TERMS STARTING WITH
is God”)—in The Zohar an angel who rules over
TERMS ANYWHERE
2:19-20 (where it is God Himself who appoints
AbhAsvarAloka. (P. Abhassaraloka; T. 'od gsal ba; C. jiguangjing tian/guangyintian; J. gokukojoten/koonten; K. kŭkkwangjong ch'on/kwangŭmch'on 極光淨天/光音天). In Sanskrit, the "heaven of radiant light" (in Chinese, the name is also parsed as the "heaven of radiant sound"), the highest of the three heavens associated with the second concentration (DHYANA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU). As the BRAHMA divinities dwelling in this realm perpetually experience this profound state of meditation, they are described as subsisting on bliss (PRĪTI) and abiding in ease (SUKHA). Their bodies radiate light in all directions like lightning or like flames from a torch. While the bodies of the divinities of this realm are uniform, their perceptions are diverse, and there is no assurance that they will not be reborn in a lower realm of existence after their death. At the beginning of a world cycle, when the physical world (BHAJANALOKA) of the sensuous realm (KAMADHATU) has not yet been formed, and at the end of a world cycle when that physical world has been destroyed, many beings are reborn into the AbhAsvarAloka. A BODHISATTVA is never reborn in the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU) even if he has achieved meditative states consistent with that realm, but he may be reborn in the AbhAsvarAloka. The Buddha once disabused a BrahmA god dwelling in that realm of the mistaken view that he was eternal. This god, whose name was Baka, had been the first living being born in the AbhAsvarAloka after a period of world dissolution, and presumed that no one had existed before him. When the divinities (DEVA) of the AbhAsvarAloka are first reborn in the realm of human beings (MANUsYA), they may retain their divine attributes for a time, being spontaneously generated rather than born viviparously, and possessing bodies made from subtle materiality rather than gross matter. However, as time passes and they take on the physical and mental characteristics of ordinary human beings, they lose their luminosity, develop sexual characteristics, and come to subsist on solid foods.
Adnarel (“my lord is God”)—in Enoch
Adrael (“my help is God”)—an angel serving
Adriel (“my help is God”)—one of the 28
advaita ::: 'no duality', without duality; sole, unique; oneness of spirit and matter, oneness of the supreme soul (paramātman) with the human soul (jivātman). The philosophy that everything is God, that there is nothing other than God.
"All disease is a means towards some new joy of health, all evil & pain a tuning of Nature for some more intense bliss & good, all death an opening on widest immortality. Why and how this should be so, is God"s secret which only the soul purified of egoism can penetrate.” Essays Divine and Human
“All disease is a means towards some new joy of health, all evil & pain a tuning of Nature for some more intense bliss & good, all death an opening on widest immortality. Why and how this should be so, is God’s secret which only the soul purified of egoism can penetrate.” Essays Divine and Human
am ::: literally "all I am"; everything is me. The esoteric meaning is that God is all, and all is God. (in some texts as humamanarn)
Ammon (Greek) Ámmōn Amen (Egyptian) Ȧmen. Also Amun, Amon. In the Egyptian 5th dynasty, Amen and his consort Ament were among the primeval gods, mentioned immediately after the deities connected with primeval matter, Nau and Nen (gods of the cosmic watery abyss). He was envisaged as “All-nature,” the universe itself, especially in its occult and secret aspects. After the 12th dynasty, however, this god additionally became looked upon as having solar attributes, and therefore was called Amen-Ra — the chief deity of the powerful priesthood of Thebes, whose sway encompassed the whole of Egypt. Ammon was identified particularly with the hidden aspect of the sun, for the hymns are addressed: “he who is hidden to gods and men,” “he who is unknown,” “thy name is hidden from thy children in thy name Amen.”
asya (dasyam) ::: an intermediate form of dasya, also called secondary / prakritic dasya, in which, unlike simple dasya, "there is no active & constant freedom, but only a general & ultimate freedom which is used little", for "we do not determine what is God"s will and act thereby or order Prakriti to act thereby, but leave everything to God to determine; the whole responsibility is His & a given impulse of Prakriti fulfils itself or not as He chooses without our interference". double sam samadhi
Aureole [diminutive of Latin aureus golden] Either a special spiritual radiance adorning the heads of saints and martyrs, or a golden halo surrounding the head or whole body of a holy man. The matter is clearly explained in The Mahatma Letters as: “a counterpart of what the astronomers call the red flames in the ‘corona’ may be seen in Reichenbach’s crystals or in any other strongly magnetic body. The head of a man — in a strong ecstatic condition, when all the electricity of his system is centered around the brain, will represent — especially in darkness — a perfect simile of the Sun during such periods [eclipses]. The first artist who drew the aureoles about the heads of his Gods and Saints, was not inspired, but represented it on the authority of temple pictures and traditions of the sanctuary and the chambers of initiation where such phenomena took place” (p. 162).
belief in rebel angels and in a Devil who is God’s enemy. .. . The Hebrew Bible itself, correctly
Berekeel (“my blessing is God”)—an angel of
is God”)—in The Zohar an angel who rules over
The Hindus call it Vairagya ... It is God's satisfaction in the manifestation which He wanted to create.
bride ::: Madhav: “The Bride is God as manifest in the world.” The Book of the Divine Mother
By the year 200 of the Hejira a definite sect of mystics had arisen, and following the instructions of a prominent member, Abu Said, his disciples forsook the world and entered the mystic life with a view of pursuing contemplation and meditation. These disciples wore a garment of wool, and from this received their name. Sufiism spread rapidly in Persia, and all Moslem philosophers were attracted to this sect, as great latitude in the beliefs of its followers was at first permitted, until in the reign of Moktadir, a Persian Sufi named Hallaj was tortured and put to death for teaching publicly that every man is God. After this the Sufis veiled their teachings, and especially in their poetry used amorous language and sang of the delights of the wine cup. In spite of the amorous trend of poetry followed by the Sufis, to the observing eye there appears a beauty and a spirituality of thought which has found many devotees. Ideas of pantheism abound, for God is held to be immanent in all things, expresses itself through all things, and is the transcendent essence of every human soul. For a person to know God is to see that God is immanent in himself.
Christian Science: A religion and philosophy, founded in 1875 by Mary Baker Eddy, based on the teaching that God, the Universal Mind, is the only existing reality, man is God’s spiritual idea and belongs by right to an order in which there is no sickness, sin, sorrow or death; all such things are errors of man’s mortal mind and have no reality for man save as he admits them; if man denies them, they cease to exist.
Daemon Est Deus Inversus (Latin) Daemon is divinity inverted; more commonly, the Devil is God inverted. An ancient Hermetic, and later Qabbalistic, aphorism referring to that polar power which is required by the equilibrium and harmony in nature. The One, when manifested, becomes Two, and from the Two are unfolded or evolved all the sequence of manifest existence. Spirit and matter, good and evil, as distinct conceptions exist only by their mutual contrast. There is no evil per se, but the human notion of essential evil arises from our inability to take in the whole at a single glance.
deism ::: The view that reason, rather than revelation or tradition, should be the basis of belief in God. Deists reject both organized and revealed religion and maintain that reason is the essential element in all knowledge. For a "rational basis for religion" they refer to the cosmological argument (first cause argument), the teleological argument (argument from design), and other aspects of what was called natural religion. Deism has become identified with the classical belief that God created but does not intervene in the world, though this is not a necessary component of deism. A form of monotheism in which it is believed that one god exists. However, a deist rejects the idea that this god intervenes in the world. Hence any notion of special revelation is impossible, and the nature of god can only be known through reason and observation from nature. A deist thus rejects the miraculous, and the claim to knowledge made for religious groups and texts.
Fate is God's foreknowledge outside Space and Time of ail that in Space and Time shall yet happen ::: what He has fore- seen, Power and Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.
::: "Fate is God"s foreknowledge outside Space & Time of all that in Space & Time shall yet happen; what He has foreseen, Power & Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.” *Essays Divine and Human
“Fate is God’s foreknowledge outside Space & Time of all that in Space & Time shall yet happen; what He has foreseen, Power & Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.” Essays Divine and Human
hatred ::: “Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God’s play in His creature.” Essays Divine and Human
Hecate (Greek) Hekate. This goddess, daughter of Perses and Asteria, was given power from Zeus in heaven, earth, and sea. She was a mysterious divinity, popularly represented as the goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, haunting crossroads and graveyards, wandering only by night and seen by dogs, whose barking told of her approach. Identified with Artemis and Persephone, she was held to be the same as Selene or Luna in heaven, Artemis or Diana on earth, and Persephone or Proserpina in the underworld; hence she was called Tergemina, Triformis, Triceps, etc. She is the personified moon, whose phenomena are triadic and is one prototype of the Christian Trinity (SD 1:387).
Holy Water As practiced in the Roman Catholic Church the rite is virtually identical with that of the ancient Egyptians: the water which has been blessed or consecrated is used to sprinkle the worshipers and objects used in the church service. It was unquestionably adopted from the ancient Mysteries, and became a rite of external symbolic purification. In Egypt and pagan Rome, it “accompanied the rite of bread and wine. ‘Holy water was sprinkled by the Egyptian priest alike upon his gods’ images and the faithful. It was both poured and sprinkled. A brush has been found, supposed to have been used for that purpose, as at this day.’ (Bonwick’s Egyptian Belief [p. 418]) As to the bread, ‘the cakes of Isis . . . were placed upon the altar. Gliddon writes that they were “identical in shape with the consecrated cake of the Roman and Eastern Churches.” Melville assures us “the Egyptians marked this holy bread with St. Andrew’s cross.” The Presence bread was broken before being distributed by the priests to the people, and was supposed to become the flesh and blood of the Deity. The miracle was wrought by the hand of the officiating priest, who blessed the food. . . . Rouge tells us “the bread offerings bear the imprint of the fingers, the mark of consecration”.’ (Ibid, page 418)” (TG 144-5).
Horus (Latin) Heru (Egyptian) Ḥeru [from ḥeru above] Egyptian deity associated with the sun god Ra, equivalent in certain respects to Apollo of the Greeks and, similarly, a slayer of a serpent. Originally two distinct deities were recognized: Heru-ur (Aroeris or Haroiri, Horus the Elder) and Heru-pa-khart (Harpocrates, Horus the Younger or Horus the Child). The older Horus was represented as the winged globe or solar disk, while the younger Horus represented the sun reborn each morning from the waters, carried on the lotus flower. But in later times the characteristics of the two were merged into one, and a further change was made from an original self-born deity to the mythological aspect of a holy child found in the triad Osiris-Isis-Horus — Father-Mother-Son. Thus the representations of Isis suckling the babe Horus are numerous. Each aspect of this god was represented in a different manner, yet all portrayed the deity as hawk-headed: the hieroglyph for Horus is a hawk.
hylotheism ::: n. --> The doctrine of belief that matter is God, or that there is no God except matter and the universe; pantheism. See Materialism.
Identity-philosophy: In general the term has been applied to any theory which failed to distinguish between spirit and matter, subject and object, regarding them as an undifferentiated unity; hence such a philosophy is a species of monism. In the history of philosophy it usually signifies the system which has been called Identitätsphilosophie by Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling who held that spirit and nature are fundamentally the same, namely, the Absolute. Neither the ego nor the non-ego are the ultimate principles of being; they are both relative concepts which are contained in something absolute. This is the supreme principle of Absolute Identity of the ideal and the real. Reasoning does not lead us to the Absolute which can only be attained by immediate intellectual intuition. In it we find the eternal concepts of things and from it we can derive everything else. We are obliged to conceive the Absolute Identity as the indifference of the ideal and the real. Of course, this is God in Whom all opposites are united. He is the unity of thought and being, the subjective and the objective, form and essence, the general and infinite, and the particular and finite. This teaching is similar to that of Spinoza. -- J.J.R.
Karma-Nemesis [from Sanskrit karma action, cause and effect + Greek Nemesis goddess of harmony or retribution] The appointed karmic lot or destiny of any entity, latent in the entity’s germinal existence and unfolded progressively in the course of its growth or evolution. The universe as a whole fulfills, in the course of its cyclic evolution, all that is contained in the germ at the dawn of its manifestation; and the individual, who in essence is a spark of the divine life, follows the same inscrutable law of destiny, as do also the worlds and all the beings in and on them.
Karshipta, Karshift (Pahlavi) The holy bird of the Zoroastrians who brought the law of Mazda into the Vara (man). “Karshipta is the human mind-soul, and the deity thereof, symbolized in ancient Magianism by a bird, as the Greeks symbolized it by a butterfly. No sooner had Karshipta entered the Vara or man, than he understood the law of Mazda, or Divine Wisdom. . . . With the Kabalists it was a like symbol. ‘Bird’ was a Chaldean, and has become a Hebrew synonym and symbol for Angel, a Soul, a Spirit, or Deva; and the ‘Bird’s Nest’ was with both Heaven, and is God’s bosom in the Zohar” (SD 2:292). The Egyptians also spoke of the spiritual swallow, the soul-bird — manas.
literally "even this He is" or "likewise this He is". The esoteric meaning is that God is all, and all is God.
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.
"Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being. The animal is Man disguised in a hairy skin and upon four legs; the worm is Man writhing and crawling towards the evolution of his Manhood. Even crude forms of Matter are Man in his inchoate body. All things are Man, the Purusha. For what do we mean by Man? An uncreated and indestructible soul that has housed itself in a mind and body made of its own elements.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 203
Modern Period. In the 17th century the move towards scientific materialism was tempered by a general reliance on Christian or liberal theism (Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Toland, Hartley, Priestley, Boyle, Newton). The principle of gravitation was regarded by Newton, Boyle, and others, as an indication of the incompleteness of the mechanistic and materialistic account of the World, and as a direct proof of the existence of God. For Newton Space was the "divine sensorium". The road to pure modern idealism was laid by the epistemological idealism (epistemological subjectivism) of Campanella and Descartes. The theoretical basis of Descartes' system was God, upon whose moral perfection reliance must be placed ("God will not deceive us") to insure the reality of the physical world. Spinoza's impersonalistic pantheism is idealistic to the extent that space or extension (with modes of Body and Motion) is merely one of the infinity of attributes of Being. Leibniz founded pure modern idealism by his doctrine of the immateriality and self-active character of metaphysical individual substances (monads, souls), whose source and ground is God. Locke, a theist, gave chief impetus to the modern theory of the purely subjective character of ideas. The founder of pure objective idealism in Europe was Berkeley, who shares with Leibniz the creation of European immaterialism. According to him perception is due to the direct action of God on finite persons or souls. Nature consists of (a) the totality of percepts and their order, (b) the activity and thought of God. Hume later an implicit Naturalist, earlier subscribed ambiguously to pure idealistic phenomenalism or scepticism. Kant's epistemological, logical idealism (Transcendental or Critical Idealism) inspired the systems of pure speculative idealism of the 19th century. Knowledge, he held, is essentially logical and relational, a product of the synthetic activity of the logical self-consciousness. He also taught the ideality of space and time. Theism, logically undemonstrable, remains the choice of pure speculative reason, although beyond the province of science. It is also a practical implication of the moral life. In the Critique of Judgment Kant, marshalled facts from natural beauty and the apparent teleological character of the physical and biological world, to leave a stronger hint in favor of the theistic hypothesis. His suggestion thit reality, as well as Mind, is organic in character is reflected in the idealistic pantheisms of his followers: Fichte (abstract personalism or "Subjective Idealism"), Schellmg (aesthetic idealism, theism, "Objective Idealism"), Hegel (Absolute or logical Idealism), Schopenhauer (voluntaristic idealism), Schleiermacher (spiritual pantheism), Lotze ("Teleological Idealism"). 19th century French thought was grounder in the psychological idealism of Condillac and the voluntaristic personalism of Biran. Throughout the century it was essentially "spiritualistic" or personalistic (Cousin, Renouvier, Ravaisson, Boutroux, Lachelier, Bergson). British thought after Hume was largely theistic (A. Smith, Paley, J. S. Mill, Reid, Hamilton). In the latter 19th century, inspired largely by Kant and his metaphysical followers, it leaned heavily towards semi-monistic personalism (E. Caird, Green, Webb, Pringle-Pattison) or impersonalistic monism (Bradley, Bosanquet). Recently a more pluralistic personalism has developed (F. C. S. Schiller, A. E. Taylor, McTaggart, Ward, Sorley). Recent American idealism is represented by McCosh, Howison, Bowne, Royce, Wm. James (before 1904), Baldwin. German idealists of the past century include Fechner, Krause, von Hartmann, H. Cohen, Natorp, Windelband, Rickert, Dilthey, Brentano, Eucken. In Italy idealism is represented by Croce and Gentile, in Spain, by Unamuno and Ortega e Gasset; in Russia, by Lossky, in Sweden, by Boström; in Argentina, by Aznar. (For other representatives of recent or contemporary personalism, see Personalism.) -- W.L.
". . . Nature is God"s power of various self-becoming, . . . .” *Essays on the Gita
“… Nature is God’s power of various self-becoming, . . . ” Essays on the Gita
Ordinarily, man is limited in all the parts of his being and he can grasp at first only so much of the divine truth as has some large correspondence to his own nature and its past deve- lopment and associations. Therefore God meets us first in diffe- rent limited affirmations of his divine qualities and nature ; he presents himself to the seeker as an absolute o! the things he can understand and to which his will and heart can respond ; he discloses some name and aspect of his Godhead. This is what is called in Yoga the iffa^devaid, the name and form elected by our nature for its worship. In order that the human being may embrace this Godhead with every part of himself, it is represented with a form that answers to its aspects and qualities and which becomes the living body of God to the adorer. These are those forms of Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, Kali, Durga, Christ,
pantheism ::: n. --> The doctrine that the universe, taken or conceived of as a whole, is God; the doctrine that there is no God but the combined force and laws which are manifested in the existing universe; cosmotheism.
quote :::In the imagery of the Sufi poets, this tavern is the world, and the sāqī is God. In whatever form the wine-giver comes and gives a wine, it is God who comes.
quote :::The life of Krishna is an ideal. It gives the picture of the life of a perfect man. The real meaning of the word Krishna is God. The man who was identified with that name was the God-conscious one who fulfilled his message in the period in which he was destined to give it.
quote :::The Sufi in the East says to himself, 'Ishq Allah, Ma'bud Allah, which means 'God is Love, God is the Beloved', in other words it is God who is Love, Lover, and Beloved.
Sahariel, Seriel, Sariel, etc.,—“my moon is God”)
Smith, Homer W. Man and His Gods. Boston: Little,
Soma: One of the three important gods of the Vedic religion, about whom the ninth book of the Rig-Veda centers. This god is associated with the plant growing in northern India which was made into an intoxicating liquor. The effects of this drink became associated with supernatural powers. -- V.F.
spinozism ::: n. --> The form of Pantheism taught by Benedict Spinoza, that there is but one substance, or infinite essence, in the universe, of which the so-called material and spiritual beings and phenomena are only modes, and that one this one substance is God.
Sri Aurobindo: "Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God"s play in His creature.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
substance monotheism ::: Found e.g. in some indigenous African religions, holds that the many gods are different forms of a single underlying substance, and that this underlying substance is God. This view has some similarities to the Christian trinitarian view of three persons sharing one nature.
Tathāgatosnīsasitātapatrā. (T. De bzhin gshegs pa'i gtsug tor nas byung ba'i gdugs dkar po can). In Sanskrit, "She of the White Parasol [who arose from] the UsnĪsA of the TATHĀGATA"; also known as Usnīsasitātapatrā. This goddess is a female protective deity, sometimes associated with TĀRĀ, who is propitiated to remove illness and other obstacles. Her most famous form is depicted with a thousand heads, a thousand hands, and a thousand feet.
Teleological Argument for God: (Gr. telos, end or purpose) Sometimes referred to as the argument from design. Events, objects, or persons are alleged to reveal a kind of relationship which suggests a purpose or end toward which they move. Such ends reveal a Fashioner or Designer who guides and directs toward the fulfillment of their functions. This Architect is God. Paley (1745-1805) in his Natural Theology is a classic expositor of the argument. Kant favored the argument, but held that it leaned too heavily upon the cosmological argument which in turn rested upon the ontological, both of which crumbled when critical analysis is applied. -- V.F.
"This Godhead is one in all things that are, the self who lives in all and the self in whom all live and move; therefore man has to discover his spiritual unity with all creatures, to see all in the self and the self in all beings, even to see all things and creatures as himself, âtmaupamyena sarvatra, and accordingly think, feel and act in all his mind, will and living. This Godhead is the origin of all that is here or elsewhere and by his Nature he has become all these innumerable existences, abhût sarvâni bhûtâni; therefore man has to see and adore the One in all things animate and inanimate, to worship the manifestation in sun and star and flower, in man and every living creature, in the forms and forces, qualities and powers of Nature, vâsudevah sarvam iti.” Essays on the Gita ::: *godhead, godheads, godhead"s.
“This Godhead is one in all things that are, the self who lives in all and the self in whom all live and move; therefore man has to discover his spiritual unity with all creatures, to see all in the self and the self in all beings, even to see all things and creatures as himself, âtmaupamyena sarvatra, and accordingly think, feel and act in all his mind, will and living. This Godhead is the origin of all that is here or elsewhere and by his Nature he has become all these innumerable existences, abhût sarvâni bhûtâni; therefore man has to see and adore the One in all things animate and inanimate, to worship the manifestation in sun and star and flower, in man and every living creature, in the forms and forces, qualities and powers of Nature, vâsudevah sarvam iti.” Essays on the Gita
"The Atheist is God playing at hide & seek with Himself; . . . .” Essays Divine and Human*
“The Atheist is God playing at hide & seek with Himself; …” Essays Divine and Human
The early Christians looked upon the Holy Spirit as of distinctly feminine characteristics, influence, or svabhava, as the center not only of vital but of spiritual and intellectual activity, whether in the universe or man, so that the Holy Spirit corresponds to a divine sakti. A notable instance in Hinduism is the Sakti or goddess Durga, having both a lofty or spiritual, and an inferior or distinctly material, function in nature, and therefore a beneficent as well as a terrible action therein — the very name Durga meaning “terrible in action,” or “terrible in going.” And yet Durga is the consort or sakti of Siva, often called the Mahesvara (Great Lord); and the name of this goddess arises from the utterly impartial, infinitely just, and yet often simply terrific action of the forces in nature, particularly when karmically directed to works of regeneration, often called destruction. Cosmic operations or cosmic justice are often indeed to human vision terrible in their operation, which can never be set aside, stayed, or diverted. Hence Durga is often represented in iconography as surrounded with a necklace of skulls or by similar ghastly emblems — a series of ideas which the pragmatic West misinterprets and consequently depicts as horrible and revolting.
Vamana-avatara (Sanskrit) Vāmana-avatāra The dwarf-avatara; a descent of Vishnu the preserver in the form of a dwarf. According to the Puranic allegory, Vamana of the Three Strides came to dispossess the demon Bali from dominion over the three worlds. Vamana petitions Bali for only as much of the world as he could compass in three steps. Vamana then resumed his godlike stature and in three world-encompassing strides deprived Bali of the heavens and the earth, all save the regions of Patala (the lower spheres of manifestation).
"What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
work. [Rf Smith, Man and his Gods.] In Ginzberg,
Zuriel (“my rock is God”)—prince of the In Numbers 3:35, Zuriel is “chief of the house of
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1:What is God? Everything. ~ Pindar, Fragment 140d, #KEYS
2:Student, tell me, what is God? ~ Kabir, #KEYS
3:Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.
~ Albert Einstein,#KEYS
4:What is, is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
5:God is all and all is God. ~ Meister Eckhart, #KEYS
6:Everything is a grace because everything is God's gift. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #KEYS
7:The soul bound is man; free, it is God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
8:God is all and all is God. ~ Eckhart, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
9:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity." ~ Plutarch, #KEYS
10:The Master is God Himself. Practice spiritual disciplines and you shall see Him. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
11:In fact, it is more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #KEYS
12:We speak, but it is God who teaches. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
13:The soul bound is man; free, it is God. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
14:The author of Sacred Scripture is God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.1.10), #KEYS
15:For what is God? He is the soul of the universe. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
16:Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, today is God's gift, that why we call it the present." ~ Joan Rivers, #KEYS
17:As Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin knew, the future of humankind is God-consciousness.
~ Ken Wilber, Up From Eden,#KEYS
18:It is God's grace alone that enables an aspirant to stop the waves of the mind and dissolve the intellect. ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
19:The pure Consciousness that alone finally remains is God. This is Liberation. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
20:All things are ordered to one good as their end, and that is God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.17)., #KEYS
21:What is God?
God is the perfection that we must aspire to realise.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
22:He [She] who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the most excellent devotee. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
23:Always cultivate pure thoughts. Purity is strength, and purity is God. Live such a life that no one may be an enemy to you. ~ SWAMI PREMANANDA, #KEYS
24:We really are one with Master or Bhagavan. The Master is God; one discovers it in the end. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
25:This world is God fulfilled in outwardness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
26:A lonely day is God's way of saying that He wants to spend some quality time with you." ~ Jami, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
27:Life here is God, the materials of Life here are God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
28:All truth and understanding is a result of a divine light which is God Himself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
29:Nature is God's power of various self-becoming, ātma-vibhūti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Theory of the Vibhuti, #KEYS
30:Know certainly that the world is God's and not yours; you are His servant only, come to carry out His Will. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
31:That Intelligence is God within us; by that men are gods and their humanity neighbours divinity. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
32:The Self is God. `I AM' is God. If God be apart from the Self, He must be a Selfless God, which is absurd. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
33:An analysis of the ego convinces us that its ultimate substance is God. When egotism vanishes, divinity manifests itself. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
34:'Be still and know that I AM God' [Psalm 46:10] means that I should still the mind and know that consciousness is God." ~ Neville Goddard, "The Complete Reader,", (2013), #KEYS
35:It is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Nature of the Supermind, #KEYS
36:If we continuously contemplate the Self, all distraction would vanish; the pure Consciousness that remains is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
37:If we would continuously contemplate the Self, the pure Consciousness that alone remains is God. This is Liberation.. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
38:I actually see that whatever is, is God. It is He who has become all these things, the mind and Buddhi are lost in the absolute. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
39:That which is good and pure in you is God. That which is evil in you is your ego. The more you think of Him, the more He will increase and you will decrease. ~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
40:What is God?
God is the perfection that we must aspire to realise. 8 November 1969
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, "The Divine" and "Man" [17],#KEYS
41:It is God who constantly inspires thought and sentiment in the heart of devotees, that is why they never lack in what is new and wise. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
42:What is God after all?
An eternal child
playing an eternal game
in an eternal garden.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, Thoughts And Glimpses,#KEYS
43:The Church teaches, "Mary is truly 'Mother of God' since she is the mother of the eternal Son of God made man, who is God himself." ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (CCC 509), #KEYS
44:My I is God, nor is any other self known to me except my God." ~ Saint Catherine of Genoa, (1447-1510) Italian Roman Catholic saint and mystic, admired for her work among the sick and the poor, Wikipedia., #KEYS
45:That which has neither body, nor appearance, nor form, nor matter, nor can be seized by our senses, That which cannot be expressed,-this is God. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
46:The aim of prayer, of spiritual discipline, of chanting the name and glories of God, is to realize that everything is God. For that alone a devotee loves God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
47:Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another.
~ Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven,#KEYS
48:When you really look for me, you will see me instantly— you will find me in the tiniest house of time. Kabir says: Student, tell me what is God? He is the breath inside the breath." ~ Kabir, #KEYS
49:The sense of one's personal will is lost. That is enlightenment. Enlightenment means there is no "me" with a sense of personal doership. "I" can do nothing. Everything that happens is God's will. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
50:All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 2 Timothy, 3:16-17, #KEYS
51:All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
52:If you will you can be healed. Hand yourself over to the doctor, and he will open the eyes of your mind and heart. Who is to be the doctor? It is God, who heals and gives life through his Word and wisdom. ~ Theophilus of Antioch, #KEYS
53:He from whom men are born spiritually reborn is God, but men are spiritually reborn through the Holy Spirit. . . . So the Holy Spirit is God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on John 3, lect. 5)., #KEYS
54:I" can do nothing. Everything that happens is God's will. One hundred percent acceptance of that which is surrender to God's will is enlightenment. That does not lead to enlightenment, that is itself enlightenment. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
55:Material energy in Matter, physical energy in the body, essential energy in the essence, all that in its entirety is God and in the universe there is nothing which is not God. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
56:Praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. It lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he does, but simply because He Is. ~ Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2639, #KEYS
57:Disciple: Mother, where is God? ~ Sri Sarada Devi; Dear, where else is God except very close to His devotees? If worldly people even visit the place used by holy men, the very atmosphere of the place can remove the dross of their mind., #KEYS
58:Do you meditate? Do you know what one feels in meditation? The mind becomes like a continuous flow of oil — it thinks of one object only, and that is God. It does not think of anything else. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
59:The whole world is one. The knower in the stone and the knower in myself are one; I am He. It is God in me, God in the stone. The knowledge in me and the knowledge in the stone are one; I am that. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
60:Where all the religions meet is the realization in no mystical sense, but in the most worldly and everyday sense that GOD IS EVERYTHING, AND EVERYTHING IS GOD…" ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-1950) was a Hindu sage of world fame, Wikipedia., #KEYS
61:The zest for life, which is the source of all passion and all insight, even divine, does not come to us from ourselves.... It is God who has to give us the impulse of wanting him. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
62:The idea of a person in loving God, is only with a view to being happy himself. He is, however, the embodiment of happiness and that happiness is God. Who else is to be loved? Love itself is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
63:If a man gathers his whole, mind and fixes it on Me, then, indeed, he achieves everything. "But what am I? It is all He. I am the machine and He is its Operator. It is God alone who exists in this [meaning his body]. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
64:Shadowy and corporeal being finds rest in living being; living being finds rest in intellectual being; intellectual being finds rest in Truth, which is God. Thus, in this way, [all beings]... flow back to their Beginning. ~ Nicholas of Cusa, De Dato Patris Luminum 5, #KEYS
65:Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls,
His crucified voice proclaims, 'I, I am God;'
'Yes, all is God,' peals back Heaven's deathless call. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
66:Īśvara is the Atman as seen or grasped by mind. His highest name is ॐ; so repeat it, meditate on it, and think of all its wonderful nature and attributes. Repeating ॐ continually is the only true worship. It is not a word, it is God Himself. ~ Swami Vivekananda? #KEYS
67:My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,
My body is God's happy living tool,
My spirit a vast sun of deathless light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Transformation,#KEYS
68:Some persons, however, find a difficulty in this faith; when they hear that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit God, and yet that this Trinity is not three Gods, but one God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, #KEYS
69:Unconditioned consciousness is God, the one and only reality. By unconditioned consciousness is meant a sense of awareness; a sense of knowing that I AM apart from knowing who I AM;…" ~ Neville Goddard, (1905-1972), American mystic teacher. "The Complete Reader,", (2013)., #KEYS
70:Innocence is within you, hidden deep inside. You have to rediscover it. And for this to happen, you must go deeper and deeper into your spiritual practices. You merely forgot your innocence for some time. That childlike innocence deep within you is God. ~ MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI, #KEYS
71:As the word we speak is an image of the Word who is God's Son, so also is the wisdom implanted in us an image of the Wisdom who is God's Son. It gives us the ability to know and understand and so makes us capable of receiving him who is the all-creative Wisdom. ~ Saint Athanasius, #KEYS
72:The Lord is within you, He is seated in your heart. Whatever you see, hear, taste & touch is God. Therefore hate not anybody, cheat not anybody, harm not anybody. Love & be one with all. You will soon attain eternal bliss, immortality, & perennial joy. ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #KEYS
73:Love is higher than the Highest. Love is greater than the Greatest. Yea, it is in a certain sense greater than God; while yet, in the highest sense of all, God is Love, and Love is God." ~ François Fénelon, (1651 - 1715), French Roman Catholic archbishop & theologian, Wikipedia., #KEYS
74:There is not one God for us and another for you, but he alone is God who led your fathers out of Egypt with a strong hand and a high arm. Nor have we trusted any other, for there is no other but him, in whom you also have trusted, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ~ Saint Justin, #KEYS
75:It is God's hidden power, which penetrates all things by that presence of its which cannot be defiled, that gives existence to anything that exists in any way at all and insofar as it exists at all.... ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God xii.26, #KEYS
76:Such is God, superior to His name, invisible and apparent, who reveals Himself to the spirit, who reveals Himself to the eyes, who has no body and who has many bodies or rather all bodies; for there is nothing which is not He and all is He alone. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
77:Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #KEYS
78:D.: Is God personal?
B.: Yes, He is always the first person, the I, ever standing before you. Because you give precedence to worldly things, God appears to have receded to the background. If you give up all else and seek Him alone, He will remain as the I, the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,#KEYS
79:368. The Vedanta is God's lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage and egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely and surely in a high and eternal sunlight.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T8],#KEYS
80:I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: What is God? If you think that the Truth can be known From words, If you think that the Sun and the Ocean Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth, O someone should start laughing! Someone should start wildly Laughing Now!
~ Hafiz,#KEYS
81:Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against
your own neck
You won't find me in the mosque
or the sadhus temple.
You wont find me in holy books
or behind the lips of priests.
Nor in eating nothing but vegetables
You will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says : Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.... ~ Kabir,#KEYS
82:Help yourself during this troubled period by reading holy books. This reading provides excellent food for the soul and conduces to great progress along the path of perfection. By no means is it inferior to what we obtain through prayer and holy meditation. In prayer and meditation it is ourselves who speak to the Lord, while in holy reading it is God who speaks to us. Before beginning to read, raise your mind to the Lord and implore Him to guide your mind Himself, to speak to your heart and move your will. ~ Saint Padre Pio, #KEYS
83:What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
84:Q:How shall I realise God?
M.: God is an unknown entity. Moreover He is external. Whereas, the Self is always with you and it is you. Why do you leave out what is intimate and go in for what is external?
D.: What is this Self again?
M.: The Self is known to everyone but not clearly. You always exist. The Be-ing is the Self. 'I am' is the name of God. Of all the definitions of God, none is indeed so well put as the Biblical statement "I AM THAT I AM" in EXODUS (Chap. 3). There are other statements, such as Brahmaivaham, Aham Brahmasmi and Soham. But none is so direct as the name JEHOVAH = I AM. The Absolute Being is what is - It is the Self. It is God. Knowing the Self, God is known. In fact God is none other than the Self. ~ Sri Ramama Maharshi, Collected Works,#KEYS
85:18. Of the devotees, who is the greatest?
He who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the most excellent devotee. Giving one's self up to God means remaining constantly in the Self without giving room for the rise of any thoughts other than that of the Self. Whatever burdens are thrown on God, He bears them. Since the supreme power of God makes all things move, why should we, without submitting ourselves to it, constantly worry ourselves with thoughts as to what should be done and how, and what should not be done and how not? We know that the train carries all loads, so after getting on it why should we carry our small luggage on our head to our discomfort, instead of putting it down in the train and feeling at ease? ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Who am I,#KEYS
86:203. God and Nature are like a boy and girl at play and in love. They hide and run from each other when glimpsed so that they may be sought after and chased and captured.
Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being.
The animal is Man disguised in a hairy skin and upon four legs; the worm is Man writhing and crawling towards the evolution of his Manhood. Even crude forms of Matter are Man in his inchoate body. All things are Man, the Purusha.
For what do we mean by Man? An uncreated and indestructible soul that has housed itself in a mind and body made of its own elements. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS
87:10 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance,
11 persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.
12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
13 while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,
15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ 2 Timothy 3#KEYS
88:O Death, thou lookst on an unfinished world
Assailed by thee and of its road unsure,
Peopled by imperfect minds and ignorant lives,
And sayest God is not and all is vain.
How shall the child already be the man?
Because he is infant, shall he never grow?
Because he is ignorant, shall he never learn?
In a small fragile seed a great tree lurks,
In a tiny gene a thinking being is shut;
A little element in a little sperm,
It grows and is a conqueror and a sage.
Then wilt thou spew out, Death, God's mystic truth,
Deny the occult spiritual miracle?
Still wilt thou say there is no spirit, no God?
A mute material Nature wakes and sees;
She has invented speech, unveiled a will.
Something there waits beyond towards which she strives,
Something surrounds her into which she grows:
To uncover the spirit, to change back into God,
To exceed herself is her transcendent task.
In God concealed the world began to be,
Tardily it travels towards manifest God:
Our imperfection towards perfection toils,
The body is the chrysalis of a soul:
The infinite holds the finite in its arms,
Time travels towards revealed eternity.
A miracle structure of the eternal Mage,
Matter its mystery hides from its own eyes,
A scripture written out in cryptic signs,
An occult document of the All-Wonderful's art.
All here bears witness to his secret might,
In all we feel his presence and his power.
A blaze of his sovereign glory is the sun,
A glory is the gold and glimmering moon,
A glory is his dream of purple sky.
A march of his greatness are the wheeling stars.
His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,
His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;
The blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice
Are murmurs falling from the Eternal's harp.
This world is God fulfilled in outwardness.
His ways challenge our reason and our sense;
By blind brute movements of an ignorant Force,
By means we slight as small, obscure or base,
A greatness founded upon little things,
He has built a world in the unknowing Void.
His forms he has massed from infinitesimal dust;
His marvels are built from insignificant things.
If mind is crippled, life untaught and crude,
If brutal masks are there and evil acts,
They are incidents of his vast and varied plot,
His great and dangerous drama's needed steps;
He makes with these and all his passion-play,
A play and yet no play but the deep scheme
Of a transcendent Wisdom finding ways
To meet her Lord in the shadow and the Night:
Above her is the vigil of the stars;
Watched by a solitary Infinitude
She embodies in dumb Matter the Divine,
In symbol minds and lives the Absolute.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
89:The madman.-
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place. and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him-you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward. forward. in all directions? be there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too. decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us-for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then: "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars-and yet they have done it themselves... It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his reqttiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Kaufmann,#KEYS
90:We have now completed our view of the path of Knowledge and seen to what it leads. First, the end of Yoga of Knowledge is God-possession, it is to possess God and be possessed by him through consciousness, through identification, through reflection of the divine Reality. But not merely in some abstraction away from our present existence, but here also; therefore to possess the Divine in himself, the Divine in the world, the Divine within, the Divine in all things and all beings. It is to possess oneness with God and through that to possess also oneness with the universal, with the cosmos and all existences; therefore to possess the infinite diversity also in the oneness, but on the basis of oneness and not on the basis of division. It is to possess God in his personality and his impersonality; in his purity free from qualities and in his infinite qualities; in time and beyond time; in his action and in his silence; in the finite and in the infinite. It is to possess him not only in pure self, but in all self; not only in self, but in Nature; not only in spirit, but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our life, to be one with all life; for our mind, to be one with the universal mind; for our spirit, to be identified with the universal spirit. It is to merge in him in the absolute and find him in all relations. Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge [511] [T1],#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:The devil is God's ape! ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 2:Forgiveness is God's command. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 3:Mirth is God's medicine. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 4:Faith is God's work within us. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 5:Conscience is God present in man. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 6:Faith is God's work within us. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 7:Sex is God's joke on human beings. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 8:Reason is God's crowning gift to man. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 9:Your talent is God's gift to you. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 10:Beauty is God's handwriting. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 11:It is God's giving if we laugh or weep. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 12:Where there is love, there is God also. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 13:& 14:We speak, but it is God who teaches. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 15:Inspiration is God making contact with itself. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 16:The Bible is God's love letter to us ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 17:The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 18:After all, God is God because he remembers. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 19:Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 20:Africa is God's country, and He can have it. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 21:Conscience is God's presence in humans. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 22:The Bible is God's Word given in man's language ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 23:Evil is real - but so is God's power and love. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 24:To be free from evil thoughts is God's best gift. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 25:Is God to blame for what I myself have done? ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 26:We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 27:To be fortunate is God, and more than God to mortals. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 28:Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 29:Salvation is God's way of making us real people. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 30:The world is God's workshop for making men in. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 31:Everyone Is God speaking. Why not be polite and Listen to Him? ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 32:The Bible is clear that the Holy Spirit is God Himself. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 33:Despondency is ingratitude; hope is God's worship. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 34:Everything is God, there is nothing else but God. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 35:The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 36:When your will is God's will, you will have your will. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 37:Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove 38:In each of us is a seed of understanding. The seed is God. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 39:It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 40:Meditation is silence. Silence is God In His Infinity's Smile. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 41:Cocaine is God’s way of saying you’re making too much money. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 42:High fortune, this in man's eye is god and more than god is this. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 43:Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 44:You should point to the whole man Jesus and say, That is God. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 45:God's grace, quite simply, is God's mercy and goodness toward us. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 46:Grace is God's love in action for those who don't deserve it. ~ robert-h-schuller, @wisdomtrove 47:Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 48:Cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 49:What is god, what is not god, what is between man and god, who shall say? ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 50:This is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call it world. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 51:It is God who makes woman beautiful, it is the devil who makes her pretty. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 52:Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation. ~ thomas-keating, @wisdomtrove 53:The body is God's temple, but we are to worship God, not the temple. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 54:It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 55:Grace is God doing for us what we could never do and what we will never deserve. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 56:It is God who creates, effects, and preserves all things through his almighty. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 57:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 58:The seeker asking, Where is God? Is really God saying, Where indeed is the seeker! ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 59:Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 60:The human soul is God's treasury, out of which he coins unspeakable riches. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 61:Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 62:All truth and understanding is a result of a divine light which is God Himself. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 63:It is God who works in and through us, if only we would let God do His work. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 64:Religion in India must be made as free and as easy of access as is God's air. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 65:Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God's work, and not mine. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 66:A lonely day is God's way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 67:God is God. He knows what he is doing. When you can’t trace his hand, trust his heart. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 68:Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because He loves. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 69:As Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin knew, the future of humankind is God-consciousness. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 70:Frustration, complication and misery are available in abundance, but so is God's grace. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 71:What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 72:To me the Bible is not God, but it is God's voice, and I do not hear it without awe ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 73:Human life is God's outer church. Its needs and urgencies are priests and pastors. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 74:We can have no conception of God higher than man, so our God is man, and man is God. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 75:If God allows proof that he exists he robs people of faith and without faith what is God? ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 76:The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 77:How is God's name hallowed among us? When both our doctrine and living are truly Christian. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 78:God does not love us because we are hard or easy to love, He loves us because He is God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 79:Whoever does not accept my teaching may not be saved - for it is God's teaching and not mine. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 80:Never lose an opportunity for seeing something beautiful for beauty is God's handwriting. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 81:Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 82:The meetings least attended in our churches today are the ones whose only attraction is God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 83:If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 84:Man's eternal question is:'Who is God?'God's immediate answer is:'My child, who else is God, if not you? ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 85:God loves you not because you are worthy, but because He is God and you are a fixture in His mind. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 86:Just beneath the surface of all experiences in life is God's, or the Guru's, compassionate face. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 87:Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 88:Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 89:What is God looking for? He is looking for men and women whose hearts are completely His - completely. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 90:It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 91:There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 92:It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 93:Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 94:Ggrace is God's best idea - it's His decision to ravage people by love, to rescue passionately, and to restore justly. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 95:Love is God's loaf; and this is that feeding for which we are taught to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 96:The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 97:The compassion that you see in the kindhearted is God's compassion. He has given it to them to protect the helpless. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 98:It is really not what we have in our hand that gets the job done, but it is God's power filling what we have in our hand. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 99:There is only one immediate question: Where is God? The immediate answer is: God is where My heart's love-breath is. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 100:We are here to affirm, not to deny... when we affirm all that is God, all that is not God is automatically denied. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 101:Since everything is God and everything contains God, you see God in everything, everything is a step towards liberation. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 102:Good morning, this is God. I will be handling all of your problems today. I will not need your help, so have a miraculous day. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 103:If you (to General Bertrand) do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, very well; then I did wrong to make you a general. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 104:Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God's medicine. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 105:My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That's God. Everything is God. I'm a child of that. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 106:As mercy is God's goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so grace is his goodness directed toward human debt and demerit. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 107:Being human means you will make mistakes. And you will make mistakes, because failure is God's way of moving you in another direction. ~ oprah-winfrey, @wisdomtrove 108:Life is nothing but the expansion of love. We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source. The Source is God, who is all Love. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 109:The Hindu philosophers teach that life is the dream of Brahman. ‘Brahman’ is a name for God, so they’re claiming that life is God’s dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 110:At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 111:It is God's will to bless us, but not necessarily on our terms. Sometimes what we think would be a wonderful blessing would not bless us at all. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 112:How anyone cannot see that Nature is God is amazing to me: that they'd rather worship something that can only exist, really, in their own minds. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 113:He is not humanity deified. He is not Godhead humanized. He is God. He is man. He is all that God is, and all that man is as God created Him. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 114:Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart - poisoned as it is with pride and pain - and replacing it with his own. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 115:When reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God. Or, rather, it is God experiencing you. God knows you when you know yourself. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 116:It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He too, is God's minister, And labors for some good By us not understood. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 117:The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 118:The sum total of all the cells in an organism is one person; so each soul is like one cell and the sum of them is God, and beyond that is the Absolute. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 119:It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 120:Mirth is God's medicine; everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all the rust of life- ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 121:That is God's call to us - simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 122:All our other faculties seem to have the brown touch of earth upon them, but the imagination carries the very livery of heaven, and is God's self in the soul. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 123:The Most difficult thing but an essential one is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 124:The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum-total of that life is God. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 125:A voice behind me asked, "Where is God? Where is He? Where can He be now?" and a voice within me answered: "Where? Here He is - He has been hanged here, on these gallows." ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 126:Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 127:The truth is God created us to have relationship with us. He wants to love us and take care of us, and He wants us to love Him. That's where our walk with Christ has to start. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 128:It is God who is the ultimate reason for things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove 129:The influence of the Church does not depend on the Church, it depends on the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit will never lose its influence. He is God and He is influencing society. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 130:All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 131:The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 132:& 133:What is Yoga? Yoga is self-conquest. Self-conquest is God-Realization. He who practices Yoga does two things with one stroke: he simplifies his whole life and he gets a freee access to the Divine. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 134:Through self-knowledge you begin to find out what is God, what is truth, what is that state which is timeless. In self-knowledge is the whole universe; it embraces all the struggles of humanity. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 135:We have to keep asking ourselves: & 136:The mystery of being is arising as all individual beings. This profound idea brings us to the greatest teaching found at the heart of the spiritual traditions of the world: Atman is Brahman. The soul is God. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 137:I am deeply convince that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God's desire for us. It is God's passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 138:We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 139:The first step in spiritual life is to have compassion. A person who is kind and loving never needs to go searching for God. God rushes toward any heart that beats with compassion-it is God's favorite place. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 140:While our world is shaking and crumbling, we need to realize that one thing will never change, and that is God. He is the same today as he was ten million years ago, and will be the same ten million years from today. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 141:What is God? The eternal one life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that one life deep within yourself and within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 142:Hope - Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us... A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead. ~ barack-obama, @wisdomtrove 143:Christ said, "I and my father are one", and you repeat it. Yet it has not helped mankind. For nineteen hundred years men have not understood that saying. They make Christ the saviour of men. He is God and we are worms! ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 144:Nature is God's first missionary. Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars. Where there are not preachers there are spring times... If a person has nothing but nature, then nature is enough to reveal something about God. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 145:Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 146:All you need to find and accomplish God's purpose in your life is God's permission and approval& 147:I could well believe that it is God's intention, since we have refused milder remedies, to compel [Christians] into unity, by persecution even. Satan is without doubt nothing else than a hammer in the hand of a benevolent and severe God. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 148:There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I've always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 149:The size of a challenge should never be measured by what we have to offer. It will never be enough. Furthermore, provision is God's responsibility, not ours. We are merely called to commit what we have - even if it's no more than a sack lunch. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 150:Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 151:You and I are experiencing the life-dream right now. But this isn’t my dream or your dream, because we are characters in the dream. The life-dream is God’s dream. The primal awareness is dreaming itself to be you and me, and experiencing the dream through us. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 152:The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 153:To me you are your own God. But if you think otherwise, think to the end. If there be God, then all is God's and all is for the best. Welcome all that comes with a glad and thankful heart. And love all creatures. This too will take you to your Self. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 154:Once sure that the doctrine we teach is God's Word, once certain of this, we may build thereupon, and know that this cause shall and must remain; the devil shall not be able to overthrow it, much less the world be able to uproot it, how fiercely soever it rage. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 155:When God's righteousness is mentioned in the gospel, it is God's action of declaring righteous the unrighteous sinner who has faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness by which a person is justified (declared righteous) is not his own but that of another, Christ. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 156:If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 157:Father is the existence out of which everything comes; Son is that knowledge. It is in Christ that God will be manifest. God was everywhere, in all beings, before Christ; but in Christ we became conscious of Him. This is God. The third is bliss, the Holy Spirit. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 158:Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 159:The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 160:I love all religions. ... If people become better Hindus, better Muslims, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there." She upheld that there are many ways to God': "All is God - Buddists, Hindus, Christians, etc., all have access to the same God." ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 161:The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 162:I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he gives us the gift of suffering. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which the Sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much are what make us perfect. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 163:For me, life is the most beautiful gift of God to mankind, therefore people and nations who destroy life by abortion and euthanasia are the poorest. I do not say legal or illegal, but I think that no human hand should be raised to kill life, since life is God's life in us, even in an unborn child. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 164:Ever-new Joy is God. He is inexhaustible; as you continue your meditations during the years, He will beguile you with an infinite ingenuity. Devotees like yourself who have found the way to God never dream of exchanging Him for any other happiness; He is seductive beyond thought of competition. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 165:Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 166:Consciousness or presence or love is trying to come up through the vehicle of this body/mind/spirit to know itself more fully and directly. It may feel like this little ‘Colleen’ is trying to reach God, but really it is God wanting to know itself through all life forms, including the life form called ‘Colleen’. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 167:If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 168:Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God's perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 169:The Neo-Platonic philosophers describe God as the ‘mystery of being’, which is in the process of ‘becoming’ all that is. The mystery of being is arising as all individual beings. This profound idea brings us to the greatest teaching found at the heart of the spiritual traditions of the world: Atman is Brahman. The soul is God. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 170:God is Infinite and His Shadow is also infinite. The Shadow of God is the Infinite Space that accommodates the infinite Gross Sphere which, with its occurrences of millions of universes, within and without the ranges of men's knowledge, is the Creation that issued from the Point of Finiteness in the infinite Existence that is God. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 171:The clearest window that ever was fashioned if it is barred by spiders' webs, and hung over with carcasses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, the Church is God's window; and if it is so obscured by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that darkness! ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 172:The greatest encouragement throughout the Bible is God's love for His lost race and the willingness of Christ, the eternal Son, to show forth that love in God's plan of redemption. The love of Jesus is so inclusive that it knows no boundaries. At the point where we stop caring and loving, Jesus is still there loving and caring ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 173:I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always... whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove 174:That your enemies have been created is God's doing; that they hate you and wish to ruin you is their own doing. What should you say about them in your mind? "Lord be merciful to them, forgive them their sins, put the fear of God in them, change them!" You are loving in them not what they are, but what you would have them to become. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 175:Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into infinite further possibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise. Beyond all and in all is God. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 176:I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question: How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question: What is God? If you think that the Truth can be known from words; if you think that the Sun and the Ocean can pass through that tiny opening called the mouth, someone should start laughing! Someone should start wildly laughing now! ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 177:Often you can see power lines running alongside the street. Unless current is flowing through them, there is no light. The power line is you and I! The current is God! We have the power to allow the current to flow through us and thus to generate the light of the world: JESUS - or to refuse to be used and, thus, allow the darkness to spread. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 178:The first angle is, love questions not. It is not a beggar. ... When love asks nothing, [when it] gives everything. This is the real spiritual worship, the worship through love. Whether God is merciful is no longer questioned. He is God; He is my love. Whether God is omnipotent and almighty, limited or unlimited , is no longer questioned. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 179:Let us not be afraid to be humble, small, helpless to prove our love for God. The cup of water you give the sick, the way you lift a dying man, the way you feed a baby, the way you teach a dull child, the way you give medicine to a sufferer of leprosy, the joy with which you smile at your own at home - all this is God's love in the world today. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 180:This little separate self must die. Then we shall find that we are in the Real, and that Real is God, and He is our own true nature, and He is always in us and with us. Let us live in Him and stand in Him. It is the only joyful state of existence. Life on the plane of the Spirit is the only life, and let us all try to attain to this realization. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 181:A fiery shield is God's Word; of more substance and purer than gold, which, tried in the fire, loses nought of its substance, but resists and overcomes all the fury of the fiery heat; even so, he that believes God's Word overcomes all, and remains secure everlastingly, against all misfortunes; for this shield fears nothing, neither hell nor the devil. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 182:Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety,& 183:It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself... Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself... Life is God's gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God... for it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 184:It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself... Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself... Life is God's gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God... for it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 185:The inferior devotee says, "God exists, but He is very far off, up there in heaven." The mediocre devotee says, "God exists is in all beings as life and consciousness." The superior devotee says, "it is God Himself who has become everything; whatever I see is only a form of God. it is He alone who has become maya, the universe, and all living beings. Nothing exists but God." ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 186:Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is all the very nature of the soul. Love is life. All, all that I understand, I understand only because of love. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God and dying means for me a particle of love, to go back to the universal and eternal source of love. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 187:If you find it difficult to love the human in someone, then love the divine in him. The divine in him is God. God exists in that person just as God exists in you. To love God is extremely easy because God is divine and perfect. Each time you look at an individual, if you can consciously become aware of God's existence in him, then you will not be disturbed by his or her imperfections or limitations. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 188:The goal of mysticism is communion with God. In this experience, the mystic no longer exists as a separate individual, but becomes one with the Oneness. This vision can only arise when the mystic realises that the ego-self is only an illusionary veil that masks the true divine Self: and that this Self is God, the being of all beings. God is not something & 189:We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 190:We have not faith, we have not patience to see this. We trust the man in the street; but there is one being in the universe we never trust and that is God. We trust Him when He works just our way. But the time will come when, getting blow after blow, the self - sufficient mind will die. In everything we do, the serpent ego is rising up. We are glad that there are so many thorns on the path. They strike the hood of the cobra. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 191:The motive is this, & 192:If God wishes to be born as man and to unite mankind in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, He suffers the terrible torment of having to bear the world in its reality. It is a crux; indeed, He Himself is His own cross. The world is God's suffering, and every individual human being who wishes even to approach his own wholeness knows very well that this means bearing his own cross. But the eternal promise for him who bears his own cross is the Paraclete. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 193:Religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief; because your belief projects what you think God ought to be, what you think ought to be true. If you believe God is love, God is good, God is this or that, your very belief prevents you from understanding what is God, what is true. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 194:Some imaginations help to break the bondage of the rest. The whole universe is imagination, but one set of imaginations will cure another set. Those that tell us that there is sin and sorrow and death in the world are terrible. But the other set - thou art holy, there is God, there is no pain - these are good, and help to break the bondage of the others. The highest imagination that can break all the links of the chain is that of the Personal God. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 195:To Mercy Pity Peace and Love All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy Pity Peace and Love Is God our father dear. And Mercy Pity Peace and Love Is Man his child and care. Then every man of every clime That prays in his distress Prays to the human form divine: Love Mercy Pity Peace. And all must love the human form In heathen, Turk, or Jew. Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 196:Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question ‘What is God like?’ and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 197:Then they began to say: & 198:Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God‚Äôs myth where the others are men‚Äôs myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call & 199:What is & 200:Children, we may go to the temple, reverently circumambulate the sanctum sanctorum and put our offering in the charity box, but on our way out if we kick the beggar at the door, where is our devotion? Compassion towards the poor is our duty to God. Mother is not saying that we should give money to every beggar that sits in front of a temple, but do not despise them. Pray for them as well. When we hate others, it is our own mind that becomes impure. Equality of vision is God. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 201:But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life& 202:What is God-given is called nature; to follow nature is called Tao (the Way); to cultivate the way is called culture. Before joy, anger, sadness and happiness are expressed, they are called the inner self; when they are expressed to the proper degree, they are called harmony. The inner self is the correct foundation of the world, and the harmony is the illustrious Way. When a man has achieved the inner self and harmony, the heaven and earth are orderly and the myriad of things are nourished and grow thereby. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 203:Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea. We are today overrun with orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where are they? The hard voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but the Church waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the Wonder that is God. And yet, thus to penetrate, to push in sensitive living experience into the holy Presence, is a privilege open to every child of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 204:We lump together all things that are beyond the capacity of all of us collectively to understand-and one name we give to all those things together is God. Therefore, God is the creative force, the sustaining power, that which motivates toward constant change, the overall intelligence which governs the universe by physical and spiritual law, truth, love, goodness, kindness, beauty, the ever-present, all-pervading essence or spirit, which binds everything in the universe together and gives to everything in the universe.. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 205:It is not given to man to know the whole Truth. His duty lies in living up to the truth as he sees it, and in doing so, to resort to the purest means, i.e., to non-violence. God alone knows absolute truth. Therefore, I have often said, Truth is God. It follows that man, a finite being, cannot know absolute truth. Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God's attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 206:My doctrine means that I must identify myself with life, with everything that lives, that I must share the majesty of life in the presence of God. The sum-total of this life is God. .. Man is not at peace with himself until he has become like unto God. The endeavor to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realisation. This self-realisation is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures... to be a real devotee is to realise oneself. Self-realisation is not something apart. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 207:If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells us about Him is ultimately a lie and therefore we cannot know Him as He really is unless we pass beyond everything that can be imagined and enter into an obscurity without images and without the likeness of any created thing. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 208:The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive ‚ a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society ‚ a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself... . The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 209:Thou shall love the Lord with thy whole heart, soul, and mind. This is the commandment of the Great God, and he cannot command the impossible. Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice by an intense inner life. There is no limit because God is love, love is God, God's love is infinite. But part is to love and to give until it hurts. That's why it is not how much you do, but how much love you put into the action. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 210:Because the Holy Spirit is God, we feel Him as He controls our circumstances and transforms our lives. When He does that, He uses us. He melts us in relationships. He molds us in the pursuit and the direction of His will. He fills us with power and the perseverance to keep at it. He uses as He controls our circumstances and transforms our lives. Ask the Spirit of God to use you, just as you are, with the gifts and abilities that He's given you. Secure in the confidence that God is in control of your life, you will be free to serve Him with joy and effectiveness. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 211:What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 212:There is one God, in whom there is the Divine Trinity, and he is the Lord Jesus Christ. This can be briefly illustrated in the following way: It is a certain and established truth that God is one, and his essence cannot be divided; and also that there is a Trinity. Since God is One, and his essence cannot be divided, it follows that God is one Person. And since he is one Person, the Trinity is in that Person. It is clear that this Person is the Lord Jesus Christ from the fact that he was conceived from God the Father (Luke 1:34, 35), and thus as to his soul and life itself he is God. Therefore, as he himself said, "he and the Father are one." (John 10:30). ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 213:The real importance of Swedenborg lies in the doctrines he taught, which are the reverse of the gloom and hell-fire of other breakaway sects. He rejects the notion that Jesus died on the cross to atone for the sin of Adam, declaring that God is neither vindictive nor petty-minded, and that since he is God, he doesn't need atonement. It is remarkable that this common-sense view had never struck earlier theologians. God is Divine Goodness, and Jesus is Divine Wisdom, and Goodness has to be approached through Wisdom. Whatever one thinks about the extraordinary claims of its founder, it must be acknowledged that there is something very beautiful and healthy about the Swedenborgian religion. Its founder may have not been a great occultist, but he was a great man. Colin Wilson ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 214:The Battle of Good and Evil Polytheism gave birth not merely to monotheist religions, but also to dualistic ones. Dualistic religions espouse the existence of two opposing powers: good and evil. Unlike monotheism, dualism believes that evil is an independent power, neither created by the good God, nor subordinate to it. Dualism explains that the entire universe is a battleground between these two forces, and that everything that happens in the world is part of the struggle. Dualism is a very attractive world view because it has a short and simple answer to the famous Problem of Evil, one of the fundamental concerns of human thought. ‘Why is there evil in the world? Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people?’ Monotheists have to practise intellectual gymnastics to explain how an all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good God allows so much suffering in the world. One well-known explanation is that this is God’s way of allowing for human free will. Were there no evil, humans could not choose between good and evil, and hence there would be no free will. This, however, is a non-intuitive answer that immediately raises a host of new questions. Freedom of will allows humans to choose evil. Many indeed choose evil and, according to the standard monotheist account, this choice must bring divine punishment in its wake. If God knew in advance that a particular person would use her free will to choose evil, and that as a result she would be punished for this by eternal tortures in hell, why did God create her? Theologians have written countless books to answer such questions. Some find the answers convincing. Some don’t. What’s undeniable is that monotheists have a hard time dealing with the Problem of Evil. For dualists, it’s easy to explain evil. Bad things happen even to good people because the world is not governed single-handedly by a good God. There is an independent evil power loose in the world. The evil power does bad things. Dualism has its own drawbacks. While solving the Problem of Evil, it is unnerved by the Problem of Order. If the world was created by a single God, it’s clear why it is such an orderly place, where everything obeys the same laws. But if Good and Evil battle for control of the world, who enforces the laws governing this cosmic war? Two rival states can fight one another because both obey the same laws of physics. A missile launched from Pakistan can hit targets in India because gravity works the same way in both countries. When Good and Evil fight, what common laws do they obey, and who decreed these laws? So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Pain is God's megaphone ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
2:God is all and all is God. ~ Eckhart, #NFDB
3:Poetry is God's work. ~ Katy Lederer, #NFDB
4:Necessity is God's veil. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
5:Patience is God's nature. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
6:Student, tell me, what is God? ~ Kabir, #NFDB
7:What is, is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
8:All truth is God's truth. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
9:Sleep is God. Go worship. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
10:Student, tell me, what is God? ~ Kabir, #NFDB
11:The devil is God's ape! ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
12:What is, is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
13:Humanity connected is God. ~ Jim Gilliam, #NFDB
14:Truly a wife is God’s gift. ~ Anya Seton, #NFDB
15:Gray hair is God's graffiti. ~ Bill Cosby, #NFDB
16:Unselfishness is God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
17:Beauty is God's handwriting. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
18:it is God without mankind ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
19:Karma is God's girlfriend. ~ Allan Williams, #NFDB
20:The great unseen reality is God ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
21:The problem's name is God. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
22:God is God, and I'm not. ~ Stephen Mansfield, #NFDB
23:The best of all is God with us ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
24:All of nature is God's art. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
25:But is God a Yale man? ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
26:Forgiveness is God's command. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
27:God is all and all is God. ~ Meister Eckhart, #NFDB
28:Mirth is God's medicine. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
29:Water is God's tranquilizer. ~ Diana Vreeland, #NFDB
30:All of my writing is God-given. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
31:Duty is God;Work is worship. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
32:Forgiveness is God's greatest gift ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
33:God is God because he remembers. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
34:Conscience is God present in man. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
35:Labor is God's education. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
36:The sum total of karma is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
37:What is God drunk on? Your love. ~ John Crowder, #NFDB
38:Man's word is God in man. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
39:Sex is God's joke on human beings. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
40:The goal of life is god realisation. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
41:the great unseen Reality is God. "He ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
42:The world is God's language to us. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
43:Bach is Bach just as God is God. ~ Hector Berlioz, #NFDB
44:If God is male, then the male is God. ~ Mary Daly, #NFDB
45:Reason is God's crowning gift to man. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
46:What is God? Everything. ~ Pindar, Fragment 140d, #NFDB
47:What is love? Love to me is god. ~ Kendrick Lamar, #NFDB
48:Where there is nothing, there is God. ~ W B Yeats, #NFDB
49:How good is God! How sweet his yoke! ~ Jean Racine, #NFDB
50:The church is God's vineyard. ~ Heinrich Bullinger, #NFDB
51:The sum of all that lives is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
52:Tim Curry is God. He will distract me. ~ Nikki Rae, #NFDB
53:Conceit is God's gift to little men. ~ Bruce Barton, #NFDB
54:"Is God a Man or a Woman ?" ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
55:It is God's giving if we laugh or weep. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
56:The Holy Spirit is God the evangelist. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
57:The source of the ego is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
58:This is God’s victory: not mine. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
59:Good is god, but better carries it. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
60:That silent Self alone is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
61:Faith is God's work within us. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
62:Love is God’s breath,” I whispered. ~ Vanessa Fewings, #NFDB
63:Reason is God's crowning gift to a man... ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
64:The greatest good on this earth is God ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
65:Where there is love, there is God also. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
66:Content is king, but context is God. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
67:Every believer is God's miracle. ~ Philip James Bailey, #NFDB
68:Joy is God in the marrow of our bones. ~ Eugenia Price, #NFDB
69:Love is life, love is god, love is sannyas! ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
70:We speak, but it is God who teaches. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
71:God is God. His name doesn't matter. ~ Christopher Pike, #NFDB
72:God is God. His name doesn’t matter. ~ Christopher Pike, #NFDB
73:Lucifer is God in the public school system ~ Vinnie Paz, #NFDB
74:Make sure your vision is God's vision. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
75:Nature is God's greatest evangelist. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
76:The Law which governs all life is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
77:The world is God's world, after all. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
78:Ability is God-given, prowess is earned. ~ John Harbaugh, #NFDB
79:The Bible is God's love letter to us ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
80:The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
81:After all, God is God because he remembers. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
82:For what is God? He is the soul of the universe. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
83:I believe that there is God in all of us ~ Michael Landon, #NFDB
84:Ignorance is God's prison. Knowing is God's palace ~ Rumi, #NFDB
85:Inspiration is God making contact with itself. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
86:Nothing that is God's is obtainable by money ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
87:The soul bound is man; free, it is God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
88:Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
89:Silence is God's first language. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
90:The soul bound is man; free, it is God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
91:What is God anyway?"
"A dark place — ~ Iris Murdoch,#NFDB
92:Africa is God's country, and He can have it. ~ Groucho Marx, #NFDB
93:Grace is God-given power to live differently. ~ Judah Smith, #NFDB
94:G.R.A.C.E. is God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
95:It is God who trains our hands for war. ~ Jill Eileen Smith, #NFDB
96:Our love is God, let's go get a Slushie. ~ Christian Slater, #NFDB
97:The mark of a man of God is God upon the man. ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
98:To a man with an empty stomach food is God ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
99:Chocolate is God's apology for brocolli ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
100:Conscience is God's presence in humans. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg, #NFDB
101:The Bible is God's Word given in man's language ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
102:Where there is nothing, there is God. ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
103:Coincidence is God's way of being anonymous. ~ Laura Pedersen, #NFDB
104:Evil is real - but so is God's power and love. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
105:helpful. The spirit is God-conscious. The soul ~ Derek Prince, #NFDB
106:Hitler is lonely. So is God. Hitler is like God. ~ Hans Frank, #NFDB
107:Ignorance is God’s prison.
Knowing is God’s Palace ~ Rumi,#NFDB
108:To be free from evil thoughts is God's best gift. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
109:Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
110:A grandchild is God's reward for raising a child. ~ Bill Cosby, #NFDB
111:Beauty is God's handwriting-a wayside sacrament. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
112:Hair loss is God's way of telling me I'm human. ~ Bruce Willis, #NFDB
113:Life is God's novel. Let him write it. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer, #NFDB
114:Man is God by his faculty for thought. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, #NFDB
115:Man’s [or woman’s] rejection is God’s protection. ~ Alan Cohen, #NFDB
116:Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
117:A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. ~ Carl Sandburg, #NFDB
118:Chaos is God's body. Order is the Devil's chains. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
119:For right is right, since God is God. ~ Frederick William Faber, #NFDB
120:Sin - sin is God’s most precious gift. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
121:We speak, but it is God who teaches. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
122:... What is God?
He is the breath inside the breath. ~ Kabir,#NFDB
123:What men call accident is God's own part. ~ Philip James Bailey, #NFDB
124:Coincidence is God's way of staying anonymous. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
125:Is God to blame for what I myself have done? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
126:War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
127:We speak, but it is God who teaches. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
128:We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
129:Art is a man's nature; nature is God's art. ~ Philip James Bailey, #NFDB
130:coincidence is god's way of remaining anonymous ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
131:Love is everything. Love is God. Live in love. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
132:To be fortunate is God, and more than God to mortals. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
133:Truth is God, and truth overrides all our plans. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
134:All of it is God, and there is nothing else. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
135:Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
136:Death is God's delightful way of giving us life. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
137:Heaven is God's answer to any suffering you may face. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
138:Salvation is God's way of making us real people. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
139:The reason for our loving God is God. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #NFDB
140:Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
141:War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
142:Weakness is God’s theater for displaying his strength. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
143:All is divine, all is God, and unity is divinity. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
144:Christianity is God's marriage proposal to the soul. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
145:Pressure is God's way of increasing your capacity. ~ Andrena Sawyer, #NFDB
146:The important thing is God has given me my life. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
147:The world is God's workshop for making men in. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
148:What is God looking for in the world? Assistants? No. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
149:A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. ~ Carl Sandburg, #NFDB
150:That which impels man to do the right thing is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
151:The power of faith to ease our suffering is God's love. ~ James Cook, #NFDB
152:As close as you are to God, so close is God to you. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
153:Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.
~ Albert Einstein,#NFDB
154:Pascal, Faith is God made sensible to the heart, then ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
155:Synchronicity is God sending us messages anonymously. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
156:But it is God who smites the godless, as he says here. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
157:Everyone Is God speaking. Why not be polite and Listen to Him? ~ Hafez, #NFDB
158:Faith is the beginning, love is the end, union of two is God ~ Unknown, #NFDB
159:Friendship is God’s way of apologising for our families’. ~ A J Waines, #NFDB
160:God is our father, but even more is God our mother. ~ Pope John Paul I, #NFDB
161:In each of us is a seed of understanding. The seed is God. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
162:On the onside, first there is God, then Sourav Ganguly. ~ Rahul Dravid, #NFDB
163:The Bible is clear that the Holy Spirit is God Himself. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
164:Work is God’s gift to help you discover your potential. ~ Myles Munroe, #NFDB
165:An acronym for grace is God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. ~ Renee Swope, #NFDB
166:Despondency is ingratitude; hope is God's worship. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
167:God is self and self is God and God is a person like myself. ~ Alex Mar, #NFDB
168:If God is God, we cant be afraid of what we can learn. ~ Krista Tippett, #NFDB
169:Punishment is God's. He alone is the infallible Judge. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
170:The resurrection is God's way of getting our attention. ~ Peter J Gomes, #NFDB
171:The sense of humor is God's best gift to Man. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
172:THEY ATE LUNCH in a Mexican place called Dirty Is God. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
173:Everything is God, there is nothing else but God. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
174:God is love, and love is God. And God is everywhere. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
175:Man, man, is thy brother, and thy father is God. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, #NFDB
176:Nature is a good name for an effect whose cause is God. ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
177:That is god... A shout in the street,' Stephen answered... ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
178:That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
179:You look until you see nothing tangible, and that is God. ~ Thomas Moore, #NFDB
180:Your tragedy is God’s opportunity to show Himself faithful. ~ Jim George, #NFDB
181:How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
182:The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
183:The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, Me too. ~ Rob Bell, #NFDB
184:When your will is God's will, you will have your will. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
185:I have to learn that the aim in life is God's, not mine. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
186:It is God's kindness to terrify you in order to lead you to safety. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
187:It is not 'Is God on my side', but 'Am I on God's side'. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
188:Life is pointless...and that is God's greatest gift. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
189:What is God singing in his profound Delphi of gold and shadow? ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
190:Life is God’s novel. Let him write it. — ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER ~ Alan Cohen, #NFDB
191:Man's extremity is God's opportunity of helping and saving. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
192:There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is God's messenger. ~ Saddam Hussein, #NFDB
193:What I am not,” he says, most truthfully, “that for me is God ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
194:Christ is God or He is the world's greatest liar and imposter. ~ Dorothy Day, #NFDB
195:Coincidence is God's way of performing miracles anonymously. ~ Sophy Burnham, #NFDB
196:Human love has an end, which is God, who makes it endless. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
197:It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
198:law which is God, and the organism that represents ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
199:Meditation is silence. Silence is God In His Infinity's Smile. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
200:The universe is God. I am God so that means I am the universe. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
201:High fortune, this in man's eye is god and more than god is this. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
202:Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up his dream for the world. ~ Rob Bell, #NFDB
203:You should point to the whole man Jesus and say, That is God. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
204:Life is God's gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God. ~ A R Bernard, #NFDB
205:Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
206:It is our work to cast care, and it is God's work to take care. ~ Thomas Watson, #NFDB
207:My life is God's life in me for Him to do with what He wants. ~ Stephen Baldwin, #NFDB
208:Romans 9:8—Is God responsible for hardening Pharaoh’s heart? ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
209:Why seek the Deity further? Whatever we see is God, and wherever we go. ~ Lucan, #NFDB
210:You have to leave room for God's grace. Perfect is God's job. ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
211:August in Florida is God's way of reminding us who's in charge. ~ Blaize Clement, #NFDB
212:God alone is true; God alone is great; alone is God. ~ Edouard Rene de Laboulaye, #NFDB
213:God's grace, quite simply, is God's mercy and goodness toward us. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
214:It is God's design to use reluctant servants to usher in glory. ~ Dan B Allender, #NFDB
215:Sometimes not getting what you want is God's greatest blessing. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
216:This is God’s trajectory within time and space: eternal expansion. ~ Mike Dooley, #NFDB
217:When your will is God's will, you will have your will. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
218:Love is God, and the one that believes in love, believes in God. ~ Shri Radhe Maa, #NFDB
219:The life of the body is the soul; the life of the soul is God. ~ Anthony of Padua, #NFDB
220:The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
221:The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul. ~ Chrysippus, #NFDB
222:To say that God is love is in effect to say simply that love is God. ~ Don Cupitt, #NFDB
223:Freedom is not our gift to the world it is God's gift to humanity. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
224:it is not just any truth that sets you free. It is God’s truth. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
225:Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
226:The author of true, real and rare wisdom is God; ask Him! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
227:The law is God's first word; the gospel is God's final word. ~ Tullian Tchividjian, #NFDB
228:Aging is God's idea. It's one of the ways he keeps us headed homeward. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
229:An oath, sir, is an end of all strife, and it is God's ordinance. ~ Anne Hutchinson, #NFDB
230:Cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money. ~ Robin Williams, #NFDB
231:Discernment is God's call to intercession, never to faultfinding. ~ Corrie ten Boom, #NFDB
232:Each day is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift to Him. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
233:Eternity is not time at all. It is God’s total possession of Himself. ~ Frank Sheed, #NFDB
234:Everything that is seen and everything that is unseen is God. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
235:Everything that is true is God's word, whoever may have said it. ~ Huldrych Zwingli, #NFDB
236:Hush, La Carconte. It is God's pleasure that things should be so. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
237:I am the vessel. The draft is God's. And God is the thirsty one. ~ Dag Hammarskj ld, #NFDB
238:I am the vessel. The draft is God's. And God is the thirsty one. ~ Dag Hammarskjold, #NFDB
239:If prayer is you talking to God, then intuition is God talking to you. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
240:The greatest thing anyone can give humanity is God consciousness. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
241:The lack of hate between executioner and victim, perhaps this is God. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
242:4For every house has a builder, but the one who built everything is God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
243:Forgiveness is God's greatest gift because it meets our greatest need. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
244:I really believe that coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. ~ Bill Moyers, #NFDB
245:Is God a man or a woman? God could be an armadillo. I have no idea. ~ Sherman Alexie, #NFDB
246:Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
247:Is man one of God’s blunders, or is God one of man’s blunders? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
248:It is God's objective to make your condition line up with your position. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
249:To remember no more is God's way of expressing absolute forgiveness. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
250:What you have to do, you do with play. The universe is God’s play. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
251:Are we alone in an uncaring universe, or is God some kind of wiseguy? ~ Matt Groening, #NFDB
252:... divine love is not something belonging to God: it is God Himself. ~ Henri Bergson, #NFDB
253:Everything has a cause, and the ultimate cause, as we have seen, is God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
254:For the Sufi, reality is neither emptiness nor illusion; reality is God. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
255:Often does good come out of evil. But that is God's, not man's plan. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
256:Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
257:What is god, what is not god, what is between man and god, who shall say? ~ Euripides, #NFDB
258:Albert Einstein said coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. ~ Scott Wilbanks, #NFDB
259:Each of us is God's workmanship, not the workmanship of anyone else. ~ Christine Caine, #NFDB
260:Meeting someone is God's doing, but parting is what humans do themselves. ~ Moto Hagio, #NFDB
261:This is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call it world. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
262:Your life is God’s gift. Your deeds are God’s reward. And God watches. ~ Warren Murphy, #NFDB
263:It is God's Word that will establish the image of the unseen within us. ~ Charles Capps, #NFDB
264:The cry of a baby is God's voice: never drive them away from the church! ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
265:The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
266:There is no one anywhere as available to everyone everywhere as is God. ~ Eugenia Price, #NFDB
267:Faith is not merely you holding on to God- it is God holding on to you ~ E Stanley Jones, #NFDB
268:It is fate, Nayla thought. It is God’s will. They were the same thing. A ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
269:It is God who makes woman beautiful, it is the devil who makes her pretty. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
270:Monogamy is god's way of making death seem like a more reasonable option. ~ Dov Davidoff, #NFDB
271:PSA18.32 It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
272:silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation. ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
273:Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation. ~ Thomas Keating, #NFDB
274:Silence is God's language, and it's a very difficult language to learn. ~ Thomas Keating, #NFDB
275:Why is the universe? To shape God. Why is God? To shape the universe. ~ Octavia E Butler, #NFDB
276:You know, the ocean is a very, very beautiful place. It is God’s gift to us, ~ Lynne Cox, #NFDB
277:Albert Einstein observed, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
278:America is God equals America equals Business equals America equals God. ~ Oriana Fallaci, #NFDB
279:As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
280:If God is God, he is the God of reality and facts and science and history. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
281:If you keep kosher, the protagonist of your meal is not you; it is God. ~ Lauren F Winner, #NFDB
282:I’m still me, Malala. The important thing is God has given me my life. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
283:The blank page is God's way of letting us know how hard it is to be God. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
284:The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families. ~ Jay McInerney, #NFDB
285:To god what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's. To humans - what? ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
286:Amid the sufferings of life on earth, suicide is God's best gift to man. ~ Pliny the Elder, #NFDB
287:Jesus is the Author of peace. He is God’s peacemaker (Ephesians 2:13-14). ~ Mark Hitchcock, #NFDB
288:....maybe fear is God's way of saying, "Pay attention, this could be fun. ~ Craig Ferguson, #NFDB
289:Anytime two people can look at each other and talk honestly, that is God. ~ Catherine Lacey, #NFDB
290:It is God’s decree which by itself completely determines the course of history; ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
291:It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
292:The Self is you. It is everything. It is God. That is who you really are. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
293:Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
294:4(For every house is built by someone, but u the builder of all things is God.) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
295:A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God. ~ Sidney Sheldon, #NFDB
296:As Albert Einstein observed, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
297:God speaks all languages—including yours. What language is God speaking to you? ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
298:My "me" is God nor do I recognize any other "me" except my God himself. ~ Catherine of Genoa, #NFDB
299:Skill in secular employments is God's gift, and comes from above, Jam. 1:17. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
300:The Bible is God’s own Word. It is God’s great gift to all people everywhere. ~ Derek Prince, #NFDB
301:The body is God's temple, but we are to worship God, not the temple. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
302:Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
303:Everything that happens is God's will. When you realize that, you're home free. ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
304:It is God alone who can subdue and govern the unruly wills of sinful men. ~ George Whitefield, #NFDB
305:It is God himself who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things. ~ John Henry Newman, #NFDB
306:You owe me nothing, my boy. If we owe anyone anything, it is God. Remember that ~ Johan Twiss, #NFDB
307:Beer is God's way of telling us that he loves us and wants us to be happy. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
308:Finn is God: If you get off your high horse, you'll notice that it, too, poops. ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
309:Finn Is God More disruptive than living in my house? You’re clearly unbalanced. ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
310:It is God who creates, effects, and preserves all things through his almighty. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
311:One is ever young in the presence of the God of Truth, or Truth which is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
312:The Bible is God’s infallible Word, the only rule of faith and practice. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
313:Krishna is God, so He's absolute: His name, His form, prasadam, it's all Him. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
314:The seeker asking, Where is God? Is really God saying, Where indeed is the seeker! ~ Meher Baba, #NFDB
315:Why is God making me suffer so much? Just because I don't believe in him? ~ Sidney Morgenbesser, #NFDB
316:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity." ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
317:Chance is better than choice; it is more lordly. Chance is God, choice is man. ~ Elizabeth Bowen, #NFDB
318:Desire is God tapping at the door of your mind, trying to give you greater good. ~ H Emilie Cady, #NFDB
319:Every quilt has an intentional flaw because the only thing that's perfect is God. ~ Holly Jacobs, #NFDB
320:God has judged me all my life. But that is God's privilege, my lady. Not yours. ~ Barbara Hambly, #NFDB
321:I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music. ~ Johann Sebastian Bach, #NFDB
322:Is god omnipotent ? If he is, can he create a rock so heavy he can't lift it ? ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
323:The human soul is God's treasury, out of which he coins unspeakable riches. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
324:The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
325:What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
326:Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
327:Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God ~ Leo F Buscaglia, #NFDB
328:All truth and understanding is a result of a divine light which is God Himself. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
329:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity." ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
330:God is God, He is not tame and domesticated like we sometimes (try to) make Him. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
331:It’s not what you get, but what you give that is God’s true measure of a life. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
332:My own favorite Bierce bon mot: “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
333:Religion in India must be made as free and as easy of access as is God's air. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
334:We want to go to God for answers, but sometimes what we get is God’s presence. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
335:Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
336:Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God. ~ Leo F Buscaglia, #NFDB
337:As Albert Einstein observed, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” When ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
338:Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God's work, and not mine. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
339:In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director. ~ Alfred Hitchcock, #NFDB
340:Jesus is God but he humbled himself to walk with us. He is our friend, our brother. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
341:Love is love. It is God-given, and a sacrament. It is not for any man to judge. ~ Kathleen McGowan, #NFDB
342:Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion. ~ John Henry Newman, #NFDB
343:Remember: the Word is God and God is the Word. You are what your words are. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
344:15 For it is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
345:A lonely day is God's way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
346:God is God. He knows what he is doing. When you can’t trace his hand, trust his heart. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
347:It is God himself who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things. ~ Saint John Henry Newman, #NFDB
348:PHI2.13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
349:Since my money is God's money, every spending decision I make is a spiritual decision. ~ John Hagee, #NFDB
350:The pure Consciousness that alone finally remains is God. This is Liberation. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
351:This world is God fulfilled in outwardness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #NFDB
352:You have given Caesar what is Caesar's, how about start giving God what is God's? ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
353:Flora had once told her that ‘Friendship is God’s way of apologising for our families’. ~ A J Waines, #NFDB
354:God has control over everything, and obviously, everything to everyone is god-given. ~ Troy Polamalu, #NFDB
355:God is God and I am not. I can only see a part of the picture He's painting. ~ Steven Curtis Chapman, #NFDB
356:His Son Jesus, the Word of God, is our Instructor.... He is God and Creator. ~ Clement of Alexandria, #NFDB
357:I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God, and God is in my soul. ~ Elizabeth of the Trinity, #NFDB
358:Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because He loves. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
359:Religion is man's attempt to reach God and Christianity is God's attempt to reach man. ~ Greg Laurie, #NFDB
360:There is God, there is you and there is Kingsley. Those are my three nonnegotiables. ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
361:To me Truth is God and there is no way to find Truth except the way of nonviolence. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
362:Turnin' nothin' into somethin' is God work, and you get nothin' without struggle and hard work ~ Nas, #NFDB
363:As Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin knew, the future of humankind is God-consciousness. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
364:frustration, complication and misery are available in abundance, but so is God's grace. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
365:I doubt if this is God’s doing. I suspect he’ll keep right out of it as a consequence. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
366:In fact, it is more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
367:I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
368:Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. KABIR ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
369:Loneliness is God’s imprint in us, constantly telling us where we should be going. ~ Ronald Rolheiser, #NFDB
370:Prayer is God's answer to our poverty, not a power we exercise to obtain an answer. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
371:The greatest sense of love, which is available for us at all times, is God’s love. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
372:What else is God good for other than a distraction from the mire we’re all stranded in? ~ Hannah Kent, #NFDB
373:What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
374:Why the kingdom? Because the Kingdom is God’s total answer to man’s total need. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
375:Doubt is God’s way of helping us not go there, though the road may be very hard and long. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
376:In fact, it is more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
377:That is God’s way. He upsets everything and loves to annoy the vain most of all. ~ Judith Merkle Riley, #NFDB
378:The hawk does not fear you, boy, and the hawk never will. The hawk is God’s gunslinger. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
379:The source of my power and strength is God, and I know it, without a shadow of a doubt. ~ Derek Fisher, #NFDB
380:To me the Bible is not God, but it is God's voice, and I do not hear it without awe ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
381:Torah is God’s book of humanity, and each of us is a chapter in its unfinished story. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
382:Human life is God's outer church. Its needs and urgencies are priests and pastors. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
383:If rain is God crying, I think God is drunk and his girlfriend just slept with Zeus. ~ Chuck Klosterman, #NFDB
384:My goal is GOD HIMSELF. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing but HIMSELF...my GOD. ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
385:the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
386:The greatest moment of your life is now. This moment is God's irreplaceable gift to you. ~ John Ortberg, #NFDB
387:Why are we worried!" Rolf said suddenly. "This is God's work. He'll make a way for us. ~ Brother Andrew, #NFDB
388:Because Man is God, and God is Man, the world is nothing but the world of Man - or Woman. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
389:Death is God," I said. "Life is Man. The day we are born begins our love affair with death. ~ Tanith Lee, #NFDB
390:For beauty is God's handwriting...A nd, thank God for it as a cup of His blessing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
391:Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion. ~ Saint John Henry Newman, #NFDB
392:The soul whose bosom lust did never touch Is God's fair bride; and maiden's souls are such. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
393:We can have no conception of God higher than man, so our God is man, and man is God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
394:A joyless Catholic is the devil's best tool. A joyful Catholic is God's greatest instrument. ~ Scott Hahn, #NFDB
395:But I doubt if this is God's doing. I suspect He'll keep right out of it as a consequence. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
396:That Intelligence is God within us; by that men are gods and their humanity neighbours divinity. ~ Hermes, #NFDB
397:The beginning is God. The end is action. Action is God creating-or God experienced. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
398:The only money of God is God. He pays never with any thing less, or any thing else. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
399:The primary object of doctrine is God; the secondary object is all things in relation to God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
400:We must accept that this creative pulse within us is God's creative pulse itself. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce, #NFDB
401:What you are is god's gift to you, What you make of yourself is your gift to god ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
402:All this is the flimsiest speculation, which is God’s gift to historical fictioneers. ~ William T Vollmann, #NFDB
403:Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls. ~ Evelyn Underhill, #NFDB
404:He [She] who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the most excellent devotee. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
405:Our choices matter. Much hangs in the balance. Our freedom is God's risk and our dignity. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
406:So, you see, a man can love you, but only imperfectly. It is God alone who can be God. ~ Melanie Dickerson, #NFDB
407:The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God! ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
408:The use of means for the obtaining of peace is ours; the bestowing of it is God's prerogative. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
409:Grace is God’s free empowerment that gives us the ability to go beyond our natural ability. W ~ John Bevere, #NFDB
410:How is God's name hallowed among us? When both our doctrine and living are truly Christian. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
411:I never get tired because it ain't energy that's being dispenced. It is GOD speaking through me. ~ Don King, #NFDB
412:It is God who speaks life into us. God is the One who resurrects the spiritually dead to life. ~ Jen Wilkin, #NFDB
413:Prayer is God's appointed means for appropriating the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
414:Prayer is God’s appointed means for appropriating the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
415:We are created to infect and infiltrate culture, restoring and reclaiming what is God’s. ~ Jefferson Bethke, #NFDB
416:If there is no God, then man sometimes thinks he is god, and sometimes tries to live like a god. ~ Ben Stein, #NFDB
417:Never walk away from someone who deserves help; your hand is God's hand for that person. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
418:Rain says a noise: shh. You can hear it when it comes down. It is God telling us to be quiet. ~ Howard Buten, #NFDB
419:Depend upon it, it is God's Word, not our comment upon God's Word, that saves souls. ~ Robert Murray M Cheyne, #NFDB
420:For me, everything is God. Everything and everyone. So it was just, God needs me now, now, now. ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
421:If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd. ~ Archibald MacLeish, #NFDB
422:Is God troubled?” And her companion replied: “The sins of this universe would trouble anyone. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
423:I worship the God that is Truth or Truth which is God through the service of these millions. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
424:The entire sum of Creation, each private and individual act of nature, is God waving hello. ~ John Ortberg Jr, #NFDB
425:The good news is God isn’t waiting for your perfect youth talk to do a mighty work through you. ~ Doug Fields, #NFDB
426:What was once easy became confused and hard, which brings us back to the mystic question, who is God? ~ Rakim, #NFDB
427:Whoever does not accept my teaching may not be saved - for it is God's teaching and not mine. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
428:You and I are but specks of that rhythmic urge which is Brahma, which is Allah, which is God. ~ Ruth St Denis, #NFDB
429:Compassion is easily forsaken in the midst of prosperity, even when this prosperity is God given. ~ Max Anders, #NFDB
430:Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thess. 5:18). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
431:Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
432:A human being was created in love. What was created in love can only live in love. Love is God. ~ Bruno Gr ning, #NFDB
433:And again: No more gods! no more gods! Man is King, Man is God! - But the great Faith is Love! ~ Arthur Rimbaud, #NFDB
434:Confidence in the natural world is self-reliance; in the spiritual world, it is God-reliance. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
435:Each day is God’s gift of a fresh unspoiled opportunity to live according to His priorities. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
436:I always say you can never be extravagant with beauty. Beauty is God made real. Beauty is life. ~ Imelda Marcos, #NFDB
437:It is not because there is God that devotion has come; because there is devotion, there is God. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
438:Never lose an opportunity for seeing something beautiful for beauty is God s handwriting. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
439:Scripture carries God’s authority, the highest authority, because Scripture is God’s very own Word. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
440:Authority is God ordained, but authoritarianism and raw power, in almost all forms, is dangerous. ~ James Dobson, #NFDB
441:Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call God. Everything is God. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
442:I remember Mom always telling me that all in all in the end the only one you really have is God. ~ Kayla Mueller, #NFDB
443:It is God which worketh in you." He needs no one, but when faith is present He works through anyone. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
444:Krishna is God, the source of all that exists, the cause of all that is, was, or ever will be. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
445:Observe, Chagatai, the protagonist of every work of fiction is Humanity, and the antagonist is God. ~ Ada Palmer, #NFDB
446:One of the most important questions you could ask is: “What is God doing in the here and now? ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
447:Talent is God-given. Be Humble. Fame is man-given. Be Grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be Careful. ~ John Wooden, #NFDB
448:Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. ~ John Wooden, #NFDB
449:Talent is God-given: be humble. Fame is man-given: be thankful. Conceit is self-given: be careful. ~ John Wooden, #NFDB
450:The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,#NFDB
451:The paradox: Is God a racist, homophobic, anti- Semitic ass? Or is God testing to see if I am? ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
452:We really are one with Master or Bhagavan. The Master is God; one discovers it in the end. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
453:What is God?
God is the perfection that we must aspire to realise.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
454:All truth and understanding is a result of a divine light which is God Himself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
455:I'm not scared. The only thing that scares me is God. And guess what, Mina? God is not a fanatic. ~ Marjan Kamali, #NFDB
456:Krishna is God, and by chanting His Holy Names, the devotee quickly develops God-consciousness. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
457:Love is God's essence; Power but his attribute: therefore is his love greater than his power. ~ Richard B Garnett, #NFDB
458:Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God's greatest gift to man. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
459:What each man honours before all else, what before all things he admires and loves, this for him is God. ~ Origen, #NFDB
460:In everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
461:Jesus Christ in his person is God manifest in the flesh, he is light of light, the true Shechinah. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
462:that strictly(and how)scienti fic land of supernod where freedom is compulsory and only man is god. ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
463:This is God's universe, buddy, not yours, and he has the final say about what's ego and what isn't. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
464:This is God's work, and God's work will not be frustrated. But there is still much to be done. ~ M Russell Ballard, #NFDB
465:War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god. ~ Cormac McCarthy, #NFDB
466:80. What is God? The immutable or unalterable good.
81. What is man? An unchangeable evil. ~ Hermes Trismegistus,#NFDB
467:Because Jesus Christ is a man, He feels what we feel. Because He is God, He can do something about it. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
468:If God allows proof that he exists he robs people of faith and without faith what is God? Nothing. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
469:I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
470:Julie Seagle: I would never in a million years go skydiving.
Finn is God: What if I took you? ~ Jessica Park,#NFDB
471:The paradox: is God a racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semetic? Or is God testing to see if I am? ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
472:this absolute power of God over man is counterbalanced by the idea that man is God's potential rival. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
473:Everything that takes place in our life is God revealing His miraculous, incredible mercy upon us. ~ Radhanath Swami, #NFDB
474:Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
475:If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
476:There is God, there is you and there is Kingsley. Those are my three nonnegotiables. You understand? ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
477:Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
478:Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. —1 THESSALONIANS 5:18 ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
479:It’s okay to be addicted to beauty,” Mom says, all dreamy. “Emerson said ‘Beauty is God’s handwriting. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
480:it's okay to be addicted to beauty," Mom says, all dreamy. "Emerson said 'beauty is God's handwriting. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
481:Knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege, and being known and loved is God’s greatest pleasure. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
482:My heart is my temple and with it I can see and hear Truth. My heart is my conscience and Truth is God. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
483:So great and boundless is God's wisdom that he knows right well how to use evil instruments to do good. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
484:The dollar bill is God in the States. All those Pelican people just believe in money and nothing else. ~ Jimi Hendrix, #NFDB
485:What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
486:Any decision I make is based on myself, and the only person I have to give an explanation to is God. ~ Solange Knowles, #NFDB
487:As Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin knew, the future of humankind is God-consciousness.
~ Ken Wilber, Up From Eden,#NFDB
488:Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 THESSALONIANS 5 : 18 ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
489:Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
490:Joy is God’s basic character. Joy is his eternal destiny. God is the happiest being in the universe. ~ John Ortberg Jr, #NFDB
491:Let him who desires to be harsh in making demands upon his debtors consider that he is God’s debtor. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
492:Man's eternal question is:'Who is God?'God's immediate answer is:'My child, who else is God, if not you? ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
493:Space tourism is God's way of telling you you aren't spending enough on lap dances, baccarat and cocaine. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
494:The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. ~ Thomas Raymond Kelly, #NFDB
495:There is no gospel without the offence. This is God's wisdom. It never seems sensible to us in our flesh. ~ Mark Dever, #NFDB
496:A Jew's undoing is never his own, it is God's; his rehabilitation is never his own, it is a Christian's. ~ Djuna Barnes, #NFDB
497:He was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Hebrews 11:10 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
498:Jesus Christ is God’s rule. And Jesus Christ is God’s presence. Wherever Christ is, there is the kingdom. ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
499:Just beneath the surface of all experiences in life is God's, or the Guru's, compassionate face. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
500:Longing gives you the power to bless. Bless the entire creation. For, the longing in you is God. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
501:Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
502:Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
503:The genuine Guru is God's representative and he speaks about God and nothing else. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, #NFDB
504:The one thing that a fish can never find is water; and the one thing that man can never find is God. ~ Eric Butterworth, #NFDB
505:Arthur Frayn: "And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?" ~ Zardoz (1974), #NFDB
506:Greatness can be captured in one word: lifestyle. Life is God's gift to you, style is what you make of it. ~ Mae Jemison, #NFDB
507:The mature believer is God-conscious, and ever-conscious of what God’s Word says about him and to him. ~ Kenneth E Hagin, #NFDB
508:God promised to bless the works of our hands. If you do not work, what is God going to bless you for? ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
509:It is God who is working in you, enabling you both to will and to act for His good purpose. Philippians 2:13 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
510:The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher is time; the best book is the world; the best friend is God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
511:The heart is God's most magnificent creation, and the prize over which he fights the kingdom of darkness. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
512:The love which moves the world, according to common Christian belief, is God's love and the love of God. ~ Mortimer Adler, #NFDB
513:14 The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
514:God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that he act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
515:If all is God, are you not included in that all? Being God yourself, is it a wonder that all is God? ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
516:If there is something more excellent than the truth, then that is God; if not, then truth itself is God. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
517:It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
518:Jesus is not a superhuman. He is God. The beloved, divine Son of Him who occupies the throne of all creation. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
519:Life here is God, the materials of Life here are God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #NFDB
520:Sabbath is not so much about a day off as it is a “day up”—a day to remember that He is God and we are not. ~ Louie Giglio, #NFDB
521:Take what comes and live without complaint. What will be, will be. Life is woman’s gift; death is God’s.’ ~ Nancy McKenzie, #NFDB
522:Talent is God-given. Be humble.
Fame is man-given. Be grateful.
Conceit is self-given. Be careful.
~ John Wooden,#NFDB
523:The Self itself is the world; the Self itself is 'I'; the Self itself is God; all is Siva, the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
524:As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother. ~ Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c.1393), Ch. 59, #NFDB
525:Creativity is God's will for us and should be practiced like any other spiritual practice -a day at a time. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
526:Hidden behind man is God. Just give him a little way, a little passage, to come through you. That is creativity. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
527:I am busily engaged in the study of the Bible. I believe it is God's word because it finds me where I am. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
528:It is God’s omnipotence, His consuming holiness, and His right to judge that make Him worthy to be feared. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
529:It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
530:The brain is the key, the brain is the source, the brain is God. Everything that humans do is neuroecology. ~ Timothy Leary, #NFDB
531:The power to Love is God's greatest gift to man, For it never will be taken from the Blessed one who loves. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
532:Acknowledge that the LORD is God. He made us, and we are His— His people, the sheep of His pasture. Psalm 100:3 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
533:God sends you into a situation not so that He can show He is God; but rather for you to show who you are! ~ Chris Oyakhilome, #NFDB
534:I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God's and everything in it. ~ Rob Bell, #NFDB
535:It is God who gives life. Let us respect and love human life, especially vulnerable life in a mother's womb. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
536:Just as the normative standard for the good and for the true is God, so the ultimate standard of beauty is God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
537:Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
538:Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
539:The fundamental story arc of the Bible is God is passionate about rescuing this world, restoring it, renewing it. ~ Rob Bell, #NFDB
540:There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
541:There is no such thing as inanimate matter...there is God or divinity in all matter and it is all living energy. ~ Jay DeFeo, #NFDB
542:Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
543:Nature is God’s power of various self-becoming, ātma-vibhūti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Theory of the Vibhuti, #NFDB
544:The man who does as he likes is the greatest slave. The man who never does as he likes is God's free man. ~ G Campbell Morgan, #NFDB
545:tonight. Hong Kong is considered one of the most important financial centers in the world. Here money is god. The ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
546:Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns?" (Rom. 8:33-34a). ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
547:Why do people argue? Even the wisest of men have not found God through argument! Is God a subject for argument? ~ Sarada Devi, #NFDB
548:In every situation take the shield of faith … and the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word. Ephesians 6:16–17 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
549:Mama says change is God's way of showing us a tender miracle, kinda like the chocolate inside a Tootsie Pop. ~ Suzanne Crowley, #NFDB
550:The Spirit, and your soul are not the same things. The Spirit is God - the source. Your soul is God's imagination. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
551:What people mean when they say that God is love is often something quite different: they really mean ‘Love is God. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
552:It is God in you that responds to God without, or affirms his own words trembling on the lips of another. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
553:Nature is God’s work, so I say nature motifs are just as spiritual, just as inspirational, as biblical images. ~ Susan Vreeland, #NFDB
554:Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book. ~ Frank Schaeffer, #NFDB
555:Talent is God-given; be thankful. Praise is man-given; be humble. Conceit is self-given; be careful. Dave Driscoll ~ Tony Dungy, #NFDB
556:This is the question: Are you using God to get something from Him? Or is God Himself the goal of your striving? ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
557:In a land where sport is sacred, Where the labourer is God, You must pander to the people, Make a hero of a clod. ~ Henry Lawson, #NFDB
558:Mr. Trump is God's man to dismantle, to upset, and to bring America - though he wants to make her great again. ~ Louis Farrakhan, #NFDB
559:Take what comes and live life without complaint. What will be, will be. Life is a woman's gift; death is God's. ~ Nancy McKenzie, #NFDB
560:that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; [1] we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
561:The Self is God. `I AM' is God. If God be apart from the Self, He must be a Selfless God, which is absurd. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
562: Why is the universe? To shape God. Why is God? To shape the universe. ~ Octavia E Butler, #NFDB
563:Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. ~ Dag Hammarskj ld, #NFDB
564:Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. ~ Dag Hammarskjold, #NFDB
565:And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
566:Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
567:I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God's business. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
568:The God of the Presence imbues the joy of completion. Love is not a “quality” of God but is God’s very essence. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
569:The greatest favorites of destiny make mistakes. Our joys are composed of shadow. The supreme smile is God's alone. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
570:The Self is God. `I AM' is God. If God be apart from the Self, He must be a Selfless God, which is absurd. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
571:the warrior knows that intuition is God's language and he continued listening to the wind and talking to the stars ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
572:Truth, according to the Christian faith, is God's love for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, truth is a relationship. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
573:We humans can work hard for each other, and we should and we must work. But it is God, and only God, who heals. ~ David Wilkerson, #NFDB
574:But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God's fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
575:How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow Him. But if Baal, follow him. 1 Kings 18:21 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
576:I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
577:Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
578:Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. ~ Beth Wiseman, #NFDB
579:The key is love, the action is service, and the joy is knowing the grandeur that is God in us and in everything. ~ Dorothy Maclean, #NFDB
580:When the heart is pure and simple it cannot help loving, because it has discovered the source of love which is God. ~ John Vianney, #NFDB
581:You may hate being pregnant, but the minute the baby is born, she is God's precious child, given to you as a gift. ~ Sandra Dallas, #NFDB
582:Be still and know that He is God. Be assured that as long as you trust Him, He will never fail you or disappoint you. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
583:Ggrace is God's best idea - it's His decision to ravage people by love, to rescue passionately, and to restore justly. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
584:God is God, as the Moslems say; but a great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
585:I was interested in the mystical element of humor - was humor part of creation? Is God laughing at us, or with us? ~ Rebecca Miller, #NFDB
586:Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
587:What is most decisive is God's Joy Project is not that we fully grasp it, but that our sovereign God fully grasps us. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
588:God is life; and in that life which is God there are no years. ... The human sense of life is not your real life. ~ Joel S Goldsmith, #NFDB
589:Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming to the rescue, God giving himself generously in and through Jesus Christ. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
590:Wanting to repent is the sign God hasn’t abandoned you. It is God, after all, who puts in us the desire to come to Him. ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
591:What if Science is God's way of reminding us that he is greater than the stories and dogma we have confined him to? ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
592:16Rejoice always, 17pray continually, 18give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
593:AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals. It is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals. ~ Jerry Falwell, #NFDB
594:All life is evolving, for evolution is God's law; and man grows slowly and steadily along with the rest. ~ Charles Webster Leadbeater, #NFDB
595:If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God's poetic justice. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
596:In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things. ~ Felicity Kendal, #NFDB
597:This is God's universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
598:Everybody is God. Everybody is the devil. And if you don't realize you have both parts, that's what really causes problems. ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
599:Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. —1 THESSALONIANS 5:18 JANUARY 8 SOFTLY ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
600:God is God. He doesn’t need me to believe in him for him to do what he does. If that were the case, he wouldn’t be God. ~ Sam Sisavath, #NFDB
601:Love is God's loaf; and this is that feeding for which we are taught to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
602:The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
603:The compassion that you see in the kindhearted is God's compassion. He has given it to them to protect the helpless. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
604:The universe is God’s son. ~ Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun (1999) “God’s Son” (Sequence: “Is It Possible to Write a Poem”), #NFDB
605:When you understand that faith is God’s muscle at your disposal, moving mountains doesn’t seem so extraordinary. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
606:Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. Keep ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
607:If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be seekers, but become one with God, for Truth is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
608:The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is God's "I Will" to every seeker for full salvation of spirit, soul and body. ~ Kenneth E Hagin, #NFDB
609:Because the Bible is God’s Word, it has eternal relevance; it speaks to all humankind, in every age and in every culture. ~ Gordon D Fee, #NFDB
610:If we continuously contemplate the Self, all distraction would vanish; the pure Consciousness that remains is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
611:It is God to whom and with whom we travel, and while He is the end of our journey, He is also at every stopping place. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
612:Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. PSALM 100:3 NIV ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
613:Since everything is God and everything contains God, you see God in everything, everything is a step towards liberation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
614:True desire in the heart for anything good is God's proof to you sent beforehand to indicate that it's yours already. ~ Denzel Washington, #NFDB
615:Truth is God, and Truth overrides all our plans. The whole Truth is only embodied within the heart of Great Power-Truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
616:Understand that nothing happens
unless it is God's will and
do what you like.
What can be simpler than that? ~ Ramesh S Balsekar,#NFDB
617:What is God?—I cannot see Him or hear Him.—God is only an idea.” ‘“God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness—and Love; ~ Anne Bront, #NFDB
618:From now on, as far as you’re concerned, Dink Meeker is God.’ ‘Then who are you?’ ‘The personnel officer who hired God. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
619:It's like being locked in a world where violence is God and you're constantly waiting to become the next victim of its wrath. ~ L H Cosway, #NFDB
620:You can know you're a Christian if, not are you dealing with your sin before God but is God dealing with you about your sin. ~ Johnny Hunt, #NFDB
621:Good morning, this is God. I will be handling all of your problems today. I will not need your help, so have a miraculous day. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
622:Grace is God’s stance of giving, loving, blessing. The Greek word for grace (claris) means favor and gift and blessing. In ~ Stuart Briscoe, #NFDB
623:He gave us eyes to see them, And lips that we might tell How great is God Almighty, Who has made all things well. ~ Cecil Frances Alexander, #NFDB
624:If the text is God's Word, it is appropriate that we respond with reverence, a certain fear, a holy joy, a questing obedience. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
625:If we would continuously contemplate the Self, the pure Consciousness that alone remains is God. This is Liberation.. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
626:It's a wonderful thing to know that there is something to know there is something greater than I am, and that is God itself. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
627:O God, show me thy glory.” They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
628:There is only one immediate question: Where is God? The immediate answer is: God is where My heart's love-breath is. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
629:Awesome is God from his [7] r sanctuary; the God of Israel—he is the one who gives s power and strength to his people. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
630:It is God that justifieth"—that justifieth the ungodly; He is not ashamed of doing it, nor are we of preaching it. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
631:Put him first. Seek him with all of your heart, and he will add everything that matters. Be still and know that he is God. ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
632:Religion isn’t so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
633:Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me; sanctification is God’s idea of what He wants to do for me. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
634:The body is the temple; the jiva is God (Siva). If one worships him with the ‘I am He’ thought, one will gain release. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
635:The Spirit, and your soul are not the same things. The Spirit is God - the source. Your soul is God's imagination - the subject. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
636:And if you determine to run your marriage your way, you’re in for a lot of trouble, because marriage is God’s institution. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
637:Good morning, This is God. I will be handling All of your Problems today. I will not need Your help, so have A miraculous day. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
638:It is the most ridiculous country in the world, Bangladesh. It is God’s idea of a really good wheeze, his stab at black comedy. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
639:When the crucified Jesus is called "the image of the invisible God," the meaning is that THIS is God, and God is like THIS. ~ J rgen Moltmann, #NFDB
640:If you (to General Bertrand) do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, very well; then I did wrong to make you a general. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
641:It is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Nature of the Supermind, #NFDB
642:Jesus said that when confronted with Caesar's coin, to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's but unto God what is God's. ~ Robert P George, #NFDB
643:Set your strong intention, work hard, and pray, slowly but surely, what you strive for will come to be. This is God’s law.” -127 ~ Ahmad Fuadi, #NFDB
644:So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
645:Such a Big miracle in such a tiny baby. Big things often have small beginnings A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. ~ Carl Sandburg, #NFDB
646:Wine is God’s special drink. The purpose of good wine is to inspire us to a livelier sense of gratitude to God. —John Calvin ~ Lauren F Winner, #NFDB
647:Courage is God's way of testing the virtues you profess to have and your level of commitment to everything you think you are. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
648:Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God's medicine. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
649:Love properly understood is God—the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love. ~ Miroslav Volf, #NFDB
650:Messi is God, as a person and even more as a player. I knew him when he was a boy and I’ve watched him grow. He deserves it all. ~ Samuel Eto o, #NFDB
651:The sights and sounds of human depravity were too much to forget. Is this hell? She wondered fleetingly. If not, where is God? ~ Corban Addison, #NFDB
652:For right is right, since God is God and right the day must win. To doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be sin. ~ Frederick William Faber, #NFDB
653:If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination. ~ Mary Daly, #NFDB
654:If you have loving devotion – zealous love and devotion – God cannot remain unmoved. How great is God’s fondness for devotion! ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
655:Missions is God finding those whose hearts are right with Him and placing them where they can make a difference for His kingdom ~ Henry Blackaby, #NFDB
656:PHILIPPIANS 2:13: God's will-healing— is working in you. For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
657:But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
658:She should send him a little note, something fun, not too didactic: A HEART ATTACK IS GOD'S REVENGE FOR EATING HIS LITTLE FRIENDS. ~ Joy Williams, #NFDB
659:And the notion that a single tradition owns the lockbox on truth is laughable, especially when the truth we’re talking is God. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
660:My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That's God. Everything is God. I'm a child of that. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
661:Nature is God's workshop. The sky is his resume. The universe is his calling card. You want to know who God is? See what he has done. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
662:The reason for loving God is God Himself. As to how He is to be loved, there is only one measure: It is immeasurable! ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #NFDB
663:You either have an imaginative mind or you don't. All of my writing is God-given. I don't write my stories - they write themselves. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
664:Believe me, when I say; There are no two powers That command the soul. One is God The other is the tide. -Anon From the novel Abarat ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
665:One often sees a call only in retrospect. This too is God's design. God often reinforces our faith after we trust him, not before. ~ Ravi Zacharias, #NFDB
666:The universe was not created in time and finished, it is created each moment; it is being created each moment because it is God’s own being. ~ Osho, #NFDB
667:This is God's way, the way of humility. It is the way of Jesus; there is no other. And there can be no humility without humiliation. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
668:Always be joyful. 17 Never stop praying. 18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
669:God does not have to appeal to the church in order to establish His own inherent sovereign authority. God is God. The church is not God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
670:God lives, but not as we. His creatures live but to die. But God is life. Therefore, goodness is not an attribute. Goodness is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
671:The church is God saying: 'I'm throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
672:The church is God saying: “I’m throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
673:What is God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. ~ Eckhart Tolle in [A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, p. 98, (2005), #NFDB
674:39know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that i the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; j there is no other. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
675:At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
676:Everything is God. Everything is light. It is only when we live in illusions, when there are shadows in our mind that we are afraid. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
677:God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme. ~ The Rev, #NFDB
678:The history of nature . . . begins with good, for it is God's work; the history of freedom begins with badness, for it is man's work. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
679:The most important thing is God's blessing and if you believe in God and you believe in yourself, you have nothing to worry about. ~ Mohamed Al Fayed, #NFDB
680:The Vedas inform us that because God is absolute, there is no difference between God the person and His holy name; the name is God. ~ Mukunda Goswami, #NFDB
681:A naïve, thick-headed, stereotypical jock who thinks he’s God’s gift to the world when he isn’t thinking the world is God’s gift to him. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
682:Life is nothing but the expansion of love. We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source. The Source is God, who is all Love. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
683:Reality is God-centered and all human beings are worshipers, whether or not they are conscious of this reality and its implications. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
684:Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus,” came to mind. ~ Melanie Dickerson, #NFDB
685:So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
686:It is God's planet - and he's taking care of it. And I don't believe that anything we do will raise or lower the temperature one point. ~ Jerry Falwell, #NFDB
687:The earth is God's book but in our blindness, we have obliterated letters so we may say God has abandoned us. It is we who are illiterate. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
688:The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.” —John Stott ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
689:A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman: a gentleman, in the vulgar superficial way of understanding the word, is the Devil's Christian. ~ Augustus Hare, #NFDB
690:God is God; He sees and hears All our troubles, all our tears. Soul, forget not, ’mid thy pains, God o’er all for ever reigns. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
691:Make sure it is God's trumpet you are blowing-
if it is only yours it won't wake the dead,
it will simply disturb the neighbours. ~ W Ian Thomas,#NFDB
692:Man is a hungry being. But he is hungry for God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. All desire is finally a desire for Him. ~ Alexander Schmemann, #NFDB
693:My heart is my temple and with it I can see and hear Truth. Only through my heart can I feel God. My heart is my conscience. Truth is God. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
694:Sex is God's joke on the human race ... if we didn't have sex to make us ridiculous, She would have had to think up something else instead. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
695:I come home from the soaring
In which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
Is still roaring in my ears. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
696:I do not accept the orthodox teaching that Jesus was or is God incarnate in the accepted sense or that he was or is the only Son of God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
697:If whom we love is God’s will, then free will is merely an illusion. And if we love whom we choose to love, then how can God punish us? ~ Felix Alexander, #NFDB
698:Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type.
What is this ideal? It is God.
Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
699:So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'
The youth whispers, 'I can. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
700:That which has neither body, nor appearance, nor form, nor matter, nor can be seized by our senses, That which cannot be expressed,—this is God. ~ Hermes, #NFDB
701:When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight. ~ Richard J Foster, #NFDB
702:You know why God’s so hard to find, Trevor? No, Mr. Shaw, I say, why is God so hard to find? God’s so hard to find because he ain’t lost! ~ Ryan Winfield, #NFDB
703:Awesome is God from his [7] sanctuary; the God of Israel—he is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
704:Love is wisdom, love is in giving, love is god, and god is love but there is no wise or fools for love. Love is equal for each one of us. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
705:The supreme force in salvation is God’s grace. Not our works. Not our talents. Not our feelings. Not our strength. Salvation is God’s sudden, ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
706:We are not these bodies; we're neither our accomplishments nor our possessions—we are all one with the Source of all being, which is God. ~ Anita Moorjani, #NFDB
707:Where did Satan get the title of being god of the world? He got it from Adam. Satan is god of the world system, not god over the believer. ~ Charles Capps, #NFDB
708:Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
709:As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
710:Don't let obstacles along the road to eternity shake your confidence in God's promise. The Holy Spirit is God's seal that you will arrive. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
711:How I wish that more men who claim to be evangelical really believed the Word of God--that it IS the Word of God, that it is God speaking. ~ J Vernon McGee, #NFDB
712:The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
713:To you it was shown, that you might realize and have personal knowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides Him. DEUTERONOMY 4:35 ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
714:Where is God? Where can I find him?" we ask. We don't realize that's like a fish swimming frantically through the ocean in search OF the ocean ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
715:It is God in action," meaning all-around harmony and peace. (Harmony is of God, and what you want in a legal case is a harmonious solution.) ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
716:...this marvelous graceful thing, this joy of physics, this perfect balance between rebellion and obedience, is God's own signature on earth. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
717:65It is God who sends water down from the sky and with it revives the earth when it is dead. There truly is a sign in this for people who listen. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
718:All can hear that still small voice within. Try it. Be still and know that the I AM within you is God, the Beloved. Listen... then live by it. ~ Eileen Caddy, #NFDB
719:Beauty is God's handwriting — a wayside sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank for it Him. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
720:God is just what happens when humanity is connected. Humanity connected is god. Each one of us is a creator but, together, we are THE creator. ~ Jim Gilliam, #NFDB
721:So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name.
The problem’s name is God. ~ Salman Rushdie,#NFDB
722:The transcendent glory that every human being quests for, whether he knows it or not, is not a thing; it is a person, and his name is God. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
723:well,” Buck said, “if you’re referring to his contention that religion is man’s attempt to reach God, while Jesus is God’s attempt to reach man. ~ Tim LaHaye, #NFDB
724:What is God?
God is the perfection that we must aspire to realise. 8 November 1969
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, "The Divine" and "Man" [17],#NFDB
725:Who are we to say that that was an odd way to do it? I don't think that it is God's purpose to make his intention absolutely obvious to us. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
726:A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
727:Life is light and consciousness. Beyond this world and other worlds, beyond time and space and dimension, beyond what we call duality, is God ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
728:Yes, it is God who works in you. And, yes, there is work for you to do. Yes, the Spirit empowers you to do the work. And, yes, you do the work. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
729:and I will say to you, rude as it may seem, `My brother, you sacrifice greatly to pride; you may be above others, but above you there is God. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
730:How anyone cannot see that Nature is God is amazing to me: that they'd rather worship something that can only exist, really, in their own minds. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
731:Our limitation is God’s opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain’t nothin you can do, that’s when God takes over. ~ Ron Hall, #NFDB
732:That morality—which some people imagine is God-given and eternal—is as malleable and learned as our ideas of beauty, our enemies, our fashion trends. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
733:The Law is God. Anything attributed to Him is not a mere attribute. He is Truth, Love, Law and a million things that human ingenuity can name. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
734:The loadstar of a saint is God Himself, not estimated usefulness. It is the work that God does through us that count, not what we do for him. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
735:There is an all powerful force or energy that creates all and draws all back into it. This is God. It is beyond intelligence, beyond analysis. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
736:We use a lot of creativity and new technology, cutting edge things to use in our church, but really what it comes down to is God changing a life. ~ Kerry Shook, #NFDB
737:Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ~ James R White, #NFDB
738:39 Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the LORD he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
739:He is not humanity deified. He is not Godhead humanized. He is God. He is man. He is all that God is, and all that man is as God created Him. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
740:Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 THESSALONIANS 5:16 – 18) ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
741:When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
742:A lot of people look for you to change. Everything has stayed the same. Financially, this is God's money, and my wife and I are just stewards of it. ~ Andre Ward, #NFDB
743:Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the maniaWhich insists there is only the One, one country, one truth, and one way. ~ Friedrich Holderlin, #NFDB
744:In my opinion, Jesus is God's attempt to reach man. But while I believe Jesus is the way to God, it makes no sense to hate people who disagree. ~ Jerry B Jenkins, #NFDB
745:Not all gospel calls are effective. The job of believers is to explain the gospel message; it is God’s job to make that message or call effective. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
746:Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 ~ Melanie Dickerson,#NFDB
747:The miracle is not that God loves me; it would be a miracle if he didn’t love me, because he is love. That is God’s basic nature—a will to good. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
748:What is God trying to tell me? ... I'm just so tired. Why are people sabotaging me? Why, when I try to do something right, do people get angry? ~ Spencer Haywood, #NFDB
749:Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
750:Why, I can’t help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
751:WINE, n.Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
752:Yes, it is God who works in you. And, yes, there is work for you to do.
Yes, the Spirit empowers you to do the work. And, yes, you do the work. ~ Francis Chan,#NFDB
753:Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart - poisoned as it is with pride and pain - and replacing it with his own. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
754:In the first minute that my soul is infused, the Image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me. ~ John Donne, #NFDB
755:It is now true that this is God's Country, if equal rights-a fair start and an equal chance in the race of life are everywhere secured to all. ~ Rutherford B Hayes, #NFDB
756:Perfect is God’s job. He’s perfect enough for all of us. You need Him and I need Him. If you haven’t made peace with that, then it’s time. Today. ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
757:The infinite has being. It is there. If infinity had no self then self would not be. But it is. Therefore it has a self. The self of infinity is God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
758:For God’s sake, where is God?”
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“Where He is? This is where – hanging here from this gallows. ~ Elie Wiesel,#NFDB
759:God’s Word does not merely impart information; it actually creates life. It’s not only descriptive; it’s effective too, God speaking is God acting. ~ Michael Horton, #NFDB
760:What is God after all?
An eternal child
playing an eternal game
in an eternal garden.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, Thoughts And Glimpses,#NFDB
761:Believe me, when I say;
There are no two powers
That command the soul.
One is God
The other is the tide.
-Anon
From the novel Abarat ~ Clive Barker,#NFDB
762:Christians do not wish to escape repentance, or chaos, if it is God’s will to bring it upon us. We must take this judgement as Christians.” Christians ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
763:The modern liberals, on the other hand, say that Jesus is God not because they think high of Jesus, but because they think desperately low of God. ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
764:This is God's world, so everything, even if it intends to efface God, bears witness to God – understood and interpreted through biblical eyeglasses. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
765:If you want a moral, here it is: what god giveth, he taketh away. In this story art is god. And if god is art, then what is the devil? Bad art of course. ~ Jeet Thayil, #NFDB
766:The best gift in the world, next to the Word incarnate, Jesus himself, is God’s written Word, and it will ignite your heart if you give it a chance. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
767:Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious
defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking
after himself. ~ Richard Dawkins,#NFDB
768:In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is God's gift to the world. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is God's gift to the collective. ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
769:Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was, but it does not matter, it does not affect one's faith. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
770:Worship is God's way of giving us an opportunity to shift our focus from our own concerns, problems, and circumstances to the way things are in heaven. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
771:depressing. I asked myself: ‘Where is God?’ I came to detest the sanctimonious attitude of people toward violence, always saying ‘it’s God’s will’. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey, #NFDB
772:Everything in its time, and timing is God’s playground. Trust me, being surprised by everything is so much better than needing to control everything. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
773:history is God’s love story. There is no event in space or time unrelated to the Jesus story, and there is no metaphor in existence unrelated to Jesus. “All ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
774:It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He too, is God's minister, And labors for some good By us not understood. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
775:Where there is love there is courage, where there is courage there is peace, where there is peace there is God. And when you have God, you have everything. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
776:God is religion; religion is God! There is no need ever for holy books, for holy rules or for so called holy envoys! God is religion; religion is God! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
777:No matter how dark things become, someone is always with you - and that someone is God. He helps by giving you peace and a positive mental attitude. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
778:The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
779:The highest and greatest goal that every soul has to reach is God. As everything needs renunciation, that highest goal needs the highest renunciation. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
780:The moon is made round by the right hand of God.
The moon is made crescent by His left.
But it is God’s heart that makes my love for you forever. ~ Deborah Rodriguez,#NFDB
781:The sum total of all the cells in an organism is one person; so each soul is like one cell and the sum of them is God, and beyond that is the Absolute. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
782:I believe there is dignity in sorrow simply because it is God's good pleasure that there should be. He is forever raising up those who are brought low. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
783:Never believe a man who says God no longer does miracles, Ben. But never believe a man who says God must do a miracle the way a man wants him to. God is God. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
784:The best thing you can give is God consciousness. Manifest your own divinity first. The truth is there. It's right within us all. Understand what you are. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
785:The confusion you all have is that the embodiment of God, while it is God, is also in all men. So seeking to worship another is never a true teaching. Aligning ~ Paul Selig, #NFDB
786:We examine everything in existence and we come to see that everything is transitory and temporal, that which is left over is God, is eternity, is the Self. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
787:When you live in light of eternity, your focus changes from “How much pleasure am I getting out of life?” to “How much pleasure is God getting out of my life? ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
788:[A] good Christian does not care for miracles very much, because a miracle is God looking after His own affairs, and we prefer looking after them for Him. ~ Georges Bernanos, #NFDB
789:As you grasp for the next rung, remember that ultimately it doesn’t matter if you rise or fall. The only thing that was ever meant to satisfy you is God. ~ Michael E Wittmer, #NFDB
790:Geometry existed before the Creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God … Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation … Geometry is God Himself.” In ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
791:He said, Heaven is not waiting for the good and pure and gentle There’s no punishment eternal, there’s no Hell for the ungodly Nor is God as you imagine— Saint ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
792:It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
793:The cross is God's truth about us, and therefore it is the only power thatcanmakeustruthful.Whenwe know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
794:God is not a person. God does not have a history. God does not have a future. God is beyond definition. We can say that your perception of this world is God. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
795:Someone once said that death is God's way of telling you to slow down. I do enjoy what I do, and the secret of my success is the willingness to grind work out. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
796:the lesson of the falling leaves the leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace such grace is god i agree with the leaves ~ Lucille Clifton, #NFDB
797:Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as 'Father' at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
798:You can't depend on Amos Ackerman. He's just a man. But God is God. He loves bigger and forgives better and gives more abundantly than nay man every could. ~ Kim Vogel Sawyer, #NFDB
799:A man whose heritage is God does not rejoice in flimsy pleasures, but as though already raised to heaven, he delights in the solid joy of eternal life. Certainly ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
800:Content is king, but context is God. You can put out good content, but if it ignores the context of the platform on which it appears, it can still fall flat. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
801:Perception, knowledge, and truth without love are nothing. They are not truth, for truth is God, and God is love. Therefore, truth without love is a lie. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
802:The past is a memory sealed right into you, tomorrow is a mystery unkown to you, and today is God's momentary gift to you - which is why it's called the present. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
803:The straight and narrow, so beloved of our founding fathers and all fathers thereafter, is now obviously and irrevocably bent. What is God trying to tell us...? ~ Larry Kramer, #NFDB
804:Coincidence, said Einstein, is God’s way of remaining anonymous. I’m beginning to think this sockless, timeless mathematician might be onto something after all, ~ Mardi Jo Link, #NFDB
805:Mirth is God's medicine; everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all the rust of life- ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
806:The aim of prayer, of spiritual discipline, of chanting the name and glories of God, is to realize that everything is God. For that alone a devotee loves God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
807:I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God." "Then who are you?" "The personnel officer who hired God. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
808:Predators seem beautifully 'designed' to catch prey animals, while the prey animals seem equally beautifully 'designed' to escape them. Whose side is God on?66 ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
809:That is God's call to us - simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
810:All I really want - when I pray , I don't really ask for anything. All I want to do is God's will and make the best decisions I can. I don't go out and preach. ~ Harry Connick Jr, #NFDB
811:The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum-total of that life is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
812:the Sermon on the Mount is God’s formula for revival. The Beatitudes are His recipe for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on the earth as it is in heaven. ~ Heidi Baker, #NFDB
813:What, then, is the God I worship? He can be none but the Lord God himself, for who but the Lord is God? What other refuge can there be, except our God? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
814:Without man, what is God? And without God, what is man? Everyone needs the help of someone to complete the work of Creation that is never truly completed. Everyone. ~ Chaim Potok, #NFDB
815:All our other faculties seem to have the brown touch of earth upon them, but the imagination carries the very livery of heaven, and is God's self in the soul. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
816:Creation, in all its splendor and misery, in all the beauty and ugliness of its myriad forms, is how God manifests His presence in time. Creation is God in time. ~ Marcelo Gleiser, #NFDB
817:I can think of God as my savior and even my friend, but I must never forget that He is God, and after He saves me, I must put myself in subjection to Him and His will. ~ Lori Wick, #NFDB
818:If there is God, I thought...Please some day let me make love to this girl while she wears that dress." "Oh..." "Tatiasha...isn't it nice to know there is a God? ~ Paullina Simons, #NFDB
819:Where there is love, there is courage
Where there is courage, there is peace
Where there is peace, there is God
And when you have God, you have everything. ~ Louise Penny,#NFDB
820:Where there is love there is courage,
where there is courage there is peace,
where there is peace there is God.
And when you have God, you have everything. ~ Louise Penny,#NFDB
821:Classic mountaineering grows out of a traditional romantic imagination. Its heart is the feeling, its path is blood, sweat and tears, and its restriction is God. ~ Wojciech Kurtyka, #NFDB
822:I live by syllogisms: God is love. Love is blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God. I don't know what I'd believe in if it wasn't for that. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
823:Material energy in Matter, physical energy in the body, essential energy in the essence, all that in its entirety is God and in the universe there is nothing which is not God. ~ id, #NFDB
824:Sunday is God's day, and he was committed to honoring it. Just because he was in Paris to compete in the Olympics didn't justify changing his lifelong commitment. ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
825:The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum-total of that life is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
826:Creation takes place through words, a series of 'And God Saids' bringing each new stage of life into being. Language is God's divine power made manifest in the world. ~ Myla Goldberg, #NFDB
827:[I]t is impossible that any people of government should ever prosper, where men render not unto God, that which is God's, as well as to Caesar, that which is Caesar's. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
828:It’s hard to grieve in a town where everything that happens is God’s will. It’s hard to know what to do with your emptiness when you’re not supposed to have emptiness. ~ Miriam Toews, #NFDB
829:To feel is to communicate with your Spirit-with God. Feeling is God's mirror; intuition is God's telephone. To seek your truth is to deepen your connection to Spirit. ~ Kenny Loggins, #NFDB
830:Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
831:Everyone has Love towards some thing or other, and that Love is a spark of the Divine; everyone has ultimately to base his life on some one Truth; that Truth is God. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
832:I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God."
"Then who are you?"
"The personnel officer who hired God. ~ Orson Scott Card,#NFDB
833:To love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God. ~ John Ortberg, #NFDB
834:faith perishes if it is walled in, or confined. If it is anywhere, it must be everywhere, like God himself: if God is in your life, he is in all things, for he is God. ~ Diogenes Allen, #NFDB
835:In this trunk," she says with a serious face, "is God's gift to women."
"Chocolate?"
"No."
"Midol?"
"What? No."
"Tampons?"
"Stop guessing," she says. ~ Victoria Scott,#NFDB
836:My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight, My body is God’s happy living tool, My spirit a vast sun of deathless light. (Collected poems ~ Transformation )#SriAurobindo, #NFDB
837:When I have a problem I pray about it, and what comes to mind and stays there I assume to be my answer. And this has been right so often that I know it is God's answer. ~ James L Kraft, #NFDB
838:As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is God's love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. ~ David, #NFDB
839:A voice behind me asked, "Where is God? Where is He? Where can He be now?" and a voice within me answered: "Where? Here He is - He has been hanged here, on these gallows." ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
840:ٰ"The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
841:Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg, #NFDB
842:Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God’s, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg, #NFDB
843:There is One Infinite Mind which of necessity includes all that is, whether it be the intelligence in man, the life in the animal, or the invisible Presence which is God. ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
844:To love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God. ~ John Ortberg Jr, #NFDB
845:I can’t tell him anything personal or important. I especially can’t tell him anything like ‘I think your roommate is God’s gift to girls.’ He’d make my life impossible. ~ Rachel Hawthorne, #NFDB
846:It is God that accomplishes all term to hopes, God, who overtakes the flying eagle, outpasses the dolphin in the sea; who bends under his strength the man with thoughts too high. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
847:It is God who is the source of the evolutionary force and God who is the destination ... the ultimate goal of spiritual growth is for the individual to become one with God. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
848:Just being a woman is God's gift. The origin of a child is a mother, a woman. She shows a man what sharing, caring, and loving is all about. That is the essence of a woman. ~ Sushmita Sen, #NFDB
849:Love isn't something you can give yourself permission for. You can't pick the time and place, or the girl. Love is God's gift to you and a woman, forever and always. ~ William W Johnstone, #NFDB
850:The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations, and towards humanity as a whole. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
851:Though Destiny a hundred times waylays you,in the end it pitches a tent for you in Heaven. It is God's loving kindness to terrify you,in order to lead you to His Kingdom of safety. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
852:As gold is an element in itself and can never change nor compromise but is gold wherever it is found, so God is God, always, only, fully God, and can never be other than He is. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
853:I say the Intelligent Design-evolution debate misses the point. It trivializes God and it trivializes science. The universe is like the hand of God. The world is God's body. ~ Michael Dowd, #NFDB
854:It is God alone who makes people see things in different ways. Know that people have different natures. Realize this and mix with them as much as you can. And love all. . ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
855:It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, #NFDB
856:The power of the gospel lies[...] in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God's new world has begun. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
857:the Source of Abundance…is God. God is the Source of every good thing. Every good and every perfect gift comes from God (see James 1:17). His methods are clear in Scripture. ~ Mike Murdock, #NFDB
858:To be in thousands of states of mind simultaneously as you perform simple physical tasks gives you a reverence for life. Each of these outer manifestations of life is God. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
859:Geometry existed before the Creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God... Geometry provided God with a model for the creatin... Geometry is God Himself.
Johannes Kepler ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
860:I can tell you only that beauty cannot be expressed or explained in a theory or an idea, that it moves by its own law, that it is God’s way of comforting His broken children. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
861:If, in monotheism, God is man, man is God. Why does God look suspiciously like the ruling class? Why is Jesus, a Jewish guy from the Middle East, blond and blue-eyed? There ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
862:Only if we completely acknowledge that what man requires today is God's life: the quickening of the spirit: will we then perceive how vain is any work performed by ourselves. ~ Watchman Nee, #NFDB
863:The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
864:9 Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
865:9Know therefore that the LORD your God is God;e he is the faithful God,f keeping his covenant of loveg to a thousand generationsh of those who love him and keep his commandments. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
866:Salvation is universal because the love of God encompasses all. If God is God and if God is love, nothing is outside the love of God. A place like hell is thus inconceivable. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
867:This is what all the work of grace aims at—an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to himself. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
868:Though Destiny a hundred times waylays you,in the end it pitches a tent for you in Heaven.
It is God's loving kindness to terrify you,in order to lead you to His Kingdom of safety. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
869:twofold profession of faith, or shahadah, that would henceforth define both the mission and principles of the movement: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s Messenger. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
870:Your purpose is God’s success. You can’t pay for what God want to be done. It’s God’s business; it’s his farmland, so when he said he’ll provide the rain, don’t doubt it! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
871:If thou art fighting against thy sins, so is God. On thy side is God who made all, and Christ who died for all and the Spirit who alone gives wisdom, purity, and nobleness. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
872:The Earth is God's pinball machine and each quake, tidal wave, flash flood and volcanic eruption is the result of a TILT that occurs when God, cheating, tries to win free games. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
873:Self-confidence means thinking all the time, "God is in me... God is doing everything . . . without God I cannot be . . . all this is God . . . I only want to think of God." ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
874:The preacher’s business is to take what is given him in the Scriptures, as it is given to him, and to endeavour to imprint it on the souls of men. All else is God’s work. ~ Robert Lewis Dabney, #NFDB
875:Well, what is God, then? God is that which watches. God is neither masculine nor feminine, although God can assume any form. God is that eternal reality that is in everything. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
876:I am succeeding quite well in my work and the future looks well. What special mission is God preparing me for? Cutting off all earthly ties and isolating me as it were. ~ Ellen Swallow Richards, #NFDB
877:If God has called you to China or any other place and you are sure in your own heart, let nothing deter you.Remember, it is God who has called you and it is the same as when He ~ Gladys Aylward, #NFDB
878:My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,
My body is God’s happy living tool,
My spirit a vast sun of deathless light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Transformation,#NFDB
879:Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful. It is God's handwriting a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
880:Religion is the rules, regulations, ceremonies and rituals developed by man to create conformity and uniformity in the approach to God. Spirituality is God's call in your soul. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
881:True faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s a leap into the light.* We shouldn’t be afraid of the facts. If God is God, he is the God of reality and facts and science and history. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
882:I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God and God is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no. ~ "The Unbeliever's Creed", Connoisseur No. IX (March 28, 1754), #NFDB
883:The influence of the Church does not depend on the Church, it depends on the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit will never lose its influence. He is God and He is influencing society. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
884:All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
885:I who still pray at morning and at eve Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, Thrice stirred below conscious self Have felt that perfect disenthrallment which is God. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
886:Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying: — That is God. Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! — What? Mr Deasy asked. — A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
887:The theologians have recognized that the ideal is the imitation of God. If we be a part of such an organic thing, this thing is God to us, as I am God to the cells that compose me. ~ Charles Fort, #NFDB
888:To me, God is the basic Reality of the universe. God is what is. That's how Moses wrote that God introduced Himself, isn't it? "I am that I am." God is. Whatever is, that is God. ~ Michael Gungor, #NFDB
889:We may assume it is God we care for, but it may be our own ego we are concerned with. To examine our religious existence is, therefore, a task to be performed constantly. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
890:All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
891:Don't run away from the world. The world is God. Don't run towards the world. God is the void. Don't be afraid of the complexities of this life, nor the stark simplicity of death. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
892:God is God to us not that we may say he is, but that we may know him; and when we know him, then we are with him, at home, at the heart of the universe, the heirs of all things. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
893:the lesson of the falling leaves
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves ~ Lucille Clifton,#NFDB
894:The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
895:I don't know where I would be without music. Even if I wasn't a musician, I think music is God. In a lot of ways, it's my saving grave. It's been my religion since I was a little kid. ~ Allie Gonino, #NFDB
896:It is “the gospel of Christ” (Rom. 1:16) because it centers in Christ, the Savior. Paul also calls it “the gospel of his Son” (Rom. 1:9), which indicates that Jesus Christ is God. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
897:The only thing we should seek in prayer is God. When we focus on how we are doing or what we are getting out of prayer, we have taken our eyes off God and put them back on our self. ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
898:This is God’s universe; we just live in it. He doesn’t owe us anything. We owe him everything. What did you make? Nothing. He made everything. For everything you have, you owe him. ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
899:All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Randy Frazee, #NFDB
900:Father of the fatherless and p protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. 6 God q settles the solitary in a home; he r leads out the prisoners to prosperity, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
901:So is Hope Changed for Despair-one laid upon the shelf, We take the other. Under heaven's high cope Fortune is god-all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
902:The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God's ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things. ~ Norman O Brown, #NFDB
903:The ultimate use of free will as envisaged by God is for your soul to desire to become At-One with God, thus transforming it into a Divine Soul. This is God’s deep desire for us, ~ Padma Aon Prakasha, #NFDB
904:Where is God, even if he doesn’t exist? I want to pray and to weep, to repent of crimes I didn’t commit, to enjoy the feeling of forgiveness like a caress that’s more than maternal. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
905:I do not want any patronage, as I do not give any. I am a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience which is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
906:Oh! it is not my remembering God, it is God’s remembering me which is the ground of my safety; it is not my laying hold of His covenant, but His covenant’s laying hold on me. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
907:At the end of the day, in brief summary: inerrancy is interested in the truthfulness of Scripture and it is a powerful way forcing people to think about that reliability that is God-given. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
908:God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
909:God often goes to the gutter to find the recipient for His grace. He lifts him out, washes him and transforms him - making him into a child of God fit for His kingdom. That is God’s grace. ~ Chuck Smith, #NFDB
910:Where is God to be found? In suffering or in rebellion? When is a man most truly a man? When he submits or when he refuses? Where does suffering lead him? To purification or to bestiality? ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
911:Why is God’s Word so important? Because it contains God’s mind and will for your life (2Ti 3:16, 17). It is the only source of absolute divine authority for you as a servant of Jesus Christ. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
912:Alas! What are all these lives driven willy-nilly? Where are they going? Why are they like this? He who knows the answer to that, sees the darkness as a whole. He is alone. His name is God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
913:In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
914:Jesus knows our world. He does not disdain us like the God of Aristotle. We can speak to Him and He answers us. Although He is a person like ourselves, He is God and transcends all things. ~ Alexis Carrel, #NFDB
915:The goal of revelation is not information only, but affection, worship, and obedience. Christ in us will be realized only as we drink deeply of the Bible, which is God's word outside of us ~ Kevin DeYoung, #NFDB
916:The goal of the disciple of Jesus, then, is not to answer the question, “What is God’s will for my life?” The goal, instead, is to walk in God’s will on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
917:Religion is man’s attempt to make peace with God on his own terms. Redemption is God’s offer of peace through Jesus Christ. But this is “peace through the blood of His cross” (Col. 1:20). ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
918:the presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His presence. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
919:What if the main issue in our culture today is not poverty or sex trafficking, homosexuality or abortion? What if the main issue is God? And what might happen if we made him our focus instead? ~ David Platt, #NFDB
920:God the Deliverer The primary truth about God is that He is the Deliverer, the Emancipator, and the Savior. He is God only to the free. Faith is a venture that turns life into an adventure. ~ Reinhard Bonnke, #NFDB
921:I think that once you lose your fear, and understand that your position is God-given, then, if you lose your fear of what man can do, it enables you to do some things that God wants you to do. ~ Steve Harvey, #NFDB
922:Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
923:No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
924:Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
925:Our message is always this, "Be filled with the Spirit." This is God's place for you, and it is as far above the natural life as the heavens are above the earth. Yield yourselves for God to fill. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
926:Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
— That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
— What? Mr Deasy asked.
— A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. ~ James Joyce,#NFDB
927:Whoever possesses God in their being has Him in a divine manner, and He shines out to them in all things; for them all things taste of God and in all things it is God's image that they see. ~ Meister Eckhart, #NFDB
928:Do you meditate? Do you know what one feels in meditation? The mind becomes like a continuous flow of oil — it thinks of one object only, and that is God. It does not think of anything else. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
929:Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another.
~ Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven,#NFDB
930:Exactly as is a mother's joy when her baby smiles for the first time into her eyes, so is God's joy when one of His children turns and prays to Him for the first time, with all his heart! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
931:I hate that this is God’s economy. That the salvation of my enemy is tied up in my own. Which is why I sometimes say that the Gospel is like, the worst good news I’ve ever heard in my life. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
932:My religion encompasses all religions. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. I believe you are god, I believe I am god; I believe the earth is god and the universe is god. We're all god. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
933:One of the most important things we can learn from Scripture is how to see ourselves accurately in the story in which we find ourselves. What story is God telling, and how does it concern us? ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
934:The concepts of truth may differ. But all admit and respect truth. That truth I call God. For sometime I was saying, "God is Truth," but that did not satisfy me. So now I say, "Truth is God." ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
935:The zest for life, which is the source of all passion and all insight, even divine, does not come to us from ourselves.... It is God who has to give us the impulse of wanting him. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
936:Do you meditate? Do you know what one feels in meditation? The mind becomes like a continuous flow of oil — it thinks of one object only, and that is God. It does not think of anything else. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
937:Listen to the Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University: ‘AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.’121 ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
938:My music comes from country music. Merle Haggard is God, and I do believe that. I'm not too tuned in to country music. I don't know who Brooks and Dunn are. I like Shania Twain, though! ~ Loudon Wainwright III, #NFDB
939:Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
940:The zest for life, which is the source of all passion and all insight, even divine, does not come to us from ourselves.... It is God who has to give us the impulse of wanting him. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
941:I answer that, As Augustine says (De Moribus Eccl. vi), "the soul needs to follow something in order to give birth to virtue: this something is God: if we follow Him we shall live aright. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
942:It is God’s love that speaks to me in the birds and streams; but also behind the clamor of the city God speaks to me in His judgments, and all these things are seeds sent to me from His will. If ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
943:We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
944:What is Yoga? Yoga is self-conquest. Self-conquest is God-Realization. He who practices Yoga does two things with one stroke: he simplifies his whole life and he gets a freee access to the Divine. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
945:Wherever a heart beats with love, wherever Faith and Reason utter their oracles, there is God, as formerly in the hearts of seers and prophets. No soil on earth is so holy as the good man’s heart. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
946:Infinity is. It is there. If infinity had no self, the self would be its limit; it would not be infinite. In other words, it would not be. But it is. So it has a self. This self of infinity is God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
947:It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
948:No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
949:Wake up, see your own wretchedness, and fly to the Lord Jesus. He is the righteousness of God, for He Himself is God. Only by believing in His righteousness will you be delivered from condemnation. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
950:We have to keep asking ourselves: 'What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?' Without such questions our lives become numb and flat. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
951:If we do not respond to human affection we cannot be loved by God in the way in which He has willed to love us—with the Heart of the Man, Jesus Who is God, the Son of God, and the anointed Christ. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
952:Parsons pulled the straw near to him, and then said to the spectators, "This is God's armor, and now I am a Christian soldier prepared for battle: I look for no mercy but through the merits of Christ; ~ John Foxe, #NFDB
953:Power Thought: It is God’s will for me to have peace and not confusion. July 26 Free from Judgment I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
954:All things are yours and you are Christ’s—and Christ is God’s. If we live, we live unto God. If we die, we die unto God—whether we live or die, we are God’s possession.” What more could anyone ask? ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
955:Another faculty has released this knowledge: our spirit. It is God’s Word in our spirit. It creates a reality that registers in our spirit. We live by this spiritual knowledge and walk in its light. ~ Phil Pringle, #NFDB
956:Bible scholars estimate that there were about 2.5 million Israelites who left Egypt healed, healthy and whole. That was and still is God’s will for His people today — all healed, healthy and whole. ~ Joseph Prince, #NFDB
957:Parental love is unconditional, and so is God's love. No matter what a child of God has done against Him, or feels he or she has done that cannot be forgiven, God still loves that wondering soul. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
958:Remember the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
959:The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
960:The whole world is one. The knower in the stone and the knower in myself are one; I am He. It is God in me, God in the stone. The knowledge in me and the knowledge in the stone are one; I am that. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
961:Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
962:Dear, where else is God except very close to His devotees? If worldly people even visit the place used by holy men, the very atmosphere of the place can remove the dross of their mind. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
963:It is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief, because your very belief projects what you think ought to be God, what you think ought to be true. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
964:Something is happening because of silence, because of peace, because of silence; if your mind is silent, if your mind is quiet, there is God, there is silence, this is the silence that is contagious. ~ H W L Poonja, #NFDB
965:Adultery doesn't come until the seventh commandment, and you won't even get to the seventh commandment if you don't violate the first two commandments. Sex is god, and I worship by having sexual sin. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
966:Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
967:Persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should be adopted to influence the conduct of men. The opposite course would be a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree and can never be reversed. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
968:Through self-knowledge you begin to find out what is God, what is truth, what is that state which is timeless. In self-knowledge is the whole universe; it embraces all the struggles of humanity. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
969:We have to keep asking ourselves: 'What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?' Without such questions our lives become numb and flat. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
970:A voice in the wind I do not know; A meaning on the face of the high hills Whose utterance I cannot comprehend. A something is behind them: that is God. ~ George MacDonald, Within and Without, Part I, scene 1, #NFDB
971: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. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
972:Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
973:I realized that “Why is God doing this to me?” was not really a question about God. It was a cry of pain, and the person asking the question didn’t need my theological wisdom. She needed a hug. Ever ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
974:Our understanding of God is the answer to prayer; getting things from God is God's indulgence of us. When God stops giving us things, He brings us into the place where we can begin to understand Him. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
975:The Evangelical is not afraid of facts, for he knows that all facts are God's facts; nor is he afraid of thinking, for he knows that all truth is God's truth, and right reason cannot endanger sound faith. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
976:The whole world is a large Niepokalanow where the Father is God, the mother the Immaculata, the elder brother the Lord Jesus in all the tabernacles of the world, and the younger brothers the people. ~ Maximilian Kolbe, #NFDB
977:Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls,
His crucified voice proclaims, ‘I, I am God;’
‘Yes, all is God,’ peals back Heaven’s deathless call. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#NFDB
978:I have no fear of after death life! Even if there is such thing, it is God who should be worried. I am sure I have good reasons to present but I am not sure he might have good excuses for his injustice. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
979:It is God's Word that will establish the image of the unseen within us. We should not allow circumstances or the cares of this life to create images within us. What the Word says should create the mage. ~ Charles Capps, #NFDB
980:Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make bad people good; it makes dead people alive...the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do. ~ Tullian Tchividjian, #NFDB
981:The gospel, however, has nothing to do with our developing a righteousness we give God so he owes us; it is God’s developing and giving us righteousness through Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:30; 2 Cor 5:21). ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
982:The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
983:Where there is love there is courage,
where there is courage there is peace,
where there is peace there is God.
And when you have God, you have everything.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling ~ Louise Penny,#NFDB
984:Wherever God's word is circulated, it stirs the hearts of the people, it prepares for public morals. Circulate that word, and you find the tone of morals immediately changed. It is God peaking to man. ~ Matthew Simpson, #NFDB
985:For after all man knows mighty little, and may some day learn enough of his own ignorance to fall down again and pray. Not that Icare. Only, if such is God's will, and Fate and Evolution--let there be God! ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
986:Sometimes I wonder how we can be so sure what it is God sees. How arrogant we are, I sometimes think, to imagine there's someone watching us every minute. To think our every action matters that much. ~ Carolyn Parkhurst, #NFDB
987:To me, the right approach is to say we are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God - it's that that seems to me to close off the discussion. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
988:Prop. I. Heaven is God’s house. An house of public worship is an house where God’s people meet from time to time to attend on God’s ordinances, and that is set apart for that and is called God’s house. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
989:The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an I. That I of the infinite is God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
990:12I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
991:But the truth is God has not told us His arrangement about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
992:I am not asking whether you know things about Him but do you know God, are you enjoying God, is God the centre of your life, the soul of your being, the source of your greatest joy? He is meant to be. ~ Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
993:Mother Teresa used the analogy of electricity: “The wire is you and me; the current is God,” she said. “We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us, and produce the light of the world—Jesus. ~ Lee Strobel, #NFDB
994:We're imperfect human beings. We're destined to fail. The only love that never fails is God's love. His love for His children---us--is boundless, battle-tested, and bold. It's trustworthy, tried and true. ~ Victoria Bylin, #NFDB
995:Where is the angry machine of all of us? Why is God such a blurred magician? Why are you begging for your life if you believe those things? Prove to me that you’re better than the rabbits we ate last night. ~ Barry Hannah, #NFDB
996:A thousand prayers every minute everywhere and what does God ever say back? Nothing! Because silence never lies. Silence is God's final advantage. Silence is the purest form of harmony. Everyone ought to try it. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
997:God is God and He lets things happen and that’s all there is to it. But He has reasons, and His reasons for something happening would be more important than a man’s reason for questioning whatever it might ~ Elmore Leonard, #NFDB
998:I am deeply convince that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God's desire for us. It is God's passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
999:I have to learn that the aim in life is God's, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him, and never say — Lord, this gives me such heart-ache. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1000:There’s a cardinal rule in book publishing that applies equally to brain surgery and auto mechanics: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Since people are still buying the original Where Is God When It Hurts? ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1001:We are all clothed with fleece of sheep I keep saying as if
I were singing as these words do. Throw a shawl over me
so you won't be afraid to sleep. I have already shown that
space is God. ~ Susan Howe,#NFDB
1002:All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, #NFDB
1003:Babies cry, make noise, go here and there. But it annoys me when a baby cries in church and there are those who say he needs to go out. The cry of a baby is God's voice: never drive them away from the church! ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1004:chronic naysayer, he viewed each member of his inner circle as a problem child whose fate he held in his hand. “We are sinners and he is God” was one view; “We serve at the president’s displeasure,” another. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
1005:There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1006:Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Paul the Apostle, #NFDB
1007:Lips, breath, tongue, hands, and every other inch of his body worships mine like I’m his religion and this bed is our church. And I swear his love is God sent and his touch is a glimpse of Heaven here on Earth. ~ Jewel E Ann, #NFDB
1008:There has been nothing in heaven or on earth which has not witnessed that Jesus Christ is God, Lord and Master, and the great Ambassador of the Father sent here below to accomplish the salvation of mankind. All ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1009:What is God? The eternal one life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of the one life deep within yourself and all creatures; to be it! Therefore, all love is the love of God. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1010:When this world shall have melted like a dream, our house shall live, and stand more imperishable than marble, more solid than granite, selfexistent as God, for it is God Himself — “We dwell in Him. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1011:I was dealing with a lot of spiritual questions like "Who am I?" "What is God" "What is the meaning of life?" All of these questions that I think we can either face head on or choose to ignore, it's up to us. ~ John McLaughlin, #NFDB
1012:Nobody can become a drug addict if they're hip. Because it's obvious that if you're hip then you've got to make it. The buzz of all buzzes which is the thing that is God - you've got to be straight to get it. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
1013:trembling” (Phil. 2:12). Even knowing that “it is God who works in [us]” (Phil. 2:13), we are our own responsibility. This is a very different picture than many of us are used to. Some individuals see their needs ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1014:We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1015:I do believe that the Church is God's primary instrument for ushering in the Kingdom (God's dream) on earth as it is in heaven, but God is not limited to use only the Church, or only Christians for that matter. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
1016:Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God's attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1017:No more restless uncertainties, no more anxious desires, no more impatience at the place we are in; for it is God who has placed us there, and who holds us in his arms. Can we be unsafe where he has placed us? ~ Francois Fenelon, #NFDB
1018:Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. ~ Sergey Brin, #NFDB
1019:Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us...A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1020:When silence is God's only voice,
And waiting on Him my only choice,
A banner of faith I humbly raise
And offer a sacrifice of praise.
Though answers He may not impart,
Forever I can trust His heart. ~ Kathy Herman,#NFDB
1021:And for you who will make this spiritual journey with me, I hope and pray that you too will discover within yourselves not only the lost children of God, but also the compassionate mother and father that is God. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1022:The first step in spiritual life is to have compassion. A person who is kind and loving never needs to go searching for God. God rushes toward any heart that beats with compassion-it is God's favorite place. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
1023:The flesh on the nape of my neck did the crawly thing that it does so well. Some people say this is God's warning that the devil is near, but I've noticed I also experience it when someone serves me Brussels sprouts. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1024:Devotional singing induces in you a desire for experiencing the truth, to glimpse the beauty that is God, to taste the bliss that is the Self. It encourages man to dive into himself and be genuinely his real Self. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1025:I happen not to believe that God is so mean-spirited that He would give you a soulmate, take her away, and then insist that you spend the rest of your life battling the empty place inside. Love is God's greatest gift. ~ Hope Ramsay, #NFDB
1026:I must not, like the quietists, reduce all religion to a denial of any specific action, despising all other means, since what makes perfection is God's order, and the means he ordains is best for the soul. ~ Jean Pierre de Caussade, #NFDB
1027:In the dictionary of the seeker of truth there is no such thing as being "not successful." He is or should be an irrepressible optimist because of his immovable faith in the ultimate victory of Truth, which is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1028:Is God somehow responsible for the suffering of this world? In this indirect way, yes. But giving a child a pair of ice skates, knowing that he may fall, is a very different matter from knocking him down on the ice. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1029:The universe, then, is God, of whom the popular gods are manifestations; while legends and myths are allegorical. The soul of man is thus an emanation from the godhead, into whom it will eventually be re-absorbed. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1030:When some perpetually morose and whining Christians come to me, I tell them I know what God's will is for their lives" 'Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus' (I Thess. 5:18). ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1031:While our world is shaking and crumbling, we need to realize that one thing will never change, and that is God. He is the same today as he was ten million years ago, and will be the same ten million years from today. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
1032:Christmas is God lighting a candle; and you don't light a candle in a room that's already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that's so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
1033:In the words of another Valentinian, since human beings created the whole language of religious expression, so, in effect, humanity created the divine world: “… and this [Anthropos] is really he who is God over all. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
1034:The only thing that separates any one of us from excellence is fear and the opposite of fear is faith. I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for, perfection is God’s business. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
1035:In what ways has God changed you to become more holy because of Jesus’ blessing? How is God inviting you to make further changes in your life to live at greater levels of obedience and holiness to reflect Christ more? ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
1036:We are ourselves creations. We are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. This is the God-force extending itself through us. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using creativity is our gift back to God. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
1037:How does one know the voice is God’s? I believed the voice bidding me to go north belonged to him, though perhaps what I really heard that day was my own impulse to freedom. Perhaps it was my own voice. Does it matter? ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
1038:So the desire you have, that itch that you have to be whatever it is you want to be ... that itch, that desire for good is God’s proof to you sent already to indicate that it’s yours. You already have it. Claim it. ~ Denzel Washington, #NFDB
1039:This is God's beauty!
The Elegant nature of Esther,
The Meek nature of Moses,
The Pius nature of Paul,
The Passionate nature of Peter,
The Just nature of Jesus and then
The wise nature of you! ~ Israelmore Ayivor,#NFDB
1040:Christ-formation is God’s ultimate goal for every follower of Christ—that slowly, over time, we will begin to think like Jesus, see things as Jesus would see them, and treat people the same as Jesus would treat them. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1041:Conscription for war is inconsistent with freedom of conscience, which is not merely the right to believe but to act on the degree of truth that one receives, to follow a vocation which is God-inspired and God-directed. ~ Bayard Rustin, #NFDB
1042:My deepest me is God!” St. Catherine of Genoa shouted as she ran through the streets of town, just as Colossians had already shouted to both Jews and pagans, “The mystery is Christ within you—your hope of Glory!” (1:27). ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1043:The gospel is not simply good advice, nor is it good news about God’s power. The gospel is God’s power to those who believe. The place where God has supremely destroyed all human arrogance and pretension is the cross. Paul ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1044:Giving is God's way. It is the way that I now understand is the truth of the Universe. Giving multiplies me and makes me feel complete and fulfilled. Giving makes me feel that I make a real and important difference. ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
1045:People are always trying to build temples and churches for God. And what is God trying to do? He is trying to build us into a temple, a living temple, a temple of the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1046:The Psalter occupies a unique place in the Holy Scriptures. It is God’s Word and, with few exceptions, the prayer of men as well. How are we to understand this? How can God’s Word be at the same time prayer to God? ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1047:When the brook dries up, we know it is time to move. God has something better in mind. Count on it. He will never leave you nor forsake you (seen Hebrews 13:5). No good thing will He withhold from you when it is God’s will ~ R T Kendall, #NFDB
1048:11And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath. + 12Now therefore, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1049:Then it came to me: I was asking the wrong question. The right one is: Where is God in gang warfare? And the answer is, The same place God is in Darfur, and in our alcoholism, and when children are bullied: being crucified. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1050:We all can have accidents in life. God knew this, and so He sent Jesus as our Healer. His healing touch is God’s mercy to us. If you are hurt, ask God to heal you and then trust Him to do it in His way and in His time. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
1051:XII Do not live for death, pay it no fear or wonder. This is the firmest law of the truest faith. Death is the dew that wets the grass in the early morning dark. It is God’s entirely. Withdraw your fatal homage, and live. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1052:A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. 6 God sets the lonely in families,c he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1053:Christ said, "I and my father are one", and you repeat it. Yet it has not helped mankind. For nineteen hundred years men have not understood that saying. They make Christ the saviour of men. He is God and we are worms! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1054:it is God’s way of putting the world, and ourselves, to rights, it challenges and subverts all the human systems which claim to put the world to rights but in fact only succeed in bringing a different set of humans out on top. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
1055:The needed change within us is God's work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. We cannot attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God: it is a grace that is given. ~ Richard J Foster, #NFDB
1056:I sometimes think love is God's way of hoodwinking people into having kids. You fall in love, and all that passion goes into procreating and wanting children. I've felt that need to want to raise a child. It's a creative urge. ~ Matt Dillon, #NFDB
1057:Many of us suffer because we think that if people don’t really love us, then we will have to live forever without love. But it’s not true. The greatest sense of love, which is available for us at all times, is God’s love. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
1058:To have distinctiveness is to believe in the distinctiveness of everyone else, because distinctiveness is not mine but is God’s gift by which he gives being to me, and he indeed gives to all, gives being to all. (p. 271) ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1059:What is god but a being with more power than those below them can comprehend? With understanding more vast than others can imagine? If you do not believe such a being exists above you, then surely you are a god, Tal'kamar. ~ James Islington, #NFDB
1060:Existence is god called through love, provoked through love. The moment you become capable of prayer, existence becomes god. The moment you become capable of deep love, life becomes god. It is a transfiguration of the same energy. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1061:Love was meant to be also a sign, a symbol, a messenger, a telltale of the Divine. Love is a messenger from God saying that every human affection and every ecstasy of love are sparks from the great flame of love that is God. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1062:Once the ego is not there, there is no expectation, frustration, no desire, no despair. Suddenly one finds oneself falling into a deep harmony with the cosmos. And that harmony is God; that harmony is nirvana; that harmony is tao. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1063:Someone at work said to me this morning, ”Where is God in all this?” I didn’t rise to the bait. I can never understand why people ask that question. The real question for the bystanders of tragedy is “Where are WE in all this? ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
1064:Your physical well being and thus your mental state, is God-given responsibility to you. Tending to them and get a clear sense of what your life is about before ashes and dust and you'll be having inner peace with your life ~ Daniel Gottlieb, #NFDB
1065:My message to blacks was: “It is time to stop hating who you are. God created you black—love yourself, love your hands and face, big nose and lips, for that is the only way you can love God. Blackness is God's gift to humanity. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
1066:Nature is God's first missionary. Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars. Where there are not preachers there are spring times... If a person has nothing but nature, then nature is enough to reveal something about God. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1067:Who is God? Who are we? What is our purpose? All these questions remain unanswered. I want to reach the genuine seeker of spiritual well-being. My goal is to satisfy the hunger and longing for those who are seeking the truth. ~ Ravi Zacharias, #NFDB
1068:All my books are very spiritual. I started out writing what was most natural to me, many years ago, which is religious, because I grew up in the jungle, the son of missionaries. I want to know, is God real? What's a priest's role? ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
1069:Before it's too late, and time is running out, let us turn from trust in the chain reactions of exploding atoms to faith of the chain reaction of God's love. Love - love of God and fellow men. That is God's formula for peace. ~ Richard Cushing, #NFDB
1070:I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way. ~ Theodosius Dobzhansky, #NFDB
1071:It is not opinions that man needs: it is TRUTH. It is not theology; it is God. It is not religion: it is Christ. It is not literature and science; but the knowledge of the free love of God in the gift of His only-begotten Son. ~ Horatius Bonar, #NFDB
1072:The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1073:God is attracted to weakness. He cannot resist when we humbly and honestly admit how desperately we need Him. When we are empty vessels, He longs to fill us with His grace, love and goodness. This is God’s law of attraction. ~ Jentezen Franklin, #NFDB
1074:Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
1075:The Bible meets the needs of the human heart. No other book is like it. It is God’s testimony. Its name is the law of the Lord. The sun is to creation what the law is to God’s people, bringing light, warmth, life, and growth. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1076:Nature is God's first missionary. Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars. Where there are not preachers there are spring times...
If a person has nothing but nature, then nature is enough to reveal something about God. ~ Max Lucado,#NFDB
1077:The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We…put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God…puts himself where we deserve to be.8 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1078:You are alive, so take your life and enjoy it. Don’t resist life passing through you, because that is God passing through you. Just your existence proves the existence of God. Your existence proves the existence of life and energy. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
1079:Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
“For God’s sake, where is God?”
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows …”
That night, the soup tasted of corpses. ~ Elie Wiesel,#NFDB
1080:Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know him, for that in us which knows God, is God. ~ Bernadette Roberts, #NFDB
1081:We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen. For the great unseen reality is God. He that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. This is basic in the life of faith. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1082:The Bible is endlessly interesting because it is God's story, and God by nature is himself endlessly interesting. The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain. The more you read it, the more you find its truth and beauty to be inexhaustible. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1083:The Bible is endlessly interesting because it is God’s story, and God by nature is himself endlessly interesting. The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain. The more you read it, the more you find its truth and beauty to be inexhaustible. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1084:No one seems to realise that the aristocracy is God’s special gift to mankind. The burghers treat us no better than commoners. Considering our divine origins, such disrespect is the worst form of impiety. I’m sure your Grace agrees. ~ David Eddings, #NFDB
1085:Perhaps there is a God like firelight, but all we can see is the shadows that we cast ourselves when we walk in front of the fire. Then we see great leaping shadows and think that this is God, but really it is only our own image. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
1086:The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life toward wrath. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1087:I could well believe that it is God's intention, since we have refused milder remedies, to compel [Christians] into unity, by persecution even. Satan is without doubt nothing else than a hammer in the hand of a benevolent and severe God. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1088:The gospel does in truth proclaim the redemption of reason. Obscurantism is always evil, and wilful error is always sin., All truth is God's truth; facts, as such, are sacred, and nothing is more un-Christian than to run away from them. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1089:The problem is not that Christians are conservative or liberal, but that some are so confident that their position is God's position that they become dismissive and intolerant toward others and divisive forces in our national life. ~ John C Danforth, #NFDB
1090:We need to return and go forward to the understanding that there is God in all living things, not more in men than women, and not more in humans than in nature. To believe otherwise is only an excuse for dominating women and nature. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
1091:And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1092:God — His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is pure. He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. 31 For who is God besides •Yahweh? And who is a rock? Only our God. 32 God — He clothes me with strength and makes my way perfect. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1093:Where does your security lie? Is God your refuge, your hiding place, your stronghold, your shepherd, your counselor, your friend, your redeemer, your saviour, your guide? If He is, you don't need to search any further for security. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
1094:Remember—the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.[1] —Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water ~ Emily P Freeman, #NFDB
1095:To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well. ~ William Nicholson, #NFDB
1096:We all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1097:I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1098:The best thing anyone can give to humanity is God consciousness. Then you can really give them something. But first you have to concentrate on your own spiritual advancement; so in a sense we have to become selfish to become selfless. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
1099:The infinite exists. It is there. If the infinite had no me, the me would be its limit; it would not be the infinite; in other words, it would not be. But it is. Then it has a me. This me of the infinite is God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1100:Today, if I had to answer the question “Where is God when it hurts?” in a single sentence, I would make that sentence another question: “Where is the church when it hurts?” We form the front line of God’s response to the suffering world. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1101:I believe in God - not in a Catholic God; there is no Catholic God. There is God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1102:I'm going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because of He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1103:It is impossible to stand still in Christian life and service, for when you stand still, you immediately start going backward. “Let us go on!” is God’s challenge to His church (Heb. 6:1), and that means moving ahead into new territory. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1104:Once one understands that the evolving community of life on Earth is God’s beloved creation and its ruination an unspeakable sin, then deep affection shown in action on behalf of ecojustice becomes an indivisible part of one’s life. ~ Elizabeth A Johnson, #NFDB
1105:The real point is that totalitarian regimes have claimed jurisdiction over the whole person, and the whole society, and they don't at all believe that we should give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's. ~ Jeane Kirkpatrick, #NFDB
1106:Vision beyond your resources? Don't let fear dictate your decisions. If your vision is God-given, it will most definitely be beyond your ability and beyond your resources. The God who gives the vision is the same God who makes provision. ~ Mark Batterson, #NFDB
1107:Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1108:Such is God, superior to His name, invisible and apparent, who reveals Himself to the spirit, who reveals Himself to the eyes, who has no body and who has many bodies or rather all bodies; for there is nothing which is not He and all is He alone. ~ Hermes, #NFDB
1109:In determining relationships we must begin somewhere. There must be somewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured, where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say "IS" and make no allowances. Such a center is God. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1110:Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? ~ Epicurus,#NFDB
1111:I say salvation is the free gift of God. It is God's free grace, I preach unto you, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Jesus Christ justifies the ungodly. Jesus Christ passed by and saw you polluted with your blood and bid you live. ~ George Whitefield, #NFDB
1112:Far beyond your intellect, far beyond your understanding, lies inexhaustible knowledge and wealth, strength and power, peace and joy. Do not use your intellect to find the answers for God and his manifestations. Everything is God. ~ Vishnudevananda Saraswati, #NFDB
1113:If something or someone is presented to us once, we will often dismiss it as being nothing more than happenstance. If that person or situation is presented twice, it is God slapping us in the face and telling us to pay attention. It is fate. ~ Scott Hildreth, #NFDB
1114:If you are a man of prayer, existence appears as God, as personal. If you are a man of meditation, existence is impersonal, just a wholeness, a divineness. For the man of prayer there is God; for the man of awareness there is godliness but no God. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1115:I have a reverential fear of God in my life, and I think we need a lot more of that. I believe that God is God, and I believe He means business. If He tells me to do something, He means it, and when He tells me not to do something, He means it. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1116:I was raised a Christian, but I wouldn't call myself a Christian now. I think when I was younger it was easier to focus on the negative, nihilist vision... this is sort of picking up on the other half of the body, which is God and white light. ~ Billy Corgan, #NFDB
1117:Man stands against even the so-called authority of God. What is God but the best in man? What is God but the highest reason? Why shouldn’t man, then, stand against even the authority of God if it goes against the laws of inquiry and reason? ~ Hindol Sengupta, #NFDB
1118:The Master never claims that he is god and others are not; on the contrary the master gives us hope that we are similar to him, very much like him with this little difference - we are not aware of who we are and the Guru knows who he is. ~ Anandmurti Gurumaa, #NFDB
1119:Hell was not part of the original creation. Hell is God's fall-back position. Hell is something God was forced to make because people chose to rebel against him and turn against what was best for them and the purpose for which they were created. ~ Lee Strobel, #NFDB
1120:If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace. ~ Katherine Anne Porter, #NFDB
1121:One of the most distinct features of this whole human history is god flattery! People never get tired of buttering every kind of gods in the hope of getting earthly benefit or obtaining heavenly plunder! Man is no doubt a tireless flunkey! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1122:Thou are God,” Mike repeated serenely. “That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grasses are God. Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together—” He croaked something in Martian and smiled. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1123:And snow—snow is not my enemy, I tell him. Snow is God’s way of telling people to slow down and rest and stay in bed for a day. And besides, snow always solves itself. Mixes with the leaves to form more earth, I tell him. Think compost, says I. ~ Robert Fulghum, #NFDB
1124:Holy Scripture is more than a watchword. It is also more than ‘light for today’. It is God’s revealed Word for all men, for all times. Holy Scripture does not consist of individual passages; it is a unit and is intended to be used as such. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1125:If the distinction provided by Jesus' words: Give unto god, what is god's, and unto Caesar what is Caesar's! is carried through, then other necessary intrusions by the national state into the domain of church creeds can be completely avoided. ~ Alfred Rosenberg, #NFDB
1126:My favorite book is God-Shaped Hole. It’s not a classic. It’s better than a classic. It’s a modern-day tragedy. I’ve never read Moby-Dick but I can almost bet it doesn’t leave you feeling like you have less skin than before you opened the book. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
1127:There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I've always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
1128:12Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1129:For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. 6 He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. 7 On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1130:God cannot be found outside you, because there is no God who can ever be outside you. God is the ultimate fragrance of your consciousness. When your consciousness opens like a lotus, the fragrance that is released is God - better to call it godliness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1131:Our consciousness is also raised by the cruelty and wastefulness of natural selection. Predators seem beautifully ‘designed’ to catch prey animals, while the prey animals seem equally beautifully ‘designed’ to escape them. Whose side is God on? ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1132:What my life really is even now is “hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). What I “treasure” in heaven is not just the little that I have caused to be there. It is what I love there and what I place my security and happiness in there. It is God who ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1133:Angels are spirits on mission, and that mission is God's. So, we can say that God, out of his love, sends angels to aid us in our redemption. Angels are sent for our redemption, and that redemption leads us all the way into the heights of worship. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
1134:For every sentient being is God—omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, and eternal—pretending with the utmost sincerity and determination to be otherwise, to be a mere creature subject to failure, pain, death, temptation, hellfire, and ultimate tragedy. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1135:If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to redeem us, He showed us in fact that suffering and pain have great power. ~ E A Bucchianeri, #NFDB
1136:In every person there is a soul, In every soul there is intelligence, In every intelligence there is thought, In every thought there is either good or evil, In every evil there is death, In every good there is life, In every life there is God. ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
1137:. . . It is God's plan that those who are to help others spiritually fall into the temptations of mind and body by which others can be tormented. . . . Scorn both these evil suggestions and the wickedness of their author, who is the devil. ~ Saint Vincent de Paul, #NFDB
1138:Judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him. Ye shall not respect persons in judgement; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgement is God's. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1139:Sometimes, when we pray for miracles what we are really praying for is God to do the work that we are too afraid to take action about. Often, the miracle resides in us and we need to simply "be all in", rather than standing on the fence waiting. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
1140:And so then, keep on growing, My son. Keep on becoming. And keep on deciding what you want to become in the next highest version of your Self. Keep on working toward that. Keep on! Keep on! This is God Work we're up to, you and I. So keep on! ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1141:Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful;
for beauty is God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament.
Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower,
and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
1142:The Gospel according to John reveals the helplessness of the human mind before the great Mystery which is God, and Paul in First Corinthians teaches that God can be known only as the Holy Spirit performs in the seeking heart an act of self-disclosure. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1143:There are some questions that we all ask ourselves in different ways: Who am I? Who is God? What am I here for? What matters most? What matters least? What are my unique talents and abilities? What will my contribution be? What happens when we die? ~ Matthew Kelly, #NFDB
1144:The size of a challenge should never be measured by what we have to offer. It will never be enough. Furthermore, provision is God's responsibility, not ours. We are merely called to commit what we have - even if it's no more than a sack lunch. ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
1145:it is God himself, the Lord and Creator of all things, who is so small here, who is hidden here in the corner, who enters into the plainness of the world, who meets us in the helplessness and defenselessness of a child, and wants to be with us. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1146:It is impossible for us to indwell this Story and not assume that narrative’s perspective. Again, that perspective is God’s perspective. It is not our perspective; it is God’s perspective. It is God’s perspective on us, not our perspective on others. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
1147:Tomorrow's God says that every church is 'his church,' and every faith is 'her faith,' and every soul is God's soul, because it shares the same soul with God! .. And no person or living thing in the universe stands outside the community of God. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1148:Truly transformational knowledge is always personal, never merely objective. It involves knowing of, not merely knowing about. And it is always relational. It grows out of a relationship to the object that is known—whether this is God or one’s self. ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
1149:...all knowledge exists in the Mind universe of Light - which is God - that all Mind is One Mind, that men do not have separate minds, and that all knowledge can be obtained from the Universal Source of All-Knowledge by becoming One with that Source. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
1150:J. dBudziszewski points out, “The motto ‘Reason Alone!’ is nonsense anyway. Reason itself presupposes faith. Why? Because a defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless. Our only guarantee that human reason works is God who made it. ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
1151:Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. — RALPH WALDO EMERSON ~ Michael J Gelb, #NFDB
1152:Service is God. Why has God endowed man with a body, a mind and an intellect ? Feel with the mind, plan with the intelligence and use the body to serve those who are in need of service. Offer that act of service to God; worship home with that Flower. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1153:What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1154:What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1155:For years one has to put up with the feeling that people do not care, really care, about one; then one day with growing alarm, one realizes that it is God who does not care; and not merely that he does not care, he does not care one way or the other. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
1156:God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1157:God is the Self of the world, but you can’t see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can’t see your own eyes, and you certainly can’t bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1158:I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of Hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of Paradise so that people will not love God for want of Heaven or fear of Hell, but because He is God."
(on pg. 174) ~ John Green,#NFDB
1159:The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is -- unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself! ~ Max Stirner, #NFDB
1160:The lesson to be learned is that there is much division in Islam. The best determination of whether a man is Muslim is if he exclusively declares that Allah is God and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger. Beyond this point, there is great diversity in Islam. ~ Nabeel Qureshi, #NFDB
1161:Love. It's God's greatest gift. He fills our world with it and makes sure we grow up with caring, supportive parents. I'm just kidding. Pain is God's greatest gift. Pain is God's way of saying, "Hurts, don't it ? Wel, go ahead. Say, me dammit again." ~ Christopher Titus, #NFDB
1162:[T]he entire human drama of recorded history is God's dream, whereby, once he begins investigating his dreams, he will start becoming conscious of himself. And that is something of the purpose of what Jung called the "miserable morass of human history." ~ Edward Edinger, #NFDB
1163:The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. ~ Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, #NFDB
1164:True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings; joy comes from the place of the very presence of God. Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all other emotions - joy transcends all other emotions. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
1165:Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1166:Honestly facing your lack of sovereignty over your own life produces either anxiety or relief. Anxiety is God-forgetting. It is the result of thinking that is life is on your shoulders, that it is your job to figure it all out and keep things in order. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1167:When we have once asked for God’s protection against evil, and have obtained it, then against everything which the devil and the world work against us we stand secure and safe. For what fear is there in this life, to the man whose guardian in this life is God ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1168:Divine grace is God acting in our life to accomplish what we cannot do on our own. It informs our being and actions and makes them effective in the wisdom and power of God. Hence, grace is not opposed to effort (our actions) but to earning (our attitude). ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1169:The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the crowning proof of Christianity. If the resurrection did not take place, then Christianity is a false religion. If it did take place, then Christ is God and the Christian faith is absolute truth. ~ Henry M Morris, #NFDB
1170:Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1171:waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the Wonder that is God. And yet, thus to penetrate, to push in sensitive living experience into the holy Presence, is a privilege open to every child of God. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1172:Poem To Kabir
Kabir says
the breath inside the breath
is God
& I say to Kabir
you are the breath inside that breath
which is not to say
that the poet is Godbut only that God
uses the poet
as the wind
uses
a sail.
~ Erica Jong,#NFDB
1173:When there is enough consciousness, God appears. You will know this as surely as you know that you have thoughts, feelings, and sensations. This is God will cross your mind as easily as This is a rose. The presence of God will be as palpable as a heartbeat. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1174:Every man carries his kingdom within, and no one knows what is taking place in another's kingdom. 'No one understands me!' Of course they don't, each one of us is a mystery. There is only One Who understands you, and that is God. Hand yourself over to Him. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1175:Guilt is God's idea. He uses it the way highway engineers use rumble strips. When we swerve off track, they call us back. Guilt does the same. It leaves us "more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverant, more human, more passionate,more responsible. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1176:If this Jesus is God’s answer, what is the question? Paul eventually came to the conclusion that God was answering a question that gets at the core of not simply the Jewish drama, but the human drama, a question that no one was yet asking in quite the same way. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1177:If your expectation of God’s Word in your life has been small, I ask you to consider giving it far more credit. Second Timothy 3:16 (NIV) says, “All Scripture is God-breathed,” so don’t just read it like any other inspirational or instructional text. Inhale it! ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1178:The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1179:I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, #NFDB
1180:The deepest need of humans is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of the soul, deprivation of God's recreating, loving peace. ~ Thomas Raymond Kelly, #NFDB
1181:I asked Him to give me the prayers He wants me to pray and to give or withhold anything according to his plan for me. Nothing is too big to ask of Him, not even an ocean lot. It is God's business to decide if it is good for me. It is my business to obey Him. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
1182:"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This is such a reassuring thing. The world is in God's hands; it is his world. We sinners have messed things up and the amount of human division and cruelty is so terrible, but fortunately God is God. ~ Matthew Levering, #NFDB
1183:Once sure that the doctrine we teach is God's Word, once certain of this, we may build thereupon, and know that this cause shall and must remain; the devil shall not be able to overthrow it, much less the world be able to uproot it, how fiercely soever it rage. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1184:Prayer is allowing ourselves to be thirsty; it is a longing for something we just cannot seem to find. The Sufis say that our longing for God is God’s longing for us. In this way, prayer is like a conversation between friends separated across time and space. ~ Elizabeth Lesser, #NFDB
1185:And I saw no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God; and yet mine understanding took that our Substance is in God: that is to say, that God is God, and our Substance is a creature in God. ~ Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c.1393), Ch. 54, #NFDB
1186:Satan can move in the supernatural realm, too, because he is a spirit being, as is God. You’ve got to be able to know whether a vision, dream, impression, or suggestion is from God or Satan. Those suggestions that do not line up with the Word are of the devil. ~ Kenneth E Hagin, #NFDB
1187:The Bible tells us, “Do not despise the day of small beginnings” (see Zech. 4:10). I believe that whatever it is God has entrusted into your hand—your family, your career, your ministry—don’t count it as insignificant and don’t approach it with a lack of vision. ~ Brian Houston, #NFDB
1188:The Crucified One is God’s standing solidarity with the suffering, the tragedy, and the disaster of all time, and God’s promise that it will not have the final word. The Risen One is God’s final word about the universe and what God plans to do with all suffering. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1189:what is God? “He’s truth; He’s meaning. He’s my purpose and yours. With terrorists wiping people out, dealers hooking kids on meth and ecstasy, violence and cruelty; there’s still love, comfort, joy, and hope. That’s God. Without him, none of it makes sense. ~ Kristen Heitzmann, #NFDB
1190:When God's righteousness is mentioned in the gospel, it is God's action of declaring righteous the unrighteous sinner who has faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness by which a person is justified (declared righteous) is not his own but that of another, Christ. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1191:If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
1192:The baptism of the Spirit is God’s ultimate purpose for His people. He didn’t save us so we could go to Heaven. He saved us so He could fill us so full of Himself we could have intimacy with Him, we could become more like Him, and we could change the world with Him. ~ Rob Reimer, #NFDB
1193:The synergetic integral of the totality of all principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans--in pure principle--we do not and never will know all the principles ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
1194:You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty. ~ Ocean Vuong, #NFDB
1195:You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty. ~ Ocean Vuong, #NFDB
1196:The origin of the Form Destroyer is unclear; it is, for instance, not possible to declare whether (one) he was a separate entity from God from the start, uncreated by God but also self-creating, as is God, or (two) whether the Form Destroyer is an aspect of God... ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1197:Remember that the lives of other people are not your business. They are their business. They are God's business because they all have God whether they use the word God or not. Even your own life is not your business. It also is God's business. Leave it to God. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
1198:the old man raised his finger toward heaven, and said, 'The infinite exists. It is there. If the infinite had no ME, the ME would be its limit; it would not be the infinite; in other words, it would not be. But it is. Then it has a ME. This ME of the infinite is God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1199:The ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us. Rather, all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1200:When I asked the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, “Is God in cyberspace?” he joked at first that God must be in cyberspace because every time he is in the London subway, “I hear people saying into their cell phones, ‘Oh God, why doesn’t this work!’” Here ~ Thomas L Friedman, #NFDB
1201:Everyone has faith in God though everyone does not know it. For everyone has faith in himself and that multiplied to the nth degree is God. The sum total of all that lives is God. We may not be God, but we are of God, even as a little drop of water is of the ocean. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1202:Father is the existence out of which everything comes; Son is that knowledge. It is in Christ that God will be manifest. God was everywhere, in all beings, before Christ; but in Christ we became conscious of Him. This is God. The third is bliss, the Holy Spirit. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1203:Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16–18 NIV 2011). Give thanks to God in every situation, not for every situation. By loving Jesus in our pain, we allow him into our pain. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
1204:We're facing dragons too. Fire-breathing griffins of the soul, whom we must outfight and outwit to reach the treasure of our self-in-potential and to release the maiden who is God's plan and destiny for ourselves and the answer to why we were put on this planet. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1205:It is not the high summer alone that is God's. The winter also is His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man's winters are His - the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the winter of our unhappiness - even 'the winter of our discontent. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1206:Mack was getting frustrated. He spoke louder, 'But, don't I have a right to...'
To complete a sentence without being interrupted? Not in reality. But as long as you think you do, you will surely get ticked off when someone cuts you off, even if it is God. ~ William Paul Young,#NFDB
1207:To be contemplative we must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give clutter away until the tiny world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
1208:Scripture is God speaking. Though the words they’d read had been penned more than a thousand years earlier, still God spoke in the reading of those words. Jesus held them accountable for the words of Scripture as if God Himself had spoken those words directly to them! ~ James R White, #NFDB
1209:I don't trust Catholics," I said, "because they take advantage of you." "And Protestants?" he asked with a laugh. "I loathe the way they fumble around with their consciences." "And atheists?" He was still laughing. "They bore me because all they ever talk about is God. ~ Heinrich Boll, #NFDB
1210:So slow down to feel the wind. Listen to the carols just a little bit longer. Linger in the quiet and taste the grace of now, and know that He is good and He is God. Name them in this moment—gift upon gift upon gift—and listen for the echo in everything: I will bless you. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
1211:(The mystics claim that their ecstasy reveals to them a circular chamber containing a great circular book, whose spine is continuous and which follows the complete circle of the walls; but their testimony is suspect; their words, obscure. This cyclical book is God.) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1212:AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers. AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals. It is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals. ~ Jerry Falwell, #NFDB
1213:Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontent with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
1214:God was true everything was
a mother's role in childhood
Someone was in that garden
each knowing the other to be
entirely inasmuch what each
believed or what confessed for
cordial confinement is God's
glory each seed every word ~ Susan Howe,#NFDB
1215:Hinduism is a relentless pursuit of Truth. "Truth is God" and if today it has become moribund, inactive, irresponsive to growth, it is because we are fatigued; and as soon as the fatigue is over, Hinduism will burst upon the world with a brilliance perhaps unknown before. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1216:If you really believe that that piece of bread is God – for crying out loud, the moment I enter this church, I would be on my knees. I would enter this church worshipping. I would cringe in terror and joy, swept away by the frightening truth that I am before the Almighty God. ~ Bo S nchez, #NFDB
1217:Perfect is God’s job.” She released Cheryl’s hand and reached for Tyler’s. “You’ll live your life a lot happier if you stop trying to be perfect. Do your best for Jesus. When you fall short, He’ll carry you.” She smiled at the others. “The way He’s carrying me right now. ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
1218:What you are about to hear is God's word to the men of this nation. We are going to war as of tonight. We have divine power - that is our weapon. We will not compromise. Wherever truth is at risk, in the schools or legislature, we are going to contend for it. We will win. ~ Bill McCartney, #NFDB
1219:The purpose of life is to be beautiful, to be bountiful, to be blissful, to be graceful and grateful. What a wonderful English word-grateful. If one is great and full, one is God. And whenever smallness faces you, you should be great, and full-full of that greatness. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
1220:There's One Person above all others who desires an extraordinary life for you. He is a Father who delights, like any good father, in the achievements and happiness of His children. His name is God! And nothing will please Him more than seeing you reach your highest potential. ~ John Bevere, #NFDB
1221:Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1222:The gospels do not relate the story of a misunderstood ethical teacher, a failed social revolutionary, a model of selfless humility, or even a heroic martyr; they reveal the Savior who is God incarnate, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1223:Try to see the world as a great education in Love and do not quarrel with your lot in life. Do not complain because of your unending cares and anxieties, your mean surroundings, the small and sordid souls you are obliged to live with. That is God’s way of making you practise. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1224:Busyness is not the goal of a conscientious believer; fruitfulness is. Not every request that comes my way is God's will for me to accept. Good opportunities are not necessarily godly ones. Expectations pushed on us by others are not the directions Jesus invites us to follow. ~ Wayne Jacobsen, #NFDB
1225:For this is God’s great plan, that people rise up beyond their personal hatreds, here, right now, in this new land where so many different people with so many different bloods have come to join together and that we recognize we are all the children of God! Every one of us! ~ Victor Villase or, #NFDB
1226:Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not. It's a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul... The only real customer is God. Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1227:Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1228:Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you... Remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God's busineess... Even your own life is not your business. It also is God's Business. Leave it to God. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
1229:The Bible is God's declaratory revelation to man containing the great truths about God, about man, about history, about salvation, and about prophecy that God wanted us to know. The Bible could be trusted just as much as if God had taken the pen and written the words Himself. ~ John F Walvoord, #NFDB
1230:The truth is that man is one individual with two aspects, just like one line with two ends. If you look at the ends, it is two. If you look at the line, it is one. One end of the line is limited, the other end of the line is unlimited. One end is man, the other end is God. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1231:Who am I really? The answer to that question is found in the answer to another. What is God's heart toward me, or, how do I affect him? If God is the Pursuer, the Ageless Romancer, the Lover, then there has to be a Beloved, one who is the Pursued. This is our role in the story. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
1232:For, behold, the mystery of godliness, how great is it! For, behold, I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name. Wherefore— 11 Eternal punishment is God's punishment. 12 Endless punishment is God's punishment. ~ Joseph Smith Jr, #NFDB
1233:I fed on one of the true monsters—one of the many 'witch hunters' who interrogated and jailed the accused, seeking guilt where there was none. How humans can do such things to their fellows is beyond me. They torture, main and kill their own kind, saying it is God's will. ~ Amelia Atwater Rhodes, #NFDB
1234:Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. ~ Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1235:I don't trust Catholics," I said, "because they take advantage of you."
"And Protestants?" he asked with a laugh.
"I loathe the way they fumble around with their consciences."
"And atheists?" He was still laughing.
"They bore me because all they ever talk about is God. ~ Heinrich B ll,#NFDB
1236:Doubt is God’s instrument, will arrive in God’s time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1237:Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart—poisoned as it is with pride and pain—and replacing it with his own. Rather than tell you to change, he creates the change. Do you clean up so he can accept you? No, he accepts you and begins cleaning you up. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1238:So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, 2:13 for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort – for the sake of his good pleasure – is God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1239:An unchurched christian is a grotesque anomaly. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God's new community. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
1240:Like Abraham, we are pilgrims and sojourners in this world, searching for that heavenly country, the city whose designer and builder is God. We have not seen this city, but we know it exists, and the evidence for it is the trust that we have in the One who promises to bring it to pass. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1241:What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must. Who is God, the one and only true? Money is God. Gold and Greenbacks and Stock-father, son, and ghosts of same, three persons in one; These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1242:D.: Is God personal?
B.: Yes, He is always the first person, the I, ever standing before you. Because you give precedence to worldly things, God appears to have receded to the background. If you give up all else and seek Him alone, He will remain as the I, the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #index,#NFDB
1243:The artist, surgeon, through clay form, can only look for cure with great obstinacy until he discovers, repeatedly, that love is god's only gift that enables man to transcend his tragedy and regain his wholeness and well-being beyond the claws of evil, rampaging as evil may be. ~ Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, #NFDB
1244:The disciples’ mistake was also my mistake: They forgot that they have a God who created the universe out of “nothing,” that can put flesh on dry bones “nothing,” that can put life in a dusty womb “nothing.” I mean, let’s face it, “nothing” is God’s favorite material to work with. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
1245:when we run from darkness, how much do we really know about what we are running from? If we turn away from darkness on principle, doing everything we can to avoid it because there is simply no telling what it contains, isn’t there a chance that what we are running from is God? ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, #NFDB
1246:. . . you should know that there is present with you the angel whom God has appointed for each man. . . This angel, who is sleepless and cannot be deceived, is always present with you; he sees all things and is not hindered by darkness. You should know, too, that with him is God. ~ Anthony the Great, #NFDB
1247:Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design. But at the same time, there's a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, well, if this is God's plan, it's very peculiar. And you have to wonder about that guy's personality, the big guy's personality. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1248:I love all religions. ... If people become better Hindus, better Muslims, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there." She upheld that there are many ways to God': "All is God - Buddists, Hindus, Christians, etc., all have access to the same God." ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
1249:The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1250:I believe the place of prayer is not only a place where I lose my burdens, but also a place where I get a burden. He shares my burden and I share His burden. ... To know that burden, we must hear the voice of the Spirit. To hear that voice, we must be still and know that He is God. ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
1251:All I know is that, like Santiago the shepherd boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1252:Finn is God: So much for Earth Day. I totally screwed things up and started celebrating the wrong planet. Now I have to collect all these stupid trademarked dog figurines that I distributed all of the yard. At least it's better than last year's mistake when I had butt statues everywhere. ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
1253:In a 2009 Harris Poll of 2,303 adult Americans, people were asked to “indicate for each [category below] if you believe in it, or not.” The results were revealing.1 God 82 % Miracles 76 % Heaven 75 % Jesus is God or the Son of God 73 % Angels 72 % Survival of the soul after death 71 % ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
1254:Just because God is God, just because Christ is Christ, they cannot do other than care for us and bless us and help us if we will but come unto them, approaching their throne of grace in meekness and lowliness of heart. They can’t help but bless us. They have to. It is their nature. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
1255:Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in innocent sufferings. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1256:PERFORM all acts with as much love as you would offer God. In Truth, you eat for the satisfaction of the I in you and dress up to please the self-same I . The husband loves his wife for the sake of the I . And who is this I that is persistently inherent in everyone? It is God Himself. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1257:The one thing to rely upon is God's favor. Do not build either on your study or on your meditation, although they both help you. But you are dependent on God, not even on your murshid. Seek Him, trust Him. In Him lies your life's purpose, and in Him is hidden the rest of your soul. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1258:There is a need to go deeper, to let myself go completely, to enter into the surroundings in the real fellowship of oneness, to lift above the outer shell, out into the depth and wideness where God is the recognized centre and everything is in time with everything, and the key-note is God. ~ Emily Carr, #NFDB
1259:Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs. ~ Wafa Sultan, #NFDB
1260:Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents it as out of himself. The nature of man, of the species – thus working on him through the irresistible power of the imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought and action – is God. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
1261:Life in its infinite forms exists as one organic unity. We are part of it: the part should feel reverence for the whole. That is the idea of vegetarianism. It simply means: don't destroy life. It simply means: life is God - avoid destroying it, otherwise you will be destroying the very ecology. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1262:Remember Who it is that has placed you in your present position; perhaps you have no home, perhaps you have experienced a reverse of fortune; no matter what! It is God who has willed it so, therefore look to Him for guidance and protection. —HINTS TO GOVERNESSES, BY ONE OF THEMSELVES, 1856 ~ Julie Klassen, #NFDB
1263:And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1264:The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1265:There is only God. REALITY is God and has never required your belief. This reality no "one" survives. In Ultimate Reality no "one" is saved either - there is simply nothing to save you "from" : you have not emerged from any "other" and there is no place else for "you" to disappear into. Ever. ~ Adi Da, #NFDB
1266:I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he gives us the gift of suffering. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which the Sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much are what make us perfect. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1267:It is said that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does. But the proper closest statement of it that can be made in English is that God cannot avoid noting the sparrow because the Sparrow is God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both of them are God, carrying out God's thoughts. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1268:The one who doesn't fall doesn't stand up. It happens that I was made kind of an idol. Everybody loses. That happens. I'm a normal human being, as are all of us. If it is God's will, the next fight I'll win... No pressure at all. There is some relief because tomorrow I will go back home. ~ Fedor Emelianenko, #NFDB
1269:Let no one believe that he has received the divine kiss, if he knows the truth without loving it or loves it without understanding it. But blessed is that kiss whereby not only is God recognized but also the Father is loved; for there is never full knowledge without perfect love. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #NFDB
1270:Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. When we abandon the doctrine that some infinite being created matter and force, and enacted a code of laws for their government ... the real priest will then be, not the mouth-piece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
1271:Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country. That our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan. ~ Sarah Palin, #NFDB
1272:When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1273:368. The Vedanta is God's lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage and egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely and surely in a high and eternal sunlight.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T8],#NFDB
1274:In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value in itself and for its own sake, just because God is God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity.”10 Silent solitude makes true speech possible ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1275:Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1276:Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand. I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1277:To the question, 'What is God?' and 'What is man?' the answer is that the soul, conscious of its limited existence, is 'man', and the soul reflected by the vision of the unlimited, is 'God'. In plain words man's self-consciousness is man, and man's consciousness of his highest ideal is God. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1278:Would it be worth it to pick up my cross and be crucified next to Jesus? If He is not God, then, no. Lose everything I love to worship a false God? A million times over, no!
But if He is God, then yes. Being forever bonded to my Lord by suffering alongside Him? A million times over, yes! ~ Nabeel Qureshi,#NFDB
1279:God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is God’s last word. Nothing will replace what God has said to us through his Son. If you want to know God, you have to come to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Alpha and Omega; his ministry is the ministry of revelation. He reveals God to us. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1280:Healthy Christians create. It is the nature of our God to create. He’s introduced in Genesis 1 as the Creator of everything. One of the last images given to us in the book of Revelation is God creating the new heaven and the new earth. The Bible is literally framed around the act of God creating. ~ Gary L Thomas, #NFDB
1281:Life vastly simplifies, and satisfaction greatly amplifies, when we begin to realize our awesome roles. God is God. From our perspective, it's all about Him. He is the center of the universe. We seek to please Him. He seeks to perfect us—and life works. Not without pain, but definitely with purpose. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1282:For me, life is the most beautiful gift of God to mankind, therefore people and nations who destroy life by abortion and euthanasia are the poorest. I do not say legal or illegal, but I think that no human hand should be raised to kill life, since life is God's life in us, even in an unborn child. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
1283:If someone asked you what the greatest good on this earth is, what would you say? An epic surf session? Financial security? Health? Meaningful, trusting friendships? Intimacy with your spouse? Knowing that you belong? The greatest good on this earth is God. Period. God’s one goal for us is Himself. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
1284:I have heard it said that prayer is when we speak to God, and meditation is when God answers. Whether it is God answering or some wiser part of our own intelligence, I am not sure it mattered to me, as I was just trying to quiet the inner noise and listen through the thick and enveloping silence. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1285:It is not the high summer alone that is God’s. The winter also is His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man’s winters are His – the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the winter of our unhappiness – even “the winter of our discontent.” Adela Cathcart, vol. 1, ch. 2 ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1286:Ultimately, your marriage partner should be part of what could be called your “mythos.” C. S. Lewis spoke of a “secret thread” that unites every person’s favorite books, music, places, or pastimes. Certain things trigger an “inconsolable longing” that gets you in touch with the Joy that is God. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1287:What we are is God’s gift to us. What we do with our lives is our gift to Him. He accepts us as we are. He’s not going to judge us on the basis of what He has given someone else, but on the basis of what we have done with what He has given us. Never be discouraged by what you don’t have. Having ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1288:Doubt is sacred. Doubt is God’s instrument, will arrive in God’s time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1289:The people of the two nations, French and English, must be brought into mutual dependence by the supply of each other's wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism of language and race. It is God's own method of producing an entente cordiale, and no other plan is worth a farthing. ~ Richard Cobden, #NFDB
1290:The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God. ~ John Ortberg, #NFDB
1291:Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever. That is what the Christian faith promises. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1292:But of that day and hour no one knows neither the angels in heaven nor the Son but only the Father.’ We are not to think that the Son of God as he is God did not know the day or hour but only that his human nature did not know it because his divine nature had not chosen to reveal it to his human nature. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1293:See, when we say a "spiritual seeker," unfortunately most people assume that he is God-oriented. A spiritual seeker is not God-oriented; if Devil is the chief of existence, he wants to know that. We want to know what is true; we are not interested in proving our belief systems, because we don't have any. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
1294:This is why killing and stealing are wrong—not because a book tells us they are wrong, or a law tells us they are wrong, or a spiritual guide tells us they are wrong, but because if everyone did them we would not move toward the ultimate complexity that is God, with the rest of the universe. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
1295:Yet, we have sophisticated scientists today who make sober statements declaring that the whole universe was created by chance. This is to say that nothing caused something, and there is no statement more anti-scientific than that. Everything has a cause, and the ultimate cause, as we have seen, is God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1296:"I AM" itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither body nor mind, but the love of the self in you for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity, and that is love. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
1297:I am’ itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
1298:Ever-new Joy is God. He is inexhaustible; as you continue your meditations during the years, He will beguile you with an infinite ingenuity. Devotees like yourself who have found the way to God never dream of exchanging Him for any other happiness; He is seductive beyond thought of competition. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1299:Americans' deepest religion is often equality. The notion that Christ alone is God-superior, authoritative, supernatural-and that Christ's teaching and person is far greater than Buddha's, or Muhammad's, or Moses's, no matter how much great and good wisdom may be contained in those others, is scandalous. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
1300:Knowledge that is acquired
is not like this. Those who have it worry if
audiences like it or not.
It's a bait for popularity.
Disputational knowing wants customers.
It has no soul...
The only real customer is God.
Chew quietly
your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay
playfully childish. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1301:The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was waiting within the veil. Similarly the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1302:Great is God our Lord, great is His power and there is no end to His wisdom. Praise Him you heavens, glorify Him, sun and moon and you planets. For out of Him and through Him, and in Him are all things..... We know, oh, so little. To Him be the praise, the honor and the glory from eternity to eternity. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
1303:To me, creativity is God. But it will be better if you allow me to change the word god into godliness, because I don`t want to be misunderstood. There is no person like God, but there is tremendous energy - exploding, unending, expanding. This expanding, unending, exploding energy, this creativity, is divine. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1304:The Miracle Of Friendship
There is a Miracle called Friendship
that dwells within the heart
and you don't know how it happens
or when it even starts.
But the happiness it brings you
always gives a special lift
and you realize that
Friendship
is God's most precious gift.
~ Anonymous,#NFDB
1305:In Life of Christ, Archbishop Fulton Sheen puts it this way: “No man can love anything unless he can get his arms around it, and the cosmos is too big and too bulky. But once God became a Babe and was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, men could say, ‘This is Emmanuel, this is God with us. ~ David Limbaugh, #NFDB
1306:Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1307:So for the question I go to the mystery of it and say I don't know. I only know that I am alive and there is something that manifests in my life, that it is God and one day I am going to understand my life, probably in the day that I die, or afterwards. But I try to find good questions and not good answers. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1308:There are only two states of consciousness that exist - the state of the ego and the state of love. The ego is the narrow state, the seed-form, the atomic stage; love is all encompassing, love is God. The center of the ego is I; the ego exists for itself. The nectar of love is the universe. Love exists for all. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1309:Until Gettysburg," she continued, "I was working for the wrong reasons. At first it was to prove myself worthy in someone's eyes. Later it was out of guilt, trying to find atonement in God's eyes. But atonement is free, never earned. And I've learned that the only person I need to please with my life is God. ~ Lynn Austin, #NFDB
1310:Unity Consciousness is the experience of the 7 billion plus people on the planet being moved by the same force, which is God. It is the awareness to see what we really are: One Living Being. However, this is a truth that really can't be explained with words; the minute you say it, it is no longer truth. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz, #NFDB
1311:Millennials think Maxine Waters is God-sent. She's an oracle! She holds the magic truths. She's one of the few Democrats willing to say what she says, and these young Millennials are just glomming onto her like you can't believe. It's one of the most amazing social science experiments to look at this happen. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1312:So saving grace, converting grace, for Augustine, is God's giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys and therefore sways the will. The will is free to move toward whatever it delights in most fully, but it is not within the power of our will to determine what that sovereign joy will be. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1313:For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God [Gen. 3:1-7], while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man [2 Cor. 5:21]. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
1314:If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1315:On the contrary, therefore, Christ declares that the doctrine of the Gospel, though it is preached to all without exception, cannot be embraced by all, but that a new understanding and a new perception are requisite; and, therefore, that faith does not depend on the will of men, but that it is God who gives it. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1316:The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1317:a common burden so many Christians have unwittingly carried, namely, that watching over us is God, an unstable parent, who is right off the bat harsh, vindictive, at best begrudgingly merciful, and mainly interested in whether we’ve read and understood the fine print; if not, God has no recourse but to punish us. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1318:If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1319:Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody – if it is, God's days have got to be numbered. That God these people say they serve– and do serve, in ways that they don't know– has got a very nasty sense of humor. Like you'd beat the shit out of Him, if He was a man. Or: if you were. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1320:The “who” question does not seek answers from God as much as it seeks God himself. The one who asks who seeks to grow in deeper understanding of who God is and who we are, because when we’re suffering, what we need more than answers—even helpful, biblical ones—is God and an assurance of our identity in Christ. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
1321:Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace Bk XIII, Chapter 16, #NFDB
1322:For me at this time in my life I recognize that everything is about moving closer to that which is God. And without a full, spiritual center - and I am not talking about religion, I am talking about without understanding the fullness from which you've come you can't really fulfill your supreme moment of destiny. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1323:I think the Russian government is right to be concerned with propaganda on teenagers who are at the age of struggling through sexual identity issue and we should help to channel these urges in productive behavior. Heterosexuality is God’s design. Policies that encourage young people to think this are good ideas. ~ Bryan Fischer, #NFDB
1324:We must learn of Jesus, how He is meek and lowly of heart. He teaches us where true humility takes its rise and finds its strength—in the knowledge that it is God who worketh all in all, that our place is to yield to Him in perfect resignation and dependence, in full consent to be and to do nothing of ourselves. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1325:When we depend on anything smaller than God to provide us with the security, significance, meaning, and value that we long for, God will love us enough to take it away. Much of our anger and bitterness, therefore, is God prying open our hands and taking away something we've held onto more tightly than him. ~ Tullian Tchividjian, #NFDB
1326:The centre of the soul is God; and, when the soul has attained to Him according to the whole capacity of its being, which is the strength and virtue of the soul, it will have reached the last and the deep centre of the soul, which will be when with all its powers it loves and understands and enjoys God. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
1327:You do not need to go to any temple or church to worship God. The whole existence is God’s temple. Your own body is the temple of God. Your own heart is the shrine. You do not need to subscribe to any religion to experience God. The only religion you need to experience God is love, kindness and respect to all beings. ~ Banani Ray, #NFDB
1328:In Islam, we believe that it is God himself who is the ultimate guide - Al Hadi - one of the names of God is Al Hadi, the Guide. But at the same time, God has provided within the Islamic revelation the possibility of spiritual guidance through human beings, because then everyone can have direct access to God. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1329:I often must sacrifice my own needs and desires for the purpose of giving my children what they need and modeling for them the depths of Christ's love.
"...make myself available in the routine tasks and myriad interruptions of daily life b/c I believe it is God's will for me to serve my family through them. ~ Sally Clarkson,#NFDB
1330:Death is God’s way of taking people away from evil. From what kind of evil? An extended disease? An addiction? A dark season of rebellion? We don’t know. But we know that no person lives one day more or less than God intends. “All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old” (Ps. 139:16). ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1331:He was a priest. Never try to fuck a priest. Even if they're talking about leaving the priesthood. That should be a rule somewhere. A former priest, maybe. And even then I don't know. The thing is, your big competition is God. And if God wants your boyfriend he's going to take him. Best to avoid the whole thing. ~ Marshall Thornton, #NFDB
1332:My Virgen de Guadalupe is not the mother of God. She is God. She is a face for a god without a face, an indigena for a god without ethnicity, a female deity for a god who is genderless, but I also understand that for her to approach me, for me to finally open the door and accept her, she had to be a woman like me. ~ Sandra Cisneros, #NFDB
1333:To terrorize a man into believing in God is never the work of God, but the work of human expediency. If we want to convince a congregation of a certain thing, we may use terror to frighten them into it; but never say that is God's way, it is our way. To call that God's method is a travesty to the character of God. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1334:Maybe you’ve heard someone say, “Sure, God is loving, but his love is balanced with his justice” or “Without justice, love is not possible.” These statements speak of God’s love as an attribute of God. But, for the Divinity model, God’s very nature is love. Love is not an aspect of God’s being; love is God’s very being. ~ Tony Jones, #NFDB
1335:And in the end, it is not our love that overcomes hate at all. It is God’s. And preemptive love is not just something God does as a one-off transaction. Preemptive love is who God is, constantly overcoming our hateful rebellion and our lesser passions that belie the self-interest we suppose ourselves to be pursuing. ~ Jeremy Courtney, #NFDB
1336:God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that He act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice. It is the same spirit that taunted, "If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the Cross." There is unbelief, there is even rebellion, in the attitude that says, "God has no right to do this to five men unless... ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
1337:The idea of a judgment of history is secularism's vain, meaningless, hopeless, pathetic attempt to devise a substitute for what the great Abrahamic traditions of faith know is the final judgment of almighty God, who is not an impersonal force. History is not God. God is God. History is not our judge. God is our Judge. ~ Robert P George, #NFDB
1338:When you know that the kingdom is God’s alone (though he gives it to us), that is the only thing that can lead to peace and rest. Owners are the ones who do all the worrying; stewards simply listen to the owner’s desires and work to implement them. Owners are responsible for the outcome; stewards strive to be faithful. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1339:Geometry, which before the origin of things was coeternal with the divine mind and is God himself (for what could there be in God which would not be God himself?), supplied God with patterns for the creation of the world, and passed over to Man along with the image of God; and was not in fact taken in through the eyes. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
1340:My identity does not begin when I begin to understand myself. There is something previous to what I think about myself, and it is what God thinks of me. That means that everything I think and feel is by nature a response, and the one to whom I respond is God. I never speak the first word. I never make the first move. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1341:Our merits create fortune. Our demerits create misfortune. Merits bring us joy. Demerits bring us sorrow. We are thus fettered by karma. Karma binds us to the material world, compels us to be born and compels us to die. No one can change this, except one. That one is God. Pray to God to cope with the fetter of karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1342:If what I think is God should come down today and says "I'm God, or the thing you call God, and you're never going to do any more movies. You're never going to do television. You're never going to do theater again in your life," I would just say "What are we doing? What is the next step?" That's how I try to approach it. ~ Peter Stormare, #NFDB
1343:The future life is where we will go on helping to bring the universe to perfection, which is God's grand ultimate aim. [The purpose of life] is to help God run the universe. Everyone in that better land will be busy all the time, and the environment will be perfect all the time for doing the work which God assigns to all. ~ Edwin Markham, #NFDB
1344:The nations are not gathered in automatically. If God has promised to bless "all the families of the earth," he has promised to do so "through Abraham's seed" (Genesis 12:3, 22:18). Now we are Abraham's seed by faith, and the earth's families will be blessed only if we go to them with the gospel. That is God's plain purpose. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
1345:Why waste words? Geometry existed before the Creation, is co-eternal with the mind of God, is God himself (what exists in God that is not God himself?): geometry provided God with a model for the Creation and was implanted into man, together with God's own likeness - and not merely conveyed to his mind through the eyes. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
1346:God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual authority and temporal authority, have been a prevailing dualism in Western culture. Only in Hindu civilization were religion and politics also so distinctly separated. In Islam, God is Caesar; in China and Japan, Caesar is God; in Orthodoxy, God is Caesar’s junior partner. ~ Samuel P Huntington, #NFDB
1347:Our attempts at charity without God, our attempts at charity before faith and hope, all fail because they are based on ourselves and our own false sufficiency and our own righteousness as their foundation and cause. But the charity that comes after faith is God’s own work in and through us, and is part of our own salvation. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
1348:The greatest encouragement throughout the Bible is God's love for His lost race and the willingness of Christ, the eternal Son, to show forth that love in God's plan of redemption. The love of Jesus is so inclusive that it knows no boundaries. At the point where we stop caring and loving, Jesus is still there loving and caring ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1349:What appears to be separate, becomes One. We are but a breath in this vast story, unnoticed, but necessary, invisible, but beautiful. We are the secret the Divine keeps from Itself. Never doubt that you are needed. Each of us is God, telling Himself a story, huddling by a campfire built of stars, preserving wonder. * ~ Robert Chazz Chute, #NFDB
1350:When you see your body wasted away through sickness, do not murmur against God, but say: 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord' (Job 1:21). You are accustomed to look upon your body as upon your own inalienable property, but that is quite wrong, because your body is God's edifice. ~ John of Kronstadt, #NFDB
1351:It is fashionable in some academic circles to exercise scholarly criticism of the Bible. In so doing, scholars place themselves above the Bible and seek to correct it. If indeed the Bible is the Word of God, nothing could be more arrogant. It is God who corrects us; we don’t correct Him. We do not stand over God but under Him. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1352:contemplative prayer is simply a wordless, trusting opening of self to the divine presence. Far from being advanced, it is about the simplest form of prayer there is. Children recognize it instantly—as I did—perhaps because, as the sixteenth-century mystic John of the Cross intimates, “Silence is God’s first language.”1 ~ Cynthia Bourgeault, #NFDB
1353:2. After God notices the truth about us (voiced by the poet), God responds to that truth. The poem of Jeremiah 5 continues with a presentation of God's response. The taxonomy of guilt and healing includes two dimensions of God's response to the reality of sin and guilt. First there is God's wrath, indignation, and anger. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
1354:It's because you weren't in love," Mary said. "When you're in love it's beautiful. When you're not it's just dirty filthy sex. Loveless sex has no true spiritual meaning deep inside your soul. But love makes everything totally cool. Love is God's special gift to horny teenage girls and boys. It makes them feel less guilty. ~ Christopher Pike, #NFDB
1355:Am I prepared to let God grip me by His power and do a work in me that is worthy of Himself? Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me; sanctification is God's idea of what He wants to do for me, and He has to get me into the attitude of mind and spirit where at any cost I will let Him sanctify me wholly. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1356:Love is God’s first word, the first thought that sailed through his mind. When he said: Let there by light! there was love. And he was well-pleased with what he had made, nor did he wish any of it unmade. And love was the world’s origin and the world’s ruler; but all its ways are filled with flowers and blood, flowers and blood. ~ Knut Hamsun, #NFDB
1357:The Weather In Space
Is God being pure force? The wind
Or what commands it? When our lives slow
And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls
In our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm
Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing
After all we're certain to lose, so alive ---
Faces radiant with panic. ~ Tracy K Smith,#NFDB
1358:God is Infinite and His Shadow is also infinite. The Shadow of God is the Infinite Space that accommodates the infinite Gross Sphere which, with its occurrences of millions of universes, within and without the ranges of men's knowledge, is the Creation that issued from the Point of Finiteness in the infinite Existence that is God. ~ Meher Baba, #NFDB
1359:I reassured my mother that it didn’t matter to me if my face was not symmetrical. Me, who had always cared about my appearance, how my hair looked! But when you see death, things change. “It doesn’t matter if I can’t smile or blink properly,” I told her. “I’m still me, Malala. The important thing is God has given me my life. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
1360:Love? What is love?” he thought. “Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1361:Loving God means rejoicing in God, being eager to think of and pray to God. It means being glad to be in God's presence and to be with God alone. It means not grieving God, but rejoicing in God simply because it is God who is involved, and because we are permitted to know and have God, and to speak with and live with God. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1362:The Course teaches that the Holy Spirit was created in the moment when the first fearful thought was thought. As perfect love, God corrects all mistakes the moment they occur. He couldn’t force us back to love, because love doesn’t force. It does, however, create alternatives. The Holy Spirit is God’s alternative to fear. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1363:Your business, son.” “Yes. Self. I must grok each cusp myself alone. And so must you . . . and so must each self. Thou art God.” “I don’t accept the nomination.” “You can’t refuse it. Thou art God and I am God and all that groks is God, and I am all that I have ever been or seen or felt or experienced. I am all that I grok. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1364:He likes to think well of himself,” I explained, watching the turn of Anne’s head and hearing her ripple of low laughter. “He could not bring himself to turn off a woman just because she’s become old. He has to find a way to see that it is God’s will that he leaves her. He has to find a greater authority than his own desires. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
1365:The clearest window that ever was fashioned if it is barred by spiders' webs, and hung over with carcasses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, the Church is God's window; and if it is so obscured by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that darkness! ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
1366:Did you ever talk to Dr. Hoenikker?” I asked Miss Faust.
“Oh, certainly. I talked to him a lot.”
“Do any conversations stick in your mind?”
“There was one where he bet I couldn’t tell him anything that was absolutely true. So I said to him, ‘God is love.’”
“And what did he say?”
“He said, ‘What is God? What is love? ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
1367:If I were asked to define the Hindu creed, I should simply say: Search after truth through non-violent means. A man may not believe in God and still call himself a Hindu. Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth... Hinduism is the religion of truth. Truth is God. Denial of God we have known. Denial of truth we have not known. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1368:I used to feel so far from God, like I had to work my way back to Him after periods of inconsistency...it's not about trying harder. it's about turning sooner. It's about confessing sin and turning back to God's gift of grace. Grace is God's "undeserved favor." We don't have to earn it, and we cannot lose it when we act undeserving. ~ Renee Swope, #NFDB
1369:Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait. ~ Octavia E Butler, #NFDB
1370:I get so ticked off at you intellectually lazy people who think that the government is God, that every dollar they get or spend is somehow sacred. There is more fraud and waste and misuse. If the federal government were held accountable to the law as corporations are held accountable, half the federal government would be in prison. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1371:Only if our highest love is God himself can we love and serve all people, families, classes, races; and only God’s saving grace can bring us to the place where we are loving and serving God for himself alone and not for what he can give us. Unless we understand the gospel, we are always obeying God for our sake and not for his.6 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1372:I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always...whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
1373:The point is one that speaks to us all: The moment we human beings grasp God with jealousy and possessiveness, we lose hold of God. One might add that the religious point here is quite the opposite of God’s jealousy, of which we hear so much in the Old Testament; it is God’s infinite capacity to love and the problem of human jealousy. ~ Diana L Eck, #NFDB
1374:But let us keep in mind Philippians 2:13: “It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” When your will is combined with God’s will, He gives you the power to do what your will is telling you you ought to do. You are not fighting this battle alone. You have tremendous power available to you in Christ. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
1375:That your enemies have been created is God's doing; that they hate you and wish to ruin you is their own doing. What should you say about them in your mind? "Lord be merciful to them, forgive them their sins, put the fear of God in them, change them!" You are loving in them not what they are, but what you would have them to become. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
1376:If all things in this universe exist, it is because they participate in the Being of God, if there are some things with life, it is because they are reflections of the life of God; if there are beings endowed with intellect and will - like men and angels - it's because they are a participation of the Sovereign Intellect which is God. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1377:Someone at work said to me this morning, ”Where is God in all this?” I didn’t rise to the bait. I can never understand why people ask that question. The real question for the bystanders of tragedy is “Where are WE in all this?” I’ve always tried to come up with answers to that challenge. I don’t know if I can at the moment. Pray for me. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
1378:I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his feet with my tears. But I shall not know any better than I know now that he is God’s Almighty Son, that he is our Savior and Redeemer, and that salvation comes in and through his atoning blood and in no other way. ~ Bruce R McConkie, #NFDB
1379:If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. ~ Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), #NFDB
1380:Shakespeare is God, of course. I have studied his plays for the vast majority of my sentient life. When I was a kid, my parents found an old copy of the LP recording of Richard Burton in John Gielgud's Broadway production of Hamlet and they gave it to me for my birthday. I listened to it till the grooves wore thin and I was off and running. ~ Ken Ludwig, #NFDB
1381:THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: A SIMPLE FORMATION Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. The universe exists. Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God. ~ William Lane Craig, #NFDB
1382:I think people just feel me. Whenever they listen to the music, it's just coming out. I think you can hear what I put into it. A lot of it is God. You can use stuff to where you want it. Like I pray to God, and I asked for direction early on, and he gave me so much. It's like rappers and soul singers is taking to me. That's both sides of me. ~ Trey Songz, #NFDB
1383:Our model is God. He does not really “set limits” on people to “make them” behave. God sets standards, but he lets people be who they are and then separates himself from them when they misbehave, saying in effect, “You can be that way if you choose, but you cannot come into my house.” Heaven is a place for the repentant, and all are welcome. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1384:THE more I become identified with God, the more will I be identified with all the others who are identified with Him. His Love will live in all of us. His Spirit will be our One Life, the Life of all of us and Life of God. And we shall love one another and God with the same Love with which He loves us and Himself. This love is God Himself. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1385:When I was your age, I lived in bed, racked with polio. I asked myself every day, ‘Where is God? Where is God? Where is God?’ God never came. It wasn’t God who saved me—it was medicine. Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die. It’s the end. If the watch doesn’t work properly, it must be fixed here and now by us. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
1386:24Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault. + 25All glory to him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen. + ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1387:So who is God? No one can finally say. That is not within human competence. All we can ever say is how we believe we have experienced God, doing our best to dispel our human delusions. Let me try to do just that. I experience God as the source of life calling me to live fully and thus to respect life in every form as embodying the holy. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
1388:This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If we were to eliminate all colors in his garden,then what would be a rainbow with only one color? Or a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1389:You were born with the right to be happy. You were born with the right to love, to enjoy and to share your love. You are alive, so take your life and enjoy it. Don’t resist life passing through you, because that is God passing through you. Just your existence proves the existence of God. Your existence proves the existence of life and energy. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
1390:I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: What is God? If you think that the Truth can be known From words, If you think that the Sun and the Ocean Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth, O someone should start laughing! Someone should start wildly Laughing Now!
~ Hafiz,#NFDB
1391:Often you can see power lines running alongside the street. Unless current is flowing through them, there is no light. The power line is you and I! The current is God! We have the power to allow the current to flow through us and thus to generate the light of the world: JESUS - or to refuse to be used and, thus, allow the darkness to spread. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
1392:This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If we were to eliminate all colors in his garden, then what would be a rainbow with only one color? Or a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1393:Woman is God’s supreme creation. Only after the earth had been formed, after the day had been separated from the night, after the waters had been divided from the land, after vegetation and animal life had been created, and after man had been placed on the earth, was woman created; and only then was the work pronounced complete and good. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
1394:The first angle is, love questions not. It is not a beggar. ... When love asks nothing, [when it] gives everything. This is the real spiritual worship, the worship through love. Whether God is merciful is no longer questioned. He is God; He is my love. Whether God is omnipotent and almighty, limited or unlimited , is no longer questioned. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1395:The Truth in Christianity is not described but experienced. This is not then the affirmation of some objective description concerning Truth but rather describes a relation with the Truth. In other words, Truth is God and having knowledge of the Truth is evidenced, not in a doctrinal system, but in allowing that Truth to be incarnated in one’s ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
1396:If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain; I don't want to have to deal with a God like that...My sense is God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he's gotten used to the things that I'm not capable of and I've come to terms with things he's not capable of...and we care very much about each other. ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
1397:Parents are in a position to forgive when they remember two things. One, the child that I am rearing is God’s child. God loved the child before I did; He will continue this love long after I am gone. Two, God’s method of dealing with sin, even the most destructive kind, is forgiveness. I am not going to be able to improve on God’s methods. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1398:The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blinded note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to "World." Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
1399:Tozer’s sermons often confront us with these questions: Is God real to you? Is your Christian experience a set of definitions, a list of orthodox doctrines, or a living relationship with God? Do you have a firsthand experience with him, or a secondhand experience through others? Is your heart hungering and thirsting after personal holiness? ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1400:I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. I am God by divine nature and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. Thus this precious beloved of mine is taught and guided by me, without herself, for she is transformed into me, and such a perfect one, says Love, takes my nourishment. ~ Marguerite Porete, #NFDB
1401:Let us not be afraid to be humble, small, helpless to prove our love for God. The cup of water you give the sick, the way you lift a dying man, the way you feed a baby, the way you teach a dull child, the way you give medicine to a sufferer of leprosy, the joy with which you smile at your own at home - all this is God's love in the world today. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
1402:The divine life is the spirit in everything that exists, from the atom to the archangel; the grain of dust could not be were God absent from it; the loftiest seraph is but a spark from the eternal fire, which is God. Sharers in one life all form one brotherhood. The immanence of God, the solidarity of man, such are the basic truths of theosophy. ~ Annie Besant, #NFDB
1403:The root of my understanding of the attributes of God is simply that when I come to God, my need will determine which of God’s attributes, at that moment, I need to celebrate. Just as the judgment of God is God’s justice confronting moral iniquity, and then judgment falls, so the mercy of God is God’s goodness confronting human guilt and suffering. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1404:Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything, or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into the infinite further responsibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise. Beyond all and in all is God. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1405:6 And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus.* 7 By God’s grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1406:[T]he main problem in life is sin, and the only solution is God and his grace. The alternative to this view is to identify something besides sin as the main problem with the world and something besides God as the main remedy. That demonizes something that is not completely bad, and makes an idol out of something that cannot be the ultimate good. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
1407:If you can allow love to happen, there is no need for prayer, there is no need for meditation, there is no need for any church, any temple. You can completely forget God if you can love—because through love, everything will have happened to you: meditation, prayer, God, everything will have happened to you. That’s what Jesus means when he says love is God. ~ Osho, #NFDB
1408:You can worship God by cleaning up baby puke with a thankful heart just as much as if you were to be writing a Bible study for thousands of people. This is because the way you train that child, the way you teach him the ways of Jesus, and the way you display grace and truth firsthand is God displaying his ministry of reconciliation through you. ~ Jefferson Bethke, #NFDB
1409:God wants each and every one of us to succeed, provided that our definition of success is right. God wants us to reach our potential and contribute to the world in tremendous ways. Success in the general sense is God’s way of sharing abundance. He uses your success to bless others while you benefit yourself. Success is a multiplier, not a divider, ~ Tommy Newberry, #NFDB
1410:This is the story of the Bible, not you or me. It is God and God alone, God’s name and namesake alone. The point of everything is God’s glory alone so that to God alone will be the glory. It is God who is deep in riches, God who is deep in wisdom, God who is deep in lovingkindness, and God who is deep in glory. Not us. This is the message of the Bible. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1411:Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1412:This little separate self must die. Then we shall find that we are in the Real, and that Real is God, and He is our own true nature, and He is always in us and with us. Let us live in Him and stand in Him. It is the only joyful state of existence. Life on the plane of the Spirit is the only life, and let us all try to attain to this realization. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1413:In the midst of this great chill there are some, I rejoice to acknowledge, who will not be content with shallow logic. They will admit the force of the argument, and then turn away with tears to hunt some lonely place and pray, "O God, show me thy glory." They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1414:The story of the zealous Galilean peasant and Jewish nationalist who donned the mantle of messiah and launched a foolhardy rebellion against the corrupt Temple priesthood and the vicious Roman occupation comes to an abrupt end, not with his death on the cross, nor with the empty tomb, but at the first moment one of his followers dares suggest he is God. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1415:A fiery shield is God's Word; of more substance and purer than gold, which, tried in the fire, loses nought of its substance, but resists and overcomes all the fury of the fiery heat; even so, he that believes God's Word overcomes all, and remains secure everlastingly, against all misfortunes; for this shield fears nothing, neither hell nor the devil. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1416:Every one who wants the supreme freedom must dare to kill himself. He who dares to kill himself has found out the secret of the deception. There is no freedom beyond; that is all, and there is nothing beyond. He who dares kill himself is God. Now every one can do so that there shall be no God and shall be nothing. But no one has once done it yet. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1417:Every providence is God’s will; whatever happens, meet God in it in humble worship. Every precept is God’s will; meet God in it with loving obedience. Every promise is God’s will; meet God in it with full trust. A life in the will of God is rest and strength and blessing. [. . .]
The will of God must first live in us, if it is to be done by us. ~ Andrew Murray,#NFDB
1418:Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart—poisoned as it is with pride and pain—and replacing it with his own. Rather than tell you to change, he creates the change. Do you clean up so he can accept you? No, he accepts you and begins cleaning you up. His dream isn’t just to get you into heaven but to get heaven into you. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1419:If Jesus is not God, then there is no Christianity, and we who worship Him are nothing more than idolaters. Conversely, if He is God, those who say He was merely a good man, or even the best of men, are blasphemers. More serious still, if He is not God, then He is a blasphemer in the fullest sense of the word. If He is not God, He is not even good. ~ J Oswald Sanders, #NFDB
1420:I think of Jesus’s legs cracked and bleeding on the Easter-cross and I see in him the foolishness of a weak God, then, three days later, legs strong and whole, standing in the garden before Mary and Thomas and the disciples telling the world to touch and see, he is God. And he is power. And he is trustworthy. In spite of appearing foolish and weak. ~ Emily T Wierenga, #NFDB
1421:The brain, which operates on electromagnetic impulses, is as much an activity of the universe as are the electromagnetic storms in the atmosphere or on a distant star. Therefore science is one form of electromagnetism that spends it time studying another formscience is god explaining god through a human nervous systemisn't spirituality the same thing? ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1422:What if everything operates by love?' I said to her, 'I mean, what if this God presence . . . is God moving through us and through everything we do? If so, why do we resist it? What if everything horrible that happens, from drive-by shootings to illness, is because we have broken this chain of love, and we don't know how to put everything right again? ~ Carolyn Weber, #NFDB
1423:Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart—poisoned as it is with pride and pain—and replacing it with his own. Rather than tell you to change, he creates the change. Do you clean up so he can accept you? No, he accepts you and begins cleaning you up. His dream isn’t just to get you into heaven but to get heaven into you. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1424:Intercession is God’s brilliant strategy for including the saints in ruling with Him in power. Yet, it has such great impact on us as it draws us into intimacy with God, protects with humility, transforms with holiness, anoints with power, unifies in community, releases revelation, and increases our inheritance while it trains us to rule with His wisdom. ~ Mike Bickle, #NFDB
1425:The Bible is perfectly plain in the things that are necessary for your souls. God will make other things in it clearer to you as the years go by. Read it, my friends. It is God’s Book, not man’s book. It is a message from the King. Read it, study it, trust it, live by it. Other books will deceive you, but not this book. This book is the Word of God. ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
1426:The brain, which operates on electromagnetic impulses, is as much an activity of the universe as are the electromagnetic storms in the atmosphere or on a distant star. Therefore science is one form of electromagnetism that spends it time studying another form…science is god explaining god through a human nervous system…isn’t spirituality the same thing? ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1427:While Devas,Asuras, Nagas,Yaskhas and Devatas satisfied mundane, everyday needs, they did not answer more primal issues:Why does the world exist? Do we exist? Who are we? There was a need for God who was greater than the gods. There was need for Ishwara, the supreme lord, Mahadeva, the great god who is God, and Bhagavan, the container of all things. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1428:If we are in Christ the whole basis of our goings is God, not conceptions of God, not ideas of God, but God Himself. We do not need any more ideas about God, the world is full of ideas about God, they are all worthless, because the ideas of God in anyone’s head are of no more use than our own ideas. What we need is a real God, not more ideas about Him. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1429:I'm not just considered a former child star. I'm not considered a black actress. I'm not considered an actress. I've done roles that were written for men. First and foremost, is God, I definitely believe in Him, having kind of mapped out what my destiny was going to be. Therefore, I wasn't just going to be put in just that one box or kept in that one place. ~ Kim Fields, #NFDB
1430:Talking to a peasant one day, I suggested to him the hypothesis that there might indeed be a God who governs heaven and earth, a Consciousness or Conscience of the Universe, but that even so it would not be sufficient reason to assume that the soul of every man was immortal in the traditional and concrete sense. And he replied, "Then what good is God? ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
1431:Peace of mind just can't be bought. Trust me: Even if your conscience doesn't stop you from playing dirty to get what you want, once you get it, it will keep you from enjoying it. As my mother used to say, "A good conscience is God's eye." Which is why I always prefer a loss to an underhanded gain; the one brings pain at the moment, the other for all time. ~ Patti LaBelle, #NFDB
1432:You can refer to god and you are really just talking about nature. If you are going to say the universe is god, then everything is god, everything is religion. But when we explore traditional religion we are talking about humanistic gods people pray to, that they think can intervene in our lives, who run sort of a heaven-and-hell operation for the afterworld. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
1433:But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?-I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.-Where is God? What is God?-My maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him, reveal Him to me. ~ Charlotte Bronte, #NFDB
1434:It is God, Who is merciful and grants everyone what he needs, Who is building him up when He gives him more than he needs; in doing so He shows the abundance of His love for men and teaches him to give thanks. When He does not grant him what he needs, He makes him compensate for the thing he needs through the working of the mind and teaches him patience. ~ Dorotheus of Gaza, #NFDB
1435:Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety,--all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
1436:There is nothing more wonderful than arriving back home again at one’s Source. The illusion is that one struggles with spiritual growth by one’s own effort; in fact, we are pulled into greater awareness by the Will of God expressed as the Holy Spirit, and all that is necessary is to allow it to happen by surrendering completely. For truly, only God is God. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
1437:The snare in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you. . . . If you make usefulness the test, then Jesus Christ was the greatest failure that ever lived. The lodestar of the saint is God Himself, not estimated usefulness. It is the work that God does through us that counts, not what we do for Him.[27] ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1438:Health is God's great gift, and we must spend it entirely for Him. Our eyes should see only for God, our feet walk only for Him, our hands labor for Him alone; in short, our entire body should serve God while we still have the time. Then, when He shall take our health and we shall near our last day, our conscience will not reproach us for having misused it. ~ Saint John Bosco, #NFDB
1439:The reason some of us swing from elation to despair so easily is that we rejoice wrongly. Our worshipping is in the wrong place. We spend too much of our energy and vitality on the wrong thing. Yet God, because He created us for worship, pursues our worship. The first commandment listed in the Ten Commandments is God instructing His people to worship only Him. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
1440:Why is the universe? To shape God. Why is God? To shape the universe. I can’t get rid of it. I’ve tried to change it or dump it, but I can’t. I cannot. It feels like the truest thing I’ve ever written. It’s as mysterious and as obvious as any other explanation of God or the universe that I’ve ever read, except that to me the others feel inadequate, at best. ~ Octavia E Butler, #NFDB
1441:You must take care of the body. Body is like a boat. Life is like a river. On this side is the world; on the other side is God. And so, to reach the other side, that is to reach God, you must maintain this boat carefully. You can keep the boat for any length of time in the water; there is no danger. But if the water comes into the boat, then there is danger. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1442:Let’s not dwell on the charge that we are all members of a corrupt and “fallen” species by birth. Rather, we should ask why it is we need saving in the first place. What is it we need saving from? The answer is God. He and his rules are the threat that we imperfect humans are up against. Therefore, God, in the form of Jesus, has offered to save us from himself. ~ Guy P Harrison, #NFDB
1443:but in him it has always been “Yes.” 20For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. 21Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, 22set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1444:Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1445:Identify the source for all the opportunities, experiences, and relationships you appreciate. Your job, the life-changing trip you took last year, your home, your car—all of these came from a source who cares about you and is thoughtful toward you. The immediate source could be a person or a group of people, but ultimately the source of all these good things is God. ~ Tim Sanders, #NFDB
1446:When the vivid reality which is meant by these rather abstract words is truly possessed by us, when that which is unchanging in ourselves is given its chance, and emerges from the stream of succession to recognise its true home and goal, which is God—then, though much suffering may, indeed will, remain; apprehension, confusion, instability, despair, will cease. ~ Evelyn Underhill, #NFDB
1447:THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: A SIMPLE FORMATION Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. The universe exists. Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God. Logically speaking, this is ~ William Lane Craig, #NFDB
1448:Divinity is great enough to be divine; it is great enough to call itself divine. But as humanity grows greater, it grows less and less likely to do so. God is God, as the Moslems say; but a great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it. That is the paradox; everything that is merely approaching to that point is merely receding from it. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1449:God is always present, always available. At whatever moment in which one turns to him the prayer is received, is heard, is authenticated, for it is God who gives our prayer its value and its character, not our interior dispositions, not our fervor, not our lucidity. The prayer which is pronounced for God and accepted by him becomes, by that very fact, a true prayer. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
1450:It is simultaneously the blessing and the curse of the reflective Christian that believers are called to live out their faith in the church. No institution has accomplished so much for good in the world; none has fallen so short of its calling! The church is God-ordained, God-inspired, but accomplishes its work through human beings subject to every possible failing. ~ Daniel Taylor, #NFDB
1451:Image-bearers always go in or on a temple. And they can't move. They are metal, wood, stone, etc. But in Genesis the images are flesh. A divine mix of spirit, flesh, love, and humanness. And Adam and Eve are placed in the garden, which is God saying loud and clear that from the beginning he wants to flood the earth with his presence. The whole world is his temple. ~ Jefferson Bethke, #NFDB
1452:It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1453:J.P. Morgan, then past 70, was asked by the son of an eminent father why he [Morgan] didn't retire. When did your father retire? asked Mr. Morgan, without looking up from his desk. In 1902. When did he die? Oh, at the end of 1904. Huh! snapped Mr. Morgan, If he had kept on working he would have been alive still. Work is God's best medicine. It is God's medicine for man. ~ B C Forbes, #NFDB
1454:Patience! patience! ye whose hearts swell indignant at wrongs like these. Not one throb of anguish, not one tear of the oppressed, is forgotten by the Man of Sorrows, the Lord of Glory. In his patient, generous bosom he bears the anguish of a world. Bear thou, like him, in patience, and labor in love; for sure as he is God, "the year of his redeemed shall come. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
1455:The presence of anger does not mean the absence of love—particularly in God. Love is God’s character, not simply an emotion. What a small god we would have if divine character was dependent on our behavior. The Christian God is not like this. The Christian God is slow to anger and rich in mercy (see Exodus 34:6, echoed in Joel 2:13 and many other places in Scripture). ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
1456:-But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?
-I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.
-Where is God? What is God?
-My maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him, reveal Him to me. ~ Charlotte Bront,#NFDB
1457:You go to the hospital your wife's in labor and you're doing the thing, and then it's very disorienting and scary and you beat yourself up and you go through a whole period of 'woe is me' and then you realize that this a gift, this child is the light, and if you can nourish that light and just let it shine, you have an opportunity to get closer to what I think is God. ~ John C McGinley, #NFDB
1458:If it is God who has been withholding His presence, exposing the sin, calling for its destruction and a return to obedience, surely we can count upon His grace to strengthen us for the life He asks of us. It is not a question of what you can do. It is a question of whether you will with your whole heart give God what is due Him and allow His will to be done in your life. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1459:Jesus says God is love. I would like to change it. I would like to say love is God. When you say God is love, love is only one of the qualities of God; he may have other qualities: wisdom, justice, etcetera. To me, love is God; godliness is only one of the qualities of love. There is no other God than the fragrance of love. But the fragrance can arise only in deep meditation. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1460:There is no “universal moral urge” and not all ethical systems agree. Polygamy, human sacrifice, infanticide, cannibalism (Eucharist), wife beating, self-mutilation, foot binding, preemptive war, torture of prisoners, circumcision, female genital mutilation, racism, sexism, punitive amputation, castration and incest are perfectly “moral” in certain cultures. Is god confused? ~ Dan Barker, #NFDB
1461:Who has inflicted this upon us? Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly uptill now? It is God that has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example. ~ Anne Frank, #NFDB
1462:Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea. We are today overrun with orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where are they? The hard voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but the Church waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the Wonder that is God. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1463:Humanity is God’s culminating act of creativity, designed with the highest intention to reflect most personally the likeness of God. Ironically, we who were created with the highest intention were also created with the capacity to deny, betray, or demean that intention. Whereas a horse will always live as a horse is intended to live, humans may live inhumane lives. ~ Erwin Raphael McManus, #NFDB
1464:It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself... Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself... Life is God's gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God... for it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
1465:In truth, the Christian hope rests not ultimately upon our own diligence, but on God’s faithfulness.30 It is God, not us, who will ultimately persevere, and that is why he is able to promise us eternal life: “where the promise is, there is all this assistance. The faithfulness of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the power of the Spirit, all are engaged in our preservation. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1466:Plain living and high thinking should be your goal. Learn to carry all the conditions of happiness within yourself by meditating and attuning your consciousness to the ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Joy, which is God. Your happiness should never be subject to any outside influence. Whatever your environment is, don't allow your inner peace be touched by it. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1467:So, how to become friends with money? First, you have to forget everything you've ever been told about it. And then you have to put in its place a new message: There's nothing in the universe that isn't God. And God, and the energy which is God, is found in everything, including money. It isn't like God is everywhere except in your billfold. In fact, God is everywhere. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1468:The English language is mysterious. The secret of our dog is to be found in it. 'Dog' spelt backwards is 'God'. The dog, then, is the road which, if travelled backwards, from the deepest depths, from the roots of the tree of smell, touch and taste, will turn you into a God. Thus the dog is the guide of the Blind Traveller, of the Pilgrim of Immortality. It is God backwards. ~ Miguel Serrano, #NFDB
1469:when He tells Moses, “When you go to Pharaoh, I will be with you” (italics added). For me, that is God’s name, the essence of what He is about. God is the one who is with us when we have to do something hard. He is the one who is with us when we are tempted to feel that the world has abandoned us. He is the one who is with us when we feel alone in the valley of the shadow. ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
1470:Even with God’s help, however, it is crucial to understand that meeting our own needs is basically our job. We can’t wait passively for others to take care of us. Jesus told us to “Ask … seek … knock” (Matt. 7:7). We are to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). Even knowing that “it is God who works in [us]” (Phil. 2:13), we are our own responsibility. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1471:To be right we must think worthily of God. It is morally imperative that we purge from our minds all ignoble concepts of the Deity and let Him be the God in our minds that He is in His universe. The Christian religion has to do with God and man, but its focal point is God, not man. Man's only claim to importance is that he was created in the divine image; in himself he is nothing. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1472:Remember, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is certain, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is solid, fixed - its nature cannot be changed; everything alive is moving, changing - a flow, a liquid thing, flexible, able to move in any direction. The more you become certain, the more you will miss life. And those who know, know life is God. If you miss life, you miss God. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1473:Each of these individuals had at one time believed it was impossible for them to make a difference in a global problem. But they’ve discovered that together, with each of them carrying their own unique batons, they are unstoppable in carrying out God’s plan. That sounds far too complex to be real, doesn’t it? It sounds impossible. Fantastic! Impossible is God’s starting point. ~ Christine Caine, #NFDB
1474:God, for me, is more of a feeling, a feeling of peace. I think my god lives in a silence that exists inside me. It's such a delicious fucking silence, so profound. But this can also get tricky, because if I'm feeling crazy then I'm like, Where the hell is god? Has god abandoned me? Like, no peace, no god. But it's still better than some bro deity telling me I'm a piece of shit. ~ Melissa Broder, #NFDB
1475:In the valleys where I was born they say it is God’s sword, dropped from the heavens.’
‘Don’t you?’ asked Flood.
Whirrun rubbed some dirt from the crosspiece with his thumb. ‘I used too.’
‘Now?’
‘God makes things, no? God is a farmer. A craftsman. A midwife. God gives things life.’ He tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. ‘What would God want with a sword? ~ Joe Abercrombie,#NFDB
1476:Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
1477:Creativeness is not merely a matter of painting pictures or writing poems, which is good to do, but which is very little in itself. What is important is to be wholly discontented, for such total discontent is the beginning of the initiative which becomes creative as it matures; and that is the only way to find out what is truth, what is God, because the creative state is God. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1478:Do you think love is the way of God—love? Look here—” He stretched forth his bony, hairy hand and pointed to the Dead Sea, which stank like a rotting carcass. “Have you ever bent over to see the two whores, Sodom and Gomorrah, at her bottom? God became angry, hurled fire, stamped on the earth: dry land turned to sea and swallowed up Sodom and Gomorrah. That is God’s way—follow ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
1479:I don’t know what it is", answered the girl, "I only know that it is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God’s wrath for the wrong I have done, I do not know, but I am drawn back to him through every suffering and ill usage; and I should be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand at last. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1480:The great reality is God, who is the author of that lower and dependent reality which makes up the sum of created things, including ourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any notions which we may have concerning Him. The worshipping heart does not create its object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1481:This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god. ~ Cormac McCarthy, #NFDB
1482:All the universe is just a dream in God's mind, and as long as he's asleep, he believes in it, and things stay real. What you see is God waking up, gradually waking up, and his wakefulness sweeps through the dream, undoes the universe, until finally he sits up, rubs his eyes, and says, "My, what a dream, I wish I could remember what it was," and in that moment we'll all be gone. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1483:To truly try means to accept God's love, his healing, to accept the world can be ugly, but your heart doesn't have to be. It takes courage, Finley the warrior. You haven't held on to your anger and bitterness in search of healing, but as a banner of your hurt. Because it's real and visible and strong, " she said. "But so is God's love and so are those arms he's holding out for you. ~ Jenny B Jones, #NFDB
1484:It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls into despair at the first onslaught of affliction. He whose soul remains ever turned toward God though the nail pierces it finds himself nailed to the very center of the universe. It is the true center; it is not in the middle; it is beyond space and time; it is God. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
1485:Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is all the very nature of the soul. Love is life. All, all that I understand, I understand only because of love. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God and dying means for me a particle of love, to go back to the universal and eternal source of love. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1486:There's this morbid side to the way many represent Christianity today, where you don't smile, because it's too serious, and you can't expect to see God - that kind of stuff. If there is God, we must see Him, and I don't believe in the idea you find in most churches, where they say, "No, you're not going to see Him. He's way up above you. Just believe what we tell you and shut up." ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
1487:In other words, God’s love is not a characteristic of God. For example, maybe you’ve heard someone say, “Sure, God is loving, but his love is balanced with his justice.” Or, “Without justice, love is not possible.” These statements talk of God’s love as an attribute of God. But, for Eastern Christians, God’s very nature is love. It’s not an aspect of God’s being, it is God’s very being. ~ Tony Jones, #NFDB
1488:In the Quranic vision there is no dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the political, sexuality and worship. The whole of life was potentially holy and had to be brought into the ambit of the divine. The aim was tawhid (making one), the integration of the whole of life in a unified community, which would give Muslims intimations of the Unity which is God. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1489:Oh for grace to be quiet! Why run from house to house to repeat the weary story which makes us more and more heart-sick as we tell it? Why even stay at home to cry out in agony because of wretched forebodings which may never be fulfilled? It would be well to keep a quiet tongue, but it would be far better if we had a quiet heart. Oh to be still and know that Jehovah is God! ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1490:Regeneration is at the basis of all change in heart and life. It is a stupendous change because it is God’s recreative act. A cheap and tawdry evangelism has tended to rob the gospel which it proclaims of that invincible power which is the glory of the gospel of sovereign grace. May the church come to think and live again in terms of the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation. ~ John Murray, #NFDB
1491:But why should the soul take to itself a body? For the same reason that I take a looking-glass — to see myself. Thus, in the body, the soul is reflected. The soul is God, and every human being has a perfect divinity within himself, and each one must show his divinity sooner or later. If I am in a dark room, no amount of protestation will make it any brighter — I must light a match. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1492:Matthew Watkins At the first Thanksgiving, one of the bloodiest battles ensued when it was discovered that the deliveryman forgot to bring extra duck sauce. Finn Is God is, on this enchanted evening, in love with a wonderful guy. Julie Seagle Going to write a book called “Binge, Screw, Loathe.” It will be about a hateful woman who travels across the US visiting all-you-can-eat brothels. ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
1493:The Only News I Know
827
The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.
The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—
The Only One I meet
Is God—The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed
If Other News there be—
Or Admirable Show—
I'll tell it You—
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
1494:To promulgate a corrupted notion of the Holy Spirit and His work is nothing less than blasphemy, because the Holy Spirit is God. He is to be exalted, honored, and adored. Along with the Father and the Son, He is to be glorified at all times for all He is and all He does. He is to be loved and thanked by those whom He indwells. But for that to occur, He must be worshipped in truth. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1495:Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. ROMANS 3:27–30 ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1496:Consequently, adoption is not a word of relationship but of position. You as a Christian are a child of God by new birth. But adoption is God’s act in which you are placed in the position of an adult son (Gal. 4:1–5). Greek, Roman, and Jewish families adopted their own children. Birth made them children, but discipline and training brought them into adoption and the full stature of sonship. ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
1497:Art begs you to notice it. Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello. So pay attention to poetry. Pay attention to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays. Don't let all this go unnoticed. Your world is shouting out to you, revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself. Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves life. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1498:I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being. ~ Pope Francis, interviewed in "How the Church will change" by Eugenio Scalfari in La Repubblica (1 October 2013), as translated from Italian to English by Kathryn Wallace, #NFDB
1499:You think we started with a bunch of prehistoric ooze, and some of it just happened to turn into Bella Abzug?” They shook their heads. “There were some dead ends along the way, hence natural selectivity. But for my money, the rest is God in a Darwin costume. So if you can wrap your brain around self-organization, then evolution is intelligent design. The Lord is even greater!…But I’m not sure. ~ Tim Dorsey, #NFDB
1500:Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavours, even the best, will come to naught.
Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavour, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever. ~ Timothy J Keller,#NFDB
80 Integral Yoga
48 Yoga
36 Poetry
33 Islam
33 Christianity
15 Philosophy
14 Occultism
13 Psychology
5 Baha i Faith
4 Sufism
4 Mysticism
3 Fiction
2 Science
2 Philsophy
1 Thelema
1 Hinduism
58 Sri Aurobindo
41 Sri Ramakrishna
33 Muhammad
30 The Mother
28 Nolini Kanta Gupta
21 Saint Augustine of Hippo
14 Satprem
12 Carl Jung
9 Aldous Huxley
8 Anonymous
7 Aleister Crowley
6 Sri Ramana Maharshi
6 Baha u llah
5 Swami Vivekananda
4 Robert Browning
4 Jordan Peterson
3 Saint John of Climacus
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
3 Percy Bysshe Shelley
3 Jorge Luis Borges
3 George Van Vrekhem
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 William Wordsworth
2 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
2 Swami Krishnananda
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 Plato
2 Ken Wilber
2 Kabir
2 Hafiz
2 Al-Ghazali
40 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
33 Quran
18 City of God
12 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
9 The Perennial Philosophy
9 The Bible
9 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
8 The Synthesis Of Yoga
8 Talks
7 Essays On The Gita
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
6 Essays Divine And Human
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
5 Mysterium Coniunctionis
5 Collected Poems
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Liber ABA
4 Isha Upanishad
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
4 Browning - Poems
3 The Life Divine
3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Shelley - Poems
3 Savitri
3 Record of Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1955
3 Preparing for the Miraculous
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
3 Bhakti-Yoga
3 Aion
2 Wordsworth - Poems
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
2 The Red Book Liber Novus
2 The Practice of Psycho therapy
2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
2 The Alchemy of Happiness
2 Songs of Kabir
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
2 Magick Without Tears
2 Let Me Explain
2 Labyrinths
2 Hafiz - Poems
2 Emerson - Poems
2 Dark Night of the Soul
2 Anonymous - Poems
2 Agenda Vol 10
2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Master wanted to train Narendra in the teachings of the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy. But Narendra, because of his Brahmo upbringing, considered it wholly blasphemous to look on man as one with his Creator. One day at the temple garden he laughingly said to a friend: "How silly! This jug is God! This cup is God! Whatever we see is God! And we too are God! Nothing could be more absurd." Sri Ramakrishna came out of his room and gently touched him. Spellbound, he immediately perceived that everything in the world was indeed God. A new universe opened around him. Returning home in a dazed state, he found there too that the food, the plate, the eater himself, the people around him, were all God. When he walked in the street, he saw that the cabs, the horses, the streams of people, the buildings, were all Brahman. He could hardly go about his day's business. His parents became anxious about him and thought him ill. And when the intensity of the experience abated a little, he saw the world as a dream. Walking in the public square, he would strike his head against the iron railings to know whether they were real. It took him a number of days to recover his normal self. He had a foretaste of the great experiences yet to come and realized that the words of the Vedanta were true.
At the beginning of 1884 Narendra's father suddenly died of heart-failure, leaving the family in a state of utmost poverty. There were six or seven mouths to feed at home. Creditors were knocking at the door. Relatives who had accepted his father's unstinted kindness now became enemies, some even bringing suit to deprive Narendra of his ancestral home. Actually starving and barefoot, Narendra searched for a job, but without success. He began to doubt whether anywhere in the world there was such a thing as unselfish sympathy. Two rich women made evil proposals to him and promised to put an end to his distress; but he refused them with contempt.
--
Sri Ramakrishna was sinking day by day. His diet was reduced to a minimum and he found it almost impossible to swallow. He whispered to M.: "I am bearing all this cheerfully, for otherwise you would be weeping. If you all say that it is better that the body should go rather than suffer this torture, I am willing." The next morning he said to his depressed disciples seated near the bed: "Do you know what I see? I see that God alone has become everything. Men and animals are only frameworks covered with skin, and it is He who is moving through their heads and limbs. I see that it is God Himself who has become the block, the executioner, and the victim for the sacrifice.' He fainted with emotion. Regaining partial consciousness, he said: "Now I have no pain. I am very well." Looking at Latu he said: "There sits Latu resting his head on the palm of his hand. To me it is the Lord who is seated in that posture."
The words were tender and touching. Like a mother he caressed Narendra and Rakhal, gently stroking their faces. He said in a half whisper to M., "Had this body been allowed to last a little longer, many more souls would have been illumined." He paused a moment and then said: "But Mother has ordained otherwise. She will take me away lest, finding me guileless and foolish, people should take advantage of me and persuade me to bestow on them the rare gifts of spirituality." A few minutes later he touched his chest and said: "Here are two beings. One is She and the other is Her devotee. It is the latter who broke his arm, and it is he again who is now ill. Do you understand me?" After a pause he added: "Alas! To whom shall I tell all this? Who will understand me?" "Pain", he consoled them again, 'is unavoidable as long as there is a body. The Lord takes on the body for the sake of His devotees."
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The First Triad which is God
I AM.
--
The Second Triad which is God
GOD the Father and Mother is concealed in Genera-
--
A black two-headed Eagle is God; even a Black
Triangle is He. In His claws He beareth a sword;
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
The Passive Nights, in which it is God Who accomplishes the purgation, are
based upon this incapacity. Souls 'begin to enter' this dark night
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let each take cognisance of the godhead that is within him for self is Godand in the strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he- creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourselfma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad. The fountain-head of creative genius lies there, in the free choice and the particular delight the self-determination of the spirit within you and not in the desire for your neighbours riches. The world has become dull and uniform and mechanical, since everybody endeavours to become not himself, but always somebody else. Imitation is servitude and servitude brings in grief.
In one's own soul lies the very height and profundity of a god-head. Each soul by bringing out the note that is his, makes for the most wondrous symphony. Once a man knows what he is and holds fast to it, refusing to be drawn away by any necessity or temptation, he begins to uncover himself, to do what his inmost nature demands and takes joy in, that is to say, begins to create. Indeed there may be much difference in the forms that different souls take. But because each is itself, therefore each is grounded upon the fundamental equality of things. All our valuations are in reference to some standard or other set up with a particular end in view, but that is a question of the practical world which in no way takes away from the intrinsic value of the greatness of the soul. So long as the thing is there, the how of it does not matter. Infinite are the ways of manifestation and all of them the very highest and the most sublime, provided they are a manifestation of the soul itself, provided they rise and flow from the same level. Whether it is Agni or Indra, Varuna, Mitra or the Aswins, it is the same supreme and divine inflatus.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
My body is God's happy living tool,
My spirit a vast sun of deathless light.3
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So, in man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable element in human life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the human reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One view considers Evil as coeval with Good: the Prince of Evil is God's peer, equal to him in all ways, absolutely separate, independent and self-existent. Light and Darkness are eternal principles living side by side, possessing equal reality. For, although it is permissible to the individual to pass out of the Darkness and enter into Light, the Darkness itself does not disappear: it remains and maintains its domain, and even it is said that some human beings are meant eternally for this domain. That is the Manichean principle and that also is fundamentally the dualistic conception of chit-achit in some Indian systems (although the principle of chit or light is usually given a higher position and priority of excellence).
The Christian too accepts the dual principle, but does not give equal status to the two. Satan is there, an eternal reality: it is anti-God, it seeks to oppose God, frustrate his work. It is the great tempter whose task it is to persuade, to inspire man to remain always an earthly creature and never turn to know or live in God. Now the crucial question that arises is, what is the necessity of this Antagonist in God's scheme of creation? What is the meaning of this struggle and battle? God could have created, if he had chosen, a world without Evil. The orthodox Christi an answer is that in that case one could not have fully appreciated the true value and glory of God's presence. It is to manifest and proclaim the great victory that the strife and combat has been arranged in which Man triumphs in the end and God's work stands vindicated. The place of Satan is always Hell, but he cannot drag down a soul into his pit to hold it there eternally (although according to one doctrine there are or may be certain eternally damned souls).
--
Satan is jealous of man who is God's favourite. He tells God that his partiality to man is misplaced. God has put into man a little of his light (reason and intelligence and something more perhaps), but to what purpose? Man tries to soar, he thinks he flies high and wide, but in fact he is and will be an insect that "lies always in the grass and sings its old song in the grass." God answers that whatever the perplexity in which man now is, in the end he will come out and reach the Light with a greater and richer experience of it. Satan smiles in return and says he will prove otherwise. Given a free hand, he can do whatever he likes with man: "Dust shall he eat and with a relish." God willingly agrees to the challenge: there is no harm in Satan's trying his hand. Indeed, Satan will prove to be a good companion to man; for man is normally prone to inertia and sinks into repose and rest and stagnation. Satan will be the goad, the force that drives towards ceaseless activity. For activity is life, and without activity no progress.
Thus, as sanctioned by God, there is a competition, a wager between man and Satan. The pact between the parties is this that, on the one hand, Satan will serve man here in life upon earth, and on the other hand, in return, man will have to serve Satan there, on the other side of life. That is to say, Satan will give the whole world to man to enjoy, man will have to give Satan only his soul. Man in his ignorance says he does not care for his soul, does not know of a there or elsewhere: he will be satisfied if he gets what he wants upon earth. That, evidently, is the demand of what is familiarly known as life-force (lan vital): the utmost fulfilment of the life-force is what man stands for, although the full significance of the movement may not be clear to him or even to Satan at the moment. For life-force does not necessarily drag man down, as its grand finale as it were, into hellhowever much Satan might wish it to be so. In what way, we shall see presently. Now Satan promises man all that he would desire and even more: he would give him his fill so' that he will ask for no more. Man takes up the challenge and declares that his hunger is insatiable, whatever Satan can bring to it, it will take in and press on: satisfaction and satiety will never come in his way. Satan thinks he knows better, for he is armed with a master weapon to lay man low and make him cry halt!
--
Satan proposes to lead man down into hell through a sure means, nothing more sure, according to him, viz., love for a woman and a woman's love in return. Nothing like that to make man earth-bound or hell-bound and force out of him the nostalgic cry, "Time must have a stop." A most simple, primal and primeval lyric love will most suit Satan's purpose. Hence the Margaret episode. Love=Passion=Lust=Hell; that is the inevitable equation sequence, and through which runs the magic thread of infatuation. And that charm is invincible. Satan did succeed and was within an ace, as they say, of the final and definitive triumph: but that was not to be, for he left out of account an incalculable element. Love, even human love has, at least can have, a wonderful power, the potency of reversing the natural decree and bring about a supernatural intervention. Human love can at a crucial momentin extremiscall down the Divine Grace, which means God's love for man. And the soul meant for perdition and about to be seized and carried away by Satan finds itself suddenly free and lifted up and borne by Heaven's messengers. Human Jove is divine love itself in earthly form and figure and whatever its apparent aberrations it is in soul and substance that thing. Satan is hoisted with his own petard. That is God's irony.
But Goethe's Satan seems to know or feel something of his fate. He knows his function and the limit too of his function. He speaks of the doomsday for people, but it is his doomsday also, he says in mystic terms. Yes, it is his doomsday, for it is the day of man's liberation. Satan has to release man from the pact that stands cancelled. The soul of man cannot be sold, even if he wanted it.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In any case, there it isasking that kind of question is still taking the attitude of those who make a distinction between what is Divine and what is not Divine, or rather what is God and what is not God. How can He be weak? Its a question I could never ask.
I quite understand. But when one speaks of the Lila, the divine play, it implies that He in some way remains in the background and doesnt really get into the act, as they say that Hes no really part of the game, but simply watches.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now let me discuss some particular points of your letter. I do not want to say much in this letter about what you have written as regards your yoga. We shall have better occasion when we meet. To look upon the body as a corpse is a sign of Sannyasa, of the path of Nirvana. You cannot be of the world with this idea. You must have delight in all thingsin the Spirit as well as in the body. The body has consciousness, it is Gods form. When you see God in everything that is in the world, when you have this vision that all this is Brahman, Sarvamidam Brahma, that Vasudeva is all thisVasudevah sarvamiti then you have the universal delight. The flow of that delight precipitates and courses even through the body. When you are in such a state, full of the spiritual consciousness, you can lead a married life, a life in the world. In all your works you find the expression of Gods delight. So far I have been transforming all the objects and perceptions of the mind and the senses into delight on the mental level. Now they are taking the form of the supramental delight. In this condition is the perfect vision and perception of Sachchidananda.
You write about the Deva Samgha and say, I am not a god, I am only a piece of much hammered and tempered iron. No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognize that there are great and small adharas [vessels]. I do not accept, however, your description of yourself as accurate. Still whatever the nature of the vessel, once the touch of God is upon it, once the spirit is awake, great and small and all that does not make much difference. There may be more difficulties, more time may be taken, there may be a difference in the manifestation, but even about that there is no certainty. The God within takes no account of these hindrances and deficiencies. He breaks his way out. Was the amount of my failings a small one? Were there less obstacles in my mind and heart and vital being and body? Did it not take time? Has God hammered me less? Day after day, minute after minute, I have been fashioned into I know not whether a god or what. But I have become or am becoming something. That is sufficient, since God wanted to build it. It is the same as regards everyone. Not our strength but the Shakti of God is the sadhaka [worker] of this yoga.
0 1965-12-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
113Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is Gods play in His creature.
It corresponds to a sort of vibration the vibration received from people who hate. Its a vibration which is, so to say, fundamentally the same as the vibration of love. At its very bottom, there is the same sensation. Although on the surface its the opposite, it is supported by the same vibration. And we could say that we are just as much the slaves of what we hate as of what we lovemaybe even more. Its something that keeps hold of you, that obsesses you and which you cherish; a sensation you cherish, because beneath its violence there is a warmth of attraction as great as that which you feel for what you love. And it seems its only in the activity of the manifestation, that is to say, quite on the surface, that there is this distorted appearance.
0 1967-06-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have something to add to what we said the other day about the Divine.1 Someone asks me, And whatever is God?
Its about a text from Sri Aurobindo. Here it is:
--
Its about the last sentence; someone has asked me, What is God? So Ive replied (taking the word God):
It is the name man has given to all that exceeds and dominates him, all that he cannot know but is subject to.
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you understand, when Y. supposedly had typhoid (which she never hadit was part of the high drama, it was the illness of transformation), she wanted to go to the Vellore hospital with M. So she wrote me a letter asking for everything to be arranged and for them to be in the same room. And in her letter she literally wrote, For me M. is God. So the poor chap, he finds it somewhat a heavy load! (Mother laughs) And he fell ill! Oh, its better to laugh. Ultimately, these things sink into ridicule. As for me, I simply do this (gesture of bringing the Light). Well see. I tell you, the first result is that this poor M. is ill: he had a pain in his back; his fever is over but hes left without a spine! And the funniest part is that when things go wrong, its to me that they write (laughing), me who belong to an outdated past! So he asked for my advice: should he do this, should he do that? I must confess I treated myself to the satisfaction of answering him (through Y.) that his illness was mostly psychological and I didnt see how the doctor could help him! Since then, silence.
But still, its sad for the kid.
0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah! (Laughing) And which one is God?
I dont know!
0 1969-08-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden."
Thoughts and Glimpses, 16.381
0 1970-03-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
135All disease is a means towards some new joy of health, all evil and pain a tuning of Nature for some more intense bliss and good, all death an opening on widest immortality. Why and how this should be so, is Gods secret which only the soul purified of egoism can penetrate.
Yes, yes (Mother nods approvingly), thats what I am doing right now. And one has be really persevering.
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In your reply to the Swedish magazine, you emphasize, The major obstacle to tolerance is not agnosticism but Manichaeism. That is also why religions will never be able to unite humanity, because they have remained Manichaean in their principle, because they are founded on morality, on a sense of good and evil, necessarily varying from one country to the next. Religions will not reconcile men with one another any more than they have reconciled men with themselves, or reconciled their aspiration to be with their need for action and for the same reasons, for in both cases they have dug an abyss between an ideal good, a being they have relegated to heaven, and an evil, a becoming, which reigns supreme in a world where all is vanity. I would like to quote here a passage from Sri Aurobindos Essays on the Gita which throws a clear light on the problem: To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are Gods discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony.2 I believe that the characters of your books would not be seeking sacrifice and death so intensely if they did not feel the side of light and joy behind the mask of darkness in which they so passionately lose themselves.
Sri Aurobindo has constantly stressed that, through progressive evolutionary cycles, humanity must go beyond the purely ethical and religious stage, just as it must go beyond the infrarational and rational stage, in order to reach a new spiritual and suprarational ageotherwise we will simply remain doomed to the upheavals, conflicts and bloody sacrifices that shake our times, for living according to a code of morality is always a tragedy, as one of the characters in Hope notes.
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is a war to which even spiritual seekers can hardly remain indifferent with impunity. There are spiritual paths, however, that ask to render unto God what is God's and unto Satan what belongs to Satan; in other words, spirituality is kept apart from what is called worldliness, clean and untouched by the dust and murk of IgnoranceMaya. The injunction accordingly is that they who are worldly must remain worldly, they have no business, no right to meddle with spirituality, and they who are spiritual should, on the other hand, remain strictly spiritual, should have nothing to do with worldliness. Because of this complete divorce between the spiritual and the worldly, the world remains worldly even today, continues to be the empire of unspirituality and obscurity, of suffering and grief, it is unable to become a dynamic and living expression and embodiment of the Spirit.
Not that spiritual men have not served and worked for the welfare of the world; but their work could not be wholly effective, it was mixed, maimed, temporary in effect. This could not be otherwise, for their activity proceeded from inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for them than to exercise an indirect influence; their spiritual realisation could bring into the life of the world only a reminiscence, an echo, just a touch and a ray from another world. Or, secondly, when they did take part in worldly affairs, their activity could not rise much beyond the worldly standard; it remained enclosed within the sphere of the moral and the conventional, took such forms as, for example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical lifeeven the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding our worldly preoccupations according to a truly spiritual or a supramental or transcendental consciousness was a rare phenomenon and even where the ideal was found, it is doubtful whether the right means and methods were discovered. Yet the sole secret of changing man's destiny and transmuting the world lies in the discovery and application of a supreme spiritual Conscious-Power.
02.06 - Boris Pasternak, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But a miracle is a miracle, a miracle is God.
When we are all confusion,
02.07 - George Seftris, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is God? What is not god? What is in-between?9
Or this truly pitiful invocation:
--
What is God? What is not god? What is in-between?
Seferis is a being of this in-between world, his consciousness a golden seam joining two hemispheres.
03.17 - The Souls Odyssey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The deep spiritual truth we are referring to is the Odyssey of the human soul. And it is also an occult phenomenon happening in the world of the inner reality. The Soul's own home is in God, is God; for it is part and parcel of the divine consciousness, it is essentially one in being and nature with the supreme Reality. It is a nucleus, a centre of individuation, a projection in a particular name and form of the infinite and eternal Being and Consciousness and Bliss on this side of manifestation or evolutionary Nature. Being in and with the Divine, merged within it, the Soul has, at the same time, its own proper domain, exclusively its own, and its own inalienable identity. It is the domain where the Soul enjoys its swarjya, its absolute freedom, dwelling in its native light and happiness and glory. But the story changes, the curve of its destiny takes a sudden new direction when it comes down upon earth, when it inhabits a mortal body. Within the body, it no longer occupies its patent frontal position, but withdraws behind a veil, as it were: it takes its stand behind or within the depth of the heart, as spiritual practice experiences it. It hides there, as in a cavern, closed in now by the shades of the prison-house which its own body and life and mind build round it. Yet it is not wholly shut out or completely cut off; for from its secret home it exerts its influence which gradually, slowly, very slowly indeed, filters throughba thes, clarifies, illumines the encasement, makes it transparent and docile in the end. For that is the Soul's ultimate function and fulfilment.
In the meanwhile, however, our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. A physical incarnation clouds the soul-consciousness and involves loss of memory, amnesia. The soul's travail therefore in a physical body is precisely to regain the memory of what has been forgotten. Spiritual discipline means at bottom this remembering, and all culture too means nothing more than that that is also what Plato thought when he said that all knowledge, all true knowledge consists in reminiscence.
04.01 - The Divine Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The world is not doomed nor man past cure; for it is not that the world has been merely created by God but that God has become and is the world at the same time: man is not merely God's creature but that he is made of God's substance and is God himself. The Spirit has shed its supreme consciousness, that is to say, overtly has become dead matter; God has veiled his effulgent infinity and has taken up a human figure. The Divine has clothed his inviolable felicity in pain and suffering, has become an earthly creature, you and me, a mortal of mortals. And thus, viewed in another perspective because Matter is essentially Spirit, because man is essentially God, therefore Matter can be resolved and transformed into Spirit and man too can become utterly divine. The urge of the spiritual consciousness that is the essence of matter even, the massed energy imbedded or lying frozen in it, manifests itself in the forward drive of evolution that brings out gradually, step by step, the various modes of the consciousness in different degrees and potentials till the original summit is revealed.
But there is a still closer mystery, the mystery of mysteries. There has not been merely a general descent, the descent of a world-force on a higher plane into another world-force on a lower plane; but that there is the descent of the individual, the personal Godhead into and as an earthly human being. The Divine born as a man and leading the life of a man among us and as one of us, the secret of Divine Incarnation is the supreme secret. That is the mechanism adopted by the Divine to cure and transmute human illshimself becoming a man, taking upon himself the burden of the evil that vitiates and withers life and working it out in and through himself. Something of this truth has been caught in the Christian view of Incarnation. God sent upon earth his only begotten son to take upon himself the sins of man, suffer vicariously for him, pay the ransom and thus liberate him, so that he may reach salvation, procure his seat by the side of the Father in Heaven. Man corrupted as he is by an original sin cannot hope by his own merit to achieve salvation. He can only admit his sin and repent and wait for the Grace to save him. The Indian view of Incarnation laid more stress upon the positive aspect of the matter, viz, the role of the Incarnation as the inaugurator and establisher of a new order in lifedharmasasthpanrthya. The Avatar brings down and embodies a higher principle of human organisation, a greater consciousness which he infuses into the existing pattern, individual or collective, which has -served its purpose, has become otiose and time-barred and needs to be remodelled, has been at the most preparatory to something else. The Avatar means a new revelation and the uplift of the human consciousness into a higher mode of being. The physical form he takes signifies the physical pressure that is exerted for the corroboration and fixation of the inner illumination that he brings upon earth and in the human frame. The Indian tradition has focussed its attention upon the Goodreyasand did not consider it essential to dwell upon the Evil. For one who finds and sees the Good always and everywhere, the Evil does not exist. Sri Aurobindo lays equal emphasis on both the aspects. Naturally, however, he does not believe in an original evil, incurable upon earth and in earthly life. In conformity with the ancient Indian teaching he declares the original divinity of man: it is because man is potentially and essentially divine that he can become actually and wholly divine. The Bible speaks indeed of man becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect: but that is due exclusively to the Grace showered upon man, not because of any inherent perfection in him. But in according full divinity to man, Sri Aurobindo does not minimise the part of the undivine in him. This does not mean any kind of Manicheism: for Evil, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not coeval or coterminous with the Divine, it is a later or derivative formation under given conditions, although within the range and sphere of the infinite Divine. Evil exists as a stern reality; even though it may be temporary and does not touch the essential reality, it is not an illusion nor can it be ignored, brushed aside or bypassed as something superficial or momentary and of no importance. It has its value, its function and implication. It is real, but it is not irremediable. It is contrary to the Divine but not contradictory. For even the Evil in its inmost substance carries or is the reality which it opposes or denies outwardly. Did not the very first of the apostles of Christ deny his master at the crucial moment? As we have said, evil is a formation necessitated by certain circumstances, the circumstances changed, the whole disposition as at present constituted changes automatically and fundamentally.
--
But this is God's sharela part de Dieu; for man too as man has to do his part. Because the Divine descending and accomplishing the work does not mean either of two things: first, it does not mean that it is a sudden miracle, deus ex machine, a fiat from the heaven which upsets and bears down everything before it and practically has no relation, logical or causal with what precedes and what follows. It is, on the contrary, as we have said, the culmination of a long process, the seal of fulfilment set upon a steady preparation and travailing growth. The Divine descends when the time is ripe, that is to say, when forces and instruments have been developed, refined, sharpened and tempered, so that they can harness and wield the Power from above. But for the preparation, the necessary conditions being there, the Grace would not have descended, although it is also true that but for the Grace, the culmination and the utter fulfilment would not have come aboutthere would have been only a vicious circle or an unending seesaw. Next, the Descent does not mean 'either that following upon it the whole business is done and completed automatically and immediately or nothing is left to be done any more. Not so. It means that what has been so long practically beyond reach, towards which one had to move with uncertainty and vague effort and in a roundabout way, as though through a trackless virgin forest or across an uncharted sea, has now been brought nearer and closer to human grasp, is now made part and parcel of earth's familiar atmosphere, so that any human being who genuinely aspires and looks for it can find it about him: there is just a thin veil which has to be put aside a little, into which a little opening is to be made and one comes in contact with or even enters into what one seeks. This means that the Grace has leaned down to man, but man too has at least to stretch his arms to touch and embrace it. Furthermore, to make that Grace permanently active and real in the normal consciousness, one has to labour, work out in fact what is given potentially: the seed is planted for him, it will grow and bloom and come to fruition provided necessary care and attention are given to the soil that bears it.
Thus then the embodied human person who has the embodied Divine Person before his eyes must know how to instal and incorporate the Divine Person in him, in his body and physical existence. That was perhaps the mystery sought to be conveyed in the Christian sacrament of transubstantiation. The bread and wine that the initiate has to take in representare or become actually and physically, as the Christian mystics assert the flesh and blood of Christ. One has to become the Divine Person in flesh and blood, wholly and integrally. As the fossil is a transmutation in stone, grain by grain, of a living bodyorganic elements eliminated and replaced by the inorganic in the very atomic structure and constitutioneven so, the living human structure, the mental, vital and physical formation will be translated, grain by grain, atom by atom into the divine substance by the infusion and imposition of the Divine figure.
05.05 - Of Some Supreme Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Soul is God's Grace upon Matter; it is the living spark from the Heart of the Divine, sent down into Matter, in order to lift Matter into Divinity.
The gods are the glories of the Supreme Divine; they are the agents that effect this transmutation and the types that embody the transmuted reality.
05.09 - Varieties of Religious Experience, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There have been religions, approaches to the Divine, which did not believe in the divinity of man, the Chaldean line, the Semitic, for example. According to these, the Creator and the created are separate in nature and being; to call anything created as God himself is blasphemy. The ancient Egyptian, the Hebrew or the Muslim place God high in Paradise, and, in their view, man can be only his servant or slave, his worker or warrior. Man is too small and too earthly to be ever identified with God: he can only be a worshipper. Man can love God, at the most, as his Beloved. But this devotion is for something afar, like the desire of the moth for the star. And to equate the two is to confuse realities. Man as worshipper and devotee can attain certain divine qualities, but limited and modified and always humanized to a large extent. And God can never become man. He sends down his representative, his vicar, prophet or apostle who acts for him and in and through whom He acts, but He himself does not come down and put on the form or flesh. The universe is Gods handiwork and testifies to his miracle and glory; but the universe is not God. Between the watch and the watchmaker there is always a hiatus and an incommensurability.
But can we say, I am born of God, and yet I am not God? So the Indian boldly declares, all this is the supreme Divine, there is nothing else than the Divinesarvam khalvidam brahma I am He, Thou are That, or again, that which is in me and the conscious being which is there in the Sun are one and the same thing. God has created man and the world, He is in man and in the world, He has become and is man and the world. Not only so. Not only does God become the clod of earth by reducing his potentialto zero, so to say; but He descends often enough in his own being and consciousness here below, assuming a human form for a special work and a special purpose. This is the Indian conception of Avatarhood.
05.28 - God Protects, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The conditions under which the Divine's protection can come are simple enough, but difficult to fulfil completely and thoroughly. The ideal conditions that ensure absolute safety are an absolute trust and reliance on the Divine Force, a tranquillity and fearlessness that nothing shakes, .whatever the appearances at the moment, the spirit and attitude of an unreserved self-giving that whatever one is and one has is God's. Between that perfect state at the peak of consciousness and the doubting and hesitant and timid mind at the lower end that of St. Peter, forexample, at his weakest moment there are various gradations of the conditions fulfilled and the protection given is variable accordingly. Not that the Divine Grace acts or has to act according to any such hard and fast rule of mechanics, there is no such mathematical Law of Protection in the scheme of Providence. And yet on the whole and generally speaking Providence, Divine Intervention, acts more or less successfully according to the degree of the soul's wakefulness on the plane that needs and possesses the protection.
And yet there is another aspect of the thing that is to be taken into consideration. For in the supreme and ultimate view the world or creation is not divided between God and Asura : the Asura cannot be outside God's infinity, he is there because permitted by him, indeed forms part of him and serves the divine purpose. Asura represents the hard dark passage through which the ignorant human soul cuts out its forward march: it is the crucible in which the growing consciousness is purified of its dross in order to regain the fullness of its divine quality and nature.
05.29 - Vengeance is Mine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Do we then propose taking it all lying down, it may be asked? Is martyrdom then our ideal? Not so, for we do not believe that evil forces can be appeased or conquered or transformed by yielding to them, letting them free to have their own way. Otherwise Krishna would not have enjoined and inspired (almost incited) Arjuna to enter on a bloody battle. Still forces, whether good or bad, are conquered or quelled or transformed truly and permanently by forces that belong not to the same level of being or consciousness, but to a higher one. Instead of working in a parallelogram of forces, we must take recourse, as it were, to a pyramid of forces. We know of the ideal of soul-force standing against and seeking to persuade or peacefully subdue brute force. It is not an impossibility; only we must be able really to get to the true soul and not a semblance or substitute of it. The true soul is .man's spiritual or divine being the consciousness in which man is one in substance and nature with God. It is not a mere thought formation, a mental and moral ideal. The only force that can succeed against a lower or undivine force is God's own force and the success can be complete and absolute by the calling in or intervention of God's force in its highest status. Anything less than that will be no more than a temporary lull or adjustment.
The world is not changed in spite of many efforts, because man is always taking to human means, he is not allowing God to do God's work, but putting his own individual initiative in God's place, taking perhaps God's name on the lips with a secret, unconscious feeling that unless he himself does something nothing will be donekarthamiti manyate. Human means may achieve at its best a compromise, but no permanent solution: it is often the beginning of a worse situation, a greater disharmony and conflictpeace, it has been said, is only a preparation for war. That vicious circle can be and has to be cut by the razor-blade consciousness of the aspirant to life divine who by the clear and tranquil energy of his tapascan call down a divine interference in mortal affairs.
05.33 - Caesar versus the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." We do not subscribe to the motto. We do not admit that the world and the spirit are irreconcilables and incommensurables. On the contrary we assert their essential unity and identity. The spiritual force is not and need not be impotent or out of place in Caesar's domain. Rather it is the spiritual man who alone can possess the secret of mastering the forces that work out mundane things, perfectly and faultlessly.
But then, it may be asked, how is it that in the history of the world we find men of action, great dynamic personalities to be mostly not spiritual but rather mundane in their character and outlook? Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Chandragupta, Akbar, even Shivaji, were not spiritual personalities; their actions were of the world and of worldly nature. And the force they wielded cannot be described as spiritual, and yet how effective it was, what mighty changes it brought about in the affairs of men! And do we not actually see in the lives of saints and true spiritual souls that the force of the spirit, if force it can be called, moves away from the field of dynamism, turns towards a plane or height where all incentives and impulses to action fall silent and vanish in the end? The spiritual force is applied to negate all mundane activity, to get out of the profane field of life. That is the skill of Yoga referred to in the Gita, that is how we are to understand the injunction to see "inaction in action", and "action in inaction".
06.01 - The Word of Fate, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
My strength is not the Titan's; it is God's.
I have discovered my glad reality
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
'Yes, all is God,' peals back Heaven's deathless call.
The seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts,
07.11 - The Problem of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The universe and its creator are not separate things, they are one and identical in their origin. The universe is God himself projected into Space (and Time). So the universe is the Divine in one aspect or another. You cannot divide the two, making one the creator and the other, his work, the watch-maker and his watch. You put your idea of the Divine upon him and ask, why he has created such a nasty world. If the Divine were to answer, It is not I, it is yourself. Become myself again, you will no longer feel and see as you do now you are not yourself, therefore your question and your problem! Indeed, when you unite your consciousness with the divine consciousness there is no longer any problem. Everything appears then natural and simple, and correct and as it should be. It is when you cut yourself from your origin and stand outside, in front of him and against him that all the trouble begins. Of course you may ask, how is it that the Divine has tolerated a part of himself going out and separating itself and creating all this disorder? I would reply on behalf of the Divine, If you want to know, you had better unite yourself with the Divine, for that is the only way of knowing why he has done so. It is not by questioning him by your mind that you will get the answer. The mind cannot know. And repeat, when you come to this identification, all problems are solved. The feeling, one can explain, that things are not all right, that they should be otherwise comes precisely from the fact that there is a divine will unfolding itself in a continuous progression, that things that were and are have to give place to things that shall be and shall be better and better than they have been. The world that was good yesterday will no longer be so tomorrow. The universe might have appeared quite harmonious in some other age but now appears quite discordant: it is because we see the possibility of a better universe. If we found it as it should be, we would not do what we have to do, we would not try to make it better. Even so, we would conceive the Divine in a very human way; for we remain imprisoned within ourselves, confined to this consciousness of ours which is like a grain of sand in the infinite immensity. You want to understand the immensity? That is not possible. It is possible only under one condition; be one with the immensity. The drop of water cannot very well ask how the ocean is: it has to lose itself into the ocean.
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08.27 - Value of Religious Exercises, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have been to holy places. I have seen monuments considered as very highly religious, in France, in Japan and elsewhere; they were not always the same kind of temples or churches nor were they the same gods but the impression they left on me, my experiences of them were everywhere almost the same, with but slight differences. There is usually a force concentrated at the place, but its character depends entirely upon the faith of the faithful; also there is a difference between the force as it really exists and the form in which it appears to the faithful. For instance, in a most famous and most beautiful place of worship which was, from the standpoint of art, the most magnificent creation one could imagine, I saw within its holy of holies a huge black Spider that had spread its net all around, caught within it and absorbed all the energies emanating from the devotion of the people, their prayers and all that. It was not a very pleasant spectacle. But the people who were there and prayed felt the divine contact, they received all kinds of benefit from their prayers. And yet the truth of the matter was what I saw. The people had the faith and their faith changed what was bad into something that was good to them. Now if I had gone and told them: 'you think it is God you are praying to! it is only a formidable vital Spider that is sucking your force,' surely it would not have been very charitable on my part. But everywhere it is almost the same thing. There is a vital Force presiding. And vital beings feed upon the vibrations of human emotion. Very few are they, a microscopic number, who go to the temples and churches and holy places with the true religious feeling, that is to say, not to pray or beg something of God, but to offer themselves, to express gratitude, to aspire, to surrender. One in a million would be too many. These when they are there, get some touch of the Divine just for the moment. But all others go only out of superstition, egoism, self-interest and create the atmosphere as it is found and it is that that you usually brea the in when you go to a holy place; only as you go there with a good feeling, you say to yourself "what a peace-giving spot!"
I am sorry to say it. But it is like that. I tell you I have purposely made the experiment to some extent everywhere. Perhaps I came across at times in far-away small cornerslike a small village church, for exampleplaces where there was real peace and quiet and some true aspiration. Barring that, everywhere it is but a web of adverse vital forces that use everything for their food. The bigger the congregation, the more portentous the vital deity. Besides, in the invisible world it is only the vital beings that like to be worshipped. For, as I have said, that pleases them, gives them importance. They are puffed up with pride and are happy; when they can have a troop of people adoring them, they reach the very height of satisfaction.
1.002 - The Heifer, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
15. It is God who ridicules them, and leaves them bewildered in their transgression.
16. Those are they who have bartered error for guidance; but their trade does not profit them, and they are not guided.
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115. To God belong the East and the West. Whichever way you turn, there is God’s presence. God is Omnipresent and Omniscient.
116. And they say, “God has begotten a son.” Be He glorified. Rather, His is everything in the heavens and the earth; all are obedient to Him.
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165. Yet among the people are those who take other than God as equals to Him. They love them as the love of God. But those who believe have greater love for God. If only the wrongdoers would realize, when they see the torment; that all power is God’s, and that God is severe in punishment.
166. Those who were followed will then disown those who followed them, and they will see the retribution, and ties between them will be severed.
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214. Or do you expect to enter Paradise before the example of those who came before you had reached you? Adversity and hardship had afflicted them, and they were so shaken up, that the Messenger and those who believed with him said, “When is God’s victory?” Indeed, God’s victory is near.
215. They ask you what they should give. Say, “Whatever charity you give is for the parents, and the relatives, and the orphans, and the poor, and the wayfarer. Whatever good you do, God is aware of it.
1.003 - Family of Imran, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
73. And trust none except those who follow your religion.” Say, “Guidance is God’s guidance. If someone is given the like of what you were given, or they argue with you before your Lord, say, “All grace is in God’s hand; He gives it to whomever He wills.” God is Bounteous and Knowing.
74. He specifies His mercy for whomever He wills. God is Possessor of Sublime Grace.
10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This world is God fulfilled in outwardness.
His ways challenge our reason and our sense;
1.004 - Women, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
11. God instructs you regarding your children: The male receives the equivalent of the share of two females. If they are daughters, more than two, they get two-thirds of what he leaves. If there is only one, she gets one-half. As for the parents, each gets one-sixth of what he leaves, if he had children. If he had no children, and his parents inherit from him, his mother gets one-third. If he has siblings, his mother gets one-sixth. After fulfilling any bequest and paying off debts. Your parents and your children—you do not know which are closer to you in welfare. This is God's Law. God is Knowing and Judicious.
12. You get one-half of what your wives leave behind, if they had no children. If they had children, you get one-fourth of what they leave. After fulfilling any bequest and paying off debts. They get one-fourth of what you leave behind, if you have no children. If you have children, they get one-eighth of what you leave. After fulfilling any bequest and paying off debts. If a man or woman leaves neither parents nor children, but has a brother or sister, each of them gets one-sixth. If there are more siblings, they share one-third. After fulfilling any bequest and paying off debts, without any prejudice. This is a will from God. God is Knowing and Clement.
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24. And all married women, except those you rightfully possess. This is God’s decree, binding upon you. Permitted for you are those that lie outside these limits, provided you seek them in legal marriage, with gifts from your property, seeking wedlock, not prostitution. If you wish to enjoy them, then give them their dowry—a legal obligation. You commit no error by agreeing to any change to the dowry. God is All-Knowing, Most Wise.
25. If any of you lack the means to marry free believing women, he may marry one of the believing maids under your control. God is well aware of your faith. You are from one another. Marry them with the permission of their guardians, and give them their recompense fairly—to be protected—neither committing adultery, nor taking secret lovers. When they are married, if they commit adultery, their punishment shall be half that of free women. That is for those among you who fear falling into decadence. But to practice self-restraint is better for you. God is Most Forgiving, Most Merciful.
1.005 - The Table, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
43. But why do they come to you for judgment, when they have the Torah, in which is God’s Law? Yet they turn away after that. These are not believers.
44. We have revealed the Torah, wherein is guidance and light. The submissive prophets ruled the Jews according to it, so did the rabbis and the scholars, as they were required to protect God’s Book, and were witnesses to it. So do not fear people, but fear Me. And do not sell My revelations for a cheap price. Those who do not rule according to what God revealed are the unbelievers.
1.006 - Livestock, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
3. He is God in the heavens and the earth. He knows what you keep secret and what you make public; and He knows what you earn.
4. Not one of their Lord’s signs comes to them, but they turn away from it.
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33. We know that what they say grieves you. It is not you they reject, but it is God's revelations that the wicked deny.
34. Other messengers before you were rejected, but they endured rejection and persecution until Our help came to them. There can be no change to God’s words. News of the Messengers has already reached you.
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53. Thus We try some of them by means of others, that they may say, “Are these the ones whom God has favored from among us?” is God not aware of the appreciative?
54. When those who believe in Our revelations come to you, say, “Peace be upon you, your Lord has prescribed mercy for Himself. Whoever among you does wrong out of ignorance, and then repents afterwards and reforms—He is Forgiving and Merciful.”
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64. Say, “It is God who delivers you from it, and from every disaster. Yet then you associate others with Him.”
65. Say, “He is Able to send upon you an affliction, from above you, or from under your feet. Or He can divide you into factions, and make you taste the violence of one another. Note how We explain the revelations, so that they may understand.”
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88. Such is God’s guidance. He guides with it whomever He wills of His servants. Had they associated, their deeds would have gone in vain.
89. Those are they to whom We gave the Book, and wisdom, and prophethood. If these reject them, We have entrusted them to others who do not reject them.
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95. It is God Who splits the grain and the seed. He brings the living from the dead, and He brings the dead from the living. Such is God. So how could you deviate?
96. It is He Who breaks the dawn. And He made the night for rest, and the sun and the moon for calculation. Such is the disposition of the Almighty, the All-Knowing.
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102. Such is God, your Lord. There is no god except He, the Creator of all things; so worship Him. He is responsible for everything.
103. No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision. He is the Subtle, the Expert.
1.007 - The Elevations, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
54. Your Lord is God; He who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then established Himself on the Throne. The night overtakes the day, as it pursues it persistently; and the sun, and the moon, and the stars are subservient by His command. His is the creation, and His is the command. Blessed is God, Lord of all beings.
55. Call upon your Lord humbly and privately. He does not love the aggressors.
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196. “My Master is God, He Who sent down the Book, and He takes care of the righteous.”
197. Those you call upon besides Him cannot help you, nor can they help themselves.
1.009 - Repentance, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
13. Will you not fight a people who violated their oaths, and planned to exile the Messenger, and initiated hostilities against you? Do you fear them? It is God you should fear, if you are believers.
14. Fight them. God will punish them at your hands, and humiliate them, and help you against them, and heal the hearts of a believing people.
1.00c - INTRODUCTION, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
source, which is God. Man comes from God in the
beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he
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Dualistic form. In the Monistic form you say that man is God,
and goes back to Him again. If our present state is the higher
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
We have absolved you from the requirement of performing the Prayer of the Signs. On the appearance of fearful natural events call ye to mind the might and majesty of your Lord, He Who heareth and seeth all, and say "Dominion is God's, the Lord of the seen and the unseen, the Lord of creation".
It hath been ordained that obligatory prayer is to be performed by each of you individually. Save in the Prayer for the Dead, the practice of congregational prayer hath been annulled. He, of a truth, is the Ordainer, the All-Wise.
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Whoso layeth claim to a Revelation direct from God, ere the expiration of a full thousand years, such a man is assuredly a lying impostor. We pray God that He may graciously assist him to retract and repudiate such claim. Should he repent, God will, no doubt, forgive him. If, however, he persisteth in his error, God will, assuredly, send down one who will deal mercilessly with him. Terrible, indeed, is God in punishing! Whosoever interpreteth this verse otherwise than its obvious meaning is deprived of the Spirit of God and of His mercy which encompasseth all created things. Fear God, and follow not your idle fancies. Nay, rather, follow the bidding of your Lord, the Almighty, the All-Wise. Erelong shall clamorous voices be raised in most lands. Shun them, O My people, and follow not the iniquitous and evil-hearted. This is that of which We gave you forewarning when We were dwelling in Iraq, then later while in the Land of Mystery, and now from this Resplendent Spot.
Be not dismayed, O peoples of the world, when the day-star of My beauty is set, and the heaven of My tabernacle is concealed from your eyes. Arise to further My Cause, and to exalt My Word amongst men. We are with you at all times, and shall streng then you through the power of truth. We are truly almighty. Whoso hath recognized Me will arise and serve Me with such determination that the powers of earth and heaven shall be unable to defeat his purpose.
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O kings of the earth! He Who is the sovereign Lord of all is come. The Kingdom is God's, the omnipotent Protector, the Self-Subsisting. Worship none but God, and, with radiant hearts, lift up your faces unto your Lord, the Lord of all names. This is a Revelation to which whatever ye possess can never be compared, could ye but know it.
We see you rejoicing in that which ye have amassed for others and shutting out yourselves from the worlds which naught except My guarded Tablet can reckon. The treasures ye have laid up have drawn you far away from your ultimate objective. This ill beseemeth you, could ye but understand it. Wash from your hearts all earthly defilements, and hasten to enter the Kingdom of your Lord, the Creator of earth and heaven, Who caused the world to tremble and all its peoples to wail, except them that have renounced all things and clung to that which the Hidden Tablet hath ordained.
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Say: This, verily, is the heaven in which the Mother Book is treasured, could ye but comprehend it. He it is Who hath caused the Rock to shout, and the Burning Bush to lift up its voice, upon the Mount rising above the Holy Land, and proclaim: "The Kingdom is God's, the sovereign Lord of all, the All-Powerful, the Loving!"
104
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O concourse of divines! Beware lest ye be the cause of strife in the land, even as ye were the cause of the repudiation of the Faith in its early days. Gather the people around this Word that hath made the pebbles to cry out: "The Kingdom is God's, the Dawning-place of all signs!" Thus doth your Lord admonish you, as a bounty on His part; He, of a truth, is the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Generous.
170
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We, of a certainty, have had no purpose in this earthly realm save to make God manifest and to reveal His sovereignty; sufficient unto Me is God for a witness. We, of a certainty, have had no intent in the celestial Kingdom but to exalt His Cause and glorify His praise; sufficient unto Me is God for a protector. We, of a certainty, have had no desire in the Dominion on high except to extol God and what hath been sent down by Him; sufficient unto Me is God for a helper.
173
1.010 - Jonah, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
3. Your Lord is God, who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then settled over the Throne, governing all things. There is no intercessor except after His permission. Such is God, your Lord—so serve Him. Will you not reflect?
4. To Him is your return, altogether. The promise of God is true. He originates creation, and then He repeats it, to reward those who believe and do good deeds with equity. As for those who disbelieve, for them is a drink of boiling water, and agonizing torment, on account of their disbelief.
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32. Such is God, your Lord—the True. What is there, beyond the truth, except falsehood? How are you turned away?
33. Thus your Lord’s Word proved true against those who disobeyed, for they do not believe.
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65. And let not their sayings dishearten you. All power is God’s. He is the Hearer, the Knower.
66. Certainly, to God belongs everyone in the heavens and everyone on earth. Those who invoke other than God do not follow partners; they follow only assumptions, and they only guess.
1.011 - Hud, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
33. He said, “It is God who will bring it upon you, if He wills, and you will not be able to escape.”
34. “My advice will not benefit you, much as I may want to advise you, if God desires to confound you. He is your Lord, and to Him you will be returned.”
1.018 - The Cave, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
38. But as for me, He is God, my Lord, and I never associate with my Lord anyone.
39. When you entered your garden, why did you not say, “As God wills; there is no power except through God”? Although you see me inferior to you in wealth and children.
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances. Whither is God he cried. I
shall tell you. We have killed him you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this?
1.01 - MAXIMS AND MISSILES, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of
man?
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
Those also, who say that the spirit is but an accident, are in error, for the spirit exists by itself in the body, and an accident is that which subsists with something else. And those who say that the spirit is matter are in error, for matter is that which can be divided, and spirit is not susceptible of division. There is spirit, beloved, which is called animal spirit, which is susceptible of division. It is found in animals. But that spirit, which has the property of knowing God, and which is called the heart, is not found in beasts, nor is it matter or an accident. The heart, on the contrary, has been created with angelic qualities. It is a substance of which it is difficult to apprehend the essence. The law does not permit it to be explained, but there is no occasion for the student being acquainted with it at the outset of his journey. That which is necessary to the student is pious ardor and zeal, and this must be called into exercise in perfection. It is God who graciously teaches the student what spirit is, as we find in the Holy Book: "We will direct in our way, all those who shall strive to propagate our worship."1 And if a man does not strive earnestly for the faith, there is no use of explaining to him the essence of spirit. It is, however, lawful to explain to him the instruments by which it operates.
Know, O seeker after the divine mysteries! that the body is the kingdom of the heart, and that in the body there are many forces in contrariety with the heart, as God speaks [18] in his Holy Word: "And what shall teach thee the forces of thy Lord ?" The heart was destined to acquire a knowledge of God, in which its happiness consists. But we cannot grow in the knowledge of God, unless we understand the works of God.
1.01 - Soul and God, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
Who are you, child? My dreams have represented you as a child and as a maiden. 49 I am ignorant of your mystery. 50 Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard are you God? is God a child, a maiden?51 Forgive me if I babble. No one else hears me. I speak to you quietly, and you know that I am neither a drunkard nor someone deranged, and that my heart twists in pain from the wound, whose darkness delivers speeches full of mockery: You are lying to yourself! You spoke so as to deceive others and make them believe in you. You want to be a prophet and chase after your ambition.
The wound still bleeds, and I am far from being able to pretend that
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Here it may be remarked that the cult of unity on the political level is only an idolatrous ersatz for the genuine religion of unity on the personal and spiritual levels. Totalitarian regimes justify their existence by means of a philosophy of political monism, according to which the state is God on earth, unification under the heel of the divine state is salvation, and all means to such unification, however intrinsically wicked, are right and may be used without scruple. This political monism leads in practice to excessive privilege and power for the few and oppression for the many, to discontent at home and war abroad. But excessive privilege and power are standing temptations to pride, greed, vanity and cruelty; oppression results in fear and envy; war breeds hatred, misery and despair. All such negative emotions are fatal to the spiritual life. Only the pure in heart and poor in spirit can come to the unitive knowledge of God. Hence, the attempt to impose more unity upon societies than their individual members are ready for makes it psychologically almost impossible for those individuals to realize their unity with the divine Ground and with one another.
Among the Christians and the Sufis, to whose writings we now return, the concern is primarily with the human mind and its divine essence.
My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me except my God Himself.
St. Catherine of Genoa
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There is a spirit in the soul, untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, itself wholly spiritual. In this principle is God, ever verdant, ever flowering in all the joy and glory of His actual Self. Sometimes I have called this principle the Tabernacle of the soul, sometimes a spiritual Light, anon I say it is a Spark. But now I say that it is more exalted over this and that than the heavens are exalted above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion It is free of all names and void of all forms. It is one and simple, as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise behold it.
Eckhart
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We say to the nation, "It is God's will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves.
We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, 'This is our dharma.' We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians.
1.020 - Ta-Ha, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
98. Surely your god is God, the One besides whom there is no other god. He comprehends everything in knowledge.
99. Thus We narrate to you reports of times gone by; and We have given you a message from Our Presence.
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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.
1.022 - The Pilgrimage, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
40. Those who were unjustly evicted from their homes, merely for saying, “Our Lord is God.” Were it not that God repels people by means of others: monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques—where the name of God is mentioned much—would have been demolished. God supports whoever supports Him. God is Strong and Mighty.
41. Those who, when We empower them in the land, observe the prayer, and give regular charity, and command what is right, and forbid what is wrong. To God belongs the outcome of events.
1.023 - The Believers, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
14. Then We developed the seed into a clot. Then We developed the clot into a lump. Then We developed the lump into bones. Then We clothed the bones with flesh. Then We produced it into another creature. Most Blessed is God, the Best of Creators.
15. Then, after that, you will die.
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116. So Exalted is God, the Ruler, the Real. There is no god except He, the Lord of the Noble Throne.
117. Whoever invokes another god besides God—he has no proof thereof—his reckoning rests with his Lord. The disbelievers will not succeed.
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This peculiar feature of spiritual practice, sadhana, being so difficult to understand intellectually, cannot be regarded as merely an individual's affair. Sadhana is God's affair, ultimately. Spiritual sadhana is God's grace working. Though it appears that is individual effort, it only seems to be so, but really it is something else. Not even the greatest of philosophical thinkers, such as Shankara, could logically answer the question, "How does knowledge arise in the jiva?" How can it be said that individual effort produces knowledge of God? Knowledge of God cannot rise by individual effort, because individual effort is so puny, so inadequate to the purpose, to the task, that we cannot expect such an infinite result to follow from the finite cause. The concept of God is an inscrutable event that takes place in the human mind. Can we imagine an ass thinking about God? However much it may put forth effort and go on trying its best throughout its life, the concept of God will never arise in an ass's mind or in a buffalo's mind. How it arises is a mystery. Suddenly, it comes.
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.
1.027 - The Ant, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
59. Say, “Praise God, and peace be upon His servants whom He has selected. is God better, or what they associate?”
60. Or, who created the heavens and the earth, and rains down water from the sky for you? With it We produce gardens full of beauty, whose trees you could not have produced. Is there another god with God? But they are a people who equate.
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63. Or, who guides you through the darkness of land and sea, and who sends the winds as heralds of His mercy? Is there another god with God? Most exalted is God, above what they associate.
64. Or, who originates the creation and then repeats it, and who gives you livelihood from the sky and the earth? Is there another god with God? Say, “Produce your evidence, if you are truthful.”
1.028 - History, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
70. And He is God. There is no god but He. To Him belongs all praise in this life, and in the next. And His is the decision, and to Him you will be returned.
71. Say, “Have you considered? Had God made the night perpetual over you until the Day of Resurrection, which god other than God will bring you illumination? Do you not hear?”
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75. And We will draw out from every community a witness, and say, “Produce your evidence.” Then they will realize that the truth is God’s, and those they used to invent have forsaken them.
76. Quaroon belonged to the clan of Moses, but he oppressed them. We had given him treasures, the keys of which would weigh down a group of strong men. His people said to him, “Do not exult; God does not love the exultant.
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82. Those who had wished they were in his position the day before were saying, “Indeed, it is God who spreads the bounty to whomever He wills of His servants, and restricts it. Had God not been gracious to us, He would have caved in on us. No wonder the ungrateful never prosper.”
83. That Home of the Hereafter—We assign it for those who seek no superiority on earth, nor corruption. And the outcome is for the cautious.
10.29 - Gods Debt, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is this debt that God owes to earth and man? We understand the debt that man and earth owe to God, their creator. But how is God indebted to his creation? Besides we learn that God pays his debt through his representative, his protagonist upon earth, the aspiring human being.
First let us understand the mystery of God's debt to man. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty to the smaller. The child owes a debt to his parents; no less is the debt that the parents owe to the child. The parents not only bring forth the child, but they have to bring him up, nourish, foster, educate and settle him in life. We know also, as the scriptures tell us, that there is a debt man owes to the gods. The paying of the debt is described in the institution of the sacrifice (yajna). It is through his sacrifice that man achieves what he has to achieve upon earth. It is the givingof what one is and what one hasto the gods the sacrifice mounts carrying the offering to the gods. But the sacrifice is not a mere one-sided movement, the sacrifice brings from the gods gifts for the manmaterial prosperity and spiritual fulfilment. Man increases himself in this way, but thereby increases the gods also. The offering that man brings in his sacrificeall his possessionshis earthly possessions, but chiefly his possessions of the inner world, the wealth of his spirit, the virtues of his consciousness all go to the gods and increase them, that is to say, they become more manifest and more powerful upon earth and in earthly existence and in the service of man.
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In reality it is God's growth in man and earth that is reflected and embodied in the growth of man and earth. The debt spoken of is the debt of God himself to himself. In other words, it is a work, a mission that he has himself taken upon himself for his own mysterious delight of existence.
Earth moves forward through man who is its flowering and man moves forward through his representative, the higher man, who reveals and embodies still greater potentialities of God's creation, having the privilege of being so conscious as to contact the gods and God Himselfhe is master of life-force (awapati); he climbs to the summits and brings down upon earth the heavenly riches and the Divine Grace, which fulfils, transmuting all debits into credits.
1.02 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Sin begets its own result. This is God's law. Won't you burn our tongue if you chew a chilli? In his youth Mathur6 led a rather fast life; so he suffered from various diseases before his death.
"One may not realize this in youth. I have looked into the hearth in the kitchen of the Kli temple when logs are being burnt. At first the wet wood burns rather well. It doesn't seem then that it contains much moisture. But when the wood is sufficiently burnt, all the moisture runs back to one end. At last water squirts from the fuel and puts out the fire.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
knew that (sin) is an abomination to God. And in fact it is God who bestows the necessary knowledge.
A prince is defined as one who knows truth (ma at) and whom God teaches. The author of a prayer to
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The Terrible Mother challenges and threatens the individual, absolutely. She is Goddess of anxiety,
depression, and psychological chaos goddess of the possibility of pain and death. She is horror, insofar as
1.02 - Pranayama, Mantrayoga, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
6. He is God, and there is no other God than He.
7. O! let us strictly meditate on the adorable light of that divine Savitri (the interior Sun, etc.). May she enlighten our minds!
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He is God alone!
God the Eternal!
1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
sun, who is God my father. Likewise the so-called tube, the origin
of the ministering wind. For you will see hanging down from the
1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Very obviously a great body of the profoundest teaching cannot be built round an ordinary occurrence which has no gulfs of deep suggestion and hazardous difficulty behind its superficial and outward aspects and can be governed well enough by the ordinary everyday standards of thought and action. There are indeed three things in the Gita which are spiritually significant, almost symbolic, typical of the profoundest relations and problems of the spiritual life and of human existence at its roots; they are the divine personality of the Teacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple and the occasion of his teaching. The teacher is God himself descended into humanity; the disciple is the first, as we might say in modern language, the representative man of his age, closest friend and chosen instrument of the
Avatar, his protagonist in an immense work and struggle the secret purpose of which is unknown to the actors in it, known only to the incarnate Godhead who guides it all from behind the veil of his unfathomable mind of knowledge; the occasion is the violent crisis of that work and struggle at the moment when the anguish and moral difficulty and blind violence of its apparent movements forces itself with the shock of a visible revelation on the mind of its representative man and raises the whole question of the meaning of God in the world and the goal and drift and sense of human life and conduct.
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Who is God? I can think of no better answer than, He who is. Nothing is more appropriate to the eternity which God is. If you call God good, or great, or blessed, or wise, or anything else of this sort, it is included in these words, namely, He is.
St. Bernard
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The Godhead gave all things up to God. The Godhead is poor, naked and empty as though it were not; it has not, wills not, wants not, works not, gets not. It is God who has the treasure and the bride in him, the Godhead is as void as though it were not.
Eckhart
1.02 - THE QUATERNIO AND THE MEDIATING ROLE OF MERCURIUS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[10] From this remarkable excursus we learn, first of all, that the centre unites the four and the seven into one.48 The unifying agent is the spirit Mercurius, and this singular spirit then causes the author to confess himself a member of the Ecclesia spiritualis, for the spirit is God. This religious background is already apparent in the choice of the term Pelican for the circular process, since this bird is a well-known allegory of Christ.49 The idea of Mercurius as a peacemaker, the mediator between the warring elements and producer of unity, probably goes back to Ephesians 2 : 13ff.:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. [RSV]50
1.031 - Luqman, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
11. Such is God’s creation. Now show me what those besides Him have created. In fact, the wicked are in obvious error.
12. We endowed Luqman with wisdom: “Give thanks to God.” Whoever is appreciative—is appreciative for the benefit of his own soul. And whoever is unappreciative—God is Sufficient and Praiseworthy.
1.034 - Sheba, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
27. Say, “Show me those you have attached to Him as associates. No indeed! But He is God, the Powerful, the Wise.”
28. We sent you only universally to all people, a herald and warner, but most people do not know.
1.035 - Originator, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
13. He merges the night into the day, and He merges the day into the night; and He regulates the sun and the moon, each running for a stated term. Such is God, your Lord; His is the sovereignty. As for those you call upon besides Him, they do not possess a speck.
14. If you pray to them, they cannot hear your prayer. And even if they heard, they would not answer you. And on the Day of Resurrection, they will reject your partnership. None informs you like an Expert.
10.35 - The Moral and the Spiritual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To cure the modern malady we have to go back again to something of the ancient mentality. We have to cultivate a consciousness, now forgotten and alienated but once natural to the human mind, the consciousness and status of a transcendence built with the sense of absolute calm, an equality, all serene and all englobing, that is God's consciousness.
Credo quia impossibile is actually a phrase of Tertullian vide his De Carne Christi, Vthough often ascribed to St. Augustine
1.035 - The Recitation of Mantra, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Likewise, we cannot wrench the subtle body from the physical body by effort; it will mean death if that is attempted. It has to be healthily detracted from its attachment to the physical body, and pinpointed towards the universal object which is God, which the chanting of pranava is supposed to do, as the yoga shastras tell us. We are not in a state of vibration that is appreciably harmonious, usually speaking, because we have attachments to particular objects. Any kind of special concern that the mind has with the particularised objects of sense prevents the subtle body from being in a state of harmony with itself. There is non-alignment of itself with the universal objective. The alignment can be effected only by producing in the subtle body a condition which is akin to the condition of universality. As we know, the universal is the most general of all beings, and nothing can be more harmonious than the universal.
Thus, the purpose of the recitation of pranava or mantra is to produce a condition in the subtle body the vehicle of the mind which is sympathetic in nature with the universal objective of harmony. What is harmony? It is equal attention paid to every structure, and every component of the structure of one's being. It cannot be done easily and, therefore, we take to the method of the chanting of mantra. The mantra, pranava, is supposed to be the king of mantras because the various parts of the soundbox in our vocal system that ordinarily operate in the chanting of any mantra, or the utterance of any word of any language, take part in the utterance of Om. The entire soundbox vibrates from the bottom to the top, and so it is believed in many mystical circles that Om is inclusive of every language. Every word conceivable is included in it in a very potential latent form, and because it is thus the most general of all symbols conceivable, it is the best designation of God, Who is the greatest of universals.
1.039 - Throngs, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
4. If God wanted to have a son, He could have selected from His creation at will. Glory be to Him. He is God, the One, the Prevailing.
5. He created the heavens and the earth with reason. He wraps the night around the day, and He wraps the day around the night. And He regulates the sun and the moon, each running along a specific course. He is indeed the Almighty, the Forgiver.
6. He created you from one person, then made from it its mate, and brought down livestock for you—eight kinds in pairs. He creates you in the wombs of your mothers, in successive formations, in a triple darkness. Such is God, your Lord. His is the kingdom. There is no god but He. So what made you deviate?
7. If you disbelieve, God is Independent of you, yet He does not approve ingratitude on the part of His servants. And if you are thankful, He will approve that in you. No bearer of burden can bear the burden of another. Then to your Lord is your return; and He will inform you of what you used to do. He is aware of what the hearts contain.
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14. Say, “It is God I worship, sincere in my faith in Him.”
15. “But you can worship whatever you wish besides Him.” Say, “The losers are those who lose their souls and their people on the Day of Resurrection.” That is indeed the obvious loss.
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23. God has sent down the best of narrations: A Scripture consistent and paired. The skins of those who reverence their Lord shiver from it, then their skins and their hearts soften up to the remembrance of God. Such is God’s guidance; He guides with it whomever He wills. But whomever God leaves astray, for him there is no guide.
24. What about someone who covers his face against the terrible misery of the Day of Resurrection? To the evildoers it will be said, “Taste what you used to earn.”
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36. is God not enough for His servant? And they frighten you with those besides Him. Whomever God sends astray, for him there is no guide.
37. And whomever God guides, for him there is no misleader. is God not Powerful and Vengeful?
38. And if you asked them, “Who created the heavens and the earth?” they would say, “God.” Say, “Have you seen those you pray to instead of God? If God willed any harm for me, can they lift His harm? And if He willed a blessing for me, can they hold back His mercy?” Say, “God suffices for me. On Him the reliant rely.”
1.03 - Man - Slave or Free?, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is from these false and dangerous doctrines of materialism which tend to subvert mans future and hamper his evolution, that Yoga gives us a means of escape. It asserts on the contrary mans freedom from matter and gives him a means of asserting that freedom. The first great fundamental discovery of the Yogins was a means of analysing the experiences of the mind and the heart. By Yoga one can isolate mind, watch its workings as under a microscope, separate every minute function of the various parts of the antakaraa, the inner organ, every mental and moral faculty, test its isolated workings as well as its relations to other functions and faculties and trace backwards the operations of mind to subtler and ever subtler sources until just as material analysis arrives at a primal entity from which all proceeds, so Yoga analysis arrives at a primal spiritual entity from which all proceeds. It is also able to locate and distinguish the psychical centre to which all psychical phenomena gather and so to fix the roots of personality. In this analysis its first discovery is that mind can entirely isolate itself from external objects and work in itself and of itself. This does not, it is true, carry us very far because it may be that it is merely using the material already stored up by its past experiences. But the next discovery is that the farther it removes itself from objects, the more powerfully, surely, rapidly can the mind work with a swifter clarity, with a victorious and sovereign detachment. This is an experience which tends to contradict the scientific theory, that mind can withdraw the senses into itself and bring them to bear on a mass of phenomena of which it is quite unaware when it is occupied with external phenomena. Science will naturally challenge these as hallucinations. The answer is that these phenomena are related to each other by regular, simple and intelligible laws and form a world of their own independent of thought acting on the material world. Here too Science has this possible answer that this supposed world is merely an imaginative reflex in the brain of the material world and to any arguments drawn from the definiteness and unexpectedness of these subtle phenomena and their independence of our own will and imagination it can always oppose its theory of unconscious cerebration and, we suppose, unconscious imagination. The fourth discovery is that mind is not only independent of external matter, but its master; it can not only reject and control external stimuli, but can defy such apparently universal material laws as that of gravitation and ignore, put aside and make nought of what are called laws of nature and are really only the laws of material nature, inferior and subject to the psychical laws because matter is a product of mind and not mind a product of matter. This is the decisive discovery of Yoga, its final contradiction of materialism. It is followed by the crowning realisation that there is within us a source of immeasurable force, immeasurable intelligence, immeasurable joy far above the possibility of weakness, above the possibility of ignorance, above the possibility of grief which we can bring into touch with ourselves and, under arduous but not impossible conditions, habitually utilise or enjoy. This is what the Upanishads call the Brahman and the primal entity from which all things were born, in which they live and to which they return. This is God and communion with Him is the highest aim of Yogaa communion which works for knowledge, for work, for delight.
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1.03 - On exile or pilgrimage, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Sometimes the Lord has brought more glory to the man who has gone into exile after the manner of this great patriarch. But even if glory is God-given, yet it is excellent to divert it from oneself with the shield of humility.
When men or devils praise us for our exile, as for some great success, then let us think of Him who for our sake was exiled from heaven to earth, and we shall find that throughout all eternity it is impossible for us to make return for this.
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
ANSWER: The ordinance of fasting is such as hath already been revealed. Should someone pledge himself, however, to offer up a fast to God, seeking in this way the fulfilment of a wish, or to realize some other aim, this is permissible, now as heretofore. Howbeit, it is God's wish, exalted be His glory, that vows and pledges be directed to such objectives as will profit mankind.
72. QUESTION: Again a question hath been asked concerning the residence and personal clothing: are these to revert, in the absence of male offspring, to the House of Justice, or are they to be distributed like the rest of the estate?
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106. He is God, exalted be He, the Lord of majesty and power! The Prophets and Chosen Ones have all been commissioned by the One True God, magnified be His glory, to nurture the trees of human existence with the living waters of uprightness and understanding, that there may appear from them that which God hath deposited within their inmost selves. As may be readily observed, each tree yieldeth a certain fruit, and a barren tree is but fit for fire. The purpose of these Educators, in all they said and taught, was to preserve man's exalted station. Well is it with him who in the Day of God hath laid fast hold upon His precepts and hath not deviated from His true and fundamental Law. The fruits that best befit the tree of human life are trustworthiness and godliness, truthfulness and sincerity; but greater than all, after recognition of the unity of God, praised and glorified be He, is regard for the rights that are due to one's parents. This teaching hath been mentioned in all the Books of God, and reaffirmed by the Most Exalted Pen. Consider that which the Merciful Lord hath revealed in the Qur'an, exalted are His words: "Worship ye God, join with Him no peer or likeness; and show forth kindliness and charity towards your parents..." Observe how loving-kindness to one's parents hath been linked to recognition of the one true God! Happy they who are endued with true wisdom and understanding, who see and perceive, who read and understand, and who observe that which God hath revealed in the Holy Books of old, and in this incomparable and wondrous Tablet.
107. In one of the Tablets He, exalted be His words, hath revealed: And in the matter of Zakat, We have likewise decreed that you should follow what hath been revealed in the Qur'an.
1.03 - The Divine and Man, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is God?
God is the perfection that we must aspire to realise.
1.040 - Forgiver, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
20. God judges with justice, while those whom they invoke besides Him cannot judge with anything. It is God who is the Hearing, the Seeing.
21. Have they not travelled through the earth, and seen the consequences for those before them? They were stronger than them, and they left more impact on earth. But God seized them for their sins, and they had no defender against God.
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28. A believing man from Pharaoh's family, who had concealed his faith, said, “Are you going to kill a man for saying, `My Lord is God,’ and he has brought you clear proofs from your Lord? If he is a liar, his lying will rebound upon him; but if he is truthful, then some of what he promises you will befall you. God does not guide the extravagant imposter.
29. O my people! Yours is the dominion today, supreme in the land; but who will help us against God’s might, should it fall upon us?” Pharaoh said, “I do not show you except what I see, and I do not guide you except to the path of prudence.”
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61. It is God Who made the night for you, that you may rest therein; and the day allowing sight. God is gracious towards the people, but most people do not give thanks.
62. Such is God, your Lord, Creator of all things. There is no god except Him; so how could you turn away?
63. Thus are turned away those who dispute the signs of God.
64. It is God who made the earth a habitat for you, and the sky a structure. And He designed you, and designed you well; and He provided you with the good things. Such is God, your Lord; so Blessed is God, Lord of the Worlds.
65. He is the Living One. There is no god except He. So pray to Him, devoting your religion to Him. Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds.
1.041 - Detailed, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
30. Surely, those who say: “Our Lord is God,” and then go straight, the angels will descend upon them: “Do not fear, and do not grieve, but rejoice in the news of the Garden which you were promised.
31. We are your allies in this life and in the Hereafter, wherein you will have whatever your souls desire, and you will have therein whatever you call for.
1.042 - Consultation, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
10. Whatever matter you differ about, its judgment rests with God. “Such is God, my Lord, in Whom I trust, and unto Him I repent.”
11. Originator of the heavens and the earth. He made for you mates from among yourselves, and pairs of animals, by means of which He multiplies you. There is nothing like Him. He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
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17. It is God who revealed the Book with the truth, and the Balance. And what will make you realize that perhaps the Hour is near?
18. Those who do not believe in it seek to hasten it; but those who believe are apprehensive of it, and they know it to be the truth. Absolutely, those who question the Hour are in distant error.
1.043 - Decorations, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
84. It is He who is God in heaven, and God on earth. He is the Wise, the Knower.
85. And blessed is He Who has sovereignty over the heavens and the earth and what is between them. He alone has knowledge of the Hour, and to Him you will be returned.
1.045 - Kneeling, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
12. It is God who placed the sea at your service, so that ships may run through it by His command, and that you may seek of His bounty, and that you may give thanks.
13. And He placed at your service whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on earth—all is from Him. In that are signs for a people who think.
1.046 - The Dunes, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
13. Those who say, “Our Lord is God,” then lead a righteous life—they have nothing to fear, nor shall they grieve.
14. These are the inhabitants of Paradise, where they will dwell forever—a reward for what they used to do.
1.048 - Victory, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
23. It is God’s pattern, ongoing since the past. You will never find any change in God’s pattern.
24. It is He who withheld their hands from you, and your hands from them, in the valley of Mecca, after giving you advantage over them. God is Observer of what you do.
1.049 - The Chambers, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
17. They regarded it a favor to you that they have submitted. Say, “Do not consider your submission a favor to me; it is God who has done you a favor by guiding you to the faith, if you are sincere.”
18. God knows the secrets of the heavens and the earth, and God is seeing of everything you do.
1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly, balance is Godly.
Because I was caught up in the spirit of this time, precisely what happened to me on this night had to happen to me, namely that the spirit of the depths erupted with force, and swept away the spirit of this time with a powerful wave. But the spirit of the depths had gained this power, because I had spoken to my soul during 25 nights in the desert and I had given her all my love and submission.
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
That Nirvana and Samsara are one is a fact about the nature of the universe; but it is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced, except by souls far advanced in spirituality. For ordinary, nice, unregenerate people to accept this truth by hearsay, and to act upon it in practice, is merely to court disaster. All the dismal story of antinomianism is there to warn us of what happens when men and women make practical applications of a merely intellectual and unrealized theory that all is God and God is all. And hardly less depressing than the spectacle of antinomianism is that of the earnestly respectable well-rounded life of good citizens who do their best to live sacramentally, but dont in fact have any direct acquaintance with that for which the sacramental activity really stands. Dr. Oman, in his The Natural and the Supernatural, writes at length on the theme that reconciliation to the evanescent is revelation of the eternal; and in a recent volume, Science, Religion and the Future, Canon Raven applauds Dr. Oman for having stated the principles of a theology, in which there could be no ultimate antithesis between nature and grace, science and religion, in which, indeed, the worlds of the scientist and the theologian are seen to be one and the same. All this is in full accord with Taoism and Zen Buddhism and with such Christian teachings as St. Augustines Ama et fac quod vis and Father Lallemants advice to theocentric contemplatives to go out and act in the world, since their actions are the only ones capable of doing any real good to the world. But what neither Dr. Oman nor Canon Raven makes sufficiently clear is that nature and grace, Samsara and Nirvana, perpetual perishing and eternity, are really and experientially one only to persons who have fulfilled certain conditions. Fac quod vis in the temporal world but only when you have learnt the infinitely difficult art of loving God with all your mind and heart and your neighbor as yourself. If you havent learnt this lesson, you will either be an antinomian eccentric or criminal or else a respectable well-rounded-lifer, who has left himself no time to understand either nature or grace. The Gospels are perfectly clear about the process by which, and by which alone, a man may gain the right to live in the world as though he were at home in it: he must make a total denial of selfhood, submit to a complete and absolute mortification. At one period of his career, Jesus himself seems to have undertaken austerities, not merely of the mind, but of the body. There is the record of his forty days fast and his statement, evidently drawn from personal experience, that some demons cannot be cast out except by those who have fasted much as well as prayed. (The Cur dArs, whose knowledge of miracles and corporal penance was based on personal experience, insists on the close correlation between severe bodily austerities and the power to get petitionary prayer answered in ways that are sometimes supernormal.) The Pharisees reproached Jesus because he came eating and drinking, and associated with publicans and sinners; they ignored, or were unaware of, the fact that this apparently worldly prophet had at one time rivalled the physical austerities of John the Baptist and was practising the spiritual mortifications which he consistently preached. The pattern of Jesus life is essentially similar to that of the ideal sage, whose career is traced in the Oxherding Pictures, so popular among Zen Buddhists. The wild ox, symbolizing the unregenerate self, is caught, made to change its direction, then tamed and gradually transformed from black to white. Regeneration goes so far that for a time the ox is completely lost, so that nothing remains to be pictured but the full-orbed moon, symbolizing Mind, Suchness, the Ground. But this is not the final stage. In the end, the herdsman comes back to the world of men, riding on the back of his ox. Because he now loves, loves to the extent of being identified with the divine object of his love, he can do what he likes; for what he likes is what the Nature of Things likes. He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into Buddhas. For him, there is complete reconciliation to the evanescent and, through that reconciliation, revelation of the eternal. But for nice ordinary unregenerate people the only reconciliation to the evanescent is that of indulged passions, of distractions submitted to and enjoyed. To tell such persons that evanescence and eternity are the same, and not immediately to qualify the statement, is positively fatalfor, in practice, they are not the same except to the saint; and there is no record that anybody ever came to sanctity, who did not, at the outset of his or her career, behave as if evanescence and eternity, nature and grace, were profoundly different and in many respects incompatible. As always, the path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses. On one side is the danger of mere rejection and escape, on the other the danger of mere acceptance and the enjoyment of things which should only be used as instruments or symbols. The versified caption which accompanies the last of the Oxherding Pictures runs as follows.
Even beyond the ultimate limits there extends a passageway,
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
man is Gods son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It was this aspect of impure mahas, vijnanam working not in its own home, swe dame but in the house of a stranger, as a servant of an inferior faculty, reason as we call it, which led the Rishi Mahachamasya to include mahas among the vyahritis. But vijnana itself is an integral part of the supreme movement, it is divine thought in divine being,therefore not a vyahriti. The Veda uses to express this pure Truth &ideal knowledge another word, equivalent in meaning to mahat,the word brihat and couples with it two other significant expressions, satyam & ritam. This trinity of satyam ritam brihatSacchidananda objectivisedis the Mahan Atma. Satyam is Truth, the principle of infinite & divine Being, Sat objectivised to Knowledge as the Truth of things self-manifested; Ritam is Law, the motion of things thought out, the principle of divine self-aware energy, Chit-shakti objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things selfarranged; Brihat is full content & fullness, satisfaction, Nature, the principle of divine Bliss objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things contented with its own manifestation in law of being & law of action. For, as the Vedanta tells us, there is no lasting satisfaction in the little, in the unillumined or half-illumined things of mind & sense, satisfaction there is only in the large, the self-true & self-existent. Nalpe sukham asti bhumaiva sukham. Bhuma, brihat, mahat, that is God. It is Ananda therefore that insists on largeness & constitutes the mahat or brihat. Ananda is the soul of Nature, its essentiality, creative power & peace. The harmony of creative power & peace, pravritti & nivritti, jana & shama, is the divine state which we feelas Wordsworth felt itwhen we go back to the brihat, the wide & infinite which, containing & contented with its works, says of it Sukritam, What I have made, is good. Whoever enters this kingdom of Mahat, this Maho Arnas or great sea of ideal knowledge, comes into possession of his true being, true knowledge, true bliss. He attains the ideal powers of drishti, sruti, smritisees truth face to face, hears her unerring voice or knows her by immediate recognising memoryjust as we say of a friend This is he and need no reasoning of observation, comparison, induction or deduction to tell us who he is or to explain our knowledge to ourselvesthough we may, already knowing the truth, use a self-evident reasoning masterfully in order to convince others. The characteristic of ideal knowledge is first that it is direct in its approach, secondly, that it is self-evident in its revelation, swayamprakasha, thirdly, that it is unerring fact of being, sat, satyam in its substance. Moreover, it is always perfectly satisfied & divinely pleasurable; it is atmarati & atmastha, confines itself to itself & does not reach out beyond itself to grasp at error or grope within itself to stumble over ignorance. It is, too, perfectly effective whether for knowledge, speech or action, satyakarma, satyapratijna, satyavadi. The man who rising beyond the state of the manu, manishi or thinker which men are now, becomes the kavi or direct seer, containing what he sees,he who draws the manomaya purusha up into the vijnanamaya,is in all things true. Truth is his characteristic, his law of being, the stamp that God has put upon him. But even for the manishi ideal Truth has its bounties. For from thence come the intuitions of the poet, the thinker, the artist, scientist, man of action, merchant, craftsman, labourer each in his sphere, the seed of the great thoughts, discoveries, faiths that help the world and save our human works & destinies from decay & dissolution. But in utilising these messages from our higher selves for the world, in giving them a form or a practical tendency, we use our intellects, feelings or imaginations and alter to their moulds or colour with their pigments the Truth. That alloy seems to be needed to make this gold from the mines above run current among men. This then is Maho Arnas.The psychological conceptions of our remote forefa thers concerning it have so long been alien to our thought & experience that they may be a little difficult to follow & more difficult to accept mentally. But we must understand & grasp them in their fullness if we have any desire to know the meaning of the Veda. For they are the very centre & keystone of Vedic psychology. Maho Arnas, the Great Ocean, is the stream of our being which at once divides & connects the human in us from the divine, & to cross over from the human to the divine, from this small & divided finite to that one, great & infinite, from this death to that immortality, leaving Diti for Aditi, alpam for bhuma, martyam for amritam is the great preoccupation & final aim of Veda & Vedanta.
We can now understand the intention of the Rishi in his last verse and the greatness of the climax to which he has been leading us. Saraswati is able to give impulsion to Truth and awaken to right thinking because she has access to the Maho Arnas, the great ocean. On that level of consciousness, we are usually it must be remembered asleep, sushupta. The chetana or waking consciousness has no access; it lies behind our active consciousness, is, as we might say, superconscious, for us, asleep. Saraswati brings it forward into active consciousness by means of the ketu or perceptive intelligence, that essential movement of mind which accepts & realises whatever is presented to it. To focus this ketu, this essential perception on the higher truth by drawing it away from the haphazard disorder of sensory data is the great aim of Yogic meditation. Saraswati by fixing essential perception on the satyam ritam brihat above makes ideal knowledge active and is able to inform it with all those plentiful movements of mind which she, dhiyavasu, vajebhir vajinivati, has prepared for the service of the Master of the sacrifice. She is able to govern all the movements of understanding without exception in their thousand diverse movements & give them the single impression of truth and right thinkingvisva dhiyo vi rajati. A governed & ordered activity of soul and mind, led by the Truth-illuminated intellect, is the aim of the sacrifice which Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra is offering to the Gods.
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
ity and see that it is God and none else who has made this
world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to
1.04 - Yoga and Human Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
So far there is little essential difference between our own ideas of human progress and those of the West except in this vital point that the West believes this evolution to be a development of matter and the satisfaction of the reason, the reflective and observing intellect, to be the highest term of our progress. Here it is that our religion parts company with Science. It declares the evolution to be a conquest of matter by the recovery of the deeper emotional and intellectual self which was involved in the body and over-clouded by the desires of the pra. In the language of the Upanishads the manakoa and the buddhikoa are more than the prakoa and annakoa and it is to them that man rises in his evolution. Religion farther seeks a higher term for our evolution than the purified emotions or the clarified activity of the observing and reflecting intellect. The highest term of evolution is the spirit in which knowledge, love and action, the threefold dharma of humanity, find their fulfilment and end. This is the tman in the nandakoa, and it is by communion and identity of this individual self with the universal self which is God that man will become entirely pure, entirely strong, entirely wise and entirely blissful, and the evolution will be fulfilled. The conquest of the body and the vital self by the purification of the emotions and the clarification of the intellect was the principal work of the past. The purification has been done by morality and religion, the clarification by science and philosophy, art, literature and social and political life being the chief media in which these uplifting forces have worked. The conquest of the emotions and the intellect by the spirit is the work of the future. Yoga is the means by which that conquest becomes possible.
In Yoga the whole past progress of humanity, a progress which it holds on a very uncertain lease, is rapidly summed up, confirmed and made an inalienable possession. The body is conquered, not imperfectly as by the ordinary civilised man, but entirely. The vital part is purified and made the instrument of the higher emotional and intellectual self in its relations with the outer world. The ideas which go outward are replaced by the ideas which move within, the baser qualities are worked out of the system and replaced by those which are higher, the lower emotions are crowded out by the nobler. Finally all ideas and emotions are stilled and by the perfect awakening of the intuitive reason which places mind in communion with spirit the whole man is ultimately placed at the service of the Infinite. All false self merges into the true Self. Man acquires likeness, union or identification with God. This is mukti, the state in which humanity thoroughly realises the freedom and immortality which are its eternal goal.
1.058 - The Argument, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
22. You will not find a people who believe in God and the Last Day, loving those who oppose God and His Messenger, even if they were their parents, or their children, or their siblings, or their close relatives. These—He has inscribed faith in their hearts, and has supported them with a spirit from Him. And He will admit them into Gardens beneath which rivers flow, wherein they will dwell forever. God is pleased with them, and they are pleased with Him. These are the partisans of God. Indeed, it is God’s partisans who are the successful.
1.059 - The Mobilization, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
22. He is God. There is no god but He, the Knower of secrets and declarations. He is the Compassionate, the Merciful.
23. He is God; besides Whom there is no god; the Sovereign, the Holy, the Peace-Giver, the Faith-Giver, the Overseer, the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the Overwhelming. Glory be to God, beyond what they associate.
24. He is God; the Creator, the Maker, the Designer. His are the Most Beautiful Names. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth glorifies Him. He is the Majestic, the Wise.
1.05 - Bhakti Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
1. God is love. Love is God. God is nectar. God is Prema.
2. Bhakti is supreme love towards God. It is love for loves sake. The devotee wants God and God alone. There is no selfish expectation here.
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
I will have nothing to do with a love which would be for God or in God. This is a love which pure love cannot abide; for pure love is God Himself.
St. Catherine of Genoa
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
"Christus est Deus, anima rationalis et caro" (Christ is God, a rational soul and
a body).
1.05 - On painstaking and true repentance which constitute the life of the holy convicts; and about the prison., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Most terrible and pitiful was the sight of their last hour. When his fellow-defaulters learnt that one of their number was ready to precede them by finishing his course, they gathered round him while his mind was still active and with thirst, with tears, with love, with a tender look and sad voice, shaking their heads, they would ask the dying man, and would say to him, burning with compassion: How are you, brother and fellow criminal? What will you say? What do you hope? What do you expect? Have you accomplished what you sought with such labour or not? Has the door been opened to you, or are you still under judgment? Have you attained your object, or not yet? Have you received any sort of assurance, or is your hope still uncertain? Have you obtained freedom, or is your thought clouded with doubt? Have you felt any enlightenment in your heart or is it still dark and ashamed? Has any inner voice said: Behold thou art made whole,1 or: Thy sins are forgiven thee, 2or: Thy faith has saved thee?3 Or, have you heard a voice like this: Let the sinners be turned into hell,4 and: Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness,5 and again: Let the wicked man be removed that he may not see the glory of the Lord?6 What, quite simply, can you say, brother? Tell us, we beg you, that we too may know in what state we shall be. For your time is already closed, and you will never find another opportunity. To this some of the dying would reply: Blessed is God who has not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me. 7Others again: Blessed is the Lord, who has not given us for a prey to their teeth.8 Others said dolefully: Will our soul pass through the impassable water9 of the spirits of the air?not having complete confidence, but looking to see what would happen in that rendering of accounts. Others still more dolefully would answer and say: Woe to the soul that has not kept its vow intact! In this hour, and in this only, it will know what is prepared for it.
But when I had seen and heard all this among them, I nearly despaired of myself, seeing my own indifference and comparing it with their suffering. For what a place and habitation theirs was! All dark, reeking, filthy and squalid. It was rightly called the prison and house of convicts. The very sight of the place was sufficient to teach all penitence and mourning. But what is hard and intolerable for others becomes easy and acceptable for those who have fallen away from virtue and spiritual riches. For the soul that has lost its former confidence; that has lost hope of dispassion; that has broken the seal of chastity; that has allowed its treasury of gifts to be robbed; that has become a stranger to divine consolation; that has rejected the commandment of the Lord; that has extinguished the beautiful fire of spiritual10 tears, and is wounded and pierced with sorrow by the remembrance of this will not only undertake the above-mentioned labours with all readiness, but will even devoutly resolve to kill itself
1.05 - On the Love of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The second cause of this love is that man loves his benefactor, and in truth his only Benefactor is God, for whatever kindness he receives from any fellow-creature is due to the immediate instigation of God. Whatever motive may have prompted the kindness he receives from another, whether the desire to gain religious merit or a good name, God is the Agent who set that motive to work.
The third cause is the love that is aroused by contemplation of the attributes of God, His power and wisdom, of which human power and wisdom are but the feeblest reflections. This love is akin to that we feel to the great and
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
the rational mind subordinates itself to faith in...in God. But what is God?
You have a chapter in the manuscript of your book titled The Divinity Of Interest. Your ideas are
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and, simultaneously, as effect upon imagination and behavior (inseparable pre-experimentally): is God as
substance and effect of substance. The prima materia is the precosmogonic egg, the dragon of chaos
1.062 - Friday, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
4. That is God’s grace, which He grants to whomever He wills. God is Possessor of limitless grace.
5. The example of those who were entrusted with the Torah, but then failed to uphold it, is like the donkey carrying works of literature. Miserable is the example of the people who denounce God’s revelations. God does not guide the wrongdoing people.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Happy is the man who, by continually effacing all images and through introversion and the lifting up of his mind to God, at last forgets and leaves behind all such hindrances. For by such means only, he operates inwardly, with his naked, pure, simple intellect and affections, about the most pure and simple object, God. Therefore see that thy whole exercise about God within thee may depend wholly and only on that naked intellect, affection and will. For indeed, this exercise cannot be discharged by any bodily organ, or by the external senses, but only by that which constitutes the essence of manunderstanding and love. If, therefore, thou desirest a safe stair and short path to arrive at the end of true bliss, then, with an intent mind, earnestly desire and aspire after continual cleanness of heart and purity of mind. Add to this a constant calm and tranquillity of the senses, and a recollecting of the affections of the heart, continually fixing them above. Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms, thou mayest always stand fast in the Lord within thee, to that degree as if thy soul had already entered the always present now of eternity that is, the state of the deity. To mount to God is to enter into oneself. For he who so mounts and enters and goes above and beyond himself, he truly mounts up to God. The mind must then raise itself above itself and say, He who above all I need is above all I know. And so carried into the darkness of the mind, gathering itself into that all-sufficient good, it learns to stay at home and with its whole affection it cleaves and becomes habitually fixed in the supreme good within. Thus continue, until thou becomest immutable and dost arrive at that true life which is God Himself, perpetually, without any vicissitude of space or time, reposing in that inward quiet and secret mansion of the deity.
Albertus Magnus (?)
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The relationship between moral action and spiritual knowledge is circular, as it were, and reciprocal. Selfless behaviour makes possible an accession of knowledge, and the accession of knowledge makes possible the performance of further and more genuinely selfless actions, which in their turn enhance the agents capacity for knowing. And so on, if all goes well and there is perfect docility and obedience, indefinitely. The process is summed up in a few lines of the Maitrayana Upanishad. A man undertakes right action (which includes, of course, right recollectedness and right meditation), and this enables him to catch a glimpse of the Self that underlies his separate individuality. Having seen his own self as the Self, he becomes selfless (and therefore acts selflessly) and in virtue of selflessness he is to be conceived as unconditioned. This is the highest mystery, betokening emancipation; through selflessness he has no part in pleasure or pain (in other words, he enters a state of non-attachment or holy indifference), but achieves absoluteness (or as Albertus Magnus phrases it, becomes immutable and arrives at that true life which is God Himself).
When mortification is perfect, its most characteristic fruit is simplicity.
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As I did not understand this reply, he went on to say, Those who are bound by obedience are usually subject to one superior only. But those who are themselves superiors have a wider field for obedience, even while they command; for if they bear in mind that it is God who has placed them over other men, and gives them the rule they have, they will exercise it out of obedience to God, and thus, even while commanding, they will obey. Moreover there is no position so high but that it is subject to a spiritual superior in what concerns the conscience and the soul. But there is a yet higher point of obedience to which all superiors may aspire, even that to which St. Paul alludes, when he says, Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all. It is by such universal obedience to everyone that we become all things to all men; and serving everyone for Our Lords sake, we esteem all to be our superiors.
In accordance with this rule, I have often observed how Franois de Sales treated everyone, even the most insignificant persons who approached him, as though he were the inferior, never repulsing anyone, never refusing to enter into conversation, to speak or to listen, never betraying the slightest sign of weariness, impatience and annoyance, however importunate or ill-timed the interruption. To those who asked him why he thus wasted his time his constant reply was, It is Gods will; it is what He requires of me; what more need I ask? While I am doing this, I am not required to do anything else. Gods Holy Will is the centre from which all we do must radiate; all else is mere weariness and excitement.
Jean Pierre Camus
1.06 - The Literal Qabalah, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
All these words are very much in accord with the general implication of the Messiah or Adept who comes with sanctity, for these words symbolize the facts which apper- tain to the state of him who is God-Man, the regenerated and illuminated Adept. For within his heart, his Soul is enkindled, and upon his brows the lissome light of the Silver
Star doth radiate - his " light shining before him " ; and above his head burns the thousand and one petalled lotus of the Sahasrara Chakra upon which the Shechinah has descended, and wherein Adonai doth disport himself with the Gods.
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Yeheshua Elohim, translated by Yeheshua (or Jesus) is God, also have the same numerical value, 412.
The correspondence of all this with the idea of Messiah is certainly most clear. Numerous other examples, dealing mainly with the Scriptures, have been worked out with laborious painstaking and ingenuity by the Qabalists. I doubt, however, that they are sufficiently important to warrant mention here.
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
that he alone is God of the earth, for which reason if it rains when
he does not wish it to do so, or is too hot, he shoots arrows at the
1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The word Go in the Vedas appears to bear two ordinary meanings, first, cow, secondly, ray, light or lustre. In the hymns of Madhuchchhanda it occurs 6 times, in five hymns. It occurs twice in the fourth hymn addressed to Indra in the first three verses which are all of them important for the discovery of the proper sense of the word as it is used in this passage. In the third verse which is the key to the passage, we find the prayer Then may we know (of) thy ultimate good thoughts. Then may we know. When? as a consequence to what? Obviously as a consequence to the result of the second verse, which I translate Come to us, O bringer out of the nectar (savana), thou the Soma-drinker; drink of the ecstatic Soma wine, a giver of illumination, enraptured or in better English bringing out the sense & association of the words, Come to us, O thou who art a distiller of the nectar, thou, the Soma-drinker, drink of the impetuously ecstatic Soma wine & be in the rapture of its intoxication our giver of illuminating light. Then may we know thy ultimate perceptions of the intellect. Pass us not byO come! Id lays emphasis on goda as the capacity in which, the purpose for which Indra is to drink. Revato and madah give the conditions under which Indra becomes a giver of illumination, the rushing & impetuous ecstasy produced by the Soma wine. It is then that men know the ultimate perceptions of mind, the highest realisations that can be given by the intellect when Indra, lord of mental force & power, is full of the ecstasy of the immortalising juice. This clear & easy sense being fixed for these two verses, we can return to the first & discover its connection with what follows. From sky to sky, its Rishi says to Indra, thou callest forth for uti, (for favour or kindness, as the ordinary interpretation would have it or for manifestation, expansion in being, as I suggest), the maker of beautiful forms, (who, being compared with a cow, must be some goddess), who is like one that gives milk freely to the milker of the cows, or, as I suggest, who milks freely to the milker of the rays. Undoubtedly, sudugham goduhe may be translated, a good milch cow to the milker of the cows; undoubtedly the poet had this idea in his mind when he wrote. The goddess is in the simile a milch cow, Indra is the milker. In each of the skies (the lower, middle & higher) he calls to her & makes her bring out the beautiful forms which she reveals to the drinker of the Soma. But it is impossible, when we take the connection with the two following verses, to avoid seeing that he is taking advantage of the double sense of go, and that while in the simile Indra is Goduh the cow-milker, in the subject of the comparison he is Goduh, the bringer out of the illumination, the flashes of higher light which produce the beautiful forms by the power of the goddess. The goddess herself must be one who is habitually associated with illumination, either Ila or Mahi. To anyone acquainted with the processes of Yoga, the whole passage at once becomes perfectly clear & true. The forms are those beautiful & myriad images of things in all the three worlds, the three akashas, dyavi dyavi, which appear to the eye of the Yogin when mental force in the Yoga is at its height, the impetuous & joyous activity (revato madah) of the mingled Ananda and Mahas fills the brain with Ojas and the highest intellectual perceptions, those akin to the supra-rational revelation, become not only possible, but easy, common & multitudinous. The passage describes the condition in which the mind, whether by drinking the material wine, the Karanajal of the Tantrics, or, as I hold, by feeding on the internal amrita, is raised to its highest exalted condition, before it is taken up into mahas or karanam, (whether in the state of Samadhi or in the waking state of the man who has realised his mahan atma, his ideal self), a state in which it is full of revealing thoughts & revealing visions which descend to it from the supra-rational level of the mahat, luminous & unerring, sunrita gomati mahi, where all is Truth & Light. Uti is the state of manifestation in Sat, in being, when that conscious existence which we are is stimulated into intensity & produces easily to the waking consciousness states of existence, movements of knowledge, outpourings of bliss which ordinarily it holds guha, in the secret parts of being.
The next passage to which I shall turn is the eighth verse of the eighth hymn, also to Indra, in which occurs the expression , a passage which when taken in the plain and ordinary sense of the epithets sheds a great light on the nature of Mahi. Sunrita means really true and is opposed to anrita, false for in the early Aryan speech su and s would equally signify, well, good, very; and the euphonic n is of a very ancient type of sandhioriginally, it was probably no more than a strong anuswartraces of which can still be found in Tamil; in the case of su this n euphonic seems to have been dropped after the movement of the literary Aryan tongue towards the modern principle of Sandhi,a movement the imperfect progress of which we see in the Vedas; but by that time the form an, composed of privative a and the euphonic n, had become a recognised alternative form to a and the omission of the n would have left the meaning of words very ambiguous; therefore n was preserved in the negative form, omitted from the affirmative where its omission caused no inconvenience,for to write gni instead of anagni would be confusing, but to write svagni instead of sunagni would create no confusion. In the pair sunrita and anrita it is probable that the usage had become so confirmed, so much of an almost technical phraseology, that confirmed habit prevailed over new rule. The second meaning of the word is auspicious, derived from the idea good or beneficent in its regular action. The Vedic scholars give a third sense, quick, active; but this is probably due to confusion with an originally distinct word derived from the root , to move on rapidly, to be strong, swift, active from which we have to dance, & strong and a number of other derivatives, for although ri means to go, it does not appear that rita was used in the sense of motion or swiftness. In any case our choice (apart from unnecessary ingenuities) lies here between auspicious and true. If we take Mahi in the sense of earth, the first is its simplest & most natural significance.We shall have then to translate the earth auspicious (or might it mean true in the sense observing the law of the seasons), wide-watered, full of cows becomes like a ripe branch to the giver. This gives a clear connected sense, although gross and pedestrian and open to the objection that it has no natural and inevitable connection with the preceding verses. My objection is that sunrita and gomati seem to me to have in the Veda a different and deeper sense and that the whole passage becomes not only ennobled in sense, but clearer & more connected in sense if we give them that deeper significance. Gomatir ushasah in Kutsas hymn to the Dawn is certainly the luminous dawns; Saraswati in the third hymn who as chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam shines pervading all the actions of the understanding, certainly does so because she is the impeller to high truths, the awakener to right thoughts, clear perceptions and not because she is the impeller of things auspiciousa phrase which would have no sense or appropriateness to the context. Mahi is one of the three goddesses Ila, Saraswati and Mahi who are described as tisro devir mayobhuvah, the three goddesses born of delight or Ananda, and her companions being goddesses of knowledge, children of Mahas, she also must be a goddess of knowledge, not the earth; the word mahi also bears the sense of knowledge, intellect, and Mahas undoubtedly refers in many passages to the vijnana or supra-rational level of consciousness, the fourth Vyahriti of the Taittiriya Upanishad. What then prevents us from taking Mahi, here as there, in the sense of the goddess of suprarational knowledge or, if taken objectively, the world of Mahat? Nothing, except a tradition born in classical times when mahi was the earth and the new Nature-worship theory. In this sense I shall take it. I translate the line For thus Mahi the true, manifest in action, luminous becomes like a ripe branch to the giveror, again in better English, For thus Mahi the perfect in truth, manifesting herself in action, full of illumination, becomes as a ripe branch to the giver. For the Yogin again the sense is clear. All things are contained in the Mahat, derived from the Mahat, depend on theMahat, but we here in the movement of the alpam, have not our desire, are blinded & confined, enjoy an imperfect, erroneous & usually baffled & futile activity. It is only when we regain the movement of the Mahat, the large & uncontracted consciousness that comes from rising to the infinite,it is only then that we escape from this limitation. She is perfect in truth, full of illumination; error and ignorance disappear; she manifests herself virapshi in a wide & various activity; our activities are enlarged, our desires are fulfilled. The connection with the preceding stanzas becomes clear. The Vritras, the great obstructors & upholders of limitation, are slain by the help of Indra, by the result of the yajnartham karma, by alliance with the armed gods in mighty internal battle; Indra, the god within our mental force, manifests himself as supreme and full of the nature of ideal truth from which his greatness weaponed with the vajra, vidyut or electric principle, derives (mahitwam astu vajrine). The mind, instinct with amrita, is then full of equality, samata; it drinks in the flood of activity of all kinds as the sea takes in the rivers. For the condition then results in which the ideal consciousness Mahi is like a ripe branch to the giver, when all powers & expansions of being at once (without obstacle as the Vritras are slain) become active in consciousness as masterful and effective knowledge or awareness (chit). This is the process prayed for by the poet. The whole hymn becomes a consecutive & intelligible whole, a single thought worked out logically & coherently and relating with perfect accuracy of ensemble & detail to one of the commonest experiences of Yogic fulfilment. In both these passages the faithful adherence to the intimations of language, Vedantic idea & Yogic experience have shed a flood of light, illuminating the obscurity of the Vedas, bringing coherence into the incoherence of the naturalistic explanation, close & strict logic, great depth of meaning with great simplicity of expression, and, as I shall show when I take up the final interpretation of the separate hymns, a rational meaning & reason of existence in that particular place for each word & phrase and a faultless & inevitable connection with what goes before & with what goes after. It is worth noticing that by the naturalistic interpretation one can indeed generally make out a meaning, often a clear or fluent sense for the separate verses of the Veda, but the ensemble of the hymn has almost always about it an air bizarre, artificial, incoherent, almost purposeless, frequently illogical and self-contradictoryas in Max Mullers translation of the 39th hymn, Kanwas to the Maruts,never straightforward, self-assured & easy. One would expect in these primitive writers,if they are primitive,crudeness of belief perhaps, but still plainness of expression and a simple development of thought. One finds instead everything tortuous, rugged, gnarled, obscure, great emptiness with great pretentiousness of mind, a labour of diction & development which seems to be striving towards great things & effecting a nullity. The Vedic singers, in the modern version, have nothing to say and do not know how to say it. I sacrifice, you drink, you are fine fellows, dont hurt me or let others hurt me, hurt my enemies, make me safe & comfortablethis is practically all that the ten Mandalas have to say to the gods & it is astonishing that they should be utterly at a loss how to say it intelligibly. A system which yields such results must have at its root some radical falsity, some cardinal error.
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
All this was written to me in 1936. Since then the work proceeded slowly and gradually until between 1939 and 1950 he succeeded to a great extent in achieving what he aimed at, as stated in the letter above. I am sure if he had more time at his disposal and could work by himself, he would have raised it to his ideal of perfect perfection. As it is, Savitri is, I suppose, the example par excellence of the Future Poetry he speaks of in his book The Future Poetry. Founder of the New Age, pioneer in the field of poetry, as in many others, he has left us an inexhaustible heritage of words, images, ideas, suggestions and hints about which we can only say here is God's plenty. Rameshwar Gupta very aptly calls it Eternity in Words.[5] Generation after generation will drink in its soul's nectar from this perennial source. The life span of the English language itself has increased a thousandfold. Shakespeare, it is said, increased the life span of the English language by centuries. Sri Aurobindo said about Shakespeare, "That kind of spear does not shake everywhere." Now we find another far greater that will shake the world to its very roots. If for no other reason, the English speaking races ought to be eternally grateful to the supreme poet of the grand epic for this miracle.
Sri Aurobindo quoting in The Future Poetry these lines of an Elizabethan poet,
1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
One in God. Despite this, however, so Athanasius tells us, each individual Person, in itself, is God.
Not so according to the Qabalah. Ain Soph is the
1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Rama, who is God Himself, was only two and a half cubits ahead of Lakshmana. But Lakshmana couldn't see Him because Sita stood between them. Lakshmana may be compared to the jiva, and Sita to maya. Man cannot see God on account of the barrier of maya. Just look: I am creating a barrier in front of my face with this towel. Now you can't see me, even though I am so near. Likewise, God is the nearest of all, but we cannot see Him on account of this covering of maya.
Maya creates upadhis
1.07 - The Process of Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Sayama is unseasonable and would be fruitless when a force, quality or tendency is in its infancy or vigour, before it has had the enjoyment and full activity which is its due. When once a thing is born it must have its youth, growth, enjoyment, life and final decay and death; when once an impetus has been given by Prakriti to her creation, she insists that the velocity shall spend itself by natural exhaustion before it shall cease. To arrest the growth or speed unseasonably by force is nigraha, which can be effective for a time but not in perpetuity. It is said in the Gita that all things are ruled by their nature, to their nature they return and nigraha or repression is fruitless. What happens then is that the thing untimely slain by violence is not really dead, but withdraws for a time into the Prakriti which sent it forth, gathers an immense force and returns with extraordinary violence ravening for the rightful enjoyment which it was denied. We see this in the attempts we make to get rid of our evil saskras or associations when we first tread the path of Yoga. If anger is a powerful element in our nature, we may put it down for a time by sheer force and call it self-control, but eventually unsatisfied Nature will get the better of us and the passion return upon us with astonishing force at an unexpected moment. There are only two ways by which we can effectively get the better of the passion which seeks to enslave us. One is by substitution, replacing it whenever it rises by the opposite quality, anger by thoughts of forgiveness, love or forbearance, lust by meditation on purity, pride by thoughts of humility and our own defects or nothingness; this is the method of Rajayoga, but it is a difficult, slow and uncertain method; for both the ancient traditions and the modern experience of Yoga show that men who had attained for long years the highest self-mastery have been suddenly surprised by a violent return of the thing they thought dead or for ever subject. Still this substitution, slow though it be, is one of the commonest methods of Nature and it is largely by this means, often unconsciously or half-consciously used, that the character of a man changes and develops from life to life or even in the bounds of a single lifetime. It does not destroy things in their seed and the seed which is not reduced to ashes by Yoga is always capable of sprouting again and growing into the complete and mighty tree. The second method is to give bhoga or enjoyment to the passion so as to get rid of it quickly. When it is satiated and surfeited by excessive enjoyment, it becomes weak and spent and a reaction ensues which establishes for a time the opposite force, tendency or quality. If that moment is seized by the Yogin for nigraha, the nigraha so repeated at every suitable opportunity becomes so far effective as to reduce the strength and vitality of the vtti sufficiently for the application of the final sayama. This method of enjoyment and reaction is also a favourite and universal method of Nature, but it is never complete in itself and, if applied to permanent forces or qualities, tends to establish a see-saw of opposite tendencies, extremely useful to the operations of Prakriti but from the point of view of self-mastery useless and inconclusive. It is only when this method is followed up by the use of sayama that it becomes effective. The Yogin regards the vtti merely as a play of Nature with which he is not concerned and of which he is merely the spectator; the anger, lust or pride is not his, it is the universal Mothers and she works it and stills it for her own purposes. When, however, the vtti is strong, mastering and unspent, this attitude cannot be maintained in sincerity and to try to hold it intellectually without sincerely feeling it is mithycra, false discipline or hypocrisy. It is only when it is somewhat exhausted by repeated enjoyment and coercion that Prakriti or Nature at the comm and of the soul or Purusha can really deal with her own creation. She deals with it first by vairgya in its crudest form of disgust, but this is too violent a feeling to be permanent; yet it leaves its mark behind in a deep-seated wish to be rid of its cause, which survives the return and temporary reign of the passion. Afterwards its return is viewed with impatience but without any acute feeling of intolerance. Finally supreme indifference or udsnat is gained and the final going out of the tendency by the ordinary process of Nature is watched in the true spirit of the sayam who has the knowledge that he is the witnessing soul and has only to dissociate himself from a phenomenon for it to cease. The highest stage leads either to mukti in the form of laya or disappearance, the vtti vanishing altogether and for good, or else to another kind of freedom when the soul knows that it is Gods ll and leaves it to Him whether He shall throw out the tendency or use it for His own purposes. This is the attitude of the Karmayogin who puts himself in Gods hands and does work for His sake only, knowing that it is Gods force that works in him. The result of that attitude of self-surrender is that the Lord of all takes charge and according to the promise of the Gita delivers His servant and lover from all sin and evil, the vttis working in the bodily machine without affecting the soul and working only when He raises them up for His purposes. This is nirliptat, the state of absolute freedom within the ll.
The law is the same for the mass as for the individual. The process of human evolution has been seen by the eye of inspired observation to be that of working out the tiger and the ape. The forces of cruelty, lust, mischievous destruction, pain-giving, folly, brutality, ignorance were once rampant in humanity, they had full enjoyment; then by the growth of religion and philosophy they began in periods of satiety such as the beginning of the Christian era in Europe to be partly replaced, partly put under control. As is the law of such things, they have always reverted again with greater or less virulence and sought with more or less success to re-establish themselves. Finally in the nineteenth century it seemed for a time as if some of these forces had, for a time at least, exhausted themselves and the hour for sayama and gradual dismissal from the evolution had really arrived. Such hopes always recur and in the end they are likely to bring about their own fulfilment, but before that happens another recoil is inevitable. We see plenty of signs of it in the reeling back into the beast which is in progress in Europe and America behind the fair outside of Science, progress, civilisation and humanitarianism, and we are likely to see more signs of it in the era that is coming upon us. A similar law holds in politics and society. The political evolution of the human race follows certain lines of which the most recent formula has been given in the watchwords of the French Revolution, freedom, equality and brotherhood. But the forces of the old world, the forces of despotism, the forces of traditional privilege and selfish exploitation, the forces of unfraternal strife and passionate self-regarding competition are always struggling to reseat themselves on the thrones of the earth. A determined movement of reaction is evident in many parts of the world and nowhere perhaps more than in England which was once one of the self-styled champions of progress and liberty. The attempt to go back to the old spirit is one of those necessary returns without which it cannot be so utterly exhausted as to be blotted out from the evolution. It rises only to be defeated and crushed again. On the other hand the force of the democratic tendency is not a force which is spent but one which has not yet arrived, not a force which has had the greater part of its enjoyment but one which is still vigorous, unsatisfied and eager for fulfilment. Every attempt to coerce it in the past reacted eventually on the coercing force and brought back the democratic spirit fierce, hungry and unsatisfied, joining to its fair motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the terrible addition or Death. It is not likely that the immediate future of the democratic tendency will satisfy the utmost dreams of the lover of liberty who seeks an anarchist freedom, or of the lover of equality who tries to establish a socialistic dead level, or of the lover of fraternity who dreams of a world-embracing communism. But some harmonisation of this great ideal is undoubtedly the immediate future of the human race. On the old forces of despotism, inequality and unbridled competition, after they have been once more overthrown, a process of gradual sayama will be performed by which what has remained of them will be regarded as the disappearing vestiges of a dead reality and without any further violent coercion be transformed slowly and steadily out of existence.
1.07 - The Psychic Center, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
and yet innumerably present in the heart of everything, as if it were one with all, for it is God within us.
To a seeing eye, this is how the psychic being appears: When you look at someone who is conscious of his soul and lives in his soul, says Mother, you feel you are going deep, deep down into the person, far,
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Away, then, with the fictions and workings of discursive reason, either for or against Christianity! They are only the wanton spirit of the mind, whilst ignorant of God and insensible of its own nature and condition. Death and life are the only things in question; life is God living and working in the soul; death is the soul living and working according to the sense and reason of bestial flesh and blood. Both this life and this death are of their own growth, growing from their own seed within us, not as busy reason talks and directs, but as the heart turns either to the one or to the other.
William Law
1.082 - The Shattering, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
19. The Day when no soul will avail another soul anything; and the decision on that Day is God’s.
1.08 - Introduction to Patanjalis Yoga Aphorisms, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Now the question arises: Is going back to God the higher state, or not? The philosophers of the Yoga school emphatically answer that it is. They say that man's present state is a degeneration. There is not one religion on the face of the earth which says that man is an improvement. The idea is that his beginning is perfect and pure, that he degenerates until he cannot degenerate further, and that there must come a time when he shoots upward again to complete the circle. The circle must be described. However low he may go, he must ultimately take the upward bend and go back to the original source, which is God. Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God. This is the method of putting it in the dualistic form. The monistic form is that man is God, and goes back to Him again. If our present state is the higher one, then why is there so much horror and misery, and why is there an end to it? If this is the higher state, why does it end? That which corrupts and degenerates cannot be the highest state. Why should it be so diabolical, so unsatisfying? It is only excusable, inasmuch as through it we are taking a higher groove; we have to pass through it in order to become regenerate again. Put a seed into the ground and it disintegrates, dissolves after a time, and out of that dissolution comes the splendid tree. Every soul must disintegrate to become God. So it follows that the sooner we get out of this state we call "man" the better for us. Is it by committing suicide that we get out of this state? Not at all. That will be making it worse. Torturing ourselves, or condemning the world, is not the way to get out. We have to pass through the Slough of Despond, and the sooner we are through, the better. It must always be remembered that man-state is not the highest state.
The really difficult part to understand is that this state, the Absolute, which has been called the highest, is not, as some fear, that of the zoophyte or of the stone. According to them, there are only two states of existence, one of the stone, and the other of thought. What right have they to limit existence to these two? Is there not something infinitely superior to thought? The vibrations of light, when they are very low, we do not see; when they become a little more intense, they become light to us; when they become still more intense, we do not see them it is dark to us. Is the darkness in the end the same darkness as in the beginning? Certainly not; they are different as the two poles. Is the thoughtlessness of the stone the same as the thoughtlessness of God? Certainly not. God does not think; He does not reason. Why should He? Is anything unknown to Him, that He should reason? The stone cannot reason; God does not. Such is the difference. These philosophers think it is awful if we go beyond thought; they find nothing beyond thought.
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
:::Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the larger experience of man discovers the identical nature [the same self or soul] appearing through them all. In all conversation between two persons tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.1
The soul is without persons, and the soul is grounded in God. "Impersonal," however, is not quite right, because it tends to imply a complete negation of the personal, whereas in higher development the personal is negated and preserved, or transcended and included: hence, "transpersonal." So I think it's very important, in all subsequent discussion, for us to remember that transpersonal means "personal plus," not "personal minus."
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Even if the soul were to see God insofar as he is God or insofar as God can be imagined or insofar as he is a thought, this same insufficiency would be there. But when all images of the soul are taken away and the soul [is] only the single One, then the pure being of the soul finds resting in itself the pure, formless Being of the divine. . . .
Neither space nor time touch this place. Nothing so much hinders the soul's understanding of God as time and space. Time and space are parts of the whole, but God is one. So if the soul is to recognize God, it must do so beyond space and time. For God is neither this nor that ["neti, neti"] in the way of the manifold things of earth, since God is one. If the soul wants to know God, it cannot do so in time. For so long as the soul is conscious of time or space or any other [object], it cannot know God.
--
The Self is known to everyone but not clearly. The Being is the Self. "I am" is the name of God. Of all the definitions of God, none is indeed so well put as the Biblical statement I AM THAT I AM. The Absolute Being is what is-It is the Self. It is God. Knowing the Self, God is known. In fact, God is none other than the Self.50
And here Ramana clearly means "Godhead," as he himself often pointed out: "Creation is by the entire Godhead breaking into God and Nature."51
1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"It is God alone", he said, "who has become all this. But in certain places-for instance, in a holy man-there is a greater manifestation than in others. You may say, there are wicked men also. That is true, even as there are tigers and lions; but one need not hug the 'tiger God'. One should keep away from him and salute him from a distance. Take water, for instance. Some water may be drunk, some may be used for worship, some for bathing, and some only for washing dishes."
Paths of knowledge and devotion
1.095 - The Fig, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
8. is God not the Wisest of the wise?
1.09 - ADVICE TO THE BRAHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Fully awakened souls are beyond virtue and vice. They realize that it is God who does everything.
Seeing God in everything
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"It is God alone who has become everything. But in man He manifests Himself the most. God is directly present in the man who has the pure heart of a child and who laughs and cries and dances and sings in divine ecstasy."
By this time Sri Ramakrishna had become better acquainted with Adhar, who related the cause of his friend's grief. The Master sang, as if to himself: To arms! To arms, O man! Death storms your house in battle array!
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"As long as a man has not realized God, he thinks he is free. It is God Himself who keeps this error in man. Otherwise sin would have multiplied. Man would not have been afraid of sin, and there would have been no punishment for it.
"But do you know the attitude of one who has realized God? He feels: 'I am the machine, and Thou, O Lord, art the Operator. I am the house and Thou art the Indweller. I am the chariot and Thou art the Driver. I move as Thou movest me; I speak as Thou makest me speak.'
1.09 - Of the signs by which it will be known that the spiritual person is walking along the way of this night and purgation of sense., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
7. In this sense we may understand that which the Spouse said to the Bride in the Songs, namely: 'Withdraw thine eyes from me, for they make me to soar aloft.'67 For in such a way does God bring the soul into this state, and by so different a path does He lead it that, if it desires to work with its faculties, it hinders the work which God is doing in it rather than aids it; whereas aforetime it was quite the contrary. The reason is that, in this state of contemplation, which the soul enters when it forsakes meditation for the state of the proficient, it is God Who is now working in the soul; He binds its interior faculties, and allows it not to cling to the understanding, nor to have delight in the will, nor to reason with the memory. For anything that the soul can do of its own accord at this time serves only, as we have said, to hinder inward peace and the work which God is accomplishing in the spirit by means of that aridity of sense. And this peace, being spiritual and delicate, performs a work which is quiet and delicate, solitary, productive of peace and satisfaction68 and far removed from all those earlier pleasures, which were very palpable and sensual. This is the peace which, says David, God speaks in the soul to the end that He may make it spiritual.69 And this leads us to the third point.
64Numbers xi, 5-6.
1.1.01 - Certitudes, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the deep there is a greater deep, in the heights a greater height. Sooner shall man arrive at the borders of infinity than at the fulness of his own being. For that being is infinity, is God - I aspire to infinite force, infinite knowledge, infinite bliss.
Can I attain it? Yes, but the nature of infinity is that it has no end. Say not therefore that I attain it. I become it. Only so can man attain God by becoming God.
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
All our goodness is a loan; God is the owner. God works and his work is God.
St. John of the Cross
1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Satchidananda alone is the Guru. If a man in the form of a guru awakens spiritual consciousness in you, then know for certain that it is God the Absolute who has assumed that human form for your sake. The guru is like a companion who leads you by the hand. After the realization of God, one loses the distinction between the guru and the disciple. 'That creates a very difficult situation; there the guru and the disciple do not see each other.' It was for this reason that Janaka said to Sukadeva, 'Give me first my teacher's fee if you want me to initiate you into the Knowledge of Brahman.' For the distinction between the teacher and the disciple ceases to exist after the disciple attains to Brahman. The relationship between them remains as long as the disciple does not see God."
It was dusk. Some of the Brahmo devotees said to the Master, "Perhaps it is time for your evening devotions."
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BRAHMO: "If it is God that makes me do everything, then I am not responsible for my sins."
MASTER (with a smile): "Yes, Duryodhana also said that. 'O Krishna, I do what Thou, seated in my heart, makest me do.' If a man has the firm conviction that God alone is the Doer and he is His instrument, then he cannot do anything sinful. He who has learnt to dance correctly never makes a false step. One cannot even believe in the existence of God until one's heart becomes pure."
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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."
A NEIGIHBOUR: "What kind of restlessness, sir?"
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Uddhava said to them: "Why are you so grief-stricken at Krishna's absence? He resides in all beings as their indwelling Spirit. He is God Himself, and nothing can exist without God." "But", said the gopis, "we do not understand all that. We can neither read nor write. We know only our Krishna of Vrindvan, who played with us here in so many ways." Uddhava said: "Krishna is God Himself. By meditating on Him, man escapes from birth and death in the world and attains liberation." The gopis said: "We do not understand big words like 'liberation'. We want to see the Krishna of our hearts."
The Master listened to the story from the Bhagavata with great attention and said at last, "Yes, the gopis were right."
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"There are two elements in this ecstatic love: 'I-ness' and 'my-ness'. Yaoda used to think: 'Who would look after Gopala if I did not? He will fall ill if I do not serve Him.' She did not look on Krishna as God. The other element is 'my-ness'. It means to look on God as one's own-'my Gopala'. Uddhava said to Yaoda: 'Mother, your Krishna is God Himself. He is the Lord of the Universe and not a common human being.' 'Oh!'
exclaimed Yaoda. 'I am not asking you about your Lord of the Universe. I want to know how my Gopala fares. Not the Lord of the Universe, but my Gopala.'
1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
raises some awkward theological questions. is God free to
prevent evil? If he is omnipotent, yes. Why then does he
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all is God, all is the Brahman, all is That, all is the Self, and
there cannot be anything outside or apart from That. If it
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of a good God, it is God himself in action. We, humans,
are God in action, for he is everything we are, can be and
1.112 - Monotheism, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
1. Say, “He is God, the One.
2. God, the Absolute.
1.11 - Delight of Existence - The Problem, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:Sachchidananda, it may be reasoned, is God, is a conscious Being who is the author of existence; how then can God have created a world in which He inflicts suffering on His creatures, sanctions pain, permits evil? God being All-Good, who created pain and evil? If we say that pain is a trial and an ordeal, we do not solve the moral problem, we arrive at an immoral or nonmoral God, - an excellent world-mechanist perhaps, a cunning psychologist, but not a God of Good and of Love whom we can worship, only a God of Might to whose law we must submit or whose caprice we may hope to propitiate. For one who invents torture as a means of test or ordeal, stands convicted either of deliberate cruelty or of moral insensibility and, if a moral being at all, is inferior to the highest instinct of his own creatures. And if to escape this moral difficulty, we say that pain is an inevitable result and natural punishment of moral evil, - an explanation which will not even square with the facts of life unless we admit the theory of Karma and rebirth by which the soul suffers now for antenatal sins in other bodies, - we still do not escape the very root of the ethical problem, - who created or why or whence was created that moral evil which entails the punishment of pain and suffering? And seeing that moral evil is in reality a form of mental disease or ignorance, who or what created this law or inevitable connection which punishes a mental disease or act of ignorance by a recoil so terrible, by tortures often so extreme and monstrous? The inexorable law of Karma is irreconcilable with a supreme moral and personal Deity, and therefore the clear logic of Buddha denied the existence of any free and all-governing personal God; all personality he declared to be a creation of ignorance and subject to Karma.
8:In truth, the difficulty thus sharply presented arises only if we assume the existence of an extra-cosmic personal God, not Himself the universe, one who has created good and evil, pain and suffering for His creatures, but Himself stands above and unaffected by them, watching, ruling, doing His will with a suffering and struggling world or, if not doing His will, if allowing the world to be driven by an inexorable law, unhelped by Him or inefficiently helped, then not God, not omnipotent, not allgood and all-loving. On no theory of an extra-cosmic moral God, can evil and suffering be explained, - the creation of evil and suffering, - except by an unsatisfactory subterfuge which avoids the question at issue instead of answering it or a plain or implied Manicheanism which practically annuls the Godhead in attempting to justify its ways or excuse its works. But such a God is not the Vedantic Sachchidananda. Sachchidananda of the Vedanta is one existence without a second; all that is, is He. If then evil and suffering exist, it is He that bears the evil and suffering in the creature in whom He has embodied Himself. The problem then changes entirely. The question is no longer how came God to create for His creatures a suffering and evil of which He is Himself incapable and therefore immune, but how came the sole and infinite Existence-Consciousness-Bliss to admit into itself that which is not bliss, that which seems to be its positive negation.
1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The nature of a mans being determines the nature of his actions; and the nature of his being comes to manifestation first of all in the mind. What he craves and thinks, what he believes and feelsthis is, so to speak, the Logos, by whose agency an individuals fundamental character performs its creative acts. These acts will be beautiful and morally good if the being is God-centred, bad and ugly if it is centred in the personal self. The stone, says Eckhart, performs its work without ceasing, day and night. For even when it is not actually falling the stone has weight. A mans being is his potential energy directed towards or away from God; and it is by this potential energy that he will be judged as good or evil for it is possible, in the language of the Gospel, to commit adultery and murder in the heart, even while remaining blameless in action.
Covetousness, envy, pride and wrath are the four elements of self, or nature, or hell, all of them inseparable from it. And the reason why it must be thus, and cannot be otherwise, is because the natural life of the creature is brought forth for the participation of some high supernatural good in the Creator. But it could have no fitness, no possible capacity to receive such good, unless it was in itself both an extremity of want and an extremity of desire for some high good. When therefore this natural life is deprived of or fallen from God, it can be nothing else in itself but an extremity of want continually desiring, and an extremity of desire continually wanting. And because it is that, its whole life can be nothing else but a plague and torment of covetousness, envy, pride and wrath, all which is precisely nature, self, or hell. Now covetousness, pride and envy are not three different things, but only three different names for the restless workings of one and the same will or desire. Wrath, which is a fourth birth from these three, can have no existence till one or all of these three are contradicted, or have something done to them that is contrary to their will. These four properties generate their own torment. They have no outward cause, nor any inward power of altering themselves. And therefore all self or nature must be in this state until some supernatural good comes into it, or gets a birth in it. Whilst man indeed lives among the vanities of time, his covetousness, envy, pride and wrath may be in a tolerable state, may hold him to a mixture of peace and trouble; they may have at times their gratifications as well as their torments. But when death has put an end to the vanity of all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of the supernatural Word and Spirit of God, must find itself unavoidably devoured or shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride and wrath.
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In all the possibility of things there is and can be but one happiness and one misery. The one misery is nature and creature left to itself, the one happiness is the Life, the Light, the Spirit of God, manifested in nature and creature. This is the true meaning of the words of Our Lord: There is but one that is good, and that is God.
William Law
1.11 - Oneness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and Godnature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices. . . . We erect a God of Love and Mercy, a God of good, a God just, righteous and virtuous according to our own moral conceptions of justice, virtue and righteousness, and all the rest, we say, is not He or is not His, but was made by some diabolical Power which He suffered for some reason to work out its wicked will or by some dark Ahriman counterbalancing our gracious Ormuzd, or was even the fault of selfish and sinful man who has spoiled what was made originally perfect by God . . . . We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in His being and that so He has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children,
Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra136 forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only 136
1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
For if the Avatar is God, how can he suffer? The double na-
ture of the Avatar, at the same time consciously divine and
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to Hazra): "Yes, all one's confusion comes to an end if one only realizes that it is God who manifests Himself as the atheist and the believer, the good and the bad, the real and the unreal; that it is He who is present in waking and in sleep; and that He is beyond all these.
"There was a farmer to whom an only son was born when he was rather advanced in age. As the child grew up, his parents became very fond of him. One day the farmer was out working in the fields, when a neighbour told him that his son was dangerously ill-indeed, at the point of death. Returning home he found the boy dead. His wife wept bitterly, but his own eyes remained dry. Sadly the wife said to her ncighbours, 'Such a son has passed away, and he hasn't even one tear to shed!' After a long while the farmer said to his wife: 'Do you know why I am not crying? Last night I dreamt I had become a king, and the father of seven princes. These princes were beautiful as well as virtuous. They grew in stature and acquired wisdom and knowledge in the various arts.
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M: "Sir, nowadays I like to think of God without form. But I am also beginning to understand that it is God alone who manifests Himself through different forms."
MASTER: "Will you take me in a carriage some day to Mati Seal's garden house at Belgharia? When you throw puffed rice into the lake there, the fish come to the surface and eat it. Ah! I feel so happy to see them sport in the water. That will awaken your spiritual consciousness too. You will feel as if the fish of the human soul were playing in the Ocean of Satchidananda. In the same manner, I go into an ecstatic mood when I stand in a big meadow. I feel like a fish released from a bowl into a lake.
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Ramprasad sang in one of his songs, 'This world is a framework of illusion.' Another devotee gave the reply, 'This very world is a mansion of mirth.' As the saying goes, 'The devotee of Kali, free while living, is full of Eternal Bliss.' The bhakta sees that He who is God has also become maya. Again, He Himself has become the universe and all its living beings. The bhakta sees God, maya, the universe, and the living beings as one. Some devotees see everything as Rma: it is Rma alone who has become everything. Some see everything as Radha and Krishna. To them it is Krishna alone who has become the twenty-four cosmic principles. It is like seeing everything green through green glasses.
"But the Bhakti scriptures admit that the manifestations of Power are different in different beings. It is Rma who has become everything, no doubt; but He manifests Himself more in some than in others. There is one kind of manifestation of Rma in the Incarnation of God, and another in men. Even the Incarnations are conscious of the body. Embodiment is due to maya. Rma wept for Sita. But the Incarnation of God puts a bondage over His eyes by His own will, like children playing blindman's buff. The children stop playing when their mother calls them. It is quite different, however, with the ordinary man. The cloth his eyes are bandaged with is fastened to his back with screws, as it were. There are eight fetters. Shame, hatred, fear, caste, lineage, good conduct, grief, and secretiveness-these are the eight fetters. And they cannot be unfastened without the help of a guru.
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"Do you know the significance of virtue and vice? A paramahamsa sees that it is God who gives us evil tendencies as well as good tendencies. Haven't you noticed that there are both sweet and bitter fruits? Some trees give sweet fruit, and some bitter or sour.
God has made the mango-tree, which yields sweet fruit, and also the hog plum, which yields sour fruit."
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"It is God Himself who has kept you in the world to set an example to men. You may resolve in your mind a thousand times to renounce the world, but you will not succeed.
God has given you such a nature that you must perform your worldly duties.
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The superior devotee says: 'It is God Himself who has become everything; whatever I see is only a form of God. It is He alone who has become maya, the universe, and all living beings. Nothing exists but God.' "
VAISHNAVA: "Does anyone ever attain that state of mind?"
1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
self-presentation to our essential psychological consciousness of a supreme Being who is the source of our existence and of whom all that is mutable or immutable is the manifestation. He is God, the Divine, the Purushottama. To Him we offer everything as a sacrifice; into His hands we give up our actions; in His existence we live and move; unified with Him in our nature and with all existence in Him, we become one soul and one power of being with Him and with all beings; with His supreme reality we identify and unite our self-being. By works done for sacrifice, eliminating desire, we arrive at knowledge and at the soul's possession of itself; by works done in self-knowledge and Godknowledge we are liberated into the unity, peace and joy of the divine existence.
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The soul, which for some inexplicable reason has come into this Matter, or becomes this Matter, evolves slowly over the ages; it grows, takes on an individuality through its senses, its mind, its experiences; more and more it recalls its lost or submerged divinity, its consciousness within its force, finally to recognize itself and return to its Origin, transcendent and nirvanic, or cosmic, depending upon its destiny and its inclinations. Is this whole saga, then, only a long and laborious trajectory from the Divine to the Divine through the dark purgatory of Matter? But why the purgatory? Why this Matter? Why ever enter it at all if it is only to get out? Some will say that the cosmic or nirvanic beatitudes of the end are well worth all the grievances of the journey. That may be so, but meanwhile the earth suffers; we may be beaming up there in supreme bliss, but torture, illness and death are still proliferating and thriving down here; our cosmic consciousness makes not an atom of difference in the earth's evolution, and our Nirvana still less. Some will say that every human being should do the same and awaken from his state of error all right, but again why the earth if it is merely to awaken from the error of the earth? We speak of "the fall," of Adam and Eve, of some absurd original sin which ruined what God had made perfect in the beginning yet everything is God!
The serpent of paradise, if every there were one, was God, and so were Satan and his Pomp and his Works. There is nothing but Him!
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
29 "[The will] is the nobler in that it plunges into unknowing, which is God."
Cf. ibid., p. 351. Cf. also n. 16, supra: ayvuxria.
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God-image is God himself, or that the self takes the place of
God.
--
power no longer proceeds from God, rather is God born from
the soul. The mythologem of the young dying god has taken on
1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
We should mark and know of a very truth that all manner of virtue and goodness, and even that Eternal Good, which is God Himself, can never make a man virtuous, good or happy so long as it is outside the soul, that is, so long as the man is holding converse with outward things through his senses and reason, and doth not withdraw into himself and learn to understand his own life, who and what he is.
Theologia Germanica
1.13 - The Divine Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9:This power was known to the Vedic seers by the name of Maya. Maya meant for them the power of infinite consciousness to comprehend, contain in itself and measure out, that is to say, to form - for form is delimitation - Name and Shape out of the vast illimitable Truth of infinite existence. It is by Maya that static truth of essential being becomes ordered truth of active being - or, to put it in more metaphysical language, out of the supreme being in which all is all without barrier of separative consciousness emerges the phenomenal being in which all is in each and each is in all for the play of existence with existence, consciousness with consciousness, force with force, delight with delight. This play of all in each and each in all is concealed at first from us by the mental play or the illusion of Maya which persuades each that he is in all but not all in him and that he is in all as a separated being not as a being always inseparably one with the rest of existence. Afterwards we have to emerge from this error into the supramental play or the truth of Maya where the "each" and the "all" coexist in the inseparable unity of the one truth and the multiple symbol. The lower, present and deluding mental Maya has first to be embraced, then to be overcome; for it is God's play with division and darkness and limitation, desire and strife and suffering in which He subjects Himself to the Force that has come out of Himself and by her obscure suffers Himself to be obscured. That other Maya concealed by this mental has to be overpassed, then embraced; for it is God's play of the infinities of existence, the splendours of knowledge, the glories of force mastered and the ecstasies of love illimitable where He emerges out of the hold of Force, holds her instead and fulfils in her illumined that for which she went out from Him at the first.
10:This distinction between the lower and the higher Maya is the link in thought and in cosmic Fact which the pessimistic and illusionist philosophies miss or neglect. To them the mental Maya, or perhaps an Overmind, is the creatrix of the world, and a world created by mental Maya would indeed be an inexplicable paradox and a fixed yet floating nightmare of conscious existence which could neither be classed as an illusion nor as a reality. We have to see that the mind is only an intermediate term between the creative governing knowledge and the soul imprisoned in its works. Sachchidananda, involved by one of His lower movements in the self-oblivious absorption of Force that is lost in the form of her own workings, returns towards Himself out of the self-oblivion; Mind is only one of His instruments in the descent and the ascent. It is an instrument of the descending creation, not the secret creatrix, - a transitional stage in the ascent, not our high original source and the consummate term of cosmic existence.
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M: "Yes, sir. You said that God Himself has become everything-the universe and all living beings. Even he who meditates is God."
MASTER: "What is more, one cannot meditate unless God wills it. One can meditate when God makes it possible for one to do so. What do you say?"
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M: "Sir, if it is God Himself who has become everything, then why do people have so many different feelings?"
MASTER: "Undoubtedly God exists in all beings as the All-pervading Spirit, but the manifestations of His Power are different in different beings. In some places there is a manifestation of the power of Knowledge; in others, of the power of ignorance. In some places there is a greater manifestation of power than in others. Don't you see that among human beings there are cheats and gamblers, to say nothing of men who are like tigers. I think of them as the 'cheat God', the 'tiger God'."
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"According to one school of thought, God cannot be seen. Who sees whom? is God outside you, that you can see Him? One sees only oneself. Having once entered the 'black waters' of the ocean, the ship does not come back and so cannot describe what it experiences."
M: "It is true, sir. As you say, having climbed to the top of the monument, one becomes unaware of what is below: horses and carriages, men and women, houses, shops and offices, and so on."
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"Once I heard a story. A man heard the comm and of God that he should see his Ideal Deity in a ram. He at once believed it. It is God who exists in all beings.
"A guru said to his disciple, 'It is Rma alone who resides in all bodies.' The disciple was a man of great faith. One day a dog snatched a piece of bread from him and started to run away. He ran after the dog, with a jar of butter in his hand, and cried again and again: 'O Rma, stand still a minute. That bread hasn't been buttered.'
1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Therefore one should not show disrespect to any religion or religious opinion. It is God alone who is called Satchidananda Brahman in the Vedas, Satchidananda Krishna in the Puranas, and Satchidananda iva in the Tantras. It is one and the same Satchidananda.
"There are different sects of Vaishnavas. That which is called Brahman in the Vedas is called lekh-Niranjan by one Vaishnava sect. 'lekh' means That which cannot be pointed out or perceived by the sense-organs. According to this sect, Radha and Krishna are only two bubbles of the lekh.
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"When your heart becomes pure, then you will realize that it is God who makes us perform such rites as the Purascharana.
Thou workest Thine own work; men only call it theirs.
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
If we want to find the Goal, we must set aside our Manichaeism and come to a realistic appreciation of what Sri Aurobindo called "the dark half of truth."233 Human knowledge, he wrote, throws a shadow that conceals half the globe of truth from its own sunlight. . . . The rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking utter truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth.234 If we eliminate everything that is wrong and God knows this world is full of mistakes and impurities we may well arrive at some truth, but it will be an empty truth. The practical approach to the Secret is, first of all, to realize, and then to see that each thing in this world, even the most grotesque or far-wandering error,235 contains a spark of truth beneath its mask, because everything here is God advancing toward Himself; there is nothing outside Him.
For error is really a half truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal.236 If a single thing in this world were totally wrong, the whole world would be totally wrong. Thus, if the seeker sets out with this premise a positive premise and ascends step by step, each time accepting to take the corresponding step downward in order to free the same light237 hidden under every mask, in every element, even in the darkest mud, the most grotesque mistake or sordid evil, he will gradually see everything becoming clearer before his eyes, not only in theory but tangibly, and he will discover not only summits but abysses of Truth.238 He will realize that his Foe was a most diligent helper, most concerned with ensuring the perfect effectiveness of his realization, first, because each battle has increased his strength, and then because each fall has compelled him to free the truth below instead of escaping alone to empty summits. Ultimately, he will understand that his particular burden was the very burden of our Mother the Earth, also striving toward her share of light. The Princes of Darkness are already saved! They are at work, the scrupulous exactors of an all-inclusive Truth, rather than a truth that excludes everything:
1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
tion is accomplished is God himself, the (Platonic) world-soul
and man's own wholeness. It is, therefore, another counterpart
1.15 - LAST VISIT TO KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The soul through which God sports is endowed with His special power. The landlord may reside in any part of his estate, but he is generally to be found in a particular drawing-room. The devotee is God's drawing-room. God loves to sport in the heart of His devotee. It is there that His special power is manifest.
Signs of a true devotee
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MASTER: "As long as one has not realized God, one should renounce the world, following the process of 'Neti, neti.' But he who has attained God knows that it is God who has become all this. Then he sees that God, maya, living beings, and the universe form one whole. God includes the universe and its living beings. Suppose you have separated the shell, flesh, and seeds of a bel-fruit and someone asks you the weight of the fruit. Will you leave aside the shell and the seeds, and weigh only the flesh? Not at all. To know the real weight of the fruit, you must weigh the whole of it-the shell, the flesh, and the seeds. Only then can you tell its real weight. The shell may be likened to the universe, and the seeds to living beings. While one is engaged in discrimination one says to oneself that the universe and the living beings are non-Self and unsubstantial. At that time one thinks of the flesh alone as the substance, and the shell and seeds as unsubstantial. But after discrimination is over, one feels that all three parts of the fruit together form a unity. Then one further realizes that the stuff that has produced the flesh of the fruit has also produced the shell and seeds. To know the real nature of the bel-fruit one must know all three.
"It is the process of evolution and involution. The world, after its dissolution, remains involved in God; and God, at the time of creation, evolves as the world. Butter goes with buttermilk, and buttermilk goes with butter. If there is a thing called buttermilk, then butter also exists; and if there is a thing called butter, then buttermilk also exists.
1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The idea of the Avatar is not indeed indispensable to its scheme, but it comes in naturally into it as a perfectly rational and logical conception. For all here is God, is the Spirit or Self-existence, is Brahman, ekamevadvityam, - there is nothing else, nothing other and different from it and there can be nothing else, can be nothing other and different from it; Nature is and can be nothing else than a power of the divine consciousness; all beings are and can be nothing else than inner and outer, subjective and objective soul-forms and bodily forms of the divine being which exist in or result from the power of its consciousness. Far from the Infinite being unable to take on finiteness, the whole universe is nothing else but that; we can see, look as we may, nothing else at all in the whole wide world we inhabit. Far from the Spirit being incapable of form or disdaining to connect itself with form of matter or mind and to assume a limited nature or a body, all here is nothing but that, the world exists only by that connection, that assumption. Far from the world being a mechanism of law with no soul or spirit intervening in the movement of its forces or the action of its minds and bodies, - only some original indifferent Spirit passively existing somewhere outside or above it, - the whole world and every particle of it is on the contrary nothing but the divine force in action and that divine force determines and governs its every movement, inhabits its every form, possesses here every soul and mind; all is in God and in him moves and has its being, in all he is, acts and displays his being; every creature is the disguised Narayana.
Far from the unborn being unable to assume birth, all beings
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Science, a power of will, an intelligence at work; but that power is the power of will and intelligence of the Self, Spirit or Godhead within it, it is not the separate, self-derived will or idea of the mechanical cell or atom. This universal will and intelligence, involved, develops its powers from form to form, and on earth at least it is in man that it draws nearest to the full divine and there first becomes, even in the outward intelligence in the form, obscurely conscious of its divinity. But still there too there is a limitation, there is that imperfection of the manifestation which prevents the lower forms from having the self-knowledge of their identity with the Divine. For in each limited being the limitation of the phenomenal action is accompanied by a limitation also of the phenomenal consciousness which defines the nature of the being and makes the inner difference between creature and creature. The Divine works behind indeed and governs its special manifestation through this outer and imperfect consciousness and will, but is itself secret in the cavern, guhayam, as the Veda puts it, or as the Gita expresses it, "In the heart of all existences the Lord abides turning all existences as if mounted on a machine by Maya." This secret working of the Lord hidden in the heart from the egoistic nature-consciousness through which he works, is God's universal method with creatures. Why then should we
154
1.16 - The Process of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
E SEE that the mystery of the divine Incarnation in man, the assumption by the Godhead of the human type and the human nature, is in the view of the Gita only the other side of the eternal mystery of human birth itself which is always in its essence, though not in its phenomenal appearance, even such a miraculous assumption. The eternal and universal self of every human being is God; even his personal self is a part of the Godhead, mamaivamsah., - not a fraction or fragment, surely, since we cannot think of God as broken up into little pieces, but a partial consciousness of the one Consciousness, a partial power of the one Power, a partial enjoyment of world-being by the one and universal Delight of being, and therefore in manifestation or, as we say, in Nature a limited and finite being of the one infinite and illimitable Being. The stamp of that limitation is an ignorance by which he forgets, not only the Godhead from which he came forth, but the Godhead which is always within him, there living in the secret heart of his own nature, there burning like a veiled Fire on the inner altar in his own temple-house of human consciousness.
He is ignorant because there is upon the eyes of his soul and all its organs the seal of that Nature, Prakriti, Maya, by which he has been put forth into manifestation out of God's eternal being; she has minted him like a coin out of the precious metal of the divine substance, but overlaid with a strong coating of the alloy of her phenomenal qualities, stamped with her own stamp and mark of animal humanity, and although the secret sign of the Godhead is there, it is at first indistinguishable and always with difficulty decipherable, not to be really discovered except by that initiation into the mystery of our own being which distinguishes a Godward from an earthward humanity.
1.16 - The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The first mark of the suprarational, when it intervenes to take up any portion of our being, is the growth of absolute ideals; and since life is Being and Force and the divine state of being is unity and the Divine in force is God as Power taking possession, the absolute vital ideals must be of that nature. Nowhere are they wanting. If we take the domestic and social life of man, we find hints of them there in several forms; but we need only note, however imperfect and dim the present shapes, the strivings of love at its own self-finding, its reachings towards its absolute the absolute love of man and woman, the absolute maternal or paternal, filial or fraternal love, the love of friends, the love of comrades, love of country, love of humanity. These ideals of which the poets have sung so persistently, are not a mere glamour and illusion, however the egoisms and discords of our instinctive, infrarational way of living may seem to contradict them. Always crossed by imperfection or opposite vital movements, they are still divine possibilities and can be made a first means of our growth into a spiritual unity of being with being. Certain religious disciplines have understood this truth, have taken up these relations boldly and applied them to our souls communion with God; and by a converse process they can, lifted out of their present social and physical formulas, become for us, not the poor earthly things they are now, but deep and beautiful and wonderful movements of God in man fulfilling himself in life. All the economic development of life itself takes on at its end the appearance of an attempt to get rid of the animal squalor and bareness which is what obligatory poverty really means, and to give to man the divine ease and leisure of the gods. It is pursued in a wrong way, no doubt, and with many ugly circumstances, but still the ideal is darkly there. Politics itself, that apparent game of strife and deceit and charlatanism, can be a large field of absolute idealisms. What of patriotism,never mind the often ugly instincts from which it starts and which it still obstinately preserves,but in its aspects of worship, self-giving, discipline, self-sacrifice? The great political ideals of man, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, apart from the selfishnesses they serve and the rational and practical justifications with which they arm themselves, have had for their soul an ideal, some half-seen truth of the absolute and have carried with them a worship, a loyalty, a loss of self in the idea which have made men ready to suffer and die for them. War and strife themselves have been schools of heroism; they have preserved the heroic in man, they have created the katriys tyaktajvit of the Sanskrit epic phrase, the men of power and courage who have abandoned their bodily life for a cause; for without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead; courage, energy and strength are among the very first principles of the divine nature in action. All this great vital, political, economic life of man with its two powers of competition and cooperation is stumbling blindly forward towards some realisation of power and unity,in two divine directions, therefore. For the Divine in life is Power possessed of self-mastery, but also of mastery of His world, and man and mankind too move towards conquest of their world, their environment. And again the Divine in fulfilment here is and must be oneness, and the ideal of human unity however dim and far off is coming slowly into sight. The competitive nation-units are feeling, at times, however feebly as yet, the call to cast themselves into a greater unified cooperative life of the human race.
No doubt all is still moving, however touched by dim lights from above, on a lower half rational half infrarational level, clumsily, coarsely, in ignorance of itself and as yet with little nobility of motive. All is being worked out very crudely by the confused clash of life-forces and the guidance of ideas that are half-lights of the intellect, and the means proposed are too mechanical and the aims too material; they miss the truth that the outer life-result can only endure if it is founded on inner realities. But so life in the past has moved always and must at first move. For life organises itself at first round the ego-motive and the instinct of ego-expansion is the earliest means by which men have come into contact with each other; the struggle for possession has been the first crude means towards union, the aggressive assertion of the smaller self the first step towards a growth into the larger self. All has been therefore a half-ordered confusion of the struggle for life corrected by the need and instinct of association, a struggle of individuals, clans, tribes, parties, nations, ideas, civilisations, cultures, ideals, religions, each affirming itself, each compelled into contact, association, strife with the others. For while Nature imposes the ego as a veil behind which she labours out the individual manifestation of the spirit, she also puts a compulsion on it to grow in being until it can at last expand or merge into a larger self in which it meets, harmonises with itself, comprehends in its own consciousness, becomes one with the rest of existence. To assist in this growth Life-Nature throws up in itself ego-enlarging, ego-exceeding, even ego-destroying instincts and movements which combat and correct the smaller self-affirming instincts and movements,she enforces on her human instrument impulses of love, sympathy, self-denial, self-effacement, self-sacrifice, altruism, the drive towards universality in mind and heart and life, glimmerings of an obscure unanimism that has not yet found thoroughly its own true light and motive-power. Because of this obscurity these powers, unable to affirm their own absolute, to take the lead or dominate, obliged to compromise with the demands of the ego, even to become themselves a form of egoism, are impotent also to bring harmony and transformation to life. Instead of peace they seem to bring rather a sword; for they increase the number and tension of conflict of the unreconciled forces, ideas, impulses of which the individual human consciousness and the life of the collectivity are the arena. The ideal and practical reason of man labours to find amidst all this the right law of life and action; it strives by a rule of moderation and accommodation, by selection and rejection or by the dominance of some chosen ideas or powers to reduce things to harmony, to do consciously what Nature through natural selection and instinct has achieved in her animal kinds, an automatically ordered and settled form and norm of their existence. But the order, the structure arrived at by the reason is always partial, precarious and temporary. It is disturbed by a pull from below and a pull from above. For these powers that life throws up to help towards the growth into a larger self, a wider being, are already reflections of something that is beyond reason, seeds of the spiritual, the absolute. There is the pressure on human life of an Infinite which will not allow it to rest too long in any formulation,not at least until it has delivered out of itself that which shall be its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment.
1.16 - The Triple Status of Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:We have started with the assertion of all existence as one Being whose essential nature is Consciousness, one Consciousness whose active nature is Force or Will; and this Being is Delight, this Consciousness is Delight, this Force or Will is Delight. Eternal and inalienable Bliss of Existence, Bliss of Consciousness, Bliss of Force or Will whether concentrated in itself and at rest or active and creative, this is God and this is ourselves in our essential, our non-phenomenal being. Concentrated in itself, it possesses or rather is the essential, eternal, inalienable Bliss; active and creative, it possesses or rather becomes the delight of the play of existence, the play of consciousness, the play of force and will. That play is the universe and that delight is the sole cause, motive and object of cosmic existence. The Divine Consciousness possesses that play and delight eternally and inalienably; our essential being, our real self which is concealed from us by the false self or mental ego, also enjoys that play and delight eternally and inalienably and cannot indeed do otherwise since it is one in being with the Divine Consciousness. If we aspire therefore to a divine life, we cannot attain to it by any other way than by unveiling this veiled self in us, by mounting from our present status in the false self or mental ego to a higher status in the true self, the Atman, by entering into that unity with the Divine Consciousness which something superconscient in us always enjoys, - otherwise we could not exist, - but which our conscious mentality has forfeited.
3:But when we thus assert this unity of Sachchidananda on the one hand and this divided mentality on the other, we posit two opposite entities one of which must be false if the other is to be held as true, one of which must be abolished if the other is to be enjoyed. Yet it is in the mind and its form of life and body that we exist on earth and, if we must abolish the consciousness of mind, life and body in order to reach the one Existence, Consciousness and Bliss, then a divine life here is impossible. We must abandon cosmic existence utterly as an illusion in order to enjoy or re-become the Transcendent. From this solution there is no escape unless there be an intermediate link between the two which can explain them to each other and establish between them such a relation as will make it possible for us to realise the one Existence, Consciousness, Delight in the mould of the mind, life and body.
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to M.): "Why should the universe be unreal? That is a speculation of the philosophers. After realizing God, one sees that it is God Himself who has become the universe and all living beings.
Divine Mother is the Universal Consciousness
1.17 - M. AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "The formless God is real, and equally real is God with form. Nangta used to instruct me about the nature of Satchidananda Brahman. He would say that It is like an infinite ocean-water everywhere, to the right, left, above, and below. Water enveloped in water. It is the Water of the Great Cause, motionless. Waves spring up when It becomes active. Its activities are creation, preservation and destruction.
"Again, he ued to say that Brahman is where reason comes to stop. There is the instance of camphor. Nothing remains after it is burnt-not even a trace of ash.
--
"It is God alone who incarnates Himself as man to teach people the ways of love and knowledge. Well, what do you think of me?
"Once my father went to Gaya. There Raghuvir said to him in a dream, 'I shall be born as your son.' Thereupon my father said to Him: 'O Lord, I am a poor brahmin. How shall I be able to serve You?' 'Don't worry about it', Raghuvir replied. 'It will be taken care of.'
--
"Before you came here, you didn't know who you were. Now you will know. It is God who, as the guru, makes one know.
"Nangta told the story of the tigress and the herd of goats. Once a tigress attacked a herd of goats. A hunter saw her from a distance and killed her. The tigress was pregnant and gave birth to a cub as she expired. The cub began to grow in the company of the goats. At first it was nursed by the she-goats, and later on, as it grew bigger, it began to eat grass and bleat like the goats. Gradually the cub became a big tiger; but still it ate grass and bleated. When atached by other animals, it would run away, like the goats. One day a fierce-looking tiger attacked the herd. It was amazed to see a tiger in the herd eating grass and running away with the goats at its approach.
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
but now Matter is taking its revenge. We called Matter crude, and crude it is. As long as we tolerate this Imbalance, there is no hope for the earth. We will only continue to swing from one extreme to another, both equally false from material enjoyment to spiritual austerity without ever finding any true fulfillment. The ancient intellectual cultures of Europe ended in disruptive doubt and sceptical impotence, the pieties of Asia in stagnation and decline. 400 401 We need both the vigor of Matter and the fresh waters of the Spirit, while our materialisms are stupefying us and our beliefs are merely the reverse of our disbeliefs. The Atheist is God playing at hide-and-seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.402
If we wish to remedy this Imbalance for everything that lacks balance in our bodies, our societies, or our cosmic cycles eventually perishes we must become lucid. We have lost the Password; such is the bottom line of our era. We have replaced true power with devices,
1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MUSICIAN: "It is God alone who is both the 'instrument' and the 'cause'. Duryodhana said to Krishna: 'O Lord, Thou art seated in my heart. I act as Thou makest me act.'"
MASTER (with a smile): "Yes, that is true. It is God alone who acts through us. He is the Doer, undoubtedly, and man is His instrument. But it is also true that an action cannot fail to produce its result. Your stomach will certainly burn if you eat hot chilli. It is God who has ordained that chilli will burn your stomach. If you commit a sin, you must bear its fruit. But one who has attained perfection, realized God, cannot commit sin. An expert singer cannot sing a false note. A man with a trained voice sings the notes correctly: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni."
The meal was ready. The Master and the devotees went to the inner court, where they were treated to a generous feast.
--
"It is God alone who does everything. You may say that in that case man may commit sin. But that is not true. If a man is firmly convinced that God alone is the Doer and that he himself is nothing, then he will never make a false step.
Meaning of free will
"It is God alone who has planted in man's mind what the 'Englishman' calls free will.
People who have not realized God would become engaged in more and more sinful actions if God had not planted in them the notion of free will. Sin would have increased if God had not made the sinner feel that he alone was responsible for his sin.
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
(To Manilal) "It is God Himself who is sporting in the form of man. It is He alone, who has become Mani Mallick. The Sikhs teach: 'Thou art Satchidananda.'
"Now and then man catches a glimpse of his real Self and becomes speechless with wonder. At such times he swims in an ocean of joy. It is like suddenly meeting a dear relative. (To M.) The other day as I was coming here in a carriage, I felt like that at the sight of Baburam. When iva realizes His own Self, He dances about in joy exclaiming, 'What am I! What am I!'
--
Process of negation and affirmation & God Himself has become everything MASTER: "God alone is the Master, and again, He is the Servant. This attitude indicates Perfect Knowledge. At first one discriminates, 'Not this, not this', and feels that God alone is real and all else is illusory. Afterwards the same person finds that it is God Himself who has become all this-the universe, maya, and the living beings. First negation and then affirmation. This is the view held by the Puranas. A vilwa-fruit, for instance, includes flesh, seeds, and shell. You get the flesh by discarding the shell and seeds. But if you want to know the weight of the fruit, you cannot find it if you discard the shell and seeds. Just so, one should attain Sarchidananda by negating the universe and its living beings. But after the attainment of Satchidananda one finds that Satchidananda Itself has become the universe and the living beings. It is of one substance that the flesh and the shell and seeds are made, just like butter and buttermilk.
The world does not exist apart from God
"It may be asked, 'How has Satchidananda become so hard?' This earth does indeed feel very hard to the touch. The answer is that blood and semen are thin liquids, and yet out of them comes such a big creature as man. Everything is possible for God. First of all reach the indivisible Satchidananda, and then, coming down, look at the universe. You will then find that everything is Its manifestation. It is God alone who has become everything. The world by no means exists apart from Him.
"All elements finally merge in ka. Again, at the time of creation, ka evolves into mahat and mahat into Ahamkra. In this way the whole world-system is evolved. It is the process of involution and evolution. A devotee of God accepts everything. He accepts the universe and its created beings as well as the indivisible Satchidananda.
--
"There are three classes of devotees. The lowest one says, 'God is up there.' That is, he points to heaven. The mediocre devotee says that God dwells in the heart as the 'Inner Controller'. But the highest devotee says: 'God alone has become everything. All that we perceive is so many forms of God.' Narendra used to make fun of me and say: 'Yes, God has become all! Then a pot is God, a cup is God!' (Laughter.)
Vision of God destroys doubts
--
TRAILOKYA: "Ah! How beautiful is God's creation!"
MASTER: "Oh no, it is not that. It was revealed to me in a flash. I didn't calculate about it. It was shown to me that each plant was a bouquet adorning the Universal Form of God. That was the end of my plucking flowers. I look on man in just the same way.
When I see a man, I see that it is God Himself who walks on earth, as it were, rocking to and fro, like a pillow floating on the waves. The pillow moves with the waves. It bobs up and down.
"The body has, indeed, only a momentary existence. God alone is real. Now the body exists, and now it does not. Years ago, when I had been suffering terribly from indigestion, Hriday said to me, 'Do ask the Mother to cure you.' I felt ashamed to speak to Her about my illness. I said to Her:
--
MASTER: "It is said in the scriptures that only those who have been charitable in their former births get money in this life. But to tell you the truth, this world is God's maya.
And there are many confusing things in this realm of maya. One cannot comprehend them.
1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"It is God Himself who has become the physicians. Therefore one must believe all of them. But one cannot have faith in them if one thinks of them as mere men.
"Sambhu was fearfully delirious. Dr. Sarvadhikari said that the delirium was due to the strong medicine. Haladhri asked the doctor to feel his pulse. The doctor said: 'Let me see your eyes. Oh, it is an enlargement of the spleen!' Haladhri said he had nothing of the sort. But Dr. Madhu gives good medicine."
--
"Since this injury to my arm a change has been coming over my mind. I have been feeling much inclined to the Naralila. It is God Himself who plays about as human beings. If God can be worshipped through a clay image, then why not through a man?
"Once a merchant was shipwrecked. He floated to the shore of Ceylon, where Bibhishana was the king of the monsters. Bibhishana ordered his servants to bring the merchant to him. At the sight of him Bibhishana was overwhelmed with joy and said: 'Ah! He looks like my Rma. The same human form!' He adorned the merchant with robes and jewels, and worshipped him. When I first heard this story, I felt such joy that I cannot describe it.
--
MASTER: "He gathers honey from various flowers. (To Ram, Nityagopal, and the others) If a devotee believes one hundred per cent that his Chosen Ideal is God, then he attains God and sees Him.
"People of bygone generations had tremendous faith. What faith Haladhri's father had!
1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"I find a change, coming over me. Years ago Vaishnavcharan said to me, 'One attains Perfect Knowledge when one sees God in man.' Now I see that it is God alone who is moving about in various forms: as a holy man, as a cheat, as a villain. Therefore I say, 'Narayana in the guise of the Sdhu, Narayana in the guise of the cheat, Narayana in the guise of the villain, Narayana in the guise of the lecher.'
"Now my problem is how I can feed all of you. I want to feed everyone. So I keep one at a time with me and feed him."
1.22 - ADVICE TO AN ACTOR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
God, the scripture, and the devotee are identical "Keshab conducted the prayer that evening at the bathing-ghat on the river. After the worship I said to him: 'It is God who manifests Himself, in one aspect, as the scriptures; therefore one should worship the sacred books, such as the Vedas, the Puranas, and the Tantras. In another aspect He has become the devotee. The heart of the devotee is God's drawing-room. One can easily find one's master in the drawing-room. Therefore, by worshipping His devotee, one worships God Himself.'
"Keshab and his followers listened to my words with great attention. It was a full-moon night. The sky was flooded with light. We were seated in the open court at the top of the stairs leading to the river. I said, 'Now let us all chant, "Bhagavata-Bhakta-Bhagavan." '
--
"In the game of hide-and-seek one must touch the 'granny' in order to be free. But the 'granny' is never pleased if she is touched at the very outset. It is God's wish that the play should continue for some time. Then-
Out of a hundred thousand kites, at best but one or two break free;
--
MASTER (smiling): "Please tell me who you are. God alone has become all this-my, the universe, living beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles. 'As the snake I bite, and as the charmer I cure.' It is God Himself who has become both vidy and avidy. He remains deluded by the my of avidy, ignorance. Again, with the help of the guru, He is cured by the my of vidy, Knowledge.
"Ignorance, Knowledge, and Perfect Wisdom. The Jnni sees that God alone exists and is the Doer, that He creates, preserves, and destroys. The vijnni sees that it is God who has become all this.
"After attaining mahabhava and prema one realizes that nothing exists but God. Bhakti pales before bhava. Bhva ripens into mahabhava and prema.
1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The idea of responsibility! Goodness gracious! Men like Sankaracharya and Sukadeva kept the 'ego of Knowledge'. It is not for man to show compassion, but for God. One feels compassion as long as one has the 'ego of Knowledge'. And it is God Himself who has become the 'ego of Knowledge'.
Supreme power of dyakti in the relative world "You may feel a thousand times that it is all magic; but you are still under the control of the Divine Mother. You cannot escape Her. You are not free. You must do what She makes you do. A man attains Brahmajnana only when it is given to him by the dyakti, the Divine Mother. Then alone does he see the whole thing as magic; otherwise not.
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: How is God to be seen?
M.: Within. If the mind is turned inward God manifests as inner consciousness.
--
D.: is God only a mental conception?
M.: Yes. Do you think of God in sleep?
--
So then, each animal has got some remarkable instinct. Kambar's learning is not to be wondered at because it is God's will, as it is in the other cases.
Talk 268.
--
D.: Buddha, when asked if there is the ego, was silent; when asked if there is no ego, he was silent; asked if there is God, he was silent; asked if there is no God, he was silent. Silence was his answer for all these. Mahayana and Hinayana schools have both misinterpreted his silence because they say that he was an atheist. If he was an atheist, why should he have spoken of nirvana, of births and deaths, of karma, reincarnations and dharma? His interpreters are wrong. Is it not so?
M.: You are right.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: How is God to be seen?
M.: Within. If the mind is turned inward God manifests as inner consciousness.
--
D.: is God only a mental conception?
M.: Yes. Do you think of God in sleep?
--
So then, each animal has got some remarkable instinct. Kambars learning is not to be wondered at because it is Gods will, as it is in the other cases.
Talk 268.
--
D.: Buddha, when asked if there is the ego, was silent; when asked if there is no ego, he was silent; asked if there is God, he was silent; asked if there is no God, he was silent. Silence was his answer for all these. Mahayana and Hinayana schools have both misinterpreted his silence because they say that he was an atheist. If he was an atheist, why should he have spoken of nirvana, of births and deaths, of karma, reincarnations and dharma? His interpreters are wrong. Is it not so?
M.: You are right.
--
Then she referred to an article in Harijan where it is said that everything is God and nothing belongs to the individual, and so on.
M.: Everything, the individual, God and all are only the Self.
--
M.: I am that I am. I am is God - not thinking, I am God. Realise
I am and do not think I am. Know I am God - it is said, and not Think I am God.
--
D.: is God apart from the Self?
M.: The Self is God. I AM is God. I am the Self, O Gudakesa!
(Ahamatma Gudakesa).
--
The devotee thinks that he is a man and expects relationship as between bodies. But the Guru, who is God or Self incarnate, works from within, helps the man to see the error of his ways, guides him in the right path until he realises the Self within.
After such realisation the disciple feels, I was so worried before. I am after all the Self, the same as before but not affected by anything; where is he who was miserable? He is nowhere to be seen.
1.26 - FESTIVAL AT ADHARS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "What shall I say? I clearly see that it is God Himself who has assumed all these human forms. Therefore I cannot take anybody to task."
HAZRA: "Narendra is again involved in a lawsuit."
--
MASTER: "No. I have not kept it. It is God Himself who has left it in me. Can you tell me how I appear in the state of samdhi?"
M: "As you said a little while ago, you see the form of God when your mind rises to the 'sixth plane'. When you speak after that, your mind comes down to the 'fifth plane'."
MASTER: "It is God who does all these things. I do not know anything."
M: "That is why you attract people so much. Sir, I have a question to ask. There are two opinions in the scriptures. According to one, Purana, Krishna is Chidatma, the Absolute, and Radha is Chitakti, Its Divine Power; but according to another, Krishna Himself is Kli; the Primordial Energy."
1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Above nature are chastity, freedom from anger, humility, prayer, vigil, fasting, constant compunction. Some of them men teach us, others angels, and of others the Teacher and Giver is God the Word Himself.
When confronted by evils, we should choose the least. For instance, it often happens that we are standing at prayer, and brothers come to us, and we have to do one of two things: either to stop praying, or to grieve the brother by leaving him without an answer. Love is greater than prayer, because prayer is a particular virtue but love embraces all the virtues.
--
There are virtues, and there are mothers of virtues. So a wise man strives rather to obtain the latter. The Teacher of the mother-virtues is God Himself through His own action, while there are plenty of teachers for the daughter-virtues.
Let us beware lest we compensate austerity in taking food by excess of sleep, and vice versa; for such behaviour is characteristic of foolish men.
1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (smiling): "You are Jnan. Then why should you have ajnan, ignorance? Oh, I understand. Where there is knowledge there is also ignorance. The sage Vasishtha was endowed with great knowledge and still he wept at the death of his sons. Therefore I ask you to go beyond both knowledge and ignorance. The thorn of ignorance has pierced the sole of a man's foot. He needs the thorn of knowledge to take it out. Afterwards he throws away both thorns. The Jnni says, 'This world is a "framework of illusion".' But he who is beyond both knowledge and ignorance describes it as a 'mansion of mirth'. He sees that it is God Himself who has become the universe, all living beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles.
Living in the world after realization of God
--
MASTER (smiling): "It is God Himself who sports in the world as both vidy and avidy.
Therefore I salute both. It is written in the Chandi: 'The Divine Mother is the good fortune of the blessed and the ill fortune of the unlucky.' (To Bhavanath) Is that mentioned in the Vishnu Purana?"
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Then she referred to an article in Harijan where it is said that everything is God and nothing belongs to the individual, and so on.
M.: Everything, the individual, God and all are only the Self.
--
M.: "I am that I am." "I am" is God - not thinking, "I am God". Realise
"I am" and do not think I am. "Know I am God" - it is said, and not "Think I am God."
--
D.: is God apart from the Self?
M.: The Self is God. "I AM" is God. "I am the Self, O Gudakesa!"
(Ahamatma Gudakesa).
--
The devotee thinks that he is a man and expects relationship as between bodies. But the Guru, who is God or Self incarnate, works from within, helps the man to see the error of his ways, guides him in the right path until he realises the Self within.
After such realisation the disciple feels, "I was so worried before. I am after all the Self, the same as before but not affected by anything; where is he who was miserable? He is nowhere to be seen."
1.3.1.02 - The Object of Our Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Buddha and Shankara supposed the world to be radically false and miserable; therefore escape from the world was to them the only wisdom. But this world is Brahman, the world is God, the world is Satyam, the world is Ananda; it is our misreading of the world through mental egoism that is a falsehood and our wrong relation with God in the world that is a misery. There is no other falsity and no other cause of sorrow.
God created the world in Himself through Maya; but the
1.33 - Treats of our great need that the Lord should give us what we ask in these words of the Paternoster Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
that it is God's will for him to moderate his eating so that others, who are dying of hunger, shall
have at least bread to eat, he will discover a thousand reasons for not understanding this but
interpreting it in his own way. If one tells a person who speaks ill of others that it is God's will that
he should love his neighbour as himself, 117he will lose patience and no amount of reasoning will
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Swamiji, I went up the hill to see the asramas in which you lived in your youth. I have also read your life. May I know if you did not then feel that there is God to whom you should pray or that you should practise something in order to reach this state?
M.: Read the life and you will understand. Jnana and ajnana are of the same degree of truth; that is, both are imagined by the ignorant; that is not true from the standpoint of the Jnani.
--
I AM that I-AM. Be still and know that I-AM God. so I-AM is God.
You know that you are. You cannot deny your existence at any moment of time. For you must be there in order to deny it. This
--
D.: But we cannot help it. It is Gods work.
M.: If that is Gods work then the other part is your work, is that so?
D.: It is man-made distinction.
--
Once Sri Bhagavan said, Desire constitutes maya, and desirelessness is God.
Talk 538.
--
But there are others who are not so easily convinced of the truth of the bare statement. They ask: Who is God? What is His nature?
Where is He? How can He be realised? and so on.
1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Swamiji, I went up the hill to see the asramas in which you lived in your youth. I have also read your life. May I know if you did not then feel that there is God to whom you should pray or that you should practise something in order to reach this state?
M.: Read the life and you will understand. Jnana and ajnana are of the same degree of truth; that is, both are imagined by the ignorant; that is not true from the standpoint of the Jnani.
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
But there are others who are not so easily convinced of the truth of the bare statement. They ask: "Who is God? What is His nature?
Where is He? How can He be realised?" and so on.
1.67 - Faith, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"Crowley is God, then? How did you know?"
"Why, it's Captain Fuller that told us so."
1.72 - Education, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Since Time and Space are the conditions of Mind, these two Studies are fundamental. Yet there remaineth Causality, which is the Root of the Actions and Reactions of Nature. This also shalt thou seek ardently, that thou mayest comprehend the Variety of the Universe, its Harmony and its Beauty, with the Knowledge of that which compelleth it. Yet this is not equal to the former two in Power to reveal thee to thyself; and its first Use is to instruct thee in the true Method of Advancement in Knowledge, which is, fundamentally, the observation of the Like and Unlike. Also, it shall arouse in thee the Ecstasy of Wonder; and it shall bring thee to a proper Understanding of Art Magick. For our Magick is but one of the Powers that lie within us undeveloped and unanalysed; and it is by the Method of Science that it must be made clear, and available to the Use of Man. Is not this a Gift beyond Price, the Fruit of a Tree not only of Knowledge but of Life? For there is that in Man which is God, and there is that also which is Dust; and by our Magick we shall make these twain one Flesh, to the Obtaining of the Empery of the Universe.
I suppose I might have put it more concisely: Classics is itself Initiation, being the key of the Unconscious; Mathematics is the Art of manipulating the Ruach, and of raising it to Neschamah; and Science is co-terminous with Magick.
1951-04-07 - Origin of Evil - Misery- its cause, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"What is God, after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden."
Thoughts and Glimpses, Cent. Vol. 16, p. 381
1953-07-15, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are exceptions, as there are exceptions to all rules; however I cannot say that money goes spontaneously, freely, without effort there where useful things will be done most. No. The maximum of goodwill is to give money for something which one understands well (which is also easy to understand), to build a hospital, for example, or to open a crche for little children. These are all works of goodwill that men understand. But if they are told that we want to change the human consciousness, we want to create a new world, oh! the first thing they say is: Pardon me! Do not speak of God, for if it is God who is doing the work, well, it is God who will give you the means for it and you have no need of our help. I have heard people saying: If you represent the Divine upon earth you can do whatever you like; there is no need for us to give you anything. And how many among you are free from that idea (an aftertaste of that idea): the Divine is all-powerful, therefore, the Divine can do whatever he likes?
That is the first argument, that is the theory. The Divine is all-powerful, he can do whatever he likes; therefore he does not need anybodys help. And if you push your idea sufficiently far, you will see that if the Divine is truly all-powerful in this world and does always whatever he wants, well, I tell you, he is the greatest monster in the universe! Because One who is all-powerful and makes the world such as it is, looking with a smile at people suffering and miserable, and finding that all right, I would call a monster. It was the kind of thing I used to think about when I was five. I used to tell myself: It is not possible, what is taught there is not true! Now, as you have a little more philosophical mind, I shall teach you how to come out of the difficulty. But, first of all, you must understand that that idea is a childish idea. I simply call on your common sense. You make of your Divine a person, because that way you understand him better. You make of him a person. And then this person has organised something (the earth, it is too big, it is difficult to understandtake anything else) and then this thing the Divine has organised with the full power to do exactly as he likes. And in this thing that he has made with the full power to do as he likesthere is ignorance, stupidity, bad will, fear, jealousy, pride, wickedness, and also suffering, illness, grief, all the pains; and a set of people who cannot say that they have perhaps more than a few minutes of happiness in the whole day and the rest of it is a neutral condition, passing by like a thing thats dead and you call that a creation! I call it something like a hell! And one who would make that deliberately and not only make it but look at it and say: Ah! it is very good, as it is narrated in some religious books, that after having made the world such as it is, the seventh day he looked at it and was extremely satisfied with his work and he rested. Well, that never! I do not call that God. Or otherwise, follow Anatole France and say that God is a demiurge and the most frightful of all beings.
1955-10-12 - The problem of transformation - Evolution, man and superman - Awakening need of a higher good - Sri Aurobindo and earths history - Setting foot on the new path - The true reality of the universe - the new race - ..., #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, not the being itself: the image he has manufactured after the event, and of which he has made a a political action. Excuse me, it is God made in mans image who has been put in temples and adored, for purely political reasons. But those who were in relation with those who manifested in themselves the Divine Reality, they have been very badly received, always. History is there to prove it. Now, you see, men dont throw stones any more, except at the poor Negroes sometimes in America; they dont burn people alive any more, it is no longer the fashion but they imprison, that happens. And in fact (I have said this already several times), what saves those who are not altogether men, is that today the world is in such a state of ignorance that people dont even believe any more in the reality of their power. But certainly if the governments believed in the reality of their power, they would have a bad time of it
But let us hope that I should say then as I said for men that the superman will be quite kind. Well, let us hope for the superman that he will know how to defend himself, that he will have some means of defence, not too visible but sufficient.
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 it is absolutely true. There is in Thoughts and Glimpses also a sentence like this where I think he uses the word God instead of the Infinite. But the idea is the same that it is God who has chosen you, the Divine who has chosen you. And that is why you run after Him!
And this is what gives thats what he says, doesnt he?this is what gives that kind of confidence, of certitude, precisely, that one is predestined; and if one is predestined, even if there are mountains of difficulties, what can that matter since one is sure to succeed! This gives you an indomitable courage to face all difficulties and a patience that stands all trials: you are sure to succeed.
1955-11-23 - One reality, multiple manifestations - Integral Yoga, approach by all paths - The supreme man and the divine man - Miracles and the logic of events, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the other case, it is God who has entered a human body. What is human is only the body, the outer form, not the consciousness. In the first case it is the human consciousness which has attained its perfection.
Thats all?
1956-02-22 - Strong immobility of an immortal spirit - Equality of soul - Is all an expression of the divine Will? - Loosening the knot of action - Using experience as a cloak to cover excesses - Sincerity, a rare virtue, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if everyone had the good sense to say, Things are as they should be; one dies because one has to die, and one is ill because one has to be ill, one is separated from those one loves because one has to be separated, and then, etc and one is in poverty because one has to be poor, one, you know, there is no end to it. Well, if completely, totally, one says, Things are as they should be, it makes no sense to grieve or to revolt, its foolish! Ah! one must be logical. So we say that misery begins with the will to make things better than they are. Why do you not want to be ill when you are ill? You are much more ill when, being ill, you dont want to be ill, than if you tell yourself, All right, it is Gods Will, I accept my illness! At least you are quiet, that helps you to recover, perhaps. And poor peoplewhy do they want to be rich? And people who lose their children or their parentswhy dont they want it to be like that? If everybody wanted things to be as they are, everybody would be happy.
This is one point of view. Only it happens that perhapsperhaps, the divine Will is not quite like that. And perhaps it is as in that storyyou all know the story of the elephant and its mahout?the elephant, its mahout and the Brahmin on the road who refused to get out of the way of the elephant and, when the mahout told him, Go away, he replied, No, God in me wants to stay here, and the mahout answered, Pardon me, but God in me tells you to go away!
1957-01-02 - Can one go out of time and space? - Not a crucified but a glorified body - Individual effort and the new force, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.
Thoughts and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, pp. 380-81
1957-03-27 - If only humanity consented to be spiritualised, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Wherefore he selected or made such a material, when he had all infinite possibility to choose from? Because of his divine Idea which saw before it not only beauty and sweetness and purity, but also force and will and greatness. Despise not force, nor hate it for the ugliness of some of its faces, nor think that love only is God. All perfect perfection must have something in it of the stuff of the hero and even of the Titan. But the greatest force is born out of the greatest difficulty.
Thoughts and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, pp. 392-93
1960 04 20, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If everything is Gods will, what is the use of personal will?
In the universe and more particularly upon earth everything is part of the divine plan executed by Nature and everything is necessary for its fulfilment. Personal will is one of Natures means of action and indispensable for her working. So personal will is in a way part of Gods will.
1960 05 11, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
32The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.
What does God playing at hide and seek with Himself mean?
In the game of hide and seek, one person hides and the other seeks. So God hides from the atheist who says, God? I do not see him, I do not know where he is; therefore he does not exist. But the atheist does not know that God is also in him; and therefore it is God who is denying his own existence. Isnt that a game? And yet a day will come when he will be brought face to face with himself and will be obliged to recognise that he exists.
The believer thinks himself very superior to the atheist, but all that he has been able to seize of God is His shadow and he clings to this shadow imagining that it is God himself. For if he truly knew God, he would know that God is all things and in everything; then he would cease to think himself superior to anybody.
11 May 1960
1961 05 22?, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Does God ever really fail? is God ever really weak? Or is it simply a game?1
It is not like that! That is precisely the distortion in the Western attitude as opposed to the attitude of the Gita. It is extremely difficult for the Western mind to understand in a living and concrete manner that everything is the Divine.
1965 12 25, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
113Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is Gods play in His creature.
114Selfishness is the only sin, meanness the only vice, hatred the only criminality. All else can easily be turned into good, but these are obstinate resisters of deity.
1967-05-24.2 - Defining God, #Notes On The Way, #unset, #Zen
the Divine. Someone asks me: "And what is God?" It is about a
text of Sri Aurobindo. Here it is:
1969 08 09, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
130Fate is Gods foreknowledge outside Space and Time of all that in Space and Time shall yet happen; what He has foreseen, Power and Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.
If everything is foreseen, what is the role of human aspiration and effort?
1969 08 19, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
135All disease is a means towards some new joy of health, all evil and pain a tuning of Nature for some more intense bliss and good, all death an opening on widest immortality. Why and how this should be so, is Gods secret which only the soul purified of egoism can penetrate.
136Why is thy mind or thy body in pain? Because thy soul behind the veil wishes for the pain or takes delight in it; but if thou wiltand perseverest in thy willthou canst impose the spirits law of unmixed delight on thy lower members.
1969 09 23, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
158What was Ramakrishna? God manifest in a human being; but behind there is God in His infinite impersonality and His universal Personality. And what was Vivekananda? A radiant glance from the eye of Shiva; but behind him is the divine gaze from which he came and Shiva himself and Brahma and Vishnu and OM all-exceeding.
Will the Avatars still need to take birth on earth once the supramental consciousness is firmly established?
1969 10 17, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
175Because a good man dies or fails and the evil live and triumph, is God therefore evil? I do not see the logic of the consequence. I must first be convinced that death and failure are evil; I sometimes think that when they come, they are our supreme momentary good. But we are the fools of our hearts and nerves and argue that what they do not like or desire, must of course be an evil!
But what about those who are unlucky and always fail in everything they do?
1969 11 27?, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
208Beatitude is Gods aim for humanity; get this supreme good for thyself first that thou mayst distribute it entirely to thy fellow-beings.
209He who acquires for himself alone, acquires ill though he may call it heaven and virtue.
1969 12 17, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
236Our country is God the Mother; speak not evil of her unless thou canst do it with love and tenderness.
237Men are false to their country for their own profit; yet they go on thinking they have a right to turn in horror from the matricide.
1970 01 01, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
264When thou hast the command, care only to fulfil it. The rest is Gods will and arrangement which men call chance and luck and fortune.
It is obviously in the silence of the mind that it is possible to perceive the Divine Command. The true way of knowing is above words and thoughts.
1970 03 03, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
364This is not according to my Shastra1 or my Science, say the men of rule, formalists. Fool! is God then only a book that there should be nothing true and good except what is written?
365By which standard shall I walk, the word that God speaks to me, saying, This is My will, O my servant, or the rules that men who are dead, have written? Nay, if I have to fear and obey any, I will fear and obey God rather and not the pages of a book or the frown of a Pandit.
--
369The Vedanta is Gods lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage and egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely and surely in a high and eternal sunlight.
Strive exclusively to hear the comm and of the Supreme Lord, and if you are perfectly sincere, He will find a way to make you hear and recognise this comm and with certainty.
1.anon - Others have told me, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Two-thirds of him is God, one-third of him is human.
The Great Goddess [Aruru] designed(?) the model for his body,
1.anon - The Seven Evil Spirits, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
[3] Adad is God of storm, Anu of heaven, Enlil of storm, Sin of the Moon, Shamash of the Sun, and Ishtar of love and fruitfulness. The meaning of Massu is unknown; but Ea was long the chief ruler.
[4] The evil gods darken the moon by an eclipse, Shamash helping them by withdrawing his light from the moon, and Adad by sending cloudy weather.
1.at - The Higher Pantheism, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Original Language English The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains -- Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him? Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why; For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel 'I am I'? Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom, Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom. Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet -- Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice. Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool; And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this Vision -- were it not He? [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.dd - So priceless is the birth, O brother, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by K. N. Upadhyaya So priceless is the birth, O brother, That in it, the Supreme Lord can be met. The human body is the Door to salvation. If the meeting is not accomplished while alive, If the contact is not made while alive, If the Lord of the universe is not found while alive, Then one is simply drowned. The One who has made this temple of our hearts, He alone dwells in this temple. None else but our Beloved is in our hearts. With thee is thy Friend. Let thyself recognize Him. Look not at a distance. Know Him as thy reflection, O Dadu. God is within all beings. He accompanies all and is close by. Musk is in the musk deer, and yet it goes around smelling grass. The self knows not God, although God is with the self. Being deaf to the Holy Sound of the Master, sadly does he wander. He for whom thou searchest in the world dwells within thyself. Thou knowest Him not, because the veil of 'mine' and 'thine' is there. He dwells within all beings, yet rarely anyone knows Him. He alone who is a devotee of God will know Him. A true Master unites us with God And shows all within the body. Within the body is the Creator, And within the body is Onkar [divinity of the second heaven]. The sky is within the body, and close by Is the earth within the body. Air and light are within the body. So is water contained within the body. Within the body are the Sun and the Moon. And the Bagpipe is played within the body. By rendering service within the heart, See thou the One who is indestructible and boundless, Having no limit either on this end or on that end, sayeth Dadu. After entering within, let one, O Dadu, bolt the doors of the house. Let one, O Dadu, serve the Lord at the Door of Eternity. God is within the self, His worship alone is to be done. Search thou for the Beloved close to the place Wherefrom the Sound emerges, and thou shalt find Him, sayeth Dadu. There is solitude there, and there is luster of Light. One who, turning the attention inward, Brings it within the self, And fixes it on the Radiant Form of the Master, Is indeed wise, O Dadu. Where the self is, there is God; all is filled with Him. Fix thine attention within, O valiant servant. So does Dadu proclaim. Fix thine attention within, and sing always within the self. This mind then dances with ecstasy, and beats with pleasure the rhythm. God is within the self; He is close to the worshipper. But leaving Him aside, men serve external constructions, lamenteth Dadu. This is the true mosque, this is the true temple. So hath the Master shown. The service and worship are performed within. Destroy delusion, O mind, by means of the Name of God and the Word bestowed by the Guru. The mind is then united with the One untouched by karmas. Liquidate thereby thy karmas, O Dadu. If the mind stays with the Name of the Supreme Lord even for a moment, O Dadu, All its karmas will be destroyed then and there, within the twinkling of an eye. The aspirant who fills his pot with drops of Celestial Melody, alone survives. How can he die, O Dadu? He drinks the divine Nectar. The artistic Creator is playing the instrument in perfect harmony. Melody is the essence of the five [elements], and through the self is the Melody expressed, O Dadu. By enabling people to hear the Sound, the Master can awaken them at His will. He may, at His pleasure, speak within them, and merge them in his own form. The knowledge of the Sound Current imparted by the Guru merges one easily into Truth. It carries me to the abode of my Beloved, says Dadu. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Dadu: The Compassionate Mystic, Translated by K. N. Upadhyaya <
1.fua - The Pupil asks- the Master answers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Raficq Abdulla Original Language Persian/Farsi 'Why was Adam driven from the garden?' The pupil asked his master. 'His heart was hardened With images, a hundred bonds that clutter the earth Chained Adam to the cycle of death following birth. He was blind to this equation, living for something other Than God and so out of paradise he was driven With his mortal body's cover his soul was shriven. Noblest of God's creatures, Adam fell with blame, Like a moth shriveled by the candle's flame, Into history which taught mankind shame. Since Adam had not given up his heart To God's attachment, there was no part For Adam in paradise where the only friend is God; His will is not for Adam to imagine and bend.' [1490.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds: The Selected Sufi Poetry of Farid ud-Din Attar, Translated by Raficq Abdulla <
1.hs - Someone Should Start Laughing, #Hafiz - Poems, #unset, #Zen
What is God?
If you think that the Truth can be known from words,
1.hs - To Linger In A Garden Fair, #Hafiz - Poems, #unset, #Zen
But what, between the two, is God's design?
1.is - Love, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Anonymous Incited by something external Is like a small lamp Whose flame is fed with oil, Or like a stream fed by rains, Where flows stop when the rains cease. But love whose object is God is like A fountain gushing forth From the earth. Its flow never ceases, For He Himself is the source of this love And also its food, Which never grows scarce. [1831.jpg] -- from Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty, Edited by Alan Jacobs
1.jr - If continually you keep your hope, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Camille and Kabir Helminski Original Language Persian/Farsi & Turkish If continually you keep your hope quivering like the willow in longing for Heaven, spiritual water and fire will continually arrive and increase your subsistence. And if your longing carries you there, it will be no wonder. Don't pay attention to your weakness, but to the intensity of your longing. For this search is God's pledge within you, because every seeker deserves to find something of which she seeks. Increase this search, that your heart may escape from this bodily prison. If your spirit shall not live without the body, for whom is the blessing promised in the words: in Heaven is your provision? [2306.jpg] -- from Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance , Edited by Camille Helmiski / Edited by Kabir Helminski <
1.kbr - Are you looking for me?, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
1.kbr - How Humble Is God, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
object:1.kbr - How Humble is God
author class:Kabir
--
How humble is God?
Kabir wept
1.pbs - Epigram IV - Circumstance, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Fortune is Godall you endure and do
Depends on circumstance as much as you.
1.pbs - Hellas - A Lyrical Drama, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
One God is GodMahomet is His prophet.
Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits
1.pbs - The Revolt Of Islam - Canto I-XII, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
'Our God alone is God!'and slaughter now
Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl
--
Whose God is God, each fearfully shall pay
The errors of his faith in endless woe!
1.pp - Raga Dhanashri, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Nirmal Dass Original Language Santbhasha The body is God, the body is the temple, the body is the worshiper, the body is the sacred shrine. The body is the incense, the lamp, the sacred offerings; it is the body I worship with broken petals. After searching all the world, it was in the body I found all the treasure of the world. Nothing is born, nothing dies -- such is Ram's light. What is contained in the universe is also contained in the body: whatever you seek, you shall find. Pipa says, He is Primal Matter; the true guru will show this. [2184.jpg] -- from Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth, Translated by Nirmal Dass
1.rb - Paracelsus - Part II - Paracelsus Attains, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
The rest is God's concern; mine, merely this,
To know that I have obstinately held
1.rb - Paracelsus - Part I - Paracelsus Aspires, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
Then Aureole is God's commissary! he shall
Be great and grandand all for us!
1.rb - Paracelsus - Part V - Paracelsus Attains, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
'T is God's praise
That man is bound to seek, and you . . .
1.rb - Pippa Passes - Part III - Evening, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
'T is God's voice calls: how could I stay? Farewell!
Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from the Turret to the Bishop's Brother's House, close to the Duomo S. Maria. PoorGirls sitting on the steps.
1.rt - Lovers Gifts LXX - Take Back Your Coins, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
-Blessed am I, blessed is God, who made me a woman. I heard him say
to me, "What God unknown are you? Your touch is the touch of the
1.rwe - Gnothi Seauton, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
Yet there is God.
He is in thy world,
1.rwe - Voluntaries, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
1.sdi - How could I ever thank my Friend?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Andrew Harvey Original Language Persian/Farsi How could I ever thank my Friend? No thanks could ever begin to be worthy. Every hair of my body is a gift from Him; How could I thank Him for each hair? Praise that lavish Lord forever Who from nothing conjures all living beings! Who could ever describe His goodness? His infinite glory lays all praise waste. Look, He has graced you a robe of splendor From childhood's first cries to old age! He made you pure in His own image; stay pure. It is horrible to die blackened by sin. Never let dust settle on your mirror's shining; Let it once grow dull and it will never polish. When you work in the world to earn your living Do not, for one moment, rely on your own strength. Self-worshiper, don't you understand anything yet? It is God alone that gives your arms their power. If, by your striving, you achieve something good, Don't claim the credit all for yourself; It is fate that decides who wins and who loses And all success streams only from the grace of God. In this world you never stand by your own strength; It is the Invisible that sustains you every moment.
1.wb - The Divine Image, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Original Language English To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love All pray in their distress; And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love is God, our Father dear, And Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love Is man, His child and care. For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity and Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk or Jew; Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too. [2071.jpg] -- from Music of the Sky: An Anthology of Spiritual Poetry, Edited by Patrick Laude / Edited by Barry McDonald <
1.wby - The Wanderings Of Oisin - Book I, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
For joy is God and God is joy.'
With one long glance for girl and boy
--
Sang, 'God is joy and joy is God,
And things that have grown sad are wicked,
1.ww - The Primrose of the Rock, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
is God's redeeming love;
That love which changed-for wan disease,
1.ww - The Vaudois, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Aliens, is God's good winter for their haunts.
1.yby - In Praise of God (from Avoda), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by T. Carmi Original Language Hebrew I shall proclaim the mighty deeds of God, who is glorious in power. He alone is God and there is no other; there is none besides Him, none second to him; there will be none after Him on earth, there was none before Him in heaven; there was none but He of old, nor shall there be in the end. Lordly in thought, godly in action -- when He takes counsel, no one is absent; when He orders, no one delays. He speaks and does, designs and fulfills, bearing the world with strength, carrying it with might. He is celebrated in song by his creatures; from above and below He is given praise. The only God on earth, the Holy One in heaven, the Mighty One on high -- He receives songs from the waters, paeans from the deeps adoration from the luminaries, speech from the days, melody from the nights. Fire shouts out His name, the trees of the forest sing for joy, the animals teach the might of his terrible acts. [1835.jpg] -- from The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, Edited by T. Carmi
2.01 - Isha Upanishad All that is world in the Universe, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
all is God. We see that it is merely a difference of language, of
outlook, of perception; but these are the things through which
2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth. Of moks.a we have no personal need; for the soul is nityamukta and bondage is an illusion. We play at being bound, we are not really bound. We can be free when God wills; for he, our supreme Self, is the master of the game, and without his grace and permission no soul can leave the game. It is often God's will in us to take through the mind the bhoga of ignorance, of the dualities, of joy and grief, of pleasure and pain, of virtue and sin, of enjoyment and renunciation: for long ages, in many countries, he never even thinks of the yoga but plays out this play century after century without wearying of it. There is nothing evil in this, nothing which we need condemn or from which we need shrink, - it is God's play. The wise man is he who recognises this truth and knowing his freedom, yet plays out God's play, waiting for his comm and to change the methods of the game.
The comm and is now. God always keeps for himself a chosen country in which the higher knowledge is through all chances and dangers, by the few or the many, continually preserved, and for the present, in this Chaturyuga at least, that country is India.
--
the divine existence. If this attitude of perfect self-surrender can be even imperfectly established, all necessity of Yogic kriya inevitably ceases. For then God himself in us becomes the sadhaka and the siddha and his divine power works in us, not by our artificial processes, but by a working of Nature which is perfectly informed, all-searching and infallibly efficient. Even the most powerful Rajayogic samyama, the most developed pran.ayama, the most strenuous meditation, the most ecstatic Bhakti, the most self-denying action, mighty as they are and efficacious, are comparatively weak in their results when set beside this supreme working. For those are all limited to a certain extent by our capacity, but this is illimitable in potency because it is God's capacity. It is only limited by his will which knows what is best for the world and for each of us in the world and apart from it.
The first process of the yoga is to make the sankalpa of atmasamarpan.a. Put yourself with all your heart and all your strength into God's hands. Make no conditions, ask for nothing, not even for siddhi in the yoga, for nothing at all except that in you and through you his will may be directly performed. To those who demand from him, God gives what they demand, but to those who give themselves and demand nothing, he gives everything that they might otherwise have asked or needed and in addition he gives himself and the spontaneous boons of his love.
--
God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, when that is God's will. You must be free even from the highest sattwic ahankara, even from the subtle ignorance of mumuks.utva, the desire of liberation, and take all joy and delight without attachment. You will then be the siddha or perfect man of the Gita.
These then are the processes of the yoga, (1) the sankalpa of atmasamarpan.a, (2) the standing apart from the Adhar by self-
--
It is said in the "Sanatsujatiya" that four things are necessary for siddhi - sastra, utsaha, guru and kala - the teaching of the path, zeal in following it, the Guru and time. Your path is that which I am pointing out, the utsaha needed is this anumati and this nitya smaran.a, the Guru is God himself and for the rest only time is needed. That God himself is the Guru, you will find when knowledge comes to you; you will see how every little circumstance within you and without you has been subtly planned and brought about by infinite wisdom to carry out the natural process of the yoga, how the internal and external movements are arranged and brought together to work on each other, so as to work out the imperfection and work in the perfection.
An almighty love and wisdom are at work for your uplifting.
2.02 - The Bhakta.s Renunciation results from Love, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
The Bhakti-Yogi, however, knows the meaning of life's struggles; he understands it. He has passed through a long series of these struggles, and knows what they mean, and earnestly desires to be free from the friction thereof; he wants to avoid the clash and go direct to the centre of all attraction, the great Hari. This is the renunciation of the Bhakta: this mighty attraction in the direction of God makes all other attraction vanish for him; this mighty infinite love of God which enters his heart leaves no place for any other love to live there. How can it be otherwise? Bhakti fills his heart with the divine waters of the ocean of love, which is God Himself; there is no place there for little loves. That is to say, the Bhakta's renunciation is that Vairagya, or non-attachment for all things, that are not God, which results from Anuraga or great attachment to God.
This is the ideal preparation for the attainment of the supreme Bhakti. When this renunciation comes, the gate opens for the soul to pass through and reach the lofty regions of Supreme Devotion or Para-Bhakti. Then it is that we begin to understand what Para-Bhakti is; and the man who has entered into the inner shrine of the Para-Bhakti, alone has the right to say that all forms and symbols are useless to him as aids to religious realisation. He alone has attained. that supreme state of love commonly called the brotherhood of man; the rest only talk. He sees no distinctions; the mighty ocean of love has entered Into h Im, and he sees not man in man, but beholds his Beloved everywhere. Through every face shines to him his Hari. The light in the sun or the moon is all His manifestation. Wherever there is beauty or sublimity, to him it is all His. Such Bhaktas are still living; the world is never without them. Such, though bitten by a serpent, only say that a messenger came to them from their Beloved. Such men alone have the right to talk of universal brotherhood.
2.02 - THE DURGA PUJA FESTIVAL, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Now you are talking like an ignorant person. It is God alone who blesses."
VIJAY: "Revered sir, please give us some instruction."
--
MASTER: "It is God who, as the doctor, prescribes the medicine. It is He who, in one form, has become the physician. Dr. Gangaprasad asked me not to drink water at night.
I regarded his statement as the words of the Vedas. I look upon him as the physician of heaven."
2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
his stick. Do you realise that it is God who is passing? There a
child runs laughing in the sunlight. Can you hear Him in that
--
if the Universe is God, then is God material, divisible, changeable, the mere flux & reflux of things; but all these are not God
in Himself, but God in His shadows & appearances; they are,
--
Man is God and as by his own Will he has cast himself into the
illusory bonds of the Enchantress, so by His own will He can
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
that is God, and forgets or does not realise that it is the Divine
278
--
Himself; for what is God but his own self in the Cosmos? There
is nothing that he can fear. The Christian virtue of faith and
2.03 - The Christian Phenomenon and Faith in the Incarnation, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
(which is God's), the ultimate dominating energy of the
whole system can only be an interpersonal attraction: in
2.04 - ADVICE TO ISHAN, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Take this medicine and your son will come to life. But you will die.' The mother took the medicine in her hand and began to think. After much reflection she said to the physician, with tears in her eyes: 'My child, I have a few more children. I have to think about them too. I am wondering what will happen to them if I die. Who will feed them and look after them?' The physician next called the wife and handed the medicine to her. She had been weeping bitterly too. With the medicine in her hand she also began to reflect. She had heard that she would die from the effect of the medicine. At last, with tears in her eyes, she said: 'He has met his fate. If I die, what will happen to my young children? Who will keep them alive? How can I take the medicine?' In the mean time the disciple had got over the effect of the pills. He was now convinced that nobody was really his own. He jumped out of bed and left the place with his teacher. The guru said to him, 'There is only one whom you may call your own, and that is God.'
"Therefore a man should act in such a way that he may have bhakti for the Lotus Feet of God and love God as his very own. You see this world around you. It exists for you only for a couple of days. There is nothing to it." PUNDIT (smiling): "Revered sir, I feel a spirit of total renunciation when I am here. I feel like going away, giving up the world."
2.05 - On Poetry, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Some time back there was an article in Hindi kasmai devya havi vidhemaTo which God shall we make our offering? And the writer answered: janat janrdanya to the average humanity which is God. Thus janrdana is to be equated to janat which is ignorant and imperfect. It almost seems that according to these people God outside janat does not exist!
Sri Aurobindo: Quite so.
2.05 - Universal Love and how it leads to Self-Surrender, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
When, at last, the central idea is, however, arrived at, that the sum total of all love is God, that the sum total of the aspirations of all the souls in the universe, whether they be free, or bound, or struggling towards liberation, is God, then alone it becomes possible for anyone to put forth universal love. God is the Samashti, and this visible universe is God differentiated and made manifest. If we love this sum total, we love everything. Loving the world and doing it good will all come easily then; we have to obtain this power only by loving God first; otherwise it is no joke to do good to the world. Everything is His and He is my Lover; I love Him, says the Bhakta. In this way everything becomes sacred to the Bhakta, because all things are His. All are His children,
His body, His manifestation. How then may we hurt any one? How then may we not love anyone? With the love of God will come, as a sure effect, the love of everyone in the universe. The nearer we approach God, the more do we begin to see that all things are in Him. When the soul succeeds in appropriating the bliss of this supreme love, it also begins to see Him in everything. Our heart will thus become an eternal fountain of love. And when we reach even higher states of this love, all the little differences between the things of the world are entirely lost; man is seen no more as man, but only as God; the animal is seen no more as animal, but as God; even the tiger is no more a tiger but manifestation of God. Thus in this intense state of Bhakti, worship is offered to every one, to every life, and to every being.
2.05 - VISIT TO THE SINTHI BRAMO SAMAJ, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"As long as a man is conscious of 'I' and 'you', and as long as he feels that it is he who prays or meditates, so long will he feel that God is listening to his prayer and that God is a Person. Then he must say: 'O God, Thou art the Master and I am Thy servant. Thou art the whole and I am a part of Thee. Thou art the Mother and I am Thy child.' At that time there exists a feeling of difference: 'I am one and Thou art another.' It is God Himself who makes us feel this difference; and on account of this difference one sees man and woman, light and darkness, and so on. As long as one is aware of this difference, one must accept akti, the Personal God. It is God who has put 'I-consciousness' in us. You may reason a thousand times; still this 'I' does not disappear.
As long as 'I-consciousness' exists, God reveals Himself to us as a Person.
--
He continued: "When you mix with people outside your Samaj, love them all. When in their company be one of them. Don't harbour malice toward them. Don't turn up your nose in hatred and say: 'Oh, this man believes in God with form and not in the formless God. That man believes in the formless God and not in God with form. This man is a Christian. This man is a Hindu. And this man is a Musslman.' It is God alone who makes people see things in different ways. Know that people have different natures. Realize this and mix with them as much as you can. And love all. But enter your own inner chamber to enjoy peace and bliss.
Lighting the lamp of Knowledge in the chamber of your heart, Behold the face of the Mother, Brahman's Embodiment.
--
MASTER: "If you please God, everyone will be pleased. It is God alone that exists in the heart of the holy man."
HOST: "Nothing, of course, remains unrealized when one attains God. If a man attains God, he can give up everything else. If a man gets a rupee, he gives up the joy of a penny."
2.06 - WITH VARIOUS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "It is true. But I see that it is God Himself who has become everything-the universe and its living beings."
Presently the Master sat down on the small couch near his bed.
--
Daaratha sent the sage Vasishtha to Rma to dissuade Him. Vasishtha found Him filled with intense renunciation. He said to Rma: 'First of all, reason with me, Rma; then You may leave the world. May I ask You if this world is outside, God? If that is so, then You may give it up.' Rma found that it is God alone who has become the universe and all its living beings. Everything in the world appears real on account of God's reality behind it.
Thereupon Rma became silent.
--
Surrender yourself at His feet. Then there will be no more confusion. Then you will realize that it is God who does everything. All depends on 'the will of Rma'."
Story of "the will of Rma"
--
MASTER: "Brahman is qualified by the universe and its living beings. At the beginning, while following the method of 'Not this, not this', one has to eliminate the universe and its living beings. But as long as 'I-consciousness' remains, one cannot but feel that it is God Himself who has become everything. He alone has become the twenty-four cosmic principles.
"When a man speaks of the essential part of the bel-fruit, he means its flesh only, and not the seeds and shell. But if he wants to speak of the total weight of the fruit, it will not do for him to weigh only the flesh. He must accept the whole thing: seeds and shell and flesh. Seeds and shell and flesh belong to one and the same fruit.
2.06 - Works Devotion and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The way of works too turns into an adoration and a devotion of self-giving because it is an entire sacrifice of all our will and its activities to the one Purushottama. The outward Vedic rite is a powerful symbol, effective for a slighter though still a heavenward purpose; but the real sacrifice is that inner oblation in which the Divine All becomes himself the ritual action, the sacrifice and every single circumstance of the sacrifice. All the working and forms of that inner rite are the self-ordinance and self-expression of his power in us mounting by our aspiration towards the source of its energies. The Divine Inhabitant becomes himself the flame and the offering, because the flame is the Godward will and that will is God himself within us. And the offering too is form and force of the constituent Godhead in our nature and being; all that has been received from him is given up to the service and the worship of its own Reality,
IX. 15.
2.07 - BANKIM CHANDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Everything is God's lila. His sportive pleasure. As long as a man is conscious of 'I' and 'you', he will experience the manifestations of God through diverse forms.
Purusha and Prakriti imply and, Their inner harmony "Sri Krishna is the Purusha; Srimati is His akti, the Primal Power. The two are Purusha and Prakriti. What is the meaning of the Yugala Murti, the conjoined images of Radha and Krishna? It is that Purusha and Prakriti are not different; there is no difference between them. Purusha cannot exist without Prakriti, and Prakriti cannot exist without Purusha. If you mention the one, the other is understood. It is like fire and its power to burn; one cannot think of fire without its power to burn; again, one cannot think of fire's power to burn without fire. Therefore in the conjoined images of Radha and Krishna, Krishna's eyes are fixed on Radha and Radha's on Krishna. Radha's complexion is golden, like lightning; so Krishna wears yellow apparel. Krishna's complexion is blue, like a dark cloud; so Radha wears a blue dress; she has also decked herself with blue sapphires. Radha has tinkling anklets; so Krishna has them too. In other words, there is inner and outer harmony between Purusha and Prakriti."
--
MASTER (smiling): "Preaching? It is only a man's vanity that makes him think of preaching. A man is but an insignificant creature. It is God alone who will preach-God who has created the sun and moon and so illumined the universe. Is preaching such a trifling affair? You cannot preach unless God reveals Himself to you and gives you the comm and to preach. Of course, no one can stop you from preaching. You haven't received the command, but still you cry yourself hoarse. People will listen to you couple of days and then forget all about it. It is like any other sensation; as long as you speak, people will say, 'Ah! He speaks well'; and the moment you stop, everything will disappear.
"The milk in the pot hisses and swells as long as there is heat under it. Take away the heat, and the milk will quiet down as before.
--
"But God keeps some jnanis in the world of my to be teachers of men. In order to teach others the Jnni lives in the world with the help of Vidy-my. It is God Himself who keeps the Jnni in the world for His work. Such was the case with Sukadeva and Sankaracharya.
Duties of life
--
"If a householder gives in charity in a spirit of detachment, he is really doing good to himself and not to others. It is God alone that he serves-God, who dwells in all beings; and when he serves God, he is really doing good to himself and not to others. If a man thus serves God through all beings, not through men alone but through animals and other living beings as well; if he doesn't seek name and fame, or heaven after death; if he doesn't seek any return from those he serves; if he can carry on his work of service in this spirit-then he performs truly selfless work, work without attachment. Through such selfless work he does good to himself. This is called karma yoga. This too is a way to realize God. But it is very difficult, and not suited to the Kaliyuga.
"Therefore I say, he who works in such a detached spirit-who is kind and charitable-benefits only himself. Helping others, doing good to others-this is the work of God alone, who for men has created the sun and moon, father and mother, fruits, flowers, and corn.
The love that you see in parents is God's love: He has given it to them to preserve His creation. The compassion that you see in the kind-hearted is God's compassion: He has given it to them to protect the helpless. Whether you are charitable or not, He will have His work done somehow or other. Nothing can stop His work.
"What then is man's duty? What else can it be? It is just to take refuge in God and to pray to Him with a yearning heart for His vision.
2.07 - The Cup, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
73:But it is God who is all and not any part; and every "dealing" must thus be an expansion of the soul, a destruction of its separateness.
74:Every ray of the sun expands the flower.
2.07 - The Triangle of Love, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
True love never comes until the object of our love becomes to us our highest Ideal. It may be that In many cases human rove is misdirected and misplaced, but to the person who loves, the thing he loves is always his own highest ideal. One may see his ideal in the vilest of beings, and another in the highest of beings; nevertheless, in every case it is the ideal alone that can be truly and intensely loved. The highest ideal of every man is called God. Ignorant or wise, saint or sinner, man or woman, educated or uneducated, cultivated or uncultivated, to every human being the highest ideal is God.
The synthesis of all the highest ideals of beauty, of sublimity, and of power gives us the completest conception of the loving and lovable God. These Ideals exist, in some shape or other, in every mind naturally; they form a part and parcel of all our minds. All the active manifestations of human nature are struggles of those ideals to become realised in practical life. All the various movements that we see around us in society are caused, by the various ideals in various souls trying to come out and become concretised; what is inside presses on to come outside. This perennially dominant influence of the ideal is the one force, the one motive power, that may be seen to be constantly working in the midst of mankind. It may be after hundreds of births after struggling through thousands of years, that man finds that it is vain to try to make the inner ideal mould completely the external conditions and square well with them; after realising this he. no more tries to project his own ideal on the outside world, but worships the ideal itself as ideal, from the highest standpoint of love. This ideally perfect ideal embraces all lower ideals. Everyone admits the truth of the saying that a lover sees Helens beauty on an Ethiops brow. The man who is standing aside as a looker-on sees that love is here misplaced, but the lover sees his Helen all the same, and does not see the Ethiop at all. Helen or Ethiop, the objects of our love are really the centres round which our ideals become crystallised. What is it that the world commonly worships? Not certainly this all-embracing, ideally perfect ideal of the supreme devotee and lover. That ideal which men and women commonly worship is what is in themselves; every person projects his or her own ideal on the outside world and kneels before it. That is why we find that men who are cruel and blood-thirsty conceive of a bloodthirsty God, because they can only love their own highest ideal. That is why good men have a very high ideal of God; and their ideal is indeed so very different from that of others.
2.07 - The Upanishad in Aphorism, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Each soul in itself is God entirely, every group of souls is collectively God; the modalities of Nature's movement create their separation and outward differences.
God transcends world and is not bound by any law of Nature. He uses laws, laws do not use Him.
--
This liberation is to be effected by dissolving the waking ego into the Lord's divine being and experiencing entirely our unity with all other existences & with Him who is God, Atman & Brahman.
All individual existences are jagat in jagati, object of motion in stream of motion & obey the laws & processes of that motion.
2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
Plato used the words, Idea of the good. A strange definition of his. You may say, Idea of God if you like. It is not an idea of God, but the idea which is God. Actually, God is only an idea; not your idea, but an Idea as such, which is the cause of other ideas. The Yoga Vasishtha goes into great detail in explaining this point that the whole universe is mind. Not my mind, or your mind, but mind as such. Pure impersonal existence, of which our minds and thoughts and feelings and evolutions are ripples.
Read the great book of Samuel Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, which is the great exposition of the structure of the universe which is so hard and real in space-time only. Space-time is not a substance. It is not something tangible. You cannot touch it, you cannot see it, you cannot sense it, you cannot taste it, you cannot smell it. And a thing which cannot be sensed is not reality at all. But that is the reality!
--
Religion is living reality and not merely thinking reality or academic analysing. All this is over already in our earlier lessons. We have thought enough philosophically, academically and hope we shall not touch this subject again. We shall enter into true religion which is God-consciousness itself in some proportion, in some measure, in a modicum.
To face God and to encounter Him in our actual life is to live religion. So, religion is not ringing a bell, waving a light, or chanting a Mantra. It is encountering God face to face. So, religion is superior to philosophy, if you understand religion in the true sense of the term. Religion is not Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism. It is the art of envisaging God-being.
--
Every love is God-love finally and the final stuff of the universe may be said to be love.
I have been telling you sometimes that there is some secret meaning behind the last words in the Eleventh Chapter of the Gita where we are told that Bhakti is supreme. The Bhakti that Sri Krishna speaks of here is not ordinary obeisance to an idol. It is not a mass that you perform in the church. It is a melting of your being before the Absolute. Therefore Bhagavan Sri Krishna says, Not charity, not philanthropy, not study, not austerity, is capable of bringing about this great vision that you had, Arjuna! Only by devotion can I be seen, contacted. Only by devotion am I capable of being known, seen and entered into. These three words are used in the Bhagavad Gita at the end of the Eleventh Chapterknowing, seeing, and entering. Arjuna knew and saw, but never entered into It. Therefore, he was the same Arjuna after the Bhagavad Gita also. He never merged into the Supreme Being.
2.08 - AT THE STAR THEATRE (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
GIRISH: "Sir, I know truly that it is God who does everything."
MASTER: "I say, 'O Mother, I am the machine and You are the Operator; I am inert and You make me conscious; I do as You make me do; I speak as You make me speak.' But the ignorant say, 'I am partly responsible, and God is partly responsible.' "
--
It is God Himself who sports in the world as men.
Master's spiritual experiences
--
"Devotion to the husb and is also a dharma. The husb and is God. Why shouldn't it be so?
If God can be worshipped through an image, why not also through a living man? But three things are necessary in order to feel the presence of God in an image: first, the devotion of the priest; second, a beautiful image; and third, the devotion of the householder. Vaishnavcharan once said that in the end the mind of the devotee is absorbed in the human manifestation of God.
2.09 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"But a bhakta also attains the Knowledge of Oneness; he sees that nothing exists but God. He does not regard the world as a dream, but says that it is God Himself who has become everything. In a wax garden you may see various objects, but everything is made of wax.
"But a man realizes this only when his devotion to God has matured. One gets jaundice when too much bile accumulates. Then one sees everything as yellow. From constantly meditating on Krishna, Radhika saw everything as Krishna; moreover, she even felt that she herself had become Krishna. If a piece of lead is kept in a lake of mercury a long time, it turns into mercury. The cockroach becomes motionless by constantly meditating on the kumira worm; it loses the power to move. At last it is transformed into a kumira.
Similarly, by constantly meditating on God the bhakta loses his ego; he realizes that God is he and he is God. When the cockroach becomes the kumira everything is achieved.
Instantly one obtains liberation.
2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Spirit awakening out of this veil gradually and with difficulty but inevitably is the secret sense of life. The power to accomplish the perfect awakening against accumulated difficulties, is God's offer to man throughout his cycles.
The perfection & the unity of the divine knowledge, will, delight in the mould of his universalised individuality is the destiny of man, his ascent to Godhead and the unfolding in him of Superman.
2.10 - The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it.
We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda.
2.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES IN CALCUTTA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to M.): "I don't enjoy these discussions. Why should I argue at all? I clearly see that God is everything; He Himself has become all. I see that whatever is, is God. He is everything; again, He is beyond everything. I come to a state in which my mind and intellect merge in the Indivisible. At the sight of Narendra my mind loses itself in the consciousness of the Absolute. (To Girish) What do you say to that?"
GIRISH (with a smile): "Why ask me? As if I understood everything except that one point!" (All laugh.)
2.13 - THE MASTER AT THE HOUSES OF BALARM AND GIRISH, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Again, jnna and bhakti are twin paths. Whichever you follow, it is God that you will ultimately reach. The Jnni looks on God in one way and the bhakta looks on Him in another way. The God of the Jnni is full of brilliance, and the God of the bhakta full of sweetness."
Bhavanth was seated near the Master, listening to these words.
--
my away from Him. Knowledge, devotion, compassion, and renunciation belong to the realm of vidy. With the help of these a man comes near God. One step more and he attains God, Knowledge of Brahman. In that state he clearly feels and sees that it is God who has become everything. He has nothing to give up and nothing to accept. It is impossible for him to be angry with anyone.
"One day I was riding in a carriage. I saw two prostitutes standing on a verandah. They appeared to me to be embodiments of the Divine Mother Herself. I saluted them.
--
(To Ram) "You are a physician. You know that medicine works only when it mixes with the patient's blood and becomes one with it. Likewise, in the state of Brahmajnana one sees God both within and without. One sees that it is God Himself who has become the body, mind, life, and soul."
M (to himself): "Assimilation!"
2.14 - AT RAMS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Worldly people are like mangoes struck by hail. If you want to offer them to God, you have to purify them by sprinkling them with Ganges water. Even then they are seldom used in the temple worship. If you are to use them at all, you have to apply Brahmajnana, that is to say, you have to persuade yourself that it is God alone who has become everything."
A Theosophist gentleman arrived with Aswini Kumar Dutta and the son of Behari Bhaduri. The Mukherji brothers entered the room and saluted Sri Ramakrishna.
--
"I said: 'According to the scriptures, water is God. We see water everywhere. But some water we drink, some we ba the in, and some we use for washing dirty things. Here sit your wife and daughter. I see them as embodiments of the Blessed Mother.'
"Thereupon Captain said, 'Yes, yes! That's true.' He wanted to apologize by touching my feet."
--
CAPTAIN: "Krishna is God Himself. In describing Him we have to use such terms as 'whole' and 'part'."
MASTER: "Whole and part are like fire and its sparks. An Incarnation of God is for the sake of the bhaktas and not of the jnanis. It is said in the Adhytma Rmyana that Rma alone is both the Pervading Spirit and everything pervaded. 'You are the Supreme Lord distinguished as the Vachaka, the signifying symbol, and the Vachya, the object signified.'"
--
MASTER: "The pervader in this case is a finite form, It is God incarnating Himself as a human being."
Sri Ramakrishna was talking thus to Captain and the devotees when Jaygopal Sen and Trailokya of the Brahmo Samaj arrived. They saluted the Master and sat down. Sri Ramakrishna looked at Trailokya with a smile and continued the conversation.
--
"I said to him: 'how slow you are to understand! I am not asking you to renounce the "ripe ego", the ego that makes a man feel he is a servant of God or His devotee. Give up the "unripe ego", the ego that creates attachment to "woman and gold". The ego that makes a man feels he is God's servant. His child is the "ripe ego". It doesn't harm one.'"
TRAILOKYA: "It is very difficult to get rid of the ego. People only think they are free from it."
--
"It is God who does everything. We are His instruments. Some Sikhs said to me in front of the Kli temple, 'God is compassionate.' I said, 'to whom is He compassionate?' 'Why, revered sir, to all of us', said the Sikhs. I said: 'We are His children. Does compassion to one's own children mean much? A father must look after his children; or do you expect the people of the neighbourhood to bring them up?' Well, won't those who say that God is compassionate ever understand that we are God's children and not someone else's?"
CAPTAIN: "You are right. They don't regard God as their own."
2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
Let the ecstasy overflow and outshine the loveless self, driven mad with the torments of its self-embracing ways, hugging mightily samsara's spokes of endless agony, and sing instead triumphantly with Saint Catherine, "My being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my Being. My me is God!" And let the joy sing with Dame Julian, "See! I am God! See! I am in all things! See! I do all things!" And let the joy shout with Hakuin, "This very body is the Body of Buddha! and this very land the Pure Land!"
And this Earth becomes a blessed being, and every I becomes a God, and every We becomes God's sincerest worship, and every It becomes God's most gracious temple.
2.15 - CAR FESTIVAL AT BALARMS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"But what am I? It is all He. I am the machine and He is its Operator. It is God alone who exists in this [meaning his body]. That is why so many people are feeling more and more attracted to it. A mere touch is enough to awaken their spirituality. This attraction, these pull, is the attraction of God and of none else.
"Trak of Belgharia was going home from Dakshineswar. I dearly noticed that a flame-like thing came out of this [meaning his body] and followed him. A few days later Trak came back to Dakshineswar. In a state of samdhi He Who dwells in this body placed his foot on Trak's chest.
2.16 - VISIT TO NANDA BOSES HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Nanda remained silent a few minutes. Then he said: "Oh, yes. People no doubt talk that way. But is God partial? If things happen through God's grace, then I must say God is partial."
MASTER: "But God Himself has become everything-the universe and its living beings.
--
PASUPATI: "True, sir. It seems that it is God alone who has become everything."
Nature of "I"
2.17 - THE MASTER ON HIMSELF AND HIS EXPERIENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
But did Mahimacharan understand the import of these words? Even after hearing them, he said to the Master, "These things have happened to you on account of your meritorious actions in your past births." Mahima still thought that Sri Ramakrishna was a sdhu or a devotee of God. The Master nodded assent to Mahima's words and said: "Yes, the result of past actions. God is like an aristocrat who has many mansions. Here [referring to himself] is one of His drawing-rooms. The bhakta is God's drawing-room."
It was nine o'clock in the evening. Sri Ramakrishna was sitting on the small couch. It was Mahimacharan's desire to form a brahmachakra in the presence of the Master.
--
M: "He [meaning the Master] says that it is God-force. You say that it is will-force."
MASTER (to the doctor): "Again, I get into such a state of mind that if someone says I am better, I at once feel much better. The other day the brahmani said: 'You are fifty per cent better.' At once I began to dance."
--
Once in a while, I say, 'O Mother, please mend the sheath of the sword a little.' But such prayers are also becoming less frequent. Nowadays I do not find my 'I'; I see that it is God alone who resides in this sheath."
The goswami had been invited to sing kirtan. A devotee asked, "Will there be any kirtan?" Sri Ramakrishna was ill, and all were afraid that the kirtan might throw his mind into ecstasy and thus aggravate the illness.
2.17 - The Soul and Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the attitude of the Witness there is also a kind of sanction, but it is passive, inert and has no kind of absoluteness about it; but if he consents entirely to uphold, the sanction has become active, even though the soul may do no more than consent to reflect, uphold and thereby maintain in action all the energies of prakriti, not determining, not selecting, believing that it is God or Force itself or some Knowledge-Will that selects and determines, and the soul only a witness and upholder and thereby giver of the sanction, anumanta, but not the possessor and the director of the knowledge and the will, jnata isvarah. But if it habitually selects and rejects in what is offered to it, it determines; the relatively passive has become an entirely active sanction and is on the way to be an active control.
This it becomes when the soul accepts its complete function as the knower, lord and enjoyer of Nature. As the knower the soul possesses the knowledge of the force that acts and determines, it sees the values of being which are realising themselves in cosmos, it is in the secret of Fate. But the force is itself determined by the knowledge which is its origin and the source and standardiser of its valuations and effectuations of values. Therefore in proportion as the soul becomes again the knower, it becomes also the controller of the action. Nor can it do this without becoming the active enjoyer, bhokta. In the lower being the enjoyment is of a twofold kind, positive and negative, which in the electricity of sensation translates itself into joy and suffering; but in the higher it is an actively equal enjoyment of the divine delight in self-manifestation. There is no loss of freedom, no descent into an ignorant attachment. The man free in his soul is aware that the Divine is the lord of the action of Nature, that Maya is His Knowledge-Will determining and effecting all, that Force is the Will side of this double divine Power in which knowledge is always present and effectual; he is aware of himself also, even individually, as a centre of the divine existence, -- a portion of the Lord, the Gita expresses it, -- controlling so far the action of Nature which he views, upholds, sanctions, enjoys, knows and by the determinative power of knowledge controls; and when he universalises himself, his knowledge reflects only the divine knowledge, his will effectuates only the divine will, he enjoys only the divine delight and not an ignorant personal satisfaction. Thus the Purusha preserves its freedom in its possession, renunciation of limited personality even in its representative enjoyment and delight of cosmic being. It has taken up fully in the higher poise the true relations of the soul and Nature.
2.18 - SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Ramakrishna was talking aside to Amrita. He asked him, "Do you meditate?" He further said to him: "Do you know!" what one feels in meditation? The mind becomes like a continuous flow of oil-it thinks of one object only, and that is God. It does not think of anything else."
Sri Ramakrishna was talking to the devotees.
--
MASTER: "Kacha had been immersed in nirvikalpa samdhi. When his mind was coming down to the relative plane, someone asked him, 'What do you see now?' Kacha replied: 'I see that the universe is soaked, as it were, in God. Everything is filled with God. It is God alone who has become all that I see. I do not know what to accept and what to reject.'
"In my opinion one should realize both the Nitya and the Lila and then live in the world as the servant of God. Hanuman saw both the Personal God and the formless Reality. He then lived as a devotee of God, as His servant."
--
Doctor: "But can one retain Perfect Knowledge permanently? You say that all is God.
Then why have you taken up this profession of a paramahamsa? And why do these people attend on you? Why don't you keep silent?"
--
"It is God who dwells within as the Pure Mind and Pure Intelligence. I am the machine and He is its Operator. I am the house and He is the Indweller. It is God who is the mahut Narayana."
DOCTOR: "Let me ask you something. Why do you ask me to cure your illness?"
--
It is God who has kept this 'jar' of the 'ego' in me."
DOCTOR: "What is the meaning of 'ego' and all that you are talking about? You must explain it to me. Do you mean to say that God is playing tricks on us?"
--
MASTER (smiling): "It is God who has kept this 'ego' in us. All this is His play, His Lila. A king has four sons. They are all princes; but when they play, one becomes a minister, another a police officer, and so on. Though a prince, he plays as a police officer.
(To the doctor) "Listen. If you realize tman you will see the truth of all I have said. All doubts disappear after the vision of God."
--
He said: 'Just a minute. Let me look it up in the newspaper.' He read the paper but could not find the news of a house falling down with a crash. Thereupon he said to his friend: 'Well, I don't believe you. It isn't in the paper; so it is all false.' "(All laugh.) GIRISH (to the doctor): "You must admit that Krishna is God. I will not let you look on Him as a mere man. You must admit that He is either God or a demon."
MASTER: "Unless a man is guileless, he cannot so easily have faith in God. God is far, far away from the mind steeped in worldliness. Worldly intelligence creates many doubts and many forms of pride-pride of learning, wealth, and the rest. (Pointing to the doctor) But he is guileless.
2.19 - Knowledge of the Scientist and the Yogi, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The knowledge possessed by the Yogi is also an answer to the terrible theory that all that takes place is Gods direct working. For once you rise to the Supermind you immediately perceive that the world is false and distorted. The supramental truth has not at all found manifestation. How then can the world be a genuine expression of the Divine? Only when the Supermind is established and rules here, then alone the Supreme Will may be said to have au thentically manifested. At the same time, we must steer clear of the dangerous exaggeration of the sense of the falsehood of the world, which comes to those who have risen to the higher consciousness. What happened with Shankara and others like him was that they had a glimpse of the true consciousness, which threw the falsehood of this world into such sharp contrast that they declared the universe to be not only false but also a really non-existent illusion which should be entirely abandoned. We, on the other hand, see its falsehood, but realise also that it has to be replaced and not abandoned as an illusion. Only, the truth has got mistranslated, something has stepped in to pervert the divine reality, but the world is in fact meant to express it. And to express it is indeed our Yoga.
***
2.2.01 - The Problem of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What we seem to be is a thinking human animal. What we are and have to become is God; the secret purpose of our existence here is to find the occult Reality of ourselves and the world, to become Divine.
Our existence in the world has a reality which is other than that which strikes our mind and senses on the surface. It contains a secret, a mystery which we have to discover, for through that discovery we must move both to the realisation of our self and spirit and the perfection and fulfilment of our life in Nature.
22.05 - On The Brink(2), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
He is thus the link between Heaven and Earth. He is the twice-born, dvija:he is planted in the mud of earth - he has the proverbial feet of clay - and his head soars high, bathes in the sun's light. He is an "emergence" out of earth, a being of evolution; he is also an "immergence", a descent into earth from heaven: one part in him is Godly, the other asuric. As the divine he is Brahman, as the Asura, Aham.
So man occupies a central place in the scheme of the universe. Above him are stationed the gods, the region of the higher mind and the heart, below him upon the earth rule the Asuras, the powers of the lower mind and the vital. In between is man, the intermediary being.
--
But man's destiny is not to be confined to this sphere of the triple world. He has a higher destiny transcending these lower worlds and that is being worked out elsewhere deep within him. He has a destiny which even the gods envy; for he has the Divine's own home in him. It is God himself who is implanted in him, in the cavern of his soul - it is his soul.
I may leave you here. We have come to the door of the mystery of mysteries: there is the cavern where the great Being is installed - guhahitam gahvarestham- the supreme key to the solution and resolution of all problems, the attainment of divine perfection. It is for you to enter and find for yourself the final consolation. Even so I am reminded of the great poet and seer Dante who was led by Virgil to the formidable door on which was inscribed in flaming letters the terrible heart-rending line:
2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Once I said to Mathur Babu: 'Don't think that I have achieved my desired end because you, a rich man, show me respect. It matters very little to me whether you obey me or not.' Of course you must remember that a mere man can do nothing, it is God alone who makes one person obey another. Man is straw and dust before the power of God."
DOCTOR: "Do you think I shall obey you because a certain fisherman obeyed you?
--
DOCTOR: "You say that you are the machine. That's all right. Or keep quiet, knowing that everything is God."
GIRISH (to the doctor): "Whatever you may think, sir, the truth is that we act because He makes us act. Can anyone take a single step against the Almighty Will?"
--
NARENDRA: "I don't say that he is God. What I am saying is that he is a godlike man."
Dr. Sarkar on expressing feelings
2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"By taking off, one by one, the sheaths of a banana tree, one obtains the pith. The sheaths are one thing, and the pith is another. The sheaths are not the pith, and the pith is not the sheaths. But in the end one realizes that the pith cannot exist apart from the sheaths, and the sheaths cannot exist apart from the pith; they are part and parcel of one and the same banana tree. Likewise, it is God who has become the twenty-four cosmic principles; it is He who has become man.
Three classes of devotees
--
MASTER: "Losing consciousness by contemplating God-through whose Consciousness even inert matter appears to be conscious, and hands, feet, and body move! People say that the body moves of itself; but they do not know that it is God who moves it. They say that water scalds the hand. But water can by no means scald the hand; it is the heat in the water, the fire in the water, that scalds.
"Rice is boiling in a pot. Potatoes and eggplant are also jumping about in the pot. The children say that the potatoes and eggplant jump of themselves; they do not know that there is fire underneath. Man says that the sense-organs do their work of themselves; but he does not know that inside dwells He whose very nature is Consciousness."
--
Water exists everywhere, but is most apparent in a river or lake. We bow down to God and not to man. God is God-not, man is God.
"God cannot be known through reasoning. All depends on faith. Of course, I am repeating to you what Sri Ramakrishna says."
--
Sri Ramkarishna said to the younger Naren, within Misra's hearing: "Rma is one, but He has a thousand names. He who is called 'God' by the Christians is addressed by the Hindus as Rma, Krishna, Isvara, and by other names. A lake has many ghats. The Hindus drink water at one ghat and call it 'jal'; the Christians at another, and call it 'water'; the Mussulmans at a third, and call it 'pani'. Likewise, He who is God to the Christians is Allah to the Mussulmans."
MISRA: "Jesus is not the son of Mary. He is God Himself. (To the devotees) Now he (pointing to Sri Ramakrishna) is as you see him-again, he is God Himself. You are not able to recognize him. I have seen him before, in visions, though I see him now directly with my eyes. I saw a garden where he was seated on a raised seat. Another person was seated on the ground, but he was not so far advanced.
"There are four door-keepers of God in this country: Tukaram in Bombay, Robert Michael in Kashmir, himself [meaning Sri Ramakrishna] in this part of the country, and another person in eastern Bengal."
2.22 - THE MASTER AT COSSIPORE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M: "Yes, he always says that after coming down from samadhi one sees that it is God Himself who has become the universe, the living beings, and all that exists. The Isvarakotis alone can attain that state. An ordinary man can at the most attain samadhi; but he cannot come down from that state."
NARENDRA: "He [the Master] said: 'Settle your family affairs and then come to me. You will attain a state higher than samadhi.' I went home this morning. My people scolded me, saying: 'Why do you wander about like a vagabond? Your law examination is near at hand and you are not paying any attention to your studies. You wander about aimlessly.'"
--
"The bhakta, however, does not ignore maya. He worships Mahamaya. Taking refuge in Her, he says: 'O Mother, please stand aside from my path. Only if You step out of my way shall I have the Knowledge of Brahman.' The jnanis explain away all three states — waking, dream, and deep sleep. But the bhaktas accept them all. As long as there is the ego, everything else exists. So long as the 'I' exists, the bhakta sees that it is God who has become maya, the universe, the living beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles."
Narendra and the other devotees sat silently listening.
--
"It is God alone who has kept this vidyamaya in me, for the good of men, for the welfare of the devotees.
"But if one retains vidyamaya one comes back to this world. The Avatars keep this vidyamaya. So long as a man has even the slightest desire, he must be born again and again. When he gets rid of all desires, then he is liberated. But the bhaktas do not seek liberation.
--
MASTER (to the devotees): "Do you know what I see right now? I see that it is God Himself who has become all this. It seems to me that men and other living beings are made of leather, and that it is God Himself who, dwelling inside these leather cases, moves the hands, the feet, the heads. I had a similar vision once before, when I saw houses, gardens, roads, men, cattle — all made of One Substance; it was as if they were all made of wax.
"I see that it is God Himself who has become the block, the executioner, and the victim for the sacrifice."
As he describes this staggering experience, in which he realizes in full the identity of all within the One Being, he is overwhelmed with emotion and exclaims, "Ah! What a vision!"
--
He casts his glance on Latu and says: "There is Loto. He bends his head, resting it on the palm of his hand. I see that it is God Himself who rests His head on His hand."
Sri Ramakrishna looks at the devotees and his love for them wells up in a thousand streams. Like a mother showing her tenderness to her children he touches the faces and chins of Rakhal and Narendra.
2.22 - The Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE ESSENCE of the teaching and the Yoga has thus been given to the disciple on the field of his work and battle and the divine Teacher now proceeds to apply it to his action, but in a way that makes it applicable to all action. Attached to a crucial example, spoken to the protagonist of Kurukshetra, the words bear a much wider significance and are a universal rule for all who are ready to ascend above the ordinary mentality and to live and act in the highest spiritual consciousness. To break out of ego and personal mind and see everything in the wideness of the self and spirit, to know God and adore him in his integral truth and in all his aspects, to surrender all oneself to the transcendent Soul of nature and existence, to possess and be possessed by the divine consciousness, to be one with the One in universality of love and delight and will and knowledge, one in him with all beings, to do works as an adoration and a sacrifice on the divine foundation of a world in which all is God and in the divine status of a liberated spirit, is the sense of the Gita's
Yoga. It is a transition from the apparent to the supreme spiritual and real truth of our being, and one enters into it by putting off the many limitations of the separative consciousness and the mind's attachment to the passion and unrest and ignorance, the lesser light and knowledge, the sin and virtue, the dual law and standard of the lower nature. Therefore, says the Teacher,
2.24 - THE MASTERS LOVE FOR HIS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"But all these problems are solved if we have faith only in one thing, and that is pantheism. All doubts disappear if one believes that everything is God. God alone is responsible for all that happens."
HIRANANDA: "Very easy to say that."
2.25 - AFTER THE PASSING AWAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"What the Master meant was that it is God alone who has kept this ego in you, so that He may accomplish many things through you."
NARENDRA: "But my ego loudly proclaims to all that I have no suffering."
2.25 - The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We have now completed our view of the path of Knowledge and seen to what it leads. First, the end of Yoga of Knowledge is God-possession, it is to possess God and be possessed by him through consciousness, through identification, through reflection of the divine Reality. But not merely in some abstraction away from our present existence, but here also; therefore to possess the Divine in himself, the Divine in the world, the Divine within, the Divine in all things and all beings. It is to possess oneness with God and through that to possess also oneness with the universal, with the cosmos and all existences; therefore to possess the infinite diversity also in the oneness, but on the basis of oneness and not on the basis of division. It is to possess God in his personality and his impersonality; in his purity free from qualities and in his infinite qualities; in time and beyond time; in his action and in his silence; in the finite and in the infinite. It is to possess him not only in pure self, but in all self; not only in self, but in Nature; not only in spirit, but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our life, to be one with all life; for our mind, to be one with the universal mind; for our spirit, to be identified with the universal spirit. It is to merge in him in the absolute and find him in all relations.
Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. Th is God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
2.3.1 - Svetasvatara Upanishad, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
web, so is God One & nought else existeth but by his own
nature covereth Himself up in the threads He hath spun
30.03 - Spirituality in Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the problem is: What is God, and what again is the blissful form of God? The word God does not mean any fixed, invariable form. God has many a form. There is no end to the ways in which He has been seen by men. So at the very outset we may be in doubt: the God of a sadhu or saint and that of an artist - are they identical or is there any difference between the two? A sadhu's vision of God may not tally with that of an artist. The blissful aspect of God which has been realised by a sadhu may also be realised in quite a different way by an artist.
In fact, in the eyes of a sadhu, that God alone is holy who is pure, unsullied and who cannot be stained by any earthly impulse. The God of a sadhu shines there alone where there is the complete absence of human impurity, sense-turmoil and grossness. In the eyes of a sadhu he alone is the real artist whose aim is to manifest God who is behind the play of daily transient activities of life and who is All-Good and free from all worldly sin. That artist alone is dear to him who has depicted men as above wants and afflictions and the restlessness of the senses and endowed them with the glow of nobility. To a sadhu God may possibly be a disciplined, liberated Being, but to an artist He is also the slave of the mind, vital and body. A sadhu takes delight in renunciation, sanctity. It is the artist who can reveal that the delight of the physical enjoyment or even of the enjoyment which we call impure is no other than and in no way inferior to the delight of God. A sadhu may remain absorbed in tranquil pure bliss, but, if he fails to appreciate the ambrosial bliss which the artist finds in his artistic work in the midst of the surging current of earthly life, then has he not found God piecemeal? God dwells in the generosity, the nobility of man as well as in the regions beyond the senses. But the same God also dwells in the meanness, narrowness and sensuality of man. The sadhu wants the former. But the artist can portray both the aspects equally in the full manifestation of their truth and beauty.
30.13 - Rabindranath the Artist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
God is God because He is the golden thread running through all things of the universe.
All are unified in your consciousness wide awake.
3.01 - Love and the Triple Path, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Without knowledge we live blindly in him with the blindness of the power of Nature intent on its works, but forgetful of its source and possessor, undivinely therefore, deprived of the real, the full delight of our being. By knowledge arriving at conscious oneness with that which we know,--for by identity alone can complete and real knowledge exist,--the division is healed and the cause of all our limitation and discord and weakness and discontent is abolished. But knowledge is not complete without works; for the Will in being also is God and not the being or its self-aware silent existence alone, and if works find their culmination in knowledge, knowledge also finds its fulfilment in works. And, here too, love is the crown of knowledge; for love is the delight of union, and unity must be conscious of joy of union to find all the riches of its own delight. Perfect knowledge indeed leads to perfect love, integral knowledge to a rounded and multitudinous richness of love. ''He who knows me'' says the Gita ''as the supreme Purusha''--not only as the immutable oneness, but in the many-souled movement of the divine and as that, superior to both, in which both are divinely held,--''he, because he has the integral knowledge, seeks me by love in every way of his being.'' This is the trinity of our powers, the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start from knowledge.
Love is the crown of all being and its way of fulfilment, that by which it rises to all intensity and all fullness and the ecstasy of utter self-finding. For if the Being is in its very nature consciousness and by consciousness we become one with it, therefore by perfect knowledge of it fulfilled in identity, yet is delight the nature of consciousness and of the acme of delight love is the key and the secret. And if will is the power of conscious being by which it fulfils itself and by union in will we become one with the Being in its characteristic infinite power, yet all the works of that power start from delight, live in the delight, have delight for their aim and end; love of the Being in itself and in all of itself that its power of consciousness manifests, is the way to the perfect wideness of the Ananda. Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight and without love we may get the rapt peace of its infinity, the absorbed silence of the Ananda, but not its absolute depth of richness and fullness. Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul's greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment.
3.02 - SOL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[124] The alchemical drama leads from below upwards, from the darkness of the earth to the winged, spiritual filius macrocosmi and to the lux moderna; the Christian drama, on the other hand, represents the descent of the Kingdom of Heaven to earth. One has the impression of a mirror-world, as if the God-man coming down from aboveas in the Gnostic legendwere reflected in the dark waters of Physis. The relation of the unconscious to the conscious mind is to a certain extent complementary, as elementary psychogenic symptoms and dreams caused by simple somatic stimuli prove.55 (Hence the strange idea, taught for instance by Rudolf Steiner, that the Hereafter possesses qualities complementary to those of this world.) Careful observation and analysis show, however, that not all dreams can be regarded mechanically as mere complementary devices but must be interpreted rather as attempts at compensation, though this does not prevent very many dreams from having, on a superficial view, a distinct complementary character. Similarly, we could regard the alchemical movement as a reflection of the Christian one.56 Koepgen makes a significant distinction between two aspects of Christ: the descending, incarnate God, and the ascending, Gnostic Christ who returns to the Father. We cannot regard the latter as the same as the alchemical filius regius, although Koepgens schema offers an exact parallel to the alchemical situation.57 The redeemer figure of alchemy is not commensurable with Christ. Whereas Christ is God and is begotten by the Father, the filius regius is the soul of nature, born of the world-creating Logos, of the Sapientia Dei sunk in matter. The filius regius is also a son of God, though of more distant descent and not begotten in the womb of the Virgin Mary but in the womb of Mother Nature: he is a third sonship in the Basilidian sense.58 No traditional influences should be invoked in considering the conceptual structure of this filius; he is more an autochthonous product deriving from an unconscious, logical development of trends which had already reached the field of consciousness in the early Christian era, impelled by the same unconscious necessity as produced the later development of ideas. For, as our modern experience has shown, the collective unconscious is a living process that follows its own inner laws and gushes up like a spring at the appointed time. That it did so in alchemy in such an obscure and complicated way was due essentially to the great psychological difficulties of antinomian thinking, which continually came up against the demand for the logical consistency of the metaphysical figures, and for their emotional absoluteness. The bonum superexcedens of God allows no integration of evil. Although Nicholas Cusanus ventured the bold thought of the coincidentia oppositorum, its logical consequence the relativity of the God-conceptproved disastrous for Angelus Silesius, and only the withered laurels of the poet lie on his grave. He had drunk with Jacob Boehme at the fount of Mater Alchimia. The alchemists, too, became choked in their own confusions.
[125] Once again, therefore, it is the medical investigators of nature who, equipped with new means of knowledge, have rescued these tangled problems from projection by making them the proper subject of psychology. This could never have happened before, for the simple reason that there was no psychology of the unconscious. But the medical investigator, thanks to his knowledge of archetypal processes, is in the fortunate position of being able to recognize in the abstruse and grotesque-looking symbolisms of alchemy the nearest relatives of those serial fantasies which underlie the delusions of paranoid schizophrenia as well as the healing processes at work in the psychogenic neuroses. The overweening contempt which other departments of science have for the apparently negligible psychic processes of pathological individuals should not deter the doctor in his task of helping and healing the sick. But he can help the sick psyche only when he meets it as the unique psyche of that particular individual, and when he knows its earthly and unearthly darknesses. He should also consider it just as important a task to defend the standpoint of consciousness, clarity, reason, and an acknowledged and proven good against the raging torrent that flows for all eternity in the darkness of the psychea
3.03 - The Consummation of Mysticism, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
everything is God to me, and everything is dust to me; that
is what man can say with equal truth, according to the direc-
3.05 - ON VIRTUE THAT MAKES SMALL, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
shout, "Zarathustra is Godless." And their teachers of
171
3.09 - Of Silence and Secrecy, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
So and so is God excites no interest. Continue, and you meet
scorn and scepticism: possibly persecution. Continue, and the
3.09 - The Return of the Soul, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
agreement and harmony. And this same one will is Gods eternal infallible
will; and from henceforth the Divine Man is in his own nature become one
3.10 - The New Birth, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Man is an analogy of God: Man is God, but not in an absolute sense,
since he is man. He is therefore God in a human way. Man is also a world,
31.10 - East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Cause of Indias Decline Where is God?
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On National HeritageEast and West
--
The Cause of Indias Decline Where is God?
3.1.15 - Rebirth, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Not soon is God's delight in us completed,
Nor with one life we end;
3.1.23 - The Rishi, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is God then?
RISHI
3.12 - ON OLD AND NEW TABLETS, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
once said in a parable: "Precisely this is Godlike that
there are gods, but no God."
32.01 - Where is God?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:32.01 - Where is God?
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
--
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On SpiritualityWhere is God?
Where is God?
GOD you do not find? No God - not at all? But why should He be found? And to own Him, what right have you? How much of yourself have you offered to Him? Every moment, every limb of yours, how far have you consecrated?
--
Whenever you say, "Where is God? Where is He? Nowhere," that shows the commencement of your soul's awakening, however insignificant it may be. For you feel a sense of want and dissatisfaction in everything including God.
Your denial of God is the first step towards God-realisation. One who finds fulfilment in the ordinary life and is content with and enamoured of it, one who needs nothing over and above life, is no better than a tree, a stone, an animal, a gorilla or a chimpanzee.
32.02 - Reason and Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Where is God? In This Crisis
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On SpiritualityReason and Yoga
--
What is truth is existent; that is, it is true only because it has existence. It is independent of any proof. It has to be seen directly and perceived immediately. The proof of the tree before you consists in your seeing it. There is God, the Self, Immortality, Eternity, the Life Divine. The proof of each of these entities, too, lies in its direct apperception.
You may say, "I see the tree, you see it, he sees it; everybody sees or can see it. But God, the Self, Immortality, the Life Divine: even if you have seen them, I have not done so. Everyone has not seen or cannot see them."
--
Where is God? In This Crisis
3.2.05 - Our Ideal, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Man also is God and it is through his developing manhood that he approaches the godhead; Life also is the Divine, its progressive expansion is the self-expression of the Brahman, and to deny
Life is to diminish the Godhead within us. This is the truth that returns to the East from the West translated into the language of the higher truth the East already possesses; and it is an ancient knowledge. The East also is awaking to the message. The danger is that Asia may accept it in the European form, forget for a time her own law and nature and either copy blindly the West or make a disastrous amalgam of that which she has in its most inferior forms and the crudenesses which are invading her.
32.06 - The Novel Alchemy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The question is: if there is God, if He is all-merciful, if the Power or Being in charge of the created universe is a benign and not a malign Power, siva and not asiva,then why is our earth afflicted with disease and suffering and sorrow and pain? Why are mortals in fear of the death that overhangs all? Not God but Satan then is the creator and supreme controller?
A well-known modern western thinker and sage has propounded a novel theory of his own on this problem. He too has suggested that the world is not something that is static with all things fixed and settled for good. The world is in movement, and the movement is ever forward, towards a higher consciousness that progressively unfolds its riches. As first results of this urge towards the heights" there have appeared all sorts of cracks and rifts, acute pulls and strains; these are translated into sorrow and suffering, deprivation and death. The earth or human society is not like a well trimmed garden, all has not been selected and arranged and put in its proper place according to a pattern and given a permanent shape. It is on the contrary like a wild bush with its innumerable shrubs and trees which have been continuously growing. So many of the dead leaves and branches have been shed, so many flowers have dried up. But new twigs are constantly forming on top and radiating their beauty of green leaves and flowers in bloom. Sorrow and suffering, pain and misery are like those dried-up and discarded flowers and leaves and twigs. These are concomitant results of the original total movement, perhaps even an inevitable necessity. But even from the individual's point of view this seeming waste and destruction is no sign of any futility, for through each individual there has been flowing that upward stream of consciousness, each individual has within himself an impulse and an endeavour to move along that stream and as an aid to it, no matter what outer form it might take. Or else the thing may be compared to the work of soldiers in a war. The common aim of war is victory. Every soldier has an equal self-devotion, "energy and steadfastness to secure this victory. Nevertheless, all do not survive till the end, many have to give up their lives, and on this immolation of the many is founded the ultimate victory. So, in the evolution of man on earth, the first step is represented by sorrow and suffering, misery and pain; these are the signs and symbols of the upward urge. Those who put up with suffering and sorrow, misery and pain, to the extent these can be borne, do not do so wholly under a sense of unwilling submission. The inner core of this suffering is a keen desire and urge and capacity to act as an instrument and support of the upward urge. Even from the point of view of the individual what appears in a sense a simple negation is in truth a thing of deep- import. Teilhard de Chard in has thus seen a spiritual meaning in the Christian's bearing of the cross; the cross-brings in the end a realisation of eternal life.
32.08 - Fit and Unfit (A Letter), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You have written that you are only an ordinary man, not out of the ordinary like me. You do not dare to be above the average, for you believe that you are wanting in capacity and power that make a man extraordinary. And therefore you have to go through life as others. However, I ask you one thing, who has told you that you are a mere nobody? How are you so positive about the limits of your power without exercising it in the field of work? Have you understood yourself entirely? No, you will say, and you will add that your shortcomings and aberrations are the proof. How can one be great with such imperfections? In order to be great, one has to aspire and that aspiration you lack. But I see at the very outset, that you have formed a wrong conception about yourself. May it not be that under cover of your despair there lies hidden the fire of your aspiration? But you have found no chance to give it a practical form. It is there lying repressed. You are only cherishing a feeling of self-depreciation. Well, have you probed it? You are wide awake to your shortcomings. Have you ever tried to see your good qualities? Before you jump to a conclusion about your own capacities, do not look only at your faults, but also at your good qualities. And in truth, I see in you a number of good qualities. Faults you have, but have you no virtues? You will ask, to what extent? Well, look at both the extremes of your merits and demerits, and form no estimate of yourself in advance. Man is an amalgam of good and bad. As there is in him an adhara for good qualities, even so there is another for bad. You call me an extraordinary man, but if you had seen me when I was of your age, you would have simply said, "What a miserable fellow you are! You have gone to dogs. There's no hope for you." And if you go through history you will find that no great personality was born with an unqualified greatness. All of them, as it is with us, came into the world, burdened with hope and despair, desire and frustration. To me the tall talk that you hear about the wonderful exploits of their childhood and boyhood is no better than a cock-and-bull story. People fabricate such stories to attract our attention to them after they have become great. Before they rose to greatness these had passed unnoticed. Be sure, you too will hear many such stories about your early life the moment you grow into a great personality. You may, however, say that all and sundry cannot become great. It is only a few that are actually great and it is God's Grace or the results of their actions in their previous lives that have made them so. There's no building on the sand. But who says that there is no power dormant in you? Or that you have no virtues acquired in your past lives? Or that you have no Grace of God? Who says that you .are only sand? So I tell you, first try to know yourself. And before trying to do so bear in mind the words of St. Paul: "I know not what I am". Start life with this approach. 'I know nothing about myself. I do not know whether I am an ordinary or extraordinary personality. I will come to know of it at long last.' Just begin the experiment on you to know yourself. Scrutinise yourself with a bold heart. Experiment on yourself like a scientist. Try to discover all your virtues and vices. As a matter of fact, the more you bring to the fore your vices, the more will you automatically see your virtues.
Man is a bottomless mine of gems. Above, there, are many layers of sand, stone, clay and Goal intermixed. The deeper you dive, the more you glimpse the real gems. The deeper still you go, you will find less and still less of mixture - there's only the gem. You have lost heart at the sight of sand, stone and coal that are on the surface. Man, as man, is such a mine. I don't say that diamonds are found in every mine. But be sure, something useful and valuable can be found in it. To an individual this precious thing is his individuality, I mean, his speciality. You will be a great personage, but that does not mean that you will grow into a Napoleon or a Buddha. And even if you could, I think, you must not try to be so. For to be a mere Napoleon or a mere Buddha is not the ideal of the world. Everybody must be his own self. Your whole greatness lies in what you should be.
You have to recognise that you are a mass of energy. Indeed, you have potentiality, whatever be your failure to manifest it fully and integrally. To be conscious of this power, to make it dynamic, to awaken this potentiality is to manifest your own individuality, your own uniqueness. Only you are not to measure this power, this potentiality by something else. Do you know the limit of the power that resides within you? In other words, this hidden power, this speciality of yours is the divine quality, is God himself. And surrender to the Divine means to let the hidden power act according to its will within you to make you calm and quiet and free your inner being from all limitations.
One more word and I stop for the moment. Just observe that our society lays great stress on modesty. If the word modesty means only to belittle oneself, to make nothing of oneself, one need not be modest at all. But what is the true meaning of modesty? It is simply to keep off pride and vanity. But pride, i.e., to boast, to give oneself airs, to look upon oneself as a big gun - all these we generally call vanity. Besides these, pride has other forms. There is a rajasic way of displaying one's pride. Truly; to think oneself poor, sinful, miserable, inferior to all, is also a sign of pride. All this is called tamasic pride. The word pride actually means I am aloof and unique, other than all you people.
3.21 - Of Black Magic, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Mankind is God; with Him is his business, and with Him alone.
Some magicians have hired legions of spirits for some special
3.5.01 - Aphorisms, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.
***
--
Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being.
The animal is Man disguised in a hairy skin and upon four legs; the worm is Man writhing and crawling towards the evolution of his Manhood. Even crude forms of Matter are Man in his inchoate body. All things are Man, the Purusha.
3.5.02 - Thoughts and Glimpses, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Wherefore he selected or made such a material, when he had all infinite possibility to choose from? Because of his divine Idea which saw before it not only beauty and sweetness and purity, but also force and will and greatness. Despise not force, nor hate it for the ugliness of some of its faces, nor think that love only is God. All perfect perfection must have something in it of the stuff of the hero and even of the Titan. But the greatest force is born out of the greatest difficulty.
***
3.6.01 - Heraclitus, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Two apophthegms of Heraclitus give us the starting-point of his whole thinking. They are his saying that it is wisdom to admit that all things are one and his other saying "One out of all and all out of One." How are we to understand these two pregnant utterances? Must we read them into each other and conclude that for Heraclitus the One only exists as resultant of the many even as the many only exist as a becoming of the One? Mr. Ranade seems to think so; he tells us that this philosophy denies Being and affirms only Becoming,-like Nietzsche, like the Buddhists. But surely this is to read a little too much into Heraclitus' theory of perpetual change, to take it too much by itself. If that was his whole belief, it is difficult to see why he should seek for an original and eternal principle, the ever-living Fire which creates all by its perpetual changing, governs all by its fiery force of the "thunderbolt", resolves all back into itself by a cyclic conflagration, difficult to account for his theory of the upward and downward way, difficult to concede what Mr. Ranade contends, that Heraclitus did hold the theory of a cosmic conflagration or to imagine what could be the result of such a cosmic catastrophe. To reduce all becoming into Nothing? Surely not; Heraclitus' thought is at the very antipodes from speculative Nihilism. Into another kind of becoming? Obviously not, since by an absolute conflagration existing things can only be reduced into their eternal principle of being, into Agni, back into the immortal Fire. Something that is eternal, that is itself eternity, something that is for ever one,-for the cosmos is eternally one and many and does not by becoming cease to be one,-something that is God (Zeus), something that can be imaged as Fire which, if an ever-active force, is yet a substance or at least a substantial force and not merely an abstract Will-to-become,-something out of which all cosmic becoming arises and into which it returns, what is this but eternal Being?
Heraclitus was greatly preoccupied with his idea of eternal becoming, for him the one right account of the cosmos, but his cosmos has still an eternal basis, a unique original principle. That distinguishes his thought radically from Nietzsche's or the Buddhists'. The later Greeks derived from him the idea of the perpetual stream of things, "All things are in flux." The idea of the universe as constant motion and unceasing change was always before him, and yet behind and in it all he saw too a constant principle of determination and even a mysterious principle of identity. Every day, he says, it is a new sun that rises; yes, but if the sun is always new, exists only by change from moment to moment, like all things in Nature, still it is the same ever-living Fire that rises with each Dawn in the shape of the sun. We can never step again into the same stream, for ever other and other waters are flowing; and yet, says Heraclitus, "we do and we do not enter into the same waters, we are and we are not." The sense is clear; there is an identity in things, in all existences, sarvabhūtāni, as well as a constant changing; there is a Being as well as a Becoming and by that we have an eternal and real existence as well as a temporary and apparent, are not merely a constant mutation but a constant identical existence. Zeus exists, a sempiternal active Fire and eternal Word, a One by which all things are unified, all laws and results perpetually determined, all measures unalterably maintained. Day and Night are one, Death and Life are one, Youth and Age are one, Good and Evil are one, because that is One and all these are only its various shapes and appearances.
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
and controls His world; Yajna is God. Agni also is a living intelligence that has gone forth, is srishta, from that Personality to do
His work and represent His power; Agni is a god. The material
4.03 - The Meaning of Human Endeavor, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
It is God himself who rises up in the heart of this
simplified world. And the organic form of the uni-
--
everything and everything is God, and Christ is at
once God and everything. On such an object,
4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Mentally she unites, for the Spouse is God, not a man.
Out of this mother is born the Ancient as well as the infant 83
4.19 - The Nature of the supermind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It must be remembered that there is always a difference between the supreme supermind of the omniscient and omnipotent Ishwara and that which can be attained by the Jiva. The human being is climbing out of the ignorance and when he ascends into the supramental nature, he will find in it grades of its ascension, and he must first form the lower grades and limited steps before he rises to higher summits. He will enjoy there the full essential light, power, Ananda of the infinite self by oneness with the Spirit, but in the dynamical expression it must determine and individualise itself according to the nature of the self-expression which the transcendent and universal Spirit seeks in tile Jiva. It is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga and more especially of its dynamic side; it is a divine self-expression in us of the Ishwara, but under the conditions of humanity and through the divinised human nature.
author class:Sri Aurobindo
4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Atheist is God playing at hide & seek with Himself;
Jnana
--
130. Fate is God's foreknowledge outside Space & Time of all that in Space & Time shall yet happen; what He has foreseen,
Power & Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.
--
good, all death an opening on widest immortality. Why and how this should be so, is God's secret which only the soul purified of egoism can penetrate.
136. Why is thy mind or thy body in pain? Because thy soul behind the veil wishes for the pain or takes delight in it; but if thou wilt - and perseverest in thy will - thou canst impose the spirit's law of unmixed delight on thy lower members.
--
158. What was Ramakrishna? God manifest in a human being; but behind there is God in His infinite impersonality and His universal Personality. And what was Vivekananda? A radiant glance from the eye of Shiva; but behind him is the divine gaze
Jnana
--
175. Because a good man dies or fails & the evil live & triumph, is God therefore evil? I do not see the logic of the consequence. I must first be convinced that death & failure are evil; I sometimes think that when they come, they are our supreme momentary good. But we are the fools of our hearts & nerves & argue that what they do not like or desire, must of course be an evil!
176. When I look back on my past life, I see that if I had not failed & suffered, I would have lost my life's supreme blessings; yet at the time of the suffering & failure, I was vexed with the sense of calamity. Because we cannot see anything but the one fact under our noses, therefore we indulge in all these snifflings and clamours. Be silent, ye foolish hearts! slay the ego, learn to see & feel vastly & universally.
4.2 - Karma, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
207. Beatitude is God's aim for humanity; get this supreme good for thyself first that thou mayst distribute it entirely to thy fellow-beings.
208. He who acquires for himself alone, acquires ill though he may call it heaven and virtue.
--
235. Our country is God the Mother; speak not evil of her unless thou canst do it with love and tenderness.
236. Men are false to their country for their own profit; yet they go on thinking they have a right to turn in horror from the matricide.
--
263. When thou hast the command, care only to fulfil it. The rest is God's will and arrangement which men call chance and luck and fortune.
264. If thy aim be great and thy means small, still act; for by action alone these can increase to thee.
--
363. This is not according to my Shastra or my Science, say the men of rule, formalists. Fool! is God then only a book that there should be nothing true & good except what is written?
364. By which standard shall I walk, the word that God speaks to me, saying "This is My will, O my servant," or the rules that men who are dead, have written? Nay, if I have to fear & obey any, I will fear & obey God rather & not the pages of a book or the frown of a Pandit.
--
368. The Vedanta is God's lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage & egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely & surely in a high & eternal sunlight.
369. What is the use of only knowing? I say to thee, Act and be, for therefore God sent thee into this human body.
5.02 - THE STATUE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
There now remains the second part of the philosophical practice, by far the more difficult, by much the more sublime. In this we read that all the sinews of talent, all the mental efforts of many philosophers have wearied themselves. For it is more difficult to make a man live again, than to slay him. Here is Gods work besought: for it is a great mystery to create souls, and to mould the lifeless body into a living statue.68
This living statue refers to the end-result of the work; and the work, as we have seen, was on the one hand a repetition of the creation of the world, and on the other a process of redemption, for which reason the lapis was paraphrased as the risen Christ. The texts sometimes strike a chiliastic note with their references to a golden age when men will live forever without poverty and sickness.69 Now it is remarkable that the statue is mentioned in connection with the eschatological ideas of the Manichaeans as reported by Hegemonius: the world will be consumed with fire and the souls of sinners chained for all eternity, and then shall these things be, when the statue shall come.70 I would not venture to say whether the Manichaeans influenced the alchemists or not, but it is worth noting that in both cases the statue is connected with the end-state. The tradition reported by Hegemonius has been confirmed by the recently discovered original work of Mani, the Kephalaia.71 This says:
5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[640] The lapis also figures in the Cabala: Sometimes Adonai, the name of the last Sefira, and Malchuth herself, the Kingdom, are so called; for the latter is the foundation of the whole fabric of the world.325 The stone is, indeed, of supreme importance, because it fulfils the function of Adam Kadmon as the capital-stone, from which all the upper and lower hosts in the work of creation are brought into being.326 It is called the sapphirestone, because it takes on divers colours from the highest powers, and works in created things now in one wise, now in the contrary, administering at times good, at others evil, now life, now death, now sickness, now healing, now poverty, now riches.327 The stone appears here as the power of fate; indeed, as the reference to Deuteronomy 32 : 39 shows, it is God himself.328 Knorr von Rosenroth was himself an alchemist, and his words here are written with deliberate intent.329 He emphasizes that the stone is the one which the builders rejected and is become the head of the corner.330 It occupies a middle position in the Sefiroth system since it unites in itself the powers of the upper world and distributes them to the lower.331 According to its position, therefore, it would correspond to Tifereth.332
[641] I have found no evidence in the alchemical literature that the sapphire was an arcanum before the time of Paracelsus. It seems as though this author introduced it into alchemy from the Cabala as a synonym for the arcane substance:
5.1.01.3 - The Book of the Assembly, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
Force that is God in the lions breast with the forest for altar.
What, in the cities stormed and sacked by Achilles in Troas
5.1.02 - Ahana, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Heavy is Godhead to bear with its mighty sun-burden of lustre.
Art thou not weary of only the stars in their solemn muster,
5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature, you say; but is God then her enemy? Was she created,
He unknowing or sleeping? Did someone transgress the fated
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
periphery without ever reaching the centre, which is God. Here
I would mention the wheel motif in mandala symbolism only in
--
passage, subordinates the many to the One. But the One is God,
and that which corresponds to him in us is the imago Dei, the
Blazing P2 - Map the Stages of Conventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
and why men shall die. The answer is: it is God or natures designing. It is what the higher
power prescribes it to be and no questioning of authority is permitted. It has all been planned
BOOK I. - Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
The glorious city of God is my theme in this work, which you, my dearest son Marcellinus,[25] suggested, and which is due to you by my promise. I have undertaken its defence against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of this city,a city surpassingly glorious, whether we view it as it still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and sojourns as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly, or as it shall dwell in the fixed stability of its eternal seat, which it now with patience waits for, expecting until "righteousness shall return unto judgment,"[26] and it obtain, by virtue of its excellence, final victory and perfect peace. A great work this, and an arduous; but God is my helper. For I am aware what ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of humility, which raises us, not by a quite human arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene. For the King and Founder[Pg 2] of this city of which we speak, has in Scripture uttered to His people a dictum of the divine law in these words: "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."[27] But this, which is God's prerogative, the inflated ambition of a proud spirit also affects, and dearly loves that this be numbered among its attri butes, to
"Show pity to the humbled soul, And crush the sons of pride."[28]
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
not revile the gods," quoth the god of Moses (Exodus xxii. 28), for it is God who "hath divided (them)
unto all nations" (Deut. iv. 19); and those who speak evil of
--
paradox, Eliphas Levi, that "man is God on Earth, and God is man in Heaven." But this could not, and
never did apply to the One Deity, only to the Hosts of ITS incarnated beams, called by us Dhyan
--
In no exoteric religion is God really one, if analyzed metaphysically.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-2-13.htm (3 von 25) [06.05.2003 03:37:17]
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
Master, it is the Thought (Mahat) which is God, the Father.**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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that which it is impossible to define -- that is God." (Physical Eclogues, Florilegium of Stobaeus.)
The contradiction between the two passages is evident; and this shows (a) that Hermes was a generic
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
* This does not mean that every bush, tree or stone is God or a god; but only that every speck of the
manifested material of Kosmos belongs to and is the substance of "God," however low it may have
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
the authority of Christ that it is God who does so? Open any pious volume in which the word
"temptation" is defined in its theological sense, and forthwith you find two definitions: (1) "Those
BOOK IV. - That empire was given to Rome not by the gods, but by the One True God, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But if they contend that only rational animals, such as men, are parts of God, I do not really see how, if the whole[Pg 152] world is God, they can separate beasts from being parts of Him. But what need is there of striving about that? Concerning the rational animal himself,that is, man,what more unhappy belief can be entertained than that a part of God is whipped when a boy is whipped? And who, unless he is quite mad, could bear the thought that parts of God can become lascivious, iniquitous, impious, and altogether damnable? In brief, why is God angry at those who do not worship Him, since these offenders are parts of Himself? It remains, therefore, that they must say that all the gods have their own lives; that each one lives for himself, and none of them is a part of any one; but that all are to be worshipped,at least as many as can be known and worshipped; for they are so many it is impossible that all can be so. And of all these, I believe that Jupiter, because he presides as king, is thought by them to have both established and extended the Roman empire. For if he has not done it, what other god do they believe could have attempted so great a work, when they must all be occupied with their own offices and works, nor can one intrude on that of another? Could the kingdom of men then be propagated and increased by the king of the gods?
14. The enlargement of kingdoms is unsuitably ascribed to Jove; for if, as they will have it, Victoria is a goddess, she alone would suffice for this business.
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Therefore that God, the author and giver of felicity, because He alone is the true God, Himself gives earthly kingdoms both to good and bad. Neither does He do this rashly, and, as it were, fortuitously,because He is God, not fortune,but according to the order of things and times, which is hidden from us, but thoroughly known to Himself; which same order of times, however, He does not serve as subject to it, but Himself rules as lord and appoints as governor. Felicity He gives only to the good. Whether a man be a subject or a king makes no difference: he may equally either possess or not possess it. And it shall be full in that life where kings and subjects exist no longer. And therefore earthly kingdoms are given by Him both to the good and the bad; lest His worshippers, still under the conduct of a very weak mind, should covet these gifts from Him as some great things. And this is the mystery of the Old Testament, in which the New was hidden, that there even earthly gifts are promised: those who were spiritual understanding even then, although not yet openly declaring, both the eternity which was symbolized by these earthly things, and in what gifts of God true felicity could be found.
34. Concerning the kingdom of the Jews, which was founded by the one and true God, and preserved by Him as long as they remained in the true religion.
BOOK IX. - Of those who allege a distinction among demons, some being good and others evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
The good angels, therefore, hold cheap all that knowledge of material and transitory things which the demons are so proud of possessing,not that they are ignorant of these things, but because the love of God, whereby they are sanctified, is very dear to them, and because, in comparison of that not merely immaterial but also unchangeable and ineffable beauty,[Pg 378] with the holy love of which they are inflamed, they despise all things which are beneath it, and all that is not it, that they may with every good thing that is in them enjoy that good which is the source of their goodness. And therefore they have a more certain knowledge even of those temporal and mutable things, because they contemplate their principles and causes in the word of God, by which the world was made,those causes by which one thing is approved, another rejected, and all arranged. But the demons do not behold in the wisdom of God these eternal, and, as it were, cardinal causes of things temporal, but only foresee a larger part of the future than men do, by reason of their greater acquaintance with the signs which are hidden from us. Sometimes, too, it is their own intentions they predict. And, finally, the demons are frequently, the angels never, deceived. For it is one thing, by the aid of things temporal and changeable, to conjecture the changes that may occur in time, and to modify such things by one's own will and faculty, and this is to a certain extent permitted to the demons,it is another thing to foresee the changes of times in the eternal and immutable laws of God, which live in His wisdom, and to know the will of God, the most infallible and powerful of all causes, by participating in His spirit; and this is granted to the holy angels by a just discretion. And thus they are not only eternal, but blessed And the good wherein they are blessed is God, by whom they were created. For without end they enjoy the contemplation and participation of Him.
23. That the name of gods is falsely given to the gods of the Gentiles, though Scripture applies it both to the holy angels and just men.
Book of Exodus, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The Book of Exodus is frequently quoted in the New Testament, as in the following three examples. Jesus quotes Exodus 3:6 as proof of the Resurrection, since the Patriarchs long dead live on in God who is God of the living (Matthew 22:32, Mark 12:26, and Luke 20:37). The Ten Commandments are frequently referred to, as in Matthew 19:18f, Mark 10:19f, and Luke 18:20f, when Jesus answered the young man who asked him, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" St. Paul in Second Corinthians 3:7-18 cited Moses in Exodus 34:33 ("He put a veil over his face") to explain the Jews' inability to recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah.
The following Scripture is from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible, now in the public domain. King James I commissioned a group of Biblical scholars in 1604 to establish an authoritative translation of the Bible from the ancient languages and other translations at the time, and the work was completed in 1611. The original King James Bible included the Apocrypha but in a separate section. A literary masterpiece of the English language, the original King James Bible is still in use today.
Book of Genesis, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
1 And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. 2 And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God's host: and he called the name of that place Mahanaim. 3 And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the country of Edom. 4 And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak unto my lord Esau; Thy servant Jacob saith thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed there until now: 5 And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and menservants, and womenservants: and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight. 6 And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother Esau, and also he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him. 7 Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed: and he divided the people that was with him, and the flocks, and herds, and the camels, into two bands; 8 And said, If Esau come to the one company, and smite it, then the other company which is left shall escape. 9 And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the LORD which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee: 10 I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. 11 Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. 12 And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.
13 And he lodged there that same night; and took of that which came to his hand a present for Esau his brother; 14 Two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, 15 Thirty milch camels with their colts, forty kine, and ten bulls, twenty she asses, and ten foals. 16 And he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove by themselves; and said unto his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space betwixt drove and drove. 17 And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother meeteth thee, and asketh thee, saying, Whose art thou? and whither goest thou? and whose are these before thee? 18 Then thou shalt say, They be thy servant Jacob's; it is a present sent unto my lord Esau: and, behold, also he is behind us. 19 And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that followed the droves, saying, On this manner shall ye speak unto Esau, when ye find him. 20 And say ye moreover, Behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of me. 21 So went the present over before him: and himself lodged that night in the company.
Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
praised is God, that his servant is Mohammed, that the
sacred temple is that of Mecca, that the distant temple is
Book of Psalms, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
6 Therefore let everyone who is Godly pray to you
while you may be found;
BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
We shall require to apply our mind with far greater intensity to the present question than was requisite in the solution and unfolding of the questions handled in the preceding books; for it is not with ordinary men, but with philosophers that we must confer concerning the theology which they call natural. For it is not like the fabulous, that is, the theatrical; nor the civil, that is, the urban theology: the one of which displays the crimes of the gods, whilst the other manifests their criminal desires, which demonstrate them to be rather malign demons than gods. It is, we say, with philosophers we have to confer with respect to this theology,men whose very name, if rendered into Latin, signifies those who profess the love of wisdom. Now, if wisdom is God, who made all things, as is attested by the divine authority and truth,[291] then the philosopher is a lover of God. But since the thing itself, which is called by this name, exists not in all who glory in the name,for it does not follow, of course, that[Pg 306] all who are called philosophers are lovers of true wisdom,we must needs select from the number of those with whose opinions we have been able to acquaint ourselves by reading, some with whom we may not unworthily engage in the treatment of this question. For I have not in this work undertaken to refute all the vain opinions of the philosophers, but only such as pertain to theology, which Greek word we understand to mean an account or explanation of the divine nature. Nor, again, have I undertaken to refute all the vain theological opinions of all the philosophers, but only of such of them as, agreeing in the belief that there is a divine nature, and that this divine nature is concerned about human affairs, do nevertheless deny that the worship of the one unchangeable God is sufficient for the obtaining of a blessed life after death, as well as at the present time; and hold that, in order to obtain that life, many gods, created, indeed, and appointed to their several spheres by that one God, are to be worshipped. These approach nearer to the truth than even Varro; for, whilst he saw no difficulty in extending natural theology in its entirety even to the world and the soul of the world, these acknowledge God as existing above all that is of the nature of soul, and as the Creator not only of this visible world, which is often called heaven and earth, but also of every soul whatsoever, and as Him who gives blessedness to the rational soul,of which kind is the human soul,by participation in His own unchangeable and incorporeal light. There is no one, who has even a slender knowledge of these things, who does not know of the Platonic philosophers, who derive their name from their master Plato. Concerning this Plato, then, I will briefly state such things as I deem necessary to the present question, mentioning beforeh and those who preceded him in time in the same department of literature.
2. Concerning the two schools of philosophers, that is, the Italic and Ionic, and their founders.
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These philosophers, then, whom we see not undeservedly exalted above the rest in fame and glory, have seen that no material body is God, and therefore they have transcended all bodies in seeking for God. They have seen that whatever is changeable is not the most high God, and therefore they[Pg 315] have transcended every soul and all changeable spirits in seeking the supreme. They have seen also that, in every changeable thing, the form which makes it that which it is, whatever be its mode or nature, can only be through Him who truly is, because He is unchangeable. And therefore, whether we consider the whole body of the world, its figure, qualities, and orderly movement, and also all the bodies which are in it; or whether we consider all life, either that which nourishes and maintains, as the life of trees, or that which, besides this, has also sensation, as the life of beasts; or that which adds to all these intelligence, as the life of man; or that which does not need the support of nutriment, but only maintains, feels, understands, as the life of angels,all can only be through Him who absolutely is. For to Him it is not one thing to be, and another to live, as though He could be, not living; nor is it to Him one thing to live, and another thing to understand, as though He could live, not understanding; nor is it to Him one thing to understand, another thing to be blessed, as though He could understand and not be blessed. But to Him to live, to understand, to be blessed, are to be. They have understood, from this unchangeableness and this simplicity, that all things must have been made by Him, and that He could Himself have been made by none. For they have considered that whatever is is either body or life, and that life is something better than body, and that the nature of body is sensible, and that of life intelligible. Therefore they have preferred the intelligible nature to the sensible. We mean by sensible things such things as can be perceived by the sight and touch of the body; by intelligible things, such as can be understood by the sight of the mind. For there is no corporeal beauty, whether in the condition of a body, as figure, or in its movement, as in music, of which it is not the mind that judges. But this could never have been, had there not existed in the mind itself a superior form of these things, without bulk, without noise of voice, without space and time. But even in respect of these things, had the mind not been mutable, it would not have been possible for one to judge better than another with regard to sensible forms. He who is clever judges better[Pg 316] than he who is slow, he who is skilled than he who is unskilful, he who is practised than he who is unpractised; and the same person judges better after he has gained experience than he did before. But that which is capable of more and less is mutable; whence able men, who have thought deeply on these things, have gathered that the first form is not to be found in those things whose form is changeable. Since, therefore, they saw that body and mind might be more or less beautiful in form, and that, if they wanted form, they could have no existence, they saw that there is some existence in which is the first form, unchangeable, and therefore not admitting of degrees of comparison, and in that they most rightly believed was the first principle of things, which was not made, and by which all things were made. Therefore that which is known of God He manifested to them when His invisible things were seen by them, being understood by those things which have been made; also His eternal power and Godhead by whom all visible and temporal things have been created.[296] We have said enough upon that part of theology which they call physical, that is, natural.
7. How much the Platonists are to be held as excelling other philosophers in logic, i.e. rational philosophy.
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The remaining part of philosophy is morals, or what is called by the Greeks , in which is discussed the question concerning the chief good,that which will leave us nothing further to seek in order to be blessed, if only we make all our actions refer to it, and seek it not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake. Therefore it is called the end, because we wish other things on account of it, but itself only for its own sake. This beatific good, therefore, according to some, comes to a man from the body, according to others, from the mind, and, according to others, from both together. For they saw that man himself consists of soul and body; and therefore they believed that from either of these two, or from both together, their well-being must proceed, consisting in a certain final good, which could render them blessed, and to which they might refer all their actions, not requiring anything ulterior to which to refer that good itself. This is why those who have added a third kind of good things, which they call extrinsic,as honour, glory, wealth, and the like,have not regarded them as part of the final good, that is, to be sought after for their own sake, but as things which are to be sought for the sake of something else, affirming that this kind of good is good to the good, and evil to the evil. Wherefore, whether they have sought the good of man from the mind or from the body, or from both together, it is still only from man they have supposed that it must be sought. But they who have sought it from the body have sought it from the inferior part of man; they who have sought it from the mind, from the superior part; and they who have sought it from both, from the whole man. Whether, therefore, they[Pg 318] have sought it from any part, or from the whole man, still they have only sought it from man; nor have these differences, being three, given rise only to three dissentient sects of philosophers, but to many. For diverse philosophers have held diverse opinions, both concerning the good of the body, and the good of the mind, and the good of both together. Let, therefore, all these give place to those philosophers who have not affirmed that a man is blessed by the enjoyment of the body, or by the enjoyment of the mind, but by the enjoyment of God,enjoying Him, however, not as the mind does the body or itself, or as one friend enjoys another, but as the eye enjoys light, if, indeed, we may draw any comparison between these things. But what the nature of this comparison is, will, if God help me, be shown in another place, to the best of my ability. At present, it is sufficient to mention that Plato determined the final good to be to live according to virtue, and affirmed that he only can attain to virtue who knows and imitates God,which knowledge and imitation are the only cause of blessedness. Therefore he did not doubt that to philosophize is to love God, whose nature is incorporeal. Whence it certainly follows that the student of wisdom, that is, the philosopher, will then become blessed when he shall have begun to enjoy God. For though he is not necessarily blessed who enjoys that which he loves (for many are miserable by loving that which ought not to be loved, and still more miserable when they enjoy it), nevertheless no one is blessed who does not enjoy that which he loves. For even they who love things which ought not to be loved do not count themselves blessed by loving merely, but by enjoying them. Who, then, but the most miserable will deny that he is blessed, who enjoys that which he loves, and loves the true and highest good? But the true and highest good, according to Plato, is God, and therefore he would call him a philosopher who loves God; for philosophy is directed to the obtaining of the blessed life, and he who loves God is blessed in the enjoyment of God.
9. Concerning that philosophy which has come nearest to the Christian faith.
BOOK VII. - Of the select gods of the civil theology, and that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
The same Varro, then, still speaking by anticipation, says that he thinks that God is the soul of the world (which the Greeks call ), and that this world itself is God; but as a wise man, though he consists of body and mind, is nevertheless called wise on account of his mind, so the world is called God on account of mind, although it consists of mind and body. Here he seems, in some fashion at least, to acknowledge one God; but that he may introduce more, he adds that the world is divided into two parts, heaven and earth, which are[Pg 268] again divided each into two parts, heaven into ether and air, earth into water and land, of all which the ether is the highest, the air second, the water third, and the earth the lowest. All these four parts, he says, are full of souls; those which are in the ether and air being immortal, and those which are in the water and on the earth mortal. From the highest part of the heavens to the orbit of the moon there are souls, namely, the stars and planets; and these are not only understood to be gods, but are seen to be such. And between the orbit of the moon and the commencement of the region of clouds and winds there are aerial souls; but these are seen with the mind, not with the eyes, and are called Heroes, and Lares, and Genii. This is the natural theology which is briefly set forth in these anticipatory statements, and which satisfied not Varro only, but many philosophers besides. This I must discuss more carefully, when, with the help of God, I shall have completed what I have yet to say concerning the civil theology, as far as it concerns the select gods.
7. Whether it is reasonable to separate Janus and Terminus as two distinct deities.
--
Next, I ask what place they find any longer for this Jupiter among the gods, if Janus is the world; for Varro defined the true gods to be the soul of the world, and the parts of it. And therefore whatever falls not within this definition, is certainly not a true god, according to them. Will they then say that Jupiter is the soul of the world, and Janus the body that is, this visible world? If they say this, it will not be possible for them to affirm that Janus is a god. For even, according to them, the body of the world is not a god, but the soul of the world and its parts. Wherefore Varro, seeing this, says that he thinks God is the soul of the world, and that this world itself is God; but that as a wise man, though he consists of soul and body, is nevertheless called wise from the soul, so the world is called God from the soul, though it consists of soul and body. Therefore the body of the world alone is not God, but either the soul of it alone, or the soul and the body together, yet so as that it is God not by virtue of the body, but by virtue of the soul. If, therefore, Janus is the world, and Janus is a god, will they say, in order that Jupiter may be a god, that he is some part of Janus? For they are wont rather to attri bute universal existence to Jupiter; whence the saying, "All things are full of Jupiter."[265] Therefore they must think Jupiter also, in order that he may be a god, and especially king of the gods, to be the world, that he may rule over the other godsaccording to them, his parts. To this effect, also, the same Varro expounds certain verses of Valerius Soranus[266] in that book which he wrote apart from the others concerning the worship of the gods. These are the verses:
"Almighty Jove, progenitor of kings, and things, and gods, And eke the mother of the gods, god one and all."
--
And when in another place he says that Genius is the rational soul of every one, and therefore exists separately in each individual, but that the corresponding soul of the world is God, he just comes back to this same thing,namely, that the soul of the world itself is to be held to be, as it were, the universal genius. This, therefore, is what he calls Jupiter. For if every genius is a god, and the soul of every man a genius, it follows that the soul of every man is a god. But if very absurdity compels even these theologists themselves to shrink from this, it remains that they call that genius god by special and pre-eminent distinction, whom they call the soul of the world, and therefore Jupiter.
14. Concerning the offices of Mercury and Mars.
--
Now Neptune had Salacia to wife, who they say is the nether waters of the sea. Wherefore was Venilia also joined to him? Was it not simply through the lust of the soul desiring a greater number of demons to whom to prostitute itself, and not because th is Goddess was necessary to the perfection of their sacred rites? But let the interpretation of this illustrious theology be brought forward to restrain us from this censuring by rendering a satisfactory reason. Venilia, says this theology, is the wave which comes to the shore, Salacia the wave which returns into the sea. Why, then, are there two goddesses, when it is one wave which comes and returns? Certainly it is mad lust itself, which in its eagerness for many deities resembles the waves which break on the shore. For though the water which goes is not different from that which returns, still the soul which goes and returns not is defiled by two demons, whom it has taken occasion by this false pretext to invite. I ask thee, O Varro, and you who have read such works of learned men, and think ye have learned something great,I ask you to interpret this, I do not say in a manner consistent with the eternal and unchangeable nature which alone is God, but only in a manner consistent with the doctrine concerning the soul of the world and its[Pg 286] parts, which ye think to be the true gods. It is a somewhat more tolerable thing that ye have made that part of the soul of the world which pervades the sea your god Neptune. Is the wave, then, which comes to the shore and returns to the main, two parts of the world, or two parts of the soul of the world? Who of you is so silly as to think so? Why, then, have they made to you two goddesses? The only reason seems to be, that your wise ancestors have provided, not that many gods should rule you, but that many of such demons as are delighted with those vanities and falsehoods should possess you. But why has that Salacia, according to this interpretation, lost the lower part of the sea, seeing that she was represented as subject to her husband? For in saying that she is the receding wave, ye have put her on the surface. Was she enraged at her husb and for taking Venilia as a concubine, and thus drove him from the upper part of the sea?
23. Concerning the earth, which Varro affirms to be a goddess, because that soul of the world which he thinks to be God pervades also this lowest part of his body, and imparts to it a divine force.
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