, he calls his inspiration. There are even some who manage to have a clear, precise vision of what is to be done. But then, day after day, hour after hour, they have this will to work, to study, to do with care all that must be done until they reproduce as perfectly as they can the first inspiration. That person has worked for the Divine, in communion with Him, but not in a passive way, not with a passive surrender; it is with an active surrender, a dynamic will. The result generally is something very good. Well, the example of the painter is interesting, because a painter who is truly an artist is able to see what he is going to do, he is able to connect himself to the divine Power that is beyond all expression and inspires all expression. For the poet, the writer, it is the same thing and for all people who do something, it is the same.
If you tried that for your lessons, dont you think it would succeed?
1953-05-27, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Music is a means of expressing certain thoughts, feelings, emotions, aspirations. There is even a region where all these movements exist and from there, as they are brought down, they take a musical form. One who is a very good composer, with some inspiration, will produce very beautiful music, for he is a good musician. A bad musician may also have a very high inspiration; he may receive something which is good, but as he possesses no musical capacity, what he produces is terribly commonplace, ordinary, uninteresting. But if you go beyond, if you reach just the place where there is this origin of musicof the idea and emotion and inspirationif you reach there, you can taste these things without being in the least troubled by the forms; the commonplace musical form can be linked up again with that, because that was the inspiration of the writer of the music. Naturally, there are cases where there is no inspiration, where the origin is merely a kind of mechanical music. It is not always interesting in every case. But what I mean is that there is an inner condition in which the external form is not the most important thing; it is the origin of the music, the inspiration from beyond, which is important; it is not purely the sounds, it is what the sounds express.
So the expression cannot be better than the inspiration?
There are musical pieces which have no inspiration, they are like mechanical works. There are musicians who possess a great virtuosity, that is, who have thoroughly mastered the technique and who, for example, can execute without making a mistake the fastest and most difficult things. They can play music but it expresses nothing: it is like a machine. It means nothing, except that they have great skill. For what is most important is the inspiration, in everything that one does; in all human creations the most important thing is inspiration. Naturally, the execution must be on the same level as the inspiration; to be able to express truly well the highest things one must have a very good technique. I do not say that technique is not necessary; it is even indispensable, but it is not the only indispensable thing, it is less important than inspiration.
The essential quality of music depends upon where the music comes from, upon its origin.
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There are different levels. There is a whole category of music that comes from the higher vital, which is very catching, somewhat (not to put it exactly) vulgar, it is something that twists your nerves. This music is not necessarily unpleasant, but generally it seizes you there in the nervous centres. So there is one type of music which has a vital origin. There is music which has a psychic originit is altogether different. And then there is music which has a spiritual origin: it is very bright and it carries you away, captures you entirely. But if you want to execute this music correctly you must be able to make it come through the vital passage. Your music coming from above may become externally quite flat if you do not possess that intensity of vital vibration which gives it its splendour and strength. I knew people who had truly a very high inspiration and it became quite flat, because the vital did not stir. I must admit that by their spiritual practices they had put to sleep their vital completelyit was literally asleep, it did not act at alland the music came straight into the physical, and if one were connected with the origin of that music, one could see that it was something wonderful, but externally it had no force, it was a little melody, very poor, very thin; there was none of the strength of harmony. When you can bring the vital into play, then all the strength of vibration is there. If you draw into it this higher origin, it becomes the music of a genius.
For music it is very special; it is difficult, it needs an intermediary. And it is like that for all other things, for literature also, for poetry, for painting, for everything one does. The true value of ones creation depends on the origin of ones inspiration, on the level, the height where one finds it. But the value of the execution depends on the vital strength which expresses it. To complete the genius both must be there. This is very rare. Generally it is the one or the other, more often the vital. And then there are those other kinds of music we have the music of the caf-concert, of the cinemait has an extraordinary skill, and at the same time an exceptional platitude, an extraordinary vulgarity. But as it has an extraordinary skill, it seizes you in the solar plexus and it is this music that you remember; it grasps you at once and holds you and it is very difficult to free yourself from it, for it is well-made music, music very well made. It is made vitally with vital vibrations, but what is behind is frightful.
But imagine this same vital power of expression, with the inspiration coming from far above the highest inspiration possible, when all the heavens open before us then that becomes wonderful. There are certain passages of Csar Franck, certain passages of Beethoven, certain passages of Bach, there are pieces by others also which have this inspiration and power. But it is only a moment, it comes as a moment, it does not last. You cannot take the entire work of an artist as being on that level. inspiration comes like a flash; sometimes it lasts sufficiently long, when the work is sustained; and when that is there, the same effect is produced, that is, if you are attentive and concentrated, suddenly that lifts you up, lifts up all your energies, it is as though someone opened out your head and you were flung into the air to tremendous heights and magnificent lights. It produces in a few seconds results that are obtained with so much difficulty through so many years of yoga. Only, in general, one may fall down afterwards, because the consciousness is not there as the basis; one has the experience and afterwards does not even know what has happened. But if you are prepared, if you have indeed prepared your consciousness by yoga and then the thing happens, it is almost definitive.
What is the cause of the great difference between European and Indian music? Is it the origin or the expression?
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This very high inspiration comes only rarely in European music; rare also is a psychic origin, very rare. Either it comes from high above or it is vital. The expression is almost always, except in a few rare cases, a vital expressioninteresting, powerful. Most often, the origin is purely vital. Sometimes it comes from the very heights, then it is wonderful. Sometimes it is psychic, particularly in what has been religious music, but this is not very frequent.
Indian music, when there are good musicians, has almost always a psychic origin; for example, the rgas have a psychic origin, they come from the psychic. The inspiration does not often come from above. But Indian music is very rarely embodied in a strong vital. It has rather an inner and intimate origin. I have heard a great deal of Indian music, a great deal; I have rarely heard Indian music having vital strength, very rarely; perhaps not more than four or five times. But very often I have heard Indian music having a psychic origin, it translates itself almost directly into the physical. And truly one must then concentrate, and as it ishow to put it?very tenuous, very subtle, as there are none of those intense vital vibrations, one can easily glide within it and climb back to the psychic origin of the music. It has that effect upon you, it is a kind of ecstatic trance, as from an intoxication. It makes you enter a little into trance. Then if you listen well and let yourself go, you move on and glide, glide into a psychic consciousness. But if you remain only in the external consciousness, the music is so tenuous that there is no response from the vital, it leaves you altogether flat. Sometimes, there was a vital force, then it became quite good. I myself like this music very much, this kind of theme developing into a play. The theme is essentially very musical: and then it is developed with variations, innumerable variations, and it is always the same theme which is developed in one way or another. In Europe there were musicians who were truly musicians and they too had the thing: Bach had it, he used to do the same sort of thing, Mozart had it, his music was purely musical, he had no intention of expressing any other thing, it was music for musics sake. But this manner of taking a certain number of notes in a certain relation (they are like almost infinite variations), personally I find it wonderful to put you in repose, and you enter deep within yourself. And then, if you are ready, it gives you the psychic consciousness: something that makes you withdraw from the external consciousness, which makes you enter elsewhere, enter within.
In what form does music come to the great composers? That is, is it only the melody that comes or is it what we hear?
1953-06-24, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They do not belong to the same domain. It is exactly as though you had what is called a torchlight, a small beacon-light in your head at the place of observation. Scientists who want to do a certain work turn the beacon in a particular way, they always put it there and the beacon remains thus: they turn it towards matter, towards the details of matter. But people with imagination turn it upward, because up above there is everything, you know, all inspirations of artistic and literary things: this comes from another domain. It comes from a much more subtle domain, much less material. So these turn upward and want to receive the light from above. But it is the same instrument. The others turn it downwards, and it is just a lack of gymnastic skill. It is the same instrument. It is the same power of a luminous ray upon something. But as one has made it a habit of concentrating it in a certain direction, one is no longer supple, one loses the habit of doing things otherwise.
But you can at any time do both the things. When you are doing science, you turn it in one direction and when you do literature and art, you turn it in the other direction; but it is the same instrument: all depends on the orientation. If you have concentration, you can move this power of concentration from one place to another and in every way it will be effective. If you are occupied with science, you use it in a scientific way, and if you want to do art, you use it in an artistic way. But it is the same instrument and it is the same power of concentration. It is simply because people do not know this that they limit themselves. So the hinges get rusty, they do not turn any more. Otherwise, if one keeps the habit of turning them, they continue to turn. Moreover, even from the ordinary point of view, it is not rare to find a scientist having as his hobby some artistic occupation and the reverse also. It is because they have found that the one was not harmful to the other and that it was the same faculty which could be utilised in both.
1953-08-05, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Many men think and write through inspiration. From where does it come?
Many! That is indeed a wonderful thing. I did not think there have been so many. So?
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Ah! inspirations come from very many different places. There are inspirations that may be very material, there are inspirations that may be vital, there are inspirations that come from all kinds of mental planes, and there are very, very rare inspirations that come from the higher mind or from a still higher region. All inspirations do not come from the same place. Hence, to be inspired does not necessarily mean that one is a higher being. One may be inspired also to do and say many stupid things!
What does inspired mean?
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Indeed, one can have also an inspiration to commit a murder! In countries where they decapitate murderers, cut off their heads, this causes a very brutal death which throws out the vital being, not allowing it the time to decompose for coming out of the body; the vital being is violently thrown out of the body, with all its impulses; and generally it goes and lodges itself in one of those present there, men half horrified, half with a kind of unhealthy curiosity. That makes the opening and it enters within. Statistics have proved that most young murderers admit that the impulse came to them when they were present at the death of another murderer. It was an inspiration, but of a detestable kind.
Fundamentally it is a moment of openness to something which was not within your personal consciousness, which comes from outside and rushes into you and makes you do something. This is the widest formula that can be given.
Now, generally, when people say: Oh! he is an inspired poet, it means he has received something from high above and expressed it in a remarkable manner. But one should rather say that his inspiration is of a high quality.
Does it not come, Mother, whenever one wants it?
1953-09-09, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Each time that something of the Divine Truth and the Divine Force comes down to manifest upon earth, some change is effected in the earths atmosphere. In the descent, those who are receptive are awakened to some inspiration from it, some touch, some beginning of sight. If they were capable of holding and expressing rightly what they receive, they would say, A great force has come down; I am in contact with it and what I understand of it, I will tell you. But most of them are not capable of that, because they have small minds. They get illumined, possessed, as it were, and cry, I have the Divine Truth, I possess it whole and entire.
One Divine Consciousness is here working through all these beings, preparing its way through all these manifestations. At this day it is here at work upon earth more powerfully than it has ever been before. There are some who receive its touch in some way, or to some degree; but what they receive they distort, they make their own thing out of it. Others feel the touch but cannot bear the force and go mad under the pressure. But some have the capacity to receive and the strength to bear, and it is they who will become the vessels of the full knowledge, the chosen instruments and agents.
1953-10-21, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There remains only one field in which the experience has not been totally achieved, that is the purely material field. And there, it may be asked if truly, when the divine Consciousness descends into the body, the transformations will not be sufficient for there to be a possibility of integral expression. But that is yet to come; it has not yet been done. And so long as it is not done, one cannot know. For even in the highest mental expression there is something which intervenes, due to the physical body. For the inspiration to come right down to the paper, for instance, well, despite everything, it must pass through very material vibrations which may change it. But if these very vibrations are transformed, then in that case it is possible that the outer expression is absolutely identical with the inner; that is, the corporeal manifestation truly becomes a manifestation of the divine essence.
Is that all?
1953-10-28, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What I have said? Nothing else but that true art is the expression of beauty in the material world; and in a world entirely changed spiritually, that is to say, one expressing completely the divine reality, art must act as a revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life; that is to say, an artist should be capable of entering into communion with the Divine and of receiving inspiration about what form or forms ought to be used to express the divine beauty in matter. And thus, if it does that, art can be a means of realisation of beauty, and at the same time a teacher of what beauty ought to be, that is, art should be an element in the education of mens taste, of young and old, and it is the teaching of true beauty, that is, the essential beauty which expresses the divine truth. This is the raison dtre of art. Now, between this and what is done there is a great difference, but this is the true raison dtre of art.
Have you understood? A little!
1953-12-16, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is the outer consciousness that is not in contact with it, for it is turned outwards instead of being turned inwards for it lives amidst all the external noises and movements, in what it sees, what it does, what it says, instead of looking within, into the depths of the being and listening to the inner inspirations.
Has the psychic any power?
1954-09-15 - Parts of the being - Thoughts and impulses - The subconscient - Precise vocabulary - The Grace and difficulties, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are ideas and thoughts which come from beyond and above, and then these are only given a form by the mind. In fact, this is what I was just going to say. The true writer, the true thinker, the true orator does not construct thoughts in his head, he receives an inspiration from above, and while entering his mind it is formulated into words. But the source of thought is very much higher.
But what you wanted to say was, Are there thoughts which come from below? These are not thoughts. They are just impulses which are translated into words in the consciousness, formulated in words, but these are not thoughts. They have a different nature.
1954-09-29 - The right spirit - The Divine comes first - Finding the Divine - Mistakes - Rejecting impulses - Making the consciousness vast - Firm resolution, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When one is perplexed, when one has to make a choice, when one doesnt know what the right thing to do isyou see, one has to choose among two or three or four possible decisions and doesnt know which is the right one, then one must put himself as far as possible in contact with his psychic being and the divine Presence in him, present the problem to this psychic consciousness and ask for the true light, the true decision, the one most in accordance with the divine Will, and try to listen and receive the inspiration.
In each case, you see, it is the right attitude.
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You do not understand the French expression passer.3 However, in English it is the same thing; I dont know what the text is in English, but comes first, do you understand what comes first means? It means that before every other consideration it is the Divine who is the first consideration that all other consideration which are not the Divine are secondary, without importance. That is, as we have just explained for instance: when you have to make a choice, you must choose according to the divine inspiration or what will bring you closer to the Divine or put you in the best situation to attain to the Divine, because it is the Divine who comes first, all personal interest or personal satisfaction must come afterwards. First the Divine. And consecration to the Divine must come first, everything else comes afterwards. If it comes, it comes; if it doesnt, it does not matter. What matters is the seeking for the Divine, this is the first thing, the thing that comes before everything, the most important thing. This is what it means.
There is something truer in you.4 It is the psychic, isnt it?
1954-10-06 - What happens is for the best - Blaming oneself -Experiences - The vital desire-soul -Creating a spiritual atmosphere -Thought and Truth, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, instead of reading any odd thing and chatting and doing anything whatever, if you read only what helps you to follow the path, if you act only in conformity with what can lead you to the divine realisation, if you abolish in yourself all desires and impulses turned towards external things, if you calm your mental being, appease your vital being, if you shut yourself against suggestions coming from outside and become immune to the action of people surrounding you, you create such a spiritual atmosphere that nothing can touch it, and it no longer depends at all on circumstances or on whom you live with or on the conditions you live in, because you are enclosed in your own spiritual atmosphere. And that is how one obtains it: by turning ones attention solely to the spiritual life, by reading only what can help in the spiritual life, by doing only what leads you to the spiritual life, and so on. Then you create your own atmosphere. But naturally, if you open all the doors, listen to what people tell you, follow the advice of this one and the inspirations of that one, and are full of desires for outside things, you cannot create a spiritual atmosphere for yourself. You will have an ordinary atmosphere like everybody else.
Sweet Mother, here it is written: Do not be troubled by your surroundings and their opposition. These conditions are often imposed at first as a kind of ordeal. Imposed by the Divine?
1955-02-09 - Desire is contagious - Primitive form of love - the artists delight - Psychic need, mind as an instrument - How the psychic being expresses itself - Distinguishing the parts of ones being - The psychic guides - Illness - Mothers vision, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, excuse me, I did not say that one doesnt need the mind. The mind is useful for something else. The mind is an instrument for formation and organisation, and if the mind lets the psychic make use of it, that will be very good. But it is not the mind which will help the psychic to manifest. The roles are reversed. The mind can be an instrument for the manifestation of the psychic later, when it has already taken possession of the outer consciousness. It is rarely so before that. Usually it is a veil and an obstruction. But surely it cant help in the manifestation. It can help in the action if it takes its true place and true movement. And if it becomes completely docile to the psychic inspiration, it can help to organise life, for this is its function, its reason of existence. But first of all the psychic being must have taken possession of the field, must be the master of the house. Then, later, things can be arranged.
There is only one way for the outer being. Let us take the physical being the physical being, the poor little physical being, the outer being, which knows nothing, can do nothing by itself. Well, for it there is only one way of allowing the psychic being to manifest: with the candid warmth of a child (Mother speaks very softly) to aspire, pray, ask, want with all its strength, without reasoning or trying to understand. One cant imagine how great an obstruction reasoning and this effort to understand put in the experience. At the moment when you are on the point of reaching a state in which something will happen, some vibration will be changed in the consciousness of the being you are all tense in an aspiration and have succeeded in fastening your aspiration, and you are standing there awaiting the answer, if this wretched mind begins to stir and to wonder, What is happening, and whats going to happen, when is it going to happen, how is it going to happen, and why is it like that, and in what order will things manifest? it is all over, you may get up and sweep out your room, you are not fit for anything else.
1955-05-18 - The Problem of Woman - Men and women - The Supreme Mother, the new creation - Gods and goddesses - A story of Creation, earth - Psychic being only on earth, beings everywhere - Going to other worlds by occult means, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. Well, perhaps it is under their inspiration that Nature made it. It is certainly not because it appeared on earth that it is like that with the gods. So logically we can think that because it was like that among the gods it has become like that on earth. But Nature doesnt seem to have received direct inspirations; she seems to have followed her own path in her own fashion. Yet she has tried all possible things; I dont think theres anything she hasnt tried, and she goes on. But Nature too has created sexless beings, even in human form; it has happened. I have even seen a Greek statue like that. The Greeks knew this.
Everything that one can imagine and much more, Nature has imagined. Only, she doesnt want to be hurried. I think it amuses her. So she wants to go in her own way: trying, demolishing, re-starting, demolishing again. She can destroy an entire species by doing just this (gesture), it is quite the same to her; she would simply say, No, it was not good. And then, there, it is finished. And she doesnt want to be hurried. If she is told that we find it has lasted long enough like this, that it could come to a slightly more harmonious conclusion, she revolts, she is not at all pleased. This is what she always says: But why are you in a hurry? All that you want to do will happen, but it is not necessary that it should happen so fast. Why are you in such a hurry? Thats what she always answers. She likes to roam about.
1955-05-25 - Religion and reason - true role and field - an obstacle to or minister of the Spirit - developing and meaning - Learning how to live, the elite - Reason controls and organises life - Nature is infrarational, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A function of preparation, as I said; it is in order to prepare for something higher which is suprarational and which must come. It is a preparation. You see, he has said, one would think, it means that it is just an impression one has that its right is indisputable. It is not indisputable. He says that its province is vast, you see, that its powers are ample, that its action is more self-confident, but it always finds itself standing between the two other powers of our being, the infrarational and the suprarational. It is an intermediary to free us from the infrarational influence that of all the instincts, all the desires, all the passions, all the impulsesto free us from this domain and prepare for the coming of the suprarational one. Therefore it is an instrument of mediation, of transition, and in this intermediating in this region, it is the best master. But it cannot go further. There is a point where it loses its power. When one is ready for the suprarational intervention, well, it has to keep quiet; and if for example, by an inner development, by a yogic action you have managed to come into contact with a divine consciousness and receive inspirations from this divine consciousness, if at this moment you want to judge these inspirations by the reason, then you are sure to make stupid mistakes, because reason understands nothing of this, and it should abdicate. But you must be sure that it is truly a contact with the divine Force; and to be sure of this well, until one is sure of it, reason is very good for preventing you from deceiving yourself.
Usually people who have a tendency for not altogether ordinary experiences find reason very troublesome; and even before being ready to surpass its action they reject it, and that is how usually they become absolutely unreasonable and end up by being half-mad. That is why, so long as you dont have an absolute certainty of having reached where you want to go, well, you must keep the reason very active in yourself in order to prevent yourself from becoming derailed. This is very, very important. One cannot dethrone reason unless the experience of the higher regions is so absolute, so true, so complete, that it compels recognition. It is not a very frequent thing. So I always advise people to keep their reason. But theres a point where it must cease having its superior rights thats to judge spiritual experience, because it cannot judge this, it does not understand it; but it must truly be a spiritual experience, not something which tries to imitate it; here an absolute sincerity is necessary. One must not deceive oneself through ambition, or indeed let oneself be deceived by any odd humbugs who come and tell you extraordinary stories in order to make you believe in their superiority.
1955-07-20 - The Impersonal Divine - Surrender to the Divine brings perfect freedom - The Divine gives Himself - The principle of the inner dimensions - The paths of aspiration and surrender - Linear and spherical paths and realisations, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For all things, first you must understand, will, and then begin to practisebegin by just a very little. When you catch yourself in the act of doing something because someone else wanted it or because you are not very sure of what you want to do and are in the habit of doing what this one or that one or tradition or customs make you dobecause, among the influences under which you live, there are collective suggestions, social traditions, many! Social habits are something terrible; your consciousness is stuffed with them from the time you are quite small; when a baby you are already told: This should be done, that should not be done, you must do this in this way, you must not do it in that way, and all that; these are ideas which usually parents or teachers have received in the same way when they were very young and to which they are accustomed and submit by habit; these are the most dangerous influences because they are subtle, they are not expressed outwardly by words; your head was stuffed with them and your feelings and reactions, when you were very small, and it is only later, much later, when you begin to reflect and try to know what the truth is as soon as you understand that there is something which must be put above all the rest, that there is something which can truly teach you to live, which must form your character, rule your movements when you understand that, you can look at yourself doing, objectivise yourself, laugh a little at all those multiple small bondages of habit, traditions, the education you have received, and then put the light, consciousness, aspiration for surrender to the Divine on these things, and try to receive the divine inspiration to do things as its necessary, not according to habits, not according to ones vital impulses, not according to all the vital impulses and personal wills which one receives from others and which push him to do things which perhaps he would not have done without all that.
One must observe all these things, look at them attentively and put them one after another in front of the divine Truth as one can receive itit is progressive, one receives it purer and purer, stronger and stronger, more and more clear-sightedlyput all these things before it and with an absolute sincerity will that this may guide you and nothing else. You do this once, a hundred times, a thousand times, millions of times and after years of sustained effort you can gradually become aware that at last you are a free beingbecause this is whats remarkable: that when one is perfectly surrendered to the Divine one is perfectly free, and this is the absolute condition for freedom, to belong to the Divine alone; you are free from the whole world because you belong only to Him. And this surrender is the supreme liberation, you are also free from your little personal ego and of all things this is the most difficultand the happiest too, the only thing that can give you a constant peace, an uninterrupted joy and the feeling of an infinite freedom from all that afflicts you, dwarfs, diminishes, impoverishes you, and from all that can create the least anxiety in you, the least fear. You are no longer afraid of anything, you no longer fear anything, you are the supreme master of your destiny because it is the Divine who wills in you and guides everything. But this does not happen overnight: a little time and a great deal of ardour in the will, not fearing to make any effort and not losing heart when one doesnt succeed, knowing that the victory is certain and that one must last out until it comes. There you are.
1955-10-19 - The rhythms of time - The lotus of knowledge and perfection - Potential knowledge - The teguments of the soul - Shastra and the Gurus direct teaching - He who chooses the Infinite..., #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And all movementswhen you observe them, you become aware that they have a certain rhythm the movements of inner consciousness, for example, not only from the point of view of understanding but that of personal reactions, of the ups and downs in progress; of a fairly regular periodic return, at once of advancing and recoiling, of difficulties and of helps. But if each person is attentive he realises that his own rhythm is absolutely particular to him; it is not the same rhythm as his neighbours. But even as the seasons follow a certain rhythm, regular enough on the whole, so the individual life has its seasons. And when one studies oneself attentively, one finds out that there are even certain repetitions of analogous circumstances at regular intervals. Even, very sensitive people become aware that there are certain days of the week or certain hours of the day when they can do things more easily. Some of them have particular difficulties on particular days and at particular hours; some on the contrary have better inspirations at particular moments but every one has to find this out in himself by observation. Naturally it is far from being absolute, it is not strict, and if it is troublesome, it can be eliminated very easily simply by a little effort of resolute will. But if it helps, one can make use of it.
And all this, each thing having its own rhythm, well, it makes an extremely complicated criss-crossing of rhythms, which results in what we see: something which seems to have nonebecause it is too complicated, it is too complex.
1955-12-07 - Emotional impulse of self-giving - A young dancer in France - The heart has wings, not the head - Only joy can conquer the Adversary, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When she was in the state of inspiration she wrote without a mistake, like a great writer; and as soon as she came out of that state and fell back into her down-to-earth consciousness the needs of life, the necessities of each minute, etc.everything disappeared, she could not even write a single line without making mistakes and it was totally unrefined stuff.
So you see, this proves that if one attains the true consciousness, there is no longer any problem to solve. What you have to be, you become. What you have to know, you know. And what you have to do, you have the power to do. And it naturally follows that all those so-called difficulties immediately vanish.
1956-06-20 - Hearts mystic light, intuition - Psychic being, contact - Secular ethics - True role of mind - Realise the Divine by love - Depression, pleasure, joy - Heart mixture - To follow the soul - Physical process - remember the Mother, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the true role of the mind is the formation and organisation of action. The mind has a formative and organising power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order, for action, for organising action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirationswhe ther from above or from the mystic centre of the soul and simply formulating the plan of actionin broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organisationsit would amply fulfil its function.
It is not an instrument of knowledge.
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For instance, take a movement, an inspiration coming from the psychic depths of the being for it comes even to those who are not conscious of their psychica kind of inspiration coming from the depths; well, in order to make itself perceptible it has to come to the surface. And as it comes to the surface, it gets mixed with all sorts of things which have nothing to do with it but which want to make use of it. As, for instance, all the desires and passions of the vital which, as soon as a force from the depths rises to the surface, catch hold of it for their own satisfaction. Or else people who live in the mind and want to understand and evaluate their experience, to judge it: then it is the mind that seizes upon this inspiration or this force which rises to the surface, for its own benefit, for its own satisfaction and it becomes mixed, and that spoils everything. And this happens constantly; constantly surface movements creep into the inspiration from the depths and deform it, veil it, defile it, ruin it completely, deforming it to such an extent that it is no longer recognisable.
Why do these external impulses, when they come in contact with the inspiration rising from within, spoil everything, instead of being transformed?
Ah! excuse me, it is a reciprocal movement. And it depends on the proportion. The inspiration from within acts, of course. It is not that it is completely absorbed and destroyed, it isnt that. Necessarily, it acts but it becomes mixed, it loses its purity and original power. But all the same something remains, and the result depends on the proportion of the forces, and this proportion is very different depending on the individual.
There comes a time when one deliberately calls the deep inner inspiration and surrenders to it, when it can enter almost completely pure and make you act in accordance with the Divine Will.
The mixture is not unavoidable; it is only what usually happens. And the proportion is very different according to the individual. With some, when the psychic within takes a decision and sends out a force, it is quite visible, it is visibly a psychic inspiration. One can at times see a sort of shadow pass which comes from the mind or the vital; but these are interventions of no importance which cannot at all change the nature of the psychic inspiration, if one does not let them have the upper hand.
None of these things is irremediable, for otherwise there would be no hope of progress.
--
The first condition is to receive inspirations from the soulexactly what we were just speaking about for if one does not receive them, how can one follow ones soul? The first condition is to be a little conscious of ones soul and receive its inspirations. Then, naturally, it goes without saying that one must obey them instead of obeying the reasoning intellect.
But how to do it? By what method? This is something purely personal. Each one must find his own method. The principle is there; if one wants to apply it, for each one the method is different. It all depends on the extent to which one is conscious of the inspirations from the soul, on the degree of identity one has with it.
So one cant give the same remedy for everybody.
1956-08-29 - To live spontaneously - Mental formations Absolute sincerity - Balance is indispensable, the middle path - When in difficulty, widen the consciousness - Easiest way of forgetting oneself, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And if one comes down to the sphere of action, it is still more difficult; for normally, if one wants to act with some kind of logic, one usually has to think out beforeh and what one wants to do and plan it before doing it, otherwise one may be tossed about by all sorts of desires and impulses which would be very far from the inspiration spoken about in Wu Wei; it would simply be movements of the lower nature driving you to act. Therefore, unless one has reached the state of wisdom and detachment of the Chinese sage mentioned in this story, it is better not to be spontaneous in ones daily actions, for one would risk being the plaything of all the most disorderly impulses and influences.
But once one enters the yoga and wants to do yoga, it is very necessary not to be the toy of ones own mental formations. If one wants to rely on ones experiences, one must take great care not to construct within oneself the notion of the experiences one wants to have, the idea one has about them, the form one expects or hopes to see. For, the mental formation, as I already have told you very often, is a real formation, a real creation, and with your idea you create forms which are to a certain extent independent of you and return to you as though from outside and give you the impression of being experiences. But these experiences which are either willed or sought after or expected are not spontaneous experiences and risk being illusionsat times even dangerous illusions.
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And naturally, when there is a unity, an agreement, a harmony among all the wills of the being, your being can become simple, candid and uniform in its action and tendencies. It is only when the whole being is grouped around a single central movement that you can be spontaneous. For if, within you, there is something which is turned towards the Divine and awaits the inspiration and impulse, and at the same time there is another part of the being which seeks its own ends and works to realise its own desires, you no longer know where you stand, and you can no longer be sure of what may happen, for one part can not only undo but totally contradict what the other wants to do.
And surely, to be in harmony with what is said in Wu Wei, after having seen very clearly what is necessary and what ought to be done, it is recommended not to put either violence or too much zest into the realisation of this programme, for an excess of zest is detrimental to the peace and tranquillity and calm necessary for the divine Consciousness to express itself through the individual. And it comes to this:
1957-01-30 - Artistry is just contrast - How to perceive the Divine Guidance?, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If one wants to follow a discipline of yoga, naturally, before undertaking anything one must try to discern and know if the inspiration received is a real one, coming from the Divine, or whether it is simply a reaction to outer circumstances and an impulse, either vital or mental. It is quite important, even very important, to try to discern and act in full knowledge of the cause. But there are very many things one does and about which one is not in the habit of thinking beforehand. When the circumstance comes, one obeys it, so to say. And, indeed, these things, like almost everything one does in life, are not important in themselves. The only thing that matters is the attitude with which they are done. The fact that you do something because that action is present there before you for one reason or another and that you are, so to say, always obliged to act as long as you are in the outer lifeall this has a certain importance from the point of view of the management of life if these acts are liable to have far-reaching consequences in life, as for example, getting married or going to live in one place or another or taking up one occupation or another; these things are generally considered important, and they are so to a certain extent; but even for them, from the point of view of yoga, everything depends much more on the attitude one takes than on the thing itself. And so, above all, for all the very small actions of daily life, the importance is reduced to a minimum.
There are some scrupulous people who set problems to themselves and find it very difficult to solve them, because they state the problem wrongly. I knew a young woman who was a theosophist and was trying to practise; she told me, We are taught that the divine Will must prevail in all that we do, but in the morning when I have my breakfast, how can I know whether God wants me to put two lumps of sugar in my coffee or only one? And it was quite touching, you know, and I had some trouble explaining to her that the spirit in which she drank her coffee, the attitude she had towards her food, was much more important than the number of lumps of sugar she put into it.1
1957-04-24 - Perfection, lower and higher, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I believe that is one of the things Sri Aurobindo is going to explain: why it is necessary to give to the physical, external being, its full development, the capacity of controlling matter directly; then you put at the disposal of the Spirit an instrument capable of manifesting it, otherwise Yes, I knew several people who in their ordinary state could not write three lines without making a mistake, not only spelling mistakes but mistakes of language, that is, who could not express one thought clearlywell, in their moments of spiritual inspiration, they used to write very beautiful things, but all the same these very beautiful things were not so beautiful as the works of the greatest writers. These things seemed remarkable in comparison with what they could do in their ordinary state; it was true, their present possibilities were used to the maximum, it was something that gave a value to what otherwise would have had none at all. But supposing you take a real geniusa musician or artist or writer of geniuswho has fully mastered his instrument, who can use it to produce works that express the utmost human possibility, if you add to this a spiritual consciousness, the supramental force, then you will have something truly divine.
And this is precisely the key to the effort Sri Aurobindo wanted us to make.
1958-02-26 - The moon and the stars - Horoscopes and yoga, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The waxing moon used to be considered as the symbol of spiritual aspiration for transformation, and spiritual plenitude was symbolised by the full moon. Moonlight has always been considered to be very favourable to visions, to poetic inspiration and all other-worldly activity. There are all kinds of stories and legends about the starsstars which appeared on the day a divine being was born. But all that is a rather literary kind of symbolism.
There is a fairly widespread belief that stars have a special influence on the destiny of men, to the extent that an entire system of knowledge is founded on this and, according to the different positions of the stars in the sky, it makes quite complete predictions about what will happen in your lifetime.
1958-07-09 - Faith and personal effort, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Religion has opened itself to denial by its claim to determine the truth by divine authority, by inspiration, by a sacrosanct and infallible sovereignty given to it from on high; it has sought to impose itself on human thought, feeling, conduct without discussion or question. This is an excessive and premature claim, although imposed in a way on the religious idea by the imperative and absolute character of the inspirations and illuminations which are its warrant and justification and by the necessity of faith as an occult light and power from the soul amidst the minds ignorance, doubts, weakness, incertitudes. Faith is indispensable to man, for without it he could not proceed forward in his journey through the Unknown; but it ought not to be imposed, it should come as a free perception or an imperative direction from the inner spirit. A claim to unquestioned acceptance could only be warranted if the spiritual effort had already achieved mans progression to the highest Truth-Consciousness total and integral, free from all ignorant mental and vital mixture. This is the ultimate object before us, but it has not yet been accomplished, and the premature claim has obscured the true work of the religious instinct in man, which is to lead him towards the Divine Reality, to formulate all that he has yet achieved in that direction and to give to each human being a mould of spiritual discipline, a way of seeking, touching, nearing the Divine Truth, a way which is proper to the potentialities of his nature.
The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 863-64
1958 09 19, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Many people have asked why Sri Aurobindo said that the river is slender. This is an expressive image which creates a striking contrast between the immensity of the divine, supramental Knowledge the origin of this inspiration, which is infinite and what a human mind can perceive of it and receive from it. Even when you are in contact with these domains, the portion, so to say, which you perceive, is minimal, slender. It is like a tiny little stream or a few falling drops and these drops are so pure, so brilliant, so complete in themselves, that they give you the sense of a marvellous inspiration, the impression that you have reached infinite domains and risen very high above the ordinary human condition. And yet this is nothing in comparison with what is still to be perceived.
I have also been asked if the psychic being or psychic consciousness is the medium through which the inspiration is perceived.
Generally, yes. The first contact you have with higher regions is a psychic one. Certainly, before an inner psychic opening is achieved, it is difficult to have these inspirations. It can happen as an exception and under exceptional conditions as a grace, but the true contact comes through the psychic; because the psychic consciousness is certainly the medium with the greatest affinity with the divine Truth.
Later, when one has emerged from the mental consciousness into a higher consciousness beyond the mind, beyond even the higher mind, and when one opens oneself to the Overmind regions, and through the Overmind to the Supermind, one can receive inspirations directly. And naturally at that point they become more frequent, richer, if one may say so, more complete. There comes a time when inspiration can be obtained at will, but this obviously demands considerable inner development.
As we have just said, this inspiration from regions far above the mind surpasses in value and quality the highest achievements of the mind, such as reason. Reason is certainly at the apex of human mental activity. It can review and control the knowledge acquired with the help of the senses. It has often been said that the senses are altogether defective instruments of knowledge, that they are incapable of perceiving things as they are, that the information they supply is superficial and very often faulty. When it is fully developed, the human reason knows this and does not trust the knowledge of the senses. It is only if one is infra-rational, if I may say so, that one believes that all one sees, hears, or touches is absolutely true. As soon as one is developed in the region of higher reason, one knows that all these notions are almost essentially false, and that one can in no way rely on them. But the knowledge one receives from this supramental or divine region surpasses all that can be conceived or understood by reason, at least to the same extent that reason surpasses the knowledge of the senses.
Several questions concern a practical point: How to develop the capacity for inspiration?; What are the conditions needed to receive inspiration and is it possible to have it constantly?
I have already replied to this. When one opens oneself to the supramental regions, one puts oneself in the right state for receiving constant inspirations. Until then, the best method is to silence the mind as much as possible, to turn it upwards and to remain in a state of silent and attentive receptivity. The more one is able to establish a silent, perfect calm in the mind, the more one becomes capable of receiving inspirations.
It was also asked whether inspirations are of different qualities.
In their origin, no. They always come down from the regions of pure Knowledge and penetrate whatever part of the human being is most receptive, best adapted to receive them but these inspirations may apply to different domains of action. They can be inspirations of pure knowledge, they can also be inspirations that contri bute to ones effort to progress, and they can also be inspirations for action which help in the practical and outer realisation. But the question here is the use one makes of the inspiration, rather than of the quality of the inspiration the inspiration is always like a drop of light and truth which succeeds in penetrating the human consciousness.
What the human consciousness does with this drop depends on the attitude, the need, the occasion, the circumstances; it does not alter the essential nature of the inspiration but it does alter the use one makes of it, its practical application.
Some of the other questions concern the difference between inspiration and intuition. They are not the same thing; but I think that we will have the opportunity of returning to this subject in the course of our reading. When Sri Aurobindo tells us what he considers intuition to be, we shall come back to it.
In a general and almost absolute way, if you truly wish to profit from these readings, as from all of Sri Aurobindos writings, the best method is this: having gathered your consciousness and focused your attention on what you are reading, you must establish a minimum of mental tranquillity the best thing would be to obtain perfect silence and achieve a state of immobility of the mind, immobility of the brain, I might say, so that the attention becomes as still and immobile as a mirror, like the surface of absolutely still water. Then what one has read passes through the surface and penetrates deep into the being where it is received with a minimum of distortion. Afterwards sometimes long afterwardsit wells up again from the depths and manifests in the brain with its full power of comprehension, not as knowledge acquired from outside, but as a light one carried within.
1958 09 26, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here it is the same phenomenon, but, as I said, the other way round. Instead of infrarational impulses which make you speak with excitement and passion, it is, on the contrary, an inspiration coming from above, a light and a knowledge greater than those of the reason which take hold of the tongue and make you say things that you would have been incapable of saying even with the most enlightened reason.
Sri Aurobindo tells us that the reason trembles because these higher truths always appear in the human domain as paradoxes, revelations contrary to reason; not because reason is incapable of understanding what comes from the higher regions, but because these revelations are always ahead of, very much ahead of, that which reason has understood or accepted. What the human reason of today finds reasonable has been paradoxical and mad in the past; and probablyone may say, certainly these unexpected, paradoxical, revolutionary revelations which are manifesting now and making the reason tremble, will in time to come be very reasonable knowledge, which in turn will tremble before new revelations.
1958 10 17, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a very long time in life, until one possesses anything resembling Knowledge, it is indispensable that reason be the master, otherwise one is the plaything of ones impulses, ones fancies, ones more or less disordered emotional imaginings, and one is in danger of being very far removed not merely from wisdom but even from the knowledge needed for conducting oneself acceptably. But when one has managed to control all the lower parts of the being with the help of reason, which is the apex of ordinary human intelligence, then if one wants to go beyond this point, if one wants to liberate oneself from ordinary life, from ordinary thought, from the ordinary vision of things, one must, if I may say so, stand upon the head of reason, not trampling it down disdainfully, but using it as a stepping stone to something higher, something beyond it, to attain to something which concerns itself very little with the decrees of reason; something which can allow itself to be irrational because it is a higher irrationality, with a higher light; something which is beyond ordinary knowledge and which receives its inspirations from above, from high above, from the divine Wisdom.
That is what this means.
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Many times in his writings, particularly in The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo warns us against the imaginings of those who believe they can do sadhana without rigorous self-control and who heed all sorts of inspirations, which lead them to a dangerous imbalance where all their repressed, hidden, secret desires come out into the open under the pretence of liberation from ordinary conventions and ordinary reason.
One can be free only by soaring to the heights, high above human passions. Only when one has achieved a higher, selfless freedom and done away with all desires and impulses does one have the right to be free.
1960 06 08, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Those who are developed inwardly, either in their senses or in their minds, perceive these realities which are invisible (to the ordinary man) and receive their inspiration from them.
So the writer or writers of the Bhagavat were certainly in contact with a whole inner world that is well and truly real and existent, where they saw and experienced everything they have described or revealed.
1962 01 12, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As long as one can keep this absolute immobility of the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pure, it comes pure. If one can catch it and keep it while speaking, what comes through is also unmixed, it remains pure.
It is an extremely delicate working, probably because it is unfamiliar the least movement, the smallest mental vibration disturbs everything. But as long as it lasts it is perfectly pure. And that must be the constant state of a supramentalised life. The mentalised spiritual will should no longer intervene; because one may very well have a spiritual will, one can live constantly expressing the spiritual will that is what happens to all those who feel that they are guided by the Divine within but that comes through a mental transcription. And so long as it is like that, it is not the supramental life. The supramental life no longer passes through the mind. The mind is an immobile zone of transmission. The slightest twitch is enough to disturb it.
--- Overview of noun inspiration
The noun inspiration has 6 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (1) inspiration ::: (arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity)
2. (1) inspiration, brainchild ::: (a product of your creative thinking and work; "he had little respect for the inspirations of other artists"; "after years of work his brainchild was a tangible reality")
3. inspiration ::: (a sudden intuition as part of solving a problem)
4. divine guidance, inspiration ::: ((theology) a special influence of a divinity on the minds of human beings; "they believe that the books of Scripture were written under divine guidance")
5. inspiration, stirring ::: (arousing to a particular emotion or action)
6. inhalation, inspiration, aspiration, intake, breathing in ::: (the act of inhaling; the drawing in of air (or other gases) as in breathing)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun inspiration
6 senses of inspiration
Sense 1
inspiration
=> idea, thought
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
inspiration, brainchild
=> product, production
=> creation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 3
inspiration
=> intuition
=> basic cognitive process
=> process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
divine guidance, inspiration
=> cognitive factor
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
inspiration, stirring
=> arousal, rousing
=> change of state
=> change
=> action
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 6
inhalation, inspiration, aspiration, intake, breathing in
=> breath
=> bodily process, body process, bodily function, activity
=> organic process, biological process
=> process, physical process
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun inspiration
2 of 6 senses of inspiration
Sense 1
inspiration
=> source, seed, germ
=> mother
=> afflatus
Sense 6
inhalation, inspiration, aspiration, intake, breathing in
=> gasp, pant
=> puff, drag, pull
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun inspiration
6 senses of inspiration
Sense 1
inspiration
=> idea, thought
Sense 2
inspiration, brainchild
=> product, production
Sense 3
inspiration
=> intuition
Sense 4
divine guidance, inspiration
=> cognitive factor
Sense 5
inspiration, stirring
=> arousal, rousing
Sense 6
inhalation, inspiration, aspiration, intake, breathing in
=> breath
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun inspiration
6 senses of inspiration
Sense 1
inspiration
-> idea, thought
=> inspiration
=> cogitation
=> concept, conception, construct
=> preoccupation
=> misconception
=> plan, program, programme
=> figment
=> generalization, generalisation, generality
=> suggestion
=> impression, feeling, belief, notion, opinion
=> reaction
=> theorem
=> notion, whim, whimsy, whimsey
=> meaning, substance
=> burden
=> theme, motif
=> ideal
=> idealization, idealisation
=> keynote
=> kink
Sense 2
inspiration, brainchild
-> product, production
=> book, volume
=> book
=> by-product, byproduct, spin-off
=> deliverable
=> end product, output
=> inspiration, brainchild
=> job
=> magazine
=> newspaper, paper
=> output, outturn, turnout
=> turnery
=> work, piece of work
=> yield, fruit
=> movie, film, picture, moving picture, moving-picture show, motion picture, motion-picture show, picture show, pic, flick
Sense 3
inspiration
-> intuition
=> feeling, intuitive feeling
=> gnosis
=> insight, sixth sense
=> immediacy, immediate apprehension
=> inspiration
Sense 4
divine guidance, inspiration
-> cognitive factor
=> divine guidance, inspiration
=> difficulty
=> determinant, determiner, determinative, determining factor, causal factor
Sense 5
inspiration, stirring
-> arousal, rousing
=> awakening, wakening, waking up
=> excitation, excitement
=> incitation, incitement
=> inflammation, inflaming
=> inspiration, stirring
=> stimulation
=> titillation
Sense 6
inhalation, inspiration, aspiration, intake, breathing in
-> breath
=> exhalation, expiration, breathing out
=> inhalation, inspiration, aspiration, intake, breathing in
--- Grep of noun inspiration
inspiration
Wikipedia - Aengus -- Irish god of youth, love, and poetic inspiration
Wikipedia - Artistic inspiration -- unconscious burst of creativity
Wikipedia - Biblical inspiration
Wikipedia - Blonde Inspiration -- 1941 film by Busby Berkeley
Wikipedia - Category:Bioinspiration
Wikipedia - Christina Kay -- Scottish school teacher, inspiration for Miss Jean Brodie
Wikipedia - Divine inspiration
Wikipedia - Dream board -- Collage of images, pictures and affirmations of one's dreams and desires, designed to serve as a source of inspiration and motivation
Wikipedia - False prophet -- Person who falsely claims the gift of prophecy or divine inspiration
Wikipedia - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology -- Engineering societies based in the United States
Wikipedia - Freightliner Inspiration
Wikipedia - Her Inspiration -- 1918 silent film directed by Robert Thornby
Wikipedia - Her Soul's Inspiration -- 1917 American silent drama film
Wikipedia - Inspiration (1928 film) -- 1928 film
Wikipedia - Inspiration (1931 film) -- 1931 film
Wikipedia - Inspirational fiction -- Literary genre
Wikipedia - Inspiration FM -- Community radio station in Northampton, United Kingdom
Wikipedia - Inspiration Mars Foundation -- A defunct American organization that proposed a crewed flyby mission to Mars
Wikipedia - James Bond (ornithologist) -- American ornithologist and inspiration for the name of the fictional spy
Wikipedia - List of ANA Inspiration champions -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - Llewelyn Davies boys -- English siblings that served as inspiration for Peter Pan
Wikipedia - Marine art -- Form of figurative art that portrays or draws its main inspiration from the sea
Wikipedia - Michael Llewelyn Davies -- Inspiration for Peter Pan
Wikipedia - Muses -- Inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts
Wikipedia - Olive Byrne -- American author, inspiration for Wonder Woman
Wikipedia - Songs of Inspiration II -- 2007 album by the American band, Alabama
Wikipedia - Songs of Inspiration -- 2006 album by the American band, Alabama
Wikipedia - Space Shuttle Inspiration -- Space Shuttle mockup
Wikipedia - The Inspiration Networks -- Group of cable television channels
Wikipedia - The Way (Put Your Hand in My Hand) -- 2003 single by Divine Inspiration
Wikipedia - Verlag Inspiration Un Limited -- British-German book publishing company
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Inspiration
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Inspiration_as_musician_by_Ven._Dhammananda
Integral World - Postmodern spirituality: Part IV: The positive Core Concept at the Center of late Postmodern Philosophy: Inspiration, Roland Benedikter
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2016/06/artistic-inspiration.html
dedroidify.blogspot - fiction-as-transmutation-inspiration
dedroidify.blogspot - inspiration-for-universe
dedroidify.blogspot - the-most-inspirational-video-youll-ever
wiki.auroville - Inspiration
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdaptationInspiration
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InspirationalInsult
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InspirationallyDisabled
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InspirationallyDisadvantaged
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InspirationalMartyr
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InspirationForTheWork
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InspirationNod
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PathOfInspiration
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/InspirationInformation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E23InspirationManifestation
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Inspiration
El Chapuln Colorado (1973 - 1979) - This series from Latin America, followed the adventures of a klutzy Mexican superhero, it and it's companion show, El Chavo del Ocho are still cult and family favorites in the Spanish speaking world. Simpsons fans, may know that the title hero was the inspiration of the Simpsons favorite, "Bumblebe...
The Montel Williams Show (1991 - 2008) - Originally similar to a tabloid talk show, the Montel Williams Show later branched out into a more inspirational talk show. One of Willaims' most popular guests, psychic Sylvia Browne would appear giving spiritual advice and a look into the afterlife. The show's showcase of Browne led it to win the...
Mega Man: Fully Charged (2018 - Current) - an animated television series based on the Japanese video game series of the same name by Capcom, developed by Man of Action Studios and produced by Dentsu Entertainment USA, and DHX Studios for Cartoon Network and Family Chrgd. The show draws primarily inspiration from the Classic series, rather th...
The Muse(1999) - When a struggling screenwriter (Albert Brooks) hits rock bottom, he's introduced to Sarah (Sharon Stone), a supposed daughter of Zeus and a muse of the arts who promises to help inspire him. However he soon finds that inspiration doesn't come easy as Sarah moves in with him and his family.
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore(1974) - This movie was the inspiration for the sitcom Alice starring Linda Lavin.In the movie however Alice is played by Ellen Burstyn,in an oscar winning performance.After her husband dies, Alice and her son Tommy are penniless.So Alice and Tommy hit the road,and eventually Alice takes A job in A diner cal...
Revenge of the Pink Panther(1978) - The sixth Pink Panther comedy was the last to star Peter Sellers (the following film in the series incorporated previously unseen footage), and it was also the last in the series to show any signs of genuine inspiration. It's a weak entry in the Panther pantheon, involving a rather mundane plot abou...
Heavy Traffic(1973) - An animated feature which begins, ends and occasionally combines with, live-action filmed on location. A white dropout struggles to create comics and animated films, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. This was done by the same people that made Fritz the Cat. So expect carto...
Windrunner (1995)(1995) - "A high school boy unwillingly moves to Southern Utah with his mother in this inspirational family feature. In Utah, the boy visits his imprisoned father, he meets a girl, he makes the school football team, and most significantly, he meets Wa To Huck. Wa To Huck is a Native American Indian who is sa...
Yakuza: Like a Dragon(2007) - Cult Japanese director Takashi Miike draws inspiration from the popular Playstation 2 title Yakuza for this unhinged tale of underworld violence in Tokyo starring Goro Kishitani and Kazuki Kitamura. It's summertime in Tokyo, and as the temperature rises, two undercover cops stake out a high-profile...
Breaking Home Ties(1987) - A Norman Rockwell illustration provides the inspiration for this TV movie starring Jason Robards, Eva Marie Saint and Doug McKeon.
Cinderella Man(2005) - The story of James Braddock, a supposedly washed up boxer who came back to become a champion and an inspiration in the 1930s.
Black Venus(1983) - Spanish actor Jose Antonio Ceinos stars as a down-and-out sculptor, whose inspiration returns with the strange appearance of a beautiful, mysterious black muse.
Bleed for This (2016) ::: 6.8/10 -- R | 1h 57min | Biography, Drama, Sport | 18 November 2016 (USA) -- The inspirational story of World Champion Boxer Vinny Pazienza who, after a near fatal car crash which left him not knowing if he'd ever walk again, made one of sport's most incredible comebacks. Director: Ben Younger Writers:
City of Joy (1992) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 12min | Drama | 17 April 1992 (USA) -- An American doctor, a British nurse and an illiterate Indian farmer join together to transform a Calcutta ghetto in this uplifting, inspirational movie starring Patrick Swayze and Pauline Collins. Director: Roland Joff Writers:
Dhobi Ghat (2010) ::: 7.0/10 -- TV-14 | 1h 40min | Drama | 21 January 2011 (India) -- The lives of four people intersect in Mumbai: a washer-man who wants to become an actor, a banker-turned-photographer, a painter looking for inspiration, and a newly-married immigrant who journals her experiences on home video. Director: Kiran Rao Writer:
Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017) ::: 7.1/10 -- PG | 1h 47min | Biography, Drama, Family | 29 September 2017 (UK) -- The relationship between writer AA Milne and his son, Christopher Robin, and how this became the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh. Director: Simon Curtis Writers: Frank Cottrell Boyce, Simon Vaughan
Home Fires ::: TV-PG | 45min | Drama, War | TV Series (20152016) -- A drama following a group of inspirational women in a rural Cheshire community during World War II. Creator: Simon Block
In the Mouth of Madness (1994) ::: 7.2/10 -- R | 1h 35min | Drama, Horror, Mystery | 3 February 1995 (USA) -- An insurance investigator begins discovering that the impact a horror writer's books have on his fans is more than inspirational. Director: John Carpenter Writer: Michael De Luca
Moxie (2021) ::: 6.8/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 51min | Comedy, Drama, Music | 3 March 2021 (USA) -- Fed up with the sexist and toxic status quo at her high school, a shy 16-year-old finds inspiration from her mother's rebellious past and anonymously publishes a zine that sparks a school-wide, coming-of-rage revolution. Director: Amy Poehler Writers:
Smoke & Mirrors (2016) ::: 6.9/10 -- El hombre de las mil caras (original title) -- Smoke & Mirrors Poster -- The story of a man who fooled an entire country. A tale of cheats and impostors, taking its inspiration from true facts and from one of the most intriguing characters of recent decades: the spy Francisco Paesa. Director: Alberto Rodrguez Writers:
Stardust Memories (1980) ::: 7.3/10 -- PG | 1h 29min | Comedy, Drama | 26 September 1980 (USA) -- While attending a retrospective of his work, a filmmaker recalls his life and his loves: the inspirations for his films. Director: Woody Allen Writer: Woody Allen Stars:
Swimming Upstream (2003) ::: 7.1/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 54min | Biography, Drama, Sport | 27 February 2003 -- Swimming Upstream Poster The inspirational life story of Australian swimmer Tony Fingleton. Director: Russell Mulcahy Writers: Anthony Fingleton (autobiography), Diane Fingleton (autobiography) | 1 more credit Stars:
The Christmas Card (2006) ::: 7.0/10 -- 1h 24min | Drama, Romance | TV Movie 2 December 2006 -- US soldier visits the town from where an inspirational Christmas card was sent to him by a church group that mails cards out to servicemen as a goodwill effort. Director: Stephen Bridgewater (as Stephen W. Bridgewater) Writer: Joany Kane Stars:
The Magic of Belle Isle (2012) ::: 7.0/10 -- PG | 1h 49min | Comedy, Drama | 6 July 2012 (USA) -- Monty Wildhorn, an alcoholic novelist of Westerns, has lost his drive. His nephew pushes him to summer in quiet Belle Isle. He begrudgingly befriends a newly single mom and her 3 girls who help him find the inspiration to write again. Director: Rob Reiner Writer:
Tolkien (2019) ::: 6.8/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 52min | Biography, Drama, Romance | 10 May 2019 (USA) -- The formative years of the orphaned author J.R.R. Tolkien as he finds friendship, love and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts at school. Director: Dome Karukoski Writers:
https://broadcasting.fandom.com/wiki/The_Inspiration_Network_(INSP)
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Bloody_Inspiration
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Bolstering_Inspiration
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https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Directing_Inspiration
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Aggressive Retsuko (ONA) 3rd Season -- -- Fanworks -- 10 eps -- Other -- Slice of Life Comedy -- Aggressive Retsuko (ONA) 3rd Season Aggressive Retsuko (ONA) 3rd Season -- After an emotional breakup with her boyfriend, red panda Retsuko closes herself off to the thought of ever being in love again—well, with an actual person anyway. Retreating into the world of VR, her virtual boyfriend showers her with praise and shows up in cute outfits, albeit for a price. -- -- While scrambling to find other ways to earn money, Retsuko finds herself in yet another financial bind after accidentally ramming into a parked van with a rental vehicle. The owner of the van, a gruff cheetah named Hyoudou, recruits her as an accountant for an underground idol group which he manages. Retsuko soon begins to buckle under the pressure from the new job, leading to plenty of inspiration for her next death metal vent sessions. -- -- In the midst of it all, Retsuko begins to wonder if she truly desires a colorless and uninteresting life, or if there's something waiting beyond her office desk. Will Retsuko finally come out on top, both in love and in the workplace? Or will she once again be convinced that the dull and sterile life in her office environment is the one she must lead? -- -- ONA - Aug 27, 2020 -- 46,456 7.90
Aoi Bungaku Series -- -- Madhouse -- 12 eps -- Novel -- Drama Historical Psychological Seinen Thriller -- Aoi Bungaku Series Aoi Bungaku Series -- Ningen Shikkaku -- A high school student seeks solace in narcotics to escape the dispiritedness that has come over his life. As he goes through the different stages of his life, it culminates in the questioning of his existence in the world. -- -- Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita -- The adaptation of Ango Sakaguchi's literary work deals with the love story of a woman abducted by a mountain bandit. -- -- Kokoro -- While trying to fill the void in his life, a university student in Tokyo encounters a charismatic older man, whom he addresses as "Sensei," who offers him advice on life. However, the man is apprehensive to share his life experience, deepening the student's curiosity. Through this peculiar relationship, the student comes to ponder about the distance between him and his family and the growing desolation in his heart filled with ego and guilt. -- -- Hashire, Melos! -- The story portrays the unbreakable bond between two friends, Melos and Selinuntius, and their faith in protecting each other, all while dangling on a thread which hovers over death and misery. -- -- Kumo no Ito -- Kandata is a coldhearted criminal who, while being punished in Hell for his misdeeds, is noticed by the Buddha Shakyamuni. Despite maintaining a record of committing ruthless atrocities, Kandata had once shown mercy to a spider he encountered in the forest by letting it live. Moved by this, Shakyamuni offers him redemption by dropping a spider's thread into the searing pits of Hell, and it is up to Kandata to seize the opportunity. -- -- Jigokuhen -- Yoshihide is a great painter in the land ruled by Horikawa, a tyrant. Offered a commission to paint the "Buddhist Hell" by the lord, Yoshihide declines, as he cannot paint anything he has not witnessed himself. In an attempt to make Yoshihide understand the magnitude of his request, the lord tortures his subjects to provide inspiration for the artist, descending his domain into utter despair and darkness. -- -- TV - Oct 11, 2009 -- 174,861 7.74
Barakamon -- -- Kinema Citrus -- 12 eps -- Web manga -- Comedy Slice of Life -- Barakamon Barakamon -- Seishuu Handa is an up-and-coming calligrapher: young, handsome, talented, and unfortunately, a narcissist to boot. When a veteran labels his award-winning piece as "unoriginal," Seishuu quickly loses his cool with severe repercussions. -- -- As punishment, and also in order to aid him in self-reflection, Seishuu's father exiles him to the Goto Islands, far from the comfortable Tokyo lifestyle the temperamental artist is used to. Now thrown into a rural setting, Seishuu must attempt to find new inspiration and develop his own unique art style—that is, if boisterous children (headed by the frisky Naru Kotoishi), fujoshi middle schoolers, and energetic old men stop barging into his house! The newest addition to the intimate and quirky Goto community only wants to get some work done, but the islands are far from the peaceful countryside he signed up for. Thanks to his wacky neighbors who are entirely incapable of minding their own business, the arrogant calligrapher learns so much more than he ever hoped to. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 523,303 8.40
Comic Girls -- -- Nexus -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy -- Comic Girls Comic Girls -- Kaoruko "Chaos" Moeta is a young manga artist who is down on her luck. She wants to draw manga about high school girls, but her storyboards are bland, her art uninspired, and her premises weak. Her concerned, exasperated editor comes up with an idea: push Chaos to be more social. So, by her recommendation, Chaos moves into a dormitory for female manga artists. She soon meets the other residents: Tsubasa Katsuki, a shounen manga artist; Ruki Irokawa, who draws erotic manga popular with women; and Koyume Koizuka, a shoujo artist who, like Chaos, has yet to be serialized. Quickly striking up a friendship with these girls, Chaos finds new inspiration for her manga and continues to grow her creativity. -- -- Comic Girls is a showcase of the daily lives of these manga artists. Will Chaos finally be able to make her debut and become serialized? None of the girls know, but they will all do their best to help each other become the best artists they can be. -- -- 115,115 7.41
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- -- Bones -- 64 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Adventure Comedy Drama Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- "In order for something to be obtained, something of equal value must be lost." -- -- Alchemy is bound by this Law of Equivalent Exchange—something the young brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric only realize after attempting human transmutation: the one forbidden act of alchemy. They pay a terrible price for their transgression—Edward loses his left leg, Alphonse his physical body. It is only by the desperate sacrifice of Edward's right arm that he is able to affix Alphonse's soul to a suit of armor. Devastated and alone, it is the hope that they would both eventually return to their original bodies that gives Edward the inspiration to obtain metal limbs called "automail" and become a state alchemist, the Fullmetal Alchemist. -- -- Three years of searching later, the brothers seek the Philosopher's Stone, a mythical relic that allows an alchemist to overcome the Law of Equivalent Exchange. Even with military allies Colonel Roy Mustang, Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, and Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes on their side, the brothers find themselves caught up in a nationwide conspiracy that leads them not only to the true nature of the elusive Philosopher's Stone, but their country's murky history as well. In between finding a serial killer and racing against time, Edward and Alphonse must ask themselves if what they are doing will make them human again... or take away their humanity. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 2,372,958 9.18
Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! -- -- ufotable -- 12 eps -- Original -- Slice of Life Comedy School -- Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! -- Manabi Straight! follows the lives of a group of young high school girls living in the year 2035 while they attend the all-girl Seioh Private High School. Since the birth rate has dropped dramatically, schools are being closed down due to the sheer lack of students available to teach. Morale in schools has dropped dramatically, and Seioh is no exception. -- -- The story begins when the main character, Manami Amamiya, transfers to Seioh. After some initial hijinks involving a futuristic scooter and a swim meet, followed by an inspirational school song performance, she is inducted as the student council president. The story that follows pertains to Manami working with Mika Inamori, the only other student council member, and three other classmates named Mutsuki Uehara, Mei Etoh, and Momoha Odori, in student council matters. After some remodeling of the student council room, Manami and her friends set forth to plan for the upcoming student festival. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia, edited) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- TV - Jan 8, 2007 -- 27,236 7.27
Gravitation -- -- Studio Deen -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Music Romance Shoujo Shounen Ai -- Gravitation Gravitation -- All Shuichi ever dreamed about was following in the footsteps of his pop idol, Ryuichi Sakuma and the band Nittle Grasper. Together with his best friend Hiro, Shuichi's formed a band called Bad Luck and they've even managed to get signed to a major recording label! Unfortunately, the studio deadlines are looming and Shuichi still hasn't finished the lyrics for any of the songs. What he needs is a little inspiration... but he's been running a little low in that department lately. While Hiro recommends finding a girlfriend, fate has other things in store for him... -- -- Walking through the park late one night, Shuichi's latest lyrics flutter away and land at the feet of a stunning stranger that takes his breath away. Unfortunately, that mysterious stranger happens to be the famous novelist Eiri Yuki, who completely crushes the young singer by telling him he has "zero talent". Now, Shuichi's so annoyed that he's managed to finish his song just so he can find and confront Yuki once again. But, are his actions really motivated by anger, or has he actually fallen in love? -- -- (Source: RightStuf) -- -- Licensor: -- Nozomi Entertainment -- 103,035 7.00
Kishibe Rohan wa Ugokanai -- -- David Production -- 4 eps -- Manga -- Action Mystery Shounen Supernatural -- Kishibe Rohan wa Ugokanai Kishibe Rohan wa Ugokanai -- Kishibe Rohan wa Ugokanai adapts a handful of one-shots based on the manga series JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken, and follows the bizarre adventures that Rohan Kishibe goes through as he searches for inspiration for his manga. -- -- Fugou Mura -- -- Rohan accompanies manga editor Kyouka Izumi to a secretive village where she plans on buying a house. Izumi informs Rohan that inhabitants of the village suddenly become rich at the age of 25 after purchasing their homes. Being 25 years old herself, Izumi has high hopes for moving into the village and invites Rohan to gather ideas for his manga. As they enter one of the houses for an interview with the seller, they are greeted by a servant named Ikkyuu, who puts them through a test of etiquette with deadly consequences. -- -- Mutsukabezaka -- -- Rohan meets with his editor, Minoru Kagamari, to discuss both his manga and the six mountains that the manga author recently bought. He explains that he purchased the mountains in order to search for a legendary spirit known as the Mutsukabezaka. To give his search context, he tells the tale of Naoko Osato, a wealthy heiress who murdered her boyfriend and became cursed by the spirit. -- -- Zangenshitsu -- -- Rohan decides to vacation in Venice after putting his manga on hiatus. While there, he explores the interior of a church and examines the structure of its confessional. After stepping into the priest's compartment, Rohan hears a man enter the confessional and begin to confess his sins. The man recounts his confrontation with a starving beggar and the haunting events that followed. -- -- The Run -- -- Youma Hashimoto is a young male model who has quickly risen to success. As his popularity grows, so does his obsession with his appearance and body. One day, he meets Rohan at the gym, and the two quickly form a rivalry which pushes Youma to intensify his training. Soon. Youma's fixation on his physique takes a dark turn as his training takes precedence over his life, and he challenges Rohan to a fatal competition on the treadmills. -- -- OVA - Sep 20, 2017 -- 77,010 7.62
Love Live! Sunshine!! 2nd Season -- -- Sunrise -- 13 eps -- Other -- Music School Slice of Life -- Love Live! Sunshine!! 2nd Season Love Live! Sunshine!! 2nd Season -- Having decided to walk down a path separate from their inspirations as idols, the girls of Aqours are more determined than ever to shine brilliantly as school idols. With their previous performance marginally increasing the number of prospective students for their endangered school, they look to carry the momentum of their small step forward into the school's upcoming open house and the next Love Live competition. Hoping to use these events to bring more attention to their school, the nine girls look to give their best performances yet. -- -- Unfortunately, these small steps forward are not enough to convince Mari Ohara's father from changing his plans. Undeterred by Mari's pleas for reconsideration, the decision to close down the school is made official, putting an end to Uranohoshi Girls' High School's student recruitment, including the open house. Though all hope seems to be lost, the school idols refuse to give up. Faced with impossible odds, Aqours sings, dances, and shines in the hopes of bringing about a miracle. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 88,468 7.57
Mimi wo Sumaseba -- -- Studio Ghibli -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Slice of Life Drama Romance Shoujo -- Mimi wo Sumaseba Mimi wo Sumaseba -- Shizuku Tsukishima is an energetic 14-year-old girl who enjoys reading and writing poetry in her free time. Glancing at the checkout cards of her books one evening, she notices that her library books are frequently checked out by a boy named Seiji Amasawa. Curiosity strikes Shizuku, and she decides to search for the boy who shares her love for literature. -- -- Meeting a peculiar cat on the train, Shizuku follows the animal and is eventually led to a quaint antique shop, where she learns about a cat statuette known as "The Baron." Taking an interest in the shop, she surprisingly finds Seiji, and the two quickly befriend one another. Shizuku learns while acquainting herself with Seiji that he has a dream that he would like to fulfill, causing her dismay as she remains uncertain of her future and has yet to recognize her talents. -- -- However, as her relationship with Seiji grows, Shizuku becomes determined to work toward a goal. Guided by the whispers of her heart and inspiration from The Baron, she resolves to carve out her own potential and dreams. -- -- -- Licensor: -- GKIDS, Walt Disney Studios -- Movie - Jul 15, 1995 -- 238,719 8.23
Mimi wo Sumaseba -- -- Studio Ghibli -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Slice of Life Drama Romance Shoujo -- Mimi wo Sumaseba Mimi wo Sumaseba -- Shizuku Tsukishima is an energetic 14-year-old girl who enjoys reading and writing poetry in her free time. Glancing at the checkout cards of her books one evening, she notices that her library books are frequently checked out by a boy named Seiji Amasawa. Curiosity strikes Shizuku, and she decides to search for the boy who shares her love for literature. -- -- Meeting a peculiar cat on the train, Shizuku follows the animal and is eventually led to a quaint antique shop, where she learns about a cat statuette known as "The Baron." Taking an interest in the shop, she surprisingly finds Seiji, and the two quickly befriend one another. Shizuku learns while acquainting herself with Seiji that he has a dream that he would like to fulfill, causing her dismay as she remains uncertain of her future and has yet to recognize her talents. -- -- However, as her relationship with Seiji grows, Shizuku becomes determined to work toward a goal. Guided by the whispers of her heart and inspiration from The Baron, she resolves to carve out her own potential and dreams. -- -- Movie - Jul 15, 1995 -- 238,719 8.23
R-15 -- -- AIC, Remic -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Ecchi Harem Romance School -- R-15 R-15 -- R-15 is about a boy, Taketo Akutagawa, who attends a school for geniuses: Inspiration Academy Private High School. Taketo is a genius novelist and writes erotica. Despite negative perceptions many people have of him, he aims to be at the top of his class and be recognized as the world's greatest writer. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- TV - Jul 10, 2011 -- 81,149 6.48
Re:Creators -- -- TROYCA -- 22 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Fantasy Mecha -- Re:Creators Re:Creators -- Humans have designed countless worlds—each one born from the unique imagination of its creator. Souta Mizushino is a high school student who aspires to be such a creator by writing and illustrating his own light novel. One day, while watching anime for inspiration, he is briefly transported into a fierce fight scene. When he returns to the real world, he realizes something is amiss: the anime's headstrong heroine, Selesia Yupitilia, has somehow returned with him. -- -- Before long, other fictional characters appear in the world, carrying the hopes and scars of their home. A princely knight, a magical girl, a ruthless brawler, and many others now crowd the streets of Japan. However, the most mysterious one is a woman in full military regalia, dubbed "Gunpuku no Himegimi," who knows far more than she should about the creators' world. Despite this, no one knows her true name or the world she is from. -- -- Meanwhile, Souta and Selesia work together with Meteora Österreich, a calm and composed librarian NPC, to uncover the meaning behind these unnatural events. With powerful forces at play, the once clear line between reality and imagination continues to blur, leading to a fateful meeting between creators and those they created. -- -- 376,319 7.57
Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Harem Comedy Romance Ecchi School -- Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata -- Tomoya Aki, an otaku, has been obsessed with collecting anime and light novels for years, attaching himself to various series with captivating stories and characters. Now, he wants to have a chance of providing the same experience for others by creating his own game, but unfortunately, Tomoya cannot do this task by himself. -- -- He successfully recruits childhood friend Eriri Spencer Sawamura to illustrate and literary elitist Utaha Kasumigaoka to write the script for his visual novel, while he directs. Super-group now in hand, Tomoya only needs an inspiration to base his project on, and luckily meets the beautiful, docile Megumi Katou, who he then models his main character after. -- -- Using what knowledge he has, Tomoya creates a new doujin circle with hopes to touch the hearts of those who play their game. What he does not realize, is that to invoke these emotions, the creators have had to experience the same feelings in their own lives. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 475,684 7.52
Tennis no Ouji-sama -- -- Trans Arts -- 178 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Sports School Shounen -- Tennis no Ouji-sama Tennis no Ouji-sama -- The world of tennis is harsh and highly competitive. Numerous schools from Japan battle it out to determine the best of the best. -- -- Seishun Gakuen Junior High School, more commonly known as Seigaku, is one of the most prominent contestants in this battle of the finest. Their team line-up gets even stronger with the sudden arrival of a young prodigy from the West, Ryouma Echizen, who is determined to prove himself and escape the towering shadow of his legendary father. This fine addition changes the team forever. -- -- Prince of Tennis follows the heartwarming and inspirational story of Ryouma on his quest to become one of the best tennis players the country has ever seen. He pushes himself hard so that he can one day surpass his father’s name and his own personal expectations. Alongside the rest of the Seigaku team, Ryouma fights to make his and his teammate's dreams come true. -- -- Licensor: -- VIZ Media -- TV - Oct 10, 2001 -- 146,203 7.90
Tennis no Ouji-sama -- -- Trans Arts -- 178 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Sports School Shounen -- Tennis no Ouji-sama Tennis no Ouji-sama -- The world of tennis is harsh and highly competitive. Numerous schools from Japan battle it out to determine the best of the best. -- -- Seishun Gakuen Junior High School, more commonly known as Seigaku, is one of the most prominent contestants in this battle of the finest. Their team line-up gets even stronger with the sudden arrival of a young prodigy from the West, Ryouma Echizen, who is determined to prove himself and escape the towering shadow of his legendary father. This fine addition changes the team forever. -- -- Prince of Tennis follows the heartwarming and inspirational story of Ryouma on his quest to become one of the best tennis players the country has ever seen. He pushes himself hard so that he can one day surpass his father’s name and his own personal expectations. Alongside the rest of the Seigaku team, Ryouma fights to make his and his teammate's dreams come true. -- TV - Oct 10, 2001 -- 146,203 7.90
Wena Wrist -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Military Music -- Wena Wrist Wena Wrist -- Sony unveiled its new "wena wrist" smartwatch's "kawamori Edition" with Macross anime director and mechanical designer Shoji Kawamori, and naturally, it comes complete with an anime ad. -- -- The aircraft shown in the video closely evokes the forward-swept-wing YF-19/VF-19 variable fighter designs first seen in Macross Plus and Macross 7, but appears to also draw inspiration from real-life fighter craft, with canards common in European fighters, and an air intake similar to the F-16. The iconic motif of hands in the shape of a fighter also first appeared in Macross Plus. -- -- Kawamori designed the case that will ship alongside the Wena Wrist product. The watch itself is a mechanical design, evoking pilot watch-style elements. The dial's design evokes the attitude indicator/artificial horizon seen on fighter instrument panels, with one side being an open-heart design showing the mechanical movement. The 12:00 position is indicated by a white arrow, common to many pilot watches. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Special - Jan 28, 2020 -- 248 5.36
Why -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Dementia -- Why Why -- A boxing ring turns into a stage for abstract animation where the punches thrown in the match and the halftone dots in reprographics gradually become indistinguishable. Tanaami shot a boxing match on a Motordrive camera, made two thousand offset prints, and rephotographed each of them. He explains his inspiration for the work being the experience of watching a boxing match on television but finding the newspaper print the next morning better capturing the exhilaration of the sport. -- -- (Source: Collaborative Cataloging Japan) -- Movie - ??? ??, 1975 -- 364 4.90
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American Music Award for Favorite Contemporary Inspirational Artist
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Inspiration
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The Prince of Egypt: Inspirational (album)
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The Sweet Inspirations (album)
Thug Motivation 102: The Inspiration
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(You're My) Soul and Inspiration
You're the Inspiration
You Light Up My Life: Inspirational Songs
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