TERMS STARTING WITH
laws of hygiene. On gnostic amulets, Suriel’s
laws of indices: A number of rules for the manipulation of indices in an exponentiation of algebraic expressions.
laws of large numbers: A theorem which states that the long term average of an experiment should be close to the expected value. (The avergae tends to the expected value - the greater the number of experiments, the higher the probability that it stays within a given neighbourhood of the expected value.) The probability of this average straying outside any given neighbourhood around the expected value tends towards zero (statistically) even if it is not impossible (physically).
laws of motion: Usually referring to Newton's 3 laws of motion.
lawsonia ::: n. --> An Asiatic and North African shrub (Lawsonia inermis), with smooth oval leaves, and fragrant white flowers. Henna is prepared from the leaves and twigs. In England the shrub is called Egyptian privet, and in the West Indies, Jamaica mignonette.
lawsuit ::: n. --> An action at law; a suit in equity or admiralty; any legal proceeding before a court for the enforcement of a claim.
LAWS OF LIFE Laws of nature concern matter and motion, and laws of life concern the consciousness aspect.
The laws of life most important to mankind are the laws of freedom, unity, development, self (self-realization), destiny, reaping, and activation.
Those most important for the individual are: the laws of freedom, unity, self, and activation - especially the first two.
The laws of life make possible the greatest possible freedom and unerring justice for all. Freedom, or power, is the individual&
Laws of Manu. See MANU, LAWS OF
Laws of thought: See Logic, traditional. Leading principle: The general statement of the validity of some particular form of valid inference (see Logic, formal) may be called its leading principle.
Lawson, John Cuthbert. Modern Greek Folklore and
TERMS ANYWHERE
2. In its rational aspect, as developed especially by Plato and Aristotle, aristocracy is the rule of the best few, in a true, purposeful, law-abiding and constitutional sense. As a political ideal, it is a form of government by morally and intellectually superior men for the common good or in the general interests of the governed, but without participation of the latter. Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the best men for directing the life of the community, and of setting in motion the process of training and selecting such models of human perfection, aristocracy becomes practically the rule of those who are thought to be the best. [Plato himself proposed his ideal State as "a model fixed in the heavens" for human imitation but not attainment; and in the Laws he offered a combination of monarchy and democracy as the best working form of government.] Though aristocracy is a type of government external to the governed, it is opposed to oligarchy (despotic) and to timocracy (militaristic). With monarchy and democracy, it exhausts the classification of the main forms of rational government.
2. In Logic and Mathematics, a collection, a manifold, a multiplicity, a set, an ensemble, an assemblage, a totality of elements (usually numbers or points) satisfying a given condition or subjected to definite operational laws. According to Cantor, an aggregate is any collection of separate objects of thought gathered into a whole; or again, any multiplicity which can be thought as one; or better, any totality of definite elements bound up into a whole by means of a law. Aggregates have several properties: for example, they have the "same power" when their respective elements can be brought into one-to-one correspondence; and they are "enumerable" when they have the same power as the aggregate of natural numbers. Aggregates may be finite or infinite; and the laws applying to each type are different and often incompatible, thus raising difficult philosophical problems. See One-One; Cardinal Number; Enumerable. Hence the practice to isolate the mathematical notion of the aggregate from its metaphysical implications and to consider such collections as symbols of a certain kind which are to facilitate mathematical calculations in much the same way as numbers do. In spite of the controversial nature of infinite sets great progress has been made in mathematics by the introduction of the Theory of Aggregates in arithmetic, geometry and the theory of functions. (German, Mannigfaltigkeit, Menge; French, Ensemble).
9PAC "tool" 709 PACkage. A {report generator} for the {IBM 7090}, developed in 1959. [Sammet 1969, p.314. "IBM 7090 Prog Sys, SHARE 7090 9PAC Part I: Intro and Gen Princs", IBM J28-6166, White Plains, 1961]. (1995-02-07):-) {emoticon}; {semicolon}" {less than}"g" "chat" grin. An alternative to {smiley}. [{Jargon File}] (1998-01-18)"gr&d" "chat" Grinning, running and ducking. See {emoticon}. (1995-03-17)= {equals}" {greater than}? {question mark}?? "programming" A {Perl} quote-like {operator} used to delimit a {regular expression} (RE) like "?FOO?" that matches FOO at most once. The normal "/FOO/" form of regular expression will match FOO any number of times. The "??" operator will match again after a call to the "reset" operator. The operator is usually referred to as "??" but, taken literally, an empty RE like this (or "//") actually means to re-use the last successfully matched regular expression or, if there was none, empty string (which will always match). {Unix manual page}: perlop(1). (2009-05-28)@ {commercial at}@-party "event, history" /at'par-tee/ (Or "@-sign party") An antiquated term for a gathering of {hackers} at a science-fiction convention (especially the annual Worldcon) to which only people who had an {electronic mail address} were admitted. The term refers to the {commercial at} symbol, "@", in an e-mail address and dates back to the era when having an e-mail address was a distinguishing characteristic of the select few who worked with computers. Compare {boink}. [{Jargon File}] (2012-11-17)@Begin "text" The {Scribe} equivalent of {\begin}. [{Jargon File}] (2014-11-06)@stake "security, software" A computer security development group and consultancy dedicated to researching and documenting security flaws that exist in {operating systems}, {network} {protocols}, or software. @stake publishes information about security flaws through advisories, research reports, and tools. They release the information and tools to help system administrators, users, and software and hardware vendors better secure their systems. L0pht merged with @stake in January 2000. {@stake home (http://atstake.com/research/redirect.html)}. (2003-06-12)@XX "programming" 1. Part of the syntax of a {decorated name}, as used internally by {Microsoft}'s {Visual C} or {Visual C++} {compilers}. 2. The name of an example {instance variable} in the {Ruby} {programming language}. (2018-08-24)[incr Tcl] "language" An extension of {Tcl} that adds {classes} and {inheritence}. The name is a pun on {C++} - an {object-oriented} extension of {C} - [incr variable] is the Tcl {syntax} for adding one to a variable. [Origin? Availability?] (1998-11-27)\ {backslash}\begin "text, chat" The {LaTeX} command used with \end to delimit an environment within which the text is formatted in a certain way. E.g. \begin{table}...\end{table}. Used humorously in writing to indicate a context or to remark on the surrounded text. For example: \begin{flame} Predicate logic is the only good programming language. Anyone who would use anything else is an idiot. Also, all computers should be tredecimal instead of binary. \end{flame} {Scribe} users at {CMU} and elsewhere used to use @Begin/@End in an identical way (LaTeX was built to resemble Scribe). On {Usenet}, this construct would more frequently be rendered as ""FLAME ON"" and ""FLAME OFF"" (a la {HTML}), or "
a body of executive officials collectively entrusted with the execution and administration of laws.
abolish ::: v. t. --> To do away with wholly; to annul; to make void; -- said of laws, customs, institutions, governments, etc.; as, to abolish slavery, to abolish folly.
To put an end to, or destroy, as a physical objects; to wipe out.
abolition ::: n. --> The act of abolishing, or the state of being abolished; an annulling; abrogation; utter destruction; as, the abolition of slavery or the slave trade; the abolition of laws, decrees, ordinances, customs, taxes, debts, etc.
abrogate ::: a. --> Abrogated; abolished. ::: v. t. --> To annul by an authoritative act; to abolish by the authority of the maker or his successor; to repeal; -- applied to the repeal of laws, decrees, ordinances, the abolition of customs, etc.
To put an end to; to do away with.
acoustics ::: n. --> The science of sounds, teaching their nature, phenomena, and laws.
active ::: a. --> Having the power or quality of acting; causing change; communicating action or motion; acting; -- opposed to passive, that receives; as, certain active principles; the powers of the mind.
Quick in physical movement; of an agile and vigorous body; nimble; as, an active child or animal.
In action; actually proceeding; working; in force; -- opposed to quiescent, dormant, or extinct; as, active laws; active hostilities; an active volcano.
Actors "theory" A model for {concurrency} by {Carl Hewitt}. Actors are autonomous and concurrent {objects} which execute {asynchronously}. The Actor model provides flexible mechanisms for building parallel and {distributed} software systems. {(http://osl.cs.uiuc.edu/)}. ["Laws for Communicating Parallel Processes", C. Hewitt et al, IFIP 77, pp. 987-992, N-H 1977]. ["ACTORS: A Model of Concurrent Computation in Distributed Systems", Gul A. Agha "agha@cs.uiuc.edu", Cambridge Press, MA, 1986]. (1999-11-23)
adactylous ::: a. --> Without fingers or without toes.
Without claws on the feet (of crustaceous animals).
administration ::: n. --> The act of administering; government of public affairs; the service rendered, or duties assumed, in conducting affairs; the conducting of any office or employment; direction; management.
The executive part of government; the persons collectively who are intrusted with the execution of laws and the superintendence of public affairs; the chief magistrate and his cabinet or council; or the council, or ministry, alone, as in Great Britain.
agrarian ::: a. --> Pertaining to fields, or lands, or their tenure; esp., relating to an equal or equitable division of lands; as, the agrarian laws of Rome, which distributed the conquered and other public lands among citizens.
Wild; -- said of plants growing in the fields. ::: n.
Albert Einstein, Relativity, The Special & The General Theory, A Popular Exposition, translated by R. W. Lawson, London, 1920.
alcanna ::: n. --> An oriental shrub (Lawsonia inermis) from which henna is obtained.
alienable ::: a. --> Capable of being alienated, sold, or transferred to another; as, land is alienable according to the laws of the state.
Al-Jabbar ::: The One whose will is compelling. The corporeal worlds (engendered existence) are compelled to comply with His demands! There is no room for refusal. This ‘jabr’ (compelling) quality will inevitably express itself and apply its laws through the essence of beings.
All nature is suffused with a love of God and a desire to return to him, witnessed by the laws of motion governing inanimate bodies, the law of self-preservation in organic life, and by man's conscious search for the divine.
Among its members W. Dubislav (1937), K. Grelling, O. Helmer, C. G. Hempel, A. Herzberg, K.. Korsch, H. Reichenbach (q.v.), M. Strauss. Many members of the following groups may be regarded as adherents of Scientific Empiricism: the Berlin Society for Scientific Philosophy, the W arsaw School, the Cambridge School for Analytic Philosophy (q.v.), further, in U. S. A., some of the representatives of contemporary Pragmatism (q.v.), especially C. W. Morris, of Neo-Realism (q.v.), and of Operationalism (q.v.). Among the individual adherents not belonging to the groups mentioned: E. Kaila (Finland), J. Jörgensen (Denmark), A. Ness (Norway); A. J. Ayer, J. H. Woodger (England); M. Boll (France); K. Popper (now New Zealand); E. Brunswik, H. Gomperz, Felix Kaufmann, R. V. Mises, L. Rougier, E. Zilsel (now in U. S. A.); E. Nagel, W. V. Quine, and many others (in U.S.A.). The general attitude and the views of Scientific Empiricism are in esential agreement with those of Logical Empiricism (see above, 1). Here, the unity of science is especially emphasized, in various respects There is a logical unity of the language of science; the concepts of different branches of science are not of fundamentally different kinds but belong to one coherent system. The unity of science in this sense is closely connected with the thesis of Physicahsm (q.v.). There is a practical task in the present stage of development, to come to a better mutual adaptation of terminologies in different branches of science. There is today no unity of the laws of science. It is an aim of the future development of science to come, if possible, to a simple set of connected, fundamental laws from which the special laws in the different branches of science, including the social sciences, can be deduced. Here also, the analysis of language is regarded as one of the chief methods of the science of science. While logical positivism stressed chiefly the logical side of this analysis, it is here carried out from various directions, including an analysis of the biological and sociological sides of the activities of language and knowledge, as they have been emphasized earlier by Pragmatism (q.v.), especially C. S. Peirce and G. H. Mead. Thus the development leads now to a comprehensive general theory of signs or semiotic (q.v.) as a basis for philosophy The following publications and meetings may be regarded as organs of this movement. The periodical "Erkenntnis", since 1930, now continued as "Journal of Unified Science" The "Encyclopedia of Unified Science", its first part ("Foundations of the Unity of Science", 2 vols.) consisting of twenty monographs (eight appeared by 1940). Here, the foundations of various fields of science are discussed, especially from the point of view of the unity of science and scientific procedure, and the relations between the fields. Thus, the work intends to serve as an introduction to the science of science (q.v.). A series of International Congresses for the Unity of Science was started by a preliminary conference in Prague 1934 (see report, Erkenntnis 5, 1935). The congresses took place at Pans in 1935 ("Actes", Pans 1936; Erkenntnis 5, 1936); at Copenhagen in 1936 (Erkenntnis 6, 1937); at Paris in 1937; at Cambridge, England, in 1938 (Erkenntnis 7, 1938); at Cambridge, Mass., in 1939 (J. Unif. Sc. 9, 1941); at Chicago in 1941. Concerning the development and the aims of this movement, see O. Neurath and C. W. Morris (for both, see above, I D), further H. Reichenbach, Ziele and Wege der heutigen Naturphilosophie, 1931; S. S. Stevens, "Psychology and the Science of Science", Psych. Bull. 36, 1939 (with bibliography). Bibliographies in "Erkenntnis": 1, 1931, p. 315, p. 335 (Polish authors); 2, 1931, p. 151, p. 189; 5, 1935, p. 185, p. 195 (American authors), p. 199 (Polish authors), p. 409, larger bibliography: in Encycl. Unif. Science, vol. II, No. 10 (to ippetr in 1942). -- R.C.
A narrower, less philosophical employment of "contingent" emphasizes the aspect of dependence of one state of affairs upon another state of affairs in accordance with the laws of nature. In this usage an event A is said to be contingent upon B when the occurrence of A depends upon the occurrence of B, and it is usually implied that the occurrence of B is itself uncertain. -- F.L.W.
annul ::: a. --> To reduce to nothing; to obliterate.
To make void or of no effect; to nullify; to abolish; to do away with; -- used appropriately of laws, decrees, edicts, decisions of courts, or other established rules, permanent usages, and the like, which are made void by component authority.
apana ::: the last stage of utthapana, in which "one is not necessarily subject to the law of gravitation or other physical laws", making possible levitation "of the whole body raised from the earth". tes hugieies tēs
A propositional function F may also be said to be possible. In this case the meaning may be either simply (Ex)F(x); or that (Ex)F(x) is possible in one of the senses just described; or that F(x) is permitted under some particulai system of conventions or code of laws. As an example of the last we may take "It is possible for a woman to be President of the United States." Here F is λx[x is a woman and x is a President of the United States], and the code of laws in question is the Constitution of the United States. -- A.C.
Archelaus: A disciple of Anaxagoras; belonged to the Sophistic period; proclaimed the conventionality of all ethical judgments. He distinguished between man's natural impulses and dispositions and the dictates of human moral laws. The former he held to be superior guides to conduct. -- M.F.
As an emergent materialist, he holds that everything happens by the blind combination of the elements of matter or energy, without any guidance, excluding the assumption of a non-material component. While he regards primary qualities as physical emergents, he yet considers secondary qualities, such as color, taste, and smell, as transphysical emergents. He favors the emergence of laws, qualities and classes. Psyche, physical in nature, combines with other material factors to make the life of the mind. Broad holds to a generative view of consciousness. Psyche persists after death for some time, floats about in cosmic space indefinitely, ready to combine with a material body under suitable conditions. He calls this theory the "compound theory of materialistic emergency." Sensa, he holds, are real, particular, short-lived existents. They are exclusively neither physical nor mental. He replaces the neo-realistic contrast between existents and subsistents, by a contrast between existents and substracta. Main works: Scientific Thought, 1923; The Mind and Its Place in Nature, 1925; Five Types of Ethical Theory, 1930. -- H.H.
As moral laws differ widely from logical and physical laws, the type of necessity which they generate is considerably different from the two types previous defined. Moral necessity is illustrated in the necessity of an obligation. Fulfillment of the obligation is morally necessary in the sense that the failure to fulfill it would violate a moral law, where this law is regarded as embodying some recognized value. If it is admitted that values are relative to individuals and societies, then the laws embodying these values will be similarly relative, and likewise the type of thing which these laws will render morally necessary.
As pointed out by Lukasiewicz, these laws of the propositional calculus were known already (in verbal form) to Ockham. The attachment of De Morgan's name to the corresponding laws of the algebra of classes appears to be historically more correct.
Associationism: A theory of the structure and organization of mind which asserts that: (a) every mental state is resolvable into simple, discrete components (See Mind-Stuff Theory, Psychological Atomism) and (b) the whole of the mental life is explicable by the combination and recombination of these elemental states in conformity with the laws of association of ideas. (See Association, Laws of). Hume (Treatise on Human Nature, 1739) and Hartley (Observations on Man, 1749) may be considered the founders of associationism of which James Mill, J. S. Mill and A. Bain are later exponents. -- L.W.
Association, Laws of: The psychological laws in accordance with which association takes place. The classical enumeration of the laws of association is contained in Aristotle's De Memoria et Reminiscentia, II, 451, b 18-20 which lists similarity, contrast and contiguity as the methods of reviving memories. Hume (A Treatise on Human Nature, Part I, § 4 and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §3) slightly revised the Aristotelian list by enumerating as the sole principles of association, resemblance, contiguity in time or place and causality; contrast was considered by Hume, "a mixture of causation and resemblance." -- L.W.
astronomer ::: n. --> An astrologer.
One who is versed in astronomy; one who has a knowledge of the laws of the heavenly orbs, or the principles by which their motions are regulated, with their various phenomena.
atmology ::: n. --> That branch of science which treats of the laws and phenomena of aqueous vapor.
::: ". . . a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies, — all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic, — for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.” The Life Divine
“… a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies,—all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic,—for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.” The Life Divine
A true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies,—all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain, which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic,—for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 678
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
authority ::: the power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge.
autonomous ::: a. --> Independent in government; having the right or power of self-government.
Having independent existence or laws.
Bacon, Roger: (1214-1294) Franciscan. He recognized the significance of the deductive application of principles and the necessity for experimental verification of the results. He was keenly interested in mathematics. His most famous work was called Opus majus, a veritable encyclopaedia of the sciences of his day. -- L.E.D Baconian Method: The inductive method as advanced by Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The purpose of the method was to enable man to attain mastery over nature in order to exploit it for his benefit. The mind should pass from particular facts to a more general knowledge of forms, or generalized physical properties. They are laws according to which phenomena actually proceed. He demanded an exhaustive enumeration of positive instances of occurrences of phenomena, the recording of comparative instances, in which an event manifests itself with greater or lesser intensity, and the additional registration of negative instances. Then experiments should test the observations. See Mill's Methods. -- J.J.R.
badger ::: n. --> An itinerant licensed dealer in commodities used for food; a hawker; a huckster; -- formerly applied especially to one who bought grain in one place and sold it in another.
A carnivorous quadruped of the genus Meles or of an allied genus. It is a burrowing animal, with short, thick legs, and long claws on the fore feet. One species (M. vulgaris), called also brock, inhabits the north of Europe and Asia; another species (Taxidea Americana / Labradorica) inhabits the northern parts of North America.
barratry ::: n. --> The practice of exciting and encouraging lawsuits and quarrels.
A fraudulent breach of duty or willful act of known illegality on the part of a master of a ship, in his character of master, or of the mariners, to the injury of the owner of the ship or cargo, and without his consent. It includes every breach of trust committed with dishonest purpose, as by running away with the ship, sinking or deserting her, etc., or by embezzling the cargo.
Berkeleianism: The idealistic system of philosophy of George Berkeley (1685-1753). He thought that the admission of an extramental world would lead to materialism and atheism. Hence he denied the existence of an independent world of bodies by teaching that their existence consists in perceptibility, esse is percipi. The cause of the ideas in our mind is not a material substance, but a spiritual being, God, who communicates them to us in a certain order which we call the laws of nature. Things cannot exist unless perceived by some mind. Berkeley acknowledged the existence of other spirits, or minds, besides that of God. -- J.J.R.
B. Generically "an absolute" or "the absolute" (pl. "absolutes") means the real (thing-in-itself) as opposed to appearance; substance, the substantival, reals (possessing aseity or self-existence) as opposed to relations; the perfect, non-comparative, complete of its kind; the primordial or uncaused; the independent or autonomous. Logic. Aristotelian logic involves such absolutes as the three laws of thought and changeless, objectively real classes or species, In Kantian logic the categories and principles of judgment are absolutes, i.e. a priori, while the Ideas of reason seek absolute totality and unity, In the organic or metaphysical logic of the Hegelian school, the Absolute is considered the ultimate terminus, referent, or subject of every judgment. Ethics and Axiology. Moral and axiological identified with the Real values, norms, principles, maxims, laws are considered absolutes when universally valid objects of acknowledgment, whether conditionally or unconditionally (e.g. the law of the best possible, the utilitarian greatest happiness principle, the Kantian categorical imperative).
lawsonia ::: n. --> An Asiatic and North African shrub (Lawsonia inermis), with smooth oval leaves, and fragrant white flowers. Henna is prepared from the leaves and twigs. In England the shrub is called Egyptian privet, and in the West Indies, Jamaica mignonette.
lawsuit ::: n. --> An action at law; a suit in equity or admiralty; any legal proceeding before a court for the enforcement of a claim.
bloody hand ::: --> A hand stained with the blood of a deer, which, in the old forest laws of England, was sufficient evidence of a man&
Boodin, John Elof: American philosopher born in Sweden in 1869 who emigrated in 1886 to the United States. Studied at the Universities of Colorado, Minnesota, Brown and especially Harvard under Royce with whom he kept a life-long friendship though he was opposed to his idealism. His works (Time and Reality, 1904 -- Truth and Reality, 1912 -- A Realistic Universe, 1916 -- Cosmic Evolution, 1925 -- Three Interpretations of the Universe, 1934 -- God, 1935 -- The Social Mind, 1940) form practically a complete system. His philosophy takes the form of a cosmic idealism, though he was interested for a time in certain aspects of pragmatism. It grew gradually from his early studies when he developed a new concept of a real and non-serial time. The structure of the cosmos is that of a hierarchy of fields, as exemplified in physics, in organisms, in consciousness and in society. The interpenetration of the mental fields makes possible human knowledge and social intercourse. Reality as such possesses five attributes: being (the dynamic stuff of all complexes, the active energy), time (the ground of change and transformation), space (which accounts for extension), consciousness (active awareness which lights up reality in spots; it becomes the self when conative tendencies cooperate as one active group), and form (the ground of organization and structure which conditions selective direction). God is the spirit of the whole. -- T.G.J Boole, George: (1815-1864) English mathematician. Professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, 1849-1864. While he made contributions to other branches of mathematics, he is now remembered primarily as the founder of the Nineteenth Century algebra of logic and through it of modern symbolic logic. His Mathematical Analysis of Logic appeared in 1847 and the fuller Laws of Thought in 1854. -- A.C.
Boolean algebra "logic" (After the logician {George Boole}) 1. Commonly, and especially in computer science and digital electronics, this term is used to mean {two-valued logic}. 2. This is in stark contrast with the definition used by pure mathematicians who in the 1960s introduced "Boolean-valued {models}" into logic precisely because a "Boolean-valued model" is an interpretation of a {theory} that allows more than two possible truth values! Strangely, a Boolean algebra (in the mathematical sense) is not strictly an {algebra}, but is in fact a {lattice}. A Boolean algebra is sometimes defined as a "complemented {distributive lattice}". Boole's work which inspired the mathematical definition concerned {algebras} of {sets}, involving the operations of intersection, union and complement on sets. Such algebras obey the following identities where the operators ^, V, - and constants 1 and 0 can be thought of either as set intersection, union, complement, universal, empty; or as two-valued logic AND, OR, NOT, TRUE, FALSE; or any other conforming system. a ^ b = b ^ a a V b = b V a (commutative laws) (a ^ b) ^ c = a ^ (b ^ c) (a V b) V c = a V (b V c) (associative laws) a ^ (b V c) = (a ^ b) V (a ^ c) a V (b ^ c) = (a V b) ^ (a V c) (distributive laws) a ^ a = a a V a = a (idempotence laws) --a = a -(a ^ b) = (-a) V (-b) -(a V b) = (-a) ^ (-b) (de Morgan's laws) a ^ -a = 0 a V -a = 1 a ^ 1 = a a V 0 = a a ^ 0 = 0 a V 1 = 1 -1 = 0 -0 = 1 There are several common alternative notations for the "-" or {logical complement} operator. If a and b are elements of a Boolean algebra, we define a "= b to mean that a ^ b = a, or equivalently a V b = b. Thus, for example, if ^, V and - denote set intersection, union and complement then "= is the inclusive subset relation. The relation "= is a {partial ordering}, though it is not necessarily a {linear ordering} since some Boolean algebras contain incomparable values. Note that these laws only refer explicitly to the two distinguished constants 1 and 0 (sometimes written as {LaTeX} \top and \bot), and in {two-valued logic} there are no others, but according to the more general mathematical definition, in some systems variables a, b and c may take on other values as well. (1997-02-27)
Boutroux, E.: (1845-1921) Teacher of Bergson and M. Blondel, is best known for his defense of radical contingency and indeterminacy in metaphysics. Influenced by French "spiritualism" stemming from Maine de Biran, Boutroux was critical of the current psychological and sociological treatment of religious experience. Main works: Contingency of the Laws of Nature (tr. 1920); Philosophy and War (tr. 1916); Science et religion, 1908. -- L.W.
Boycott Apple "legal" Some time before 1989, {Apple Computer, Inc.} started a lawsuit against {Hewlett-Packard} and {Microsoft}, claiming they had breeched Apple's {copyright} on the {look and feel} of the {Macintosh user interface}. In December 1989, {Xerox} failed to sue {Apple Computer}, claiming that the software for Apple's {Lisa} computer and {Macintosh} {Finder}, both copyrighted in 1987, were derived from two {Xerox} programs: {Smalltalk}, developed in the mid-1970s and {Star}, copyrighted in 1981. Apple wanted to stop people from writing any program that worked even vaguely like a {Macintosh}. If such {look and feel} lawsuits succeed they could put an end to {free software} that could substitute for commercial software. In the weeks after the suit was filed, {Usenet} reverberated with condemnation for Apple. {GNU} supporters {Richard Stallman}, {John Gilmore} and Paul Rubin decided to take action against Apple. Apple's reputation as a force for progress came from having made better computers; but The {League for Programming Freedom} believed that Apple wanted to make all non-Apple computers worse. They therefore campaigned to discourage people from using Apple products or working for Apple or any other company threatening similar obstructionist tactics (e.g. {Lotus} and {Xerox}). Because of this boycott the {Free Software Foundation} for a long time didn't support {Macintosh} {Unix} in their software. In 1995, the LPF and the FSF decided to end the boycott. [Dates? Other events? Why did Xerox's case against Apple fail?] (1995-04-18)
(b) Seriousness, the inner state of respect or politeness (kung). With respect to daily affairs, it is expressed in care, vigilance, attention, etc., and with respect to the laws of the universe, it is expressed in sincerity (ch'eng), especially toward the Reason (li) of things. "Seriousness is the basis of moral cultivation, the essence of human affairs, just as sincerity is the way of Heaven." It is "to straighten one's internal life and righteousness (i) is to square one's external life." It means "unity of mind and absolute equanimity and absolute steadfastness." (Neo-Confucianism.) -- W.T.C.
bullet-proof hosting "networking, legal" A {hosting} company that guarantees not to shut down its {servers} even when requested to do so by law enforcement agencies. These hosting companies are often located off-shore or in nations where computer crime laws are lax or non-existent and where extradition requests will not be honoured. (2019-05-25)
Business Software Alliance "company" The BSA was created by {Microsoft} in 1988 in an attempt to combat {software theft}. The alliance includes the majority of leading software publishers including {Novell}, {Symantec}, and {Autodesk} and is actively campaigning in over 65 countries. The BSA operates a three-pronged approach: 1. Lobbying to strengthen copyright laws and co-operation with law enforcement agencies. 2. Educating the public through marketing, roadshows, etc. 3. Bringing legal actions against counterfeiters. BSA's aims are the same as the {Federation Against Software Theft} but it is not limited to the UK. In December 1990 the BSA obtained the first legal order in the UK which allowed a surprise search on a company's offices for suspected copyright infringement. {(http://bsa.org/bsa)}. UK Office: Business Software Alliance, 1st Floor, Leaconfield House, Curzon Street, London W1Y 8AS, United Kingdom. See also {software audit}. (1996-05-19)
But reason is not limited to its theoretical use. Besides objects of cognition and thought, there are also those of will and feeling. Kant's "practical philosophy", the real foundation of his system of transcendental idealism, centers in a striking doctrine of freedom. Even in its theoretical use. reason is a law-giver to Nature, in that the data of sense must conform to the forms of the sensibility and understanding if Nature is to be known at all. But in moral experience, as Kant shows in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the will of a rational being is directly autonomous -- a law unto itself. But the unconditional moral law, "duty" or "categorical imperative", the validity of which Kant does not question, is possible only on the supposition that the will is really free. As phenomenal beings we are subject to the laws of nature and reason, but as pure rational wills we move in the free, noumenal or intelligible realm, bound only by the self-imposed rational law "to treat humanity in every case as an end, never as a means only."
By immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 18, Page: 93
by-law ::: n. --> A local or subordinate law; a private law or regulation made by a corporation for its own government.
A law that is less important than a general law or constitutional provision, and subsidiary to it; a rule relating to a matter of detail; as, civic societies often adopt a constitution and by-laws for the government of their members. In this sense the word has probably been influenced by by, meaning secondary or aside.
By way of connoting different types of society, many contemporary Marxists, especially in the U.S.S.R., building upon Marx's analysis of the two phases of "communist society" ("Gotha Program") designate the first or lower phase by the term socialism, the second or higher by the term communism (q.v.). The general features of socialist society (identified by Soviet thinkers with the present phase of development of the U.S.S.R.) are conceived as follows: Economic collective ownership of the means of production, such as factories, industrial equipment, the land, and of the basic apparatus of distribution and exchange, including the banking system; the consequent abolition of classes, private profit, exploitation, surplus value, (q.v.) private hiring and firing and involuntary unemployment; an integrated economy based on long time planning in terms of needs and use. It is held that only under these economic conditions is it possible to apply the formula, "from each according to ability, to each according to work performed", the first part of which implies continuous employment, and the second part, the absence of private profit. Political: a state based upon the dictatorship of the proletariat (q.v.) Cultural the extension of all educational and cultural facilities through state planning; the emancipation of women through unrestricted economic opportunities, the abolition of race discrimination through state enforcement, a struggle against all cultural and social institutions which oppose the socialist society and attempt to obstruct its realization. Marx and Engels held that socialism becomes the inevitable outgrowth of capitalism because the evolution of the latter type of society generates problems which can only be solved by a transition to socialism. These problems are traced primarily to the fact that the economic relations under capitalism, such as individual ownership of productive technics, private hiring and firing in the light of profits and production for a money market, all of which originally released powerful new productive potentialities, come to operate, in the course of time, to prevent full utilization of productive technics, and to cause periodic crises, unemployment, economic insecurity and consequent suffering for masses of people. Marx and Engels regarded their doctrine of the transformation of capitalist into socialist society as based upon a scientific examination of the laws of development of capitalism and a realistic appreciation of the role of the proletariat. (q.v.) Unlike the Utopian socialism (q.v.) of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen (q.v.) and others, their socialism asserted the necessity of mass political organization of the working classes for the purpose of gaining political power in order to effect the transition from capitalism, and also foresaw the probability of a contest of force in which, they held, the working class majority would ultimately be victorious. The view taken is that Marx was the first to explain scientifically the nature of capitalist exploitation as based upon surplus value and to predict its necessary consequences. "These two great discoveries, the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalist production by means of surplus value we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science . . ." (Engels: Anti-Dühring, pp. 33-34.) See Historical materialism. -- J.M.S.
capitulary ::: n. --> A capitular.
The body of laws or statutes of a chapter, or of an ecclesiastical council.
A collection of laws or statutes, civil and ecclesiastical, esp. of the Frankish kings, in chapters or sections. ::: a.
caryophyllaceous ::: a. --> Having corollas of five petals with long claws inclosed in a tubular, calyx, as the pink
Belonging to the family of which the pink and the carnation are the types.
caste ::: n. --> One of the hereditary classes into which the Hindoos are divided according to the laws of Brahmanism.
A separate and fixed order or class of persons in society who chiefly hold intercourse among themselves.
casuistry ::: a. --> The science or doctrine of dealing with cases of conscience, of resolving questions of right or wrong in conduct, or determining the lawfulness or unlawfulness of what a man may do by rules and principles drawn from the Scriptures, from the laws of society or the church, or from equity and natural reason; the application of general moral rules to particular cases.
Sophistical, equivocal, or false reasoning or teaching in regard to duties, obligations, and morals.
Categorical Imperative: (Kant. Ger. kategorischer Imperativ) The supreme, absolute moral law of rational, self-determining beings. Distinguished from hypothetical or conditional imperatives which admit of exceptions. Kant formulated the categorical imperative as follows "Act on maxims which can at the same time have for their object themselves as universal laws of nature." See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
Chance: (Lat. cadere, to fall) 1. Property or being undetermined. 2. Property of being predictable according to the laws of probability (q.v.). -- A.C.B.
Ch'ang: (a) "Invariables" or universal and eternal laws or principles running through the phenomenal change of the universe. (Lao Tzu). (b) Constant virtues. See wu ch'ang. -- H.H.
cheliferous ::: a. --> Having cheliform claws, like a crab.
chorology ::: n. --> The science which treats of the laws of distribution of living organisms over the earth&
clawed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Claw ::: a. --> Furnished with claws.
clawless ::: a. --> Destitute of claws.
claw ::: n. **1. A sharp, usually curved, nail on the foot of an animal, as on a cat, dog, or bird. v. 2. To tear, scratch, seize, pull, etc., with or as if with claws. clawed.**
claw ::: n. --> A sharp, hooked nail, as of a beast or bird.
The whole foot of an animal armed with hooked nails; the pinchers of a lobster, crab, etc.
Anything resembling the claw of an animal, as the curved and forked end of a hammer for drawing nails.
A slender appendage or process, formed like a claw, as the base of petals of the pink.
To pull, tear, or scratch with, or as with, claws or nails.
clutch ::: n. --> A gripe or clinching with, or as with, the fingers or claws; seizure; grasp.
The hands, claws, or talons, in the act of grasping firmly; -- often figuratively, for power, rapacity, or cruelty; as, to fall into the clutches of an adversary.
A device which is used for coupling shafting, etc., so as to transmit motion, and which may be disengaged at pleasure.
Any device for gripping an object, as at the end of a chain
code ::: n. --> A body of law, sanctioned by legislation, in which the rules of law to be specifically applied by the courts are set forth in systematic form; a compilation of laws by public authority; a digest.
Any system of rules or regulations relating to one subject; as, the medical code, a system of rules for the regulation of the professional conduct of physicians; the naval code, a system of rules for making communications at sea means of signals.
codex ::: n. --> A book; a manuscript.
A collection or digest of laws; a code.
An ancient manuscript of the Sacred Scriptures, or any part of them, particularly the New Testament.
A collection of canons.
codification ::: n. --> The act or process of codifying or reducing laws to a code.
codify ::: v. t. --> To reduce to a code, as laws.
Cohen, Hermann: (1842-1918) and Paul Natorp (1854-1924) were the chief leaders of the "Marburg School" which formed a definite branch of the Neo-Kantian movement. Whereas the original founders of this movement, O. Liebmann and Fr. A. Lange, had reacted to scientific empiricism by again calling attention to the a priori elements of cognition, the Marburg school contended that all cognition was exclusively a priori. They definitely rejected not only the notion of "things-in-themselves" but even that of anything immediately "given" in experience. There is no other reality than one posited by thought and this holds good equally for the object, the subject and God. Nor is thought in its effort to "determine the object = x" limited by any empirical data but solely by the laws of thought. Since in Ethics Kant himself had already endeavored to eliminate all empirical elements, the Marburg school was perhaps closer to him in this field than in epistemology. The sole goal of conduct is fulfillment of duty, i.e., the achievement of a society organized according to moral principles and satisfying the postulates of personal dignity. The Marburg school was probably the most influential philosophic trend in Germany in the last 25 years before the First World War. The most outstanding present-day champion of their tradition is Ernst Cassirer (born 1874). Cohen and Natorp tried to re-interpret Plato as well as Kant. Following up a suggestion first made by Lotze they contended that the Ideas ought to be understood as laws or methods of thought and that the current view ascribing any kind of existence to them was based on a misunderstanding of Aristotle's. -- H.G.
comitial ::: a. --> Relating to the comitia, or popular assemblies of the Romans for electing officers and passing laws.
comitia ::: n. pl. --> A public assembly of the Roman people for electing officers or passing laws.
commandment ::: n. --> An order or injunction given by authority; a command; a charge; a precept; a mandate.
One of the ten laws or precepts given by God to the Israelites at Mount Sinai.
The act of commanding; exercise of authority.
The offense of commanding or inducing another to violate the law.
commonwealth ::: n. --> A state; a body politic consisting of a certain number of men, united, by compact or tacit agreement, under one form of government and system of laws.
The whole body of people in a state; the public.
Specifically, the form of government established on the death of Charles I., in 1649, which existed under Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard, ending with the abdication of the latter in 1659.
community ::: n. --> Common possession or enjoyment; participation; as, a community of goods.
A body of people having common rights, privileges, or interests, or living in the same place under the same laws and regulations; as, a community of monks. Hence a number of animals living in a common home or with some apparent association of interests.
Society at large; a commonwealth or state; a body politic; the public, or people in general.
Commutative law is any law of the form x o y = y o x, or with the biconditional, etc., replacing equality -- compare Associative law. Commutative laws of addition and multiplication hold in arithmetic, also in the theory of real numbers, etc. In the propositional calculus there are commutative laws of conjunction, both kinds of disjunction, the biconditional, alternative denial and its dual; also corresponding laws in the algebra of classes. -- A.C.
compose ::: v. t. --> To form by putting together two or more things or parts; to put together; to make up; to fashion.
To form the substance of, or part of the substance of; to constitute.
To construct by mental labor; to design and execute, or put together, in a manner involving the adaptation of forms of expression to ideas, or to the laws of harmony or proportion; as, to compose a sentence, a sermon, a symphony, or a picture.
Compossibility: Those things are compossible in Leibniz's philosophy which are literally "co-possible," i.e., which may exist together, which belong to the same possible world. Since metaphysical possibility means for Leibniz simply the absence of contradiction, two or more things are compossible if, and only if, their joint ascription to a single world involves no contradiction. All possible worlds are held by Leibniz to have general laws analogous to those of our own actual world. Compossibility for any set of things, consequently, involves their capacity to be brought under one and the same general system of laws. That this last provision is important follows from the fact that Leibniz affirmed all simple predicates to be compatible. -- F.L.W.
concubine ::: n. --> A woman who cohabits with a man without being his wife; a paramour.
A wife of inferior condition; a lawful wife, but not united to the man by the usual ceremonies, and of inferior condition. Such were Hagar and Keturah, the concubines of Abraham; and such concubines were allowed by the Roman laws. Their children were not heirs of their father.
consolato del mare ::: --> A collection of maritime laws of disputed origin, supposed to have been first published at Barcelona early in the 14th century. It has formed the basis of most of the subsequent collections of maritime laws.
Contextual definition: See incomplete symbol. Contiguity, Association by: A type of association, recognized by Aristotle, whereby one of two states of mind, which have been coexistent or successive, tends to recall the other. This type of association has sometimes been considered the basic type to which all others are reducible. See Association, laws of. -- L.W.
Contrast, Association by: (Lat. contrastare, to stand opposed to) Association in accordance with the principle proposed by Aristotle but rejected by Hartley, J. S. Mill and other associationists that contrasting qualities tend to reinstate one another in consciousness. See Association, Laws of. -- L.W.
Convention: (Lat. conveniens, suitable) Any proposition whose truth is determined not by fact but by social agreement or usage. In Democritus, "Sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, color is color by convention (nomoi)." (Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker B. 125) The Sophists (q.v.) regarded all laws and ethical principles as conventions. -- A.C.B.
copyright "legal" The exclusive rights of the owner of the copyright on a work to make and distribute copies, prepare derivative works, and perform and display the work in public (these last two mainly apply to plays, films, dances and the like, but could also apply to software). A work, including a piece of software, is under copyright by default in most coutries, whether of not it displays a copyright notice. However, a copyright notice may make it easier to assert ownership. The copyright owner is the person or company whose name appears in the copyright notice on the box, or the disk or the screen or wherever. Most countries have agreed to uphold each others' copyrights. A copyright notice has three parts. The first can be either the {copyright symbol} (a letter C in a circle), the word "Copyright" or the abbreviation "Copr". Only the first of these is recognised internationally and the common {ASCII} rendering "(C)" is not valid anywhere. This is followed by the name of the copyright holder and the year of publication. The year should be the year of _first_ publication, it is not necessary as some believe to update this every year to the current year. Copyright protection in most countries extends for 50 years after the author's death. Originally, most of the computer industry assumed that only the program's underlying instructions were protected under copyright law but, beginning in the early 1980s, a series of lawsuits involving the video screens of game programs extended protections to the appearance of programs. Use of copyright to restrict redistribution is immoral, unethical and illegitimate. It is a result of brainwashing by monopolists and corporate interests and it violates everyone's rights. Such use of copyrights and patents hamper technological progress by making a naturally abundant resource scarce. Many, from communists to right wing libertarians, are trying to abolish intellectual property myths. See also {public domain}, {copyleft}, {software law}. {Universal Copyright Convention (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/creativity/creative-industries/copyright/)}. {US Copyright Office (http://copyright.gov/)}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:misc.legal.computing}. [Is this definition correct in the UK? In the US? Anywhere?] (2014-01-08)
corps ::: n. sing. & pl. --> The human body, whether living or dead.
A body of men; esp., an organized division of the military establishment; as, the marine corps; the corps of topographical engineers; specifically, an army corps.
A body or code of laws.
The land with which a prebend or other ecclesiastical office is endowed.
Cosmology: A branch of philosophy which treats of the origin and structure of the universe. It is to be contrasted with ontology or metaphysics, the study of the most general features of reality, natural and supernatural, and with the philosophy of nature, which investigates the basic laws, processes and divisions of the objects in nature. It is perhaps impossible to draw or maintain a sharp distinction between these different subjects, and treatises which profess to deal with one of them usually contain considerable material on the others. Encyclopedia, section 35), are the contingency, necessity, eternity, limitations and formal laws of the world, the freedom of man and the origin of evil. Most philosophers would add to the foregoing the question of the nature and interrelationship of space and time, and would perhaps exclude the question of the nature of freedom and the origin of evil as outside the province of cosmology. The method of investigation has usually been to accept the principles of science or the results of metaphysics and develop the consequences. The test of a cosmology most often used is perhaps that of exhibiting the degree of accordance it has with respect to both empirical fact and metaphysical truth. The value of a cosmology seems to consist primarily in its capacity to provide an ultimate frame for occurrences in nature, and to offer a demonstration of where the limits of the spatio-temporal world are, and how they might be transcended.
cosmology ::: n. --> The science of the world or universe; or a treatise relating to the structure and parts of the system of creation, the elements of bodies, the modifications of material things, the laws of motion, and the order and course of nature.
create ::: a. --> Created; composed; begotten. ::: v. t. --> To bring into being; to form out of nothing; to cause to exist.
To effect by the agency, and under the laws, of causation; to be the occasion of; to cause; to produce; to form or
Cudworth, Ralph: (1617-1688) Was the leading Cambridge Platonist (q.v.). His writings were devoted to a refutation of Hobbesean materialism which he characterized as atheistic. He accepted a rationalism of the kind advanced by Descartes. He found clear and distinct fundamental notions or categories reflecting universal reason, God's mind, the nature and essence of things and the moral laws, which he held to be as binding on God as the axioms of mathematics. His two most important works are The True Intellectual System of the Universe, and A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. -- L.E.D.
Customs: Behavior patterns participated in by persons as members of a group, contrasted with personal or random group behavior patterns, including folkways, conventions, mores, institutions. Behavior patterns long established in a group as contrasted with newly enacted laws or newly acquired conduct practices. Group behavior patterns which are un-enforced (folkways) or moderately enforced (conventions) or morally enforced (mores) as contrasted with institutions which are legally enforced.
defier ::: n. --> One who dares and defies; a contemner; as, a defier of the laws.
deformity ::: a. --> The state of being deformed; want of proper form or symmetry; any unnatural form or shape; distortion; irregularity of shape or features; ugliness.
Anything that destroys beauty, grace, or propriety; irregularity; absurdity; gross deviation from order or the established laws of propriety; as, deformity in an edifice; deformity of character.
De Morgan, Augustus: (1806-1871) English mathematician and logician. Professor of mathematics at University College, London, 1828-1831, 1836-1866. His Formal Logic of 1847 contains some points of an algebra of logic essentially similar to that of Boole (q. v.), but the notation is less adequate than Boole's and the calculus is less fully worked out and applied. De Morgan, however, had the notion of logical sum for arbitrary classes -- whereas Boole contemplated addition only of classes having no members in common. De Morgan's laws (q. v.) -- as they are now known -- were also enunciated in this work. The treatment of the syllogism is original, but has since been susperseded, and does not constitute the author's real claim to remembrance as a logician. (The famous controversy with Sir William Hamilton over the latter's charge of plagiarism in connection with this treatment of the syllogism may therefore be dismissed as not of present interest.)
De Morgan's laws: Are the two dually related theorems of the propositional calculus, ∼[p ∨ q] ≡ [∼p ∼q], ∼[pq] ≡ [∼p v ∼q], or the two corresponding dually related theorems of the algebra of classes, −(a ∪ b) = −a ∩ −b, −(a ∩ b) = −a ∪ −b. In the propositional calculus these laws (together with the law of double negation) make it possible to define conjunction in terms of negation and (inclusive) disjunction, or, alternatively, disjunction in terms of negation and conjunction. Similarly in the algebra of classes logical product may be defined in terms of logical sum and complementation, or logical sum in terms of logical product and complementation.
DeMorgan's theorem "logic" A logical {theorem} which states that the {complement} of a {conjunction} is the {disjunction} of the complements or vice versa. In symbols: not (x and y) = (not x) or (not y) not (x or y) = (not x) and (not y) E.g. if it is not the case that I am tall and thin then I am either short or fat (or both). The theorem can be extended to combinations of more than two terms in the obvious way. The same laws also apply to sets, replacing logical complement with set complement, conjunction ("and") with set intersection, and disjunction ("or") with set union. A ({C}) programmer might use this to re-write if (!foo && !bar) ... as if (!(foo || bar)) ... thus saving one operator application (though an {optimising compiler} should do the same, leaving the programmer free to use whichever form seemed clearest). (1995-12-14)
despot ::: n. --> A master; a lord; especially, an absolute or irresponsible ruler or sovereign.
One who rules regardless of a constitution or laws; a tyrant.
determinant ::: a. --> Serving to determine or limit; determinative. ::: n. --> That which serves to determine; that which causes determination.
The sum of a series of products of several numbers, these products being formed according to certain specified laws
devanam adabdha (adabdhani) vratani ::: [the inviolate laws of the working of the gods]. [Ved.]
devanam dhruva-vratani ::: [the fixed laws of working of the gods]. [Ved.]
devanam prathama vratani ::: [the first laws of working of the gods]. [Ved.]
digest ::: v. t. --> To distribute or arrange methodically; to work over and classify; to reduce to portions for ready use or application; as, to digest the laws, etc.
To separate (the food) in its passage through the alimentary canal into the nutritive and nonnutritive elements; to prepare, by the action of the digestive juices, for conversion into blood; to convert into chyme.
To think over and arrange methodically in the mind; to
dioptrics ::: n. --> The science of the refraction of light; that part of geometrical optics which treats of the laws of the refraction of light in passing from one medium into another, or through different mediums, as air, water, or glass, and esp. through different lenses; -- distinguished from catoptrics, which refers to reflected light.
disafforest ::: v. t. --> To reduce from the privileges of a forest to the state of common ground; to exempt from forest laws.
disarmed ::: a. --> Deprived of arms.
Deprived of claws, and teeth or beaks.
::: "Discoveries will be made that thin the walls between soul and matter; attempts there will be to extend exact knowledge into the psychological and psychic realms with a realisation of the truth that these have laws of their own which are other than the physical, but not the less laws because they escape the external senses and are infinitely plastic and subtle.” The Human Cycle, etc.
“Discoveries will be made that thin the walls between soul and matter; attempts there will be to extend exact knowledge into the psychological and psychic realms with a realisation of the truth that these have laws of their own which are other than the physical, but not the less laws because they escape the external senses and are infinitely plastic and subtle.” The Human Cycle, etc.
disobey ::: v. t. --> Not to obey; to neglect or refuse to obey (a superior or his commands, the laws, etc.); to transgress the commands of (one in authority); to violate, as an order; as, refractory children disobey their parents; men disobey their Maker and the laws. ::: v. i. --> To refuse or neglect to obey; to violate commands; to
dispense ::: v. t. --> To deal out in portions; to distribute; to give; as, the steward dispenses provisions according directions; Nature dispenses her bounties; to dispense medicines.
To apply, as laws to particular cases; to administer; to execute; to manage; to direct.
To pay for; to atone for.
To exempt; to excuse; to absolve; -- with from.
Dispensation; exemption.
Distributive law is a name given to a number of laws of the same or similar form appearing in various disciplines -- compare associative law. A distributive law of multiplication over addition appears in arithmetic: x X (y + z) = (x X y) + (x X z). This distributive law holds also in the theory of real numbers, and in many other mathematical disciplines involving two operations called multiplication and addition. In the propositional calculus there are four distributive laws (two dually related pairs): p[p ∨ r] ≡ [pq ∨ pr]. [p ∨ qr] ≡ [p ∨ q][p ∨ r]. p[p + r] ≡ [pq + pr]. [p ∨ [q ≡ r] ≡ [p ∨ q] ≡ [p ∨ r]]. Also four corresponding laws in the algebra of classes. -- A.C.
Divine and led by Utc common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance. Tltc religious life is a movement of the same Ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond.
dragon ::: a mythical monster traditionally represented as a gigantic reptile having a lion"s claws, the tail of a serpent, wings, and a scaly skin. (Also employed by Sri Aurobindo as an adjective.)
dragon ::: n. --> A fabulous animal, generally represented as a monstrous winged serpent or lizard, with a crested head and enormous claws, and regarded as very powerful and ferocious.
A fierce, violent person, esp. a woman.
A constellation of the northern hemisphere figured as a dragon; Draco.
A luminous exhalation from marshy grounds, seeming to move through the air as a winged serpent.
dynamical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to dynamics; belonging to energy or power; characterized by energy or production of force.
Relating to physical forces, effects, or laws; as, dynamical geology.
dynamics ::: n. --> That branch of mechanics which treats of the motion of bodies (kinematics) and the action of forces in producing or changing their motion (kinetics). Dynamics is held by some recent writers to include statics and not kinematics.
The moving moral, as well as physical, forces of any kind, or the laws which relate to them.
That department of musical science which relates to, or treats of, the power of tones.
dysnomy ::: n. --> Bad legislation; the enactment of bad laws.
Economics: (Lat. aeconomicus, domestic economy, from oikos, house, + nomos, law) That branch of social science which is concerned with the exchange of goods. Employed by Xenophon, Aristotle and Cicero to describe treatises on the proper conduct of the household. In more recent times, combined with politics as political economy, the study of the laws and system of society. Now, more specially, the study of the production, distribution and consumption of material wealth and skills. -- J.K.F.
Economy: An aspect of the scientific methodology of Ernst Mach (Die Analyse der Empfindungen, 5th ed., Jena, 1906); science and philosophy utilize ideas and laws which are not reproductive of sense data as such, but are simplified expressions of the functional relations discovered in the manifold of sense perceptions. -- V.J.B.
energetical ::: a. --> Having energy or energies; possessing a capacity for vigorous action or for exerting force; active.
Exhibiting energy; operating with force, vigor, and effect; forcible; powerful; efficacious; as, energetic measures; energetic laws.
energetics ::: n. --> That branch of science which treats of the laws governing the physical or mechanical, in distinction from the vital, forces, and which comprehends the consideration and general investigation of the whole range of the forces concerned in physical phenomena.
English "database" The official name of the {database} language used by the {Pick} {operating system}, actually a sort of {crufty}, brain-damaged {SQL} with delusions of grandeur. The name permits {marketroids} to say "Yes, and you can program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suits} without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws. ["Exploring the Pick Operating System", J.E. Sisk et al, Hayden 1986]. [{Jargon File}] (2014-06-27)
equitably ::: adv. --> In an equitable manner; justly; as, the laws should be equitably administered.
establish ::: a. --> To make stable or firm; to fix immovably or firmly; to set (a thing) in a place and make it stable there; to settle; to confirm.
To appoint or constitute for permanence, as officers, laws, regulations, etc.; to enact; to ordain.
To originate and secure the permanent existence of; to found; to institute; to create and regulate; -- said of a colony, a state, or other institutions.
Eternity: An infinite extent of time, in which every event is future at one time, present at another, past at another. As everlastingness, it was formerly divided into two eternities, eternitv a parte ante, an infinite extent of time before the present, and eternity a parte post, an infinite extent of time after the present. Anything can be called "eternal" which is not subject to change, f.i. laws of nature, or which transcends all time. See Timeless. -- R.B.W.
executive ::: a. --> Designed or fitted for execution, or carrying into effect; as, executive talent; qualifying for, concerned with, or pertaining to, the execution of the laws or the conduct of affairs; as, executive power or authority; executive duties, officer, department, etc. ::: n.
executive ::: having the function or purpose of carrying plans, orders, laws, etc., into practical effect.
executory ::: a. --> Pertaining to administration, or putting the laws in force; executive.
Designed to be executed or carried into effect in time to come, or to take effect on a future contingency; as, an executory devise, reminder, or estate; an executory contract.
expeditate ::: v. t. --> To deprive of the claws or the balls of the fore feet; as, to expeditate a dog that he may not chase deer.
Experimentalism: Since Dewey holds that "experimentation enters into the determination of every warranted proposition" (Logic, p. 461), he tends to view the process of inquiry as experimentation. Causal propositions, for example, become prospective, heuristic, teleological; not retrospective, revelatory or ontological. Laws are predictions of future occurrences provided certain operations are carried out. Experimentalism, however, is sometimes interpreted in the wider Baconian sense as an admonition to submit ideas to tests, whatever these may be. If this is done, pseudo-problems (such as common epistemological questions) either evaporate or are quickly resolved.
Explanation: In general: the process, art, means or method of making a fact or a statement intelligible; the result and the expression of what is made intelligible; the meaning attributed to anything by one who makes it intelligible; a genetic description, causal development, systematic clarification, rational exposition, scientific interpretation, intelligible connection, ordered manifestation of the elements of a fact or a statement. A. More technically, the method of showing discursively that a phenomenon or a group of phenomena obeys a law, by means of causal relations or descriptive connections, or briefly, the methodical analysis of a phenomenon for the purpose of stating its cause. The process of explanation suggests the real preformation or potential presence of the consequent in the antecedent, so that the phenomenon considered may be evolved, developed, unrolled out of its conditioning antecedents. The process and the value of a scientific explanation involve the question of the relation between cause and law, as these two terms may be identified (Berkeley) or distinguished (Comte). Hence modern theories range between extreme idealism and logical positivism. Both these extremes seem to be unsatisfactory: the former would include too much into science, while the latter would embrace a part of it only, namely the knowledge of the scientific laws. Taking into account Hume's criticism of causality and Mill's reasons for accepting causality, Russell proposes what seems to be a middle course, namely that regular sequences suggest causal relations, that causal relations are one special class of scientific generalization, that is one-way sequences in time, and that causal relations as such should not be used in the advanced stages of scientific generalization, functional relations being sufficient in all cases. However satisfactory in methodology, this view may not cover all the implications of the problem. B. There are three specific types of causal explanation, and their results may be combined: genetic or in terms of the direct and immediate conditions or causes producing a phenomenon (formal and efficient cause); descriptive, or in terms of the material elements of the phenomenon (material cause); teleological, or in terms of the ultimate end to be attained (final cause), either in accordance with the nature of the event or with the intention of the agent. The real causes of a phenomenon cannot be identified always, because the natural process of change or becoming escapes complete rationalization. But the attempt to rationalize the real by causal explanation, need not be abandoned in favor of a limited genetic description (postulational or functional) of the laws which may account for the particular phenomenon.
extraphysical ::: a. --> Not subject to physical laws or methods.
falcon ::: n. --> One of a family (Falconidae) of raptorial birds, characterized by a short, hooked beak, strong claws, and powerful flight.
Any species of the genus Falco, distinguished by having a toothlike lobe on the upper mandible; especially, one of this genus trained to the pursuit of other birds, or game.
An ancient form of cannon.
familistery ::: n. --> A community in which many persons unite as in one family, and are regulated by certain communistic laws and customs.
Fan or fu: The greatest of all the laws underlying phenomenal change, that if any one thing moves to an extreme direction, a change must bring about an opposite result, called "reversion" or "return". Reminds one of Hegel's antithesis. (Lao Tzu.) -- H.H.
faradic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Michael Faraday, the distinguished electrician; -- applied especially to induced currents of electricity, as produced by certain forms of inductive apparatus, on account of Faraday&
fee ::: n. --> property; possession; tenure.
Reward or compensation for services rendered or to be rendered; especially, payment for professional services, of optional amount, or fixed by custom or laws; charge; pay; perquisite; as, the fees of lawyers and physicians; the fees of office; clerk&
finite ::: 1. Having bounds; limited. 2. Subject to limitations or conditions, as of space, time, circumstances, or the laws of nature. finite"s, finiteness.
First, each plane, in spite of Its connection with others aboie and below it, is yet a world in itself, with its own movements, forces, beings, types, forms existing as if for its and their own sake, under its ovs-n laws, for its own manifestation nithouf appa-
fitness ::: n. --> The state or quality of being fit; as, the fitness of measures or laws; a person&
flawless ::: a. --> Free from flaws.
flawy ::: a. --> Full of flaws or cracks; broken; defective; faulty.
Subject to sudden flaws or gusts of wind.
forest ::: n. --> An extensive wood; a large tract of land covered with trees; in the United States, a wood of native growth, or a tract of woodland which has never been cultivated.
A large extent or precinct of country, generally waste and woody, belonging to the sovereign, set apart for the keeping of game for his use, not inclosed, but distinguished by certain limits, and protected by certain laws, courts, and officers of its own.
For that explanatory function, empirical laws are needed, and occasionally the part-whole principle is tacitly identified with some specific law (or group of laws) governing the phenomenon under consideration. Whatever explanation is achieved in such a case, is obviously due, not to the vague part-whole principle but rather to the specific empirical law which is tacitly supplanted for it; and any empirical law which might be chosen here, applies to a certain specific type of phenomena only and cannot pass for a comprehensive principle governing all kinds of wholes.
foussa ::: n. --> A viverrine animal of Madagascar (Cryptoprocta ferox). It resembles a cat in size and form, and has retractile claws.
free ::: superl. --> Exempt from subjection to the will of others; not under restraint, control, or compulsion; able to follow one&
geometrically ::: adv. --> According to the rules or laws of geometry.
geometrize ::: v. i. --> To investigate or apprehend geometrical quantities or laws; to make geometrical constructions; to proceed in accordance with the principles of geometry.
godliness ::: n. --> Careful observance of, or conformity to, the laws of God; the state or quality of being godly; piety.
godly ::: n. --> Pious; reverencing God, and his character and laws; obedient to the commands of God from love for, and reverence of, his character; conformed to God&
Gorgon ::: Greek myth any of three winged monstrous sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, who had live snakes for hair, huge teeth, and brazen claws. A glance at Medusa who was slain by Perseus) turned the beholder to stone.
gorgon ::: greek myth any of three winged monstrous sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, who had live snakes for hair, huge teeth, and brazen claws. A glance at Medusa who was slain by Perseus) turned the beholder to stone.
government ::: n. --> The act of governing; the exercise of authority; the administration of laws; control; direction; regulation; as, civil, church, or family government.
The mode of governing; the system of polity in a state; the established form of law.
The right or power of governing; authority.
The person or persons authorized to administer the laws; the ruling power; the administration.
govern ::: v. t. --> To direct and control, as the actions or conduct of men, either by established laws or by arbitrary will; to regulate by authority.
To regulate; to influence; to direct; to restrain; to manage; as, to govern the life; to govern a horse.
To require to be in a particular case; as, a transitive verb governs a noun in the objective case; or to require (a particular case); as, a transitive verb governs the objective case.
grapnel ::: n. --> A small anchor, with four or five flukes or claws, used to hold boats or small vessels; hence, any instrument designed to grapple or hold; a grappling iron; a grab; -- written also grapline, and crapnel.
grapple ::: v. t. --> To seize; to lay fast hold of; to attack at close quarters: as, to grapple an antagonist.
To fasten, as with a grapple; to fix; to join indissolubly.
A seizing or seizure; close hug in contest; the wrestler&
Happiness: (in Kant's ethics) Kant is more concerned with happiness in terms of its ideal possibility than with its realization in actual human experience. Its ideal possibility rests on the a priori laws of intelligible freedom (vide), by which the individual through self-determination achieves unity: the self-sufficiency and harmony of his own being. "Real happiness rests with my free volition, and real contentment consists in the consciousness of freedom." (Kant.) -- P.A.S.
harpy ::: n. --> A fabulous winged monster, ravenous and filthy, having the face of a woman and the body of a vulture, with long claws, and the face pale with hunger. Some writers mention two, others three.
One who is rapacious or ravenous; an extortioner.
The European moor buzzard or marsh harrier (Circus aeruginosus).
A large and powerful, double-crested, short-winged American eagle (Thrasaetus harpyia). It ranges from Texas to Brazil.
Hartmann, Eduard von: (1842-1906) Hybridizing Schopenhauer's voluntarism with Hegel's intellectualism, and stimulated by Schelling, the eclectic v.H. sought to overcome irrationalism and rationalism by postulating the Unconscious, raised into a neutral absolute which has in it both will and idea in co-ordination. Backed by an encyclopaedic knowledge he showed, allegedly inductively, how this generates all values in a conformism or correlationism which circumvents a subjective monistic idealism no less than a phenomenalism by means of a transcendental realism. Writing at a time when vitalists were hard put to be endeavored to synthesize the new natural sciences and teleology by assigning to mechanistic causility a special function in the natural process under a more generalized and deeper purposiveness. Dispensing with a pure rationalism, but without taking refuge in a vital force, v.H. was then able to establish a neo-vitalism. In ethics he transcended an original pessimism, flowing from the admittance of the alogical and dis-teleological, in a qualified optimism founded upon an evolutionary hypothesis which regards nature with its laws subservient to the logical, as a species of the teleological, and to reason which, as product of development, redeems the irrational will once it has been permitted to create a world in which existence means unhappiness.
hemastatics ::: n. --> Laws relating to the equilibrium of the blood in the blood vessels.
henna ::: n. --> A thorny tree or shrub of the genus Lawsonia (L. alba). The fragrant white blossoms are used by the Buddhists in religious ceremonies. The powdered leaves furnish a red coloring matter used in the East to stain the hails and fingers, the manes of horses, etc.
The leaves of the henna plant, or a preparation or dyestuff made from them.
hermeneutics ::: n. --> The science of interpretation and explanation; exegesis; esp., that branch of theology which defines the laws whereby the meaning of the Scriptures is to be ascertained.
Heteronomy: (Gr. hetero, other + nomos, law) See Autonomy. Heteronomy of Ends: (Kant) Just as autonomy of the will is that state of affairs in the life of a rational being in which the will is determined in its choices by no ends other than itself, so heteronomy of the will is the state in which the will is determined by ends other than itself, e.g. happiness or gain either for self or others. In autonomy the will is its own end, and is determined only by its own laws. Autonomy of the will is the supreme principle of morality, Kant affirms, and heteronomy is the source of all spurious principles of morality. For in heteronomy the will, being attracted by external ends, is obeying laws not of its own making. In autonomy, however, the will obeys only its own laws, it makes only those choices of action which may also be regarded as instances of laws of its own choosing. The principle of the Autonomy of the Will, and the Categorical Imperative, are thus one and the same thing. -- F.L.W.
heteronomy ::: n. --> Subordination or subjection to the law of another; political subjection of a community or state; -- opposed to autonomy.
A term applied by Kant to those laws which are imposed on us from without, or the violence done to us by our passions, wants, or desires.
Hilbert and Ackermann, Grundzuge der theoretischen Logik, 2nd edn., Berlin, 1938. Logic, traditional: the name given to those parts and that method of treatment of formal logic which have come down substantially unchanged from classical and medieval times. Traditional logic emphasizes the analysis of propositions into subject and predicate and the associated classification into the four forms, A, E, I, O; and it is concerned chiefly with topics immediately related to these, including opposition, immediate inference, and the syllogism (see logic, formal). Associated with traditional logic are also the three so-called laws of thought -- the laws of identity (q. v.), contradiction (q. v.) -- and excluded middle (q. v.) -- and the doctrine that these laws are in a special sense fundamental presuppositions of reasoning, or even (by some) that all other principles of logic can be derived from them or are mere elaborations of them. Induction (q. v.) has been added in comparatively modern times (dating from Bacon's Novum Organum) to the subject matter of traditional logic. -- A. C.
histonomy ::: n. --> The science which treats of the laws relating to organic tissues, their formation, development, functions, etc.
historionomer ::: n. --> One versed in the phenomena of history and the laws controlling them.
History, Philosophy of: History investigates the theories concerning the development of man as a social being within the limits of psychophysical causality. Owing to this double puipose the philosophy of history has to study the principles of historiography, and, first of all, their background, their causes and underlying laws, their meaning and motivation. This can be called the metaphysics of history. Secondly, it concerns itself with the cognitive part, i.e. with historic understanding, and then it is called the logic of history. While in earlier times the philosophy of history was predominantly metaphysics, it has turned more and more to the methodology or logic of history. A complete philosophy of history, however, ought to consider the metaphysical as well as the logical problems involved.
hundredweight ::: n. --> A denomination of weight, containing 100, 112, or 120 pounds avoirdupois, according to differing laws or customs. By the legal standard of England it is 112 pounds. In most of the United States, both in practice and by law, it is 100 pounds avoirdupois, the corresponding ton of 2,000 pounds, sometimes called the short ton, being the legal ton.
hydrodynamics ::: n. --> That branch of the science of mechanics which relates to fluids, or, as usually limited, which treats of the laws of motion and action of nonelastic fluids, whether as investigated mathematically, or by observation and experiment; the principles of dynamics, as applied to water and other fluids.
hydromechanics ::: n. --> That branch of physics which treats of the mechanics of liquids, or of their laws of equilibrium and of motion.
hyperphysical ::: a. --> Above or transcending physical laws; supernatural.
iatromathematician ::: n. --> One of a school of physicians in Italy, about the middle of the 17th century, who tried to apply the laws of mechanics and mathematics to the human body, and hence were eager student of anatomy; -- opposed to the iatrochemists.
Idealists regard such an equalization of physical laws and psychological, historical laws as untenable. The "tvpical case" with which physics or chemistry analyzes is a result of logical abstraction; the object of history, however, is not a unit with universal traits but something individual, in a singular space and at a particular time, never repeatable under the same circumstances. Therefore no physical laws can be formed about it. What makes it a fact worthy of historical interest, is iust the fullness of live activity in it; it is a "value", not a "thing". Granted that historical events are exposed to influences from biological, geological, racial and traditional sources, they aie always carried by a human being whose singularity of character has assimilated the forces of his environment and surmounted them There is a reciprocal action between man and society, but it is always personal initiative and free productivity of the individual which account for history. Denying, therefore, the logical primacy of physical laws in history, does not mean lawlessness, and that is the standpoint of the logic of history in more recent times. Windelband and H. Rickert established another kind of historical order of laws. On their view, to understand history one must see the facts in their relation to a universally applicable and transcendental system of values. Values "are" not, they "hold"; they are not facts but realities of our reason, they are not developed but discovered. According to Max Weber historical facts form an ideally typical, transcendental whole which, although seen, can never be fully explained. G, Simmel went further into metaphysics: "life" is declared an historical category, it is the indefinable, last reality ascending to central values which shaped cultural epochs, such as the medieval idea of God, or the Renaissance-idea of Nature, only to be tragically disappointed, whereupon other values rise up, as humanity, liberty, technique, evolution and others.
II. Metaphysics of History: The metaphysical interpretations of the meaning of history are either supra-mundane or intra-mundane (secular). The oldest extra-mundane, or theological, interpretation has been given by St. Augustine (Civitas Dei), Dante (Divma Commedia) and J. Milton (Paradise Lost and Regained). All historic events are seen as having a bearing upon the redemption of mankind through Christ which will find its completion at the end of this world. Owing to the secularistic tendencies of modern times the Enlightenment Period considered the final end of human history as the achievement of public welfare through the power of reason. Even the ideal of "humanity" of the classic humanists, advocated by Schiller, Goethe, Fichte, Rousseau, Lord Byron, is only a variety of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and in the same line of thought we find A. Comte, H. Spencer ("human moral"), Engels and K. Marx. The German Idealism of Kant and Hegel saw in history the materialization of the "moral reign of freedom" which achieves its perfection in the "objective spirit of the State". As in the earlier systems of historical logic man lost his individuality before the forces of natural laws, so, according to Hegel, he is nothing but an instrument of the "idea" which develops itself through the three dialectic stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. (Example. Absolutism, Democracy, Constitutional Monarchy.) Even the great historian L. v. Ranke could not break the captivating power of the Hegelian mechanism. Ranke places every historical epoch into a relation to God and attributes to it a purpose and end for itself. Lotze and Troeltsch followed in his footsteps. Lately, the evolutionistic interpretation of H. Bergson is much discussed and disputed. His "vital impetus" accounts for the progressiveness of life, but fails to interpret the obvious setbacks and decadent civilizations. According to Kierkegaard and Spranger, merely human ideals prove to be too narrow a basis for the tendencies, accomplishments, norms, and defeats of historic life. It all points to a supra-mundane intelligence which unfolds itself in history. That does not make superfluous a natural interpretation, both views can be combined to understand history as an endless struggle between God's will and human will, or non-willing, for that matter. -- S.V.F.
I. Logic of History The historical objects under observation (man, life, society, biological and geological conditions) are so diverse that even slight mistakes in evaluation of items and of the historical whole may lead to false results. This can be seen from the modern logic of history. In the 18th century, G. B. Vico contended, under the deep impression of the lawfulness prevailing in natural sciences, that historical events also follow each other according to unswerving natural laws. He assumed three stages of development, that of fantasy, of will, and of science. The encyclopedists and Saint-Simon shared his view. The individual is immersed, and driven on, by the current of social tendencies, so that Comte used to speak of an "histoire sans noms". His three stages of development were the theological, metaphysical, and scientific stage. H. Spencer and A. Fouillee regard social life as an organism unfolding itself according to immanent laws, either of racial individuality (Gobineau, Vocher de Lapauge) or of a combination of social, physical, and personal forces (Taine). The spirit of a people and of an age outweigh completely the power of an individual personality which can work only along socially conditioned tendencies. The development of a nation always follows the same laws, it may vary as to time and whereabouts but never as to the form (Burkhardt, Lamprecht). To this group of historians belong also O. Spengler and K. Marx; "Fate" rules the civilization of peoples and pushes them on to their final destination.
Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted! "messaging" Since {Usenet} first got off the ground in 1980-81, it has grown exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On the other hand, most people feel the {signal-to-noise ratio} of {Usenet} has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase "Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!" has become a running joke, hauled out any time someone grumbles about the {S/N ratio} or the huge and steadily increasing volume, or the possible loss of a key node or link, or the potential for lawsuits when ignoramuses post copyrighted material etc. [{Jargon File}] (1998-09-24)
immortality ::: “By immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.” The Upanishads
In arithmetic there are two associative laws, of addition and of multiplication: x + (y + z) = (x + y) + z. x X (y X z) = (x X y) X z. Associative laws of addition and of multiplication hold also in the theory of real numbers, the theory of complex numbers, and various other mathematical disciplines.
inoperative ::: a. --> Not operative; not active; producing no effects; as, laws renderd inoperative by neglect; inoperative remedies or processes.
in political and legal philosophy and theology, doctrines based on the theory that there are certain unchanging laws which pertain to man"s nature, which can be discovered by reason, and therefore ethically binding in human society, and to which man-made laws should conform.
In Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York, 1920, p. 156), Dewey states "When the claim or pretension or plan is acted upon it guides us truly or falsely; it leads us to our end or away from it. Its active, dynamic function is the all-important thing about it, and in the quality of activity induced by it lies all its truth and falsity. The hypothesis that works is the true one, and truth is an abstract noun applied to the collection of cases, actual, foreseen and desired, that receive confirmation in their work and consequences". The needs and desires which truth must satisfy, however, are not conceived as personal and emotional (as with James) but rather as "public" in some not altogether explicit sense. Although Dewey emphasizes the functional role of propositions and laws (and even of sensations, facts and objects), and describes these materials of knowledge as means, tools, instruments or operations for the transformation of an indeterminate situation into a determinate one in the process of inquiry (Logic, The Theory of Inquiry, N. Y., 1938), he does not clearly deny that they have a strictly cognitive role as well, and he once states that "the essence of pragmatic instrumentalism is to conceive of both knowledge and practice as means of making goods -- excellencies of all kinds -- secure in experienced existence". (The Quest for Certainty, N. Y., 1929, p. 37.) Indeed, in his Logic (p. 345), he quotes with approval Peirce's definition "truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless inquiry would tend to bring scientific belief, . . ." Here truth seems to be represented as progressive approximation to reality, but usually it is interpreted as efficacy, verification or practical expediency.
institute ::: p. a. --> Established; organized; founded. ::: v. t. --> To set up; to establish; to ordain; as, to institute laws, rules, etc.
To originate and establish; to found; to organize; as, to institute a court, or a society.
insurgent ::: a. --> Rising in opposition to civil or political authority, or against an established government; insubordinate; rebellious. ::: n. --> A person who rises in revolt against civil authority or an established government; one who openly and actively resists the execution of laws; a rebel.
In the field of the philosophy of religion, Platonism becomes obscure. There is little doubt that Plato paid only lip-service to the anthropomorphic polytheism of Athenian religion. Many of the attributes of the Idea of the Good are those of an eternal God. The Republic (Book II) pictures the Supreme Being as perfect, unchangeable and the author of truth. Similar rationalizations are found throughout the Laws. Another current of religious thought is to be found m the Timaeus, Politicus and Sophist. The story of the making of the universe and man by the Demiurgus is mythic and yet it is in many points a logical development of his theory of Ideas. The World-Maker does not create things from nothing, he fashions the world out of a pre-existing chaos of matter by introducing patterns taken from the sphere of Forms. This process of formation is also explained, in the Timaeus (54 ff), in terms of various mathematical figures. In an early period of the universe, God (Chronos) exercised a sort of Providential care over things in this world (Politicus, 269-275), but eventually man was left to his own devices. The tale of Er, at the end of the Republic, describes a judgment of souls after death, their separation into the good and the bad, and the assignment of various rewards and punishments. H. Stephanus et J. Serranus (ed.), Platonis Opera (Paris, 1578), has provided the standard pagination, now used in referring to the text of Plato, it is not a critical edition. J. Burnet (ed.), Platonis Opera, 5 vol. (Oxford, 1899-1907). Platon, Oeuvres completes, texte et trad., Collect. G. Bude (Paris, 1920 ff.). The Dialogues of Plato, transl. B. Jowett, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1920). W. Pater, Plato and Platonism (London, 1909). A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and his Work (N. Y., 1927). P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, 1933). A. Dies, Autour de Platon, 2 vol. (Paris, 1927). U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Platon, 2 vol. (Berlin, 1919). John Burnet, Platonism (Berkeley, 1928). Paul Elmer More, Platonism (Oxford, 1931). Constantm Ritter, Essence of Plato's Philosophy (London, 1933). Leon Robin, Platon (Paris, 1935). Paul Shorey, Platonism, Ancient and Modern (Berkeley, 1938). A. E. Taylor, Platontsm and Its Influence (London, 1924). F. J. E. Woodbridge, The Son of Apollo (Boston, 1929). C. Bigg, The Christian Platomsts of Alexandria (Oxford, 1913). T. Whittaker, The Neo-Platonists (Cambridge, 1918, 2nd ed ). John H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Angle-Saxon Philosophy (New York, 1931). F. J. Powicke, The Cambridge Platonists (Boston, 1927). -- V.J.B.
In the first edition of the Logische Untersuchungen phenomenology was defined (much as it had been by Hamilton and Lazarus) as descriptive analysis of subjective processes Erlebnisse. Thus its theme was unqualifiedly identified with what was commonly taken to be the central theme of psychology; the two disciplines were said to differ only in that psychology sets up causal or genetic laws to explain what phenomenology merely describes. Phenomenology was called "pure" so far as the phenomenologist distinguishes the subjective from the objective and refrains from looking into either the genesis of subjective phenomena or their relations to somatic and environmental circumstances. Husserl's "Prolegomena zur reinen Logik" published as the first part of the Logische Untersuchungen, had elaborated the concept of pure logic, a theoretical science independent of empirical knowledge and having a distinctive theme: the universal categorial forms exemplified in possible truths, possible facts, and their respective components. The fundamental concepts and laws of this science, Husserl maintained, are genuine only if they can be established by observing the matters to which they apply. Accordingly, to test the genuineness of logical theory, "wir wollen auf die 'Sachen selbst' zurückgehen": we will go, from our habitual empty understanding of this alleged science, back to a seeing of the logical forms themselves. But it is then the task of pure phenomenology to test the genuineness and range of this "seeing," to distinguish it from other ways of being conscious of the same or other matters. Thus, although pure phenomenology and pure logic are mutually independent disciplines with separate themes, phenomenological analysis is indispensible to the critical justification of logic. In like manner, Husserl maintained, it is necessary to the criticism of other alleged knowledge; while, in another way, its descriptions are prerequisite to explanatory psychology. However, when Husserl wrote the Logische Untersuchungen, he did not yet conceive phenomenological analysis as a method for dealing with metaphysical problems.
In the propositional calculus there are the four following associative laws (two dually related pairs): [p ∨ [q ∨ r]] ≡ [[p ∨ q] ∨ r]. [p[qr]] ≡ [[qp]r]. [p +[q + r]] ≡ [[p + q] + r]. [p ≡ [q ≡ r]] ≡ [[p ≡ q] ≡ r]. Also four corresponding laws in the algebra of classes.
In this broad sense contingency appears always to imply a reference to some basis in relation to which a given thing may be said to be contingent, and in view of the two referents most commonly employed it is possible to distinguish two chief types: (1) logical contingency, and (2) physical contingency. The first is contingency with respect to the laws of logic, the second contingency with respect to the laws of nature. A given state of affairs, e.g., the existence of a snowflake with a given shape, is logically contingent in that the laws of logic do not suffice to establish that such a thing does or does not exist. This same state of affairs would not ordinarily be held to be physically contingent, however, for, although the laws of nature alone do not suffice to determine that there is such a snowflake, still it would be held on the general hypothesis of determinism that, given the specific conditions under which the water was frozen, it was determined by physical laws that a snowflake would exist and that it would have this shape and no other.
Intra-ordinal Laws: Connecting properties of aggregates of the same order. Laws connecting the characteristics of living organisms. (Broad.) -- H.H.
involutionary given(s) ::: Items presupposed to be given or deposited by involution, already operating, for example, at the moment of the Big Bang and forward. These might include Eros/Agape (the morphogenetic tilt of manifestation), Prototypical Forms, certain mathematical laws, as well as the twenty tenets. Other examples of involutionary givens might include Whitehead’s eternal objects (shape, color, etc.) and Sheldrake’s pregiven constants (energy, form, causation, development, creativity). See evolutionary given(s).
It can be shown that the following principles of duality hold in the propositional calculus (where A* and B* denote the duals of the formulas A and B respectively): if A is a theorem, then ∼A* is a theorem; if A ⊃ B is a theorem, then B* ⊃ A* is a theorem; if A ≡ B is a theorem, then A* ≡ B* is a theorem. Special names have been given to certain particular theorems and forms of valid inference of the propositional calculus. Besides § 2 following, see: absorption; affirmation of the consequent; assertion; associative law; commutative law; composition; contradiction, law of; De Morgan's laws; denial of the antecedent; distributive law; double negation, law of; excluded middle, law of; exportation; Hauber's law; identity, law of; importation; Peirce's law; proof by cases; reductio ad absurdum; reflexivity; tautology; transitivity; transposition. Names given to particular theorems of the propositional calculus are usually thought of as applying to laws embodied in the theorems rather than to the theorems as formulas; hence, in particular, the same name is applied to theorems differing only by alphabetical changes of the variables appearing; and frequently the name used for a theorem is used also for one or more forms of valid inference associated with the theorem. Similar remarks apply to names given to particular theorems of the functional calculus of first order, etc.
Jen: Man. Goodness; virtue in general; the moral principle; the moral ideal of the superior man (chun. tzu); the fundamental as well as the sum total of virtues, just as the Prime (yuan) is the origin and the vital force of all things --jen consisting of "man" and "two" and yuan consisting of "two" and "man". (Confucianism.) True manhood; man's character; human-heartedness; moral character; being man-like; "that by which a man is to be a man;" "realization of one's true self and the restoration of the moral order." (Confucius and Mencius.) "The active (yang) and passive (yin) principles are the way of Heaven; the principles of strength and weakness are the way of Earth; and true manhood and righteousness (i) are the way of Man." "True manhood is man's mind and righteousness is man's path." It is one of the three Universally Recognized Moral Qualities of man (ta te), the four Fundamentals of the Moral Life (ssu tuan), and the five Constant Virtues (wu ch'ang). True manhood and righteousness are the basic principles of Confucian ethics and politics. (Confucianism.) The golden rule; "Being true to the principles of one's nature (chung) and the benevolent exercise of them in relation to others (shu)." "The true man, having established his own character, seeks to establish the character of others; and having succeeded, seeks to make others succeed." (Confucius.) Love; benevolence; kindness; charity; compassion; "the character of the heart and the principle of love;" "love towards all men and benefit towards things." (Confucianism.) "Universal love without the element of self," (Chuang Tzu, between 399 and 295 B.C.) "Universal Love." (Han Yu, 767-824.) The moral principle with regard to others. "True manhood is the cardinal virtue by which others are pacified, whereas righteousness is the cardinal principle by which the self is rectified." It means "to love others and not the self." (Tung Chung-shu, 177-104 B.C.) Love of all men and things and impartiality and justice towards all men and things, this virtue being the cardinal virtue not only of man but also of the universe. "Love means to devote oneself to the benefit of other people and things." "Love implies justice, that is, as a man, treating others as men." "The true man regards the universe and all things as a unity. They are all essential to himself. As he realizes the true self, there is no limit to his love." (Ch'eng Ming-tao, 1032-1068.) "Love is the source of all laws, the foundation of all phenomena." "What is received from Heaven at the beginning is simply love, and is therefore the complete substance of the mind." "Love is the love of creating in the mind of Heaven and Earth, and men and other creatures receive it as their mind." (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200.)
Jhumur: “The Book of bliss is really the ultimate Satchitananda, the everlasting day when one has moved out of all contact with the unconscious and lives no longer in between sunlight and darkness but wholly in the light, wholly in the Divine. There was once a question that somebody asked Mother when She used to take our classes. She (the person) said that in our world there is a change from lesser to greater if one tries to progress. It is a constant change. When one enters the higher plane, the upper hemisphere as you call it, will there be no change, will it always be the same? Mother said,”No, it is not that. One perfection can then be manifested later in another kind of perfection.” There is a variety of different laws of perfection, hence the myriad volumes of the Book of Bliss. Delight has so many modes of expression, perfection or delight, they are all the same and there is not just one way of manifesting the Divine. There are infinite modes of expression of that delight.”
judaism ::: n. --> The religious doctrines and rites of the Jews as enjoined in the laws of Moses.
Conformity to the Jewish rites and ceremonies.
Jupiter is usually thought to have originated as a sky god. His identifying implement is the thunderbolt, and his primary sacred animal is the eagle,[1] which held precedence over other birds in the taking of auspices[2] and became one of the most common symbols of the Roman army (see Aquila). The two emblems were often combined to represent the god in the form of an eagle holding in its claws a thunderbolt, frequently seen on Greek and Roman coins.[3] As the sky-god, he was a divine witness to oaths, the sacred trust on which justice and good government depend. Many of his functions were focused on the Capitoline (“Capitol Hill”), where the citadel was located. He was the chief deity of the early Capitoline Triad with Mars and Quirinus.[4] In the later Capitoline Triad, he was the central guardian of the state with Juno and Minerva. His sacred tree was the oak.
jurisdiction ::: a. --> The legal power, right, or authority of a particular court to hear and determine causes, to try criminals, or to execute justice; judicial authority over a cause or class of causes; as, certain suits or actions, or the cognizance of certain crimes, are within the jurisdiction of a particular court, that is, within the limits of its authority or commission.
The authority of a sovereign power to govern or legislate; the right of making or enforcing laws; the power or right of
jurisprudence ::: a. --> The science of juridical law; the knowledge of the laws, customs, and rights of men in a state or community, necessary for the due administration of justice.
justinian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the Institutes or laws of the Roman Justinian.
Kant, Immanuel: (1724-1804), born and died in Königsberg. Studied the Leibniz-Wolffian philosoohv under Martin Knutzen. Also studied and taught astronomy (see Kant-Laplace hypothesis), mechanics and theology. The influence of Newton's physics and Lockean psychology vied with his Leibnizian training. Kant's personal life was that of a methodic pedant, touched with Rousseauistic piety and Prussian rigidity. He scarcely travelled 40 miles from Königsberg in his life-time, disregarded music, had little esteem for women, and cultivated few friends apart from the Prussian officials he knew in Königsberg. In 1755, he became tutor in the family of Count Kayserling. In 1766, he was made under-librarian, and in 1770 obtained the chair of logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Heine has made classical the figure of Kant appearing for his daily walk with clock-like regularity. But his very wide reading compensated socially for his narrow range of travel, and made him an interesting coversationalist as well as a successful teacher. Kantianism: The philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804); also called variously, the critical philosophy, criticism, transcendentalism, or transcendental idealism. Its roots lay in the Enlightenment; but it sought to establish a comprehensive method and doctrine of experience which would undercut the rationalistic metaphysics of the 17th and 18th centuries. In an early "pre-critical" period, Kant's interest centered in evolutionary, scientific cosmology. He sought to describe the phenomena of Nature, organic as well as inorganic, as a whole of interconnected natural laws. In effect he elaborated and extended the natural philosophy of Newton in a metaphysical context drawn from Christian Wolff and indirectly from Leibniz.
Kant-Laplace hypothesis: Theory of the origin of the solar system, formulated first by Kant (Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, 1755) and later by Laplace (Exposition of the System of the World, 1796). According to this theory the solar system evolved from a rotating mass of incandescent gas which by cooling and shrinking, and thus increasing its rate of spin, gradually flattened at its poles and threw off rings from its equator. These rings became the planets, which by the operation of the same laws developed their own satellites. While Laplace supposed the rotating nebula to have been the primordial stuff, Kant maintained that this was itself formed and put into rotation by gravitational action on the original atoms which through their impact with one another generated heat. -- A.C.B.
Kingdom of ends: Kant's notion of the systematic union of different rational beings by common laws. Cf. also the Practical Imperative. -- P.A.S.
kinology ::: n. --> That branch of physics which treats of the laws of motion, or of moving bodies.
Kitab ::: Book; Scripture; established and applied knowledge; laws and regulations
know-nothing ::: n. --> A member of a secret political organization in the United States, the chief objects of which were the proscription of foreigners by the repeal of the naturalization laws, and the exclusive choice of native Americans for office.
lammaking ::: a. --> Enacting laws; legislative. ::: n. --> The enacting of laws; legislation.
Late period: Timaeus, Critias, Sophistes, Politicus, Philebus, Parmenides, Laws, Epinomis (doubtful). Thirteen Letters have also been preserved, of which two (VII-VIII), at least, are probably authentic.
lawe ::: v. t. --> To cut off the claws and balls of, as of a dog&
lawgiver ::: n. --> One who makes or enacts a law or system of laws; a legislator.
lawgiving ::: a. --> Enacting laws; legislative.
"Law is a process or a formula; but the soul is the user of processes and exceeds formulas.” Essays Divine and Human ::: **law"s, laws, stone-laws, world-law, world-laws.**
::: "Law is necessary for order and stability, but it becomes a conservative and hampering force unless it provides itself with an effective machinery for changing the laws as soon as circumstances and new needs make that desirable.” *The Human Cycle
“Law is necessary for order and stability, but it becomes a conservative and hampering force unless it provides itself with an effective machinery for changing the laws as soon as circumstances and new needs make that desirable.” The Human Cycle
lawless ::: a. --> Contrary to, or unauthorized by, law; illegal; as, a lawless claim.
Not subject to, or restrained by, the law of morality or of society; as, lawless men or behavior.
Not subject to the laws of nature; uncontrolled.
Laws of thought: See Logic, traditional. Leading principle: The general statement of the validity of some particular form of valid inference (see Logic, formal) may be called its leading principle.
lawyer ::: n. --> One versed in the laws, or a practitioner of law; one whose profession is to conduct lawsuits for clients, or to advise as to prosecution or defence of lawsuits, or as to legal rights and obligations in other matters. It is a general term, comprehending attorneys, counselors, solicitors, barristers, sergeants, and advocates.
The black-necked stilt. See Stilt.
The bowfin (Amia calva).
League for Programming Freedom "body, legal" (LPF) A grass-roots organisation of professors, students, businessmen, programmers and users dedicated to bringing back the freedom to write programs. Once programmers were allowed to write programs using all the techniques they knew, and providing whatever features they felt were useful. Monopolies, {software patents} and {interface copyrights} have taken away freedom of expression and the ability to do a good job. "{Look and feel}" lawsuits attempt to monopolise well-known command languages; some have succeeded. Copyrights on command languages enforce gratuitous incompatibility, close opportunities for competition and stifle incremental improvements. {Software patents} are even more dangerous; they make every design decision in the development of a program carry a risk of a lawsuit, with draconian pre-trial seizure. It is difficult and expensive to find out whether the techniques you consider using are patented; it is impossible to find out whether they will be patented in the future. The League is not opposed to the legal system that Congress intended -- {copyright} on individual programs. They aim to reverse the changes made by judges in response to special interests, often explicitly rejecting the public interest principles of the Constitution. The League works to abolish the monopolies by publishing articles, talking with public officials, boycotting egregious offenders and in the future may intervene in court cases. On 1989-05-24, the League picketed {Lotus} headquarters on account of their lawsuits, and then again on 1990-08-02. These marches stimulated widespread media coverage for the issue. The League's funds are used for filing briefs; printing handouts, buttons and signs and whatever will persuade the courts, the legislators and the people. The League is a non-profit corporation, but not considered a tax-exempt charity. {LPF Home (http://progfree.org/)}. (2007-02-28)
legal ::: a. --> Created by, permitted by, in conformity with, or relating to, law; as, a legal obligation; a legal standard or test; a legal procedure; a legal claim; a legal trade; anything is legal which the laws do not forbid.
According to the law of works, as distinguished from free grace; or resting on works for salvation.
According to the old or Mosaic dispensation; in accordance with the law of Moses.
legal Loosely used to mean "in accordance with all the relevant rules", especially in connection with some set of constraints defined by software. "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ANSI C." "This parser processes each line of legal input the moment it sees the trailing linefeed." Hackers often model their work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the thicket of "natural laws" to achieve a desired objective. Their use of "legal" is flavoured as much by this game-playing sense as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers. Compare {language lawyer}, {legalese}. [{Jargon File}]
Legal Philosophy: Deals with the philosophic principles of law and justice. The origin is to be found in ancient philosophy. The Greek Sophists criticized existing laws and customs by questioning their validity: All human rules are artificial, created by enactment or convention, as opposed to natural law, based on nature. The theory of a law of nature was further developed by Aristotle and the Stoics. According to the Stoics the natural law is based upon the eternal law of the universe; this itself is an outgrowth of universal reason, as man's mind is an offshoot of the latter. The idea of a law of nature as being innate in man was particularly stressed and popularized by Cicero who identified it with "right reason" and already contrasted it with written law that might be unjust or even tyrannical. Through Saint Augustine these ideas were transmitted to medieval philosophy and by Thomas Aquinas built into his philosophical system. Thomas considers the eternal law the reason existing in the divine mind and controlling the universe. Natural law, innate in man participates in that eternal law. A new impetus was given to Legal Philosophy by the Renaissance. Natural Jurisprudence, properly so-called, originated in the XVII. century. Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Benedictus Spinoza, John Locke, Samuel Pufendorf were the most important representatives of that line of thought. Grotius, continuing the Scholastic tradition, particularly stressed the absoluteness of natural hw (it would exist even if God did not exist) and, following Jean Bodin, the sovereignty of the people. The idea of the social contract traced all political bodies back to a voluntary compact by which every individual gave up his right to self-government, or rather transferred it to the government, abandoning a state of nature which according to Hobbes must have been a state of perpetual war. The theory of the social compact more and more accepts the character of a "fiction" or of a regulative idea (Kant). In this sense the theory means that we ought to judge acts of government by their correspondence to the general will (Rousseau) and to the interests of the individuals who by transferring their rights to the commonwealth intended to establish their real liberty. Natural law by putting the emphasis on natural rights, takes on a revolutionary character. It played a part in shaping the bills of rights, the constitutions of the American colonies and of the Union, as well as of the French declaration of the rights of men and of citizens. Natural jurisprudence in the teachings of Christian Wolff and Thomasius undergoes a kind of petrification in the vain attempt to outline an elaborate system of natural law not only in the field of international or public law, but also in the detailed regulations of the law of property, of contract, etc. This sort of dogmatic approach towards the problems of law evoked the opposition of the Historic School (Gustav Hugo and Savigny) which stressed the natural growth of laws ind customs, originating from the mysterious "spirit of the people". On the other hand Immanuel Kant tried to overcome the old natural law by the idea of a "law of reason", meaning an a priori element in all existing or positive law. In his definition of law ("the ensemble of conditions according to which everyone's will may coexist with the will of every other in accordance with a general rule of liberty"), however, as in his legal philosophy in general, he still shares the attitude of the natural law doctrine, confusing positive law with the idea of just law. This is also true of Hegel whose panlogism seemed to lead in this very direction. Under the influence of epistemological positivism (Comte, Mill) in the later half of the nineteenth century, legal philosophy, especially in Germany, confined itself to a "general theory of law". Similarily John Austin in England considered philosophy of law concerned only with positive law, "as it necessarily is", not as it ought to be. Its main task was to analyze certain notions which pervade the science of law (Analytical Jurisprudence). In recent times the same tendency to reduce legal philosophy to logical or at least methodological tasks was further developed in attempting a pure science of law (Kelsen, Roguin). Owing to the influence of Darwinism and natural science in general the evolutionist and biological viewpoint was accepted in legal philosophy: comparative jurisprudence, sociology of law, the Freirecht movement in Germany, the study of the living law, "Realism" in American legal philosophy, all represent a tendency against rationalism. On the other hand there is a revival of older tendencies: Hegelianism, natural law -- especially in Catholic philosophy -- and Kantianism (beginning with Rudolf Stammler). From here other trends arose: the critical attitude leads to relativism (f.i. Gustav Radbruch); the antimetaphysical tendency towards positivism -- though different from epistemological positivism -- and to a pure theory of law. Different schools of recent philosophy have found their applications or repercussions in legal philosophy: Phenomenology, for example, tried to intuit the essences of legal institutions, thus coming back to a formalist position, not too far from the real meaning of analytical jurisprudence. Neo-positivism, though so far not yet explicitly applied to legal philosophy, seems to lead in the same direction. -- W.E.
legific ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to making laws.
legislate ::: v. i. --> To make or enact a law or laws.
legislation ::: n. --> The act of legislating; preparation and enactment of laws; the laws enacted.
legislative ::: a. --> Making, or having the power to make, a law or laws; lawmaking; -- distinguished from executive; as, a legislative act; a legislative body.
Of or pertaining to the making of laws; suitable to legislation; as, the transaction of legislative business; the legislative style.
legislator ::: n. --> A lawgiver; one who makes laws for a state or community; a member of a legislative body.
legislatrix ::: n. --> A woman who makes laws.
legislature ::: n. --> The body of persons in a state or kingdom invested with power to make and repeal laws; a legislative body.
legist ::: n. --> One skilled in the laws; a writer on law.
Level: A grade or type of existence or being which entails a special type of relatedness or of organization, with distinctive laws. The term has been used primarily in connection with theories of emergent evolution where certain so-called higher levels, e.g. life, or mind, are supposed to have emerged from the lower levels, e.g. matter, and are considered to exhibit features of novelty not predictable from the lower levels. -- A.C.B.
leviticus ::: n. --> The third canonical book of the Old Testament, containing the laws and regulations relating to the priests and Levites among the Hebrews, or the body of the ceremonial law.
lila &
litigant ::: a. --> Disposed to litigate; contending in law; engaged in a lawsuit; as, the parties litigant. ::: n. --> A person engaged in a lawsuit.
litigate ::: v. t. --> To make the subject of a lawsuit; to contest in law; to prosecute or defend by pleadings, exhibition of evidence, and judicial debate in a court; as, to litigate a cause. ::: v. i. --> To carry on a suit by judicial process.
litigiousness ::: n. --> The state of being litigious; disposition to engage in or carry on lawsuits.
lobster ::: n. --> Any large macrurous crustacean used as food, esp. those of the genus Homarus; as the American lobster (H. Americanus), and the European lobster (H. vulgaris). The Norwegian lobster (Nephrops Norvegicus) is similar in form. All these have a pair of large unequal claws. The spiny lobsters of more southern waters, belonging to Palinurus, Panulirus, and allied genera, have no large claws. The fresh-water crayfishes are sometimes called lobsters.
Logical, physical, and moral necessity are founded in logical, physical, and moral laws respectively. Anything is logically necessary the denial of which would violate a law of logic. Thus in ordinary commutative algebra the implication from the postulates to ab-ba is logically necessary, since its denial would violate a logical law (viz. the commutative rule) of this system.
logic ::: n. --> The science or art of exact reasoning, or of pure and formal thought, or of the laws according to which the processes of pure thinking should be conducted; the science of the formation and application of general notions; the science of generalization, judgment, classification, reasoning, and systematic arrangement; correct reasoning.
A treatise on logic; as, Mill&
Lotus Development Corporation "company" A software company who produced {Lotus 1-2-3}, the {Symphony} {spreadsheet} and {Lotus Notes} for the {IBM PC}. Disliked by the {League for Programming Freedom} on account of their lawsuits. Quarterly sales $224M, profits $10M (Aug 1994). Telephone: +1 (617) 225 1284. [Where are they? Founded when? Other products? E-mail? Internet?] (1994-11-16)
Madhav: “protagonists of Inconscience, darkness, the hierarchy of the dark reign, the dualities and the Laws of Karma …”
Main works: Problem d. Geschichtsphilosophie, 1892; Philosophie des Geldes, 1900; Soziologie, 1908; Goethe, 1913; Lebensanschauung, 1918. Simple Enumeration: (Bacon) The name given by F. Bacon to the Aristotelian and the Scholastic process of induction which advances to the knowledge of laws from the knowledge of facts established by observation and experiment and clearly arranged. This type of induction treats instances by noting the number of observed coincident happenings of the antecedent and the consequent under investigation, and then formulating a causal connection between them. Bacon considers that Simple Enumeration lacks the methodological characteristics which he conceived (rather than determined and applied) for the process of induction. It may be added that the ancient and medieval logicians were fully aware of this type of induction. -- T.G.
malware "security" Any {software} designed to do something that the user would not wish it to do, hasn't asked it to do, and often has no knowledge of until it's too late. Types of malware include {backdoor}, {ransomware}, {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse}. Malware typically affects the system on which it is run, e.g. by deleting or corrupting files on the local disks. Since Internet connections became common, malware has increasingly targeted remote systems. An early example was malware consisting of a malicious e-mail attachment that targeted security flaws in {Microsoft Outlook} (the most common {e-mail client}) to send itself to all the user's contacts. A more recent kind of malware "recruits" the infected computer to become part of a {botnet} consisting of thousands of infected computers that can then be remotely controlled and used to launch {DDoS} attacks. (2007-11-15)
Manava-dharmasastra ::: [name of the famous code of laws attributed to Manu]; the science of the law of conduct of the mental or human being.
marketroid /mar'k*-troyd/ (Or "marketing slime", "marketeer", "marketing droid", "marketdroid") A member of a company's marketing department, especially one who promises users that the next version of a product will have features that are not actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-23)
marry ::: v. t. --> To unite in wedlock or matrimony; to perform the ceremony of joining, as a man and a woman, for life; to constitute (a man and a woman) husband and wife according to the laws or customs of the place.
To join according to law, (a man) to a woman as his wife, or (a woman) to a man as her husband. See the Note to def. 4.
To dispose of in wedlock; to give away as wife.
To take for husband or wife. See the Note below.
Figuratively, to unite in the closest and most endearing
Mary "language" An extensible, machine-oriented superset of {ALGOL68} developed by Mark Rain. Mary is maintained (and used) by {Kvatro Telecom AS}. Although dated, it still offers a nice strongly typed {3GL} with {macros} but without most of {C}'s flaws. It runs on {SPARC} and {x86} computers. Hidden on the back cover of the manual: MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB - COERCION IMPOSSIBLE. ["Mary Programmer's Reference Manual", M. Rain et al, R Unit, Trondheim Norway, 1974]. ["Operator Expressions in Mary", M. Rain, SIGPLAN Notices 8(1), Jan 1973]. (1998-11-10)
mastersinger ::: n. --> One of a class of poets which flourished in Nuremberg and some other cities of Germany in the 15th and 16th centuries. They bound themselves to observe certain arbitrary laws of rhythm.
materialize ::: v. t. --> To invest with material characteristics; to make perceptible to the senses; hence, to present to the mind through the medium of material objects.
To regard as matter; to consider or explain by the laws or principles which are appropriate to matter.
To cause to assume a character appropriate to material things; to occupy with material interests; as, to materialize thought.
mechanical ::: a. --> Pertaining to, governed by, or in accordance with, mechanics, or the laws of motion; pertaining to the quantitative relations of force and matter, as distinguished from mental, vital, chemical, etc.; as, mechanical principles; a mechanical theory; mechanical deposits.
Of or pertaining to a machine or to machinery or tools; made or formed by a machine or with tools; as, mechanical precision; mechanical products.
mechanic ::: a. --> The art of the application of the laws of motion or force to construction.
A mechanician; an artisan; an artificer; one who practices any mechanic art; one skilled or employed in shaping and uniting materials, as wood, metal, etc., into any kind of structure, machine, or other object, requiring the use of tools, or instruments.
Having to do with the application of the laws of motion in the art of constructing or making things; of or pertaining to
mechanico-chemical ::: a. --> Pertaining to, connected with, or dependent upon, both mechanics and chemistry; -- said especially of those sciences which treat of such phenomena as seem to depend on the laws both of mechanics and chemistry, as electricity and magnetism.
Mechanism: (Gr. mechane, machine) Theory that all phenomena are totally explicable on mechanical principles. The view that all phenomena is the result of matter in motion and can be explained by its law. Theory of total explanation by efficient, as opposed to final, cause (q.v.). Doctrine that nature, like a machine, is a whole whose single function is served automatically by its parts. In cosmology, first advanced by Leucippus and Democritus (460 B.C.-370 B.C.) as the view that nature is explicable on the basis of atoms in motion and the void. Held by Galileo (1564-1641) and others in the seventeenth century as the rnechanical philosophy. For Descartes (1596-1650), the essence of matter is extension, and all physical phenomena are explicable by mechanical laws. For Kant (1724-1804), the necessity in time of all occurrence in accordance with causality as a law of nature. In biology, theory that organisms are totally explicable on mechanical principles. Opposite of: vitalism (q.v.). In psychology, applied to associational psychology, and in psychoanalysis to the unconscious direction of a mental process. In general, the view that nature consists merely of material in motion, and that it operates automatically. Opposite of: all forms of super-naturalism. See also Materialism, Atomism. -- J.K.F.
melodics ::: n. --> The department of musical science which treats of the pitch of tones, and of the laws of melody.
Metalogical: That which belongs to the basis of logic. Metalogical truths are the laws of thought, the formal conditions of thinking inherent in reason. (Schopenhauer.) -- H.H.
Metaphysics and psychology are not distinct in Herbert's view. In his day psychology was also philosophy. It was still a metaphysical science in the sense that it is differentiated from physical science. It was only later that psychology repudiated philosophy. Accepting Kant's challenge to make psychology a mathematical science, he developed an elaborate system of mathematical constructions that proved the least fruitful phase of his system. As a mathematical science psychology can use only calculation, not experiment. As the mind or soul is unitary, indivisible. science, including philosophy, is neither analytical nor experimental. Bv denying analysis to psychology, Herbart combatted the division of mind into separate faculties. Psychology is not the mere description of the mind, but the working out of its mathematical laws.
Methodology: The systematic analysis and organization of the rational and experimental principles and processes which must guide a scientific inquiry, or which constitute the structure of the special sciences more particularly. Methodology, which is also called scientific method, and more seldom methodeutic, refers not only to the whole of a constituted science, but also to individual problems or groups of problems within a science. As such it is usually considered as a branch of logic; in fact, it is the application of the principles and processes of logic to the special objects of the various sciences; while science in general is accounted for by the combination of deduction and induction as such. Thus, methodology is a generic term exemplified in the specific method of each science. Hence its full significance can be understood only by analyzing the structure of the special sciences. In determining that structure, one must consider the proper object of the special science, the manner in which it develops, the type of statements or generalizations it involves, its philosophical foundations or assumptions, and its relation with the other sciences, and eventually its applications. The last two points mentioned are particularly important: methods of education, for example, will vary considerably according to their inspiration and aim. Because of the differences between the objects of the various sciences, they reveal the following principal methodological patterns, which are not necessarily exclusive of one another, and which are used sometimes in partial combination. It may be added that their choice and combination depend also in a large degree on psychological motives. In the last resort, methodology results from the adjustment of our mental powers to the love and pursuit of truth. There are various rational methods used by the speculative sciences, including theology which adds certain qualifications to their use. More especially, philosophy has inspired the following procedures: The Soctattc method of analysis by questioning and dividing until the essences are reached; the synthetic method developed by Plato, Aristotle and the Medieval thinkers, which involves a demonstrative exposition of the causal relation between thought and being; the ascetic method of intellectual and moral purification leading to an illumination of the mind, as proposed by Plotinus, Augustine and the mystics; the psychological method of inquiry into the origin of ideas, which was used by Descartes and his followers, and also by the British empiricists; the critical or transcendental method, as used by Kant, and involving an analysis of the conditions and limits of knowledge; the dialectical method proceeding by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which is promoted by Hegelianlsm and Dialectical Materialism; the intuitive method, as used by Bergson, which involves the immediate perception of reality, by a blending of consciousness with the process of change; the reflexive method of metaphysical introspection aiming at the development of the immanent realities and values leading man to God; the eclectic method (historical-critical) of purposive and effective selection as proposed by Cicero, Suarez and Cousin; and the positivistic method of Comte, Spencer and the logical empiricists, which attempts to apply to philosophy the strict procedures of the positive sciences. The axiomatic or hypothetico-deductive method as used by the theoretical and especially the mathematical sciences. It involves such problems as the selection, independence and simplification of primitive terms and axioms, the formalization of definitions and proofs, the consistency and completeness of the constructed theory, and the final interpretation. The nomological or inductive method as used by the experimental sciences, aims at the discovery of regularities between phenomena and their relevant laws. It involves the critical and careful application of the various steps of induction: observation and analytical classification; selection of similarities; hypothesis of cause or law; verification by the experimental canons; deduction, demonstration and explanation; systematic organization of results; statement of laws and construction of the relevant theory. The descriptive method as used by the natural and social sciences, involves observational, classificatory and statistical procedures (see art. on statistics) and their interpretation. The historical method as used by the sciences dealing with the past, involves the collation, selection, classification and interpretation of archeological facts and exhibits, records, documents, archives, reports and testimonies. The psychological method, as used by all the sciences dealing with human behaviour and development. It involves not only introspective analysis, but also experimental procedures, such as those referring to the relations between stimuli and sensations, to the accuracy of perceptions (specific measurements of intensity), to gradation (least noticeable differences), to error methods (average error in right and wrong cases), and to physiological and educational processes.
miracle ::: an event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God.
miracle ::: n. --> A wonder or wonderful thing.
Specifically: An event or effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things, or a deviation from the known laws of nature; a supernatural event, or one transcending the ordinary laws by which the universe is governed.
A miracle play.
A story or legend abounding in miracles.
Miranda "language" (From the Latin for "admirable", also the heroine of Shakespeare's "Tempest") A {lazy} {purely functional} programming language and {interpreter} designed by {David Turner} of the University of Kent in the early 1980s and implemented as a product of his company, {Research Software Limited}. Miranda combines the main features of {KRC} and {SASL} with {strong typing} similar to that of {ML}. It features terse {syntax} using the {offside rule} for indentation. The {type} of an expression is inferred from the {source} by the {compiler} but explicit type declarations are also allowed. It has nested {pattern-matching}, {list comprehensions} and {modules}. It uses {operator sections} rather than {lambda abstractions}. User types are algebraic, and in early versions could be constrained by {laws}. It is implemented using {SKI combinator} {reduction}. Originally implemented for {Unix}, there are versions for most UNIX-like platforms including {Intel PC} under {Linux}. The {KAOS} operating system is written entirely in Miranda. There are translators from Miranda to {Haskell} {mira2hs (/pub/misc/mira2hs)} and to {LML} {mira2lml (/pub/misc/mira2lml)}. Non-commercial near-equivalents of Miranda include {Miracula} and {Orwell}. {(http://miranda.org.uk/)}. [{"Miranda: A Non Strict Functional Language with Polymorphic Types" (http://miranda.org.uk/nancy.html)}, D.A. Turner, in Functional Programming Languages and Computer Architecture, LNCS 201, Springer 1985]. [{"An Overview of Miranda" (http://miranda.org.uk/overview.pdf)}, D. A. Turner, SIGPLAN Notices, 21(12):158--166, December 1986]. ["Functional Programming with Miranda", Ian Holyer, Pitman Press 0-273-03453-7]. (2007-03-22)
misfeature /mis-fee'chr/ or /mis'fee"chr/ A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation that has evolved. Since it results from a deliberate and properly implemented feature, a misfeature is not a bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned, but its long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately predicted (which is quite different from not having thought ahead at all). A misfeature can be a particularly stubborn problem to resolve, because fixing it usually involves a substantial philosophical change to the structure of the system involved. Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise because the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes for laws of nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because trade-offs were made whose parameters subsequently change (possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah, it is kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but the original implementors wanted to save directory space and we"re stuck with it for now."
Missing definition "introduction" First, this is an (English language) __computing__ dictionary. It includes lots of terms from related fields such as mathematics and electronics, but if you're looking for (or want to submit) words from other subjects or general English words or other languages, try {(http://wikipedia.org/)}, {(http://onelook.com/)}, {(http://yourdictionary.com/)}, {(http://www.dictionarist.com/)} or {(http://reference.allrefer.com/)}. If you've already searched the dictionary for a computing term and it's not here then please __don't tell me__. There are, and always will be, a great many missing terms, no dictionary is ever complete. I use my limited time to process the corrections and definitions people have submitted and to add the {most frequently requested missing terms (missing.html)}. Try one of the sources mentioned above or {(http://techweb.com/encyclopedia/)}, {(http://whatis.techtarget.com/)} or {(http://google.com/)}. See {the Help page (help.html)} for more about missing definitions and bad cross-references. (2014-09-20)! {exclamation mark}!!!Batch "language, humour" A daft way of obfuscating text strings by encoding each character as a different number of {exclamation marks} surrounded by {question marks}, e.g. "d" is encoded as "?!!!!?". The language is named after the {MSDOS} {batch file} in which the first converter was written. {esoteric programming languages} {wiki entry (http://esolangs.org/wiki/!!!Batch)}. (2014-10-25)" {double quote}
mitrasya dharmabhih ::: by the "holdings" or laws of Mitra. [Ved.]
Montesquieu, Charles De Secondat: (1689-1755) French historian and writer in the field of politics. His Lettres persanes, thinly disguise trenchant criticism of the decadence of French society through the letters of two Persian visitors. His masterpiece, L'Esprit des Lois, gives a political and social philosophy in pointing the relation between the laws and the constitution of government. He finds a relation between all laws in the laws of laws, the necessary relations derived from the nature of things. In his analysis of the English constitution, he stressed the separation of powers in a manner that has had lasting influence though based on historical inaccuracy. -- L.E.D.
morne ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the morn; morning.
Without teeth, tongue, or claws; -- said of a lion represented heraldically. ::: n. --> A ring fitted upon the head of a lance to prevent wounding an adversary in tilting.
morphonomy ::: n. --> The laws of organic formation.
Most of the basic problems and theories of cosmology seem to have been discussed by the pre-Socratic philosophers. Their views are modified and expanded in the Timaeus of Plato, and rehearsed and systematized in Aristotle's Physics. Despite multiple divergencies, all these Greek philosophers seem to be largely agreed that the universe is limited in space, has neither a beginning nor end in time, is dominated by a set of unalterable laws, and has a definite and recurring rhythm. The cosmology of the Middle Ages diverges from the Greek primarily through the introduction of the concepts of divine creation and annihilation, miracle and providence. In consonance with the tendencies of the new science, the cosmologies of Descartes, Leibniz and Newton bring the medieval views into closer harmony with those of the Greeks. The problems of cosmology were held to be intrinsically insoluble by Kant. After Kant there was a tendency to merge the issues of cosmology with those of metaphysics. The post-Kantians attempted to deal with both in terms of more basic principles and a more flexible dialectic, their opponents rejected both as without significance or value. The most radical modern cosmology is that of Peirce with its three cosmic principles of chance, law and continuity; the most recent is that of Whitehead, which finds its main inspiration in Plato's Timaeus.
multiple value "database" (MU) A one-to-many relationship between entries in a database, for example a person may have an address field which spanned multiple records (with different indexes). Multiple values are a non-{relational} technique. MUs have recently been made available in {DB2}, despite the product being so heavily influenced by {Codd's Laws} of {relational databases}. [Confirm, clarify?] (1995-10-30)
Muslim ::: one who surrenders; submitter; one who is willing to accept and make peace with Allah’s laws and regulations
must ::: v. i. / auxiliary --> To be obliged; to be necessitated; -- expressing either physical or moral necessity; as, a man must eat for nourishment; we must submit to the laws.
To be morally required; to be necessary or essential to a certain quality, character, end, or result; as, he must reconsider the matter; he must have been insane. ::: n.
“My researches first convinced me that words, like plants, like animals, are in no sense artificial products, but growths,—living growths of sound with certain seed-sounds as their basis. Out of these seed-sounds develop a small number of primitive root-words with an immense progeny which have their successive generations and arrange themselves in tribes, clans, families, selective groups each having a common stock and a common psychological history. For the factor which presided over the development of language was the association, by the nervous mind of primitive man, of certain general significances or rather of certain general utilities and sense-values with articulate sounds. The process of this association was also in no sense artificial but natural, governed by simple and definite psychological laws.” The Secret of the Veda
natural ::: a. --> Fixed or determined by nature; pertaining to the constitution of a thing; belonging to native character; according to nature; essential; characteristic; not artifical, foreign, assumed, put on, or acquired; as, the natural growth of animals or plants; the natural motion of a gravitating body; natural strength or disposition; the natural heat of the body; natural color.
Conformed to the order, laws, or actual facts, of nature; consonant to the methods of nature; according to the stated course of
naturalism ::: n. --> A state of nature; conformity to nature.
The doctrine of those who deny a supernatural agency in the miracles and revelations recorded in the Bible, and in spiritual influences; also, any system of philosophy which refers the phenomena of nature to a blind force or forces acting necessarily or according to fixed laws, excluding origination or direction by one intelligent will.
natural Law ::: a law or body of laws that derives from nature and is believed to be binding upon human actions apart from or in conjunction with laws established by human authority.
Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discoveiy of the secret ktws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of subtle-'
nazarene ::: n. --> A native or inhabitant of Nazareth; -- a term of contempt applied to Christ and the early Christians.
One of a sect of Judaizing Christians in the first and second centuries, who observed the laws of Moses, and held to certain heresies.
neonomian ::: n. --> One who advocates adheres to new laws; esp. one who holds or believes that the gospel is a new law. ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the Neonomians, or in accordance with their doctrines.
nirukta ::: etymology; philology, part of sahitya: the study of the origins and development of language, especially with reference to Sanskrit, with the aim of creating "a science which can trace the origins, growth & structure of the Sanscrit language, discover its primary, secondary & tertiary forms & the laws by which they develop from each other, trace intelligently the descent of every meaning of a word in Sanscrit from its original root sense, account for all similarities & identities of sense, discover the reason of unexpected divergences, trace the deviations which separated Greek & Latin from the Indian dialect, discover & define the connection of all three with the Dravidian forms of speech".
nomography ::: n. --> A treatise on laws; an exposition of the form proper for laws.
nomology ::: n. --> The science of law; legislation.
The science of the laws of the mind; rational psychology.
nomothetical ::: a. --> Legislative; enacting laws; as, a nomothetical power.
Occultism is the knowledge and right use of the hidden forces of Nature. True occultism means a search into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and
occultism ::: the knowledge and right use of the hidden forces of nature; true occultism means a search into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface.
Of the many theological doctrines included in this philosophy, there are to be noted those of the Torah and prophecy. The Torah is considered by all philosophers divinely revealed. The Sinaitic revelation was accomplished by means of a specially created voice which uttered the commandments. The Torah is therefore immutable and is eternal. Its purpose is to train men for a good life. According to Maimonides, the Torah aims at both the improvement of the soul and of the body. The first is accomplished the second by numerous laws which regulate the by inculcating right conceptions about God, and life of the individual and society.
“On the surface of life all appears to be a game of Chance. There is no certainty about any movement; ups and downs, vicissitudes, cataclysms, actions, passions and thoughts crowd in medley and it is impossible to anticipate or regulate them with any definiteness. But a deeper scrutiny reveals a pattern behind all the apparent workings of Chance. What looks like Chance is itself a part of the process; it is called Chance because the particular operation does not take place within the framework of the laws erected by the limited empirical mind; there is really no Chance in the working out of the divine Intention that is this Universe.” Readings in Savitri Vol. III.
oppressor ::: n. --> One who oppresses; one who imposes unjust burdens on others; one who harasses others with unjust laws or unreasonable severity.
optics ::: n. --> That branch of physical science which treats of the nature and properties of light, the laws of its modification by opaque and transparent bodies, and the phenomena of vision.
orangeman ::: n. --> One of a secret society, organized in the north of Ireland in 1795, the professed objects of which are the defense of the regning sovereign of Great Britain, the support of the Protestant religion, the maintenance of the laws of the kingdom, etc.; -- so called in honor of William, Prince of Orange, who became William III. of England.
original ::: a. --> Pertaining to the origin or beginning; preceding all others; first in order; primitive; primary; pristine; as, the original state of man; the original laws of a country; the original inventor of a process.
Not copied, imitated, or translated; new; fresh; genuine; as, an original thought; an original process; the original text of Scripture.
Having the power to suggest new thoughts or combinations
orthometry ::: n. --> The art or practice of constructing verses correctly; the laws of correct versification.
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.
Parkinson's Law of Data "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars also tends to double about once every 12 months (see {Moore's Law}); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely. [{Jargon File}]
parliament ::: n. --> A parleying; a discussion; a conference.
A formal conference on public affairs; a general council; esp., an assembly of representatives of a nation or people having authority to make laws.
The assembly of the three estates of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, viz., the lords spiritual, lords temporal, and the representatives of the commons, sitting in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, constituting the legislature, when
pastie /pay'stee/ An adhesive label designed to be attached to a key on a keyboard to indicate some non-standard character which can be accessed through that key. Pasties are likely to be used in APL environments, where almost every key is associated with a special character. A pastie on the R key, for example, might remind the user that it is used to generate the rho character. The term properly refers to nipple-concealing devices formerly worn by strippers in concession to indecent-exposure laws; compare {tits on a keyboard}. [{Jargon File}]
paw ::: n. --> The foot of a quadruped having claws, as the lion, dog, cat, etc.
The hand. ::: v. i. --> To draw the forefoot along the ground; to beat or scrape with the forefoot.
PDP-20 The most famous computer that never was. {PDP-10} computers running the {TOPS-10} operating system were labelled "DECsystem-10" as a way of differentiating them from the {PDP-11}. Later on, those systems running {TOPS-20} were labelled "DECSYSTEM-20" (the block capitals being the result of a lawsuit brought against DEC by Singer, which once made a computer called "system-10"), but contrary to popular lore there was never a "PDP-20"; the only difference between a 10 and a 20 was the {operating system} and the colour of the paint. Most (but not all) machines sold to run {TOPS-10} were painted "Basil Blue", whereas most TOPS-20 machines were painted "Chinese Red" (often mistakenly called orange). [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-21)
perpetuity ::: n. --> The quality or state of being perpetual; as, the perpetuity of laws.
Something that is perpetual.
Endless time.
The number of years in which the simple interest of any sum becomes equal to the principal.
The number of years&
perspective ::: n. --> Of or pertaining to the science of vision; optical.
Pertaining to the art, or in accordance with the laws, of perspective. ::: a. --> A glass through which objects are viewed.
That which is seen through an opening; a view; a
perspectography ::: n. --> The science or art of delineating objects according to the laws of perspective; the theory of perspective.
philology ::: n. --> Criticism; grammatical learning.
The study of language, especially in a philosophical manner and as a science; the investigation of the laws of human speech, the relation of different tongues to one another, and historical development of languages; linguistic science.
A treatise on the science of language.
philosophy ::: n. --> Literally, the love of, including the search after, wisdom; in actual usage, the knowledge of phenomena as explained by, and resolved into, causes and reasons, powers and laws.
A particular philosophical system or theory; the hypothesis by which particular phenomena are explained.
Practical wisdom; calmness of temper and judgment; equanimity; fortitude; stoicism; as, to meet misfortune with philosophy.
phonography ::: n. --> A description of the laws of the human voice, or sounds uttered by the organs of speech.
A representation of sounds by distinctive characters; commonly, a system of shorthand writing invented by Isaac Pitman, or a modification of his system, much used by reporters.
The art of constructing, or using, the phonograph.
photologist ::: n. --> One who studies or expounds the laws of light.
physical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to nature (as including all created existences); in accordance with the laws of nature; also, of or relating to natural or material things, or to the bodily structure, as opposed to things mental, moral, spiritual, or imaginary; material; natural; as, armies and navies are the physical force of a nation; the body is the physical part of man.
Of or pertaining to physics, or natural philosophy; treating of, or relating to, the causes and connections of natural
physically ::: adv. --> In a physical manner; according to the laws of nature or physics; by physical force; not morally.
According to the rules of medicine.
physics ::: n. --> The science of nature, or of natural objects; that branch of science which treats of the laws and properties of matter, and the forces acting upon it; especially, that department of natural science which treats of the causes (as gravitation, heat, light, magnetism, electricity, etc.) that modify the general properties of bodies; natural philosophy.
Pieh Mo: Neo-Mohists; heretical Mohists. See Mo che and Chinese philosophy. Pien: Argumentation or dialectics, which "is to make clear the distinction between right and wrong, to ascertain the principles of order and disorder, to make clear the points of similarity and difference, to examine the laws of names and actualities, to determine what is beneficial and what is harmful, and to decide what is uncertain and doubtful. It describes the ten thousand things as they are, and discusses the various opinions in their comparative merits. It uses names to specify actualities, propositions to express ideas, and explanations to set forth reasons, including or excluding according to classes." It involves seven methods: "The method of possibility is to argue from what is not exhausted. The method of hypothesis is to argue from what is not actual at present. The method of imitation is to provide a model. What is imitated is taken as the model. If the reason agrees with the model, it is correct. If it does not agree with the model, it is incorrect. This is the method of imitation. The method of comparison is to make clear about one thing by means of another. The method of parallel is to compare two propositions consistently throughout. The method of analogy says, 'You are so. Why should I not be so?" The method of induction is to grant what has not been accepted on the basis of its similarity to what has already been accepted. For example, when it is said that all the others are the same, how can I say that the others are different?" (Neo-Mohism.) -- W.T.C.
pinch ::: v. t. --> To press hard or squeeze between the ends of the fingers, between teeth or claws, or between the jaws of an instrument; to squeeze or compress, as between any two hard bodies.
o seize; to grip; to bite; -- said of animals.
To plait.
Figuratively: To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve; to distress; as, to be pinched for money.
To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a
Platonism as a political philosophy finds its best known exposition in the theory of the ideal state in the Republic. There, Plato described a city in which social justice would be fully realized. Three classes of men are distinguished: the philosopher kings, apparently a very small group whose education has been alluded to above, who would be the rulers because by nature and by training they were the best men for the job. They must excel particularly in their rational abilities: their special virtue is philosophic wisdom; the soldiers, or guardians of the state, constitute the second class; their souls must be remarkable for the development of the spirited, warlike element, under the control of the virtue of courage; the lowest class is made up of the acquisitive group, the workers of every sort whose characteristic virtue is temperance. For the two upper classes, Plato suggested a form of community life which would entail the abolition of monogamous marriage, family life, and of private property. It is to be noted that this form of semi-communism was suggested for a minority of the citizens only (Repub. III and V) and it is held to be a practical impossibility in the Laws (V, 739-40), though Plato continued to think that some form of community life is theoretically best for man. In Book VIII of the Republic, we find the famous classification of five types of political organization, ranging from aristocracy which is the rule of the best men, timocracy, in which the rulers are motivated by a love of honor, oligarchy, in which the rulers seek wealth, democracy, the rule of the masses who are unfit for the task, to tyranny, which is the rule of one man who may have started as the champion of the people but who governs solely for the advancement of his own, selfish interests.
platonism ::: n. --> The doctrines or philosophy by Plato or of his followers.
An elevated rational and ethical conception of the laws and forces of the universe; sometimes, imaginative or fantastic philosophical notions.
policed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Police ::: a. --> Regulated by laws for the maintenance of peace and order, enforced by organized administration.
police ::: n. --> A judicial and executive system, for the government of a city, town, or district, for the preservation of rights, order, cleanliness, health, etc., and for the enforcement of the laws and prevention of crime; the administration of the laws and regulations of a city, incorporated town, or borough.
That which concerns the order of the community; the internal regulation of a state.
The organized body of civil officers in a city, town, or
polyphonic ::: a. --> Having a multiplicity of sounds.
Characterized by polyphony; as, Assyrian polyphonic characters.
Consisting of several tone series, or melodic parts, progressing simultaneously according to the laws of counterpoint; contrapuntal; as, a polyphonic composition; -- opposed to homophonic, or monodic.
positivism ::: n. --> A system of philosophy originated by M. Auguste Comte, which deals only with positives. It excludes from philosophy everything but the natural phenomena or properties of knowable things, together with their invariable relations of coexistence and succession, as occurring in time and space. Such relations are denominated laws, which are to be discovered by observation, experiment, and comparison. This philosophy holds all inquiry into causes, both efficient and final, to be useless and unprofitable.
pounced ::: a. --> Furnished with claws or talons; as, the pounced young of the eagle.
Ornamented with perforations or dots.
preempt ::: v. t. & i. --> To settle upon (public land) with a right of preemption, as under the laws of the United States; to take by preemption.
promulgate ::: v. t. --> To make known by open declaration, as laws, decrees, or tidings; to publish; as, to promulgate the secrets of a council.
prosody ::: n. --> That part of grammar which treats of the quantity of syllables, of accent, and of the laws of versification or metrical composition.
pseudoscorpiones ::: n. pl. --> An order of Arachnoidea having the palpi terminated by large claws, as in the scorpions, but destitute of a caudal sting; the false scorpions. Called also Pseudoscorpii, and Pseudoscorpionina. See Illust. of Book scorpion, under Book.
publicist ::: n. --> A writer on the laws of nature and nations; one who is versed in the science of public right, the principles of government, etc.
publishment ::: n. --> The act or process of making publicly known; publication.
A public notice of intended marriage, required by the laws of some States.
pundit ::: n. --> A learned man; a teacher; esp., a Brahman versed in the Sanskrit language, and in the science, laws, and religion of the Hindoos; in Cashmere, any clerk or native official.
questmonger ::: n. --> One who lays informations, and encourages petty lawsuits.
raptorial ::: a. --> Rapacious; living upon prey; -- said especially of certain birds.
Adapted for seizing prey; -- said of the legs, claws, etc., of insects, birds, and other animals.
Of or pertaining to the Raptores. See Illust. (f) of Aves.
rebellion ::: v. i. --> The act of rebelling; open and avowed renunciation of the authority of the government to which one owes obedience, and resistance to its officers and laws, either by levying war, or by aiding others to do so; an organized uprising of subjects for the purpose of coercing or overthrowing their lawful ruler or government by force; revolt; insurrection.
Open resistance to, or defiance of, lawful authority.
recompilement ::: n. --> The act of recompiling; new compilation or digest; as, a recompilement of the laws.
rectitude ::: n. --> Straightness.
Rightness of principle or practice; exact conformity to truth, or to the rules prescribed for moral conduct, either by divine or human laws; uprightness of mind; uprightness; integrity; honesty; justice.
Right judgment.
Reflexivity: A dyadic relation R is called reflexive if xRx holds for all x within a certain previously fixed domain which must include the field of R (cf. logic, formal, § 8). In the propositional calculus, the laws of reflexivity of material implication and material equivalence (the conditional and biconditional) are the theorems, p ⊃ p, p ≡ p, expressing the reflexivity of these relations. Other examples of reflexive relations are equality, class inclusion, ⊂ (see logic, formal, § 7); formal implication and formal equivalence (see logic, formal, § 3); the relation not greater than among whole numbers, or among rational numbers, or among real numbers; the relation not later than among instants of time; the relation less than one hour apart among instants of time.
regulate ::: v. t. --> To adjust by rule, method, or established mode; to direct by rule or restriction; to subject to governing principles or laws.
To put in good order; as, to regulate the disordered state of a nation or its finances.
To adjust, or maintain, with respect to a desired rate, degree, or condition; as, to regulate the temperature of a room, the pressure of steam, the speed of a machine, etc.
restrictive ::: a. --> Serving or tending to restrict; limiting; as, a restrictive particle; restrictive laws of trade.
Astringent or styptic in effect.
retractile ::: a. --> Capable of retraction; capable of being drawn back or up; as, the claws of a cat are retractile.
retraction ::: n. --> The act of retracting, or drawing back; the state of being retracted; as, the retraction of a cat&
retract ::: v. t. --> To draw back; to draw up or shorten; as, the cat can retract its claws; to retract a muscle.
To withdraw; to recall; to disavow; to recant; to take back; as, to retract an accusation or an assertion.
To take back,, as a grant or favor previously bestowed; to revoke. ::: v. i.
Rickert, Heinrich: (1863-1936) Believing that only in system philosophy achieves its ends, Rickert established under the influence of Fichte a transcendental idealism upon an epistemology which has nothing to do with searching for connections between thought and existence, but admits being only as a being in consciousness, and knowledge as an affirming or negating, approving or disapproving of judgments. Hence, philosophy is one of norms in which the concept of reality dissolves into a concept of value, while consciousness ceases to be an individual phenomenon and becomes impersonal and general. Value exists not as a physical thing but in assent and our acknowledging its validity. In this we are guided by meaning and obligated by the ought. Method distinguishes history as the discipline of the particular from science which must advance beyond fact-gathering to the discovery of general laws, and from philosophy which seeks absolute cultural values through explanation, understanding, and interpretation.
rightful ::: a. --> Righteous; upright; just; good; -- said of persons.
Consonant to justice; just; as, a rightful cause.
Having the right or just claim according to established laws; being or holding by right; as, the rightful heir to a throne or an estate; a rightful king.
Belonging, held, or possessed by right, or by just claim; as, a rightful inheritance; rightful authority.
sanitarian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to health, or the laws of health; sanitary. ::: n. --> An advocate of sanitary measures; one especially interested or versed in sanitary measures.
San piao: The three laws in reasoning and argumentation, namely, that "there must be a basis or foundation" which can be "found in a study of the experiences of the wisest men of the past," that "there must be a general survey" by "examining (its compatibility with) the facts of the actual experience of the people," and that "there must be practical application" by "putting it into law and governmental policies, and see whether or not it is conducive to the welfare of the state and of the people." (Mo Tzu, between 500 and 396 B.C.) -- W.T.C.
science ::: n. --> Knowledge; knowledge of principles and causes; ascertained truth of facts.
Accumulated and established knowledge, which has been systematized and formulated with reference to the discovery of general truths or the operation of general laws; knowledge classified and made available in work, life, or the search for truth; comprehensive, profound, or philosophical knowledge.
Especially, such knowledge when it relates to the physical
scratch ::: v. t. --> To rub and tear or mark the surface of with something sharp or ragged; to scrape, roughen, or wound slightly by drawing something pointed or rough across, as the claws, the nails, a pin, or the like.
To write or draw hastily or awkwardly.
To cancel by drawing one or more lines through, as the name of a candidate upon a ballot, or of a horse in a list; hence, to erase; to efface; -- often with out.
Security Administrator's Integrated Network Tool "networking, security, tool" (SAINT, originally "Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks", SATAN) A tool written by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema which remotely probes systems via the {network} and stores its findings in a {database}. The results can be viewed with an {web browser}. SAINT requires {Perl} 5.000 or better. In its simplest mode, SAINT gathers as much information about remote hosts and networks as possible by examining such network services as {finger}, {NFS}, {NIS}, {FTP}, {TFTP}, {rexd}, and other services. The information gathered includes the presence of various network information services as well as potential security flaws - usually in the form of incorrectly setup or configured network services, well-known {bugs} in system or network utilities, or poor or ignorant policy decisions. It can then either report on this data or use a simple rule-based system to investigate any potential security problems. Users can then examine, query, and analyze the output with a {web browser}. While the program is primarily geared toward analysing the security implications of the results, a great deal of general network information can be gained when using the tool - network topology, network services running, and types of hardware and software being used on the network. SAINT can also be used in exploratory mode. Based on the initial data collection and a user configurable ruleset, it will examine the avenues of trust and dependency and iterate further data collection runs over secondary hosts. This not only allows the user to analyse his own network, but also to examine the real implications inherent in network trust and services and help them make reasonably educated decisions about the security level of the systems involved. {(http://wwdsi.com/saint/)}. {Old SATAN page (http://fish.com/satan/)}. {Mailing list (http://wwdsi.com/saint/list_server.html)}. (2000-08-12)
Seder III, Nashim (women) -- 7 tractates: laws of marriage, divorce, forced marriage, adultery, asceticism.
Seder IV, Nezikin (damages), 10 tractates -- laws of damages, injuries, property, buying, selling, lending, hiring, renting, heredity, court proceedings, fines and punishment, cities of refuge, oaths. Special tractates on ethics (Abot) and idolatry and testimonials of special decisions.
seed-sounds ::: Sri Aurobindo: "My researches first convinced me that words, like plants, like animals, are in no sense artificial products, but growths, — living growths of sound with certain seed-sounds as their basis. Out of these seed-sounds develop a small number of primitive root-words with an immense progeny which have their successive generations and arrange themselves in tribes, clans, families, selective groups each having a common stock and a common psychological history. For the factor which presided over the development of language was the association, by the nervous mind of primitive man, of certain general significances or rather of certain general utilities and sense-values with articulate sounds. The process of this association was also in no sense artificial but natural, governed by simple and definite psychological laws.” *The Secret of the Veda
sheriff ::: n. --> The chief officer of a shire or county, to whom is intrusted the execution of the laws, the serving of judicial writs and processes, and the preservation of the peace.
Shruti: “Vijnana maya purusha. The angel who holds and brings forth the occult mysteries of life, the mysterious truths of existence, the occult laws of Nature, the level of being. Hiranyagarbha, the golden embryo is also the Angel of mysterious ecstasies. He is also the man who has attained the state of Vijnana where he is now Mind, Life, Matter.”
Similarity, Law of: (Lat similis, like) Association depending upon resemblance between the associated ideas. See Association, Laws of. -- L.W.
Similarly, physically necessary things are those whose denial would violate a physical or natural law. The orbits of the planets are said to be physically necessary. Circular orbits for the planets are logically possible, but not physically possible, so long as certain physical laws of motion remain true. Physical necessity is also referred to as "causal" necessity.
sloth ::: a sluggish natured arboreal mammal inhabiting tropical parts of Central and South America, having a long, coarse, greyish-brown coat often of a greenish cast caused by algae, and long, hooklike claws used in gripping tree branches while hanging or moving along in a habitual upside-down position.
sloth ::: n. --> Slowness; tardiness.
Disinclination to action or labor; sluggishness; laziness; idleness.
Any one of several species of arboreal edentates constituting the family Bradypodidae, and the suborder Tardigrada. They have long exserted limbs and long prehensile claws. Both jaws are furnished with teeth (see Illust. of Edentata), and the ears and tail are rudimentary. They inhabit South and Central America and Mexico.
smriti &
smrti (Smriti) ::: 1. remembrance; the faculty by which true knowledge hidden in the mind reveals itself to the judgment and is recognised at once as the truth. ::: 2. [(a code of) traditional or man-made laws, as distinguished from sruti or revealed laws].
smuggle ::: v. t. --> To import or export secretly, contrary to the law; to import or export without paying the duties imposed by law; as, to smuggle lace.
Fig.: To convey or introduce clandestinely. ::: v. i. --> To import or export in violation of the customs laws.
software law "legal" Software may, under various circumstances and in various countries, be restricted by patent or {copyright} or both. Most commercial software is sold under some kind of {software license}. A patent normally covers the design of something with a function such as a machine or process. Copyright restricts the right to make and distribute copies of something written or recorded, such as a song or a book of recipies. Software has both these aspects - it embodies functional design in the {algorithms} and data structures it uses and it could also be considered as a recording which can be copied and "performed" (run). "{Look and feel}" lawsuits attempt to monopolize well-known command languages; some have succeeded. {Copyrights} on command languages enforce gratuitous incompatibility, close opportunities for competition, and stifle incremental improvements. {Software patents} are even more dangerous; they make every design decision in the development of a program carry a risk of a lawsuit, with draconian pretrial seizure. It is difficult and expensive to find out whether the techniques you consider using are patented; it is impossible to find out whether they will be patented in the future. The proper use of {copyright} is to prevent {software piracy} - unauthorised duplication of software. This is completely different from copying the idea behind the program in the same way that photocopying a book differs from writing another book on the same subject. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:misc.legal.computing}. ["The Software Developer's and Marketer's Legal Companion", Gene K. Landy, 1993, AW, 0-201-62276-9]. (1994-11-16)
software theft "legal" Unauthorised duplication and/or use of computer {software}. This usually means unauthorised copying, either by individuals for use by themselves or their friends or by companies who then sell the illegal copies to users. Many kinds of {software protection} have been invented to try to reduce software theft but, with sufficient effort, it is always possible to bypass or "crack" the protection, and {software protection} is often annoying for legitimate users. Software theft in 1994 was estimated to have cost $15 billion in worldwide lost revenues to software publishers. It is an offence in the UK under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which states that "The owner of the copyright has the exclusive right to copy the work." It is estimated that European software houses alone lose $6 billion per year through the unlawful copying and distribution of software, with much of this loss being through business users rather than "basement hackers". One Italian pirating operation employed over 100 staff and had a turnover of $10M. It is illegal to: 1. Copy or distribute software or its documentation without the permission or licence of the copyright owner. 2. Run purchased software on two or more computers simultaneously unless the licence specifically allows it. 3. Knowingly or unknowingly allow, encourage or pressure employees to make or use illegal copies sources within the organisation. 4. Infringe laws against unauthorised software copying because someone compels or requests it. 5. Loan software in order that a copy be made of it. When software is upgraded it is generally the case that the licence accompanying the new version revokes the old version. This means that it is illegal to run both the old and new versions as only the new version is licensed. Both individuals and companies may be convicted of piracy offences. Officers of a company are also liable to conviction if the offences were carried out by the company with their consent. On conviction, the guilty party can face imprisonment for up to two years (five in USA), an unlimited fine or both as well as being sued for copyright infringement (with no limit) by the copyright owner. Because copying software is easy, some think that it is less wrong than, say, stealing it from a shop. In fact, both deprive software producers of income. Software theft should be reported to the {Federation Against Software Theft} (FAST). See also {Business Software Alliance}, {software audit}, {software law}. (2003-06-17)
Sometimes referred to as generalizations or analogues of De Morgan's laws are the two dually related theorems of the functional calculus of first order, ∼(Ex)F(x) ≡ (x)∼F(x), ∼(x)F(x) ≡ (Ex)∼F(x), and similar theorems in higher functional calculi. These make possible the definition of the existential quantifier in terms of the universal quantifier (or inversely). -- A.C.
SPEC "benchmark, body" Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. A non-profit corporation registered in California formed to "establish, maintain and endorse a standardized set of relevant {benchmarks} that can be applied to the newest generation of high-performance computers" (from SPEC's bylaws). The founders believe that the user community will benefit greatly from an objective series of applications-oriented tests, which can serve as common reference points and be considered during the evaluation process. SPEC develops suites of {benchmarks} intended to measure computer performance. These are available to the public for a fee covering development and administration costs. The current (14 Nov 94) SPEC benchmark suites are: {CINT92} (CPU intensive integer benchmarks); {CFP92} (CPU intensive floating-point benchmarks); SDM (UNIX Software Development Workloads); SFS (System level file server (NFS) workload). {Results (ftp://ftp.cdf.toronto.edu/pub/spectable)}. SPEC also publishes a quarterly report of SPEC news and results, The SPEC Newsletter. Some issues are {here (http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/spec.html)}. There is a {FAQ} about SPEC {here (http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/specfaq.html)}. (1994-11-14)
Sri Aurobindo: "By immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.” *The Upanishads
SRI International "company" One of the world's largest contract research firms. Founded in 1946 in conjuction with {Stanford University} as the Stanford Research Institute, they later became fully independent and were incorporated as a non-profit organisation under U.S. and California laws. SRI does research and development in many areas, independently and for hire. They produce and sell reports on the independent research. {(http://sri.com/)}. Address: Menlo Park, California, USA; Cambridge, UK. (2003-04-12)
Statement: See Meaning, Kinds of, 1. Statistics: The systematic study of quantitative facts, numerical data, comparative materials, obtained through description and interpretation of group phenomena. The method of using and interpreting processes of classification, enumeration, measurement and evaluation of group phenomena. In a restricted sense, the materials, facts or data referring to group phenomena and forming the subject of systematic computation and interpretation. The Ground of Statistics. Statistics have developed from a specialized application of the inductive principle which concludes from the characteristics of a large number of parts to those of the whole. When we make generalizations from empirical data, we are never certain of having expressed adequately the laws connecting all the relevant and efficient factors in the case under investigation. Not only have we to take into account the personal equation involved and the imperfection of our instru ments of observation and measurement, but also the complex character of physical, biological, psychological and social phenomena which cannot be subjected to an exhaustive analysis. Statistics reveals precisely definite trends and frequencies subject to approximate laws, in these various fields in which phenomena result from many independently varying factors and involve a multitude of numerical units of variable character. Statistics differs fiom probability insofar as it makes a more consistent use of empirical data objectively considered, and of methods directly inspired by the treatment of these data.
statutes ::: an established laws or rules, as that of God or fate.
Stoic School: Founded by Zeno (of Citium, in Cyprus) in the year 308 B.C. in Athens. For Stoicism virtue alone is the only good and the virtuous man is the one who has attained happiness through knowledge, as Socrites had taught. The virtuous man thus finds happiness in himself and is independent of the external world which he has succeeded in overcoming by mastering himself, his passions and emotions. As for the Stoic conception of the universe as a whole, their doctrine is pantheistic. All things and all natural laws follow by a conscious determination from the basic World Reason, and it is this rational order by which, according to Stoicism, the wise man seeks to regulate his life as his highest duty. -- M.F.
stomapoda ::: n. pl. --> An order of Crustacea including the squillas. The maxillipeds are leglike in form, and the large claws are comblike. They have a large and elongated abdomen, which contains a part of the stomach and heart; the abdominal appendages are large, and bear the gills. Called also Gastrula, Stomatopoda, and Squilloidea.
stone ::: n. 1. A small piece of rock. 2. Fig. Something resembling stone in shape or hardness. stones, stone-bound, hearth-stone, stepping-stone, stepping-stones, term-stones. 3. Of a person"s expression etc.), like a stone in coldness, hardness, stillness, etc. stone-calm, stone-still. adj. 4. Made of, pertaining to or having the characteristics of stone. Also fig. stone-grip, stone-laws. adv. 5. Completely; totally (usually used in combination).
table ::: 1. An article of furniture supported by one or more vertical legs and having a flat horizontal surface. 2. An engraved slab or tablet bearing an inscription or a device. 3. tables. The engraved tablets carrying sacred laws, etc. 4. An orderly arrangement of data, especially one in which the data are arranged in columns and rows in an essentially rectangular form.
Ta Ku: Major cause. See: ku. Talmud: (Learning) An encyclopedic work in Hebrew-Aramaic produced during 800 years (300 B.C.-500 A.D.) in Palestine and Babylon. Its six sedarim (orders) subdivided in 63 massektot (tractates) represent the oral tradition of Judaism expounding and developing the religious ideas and civil laws of the written special hermeneutic middot (measures) of law (i.e., the Hebrew Bible) by means of Rabbi Hillel, 13 of R. Ishmael and 32 of R. Eliezer of Galilee.
talons ::: the claws of a bird of prey.
tatouay ::: n. --> An armadillo (Xenurus unicinctus), native of the tropical parts of South America. It has about thirteen movable bands composed of small, nearly square, scales. The head is long; the tail is round and tapered, and nearly destitute of scales; the claws of the fore feet are very large. Called also tatouary, and broad-banded armadillo.
Tattva: (Skr.) "Thatness", "whatness", one of the principles ranging from abstract factors of conscious life to relations and laws governing natural facts. The Trika (q.v.). knows 36 tattvas which come into play when the universe "unfolds", i.e., is created by Shiva in an act variously symbolized by the awakening of his mind, or a "shining forth" (see abhasea). -- K.F.L.
taxonomic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or involving, taxonomy, or the laws and principles of classification; classificatory.
taxonomy ::: n. --> That division of the natural sciences which treats of the classification of animals and plants; the laws or principles of classification.
thecodactyl ::: n. --> Any one of a group of lizards of the Gecko tribe, having the toes broad, and furnished with a groove in which the claws can be concealed.
The formulas and the c-rules of the language in question may include some which are extralogical in character -- corresponding, e.g., to physical laws or to matters of empirical fact. Carnap makes an attempt (which, however, has been questioned) to define in purely syntactical terms when a relation of consequence is one of logical consequence. If the notion of consequence is restricted to that of logical consequence, the terms corresponding to valid and contra-valid are analytic and contradictory respectively. If the c-rules are purely logical in character, the class of analytic sentences coincides with that of valid sentences, and the class of contradictory sentences with that of contravalid sentences.
The general philosophical position which has as its fundamental tenet the proposition that the natural world is the whole of reality. "Nature" and "natural world" are certainly ambiguous terms, but this much is clear in thus restricting reality, naturalism means to assert that there is but one system or level of reality, that this system is the totality of objects and events in space and time; and that the behavior of this system is determined only by its own character and is reducible to a set of causal laws. Nature is thus conceived as self-contained and self-dependent, and from this view spring certain negations that define to a great extent the influence of naturalism. First, it is denied that nature is derived from or dependent upon any transcendent, supernatural entities. From this follows the denial that the order of natural events can be intruded upon. And this in turn entails the denial of freedom, purpose, and transcendent destiny.
The governing factors for us must be the spirit and the psychic being united with the Divine ; the occult laws and phenomena have to be known only as an instrumentation, not as the govern* ing principles. The occult is a vast field and complicated and not without its dangers. It need not be abandoned but it should not be given the first place.
Theocracy: (Gr. theos, god, kratos, government, power) A view of political organization in which God is sole ruler. All political laws come under what is held to be the Divine Will. Church and State become one. Examples the development of the Hebrew ideal and Judaism, Mohammedan politics, Calvinism in Geneva, Puritan New England. -- V.F.
theology ::: n. --> The science of God or of religion; the science which treats of the existence, character, and attributes of God, his laws and government, the doctrines we are to believe, and the duties we are to practice; divinity; (as more commonly understood) "the knowledge derivable from the Scriptures, the systematic exhibition of revealed truth, the science of Christian faith and life."
Theory: (Gr. theoria, viewing) The hypothetical universal aspect of anything. For Plato, a contemplated truth. For Aristotle, pure knowledge as opposed to the practical. An abstraction from practice. The principle from which practice proceeds. Opposite of practice. -- J.K.F. Hypothesis. More loosely: supposition, whatever is problematic, verifiable but not verified. (As opposed to practice) systematically organized knowledge of relatively high generality. (See "the theory of light"). (As opposed to laws and observations): explanation. The deduction of the axioms and theorems of one system from assertions (not necessarily verified) from another system and of a relatively less problematic and more intelligible nature. (Note: Since criteria of what is 'intelligible' and 'problematic' are subjective and liable to fluctuation, any definition of the term is bound to be provisional. It might be advisable to distinguish between laws (general statements in a system), principles (axioms), and theories (methods for deriving the axioms by means of appropriate definitions employing terms from other systems). -- M.B.
The Platonic philosophy of art and aesthetics stresses, as might be expected, the value of the reasonable imitation of Ideal realities rather than the photographic imitation of sense things and individual experiences. All beautiful things participate in the Idea of beauty (Symposium and Phaedrus). The artist is frequently described as a man carried away by his inspiration, akin to the fool; yet art requires reason and the artist must learn to contemplate the world of Ideas. Fine art is not radically distinguished from useful art. In both the Republic and the Laws, art is subordinated to the good of the state, and those forms of art which are effeminate, asocial, inimical to the morale of the citizens, are sternly excluded from the ideal state.
The Platonic theory of education is based on a drawing out (educatio) of what is already dimly known to the learner. (Meno, Repub. II-VII, Theaetetus, Laws.) The training of the philosopher-ruler, outlined in the Republic, requires the selection of the most promising children in their infancy and a rigorous disciplining of them in gymnastic, music (in the Greek sense of literary studies), mathematics and dialectic (the study of the Ideas). This training was to continue until the students were about thirty-five years of age; then fifteen years of practical apprenticeship in the subordinate offices of the state were required; finally, at the age of fifty, the rulers were advised to return to the study of philosophy. It should be noted that this program is intended only for an intellectual elite; the military class was to undergo a shorter period of training suited to its functions, and the masses of people, engaged in production, trading, and like pursuits, were not offered any special educational schedule.
The position taken is that investigation reveals basic, recurrent patterns of change, expressible as laws of materialist dialectics, which are seen as relevant to every level of existence, and, because validated by past evidence, as indispensable hypotheses in guiding further investigation. These are Law of interpenetration, unity and strife of opposites. (All existences, being complexes of opposing elements and forces, have the character of a changing unity. The unity is considered temporary, relative, while the process of change, expressed by interpenetration and strife, is continuous, absolute.) Law of transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. (The changes which take place in nature are not merely quantitative; their accumulation eventually precipitates new qualities in a transition which appears as a sudden leap in comparison to the gradualness of the quantitative changes up to that point. The new quality is considered as real as the original quality. It is not mechanically reducible to it it is not merely a larger amount of the former quality, but something into which that has developed.) Law of negation of negation. (The series of quantitative changes and emerging qualities is unending. Each state or phase of development is considered a synthesis which resolves the contradictions contained in the preceding synthesis and which generates its own contradictions on a different qualitative level.) These laws, connecting ontology with logic, are contrasted to the formalistic laws of identity, difference and excluded middle of which they are considered qualitatively enriched reconstructions. Against the ontology of the separateness and self-identity of each thing, the dialectical laws emphasize the interconnectedness of all things and self-development of each thing. An A all parts of which are always becoming non-A may thus be called non-A as well as A. The formula, A is A and cannot be non-A, becomes, A is A and also non-A, that is, at or during the same instant: there is no instant, it is held, during which nothing happens. The view taken is that these considerations apply as much to thought and concepts, as to things, that thought is a process, that ideas gain their logical content through interconnectedness with other ideas, out of and into which they develop.
The rejection of the law of excluded middle carries with it the rejection of various other laws of the classical propositional calculus and functional calculus of first order, including the law of double negation (and hence the method of indirect proof). In general the double negation of a proposition is weaker than the proposition itself; but the triple negation of a proposition is equivalent to its single negation. Noteworthy also is the rejection of ∼(x)F(x) ⊃ (Ex)∼F(x); but the reverse implication is valid. (The sign ⊃ here does not denote material implication, but is a distinct primitive symbol of implication.) -- A.C.
The remembrancer of the city of London is parliamentary solicitor to the corporation, and is bound to attend all courts of aldermen and common council when required. Pull. Laws & Cust. Lond. 122. from Black’s Law Dictionary.
The social theory, termed historical materialism, represents the application of the general principles of materialist dialectics to human society, by which they were first suggested. The fundamental changes and stages which society has passed through in the course of its complex evolution are traced primarily to the influence of changes taking place in its economic base. This base has two aspects: material forces of production (technics, instrumentalities) and economic relations (prevailing system of ownership, exchange, distribution). Growing out of this base is a social superstructure of laws, governments, arts, sciences, religions, philosophies and the like. The view taken is that society evolved as it did primarily because fundamental changes in the economic base resulting from conflicts of of interest in respect to productive forces, and involving radical changes in economic relations, have compelled accommodating changes in the social superstructure. Causal action is traced both ways between base and superstructure, but when any "higher" institution threatens the position of those who hold controlling economic power at the base, the test of their power is victory in the ensuing contest. The role of the individual in history is acknowledged, but is seen in relation to the movement of underlying forces. Cf. Plekhanov, Role of the Individual m History.
The study of society, societal relations. Originally called Social Physics, meaning that the methods of the natural sciences were to be applied to the study of society. Whereas the pattern originally was physics and the first sociologists thought that it was possible to find laws of nature in the social realm (Quetelet, Comte, Buckle), others turned to biological considerations. The "organic" conception of society (Lilienfeld, Schaeffle) treated society as a complex organism, the evolutionists, Gumplowicz, Ratzenhofer, considered the struggle between different ethnic groups the basic factor in the evolution of social structures and institutions. Other sociologists accepted a psychological conception of society; to them psychological phenomena (imitation, according to Gabriel Tarde, consciousness of kind, according to F. H. Giddings) were the basic elements in social interrelations (see also W. McDougall, Alsworth Ross, etc.). These relations themselves were made the main object of sociological studies by G. Simmel, L. Wiese, Howard Becker. A kind of sociological realism was fostered by the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, and his school. They considered society a reality, the group-mind an actual fact, the social phenomena "choses sociales". The new "sociology of knowledge", inaugurated by these French sociologists, has been further developed by M. Scheler, K. Mannheim and W. Jerusalem. Recently other branches of social research have separated somewhat from sociology proper: Anthropogeography, dealing with the influences of the physical environment upon society, demography, social psychology, etc. Problems of the methodology of the social sciences have also become an important topic of recent studies. -- W.E.
The view of freedom of the will and the soul influenced to a great extent the ethics of the Jewish philosophers. A large number of thinkers accepted the Aristotelian norm of the golden mean as the rule of conduct, but considered that the laws and precepts of the Torah help towards obtaining right conduct. Maimonides, however, stated that the norm of the mean is only for the average man, but that the higher man should incline towards an extreme good way in conduct. Crescas' view of the good way follows from the theory of the soul, he stresses the emotional element, namely the necessity of the love of the Good and the desire to actualize it in life.
This "widespread instinctive conviction" in the order of nature, without its theological implications, became the basis and primary article of faith of modern natural science, whose aim is to express this rationality of nature as far as possible by the laws of natural science. Cf. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 5ff). Opposed to chaos, disorder, absence of law, irrationality. -- L-M.H.
Towers of Hanoi "games" A classic computer science problem, invented by Edouard Lucas in 1883, often used as an example of {recursion}. "In the great temple at Benares, says he, beneath the dome which marks the centre of the world, rests a brass plate in which are fixed three diamond needles, each a cubit high and as thick as the body of a bee. On one of these needles, at the creation, God placed sixty-four discs of pure gold, the largest disc resting on the brass plate, and the others getting smaller and smaller up to the top one. This is the Tower of Bramah. Day and night unceasingly the priests transfer the discs from one diamond needle to another according to the fixed and immutable laws of Bramah, which require that the priest on duty must not move more than one disc at a time and that he must place this disc on a needle so that there is no smaller disc below it. When the sixty-four discs shall have been thus transferred from the needle on which at the creation God placed them to one of the other needles, tower, temple, and Brahmins alike will crumble into dust, and with a thunderclap the world will vanish." The recursive solution is: Solve for n-1 discs recursively, then move the remaining largest disc to the free needle. Note that there is also a non-recursive solution: On odd-numbered moves, move the smallest sized disk clockwise. On even-numbered moves, make the single other move which is possible. ["Mathematical Recreations and Essays", W W R Ball, p. 304] {The rec.puzzles Archive (http://rec-puzzles.org/sol.pl/induction/hanoi)}. (2003-07-13)
Tracing the scriptural verses of her laws
transfer ::: v. t. --> To convey from one place or person another; to transport, remove, or cause to pass, to another place or person; as, to transfer the laws of one country to another; to transfer suspicion.
To make over the possession or control of; to pass; to convey, as a right, from one person to another; to give; as, the title to land is transferred by deed.
To remove from one substance or surface to another; as, to transfer drawings or engravings to a lithographic stone.
Transitivity: A dyadic relation R is transitive if, whenever xRy and yRz both hold, xRz also holds. Important examples of transitive relations are the relation of identity or equality; the relation less than among whole numbers, or among rational numbers, or among real numbers, the relation precedes among instants of time (as usually taken); the relation of class inclusion, ⊂ (see logic, formal, §7); the relations of material implication and material equivalence among propositions, the relations of formal implication and formal equivalence among monadic propositional functions. In the propositional calculus, the laws of transitivity of material implication and material equivalence (the conditional and biconditional) are: [p ⊃ q][q ⊃ r] ⊃ [p ⊃ r] [p ≡ q][q ≡ r] ⊃ [p ≡ r] Similar laws of transitivity may be formulated for equality (e.g., in the functional calculus of first order with equality), class inclusion (e.g., in the Zermelo set theory), formal implication (e.g., in the pure functional calculus of first order), etc. -- A.C.
Transmigration of Souls: See Metempsychosis. Trans-ordinal laws: Connecting properties of aggregates of different orders. Laws connecting the characteristics of inorganic things with living tilings. (Broad). -- H.H.
triungulus ::: n. --> The active young larva of any oil beetle. It has feet armed with three claws, and is parasitic on bees. See Illust. of Oil beetle, under Oil.
unarmed ::: a. --> Not armed or armored; having no arms or weapons.
Having no hard and sharp projections, as spines, prickles, spurs, claws, etc.
unguiculata ::: n. pl. --> An extensive division of Mammalia including those having claws or nails, as distinguished from the hoofed animals (Ungulata).
unguiculated ::: a. --> Furnished with nails, claws, or hooks; clawed. See the Note under Nail, n., 1. ::: n. --> Furnished with a claw, or a narrow stalklike base, as the petals of a carnation.
unguiferous ::: a. --> Producing, having, or supporting nails or claws.
unguiform ::: a. --> Having the form of a claw or claws.
universally ::: adv. --> In a universal manner; without exception; as, God&
unlawed ::: a. --> Not having the claws and balls of the forefeet cut off; -- said of dogs.
utopia ::: n. --> An imaginary island, represented by Sir Thomas More, in a work called Utopia, as enjoying the greatest perfection in politics, laws, and the like. See Utopia, in the Dictionary of Noted Names in Fiction.
Hence, any place or state of ideal perfection.
Valid inference: In common usage an inference is said to be valid if it is permitted by the laws of logic. It is possible to specify this more exactly only in formal terms, with reference to a particular logistic system (q.v.).
VI. Probability as a Limit of Frequencies. According to this view, developed especially by Mises and by Wald, the probability of an event is equal to its total frequency, that is to the limit, if it exists, of the frequency of that event in n trials, when n tends to infinity. The difficulty of working out this conception led Mises to propose the notion of a collective in an attempt to evolve conditions for a true random sequence. A collective is a random sequence of supposed results of trials when (1) the total frequency of the event in the sequence exists, and (2) the same property holds with the same limiting value when the sequence is replaced by any sequence derived from it. Various methods were devised by Copeland, Reichenbach and others to avoid objections to the second condition: they were generalized by Wald who restricted the choice of the "laws of selection" defining the ranks of the trials forming one of the derived sequences, by his postulate that these laws must form a denumerable set. This modification gives logical consistency to this theory at the expense of its original simplicity, but without disposing of some fundamental shortcomings. Thus, the probability of an event in a collective remains a relative notion, since it must be known to which denumerable set of laws of selection it has been defined relatively, in order to determine its meaning, even though its value is not relative to the set. Controversial points about the axiomatization of this theory show the possibility of other alternatives.
visitation ::: n. --> The act of visiting, or the state of being visited; access for inspection or examination.
Specifically: The act of a superior or superintending officer who, in the discharge of his office, visits a corporation, college, etc., to examine into the manner in which it is conducted, and see that its laws and regulations are duly observed and executed; as, the visitation of a diocese by a bishop.
The object of a visit.
vote ::: n. --> An ardent wish or desire; a vow; a prayer.
A wish, choice, or opinion, of a person or a body of persons, expressed in some received and authorized way; the expression of a wish, desire, will, preference, or choice, in regard to any measure proposed, in which the person voting has an interest in common with others, either in electing a person to office, or in passing laws, rules, regulations, etc.; suffrage.
That by means of which will or preference is expressed in
wholesome ::: superl. --> Tending to promote health; favoring health; salubrious; salutary.
Contributing to the health of the mind; favorable to morals, religion, or prosperity; conducive to good; salutary; sound; as, wholesome advice; wholesome doctrines; wholesome truths; wholesome laws.
Sound; healthy.
Windelband, Wilhelm: Wmdelband (1848-1915) was preeminently an outstanding historian of philosophy. He has nowhere given a systematic presentation of his own views, but has expressed them only in unconnected essays and discourses. But in these he made some suggestions of great import on account of which he has been termed the founder and head of the "South-Western German School." He felt that he belonged to the tradition of German Idealism without definitely styling himself a Neo-Kantian, Neo-Fichtean or Neo-Hegelian. His fundamental position is that whereas it is for science to determine facts, it is for philosophy to determine values. Facts may be gathered from experience, but values, i.e., what "ought" to be thought, felt and done, cannot and hence must in some sense be a priori. Of particular significance was his effort -- later worked out by H. Rickert -- to point out a fundamental distinction between natural and historical science: the former aims at establishing general laws and considers particular facts only insofar as they are like others. In contrast to this "nomothetic" type of science, history is "idiographic", i.e., it is interested in the particular as such, but, of course, not equally in all particulars, but in such only as have some significance from the point of view of value. -- H.G.
Wolff. Christian: (1679-1754) A most outstanding philosopher of the German Enlightenment, and exponent of an all pervasive rationalism, who was professor of mathematics at Halle. He was a dry and superficial systematic popularizer of dogmatic philosophy whose laws have for him a purely logical and rational foundation. -- H.H.
wonder ::: n. 1. An event inexplicable by the laws of nature; a miracle; something strange and surprising brought about by a supernatural force. 2. A miraculous deed or event; remarkable phenomenon. 3. The emotion excited by what is strange and surprising; a feeling of surprised or puzzled interest, sometimes tinged with admiration. 4. Something strange, unexpected, or extraordinary. Wonder, wonder"s, Wonder"s, wonders, wonder-book, wonder-couch, wonder-dance, wonder-flecks, wonder-flowers, wonder-hues, wonder-plastics, wonder-rounds, wonder-rush, wonder-tree, wonder-web, wonder-weft, Wonder-worker, Wonder-worker"s, wonder-works, wonder-world, wonder-worlds. *adj. 5. Arousing awe or admiration; wonderful. v. 6. To be filled with admiration, amazement or awe; marvel (often followed by at); to think or speculate curiously (at or about); be curious to know. *wonders, wondered, wondering.
world ::: 1. Everything that exists; the universe; the macrocosm. 2. The earth with its inhabitants. 3. Any sphere, realm, or domain, with all pertaining to it. 4. Any period, state, or sphere of existence. world"s, worlds, wonder-world, wonder-worlds, world-adventure, world-adventure"s, world-being"s, World-Bliss, world-cloak, world-conjecture"s, world-creating, world-creators, world-delight, World-Delight, world-destiny, world-destroying, world-disillusion"s, world-dream, world-drowse, world-egos, world-energies, world-energy, World-Energy, world-force, world-experience, world-fact, world-failure"s, world-fate, World-Force, world-forces, World-free, World-Geometer"s, world-heart, world-idea, world-ignorance, World-Ignorance, World-maker"s, world-indifference, world-interpreting, world-kindergarten, world-knowledge, world-law, world-laws, world-libido"s, world-making"s, World-Matter"s, World-naked, world-need, world-ocean"s, world-outline, world-pain, world-passion, World-personality, world-pile, world-plan, world-power, World-Power, World-Power"s, World-Puissance, world-rapture, world-redeemer"s, world-rhyme, world-rhythms, world-scene, world-scheme, world-sea, World-Self, world-shape, world-shapes, world-space, world-stuff, world-symbol, World-symbols, World-task, world-time, World-Time‘s, world-tree, world-ways, world-whim, dream-world, heaven-world, mid-world.
wrong ::: --> imp. of Wring. Wrung. ::: a. --> Twisted; wry; as, a wrong nose.
Not according to the laws of good morals, whether divine or human; not suitable to the highest and best end; not morally right; deviating from rectitude or duty; not just or equitable; not true; not
Zeno the Stoic: (c. 340-265 B.C.) A native of Cyprus and the founder of the Stoic School in Athens. His philosophy was built on the principle that reality is a rational order in which nature is controlled by laws of Reason, interpreted in the vein of pantheism. Men's lives are guided by Providence against which it is futile to resist and to which wise men willingly submit. -- R.B.W.
zoonomy ::: n. --> The laws of animal life, or the science which treats of the phenomena of animal life, their causes and relations.
KEYS (10k)
20 Sri Aurobindo
7 Laws of Manu
3 Laws of Mann
2 Book of Wisdom
2 Alfred Korzybski
1 Tom Butler-Bowdon
1 Stephen King
1 Simone Weil
1 Satprem
1 Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
1 Saint Irenaeus
1 Saint Ephrem of Syria
1 Saint Cyril
1 Saint Boniface
1 Saint Augustine
1 Publilius Syrus
1 Phil Hine
1 Paramahansa Yogananda
1 Origen
1 Martin Luther King Jr.
1 Marcus Aurelius
1 Manly P Hall
1 Leonard Susskind
1 Laws of Manu VI. 72
1 Laws of Manu. II. 193
1 Laws of Maim
1 Jordan Peterson
1 Jonathan Swift
1 John Milton
1 it is not as though I had invented it with my mind
1 H P Lovecraft
1 H P Blavatsky
1 Howard Gardner
1 Hafiz Shirázi
1 Giordano Bruno
1 Georg C Lichtenberg
1 G.B. Shaw
1 Franz Bardon
1 Ella Wheeler Wilcox
1 Charles Webster Leadbeater
1 Book of Golden Precepts
1 Bob Ross
1 Albert Einstein
1 Albert Einstein
1 Swami Vivekananda
1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
1 Heraclitus
1 Aristotle
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
36 Nigella Lawson
25 Anonymous
14 Toye Lawson Brown
12 Marcus Tullius Cicero
11 Mark Twain
10 Ralph Waldo Emerson
10 Otto von Bismarck
10 Mahatma Gandhi
10 Donald Trump
10 Baron de Montesquieu
9 Tacitus
9 Jenny Lawson
8 Toba Beta
8 Henry David Thoreau
8 Aristotle
7 Voltaire
7 Thomas Jefferson
7 Samuel Johnson
7 Plato
7 Julie Lawson Timmer
1:He who lives in solitude may make his own laws. ~ Publilius Syrus, #KEYS
2:One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.,#KEYS
3:Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature! ~ G.B. Shaw, #KEYS
4:The people must fight for their laws as for their walls. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
5:Even the slightest breach of God's laws will be taken into account. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, #KEYS
6:The ignorant is a child. ~ Laws of Manu. II. 193, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
7:The hand of an artisan is always pure when it is at work. ~ Laws of Mann, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
8:Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. ~ Aristotle, Politics, II, 8, #KEYS
9:God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #KEYS
10:The laws of the Unknown create the known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
11:The beginning of wisdom is the sincere desire for instruction. To observe attentively its laws is to establish the perfect purity of the soul. ~ Book of Wisdom, #KEYS
12:Let him destroy by deep meditation the qualities that are opposed to the divine nature. ~ Laws of Manu VI. 72, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
13:God can never be believed to have left the kingdoms of men, their dominations and servitudes, outside of the laws of His providence. ~ Saint Augustine, City of God 5.11), #KEYS
14:By not doing evil to creatures and mastering one's senses...one arrives here below at the supreme goal. ~ Laws of Manu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
15:Dwell far above the laws that govern men
And are not to be mapped by mortal judgments. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
16:earn what are the duties which are engraved in the hearts of men as their means of arriving to beatitude. ~ Laws of Manu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
17:God transcends world and is not bound by any law of Nature. He uses laws, laws do not use Him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
18:The soul is its own witness, the soul is its own refuge. Never despise thy soul, that supreme witness in men. ~ Laws of Manu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
19:Fear of the gods arose from man's ignorance of God and his ignorance of the laws that govern the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Godward Emotions, #KEYS
20:Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
21:All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS
22:The beginning of wisdom is the sincere desire for instruction. To observe attentively its laws is to establish the perfect purity of the soul. ~ Book of Wisdom, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
23:Desire nothing. Rage not against the unalterable laws of Nature. Struggle only against the personal, the transient, the ephemeral, the perishable. ~ Book of Golden Precepts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
24:Up to a better covenant; disciplined From shadowy types to truth; from flesh to spirit; From imposition of strict laws to free Acceptance of large grace; from servile fear To filial; works of law to works of faith. ~ John Milton, #KEYS
25:But the man who bringeth not by his own movement on living beings the pains of slavery and death and who desireth the good of all creatures, attaineth to happiness. ~ Laws of Manu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
26:The laws of this world as it is are the laws of the Ignorance and the Divine in the world maintains them so long as there is the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Physical Mind and Sadhana, #KEYS
27:Avoid hurting any living animal, and do whatever thou likest, For in my book of laws there is no crime but this." ~ Hafiz Shirázi, (1315-1390), Persian poet, his collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature, Wikipedia, #KEYS
28:Even God himself obeys the Laws he made:
The Law abides and never can it change,
The Person is a bubble on Time's sea. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
29:Whoever prays for the coming of the kingdom of God within himself is praying rightly, praying for the kingdom to dawn in him, bear fruit and reach perfection. For God reigns in every saint, and every saint obeys God's spiritual laws. ~ Origen, #KEYS
30:Occultism is the ancient science which deals with the hidden forces of nature, the laws governing them, and the means by which such forces can be brought under the control of the enlightened human mind. ~ Manly P Hall, Spiritual Centers in Man, #KEYS
31:At the close of the great Night...He whom the spirit alone can perceive, who escapes from the organs of sense, who is without visible parts, Eternal, the soul of all existences, whom none can comprehend, outspread His own splendours. ~ Laws of Manu, #KEYS
32:God by His Word has created the whole world, and to all the world he has given laws in which each different thing should exist, and according to what is determined by God should not pass their bounds, each fulfilling its appointed task. ~ Saint Irenaeus, #KEYS
33:Let us continue the fight on the day of the Lord. The days of anguish and of tribulation have overtaken us; if God so wills, let us die for the holy laws of our fathers, so that we may deserve to obtain an eternal inheritance with them. ~ Saint Boniface, #KEYS
34:The Divine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by laws and processes because they are the expression of the truth of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #KEYS
35:To refrain from all evil, to speak always the truth, to abstain from all theft, to be pure and control the senses, that in sum constitutes the duty which theManu has prescribed for the four classes. ~ Laws of Manu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
36:Yama, the strong pure Hades sad and subtle,
Dharma, who keeps the laws of old untouched,
Critanta, who ends all things and at last
Himself shall end. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,#KEYS
37:After having abandoned every kind of pious practice, directing his mind towards the sole object of his thoughts, the contemplation of the divine Being, free from all desire...he attains the supreme goal. ~ Laws of Mann, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
38:A true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
39:[The human being] only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition.... It is through such instants that he [or she] is capable of the supernatural. ~ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, #KEYS
40:When our Savior came, he appeared as a divine temple, glorious beyond any comparison, far more splendid and excellent than the older temple. He exceeded the old as much as worship in Christ and the gospels exceeds the cult of the laws, as truth exceeds its shadows. ~ Saint Cyril, #KEYS
41:How many commandments must I write—how many laws must I engrave— when, if you desire your freedom, you could learn them all from yourself? . . . Let nature be your book, and creation your tablets; learn the laws from them, and meditate on things unwritten. ~ Saint Ephrem of Syria, #KEYS
42:One on another we prey and one by another are mighty.
This is the world and we have not made it; if it is evil,
Blame first the gods; but for us, we must live by its laws or we perish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
43:He stood erect among his brute compeers,
He built life new, measured the universe,
Opposed his fate and wrestled with unseen Powers,
Conquered and used the laws that rule the world, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
44:The man who consents to the death of an animal, he who kills it, he who cuts it up, the buyer, the seller, he who prepares the flesh, he who serves it and he who eats it, are all to be regarded as having taken part in the murder. ~ Laws of Maim, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
45:At the close of the great Night...He whom the spirit alone can perceive, who escapes from the organs of sense, who is without visible parts, Eternal, the soul of all existences, whom none can comprehend, outspread His own splendours. ~ Laws of Manu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
46:Aug 6 The Divine Mother is the power of all causation. She energizes every cause unmistakably to produce the effect. Her will is the only law, and as She cannot make a mistake, nature's laws--Her will--can never be changed. She is the life of the law of karma, or causation.~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
47:Those who pursue attentively their contemplation have no sorrow to fear, nor can any vicissitude of Fate affect them . They contemplate this history written in ourselves to guide us in the execution of the divine laws which, equally, are engraved in our hearts. ~ Giordano Bruno, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
48:Magic is but a science, a profound knowledge of the Occult forces in Nature, and of the laws governing the visible or the invisible world. Spiritualism in the hands of an adept becomes Magic, for he is learned in the art of blending together the laws of the Universe, without breaking any of them and thereby violating Nature. ~ H P Blavatsky, #KEYS
49:True magic therefore is the high knowledge of the more subtle powers that have not yet been acknowledged by science up to this date because the methods of scrutiny that have been applied so far do not suffice for their grasping, understanding and utilization, although the laws of magic are analogous to all official sciences of the world. ~ Franz Bardon, #KEYS
50:Better are those who have read than those who have studied little; preferable those who possess what they have read to those who have read and forgotten; more meritorious those who understand than those who know by heart; those to be more highly valued who do their duty than those who merely know it. ~ Laws of Mann, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
51:Dick Feynman was a genius of visualization (he was also no slouch with equations): he made a mental picture of anything he was working on. While others were writing blackboard-filling formulas to express the laws of elementary particles, he would just draw a picture and figure out the answer. ~ Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, #KEYS
52:How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? [...] In my opinion the answer to this question is, briefly, this: As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
53:Mind looked on Nature with unknowing eyes,
Adored her boons and feared her monstrous strokes.
It pondered not on the magic of her laws,
It thirsted not for the secret wells of Truth,
But made a register of crowding facts
And strung sensations on ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.04#KEYS
54:Always the dark Adventurers seem to win;
Nature they fill with evil's institutes,
Turn into defeats the victories of Truth,
Proclaim as falsehoods the eternal laws,
And load the dice of Doom with wizard lies;
The world's shrines they have occupied, usurpe ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
55:The worlds beyond exist: they have their universal rhythm, their grand lines and formations, their self-existent laws and mighty energies, their just and luminous means of knowledge. And here on our physical existence and in our physical body they exercise their influences; here also they organise their means of manifestation and commission their messengers and their witnesses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.03, #KEYS
56:The word is derived from the Latin occultus, hidden; so that it is the study of the hidden laws of nature. Since all the great laws of nature are in fact working in the invisible world far more than in the visible, occultism involves the acceptance of a much wider view of nature than that which is ordinarily taken. The occultist, then, is a man who studies all the laws of nature that he can reach or of which he can hear, and as a result of his study he identifies himself with these laws and devotes his life to the service of evolution. ~ Charles Webster Leadbeater, , #KEYS
57:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
58:Systematic study of chemical and physical phenomena has been carried on for many generations and these two sciences now include: (1) knowledge of an enormous number of facts; (2) a large body of natural laws; (3) many fertile working hypotheses respecting the causes and regularities of natural phenomena; and finally (4) many helpful theories held subject to correction by further testing of the hypotheses giving rise to them. When a subject is spoken of as a science, it is understood to include all of the above mentioned parts. Facts alone do not constitute a science any more than a pile of stones constitutes a house, not even do facts and laws alone; there must be facts, hypotheses, theories and laws before the subject is entitled to the rank of a science. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
59:At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down
To guide her force that feels but cannot know,
Its breath of power controls her restless seas
And life obeys the governing Idea.
At her will, led by a luminous Immanence
The hazardous experimenting Mind
Pushes its way through obscure possibles
Mid chance formations of an unknowing world.
Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient,
Transmuted instincts shape to divine thoughts,
Thoughts house infallible immortal sight
And Nature climb towards God's identity.
The Master of the worlds self-made her slave
Is the executor of her fantasies:
She has canalised the seas of omnipotence;
She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
60:Our life's uncertain way winds circling on,
Our mind's unquiet search asks always light,
Till they have learned their secret in their source,
In the light of the Timeless and its spaceless home,
In the joy of the Eternal sole and one.
But now the Light supreme is far away:
Our conscious life obeys the Inconscient's laws;
To ignorant purposes and blind desires
Our hearts are moved by an ambiguous force;
Even our mind's conquests wear a battered crown.
A slowly changing order binds our will.
This is our doom until our souls are free.
A mighty Hand then rolls mind's firmaments back,
Infinity takes up the finite's acts
And Nature steps into the eternal Light.
Then only ends this dream of nether life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
61:A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain - a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space .... Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author's intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... The one test of the really weird is simply this - whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim. ~ H P Lovecraft, #KEYS
62:Every human acheivement, be it a scientific discovery, a picture, a statue, a temple, a home or a bridge, has to be conceived in the mind first-the plan thought out-before it can be made a reality, and when anything is to be attempted that involves any number of individuals-methods of coordination have to be considered-the methods have to be the best suited for such undertakings are engineering methods-the engineering of an idea towards a complete realization. Every engineer has to know the materials with which he has to work and the natural laws of these materials, as discovered by observation and experiment and formulated by mathematics and mechanics else he can not calculate the forces at his disposal; he can not compute the resistance of his materials; he can not determine the capacity and requirements of his power plant; in short, he can not make the most profitable use of his resources. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
63:The Self, the Divine, the Supreme Reality, the All, the Transcendent, - the One in all these aspects is then the object of Yogic knowledge. Ordinary objects, the external appearances of life and matter, the psychology of out thoughts and actions, the perception of the forces of the apparent world can be part of this knowledge, but only in so far as it is part of the manifestation of the One. It becomes at once evident that the knowledge for which Yoga strives must be different from what men ordinarily understand by the word. For we mean ordinarily by knowledge an intellectual appreciation of the facts of life, mind and matter and the laws that govern them. This is a knowledge founded upon our sense-perception and upon reasoning from our sense-perceptions and it is undertaken partly for the pure satisfaction of the intellect, partly for practical efficiency and the added power which knowledge gives in managing our lives and the lives of others, in utilising for human ends the overt or secret forces of Nature and in helping or hurting, in saving and ennobling or in oppressing and destroying our fellow-men. Yoga, indeed, is commensurate with all life and can include these subjects and objects.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,#KEYS
64:If we are religious-minded, perhaps we will see the gods who inhabit this world. Beings, forces, sounds, lights, and rhythms are just so many true forms of the same indefinable, but not unknowable, Essence we call God; we have spoken of God, and made temples, laws or poems to try to capture the one little pulsation filling us with sunshine, but it is free as the wind on foam-flecked shores. We may also enter the world of music, which in fact is not different from the others but a special extension of this same, great inexpressible Vibration. If once, only once, even for a few moments in a lifetime, we can hear that Music, that Joy singing above, we will know what Beethoven and Bach heard; we will know what God is because we will have heard God. We will probably not say anything grandiose; we will just know that That exists, whereupon all the suffering in the world will seem redeemed.
At the extreme summit of the overmind, there only remain great waves of multi-hued light, says the Mother, the play of spiritual forces, which later translate - sometimes much later - into new ideas, social changes, or earthly events, after crossing one by one all the layers of consciousness and suffering a considerable distortion and loss of light...
~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure Of Consciousness,#KEYS
65:... Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down. ~ Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels, #KEYS
66:IN OUR scrutiny of the seven principles of existence it was found that they are one in their essential and fundamental reality: for if even the matter of the most material universe is nothing but a status of being of Spirit made an object of sense, envisaged by the Spirit's own consciousness as the stuff of its forms, much more must the life-force that constitutes itself into form of Matter, and the mind-consciousness that throws itself out as Life, and the Supermind that develops Mind as one of its powers, be nothing but Spirit itself modified in apparent substance and in dynamism of action, not modified in real essence. All are powers of one Power of being and not other than that All-Existence, All-Consciousness, All-Will, All-Delight which is the true truth behind every appearance. And they are not only one in their reality, but also inseparable in the sevenfold variety of their action. They are the seven colours of the light of the divine consciousness, the seven rays of the Infinite, and by them the Spirit has filled in on the canvas of his self-existence conceptually extended, woven of the objective warp of Space and the subjective woof of Time, the myriad wonders of his self-creation great, simple, symmetrical in its primal laws and vast framings, infinitely curious and intricate in its variety of forms and actions and the complexities of relation and mutual effect of all upon each and each upon all. These are the seven Words of the ancient sages; by them have been created and in the light of their meaning are worked out and have to be interpreted the developed and developing harmonies of the world we know and the worlds behind of which we have only an indirect knowledge. The Light, the Sound is one; their action is sevenfold.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 7 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance, 499,#KEYS
67:I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth ~ it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it. And so how can I go wrong? I shall make some slips no doubt, and shall perhaps talk in second-hand language, but not for long: the living image of what I saw will always be with me and will always correct and guide me. Oh, I am full of courage and freshness, and I will go on and on if it were for a thousand years! Do you know, at first I meant to conceal the fact that I corrupted them, but that was a mistake ~ that was my first mistake! But truth whispered to me that I was lying, and preserved me and corrected me. But how establish paradise ~ I don't know, because I do not know how to put it into words. After my dream I lost command of words. All the chief words, anyway, the most necessary ones. But never mind, I shall go and I shall keep talking, I won't leave off, for anyway I have seen it with my own eyes, though I cannot describe what I saw. But the scoffers do not understand that. It was a dream, they say, delirium, hallucination. Oh! As though that meant so much! And they are so proud! A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted ~ you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times ~ but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness ~ that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, #KEYS
68:The one high and reasonable course for the individual human being, - unless indeed he is satisfied with pursuing his personal purposes or somehow living his life until it passes out of him, - is to study the laws of the Becoming and take the best advantage of them to realise, rationally or intuitionally, inwardly or in the dynamism of life, its potentialities in himself or for himself or in or for the race of which he is a member; his business is to make the most of such actualities as exist and to seize on or to advance towards the highest possibilities that can be developed here or are in the making. Only mankind as a whole can do this with entire effect, by the mass of individual and collective action, in the process of time, in the evolution of the race experience: but the individual man can help towards it in his own limits, can do all these things for himself to a certain extent in the brief space of life allotted to him; but, especially, his thought and action can be a contribution towards the present intellectual, moral and vital welfare and the future progress of the race. He is capable of a certain nobility of being; an acceptance of his inevitable and early individual annihilation does not preclude him from making a high use of the will and thought which have been developed in him or from directing them to great ends which shall or may be worked out by humanity. Even the temporary character of the collective being of humanity does not so very much matter, - except in the most materialist view of existence; for so long as the universal Becoming takes the form of human body and mind, the thought, the will it has developed in its human creature will work itself out and to follow that intelligently is the natural law and best rule of human life. Humanity and its welfare and progress during its persistence on earth provide the largest field and the natural limits for the terrestrial aim of our being; the superior persistence of the race and the greatness and importance of the collective life should determine the nature and scope of our ideals. But if the progress or welfare of humanity be excluded as not our business or as a delusion, the individual is there; to achieve his greatest possible perfection or make the most of his life in whatever way his nature demands will then be life's significance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, [T1],#KEYS
69:reading :::
Self-Help Reading List:
James Allen As a Man Thinketh (1904)
Marcus Aurelius Meditations (2nd Century)
The Bhagavad-Gita
The Bible
Robert Bly Iron John (1990)
Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy (6thC)
Alain de Botton How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997)
William Bridges Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980)
David Brooks The Road to Character (2015)
Brené Brown Daring Greatly (2012)
David D Burns The New Mood Therapy (1980)
Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers) The Power of Myth (1988)
Richard Carlson Don't Sweat The Small Stuff (1997)
Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)
Deepak Chopra The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (1994)
Clayton Christensen How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012)
Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (1988)
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1991)
The Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler The Art of Happiness (1999)
The Dhammapada (Buddha's teachings)
Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit (2011)
Wayne Dyer Real Magic (1992)
Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance (1841)
Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run With The Wolves (1996)
Viktor Frankl Man's Search For Meaning (1959)
Benjamin Franklin Autobiography (1790)
Shakti Gawain Creative Visualization (1982)
Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence (1995)
John Gray Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (1992)
Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life (1984)
James Hillman The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996)
Susan Jeffers Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway (1987)
Richard Koch The 80/20 Principle (1998)
Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014)
Ellen Langer Mindfulness: Choice and Control in Everyday Life (1989)
Lao-Tzu Tao-te Ching (The Way of Power)
Maxwell Maltz Psycho-Cybernetics (1960)
Abraham Maslow Motivation and Personality (1954)
Thomas Moore Care of the Soul (1992)
Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963)
Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking (1952)
M Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled (1990)
Anthony Robbins Awaken The Giant Within (1991)
Florence Scovell-Shinn The Game of Life and How To Play It (1923)
Martin Seligman Learned Optimism (1991)
Samuel Smiles Self-Help (1859)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man (1955)
Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)
Marianne Williamson A Return To Love (1993)
~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help,#KEYS
70:Satya Sattva - "Sri Yukteswar's intuition was penetrating; heedless of remarks, he often replied to one's unexpressed thoughts. The words a person uses, and the actual thoughts behind them, may be poles apart. 'By calmness,' my guru said, 'try to feel the thoughts behind the confusion of men's verbiage.' [...]
Many teachers talked of miracles but could manifest nothing. Sri Yukteswar seldom mentioned the subtle laws but secretly operated them at will. 'A man of realization doesn't perform any miracle until he receives an inward sanction', master explained. 'God does not wish the secrets of His creation revealed promiscuously. Also, every individual in the world has an inalienable right to his free will. A saint will not encroach on that independence.'
The silence habitual to Sri Yukteswar was caused by his deep perceptions of the Infinite. [...] Because of my guru's unspectacular guise, only a few of his contemporaries recognized him as a superman. The adage: 'He is a fool that cannot conceal his wisdom,' could never be applied to my profound and quiet master. Though born a mortal like all others, Sri Yukteswar achieved identity with the Ruler of time and space. Master found no insuperable obstacles to the mergence of human and Divine. No such barrier exists, I came to understand. [...]
Though my guru's undissembling speech prevented a large following during his years on Earth, nevertheless, through an ever-growing number of sincere students of his teachings, his spirit lives on in the world today. [...]
The disclosures of the Divine insight are often painful to worldly ears. Master was not popular with superficial students. The wise, always few in number, deeply revered him. I daresay Sri Yukteswar would have been the most sought-after guru in India had his speech not been so candid and so censorious. [...]
He added, 'You will go to foreign lands, where blunt assaults on the ego are not appreciated. A teacher could not spread India's message in the West without an ample fund of accommodative patience and forbearance.' [...]
I am immeasurably grateful for the humbling blows he dealt my vanity. I sometimes felt that, metaphorically, he was discovering and uprooting every diseased tooth in my jaw. The hard core of egotism is difficult to dislodge except rudely. With its departure, the Divine finds at last un unobstructed channel. In vain It seeks to percolate through flinty hearts of selfishness. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi,#KEYS
71:If we look at this picture of the Self-Existence and its works as a unitary unlimited whole of vision, it stands together and imposes itself by its convincing totality: but to the analysis of the logical intellect it offers an abundance of difficulties, such as all attempts to erect a logical system out of a perception of an illimitable Existence must necessarily create; for any such endeavour must either effect consistency by an arbitrary sectioning of the complex truth of things or else by its comprehensiveness become logically untenable. For we see that the Indeterminable determines itself as infinite and finite, the Immutable admits a constant mutability and endless differences, the One becomes an innumerable multitude, the Impersonal creates or supports personality, is itself a Person; the Self has a nature and is yet other than its nature; Being turns into becoming and yet it is always itself and other than its becomings; the Universal individualises itself and the Individual universalises himself; Brahman is at once void of qualities and capable of infinite qualities, the Lord and Doer of works, yet a non-doer and a silent witness of the workings of Nature. If we look carefully at these workings of Nature, once we put aside the veil of familiarity and our unthinking acquiescence in the process of things as natural because so they always happen, we discover that all she does in whole or in parts is a miracle, an act of some incomprehensible magic. The being of the Self-existence and the world that has appeared in it are, each of them and both together, a suprarational mystery. There seems to us to be a reason in things because the processes of the physical finite are consistent to our view and their law determinable, but this reason in things, when closely examined, seems to stumble at every moment against the irrational or infrarational and the suprarational: the consistency, the determinability of process seems to lessen rather than increase as we pass from matter to life and from life to mentality; if the finite consents to some extent to look as if it were rational, the infinitesimal refuses to be bound by the same laws and the infinite is unseizable. As for the action of the universe and its significance, it escapes us altogether; if Self, God or Spirit there be, his dealings with the world and us are incomprehensible, offer no clue that we can follow. God and Nature and even ourselves move in a mysterious way which is only partially and at points intelligible, but as a whole escapes our comprehension. All the works of Maya look like the production of a suprarational magical Power which arranges things according to its wisdom or its phantasy, but a wisdom which is not ours and a phantasy which baffles our imagination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.02, #KEYS
72:Worthy The Name Of Sir Knight
Sir Knight of the world's oldest order,
Sir Knight of the Army of God,
You have crossed the strange mystical border,
The ground floor of truth you have trod;
You have entered the sanctum sanctorum,
Which leads to the temple above,
Where you come as a stone, and a Christ-chosen one,
In the kingdom of Friendship and Love.
II
As you stand in this new realm of beauty,
Where each man you meet is your friend,
Think not that your promise of duty
In hall, or asylum, shall end;
Outside, in the great world of pleasure,
Beyond, in the clamor of trade,
In the battle of life and its coarse daily strife
Remember the vows you have made.
III
Your service, majestic and solemn,
Your symbols, suggestive and sweet,
Your uniformed phalanx in column
On gala days marching the street;
Your sword and your plume and your helmet,
Your 'secrets' hid from the world's sight;
These things are the small, lesser parts of the all
Which are needed to form the true Knight.
IV
The martyrs who perished rejoicing
In Templary's glorious laws,
Who died 'midst the fagots while voicing
The glory and worth of their cause-
935
They honored the title of 'Templar'
No more than the Knight of to-day
Who mars not the name with one blemish of shame,
But carries it clean through life's fray.
To live for a cause, to endeavor
To make your deeds grace it, to try
And uphold its precepts forever,
Is harder by far than to die.
For the battle of life is unending,
The enemy, Self, never tires,
And the true Knight must slay that sly foe every day
Ere he reaches the heights he desires.
VI
Sir Knight, have you pondered the meaning
Of all you have heard and been told?
Have you strengthened your heart for its weaning
From vices and faults loved of old?
Will you honor, in hours of temptation,
Your promises noble and grand?
Will your spirit be strong to do battle with wrong,
'And having done all, to stand?'
VII
Will you ever be true to a brother
In actions as well as in creed?
Will you stand by his side as no other
Could stand in the hour of his need?
Will you boldly defend him from peril,
And lift him from poverty's curseWill the promise of aid which you willingly made,
Reach down from your lips to your purse?
VIII
The world's battle field is before you!
Let Wisdom walk close by your side,
936
Let Faith spread her snowy wings o'er you,
Let Truth be your comrade and guide;
Let Fortitude, Justice and Mercy
Direct all your conduct aright,
And let each word and act tell to men the proud fact,
You are worthy the name of 'Sir Knight'.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#KEYS
73:Our culture, the laws of our culture, are predicated on the idea that people are conscious. People have experience; people make decisions, and can be held responsible for them. There's a free will element to it. You can debate all that philosophically, and fine, but the point is that that is how we act, and that is the idea that our legal system is predicated on. There's something deep about it, because you're subject to the law, but the law is also limited by you, which is to say that in a well-functioning, properly-grounded democratic system, you have intrinsic value. That's the source of your rights. Even if you're a murderer, we have to say the law can only go so far because there's something about you that's divine.
Well, what does that mean? Partly it means that there's something about you that's conscious and capable of communicating, like you're a whole world unto yourself. You have that to contribute to everyone else, and that's valuable. You can learn new things, transform the structure of society, and invent a new way of dealing with the world. You're capable of all that. It's an intrinsic part of you, and that's associated with the idea that there's something about the logos that is necessary for the absolute chaos of the reality beyond experience to manifest itself as reality. That's an amazing idea because it gives consciousness a constitutive role in the cosmos. You can debate that, but you can't just bloody well brush it off. First of all, we are the most complicated things there are, that we know of, by a massive amount. We're so complicated that it's unbelievable. So there's a lot of cosmos out there, but there's a lot of cosmos in here, too, and which one is greater is by no means obvious, unless you use something trivial, like relative size, which really isn't a very sophisticated approach.
Whatever it is that is you has this capacity to experience reality and to transform it, which is a very strange thing. You can conceptualize the future in your imagination, and then you can work and make that manifest-participate in the process of creation. That's one way of thinking about it. That's why I think Genesis 1 relates the idea that human beings are made in the image of the divine-men and women, which is interesting, because feminists are always criticizing Christianity as being inexorably patriarchal. Of course, they criticize everything like that, so it's hardly a stroke of bloody brilliance. But I think it's an absolute miracle that right at the beginning of the document it says straightforwardly, with no hesitation whatsoever, that the divine spark which we're associating with the word, that brings forth Being, is manifest in men and women equally. That's a very cool thing. You got to think, like I said, do you actually take that seriously? Well, what you got to ask is what happens if you don't take it seriously, right? Read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. That's the best investigation into that tactic that's ever been produced. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,#KEYS
74:Talk 26
...
D.: Taking the first part first, how is the mind to be eliminated or relative consciousness transcended?
M.: The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.
D.: How is restlessness removed from the mind?
M.: External contacts - contacts with objects other than itself - make the mind restless. Loss of interest in non-Self, (vairagya) is the first step. Then the habits of introspection and concentration follow. They are characterised by control of external senses, internal faculties, etc. (sama, dama, etc.) ending in samadhi (undistracted mind).
Talk 27.
D.: How are they practised?
M.: An examination of the ephemeral nature of external phenomena leads to vairagya. Hence enquiry (vichara) is the first and foremost step to be taken. When vichara continues automatically, it results in a contempt for wealth, fame, ease, pleasure, etc. The 'I' thought becomes clearer for inspection. The source of 'I' is the Heart - the final goal. If, however, the aspirant is not temperamentally suited to Vichara Marga (to the introspective analytical method), he must develop bhakti (devotion) to an ideal - may be God, Guru, humanity in general, ethical laws, or even the idea of beauty. When one of these takes possession of the individual, other attachments grow weaker, i.e., dispassion (vairagya) develops. Attachment for the ideal simultaneously grows and finally holds the field. Thus ekagrata (concentration) grows simultaneously and imperceptibly - with or without visions and direct aids.
In the absence of enquiry and devotion, the natural sedative pranayama (breath regulation) may be tried. This is known as Yoga Marga. If life is imperilled the whole interest centres round the one point, the saving of life. If the breath is held the mind cannot afford to (and does not) jump at its pets - external objects. Thus there is rest for the mind so long as the breath is held. All attention being turned on breath or its regulation, other interests are lost. Again, passions are attended with irregular breathing, whereas calm and happiness are attended with slow and regular breathing. Paroxysm of joy is in fact as painful as one of pain, and both are accompanied by ruffled breaths. Real peace is happiness. Pleasures do not form happiness. The mind improves by practice and becomes finer just as the razor's edge is sharpened by stropping. The mind is then better able to tackle internal or external problems. If an aspirant be unsuited temperamentally for the first two methods and circumstantially (on account of age) for the third method, he must try the Karma Marga (doing good deeds, for example, social service). His nobler instincts become more evident and he derives impersonal pleasure. His smaller self is less assertive and has a chance of expanding its good side. The man becomes duly equipped for one of the three aforesaid paths. His intuition may also develop directly by this single method. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,#KEYS
75:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,#KEYS
76:The supreme Form is then made visible. It is that of the infinite Godhead whose faces are everywhere and in whom are all the wonders of existence, who multiplies unendingly all the many marvellous revelations of his being, a world-wide Divinity seeing with innumerable eyes, speaking from innumerable mouths, armed for battle with numberless divine uplifted weapons, glorious with divine ornaments of beauty, robed in heavenly raiment of deity, lovely with garlands of divine flowers, fragrant with divine perfumes. Such is the light of this body of God as if a thousand suns had risen at once in heaven. The whole world multitudinously divided and yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods. Arjuna sees him, God magnificent and beautiful and terrible, the Lord of souls who has manifested in the glory and greatness of his spirit this wild and monstrous and orderly and wonderful and sweet and terrible world, and overcome with marvel and joy and fear he bows down and adores with words of awe and with clasped hands the tremendous vision. "I see" he cries "all the gods in thy body, O God, and different companies of beings, Brahma the creating lord seated in the Lotus, and the Rishis and the race of the divine Serpents. I see numberless arms and bellies and eyes and faces, I see thy infinite forms on every side, but I see not thy end nor thy middle nor thy beginning, O Lord of the universe, O Form universal. I see thee crowned and with thy mace and thy discus, hard to discern because thou art a luminous mass of energy on all sides of me, an encompassing blaze, a sun-bright fire-bright Immeasurable. Thou art the supreme Immutable whom we have to know, thou art the high foundation and abode of the universe, thou art the imperishable guardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soul of existence."
But in the greatness of this vision there is too the terrific image of the Destroyer. This Immeasurable without end or middle or beginning is he in whom all things begin and exist and end.
This Godhead who embraces the worlds with his numberless arms and destroys with his million hands, whose eyes are suns and moons, has a face of blazing fire and is ever burning up the whole universe with the flame of his energy. The form of him is fierce and marvellous and alone it fills all the regions and occupies the whole space between earth and heaven. The companies of the gods enter it, afraid, adoring; the Rishis and the Siddhas crying "May there be peace and weal" praise it with many praises; the eyes of Gods and Titans and Giants are fixed on it in amazement. It has enormous burning eyes; it has mouths that gape to devour, terrible with many tusks of destruction; it has faces like the fires of Death and Time. The kings and the captains and the heroes on both sides of the world-battle are hastening into its tusked and terrible jaws and some are seen with crushed and bleeding heads caught between its teeth of power; the nations are rushing to destruction with helpless speed into its mouths of flame like many rivers hurrying in their course towards the ocean or like moths that cast themselves on a kindled fire. With those burning mouths the Form of Dread is licking all the regions around; the whole world is full of his burning energies and baked in the fierceness of his lustres. The world and its nations are shaken and in anguish with the terror of destruction and Arjuna shares in the trouble and panic around him; troubled and in pain is the soul within him and he finds no peace or gladness. He cries to the dreadful Godhead, "Declare to me who thou art that wearest this form of fierceness. Salutation to thee, O thou great Godhead, turn thy heart to grace. I would know who thou art who wast from the beginning, for I know not the will of thy workings." ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita, 2.10_-_The_Vision_of_the_World-Spirit_-_Time_the_Destroyer,#KEYS
77:Coded Language
Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic community to its drum woven past
Whereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released at the same given moment of recorded history , yet at a different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with the present.
We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.
Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal aggressors.
Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.
Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.
Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season
Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and effect
Reject mediocrity!
Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand.
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.
Thus, in the name of:
ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN
LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITH, LOURDE, WHITMAN
BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ, SIDDHARTHA
MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GURDJIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER, HOLIDAY
DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE, RACHMANINOV
ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHAWAY, HENDRIX, KUTI, DICKINSON, RIPPERTON
MARY, ISIS, THERESA, HANSBURY, TESLA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI
LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING, FOUR
LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERÓN, MARLEY, MAGDALENE, COSBY
SHAKUR, THOSE WHO BURN, THOSE STILL AFLAME, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED
We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever.
If you must count to keep the beat then count.
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.
Curve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.
Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry, crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
~ Saul Williams,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:The gods have their own laws. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 2:Every ruler is harsh whose laws is new. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 3:Laws without morals are in vain. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 4:Nature never breaks her own laws. ~ leonardo-da-vinci, @wisdomtrove 5:Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 6:Laws, like houses, lean on one another. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 7:The only laws are paradox, humor and change. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 8:All human laws are nourished by one divine law. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 9:The laws allow arms to be taken against an armed foe. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 10:They that possess the prince possess the laws. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 11:The laws of the Universe are responding to me. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 12:May your dreams defy the laws of gravity. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 13:For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 14:Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 15:The laws of a state change with the changing times. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 16:Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 17:Laws can never be enforced unless fear supports them. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 18:Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 19:Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 20:Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 21:Congress, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 22:The people must fight for their laws as for their walls. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 23:Of what use are laws, inoperative through public immortality? ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 24:Accursed be the city where the laws would stifle nature's! ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 25:The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 26:To be an artist you must learn the laws of nature. ~ pierre-auguste-renoir, @wisdomtrove 27:One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 28:Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 29:There are so many laws that no one is safe from hanging. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 30:Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 31:Laws always lose in energy what the government gains in extent. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 32:The people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 33:To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 34:The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 35:Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 36:Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 37:Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 38:The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 39:The question not many ask is: why are the laws of physics like they are? ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 40:It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 41:Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obey them. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 42:Customs may not be as wise as laws, but they are always more popular. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 43:If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 44:Laws which are consistent in theory often prove chaotic in practice. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 45:Self-will seems to be the only virtue that takes no account of man-made laws. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 46:The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 47:Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 48:Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 49:Ancient laws remain in force long after the people have the power to change them. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 50:Unless your goal is against the laws of God or society, you can achieve it. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 51:Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 52:The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 53:Principles are like lighthouses. They are natural laws that cannot be broken. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 54:The laws of physics that we regard as & 55:When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 56:The laws of physics must provide a mechanism for the universe to come into being. ~ john-wheeler, @wisdomtrove 57:Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 58:The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 59:We may avoid the laws of man, but there are greater laws that can't be broken. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 60:As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 61:Attitude is your acceptance of the natural laws, or your rejection of the natural laws. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 62:There are laws of the universe and if you practice them they will respond to you. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 63:Whoever yields properly to Fate, is deemed Wise among men, and knows the laws of heaven. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 64:Bull markets and Bear markets can obscure mathematical laws, they cannot repeal them. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 65:It ain't no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don't break any. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 66:An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 67:Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hands makes them obey its laws ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 68:Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 69:Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism, fools making laws for the breaking of jaws. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 70:Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hands makes them obey its laws. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 71:He who understands one thing understands everything, for the same laws are in all. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 72:Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 73:Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 74:Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 75:& 76:Public morals are natural complement of all laws they are by themselves an entire code. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 77:We do not need more laws . No country suffers from a shortage of laws. We need a new model . ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 78:Laws or ordinances unobserved, or partially attended to, had better never have been made. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 79:It is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 80:A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 81:The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 82:Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 83:The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 84:I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 85:The laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 86:I deeply, deeply believe in the mystical laws. I know that every thought sends an eternity in motion. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 87:The laws are very simple: thought is creative; fear attracts like energy; love is all there is. ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove 88:Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 89:It strengthens the bonds between nations to have the same civil laws and the same monetary system. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 90:Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 91:Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 92:One of the cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 93:All laws and philosophy merely tell us what should be done, but they do not provide the strength to do it. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 94:If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 95:I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 96:Moral values, and a culture and a religion, maintaining these values are far better than laws and regulations. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 97:The founder brought the laws from the lawgiver; the faithful are meant to announce the laws to the lawgiver. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 98:Wouldst thou know if a people be well governed, or if its laws be good or bad, examine the music it practices. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 99:It's not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It's those who write the songs. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 100:I deeply, deeply believe in the mystical laws. I know that every thought sends an eternity in motion. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 101:It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 102:My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 103:One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 104:It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 105:Just as it is the duty of all men to obey just laws, so it is the duty of all men to disobey unjust laws. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 106:The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. ~ giordano-bruno, @wisdomtrove 107:Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 108:The fundamental laws are in the long run merely statements that every event is itself and not some different event. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 109:The magician to some degree is trying to drive him or herself mad in a controlled setting, within controlled laws. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 110:A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 111:I think that the & 112:Just concentrate on thinking and living and acting in harmony with God's laws and inspiring others to do likewise. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 113:Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 114:I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 115:The laws of logic do not prescribe the way our minds think; they prescribe the way our minds ought to think. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 116:The laws of physics ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 117:We are all bound thither; we are hastening to the same common goal. Black death calls all things under the sway of its laws. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 118:Democracy comes naturally to him who is habituated normally to yield willing obedience to all laws, human or divine. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 119:Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 120:Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 121:Nothing exists without a purpose. And we humans are subject to the laws of nature just as everything else on earth is. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 122:I am as free as nature first made man, / Ere the base laws of servitude began, / When wild in woods the noble savage ran. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 123:Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 124:Leave the ass burdened with laws behind in the valley. But your conscience, let it ascend with Isaac into the mountain. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 125:Knowing that all things contrary to God's laws are transient, let us avoid despair and radiate hope for a warless world. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 126:Clever tyrants are never punished; they have always some slight shade of virtue: they support the laws before destroying them. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 127:It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 128:Where the realm of freedom of thought and action begin, the determination of individuals according to generic laws ends. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 129:Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 130:Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 131:When we align our lives with spiritual laws, challenges remain, but we can approach them with arms open wide, ready to dance. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 132:Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 133:The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 134:Nothing exists without a purpose. And we humans are subject to the laws of nature just as everything else on earth is. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 135:The eight laws of learning are explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 136:Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 137:Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 138:Success should be measured by the yardstick of happiness; by your ability to remain in peaceful harmony with cosmic laws. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 139:I live my life by True North principles - the Laws of Life. I connect with the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the heart. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 140:Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 141:An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 142:We live in an in-between universe where things change all right... but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 143:Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 144:The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 145:There are two worlds we live in: a material world, bound by the laws of physics, and the world inside our mind, which is just as important. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 146:As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 147:Freemasonry is founded on the immutable laws of Truth and Justice and its grand object is to promote the happiness of the human race. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 148:We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 149:The laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 150:Music must be supported by the king and the princes, for the maintenance of the arts is their duty no less than the maintenance of the laws. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 151:The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 152:I want you to invent it. I want you to have that skill. To create your own reality. Your own set of laws. I want to try and teach you that. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 153:Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 154:The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 155:What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 156:Success is the most natural thing in the world. The person who does not succeed has placed himself in opposition to the laws of the Universe. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 157:Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 158:We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 159:That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 160:Because the Soul is not made of matter, since it is spiritual, it cannot obey the laws of matter, it cannot be judged by the laws of matter. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 161:Justice required resort to law and that could be a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 162:The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 163:There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 164:There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 165:From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed. ... To group all facts under some general laws. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 166:If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 167:My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmatic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 168:Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity. ~ leonardo-da-vinci, @wisdomtrove 169:When men no longer fear God, they transgress His laws without hesitation. The fear of consequences is no deterrent when the fear of God is gone. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 170:Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 171:Strange and marvelous things will happen with constant regularity as you alter your life and begin living in harmony with the laws of the universe. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 172:A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends? ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 173:Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 174:The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 175:Christ is no Moses, no exactor, no giver of laws, but a giver of grace, a Savior; he is infinite mercy and goodness, freely and bountifully given to us. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 176:Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 177:Mathematics is universal. It's discovered by human beings, but the rules of mathematics are the same throughout the universe and the laws of the universe. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 178:Those who excel in war first cultivate their own humanity and and maintain their laws and institutions. By these means they make their governments invincible. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 179:It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 180:One can't prove that God doesn't exist. But science makes God unnecessary. The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a creator. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 181:To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 182:All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the substance of original justice. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 183:Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 184:It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 185:Although I broke a lot of laws as a teenager, I straightened out immediately upon turning eighteen, when I realized the state had a legal right to execute me. ~ george-carlin, @wisdomtrove 186:The ongoing migration of persons to the United States in violation of our laws is a serious national problem detrimental to the interests of the United States. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 187:If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 188:The thing about lucid dreams is that it's not like the real world where you are constrained by all sorts of things, including the laws of physics-you can do magic. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 189:Maternity is a glorious thing, since all mankind has been conceived, born, and nourished of women. All human laws should encourage the multiplication of families. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 190:I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience. ~ audrey-hepburn, @wisdomtrove 191:Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 192:One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust ... is in reality expressing the highest respect for law ... We will not obey your evil laws. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 193:Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 194:In any civilized society, it is every citizen's responsibility to obey just laws. But at the same time, it is every citizen's responsibility to disobey unjust laws. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 195:Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 196:There are fundamental laws of life (Truths) that operate with unerring consistency - and you are better off to the degree to which you learn to live according to them. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 197:[T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 198:Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions: andhas often, in reality, the force ascribed to it. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 199:It is obvious: if you do not accept something that assumes the form of destiny,' you not only change its natural laws' but also the laws of the enemy playing the role of fate. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 200:There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 201:Laws that only threaten, and are not kept, become like the log that was given to the frogs to be their king, which they feared at first, but soon scorned and trampled on. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 202:Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings, because its aim and end is to obliterate all such fictions and monstrosities. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 203:Till facts are grouped & called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen & to see bearing of scattered facts. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 204:One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 205:We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 206:The so-called miraculous powers of a great master are a natural accompaniment to his exact understanding of subtle laws that operate in the inner cosmos of consciousness. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 207:Mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence . . . the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe which are concealed by appearances. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 208:Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 209:We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 210:Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time, and space would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 211:Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 212:Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 213:Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions-a government of force, and a government of laws; the first is the definition of despotism-the last, of liberty. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 214:You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 215:Cujus region, ejus rligio (Whoever's reign, his religion) ... He who owns the country owns the Church, and he that makes your laws for you has the right to make your religion for you. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 216:Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual; and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 217:People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 218:All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 219:If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 220:Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 221:Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 222:I‚Äôm not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 223:Laws, written, if not on stone tables, yet on the azure of infinitude, in the inner heart of God's creation, certain as life, certain as death, are there, and thou shalt not disobey them. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 224:Principles are like a compass. A compass has a true north that is objective and external, that reflects natural laws or principles, as opposed to values which are subjective and internal. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 225:When…we, as individuals, obey laws that direct us to behave for the welfare of the community as a whole, we are indirectly helping to promote the pursuit of happiness by our fellow human beings. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 226:It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 227:Nature doesn't ask your permission; it doesn't care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You're obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 228:We worship God, but have no faith in the workings of God's laws of love. The world awaits the living of the law of love, which will reach the divine within all human beings and transform them. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 229:Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 230:Timid and cowardly soldiers cause the loss of a nation's independence; but pusillanimous magistrates destroy the empire of the laws, the rights of the throne, and even social order itself. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 231:It doesn't do good to open doors for someone who doesn't have the price to get in. If he has the price, he may not need the laws. There is no law saying the Negro has to live in Harlem or Watts. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 232:One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 233:When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 234:Laws are essential emanations from the self-poised character of God; they radiate from the sun to the circling edge of creation. Verily, the mighty Lawgiver hath subjected himself unto laws. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 235:Let's face it.., our current [immigration control] system is like a busy intersection without a traffic cop: sure there are laws on the books, but absent enforcement, there are too many accidents. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 236:Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 237:& 238:Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 239:The most ancient and important taboo prohibitions are the two basic laws of totemism: not to kill the totem animal and to avoid sexual intercourse with members of the totem clan of the opposite sex. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 240:When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 241:Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 242:The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 243:My feeling is that scientific method has the power to account for and interlink all phenomena in the universe, including its origin, using the laws of nature. But that still leaves the laws unexplained. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 244:There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws... What is the difference between the two?... An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 245:No doubt it is an evil to be bound by laws, but it is necessary at the immature stage to be guided by rules; in other words, as the Master used to say that the sapling must be hedged round, and so on. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 246:Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 247:The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all notions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by human wills. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 248:The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 249:The people's awe and innate fear will hold injustice back by day, by night, so long as the people leave the laws intact, just as they are: muddy the cleanest spring, and all you'll have to drink is muddy water. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 250:Do you suppose there's any difference between spring in nature and spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 251:The whole point about the true unconscious is that it is all the time moving forward, beyond the range of its own fixed laws or habits. It is no good trying to superimpose an ideal nature upon the unconscious. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 252:It is necessary, then, to give the child the possibility of developing according to the laws of his nature, so that he can become strong, and, having become strong, can do even more than we dared hope for him. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 253:There are principles that govern human effectiveness - natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging and unarguably "there" as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 254:God is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 255:Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 256:There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 257:The law... dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 258:A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 259:A man would have to be an idiot to write a book of laws for an apple tree telling it to bear apples and not thorns, seeing that the apple-tree will do it naturally and far better than any laws or teaching can prescribe. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 260:Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 261:Your love of liberty - your respect for the laws - your habits of industry - and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 262:One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that & 263:The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 264:Two and two make four. Nature doesn't ask your advice. She isn't interested in your preferences or whether or not you approve of her laws. You must accept nature as she is with all the consequences that that implies. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 265:Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 266:Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, laws, under no form of government, are better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 267:This is the work of N√¢ma-Rupa - name and form. Everything that has form, everything that calls up an idea in your mind, is within Maya; for everything that is bound by the laws of time, space, and causation is within Maya. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 268:You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 269:You can find God if you will only seek - by obeying divine laws, by loving people, by relinquishing self-will, attachments, negative thoughts and feelings. And when you find God it will be in stillness. You will find God within. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 270:The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 271:The most effective means of upholding the law is not the State policeman or the marshals or the National Guard. It is you. It lies in your courage to accept those laws with which you disagree as well as those with which you agree. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 272:But I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 273:I have asked the secretary of the treasury to report by April 1 on whether present tax laws may be stimulating in undue amounts the flow of American capital to the industrial countries abroad through special preferential treatment. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 274:It was given out that the animals there practised cannibalism, tortured one another with red-hot horseshoes, and had their females in common. This was what came of rebelling against the laws of Nature, Frederick and Pilkington said. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 275:We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named fair competition and so forth, it is a mutual hostility. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 276:But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 277:But if the laws are to be so trampled upon with impunity, and a minority is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government, and nothing but anarchy and confusion is to be expected thereafter. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 278:The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 279:The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 280:Unless the structure of the nucleus has a surprise in store for us, the conclusion seems plain ‚Äî there is nothing in the whole system of laws of physics that cannot be deduced unambiguously from epistemological considerations. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 281:What is a Socialist? - That's when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no marriages, and everyone has any religion and laws he likes best. You are not old enough to understand that yet. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 282:May you find grace as you surrender to life. May you find happiness, as you stop seeking it. May you come to trust these laws and inherit the wisdom of the Earth. May you reconnect with the heart of nature and feel the blessings of Spirit. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 283:none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 284:Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 285:Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions; . . . that laws were like cobwebs, - for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 286:A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 287:The student of mathematics must get rid of all arbitrary thinking and follow purely the demands of thought. In thinking in this way, the laws of the spiritual world flow into him. This regulated thinking leads to the most spiritual truths. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 288:God created the law of free will, and God created the law of cause and effect. And he himself will not violate the law. We need to be thinking less in terms of what God did and more in terms of whether or not we are following those laws. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 289:The laws of relativity are clear on this point. If you could move at the speed of light, you would see all of space shrink to a single point, and all of time collapse to an instant. In the reference frame of light, there is no space and time. ~ bernard-haisch, @wisdomtrove 290:Most people have no concept of how an automatic transmission works, yet they know how to drive a car. You don't have to study physics to understand the laws of motion to drive a car. You don't have to understand any of this stuff to use Macintosh. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 291:[The black hole] teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as “sacred,” as immutable, are anything but. ~ john-wheeler, @wisdomtrove 292:Let the separation between you and the world be final and irreversible. Say, & 293:A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 294:The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 295:Wherever in any society there are too many laws, it is a sure sign that that society will soon die. If you study the characteristics of India, you will find that no nation possesses so many laws as the Hindus, and national death is the result. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 296:Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 297:Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 298:The man-made laws have been made by men who have not perceived the final goal towards which they are making. And that is why it is so important to insist upon the final thing first, and then all the regulations, all the disciplines, will follow. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 299:One of the great cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we've been wishing to lead ourselves. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 300:According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world, merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws, is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realizes all things as spiritually one with it, and there ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 301:There is a moral law in this world which has its application both to individuals and organized bodies of men. You cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals. We may forget truth for our conv ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 302:What the anthropic principle depends upon is the idea that whatever is the nature of the universe, or universe portion that we see about us, being subject to whatever dynamical laws govern its actions, this must be strongly favourable to our very existence. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove 303:Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts?... Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 304:Under the urge of nature and according to the laws of development, though not understood by the adult, the child is obliged to be serious about two fundamental things ... the first is the love of activity... The second fundamental thing is independence. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 305:Great numbers of children will be born who understand electronics and atomic power as well as other forms of energy. They will grow into scientists and engineers of a new age which has the power to destroy civilization unless we learn to live by spiritual laws. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 306:A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there - that of the pulse, the heart beat. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 307:If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 308:There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 309:Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws of this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of station, race, or calling. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 310:How can I teach your children gentleness and mercy to the weak, and reverence for life, which in its nakedness and excess, is still a gleam of God's omnipotence, when by your laws, your actions and your speech, you contradict the very things I teach? ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 311:A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the state's segregation laws was democratically elected? ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 312:To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 313:Among the conditions of life or the laws of Nature, some of which seem to us faulty, some apparently unjust and merciless, there are many that amaze us by their beauty and sweetness. Love of home, regardless of its character or location, certainly is one of these. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 314:Again and again in history some people wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and move to broader deeper laws. They carry strange customs with them and demand room for bold and audacious action. The future speaks ruthlessly through them. They change the world. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 315:Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental & 316:Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life! ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 317:When you understand the Laws, then you understand that it is not more difficult to create a castle than it is a button. They are equal. It is not more difficult to create $10 million than $100,000. It is the same application of the same Law to two different intentions. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 318:Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 319:It’s almost as if science said, Give me one free miracle, and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless, causal explanation.’17 The one free miracle was the sudden appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, with all the laws that govern it. ~ rupert-sheldrake, @wisdomtrove 320:So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind - it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact - I can only submit to the edict of others. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 321:There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 322:The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 323:The four laws of learning are: the first is demonstration of what you want. The second is the criticism of the demonstration. The third is the imitation of the correct model, and the fourth is repetition, over and over until it becomes habit where is you don't think about it. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 324:As Terence McKenna observed, Modern science is based on the principle: ‘Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.’ The one free miracle is the appearance of all the mass and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern it in a single instant from nothing.4 ~ rupert-sheldrake, @wisdomtrove 325:The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word "Art," and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K.; kicking little girls in the head is O.K.; even a film like L'Age d'Or is O.K. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 326:I highly venerate the Masonic Institution, under the fullest persuasion that, when its principles are acknowledged and its laws and precepts obeyed, it comes nearest to the Christian religion, in its moral effects and influence, of any institution with which I am acquainted. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 327:Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination. This web allows humans alone to organise crusades, socialist revolutions and human rights movements. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 328:The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. (from "Rediscovering Lost Values") ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 329:If the people are governed by laws and punishment is used to maintain order, they will try to avoid the punishment but have no sense of shame. If they are governed by virtue and rules of propriety are used to maintain order, they will have a sense of shame and will become good as well. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 330:Fascism is the result of the collapse of Europe's spiritual and social order... catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the facade of society. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 331:Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 332:We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove 333:Nature and training (in any sport or art) can teach us all the spiritual laws I describe in another book, The Laws of Spirit. But now I'm happy to share these four purposes of life that lend meaning and direction to anyone's life, especially those in transition, going through changes." ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 334:What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 335:The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 336:I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the finanical system to let me do what I love doing-and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 337:The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 338:The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 339:Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply & 340:My life isn’t theories and formulae. It’s part instinct, part common sense. Logic is as good a word as any, and I’ve absorbed what logic I have from everything and everyone… from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature. ~ audrey-hepburn, @wisdomtrove 341:We cannot pry into the Infinite Mind of the Absolute, but we may form certain conclusions by observing and studying the Laws of the Universe, which seem to be moving in certain directions. From the manifested Will of the Divine One, we may at least hazard an idea as to its purposes. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 342:It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have obtained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form were dangerous, are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 343:A person’s quality-of-life arises from living a life which is aligned with character traits and principles which have formed the foundation of every great person or society in history. This goes beyond values, practices or religion to the laws at the heart of happiness and quality- of- life. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 344:Congressional mistakes have dramatically increased immigration through a series of what I believe were ill-advised actions going back to 1965 when the basic notions of our immigration laws were revised. In 1990, Congress opened the floodgates by passing a 35-percent increase in legal immigration. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 345:We may conclude, therefore, that, in order to establish laws for the regulation of property, we must be acquainted with the nature and situation of man; must reject appearances, which may be false, though specious; and must search for those rules, which are, on the whole, most useful and beneficial. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 346:The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed; it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession; it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 347:The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than understand and explain it. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 348:A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them ... A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. . . ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 349:How could politics be a science, if laws and forms of government had not a uniform influence upon society? Where would be the foundation of morals, if particular characters had no certain or determinate power to produce particular sentiments, and if these sentiments had no constant operation on actions? ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 350:The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him. If it were not for the laws of the land, we should soon see a massacre of the righteous. Jesus was watched by his enemies, who were thirsting for his blood: his disciples must not look for favour where their Master found hatred and death. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 351:I never understood society. i undersand that it works somehow and that it functions as a reality and that its realities are necessary to keep us from worse realities. but all i sense are that are plenty of police and jails and judges and laws and that what is meant to protect me is breaking me down. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 352:religion is created by humans rather than by gods, and it is defined by its social function rather than by the existence of deities. Religion is anything that confers superhuman legitimacy on human social structures. It legitimises human norms and values by arguing that they reflect superhuman laws. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 353:Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 354:The great lawyer who employs his talent and his learning in the highly emunerative task of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in the country of a spirit of dumb anger against all laws and of disbelief in their efficacy. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 355:A constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 356:In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 357:Justice is a moral virtue, merely because it has that tendency to the good of mankind, and indeed is nothing but an artificial invention to that purpose. The same may be said of allegiance, of the laws of nations, of modesty, and of good manners. All these are mere human contrivances for the interest of society. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 358:One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 359:Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 360:If we spend the time we waste in sighing for the perfect golden fruit in fulfilling the conditions of its growth, happiness will come, must come. It is guaranteed in the very laws of the universe. If it involves some chastening and renunciation, well, the fruit will be all the sweeter for this touch of holiness. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 361:It is certainly true that reason is the most important and the highest rank among all things and, in comparison with other things of this life, the best and something divine. It is the inventor and mentor of all the arts, medicines, laws, and of whatever wisdom, power, virtue, and glory men possess in this life. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 362:Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the descernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 363:I recognized that there are some well-known, little understood, and seldom practiced laws that we must live by if we wish to find peace within or without. Included are the laws that evil can only be overcome by good; that only good means can attain a good end; that those who do unloving things hurt themselves spiritually. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 364:There are laws in some countries, I believe, which prohibit anyone from following you in the street, and if someone does, he can be arrested and put into prison. So, spiritually, I wish there were a police system which would put people into a spiritual prison for following others. In fact, it does happen automatically. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 365:What we need to understand is that when traditions become laws, rules, obligations and expectations others put on us that we don't want to fulfill, then they lose real meaning and steal the joy from our lives. And if we're too religious, we won't be able to be led by the Holy Spirit and enjoy an intimate relationship with Him. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 366:When I was coaching I always considered myself a teacher. Teachers tend to follow the laws of learning better than coaches who do not have any teaching background. A coach is nothing more than a teacher. I used to encourage anyone who wanted to coach to get a degree in teaching so they could apply those principles to athletics. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 367:Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever be suspended by something admittedly above them. It is as if we were to say that a lawyer was so deeply learned in the American Constitution that he knew there could never be a revolution in America. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 368:I assure you very explicitly, that in my opinion the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and tenderness: and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be extensively accommodated to them, as a due regard for the protection and essential interests of the nation may justify and permit. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 369:I'n'I nah come to fight flesh and blood, But spiritual wickedness in & 370:There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 371:It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 372:Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 373:The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them ... It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 374:There is within the hearts of people a deep desire for peace on earth, and they would speak for peace if they were not bound by apathy, by ignorance, by fear. It is the job of the peacemakers to inspire them from their apathy, to dispel their ignorance with truth, to allay their fear with faith that God's laws work - and work for good. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 375:A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 376:... for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the future. With God all is Now. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 377:Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap - let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 378:When we are inclined to boast of our position [as Christians] we should remember that we are but Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord. Therefore, if one is to boast of flesh and blood the Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 379:All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 380:The NRA believes America's laws were made to be obeyed and that our Constitutional liberties are just as important today as 200 years ago. And by the way, the Constitution does not say Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms. The Constitution says & 381:Natural laws (like gravity) and principles (like respect, honesty, kindness, integrity, and fairness) control the consequences of our choices. Just as you get bad air and bad water when you consistently violate the environment, so also is trust (the glue of relationships) destroyed when you’re consistently unkind and dishonest to people. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 382:Leave your mind alone, that is all. Don't go along with it. After all, there is no such thing as mind apart from thoughts which come and go obeying their own laws, not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in them. It is exactly as Christ said, & 383:He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really was God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 384:It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just. Therefore it isnecessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 385:The assumption that the laws of nature are eternal is a vestige of the Christian belief system that informed the early postulates of modern science in the seventeenth century. Perhaps the laws of nature have actually evolved along with nature itself, and perhaps they are still evolving. Or perhaps they are not laws at all, but more like habits. ~ rupert-sheldrake, @wisdomtrove 386:We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love: not from the fact that we love but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want. Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 387:The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness by reasonable compact in civil society. It was to be, in the first instance, in a considerable degree a government of accommodation as well as a government of Laws. Much was to be done by prudence, much by conciliation, much by firmness. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 388:A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that he created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 389:I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 390:We sift reality through screens composed of ideas . (And such ideas have their roots in older ideas.) Such idea systems are necessarily limited by language , by the ways we can describe them. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms (other laws and other orders) we must step outside language. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 391:At the head of all these laws, in and through every particle of matter and force, stands One through whose command the wind blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain, and death stalks upon the earth. And what is His nature? He is everywhere the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All Merciful. Thou art our Father. Thou art our beloved Friend. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 392:Slavery results from laws, laws are made by governments, and, therefore people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of governments... . And it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 393:The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by & 394:The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world-the hardware-plays the role of a gigantic computer. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 395:The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 396:Prayer is often an argument of laziness: "Lord, my temper gives me a vast deal of inconvenience, and it would be a great task for me to correct it; and wilt thou be pleased to correct it for me, that I may get along easier?" If prayer was answered under such circumstances, independent of action of natural laws, it would be paying a premium on indolence. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 397:Science may explain the world, but we still have to explain science. The laws which enable the universe to come into being spontaneously seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design. If physics is the product of design, the universe must have a purpose, and the evidence of modern physics suggests strongly to me that the purpose includes us ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 398:Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery and would exist if all humanity forgets it, so it is with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forget them. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 399:Too late for changes, too late perhaps for explanations and ideological webs, but the love goes on, the love goes on, blind to laws and warnings and even to wisdom and to fears. And whatever that love is, perhaps an illusion of a new love, I want it, I can’t resist it, my whole being melts in one kiss, my knowledge melts, my fears melt, my blood dances, my legs open. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 400:Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 401:The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 402:Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws... . There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased - freedom from the despotism of the majority. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 403:The laws governing the universe can be made interesting and wonderful to the child, more interesting even that things in themselves, and he begins to ask: What am I? What is the task of man in this wonderful universe? Do we merely live here for ourselves, or is there something more for us to do? Why do we struggle and fight? What is good and evil? Where will it all end? ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 404:There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 405:Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute - and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? The nature of your actions - and of your ambition - will be different, according to which set of answers you come to accept. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 406:To bring the matter to one point, Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says, No, to this question, is an independent, for independency means no more than this, whether we shall make our own law, or, whether the king, the greatest enemy which this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us there shall be no laws but such as I like. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 407:If the minority, and a small one too, is suffered to dictate to the majority, after measures have undergone the most solemn discussions by the representatives of the people, and their will through this medium is enacted into a law, there can be no security for life, liberty, or property; nor, if the laws are not to govern, can any man know how to conduct himself in safety. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 408:It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive, that although laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding generations, yet that they continue to derive their force from the consent of the living. A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non repealing passes for consent. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 409:People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 410:We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 411:. . . as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 412:Indeed, what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless, its criminality is still affirmed by those who are eager to punish it. It is in such cases that the true genius lurking behind many of our laws stands revealed. The idea of a victimless crime is nothing more than a judicial reprise of the Christian notion of sin. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 413:It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 414:The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap... When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 415:One has to be a light to oneself; this light is the law. There is no other law. All the other laws are made by thought and so fragmentary and contradictory. To be a light to oneself is not to follow the light of another, however reasonable, logical, historical, and however convincing. You cannot be a light to yourself if you are in the dark shadows of authority, of dogma, of conclusion. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 416:What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 417:These principles have given me a way of explaining naturally the union or rather the mutual agreement [conformité] of the soul and the organic body. The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove 418:The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill as ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics- as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 419:The thinker seeks the laws of phenomena, and strives to penetrate by thinking what he experiences by observing. Only when we have made the world-content into our thought-content do we again find the unity out of which we had separated ourselves. We shall see later that this goal can be reached only if the task of the research scientist is conceived at a much deeper level than is often the case. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 420:The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 421:The darkness that we see in our world today is due to the disintegration of things out of harmony with God's laws. The basic conflict is not between nations, it is between two opposing beliefs. The first is that evil can be overcome by more evil, that the end justifies the means. This belief is very prevalent in our world today. It is the war way. It is the official position of every major nation. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 422:The God of the modern evangelical rarely astonishes anybody. He manages to stay pretty much with the constitution. Never break our by-laws. He's a very well-behaved God and very denominational and very much like one of us... we ask Him to help us when we're in trouble and look to Him to watch over us when we're asleep. The God of the modern evangelical isn't a God I could have much respect for. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 423:Whether moral and social phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformity of the course of nature; and how far the methods, by which so many of the laws of the physical world have been numbered among truths irrevocably acquired and universally assented to, can be made instrumental to the gradual formation of a similar body of received doctrine in moral and political science. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 424:A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of born freethinker has been appearing, who’ve never even heard that there have been laws of morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative ideas about everything, that is savages. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 425:In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 426:... the first thing his education demands is the provision of an environment in which he can develop the powers given him by nature. This does not mean just to amuse him and let him do what he likes. But it does mean that we have to adjust our minds to doing a work of collaboration with nature, to being obedient to one of her laws, the law which decrees that development comes from environmental experience. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 427:Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 428:A man who fears not God, will break all his laws with an easy conscience, but one who is the favorite of heaven, who has been indulged to sit at royal banquets, who knows the eternal love of God to him, cannot bear that there should be any evil way in him that might grieve the Spirit and bring dishonor to the name of Christ. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a truly awakened Christian. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 429:Now I realize it's fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should encourage others to read the Bible. That we're told we'll violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 430:The basic cause of all our difficulties is immaturity. That's why I talk so much about peace within ourselves as a step toward peace in our world. If we were mature, war would not be possible and peace would be assured. In our immaturity we do not know the laws of the universe, and we think evil can be overcome by more evil. One symptom of our immaturity is greed, making it difficult for us to learn the simple lesson of sharing... ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 431:Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 432:When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 433:In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, everyone who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find the enviable existence ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 434:It was a murky confusion ‚Äî here and there blotted with a color like the color of the smoke from damp fuel ‚Äî of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 435:In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshy sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleeting aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 436:I hold myself accountable for my contradictions. I deeply, deeply believe in the mystical laws. I know that every thought sends an eternity in motion. I mean, I know what I am capable of as a teacher; I know what I'm capable of because of my intelligence. But I also know that that's useless if - I have been humiliated so often, when I think that I can combat the terrors of life with intelligence. Because you can't. It'll bring you to your knees. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 437:To Amma, all are Her children. In Amma's eyes no defect of Her children is serious. But when She is considered as the guru, it is essential for the growth of the disciples that they conduct themselves according to the tradition. Amma will pardon all the mistakes of Her children, but nature has certain laws. That is what brings punishment for our sins. Children, we should be able to take any sorrow or suffering as conducive for our growth. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 438:The single difference between the theory I propose and the ideas current in modern astrophysics is that I assume that an infinite conscious intelligence preexists. You cannot get away from the preexistence of something, and whether that is an ensemble of physical laws generating infinite random universes or an infinite conscious intelligence is something present-day science cannot resolve, and indeed one view is not more rational than the other. ~ bernard-haisch, @wisdomtrove 439:For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 440:All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 441:The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle... ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 442:as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness. You are in the country where you make up the rules, the laws. You are both dictator and obedient populace. It is a country nobody has ever explored before. It is up to you to make the maps, to build the cities. Nobody else in the world can do it, or ever could do it, or ever will be able to do it again. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 443:The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 444:The Three Laws of Robotics: 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law; The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 445:I hold myself accountable for my contradictions. I deeply, deeply believe in the mystical laws. I know that every thought sends an eternity in motion. I mean, I know what I am capable of as a teacher; I know what I'm capable of because of my intelligence. But I also know that that's useless if - I have been humiliated so often, when I think that I can combat the terrors of life with intelligence. Because you can't. It'll bring you to your knees. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 446:Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, & 447:The way mathematical laws can exist independently of the evolving universe and at the same time act upon it remains a profound mystery. For those who accept God, this mystery is an aspect of God's relation to the realm of nature; for those who deny God, the mystery is even more obscure: A quasi-mental realm of mathematical laws somehow exists independently of nature, yet not in God, and governs the evolving physical world without itself being physical. ~ rupert-sheldrake, @wisdomtrove 448:The only thing harder to understand than a law of statistical origin would be a law that is not of statistical origin, for then there would be no way for it—or its progenitor principles—to come into being. On the other hand, when we view each of the laws of physics—and no laws are more magnificent in scope or better tested—as at bottom statistical in character, then we are at last able to forego the idea of a law that endures from everlasting to everlasting. ~ john-wheeler, @wisdomtrove 449:The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature -were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 450:One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 451:The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden-that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 452:All the worth which the human being possesses all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State... For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of History in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity... ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 453:Tobacco smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no man is bound to speak one word more than he has actually and veritably got to say. Nay, rather every man is admonished and enjoined by the laws of honor, and even of personal ease, to stop short of that point; and at all events to hold his peace and take to his pipe again the instant he has spoken his meaning, if he chance to have any. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 454:Matter cannot be conceived to actually exist, as the only real substance is Universal Mind, and that the material and phenomenal universe is nothing but a series of mental appearances and impressions which appear and disappear in accordance with mental laws which are called "The Laws of Nature"; that the only reality of the phenomenal world consists in its being consciously "perceived" by God, Spirit, the Absolute, or whatever Ultimate reality may be termed. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 455:The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 456:What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful & 457:One hundred and fifty years ago the vacant lands of the West were opened to private use. One hundred years ago the Congress passed the Homestead Act, probably the single greatest stimulus to national development ever enacted. Under the impetus of that Act and other laws, more than 1.1 billion acres of the original public main have been transferred to private and non-federal public ownership. The 768 million acres remaining in federal ownership are a valuable national asset. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 458:George Berkeley was a bishop of the Church of England, who lived a.d. 1685– 1753. He was the founder of the modern school of Idealism, which system he developed largely upon the basis of Locke, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz. He held that matter cannot be conceived to actually exist, the only real substance being mind; and that the material world is nothing but a complex of mental impressions which appear and disappear in accordance with established laws of nature. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 459:You're a product of our language, and how our laws are and how we believe our God wants us. Every bitty molecule about you has already been thought out by some million people before you. Anything you can do is boring and old and perfectly okay. You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it. You can't imagine any way to escape. There's no way you can get out.The world is your cradle and your trap. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 460:The sudden appearance of all the Laws of Nature is as untestable as Platonic metaphysics or theology. Why should we assume that all the Laws of Nature were already present at the instant of the Big Bang, like a cosmic Napoleonic code? Perhaps some of them, such as those that govern protein crystals, or brains, came into being when protein crystals or brains first arose. The preexistence of these laws cannot possibly be tested before the emergence of the phenomena they govern. ~ rupert-sheldrake, @wisdomtrove 461:I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now I was reduced to the condition of a silly old woman, worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food-value, and a thousand minute details of conduct that were in themselves completely ridiculous and stupid, and yet which haunted me with vague and terrific sanctions. If I eat this, I may go out of my mind. If I do not eat that, I may die in the night. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 462:The characteristics of matter are thought into it by means of the idea of matter in Universal Mind. And the laws governing and determining the activities of matter are also thought into being in the same idea. It is just as if a man were to form the idea of a new thing called matter in the course of writing a strange story of a strange new world, with this difference, that when Universal Mind forms an idea that idea is imposed upon all other creations of Universal Mind. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 463:The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that's an inexhaustible one I'm sure. ~ martin-rees, @wisdomtrove 464:We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 465:Do not sit down and try to pump up repentance from the dry well of a corrupt nature. It is contrary to the laws of your mind to suppose that you can force your soul into that gracious state. Take your heart in prayer to Him who understands it and say, "Lord, cleanse it. Lord, renew it. Lord, work repentance in it." The more you try to produce penitent emotions in yourself, the more you will be disappointed. However, if you believingly think of Jesus dying for you, repentance will burst forth. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 466:Ultimately it is consciousness that is the origin of matter, energy, and the laws of nature in this universe and all others that may exist. And the purpose is for God to experience his potential. God's ideas and abilities become God's experience in the life of every sentient being. What greater purpose could there be for each of us humans than that of creating God's experience? God experiences the richness of his potential through us because we are the incarnations of him in the physical realm. ~ bernard-haisch, @wisdomtrove 467:We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If todayI lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 468:When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 469:The more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, - that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, - that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, - that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses; - by such reflections as these... I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 470:The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 471:He felt as though he were failing in practically every area of his life. Lately, happiness seemed as distant and unattainable to him as space travel. He hadn't always felt this way. There had been a long period of time during which he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes are made, regrets form, and all that was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 472:I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 473:There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal communications which I really hear there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole. So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling one's self in touch with what is universally true. ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 474:The purpose of problems is to push you toward obedience to God's laws, which are exact and cannot be changed. We have the free will to obey them or disobey them. Obedience will bring harmony, disobedience will bring you more problems... There was a time when I thought it was a nuisance to be confronted with a problem. I tried to get rid of it. I tried to get somebody else to solve it for me. But that was a long time ago. It was a great day in my life when I discovered the wonderful purpose of problems. Yes, they have a wonderful purpose. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 475:There & 476:All nature has come to expect from God a sense of orderliness. Whatever God does carries with it His fingerprint. And in the world around us His fingerprint of orderliness is evident to anybody who is honest with the facts. If you look at nature, you will discover a mathematical exactness. Without this precision, the entire world would be in utter confusion. One plus one always equals two no matter what part of the universe you happen to be in. And the laws of nature operate in beautiful harmony, a harmony that is ordered by God Himself. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 477:It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God,. to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits , and humbly to implore his protection and favor... beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 478:When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 479:At one time,' Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, & 480:Everything happens through immutable laws, ... everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 481:I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower from, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 482:Upon the decease [of] my wife, it is my Will and desire th[at] all the Slaves which I hold in [my] own right, shall receive their free[dom] . . . . The Negroes thus bound, are (by their Masters or Mistresses) to be taught to read and write; and to be brought up to some useful occupation, agreeably to the Laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the support of Orphan and other poor Children. And I do hereby expressly forbid the Sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth, of any Slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 483:According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world, merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws, is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realizes all things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in it, knowing it and making use of it, but realizing our own selves in it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in perfect union. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 484:People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature - the laws of physics - are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least not in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 485:The preservation of parks, wilderness, and wildlife has also aided liberty by keeping alive the 19th century sense of adventure and awe with which our forefathers greeted the American West. Many laws protecting environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property against the destructive trespass of pollution. In our own time, the nearly universal appreciation of these preserved landscapes, restored waters, and cleaner air through outdoor recreation is a modern expression of our freedom and leisure to enjoy the wonderful life that generations past have built for us. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 486:My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain that alone on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine would not, I suppose, have thus suffered, and if I had to live my life over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 487:People of the world, the time for decision is short. It is measured in a few years. The choice is ours as to whether or not we will pay the price of peace. If we are not willing to pay it, all that we hold dear will be consumed in the flame of war. The darkness in our world today is due to the disintegration of things which are contrary to God's laws. Let us never say hopelessly this is the darkness before a storm; rather let us say with faith this is the darkness before the dawn of the golden age of peace, which we cannot now even imagine. For this, let us hope and work and pray. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 488:How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. You always insist that the order sustaining society is an objective reality created by the great gods or by the laws of nature. People are unequal, not because Hammurabi said so, but because Enlil and Marduk decreed it. People are equal, not because Thomas Jefferson said so, but because God created them that way. Free markets are the best economic system, not because Adam Smith said so, but because these are the immutable laws of nature. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 489:Under the antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. If he complies with one of these laws, he faces criminal prosecution under several others. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful & 490:One of history’s fews iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it. Over the few decades, we have invented countless time saving machines that are supposed to make like more relaxed - washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, telephones, mobile phones, computers, email. We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed and made our days more anxious and agitated. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 491:There is no need to search; achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all, so just be happy now! Love is the only reality of the world, because it is all One, you see. And the only laws are paradox, humor and change. There is no problem, never was, and never will be. Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns, and relax into the world. No need to resist life, just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you imagine. You are the world, you are the universe; you are yourself and everyone else, too! It's all the marvelous Play of God. Wake up, regain your humor. Don't worry, just be happy. You are already free! ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 492:Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 493:The antidote to a meaningless and lawless existence was provided by humanism, a revolutionary new creed that conquered the world during the last few centuries. The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism. Whereas traditionally the great cosmic plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the roles and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to the cosmos. According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 494:This is a dynamic and mysterious universe and human life is, no doubt, conditioned by imponderables of which we are only dimly aware. People sometimes say, "the strangest coincidence happened." Coincidences may seem strange, but they are never a result of caprice. They are orderly laws in the spiritual life of man. They affect and influence our lives profoundly. These so-called imponderables are so important that you should become spiritually sensitized to them. Indeed, the more spiritually minded you become the more acute your contact will be with these behind-the-scenes forces. By being alive to them through insight, instruction, and illumination, you can make your way past errors and mistakes on which, were you less spiritually sensitive, you might often stumble. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 495:Wake up! Wake up! Soon the person you believe you are will die - so now, wake up and be content with this knowledge: there is no need to search; achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all, so just be happy now! Love is the only reality of the world, because it is all ONE, you see. And the only laws are paradox, humor, and change. There is no problem, never was, and never will be. Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns, and relax into the world. No need to resist life; just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are for more than you imagine. you are the world, you are the universe; you are yourself and everyone else too! It's all the marvelous Play of God. Wake up, regain your humor. Don't worry, just be happy. You are already free! ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 496:How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realize this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realize this possibility. Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 497:Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 498:Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees. Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 499:How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 500: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:love obeys no laws ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
2:The gods have their own laws. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
3:Bad laws make hard cases. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
4:Fury too, has its laws. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
5:Petty laws breed great crimes. ~ Ouida, #NFDB
6:They obey older laws. ~ Alison Croggon, #NFDB
7:All things obey fixed laws. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
8:LORD’s] laws are wonderful. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
9:We are a nation of laws. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
10:We are a country of laws. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
11:Laws are subordinate to custom. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
12:to dispense from the laws. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
13:Laws are not made for the good. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
14:America is a country of laws. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
15:broke the concealed-carry laws. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
16:Good morals lead to good laws. ~ Chuck Norris, #NFDB
17:I came, I saw, I concurred... ~ Darren E Laws, #NFDB
18:Just laws reflect what is right. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
19:Laws die. Books never. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB
20:Nature has no Laws — only habits. ~ Hakim Bey, #NFDB
21:Stop quoting laws, we carry weapons! ~ Pompey, #NFDB
22:Very good laws may be ill timed. ~ Montesquieu, #NFDB
23:What is crucial is there be laws. ~ Andre Weil, #NFDB
24:So many laws argues so many sins. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
25:There are laws for peace as well as war. ~ Livy, #NFDB
26:Those who fear men like laws. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
27:I know not whether Laws be right, ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
28:Laws can't control the lawless. ~ Wayne LaPierre, #NFDB
29:More laws, less justice. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
30:The ignorant is a child. ~ Laws of Manu. II. 193, #NFDB
31:A government of laws, and not of men ~ John Adams, #NFDB
32:immutable laws of God Almighty ~ Christian Wolmar, #NFDB
33:Laws die, but Books never. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB
34:Oliver Tackles Uganda’s Anti-Gay Laws ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
35:Unjust laws aren't laws at all. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
36:A government of laws, and not of men. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
37:Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns. ~ Louis XIV, #NFDB
38:The more laws and restrictions there are, ~ Laozi, #NFDB
39:All laws are simulations of reality. ~ John C Lilly, #NFDB
40:Every ruler is harsh whose laws is new. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
41:Greatness breaks laws. ~ Louise Berliawsky Nevelson, #NFDB
42:Laws are inoperative in war ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
43:Laws without morals are in vain. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
44:Man gave us laws, and God gave us time, ~ ASAP Rocky, #NFDB
45:Some Laws were meant to be broken. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
46:What can laws do without morals? ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
47:Where love reigns, there's no need for laws. ~ Plato, #NFDB
48:Change the narrative, change the laws. ~ Ani DiFranco, #NFDB
49:Laws, everything’s a chance, isn’t it? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
50:Nature never breaks her own laws. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
51:Prayer never changes the laws of nature. ~ Dan Barker, #NFDB
52:The laws are stacked for the wealthy. ~ Jesse Jackson, #NFDB
53:Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. ~ Montesquieu, #NFDB
54:Where love rules, laws are not needed. ~ Annie Besant, #NFDB
55:Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
56:Cats do not abide by the laws of nature. ~ Charlie Day, #NFDB
57:Ethics are more important than laws. ~ Wynton Marsalis, #NFDB
58:Laws can discover sin, but not remove it ~ John Milton, #NFDB
59:Laws, like houses, lean on one another. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
60:Love obeys no laws other than its own. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
61:The laws of decency enforce themselves. ~ Louise Colet, #NFDB
62:Arms and laws do not flourish together. ~ Julius Caesar, #NFDB
63:Laws are silent in time of war. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
64:the laws of the South. From that moment ~ Chris d Lacey, #NFDB
65:Very good laws may be ill timed. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
66:The miracle on earth are the laws of heaven. ~ Jean Paul, #NFDB
67:The more laws, the less justice. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
68:During war, the laws are silent. ~ Quintus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
69:Love obeys
no laws other than its own. ~ Lauren Oliver,#NFDB
70:The land didn't need laws. But people did. ~ John Shirley, #NFDB
71:the rulers make laws for their own interests. But ~ Plato, #NFDB
72:I'm a lawmaker, but I really don't like laws. ~ Bob Corker, #NFDB
73:All just laws condemn cruelty. ~ Pedro Calderon de la Barca, #NFDB
74:America is ruled by laws, not mobs!” ========== ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
75:Christianity is part of the laws of England. ~ Matthew Hale, #NFDB
76:Laws were made by men, and men made mistakes ~ Joan D Vinge, #NFDB
77:Obama calls for tougher laws against cybercrime ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
78:The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
79:The laws are with us, and God on our side. ~ Robert Southey, #NFDB
80:The laws of physics that we regard ~ John Archibald Wheeler, #NFDB
81:Even if the mind were not, its laws would be! ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
82:The laws allow arms to be taken against an armed foe. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
83:There is no justice in following unjust laws. ~ Aaron Swartz, #NFDB
84:They that possess the prince possess the laws. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
85:Wealth makes the laws that poverty must obey. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
86:We have to modernize how we make laws. ~ Birgitta Jonsdottir, #NFDB
87:Good laws are the offspring of bad actions. ~ Charles Macklin, #NFDB
88:Laws and machines are shaped to fit the classes. ~ Rod McKuen, #NFDB
89:The laws of the Universe are responding to me. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
90:There are no laws by which we can write Iliads. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
91:When war is raging the laws are dumb. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
92:Given current laws, trust is our only option. ~ Bruce Schneier, #NFDB
93:it still amused me that criminals had laws. ~ Samantha Shannon, #NFDB
94:Laws are made to free people, not to bind them ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
95:Laws die, books never. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
96:Me care for te laws when te laws care for me. ~ Joanna Baillie, #NFDB
97:Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
98:A s laws multiply, injustice increases. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
99:For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
100:I am not a promoter of more laws, just better ones. ~ Lee Terry, #NFDB
101:I grew up before there were strict leash laws. ~ Beverly Cleary, #NFDB
102:Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
103:Public infamy must restrain what the laws cannot. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
104:Right is not unlimited, but is limited by the laws. ~ Aeschines, #NFDB
105:The laws of a state change with the changing times. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
106:The physical laws are but the bars of a cage. ~ Gregory Benford, #NFDB
107:There are unjust laws as there are unjust men. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
108:The weak make laws, while the strong interpret them. ~ Samarpan, #NFDB
109:Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
110:At the time, the rich basically bought the laws. So ~ K F Breene, #NFDB
111:Laws undertake to punish only overt acts. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
112:My feeling about in-laws was that they were outlaws. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
113:We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal. ~ John Boehner, #NFDB
114:Curse on all laws but those which love has made. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
115:He who lives in solitude may make his own laws. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
116:Hey, I didn’t write the laws. I just abuse them. The ~ M K Gibson, #NFDB
117:I've used the laws of the country to my advantage. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
118:Laws can never be enforced unless fear supports them. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
119:My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. ~ Barry Goldwater, #NFDB
120:People who are very beautiful make their own laws. ~ Vivien Leigh, #NFDB
121:Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
122:So sue me, I think the marijuana laws are bullshit. ~ Paul Levine, #NFDB
123:The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
124:Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
125:He who lives in solitude may make his own laws. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
126:Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
127:Life adapted to the laws of physics, not vice versa. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
128:making laws with penalties of death, and consequently ~ John Locke, #NFDB
129:Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
130:there are laws of inevitability at work in our lives. ~ Amy Gentry, #NFDB
131:Where laws end, tyranny begins. ~ William Pitt 1st Earl of Chatham, #NFDB
132:For the laws are dumb in the midst of arms. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
133:perfect harmony with the laws of success. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
134:the dead still obey the laws of physics, don’t they? ~ Joe McKinney, #NFDB
135:True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
136:We do not know the laws of God, nor their working. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
137:CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
138:Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
139:I wouldn't vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
140:Laws that oppress people have no moral authority. ~ Richard Stallman, #NFDB
141:The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
142:Boredom and fear keep us working and obeying the laws. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
143:Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
144:only those who made the laws were allowed to break them. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
145:The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God. ~ Euclid, #NFDB
146:The people must fight for their laws as for their walls. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
147:As in laws or in war, the longest purse finally wins. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
148:As the Talmud says, Customs are more powerful than laws. ~ Gwen Cooper, #NFDB
149:But laws are slow to change what is in people’s hearts. ~ Sejal Badani, #NFDB
150:But there are laws of inevitability at work in our lives. ~ Amy Gentry, #NFDB
151:By all the laws of probability proteins shouldn’t exist. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
152:Of what use are laws, inoperative through public immortality? ~ Horace, #NFDB
153:Promises were like laws; smart men knew when to break both. ~ C J Hill, #NFDB
154:The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
155:The people must fight for their laws as for their walls. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
156:There are no good laws but such as repeal other laws. ~ Andrew Johnson, #NFDB
157:There are no laws of nature; there are habits of nature. ~ David Wolfe, #NFDB
158:Accursed be the city where the laws would stifle nature's! ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
159:All rights and laws are still transmitted, ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
160:Belief was immune to logic; it operated by its own laws. ~ James Siegel, #NFDB
161:God's eternal laws are kind-and break the heart of stone. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
162:had read the laws, but not learnt how to practise law. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
163:Heaven is space in universe that has unique laws of nature. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
164:Sorry officer, today I'm not in the mood to break the laws. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
165:When the State is corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
166:Where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
167:If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
168:Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
169:The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
170:The hand of an artisan is always pure when it is at work. ~ Laws of Mann, #NFDB
171:The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
172:The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
173:There are laws for everything except the harm families do. ~ Sue Grafton, #NFDB
174:Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
175:A mother gives life. Mother-in-laws Snuff the life out of you ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
176:I hardly broke any laws at all. I should drive more often. ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
177:I see as white people finding loopholes in the slavery laws. ~ Chris Rock, #NFDB
178:Pompey snapped, “Cease quoting laws to us that have swords. ~ Mike Duncan, #NFDB
179:the need for gun control laws and a new moral climate. ~ Lawrence Sanders, #NFDB
180:There are no rights anymore. No laws. Just force and fear. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
181:The severity of the laws prevents their execution. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
182:We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
183:What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
184:I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
185:If the laws of physics be for us, who can be against us?! ~ Frank J Tipler, #NFDB
186:In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
187:Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
188:Privilege (to the privileged) means having private laws. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
189:Rules, laws and codes become obsolete among the self-governed. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
190:The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history. ~ Ariel Durant, #NFDB
191:The laws of biology are written in the language of diversity. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
192:The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
193:To be an artist you must learn the laws of nature. ~ Pierre Auguste Renoir, #NFDB
194:Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
195:What draws friends together does not conform to the laws of nature. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
196:Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws? ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
197:Your pot laws are great! But your gun laws are even better! ~ Eddie Vedder, #NFDB
198:After all, that is what laws are for, to be made and unmade. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
199:After the laws of physics, everything else is opinion ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
200:Laws are the DNA of government. They must evolve with time. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
201:Our focus has to be on changing reality, not changing laws. ~ Sheryl WuDunn, #NFDB
202:The right creative act makes its own laws, and always will do. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
203:We are all servants of the laws in order to be free ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
204:after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
205:Don't care what people say. Don't give a damn about their laws. ~ Edith Piaf, #NFDB
206:government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you. ~ V S Naipaul, #NFDB
207:Great faith overcomes laws of nature that govern physical world. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
208:Laws are funny things. The more you have, the more you need. ~ Nathan Lowell, #NFDB
209:laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
210:Nothing is so defective as those laws which correct defects. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
211:Phenomena complex-laws simple....Know what to leave out. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
212:The laws of nature apply equally to the mind and the emotions. ~ Dan Millman, #NFDB
213:To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave. ~ Les Claypool, #NFDB
214:AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature. ~ Pat Buchanan, #NFDB
215:I speak of the laws man has made, to make everyone lawful. ~ Constantina Maud, #NFDB
216:I was in another universe with different laws and distinct truth. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
217:Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
218:Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
219:Solomon's Laws
1. When the law doesn't work...work the law. ~ Paul Levine,#NFDB
220:There are so many laws that no one is safe from hanging. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
221:There are so many laws that no one is safe from hanging. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
222:All fiction that does not violate the laws of physics is fact. ~ David Deutsch, #NFDB
223:If harsher laws are put in place, less will dare to break them. ~ Jane Goodall, #NFDB
224:It will be necessary for us to be a nation of men, and not laws. ~ Dick Cheney, #NFDB
225:Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
226:Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
227:One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
228:Our fathers gave us many laws which they had learned from their ~ Chief Joseph, #NFDB
229:Senator: Person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
230:Sergeant Bergdahl may have broken any number of military laws. ~ Alex Berenson, #NFDB
231:The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
232:The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
233:all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
234:At my level, the laws of physics are more like suggestions. And ~ Craig Alanson, #NFDB
235:Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
236:Laws always lose in energy what the government gains in extent. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
237:Laws cannot be imposed on him who is the master of the law. ~ Benvenuto Cellini, #NFDB
238:Observe Nature, study her laws, and obey them in your speaking. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
239:Sundays had a candid feeling. There were no laws, no stakes. ~ Stephanie Danler, #NFDB
240:The people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
241:Voter caging and voter ID laws exist to disfranchise voters. ~ Cynthia McKinney, #NFDB
242:We see every day that our very laws have both sides of the fence. ~ Jerry Jones, #NFDB
243:Where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
244:Which is better--to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill? ~ William Golding, #NFDB
245:Aren’t you violating the building codes? Or the laws of physics? ~ Scott Hawkins, #NFDB
246:Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws. ~ Bill James, #NFDB
247:He led efforts to end the racial separation laws in place in America ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
248:He saw how only those who made the laws were allowed to break them. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
249:I definitely think there could be stricter teen driving laws. ~ Victoria Justice, #NFDB
250:It was a self-contained cosmos, obeying no laws but it’s own ~ Frank G Slaughter, #NFDB
251:Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way if justice. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi, #NFDB
252:Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi, #NFDB
253:Laws die, Books never. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu (1839), Act I, scene 2., #NFDB
254:Laws that discriminate validate other kinds of discrimination. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
255:Repeal all laws which assume that mankind is a herd of cattle ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
256:The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
257:Those who can’t teach, pass laws about how to evaluate teachers. ~ Diane Ravitch, #NFDB
258:To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
259:Truth and justice are the immutable laws of social order. ~ Pierre Simon Laplace, #NFDB
260:You break rules all the time.’ ‘I break laws. That’s different. ~ Becky Chambers, #NFDB
261:France, mother of arts, of warfare, and of laws (Les Regrets) ~ Joachim du Bellay, #NFDB
262:Gold is reserved for those who know its laws and abide by them. ~ George S Clason, #NFDB
263:Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
264:I abandon myself to the fever of dreams, in search for new laws. ~ Antonin Artaud, #NFDB
265:The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
266:The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
267:We are better off not knowing how sausages and laws are made. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
268:Wikipedia’s triumph seems to defy the laws of behavioral physics. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
269:Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong. ~ William E Gladstone, #NFDB
270:If no laws applied to them, then no laws protected them either. ~ Jonathan Maberry, #NFDB
271:Laws are made not to be broken.
They are made to curb our savagery. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
272:Laws by their very nature are arbitrary and depend on context. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
273:Laws should be made, not against quacks but against superstition. ~ Rudolf Virchow, #NFDB
274:One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.,#NFDB
275:So we have the toughest laws, and you have tremendous gun violence. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
276:The injustice of a government is proportional to the number of its laws. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
277:The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
278:The science of the laws is the slow growth of time and experience. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
279:These gun laws are very much the creation of the Prime Minister. ~ Amanda Vanstone, #NFDB
280:The stronger our gun control laws are, the fewer acts of violence. ~ Joe Lieberman, #NFDB
281:you should treat laws as necessary evils and not as Gospel Truths. ~ Awdhesh Singh, #NFDB
282:American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
283:A woman in love, is what. In my experience, they got their own laws. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
284:Billy Almon has all of his in-laws and outlaws here this afternoon. ~ Jerry Coleman, #NFDB
285:Current illusion is that science has abolished all natural laws. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
286:Even where laws are unjust, hearts can find a way to be together. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
287:I never violate my oaths or my codes... Only international laws. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
288:It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
289:It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written. ~ John Paul Stevens, #NFDB
290:Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
291:Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
292:Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
293:Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
294:Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
295:My particles made me do it by moving according to the laws of physics ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
296:The laws governed people’s happiness. To be lawless was to be happy. ~ Jess C Scott, #NFDB
297:the laws that ran through nature were uniform and pervasive. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
298:There's laws that we must live by, and they're not the laws of man. ~ Dan Fogelberg, #NFDB
299:You, stupid one, who believe in laws which punish murder by murder... ~ George Sand, #NFDB
300:Boulez seemed to me to be a guy who wrote laws. Like a company lawyer. ~ Luc Ferrari, #NFDB
301:Cos rules are lures, and laws are walls
And all the people, are silly fools ~ Leo,#NFDB
302:Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
303:I'm just worried about the unintended consequences of the laws. ~ Mary Katharine Ham, #NFDB
304:I took and received campaign donations under the existing laws. ~ Sheila Jackson Lee, #NFDB
305:It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
306:Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
307:laws for the sake of controlling people rather than protecting them. ~ Chris Dietzel, #NFDB
308:Part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to laws of space and time. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
309:Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal. ~ Friedrich Engels, #NFDB
310:The fundamental laws of human nature are overlooked by social planners. ~ James Cook, #NFDB
311:The government has the right to change laws and rules and regulations. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
312:The laws of every country must be analogous to some common principle. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
313:The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
314:The only way you can get at the state is by dealing with its laws. ~ Philip Berrigan, #NFDB
315:Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, makes that and the action fine. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
316:Even the most eminent persons are subject to the laws of gravity. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
317:If we repealed all the laws of the world marriage would still exist. ~ Tom McClintock, #NFDB
318:Nature's deepest laws, her only true laws, are her invisible ones. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
319:The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics. ~ Brian Greene, #NFDB
320:The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
321:The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. ~ Fr d ric Bastiat, #NFDB
322:They unlike their deceitful brothers, uphold the laws of our realm. ~ Candace Knoebel, #NFDB
323:Where there are laws, he who has not broken them need not tremble. ~ Vittorio Alfieri, #NFDB
324:Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
325:If you are still breathing maybe it is not such a bad day after all... ~ Darren E Laws, #NFDB
326:Love permeates all things and laws.
Scientists should research it more. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
327:Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many laws. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
328:The Constitution and the laws are supreme and the Union indissoluble. ~ Andrew Jackson, #NFDB
329:The more laws and orders are multiplied, the more theft and violence increase. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
330:The only thing privacy laws accomplish is making the bugs smaller. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
331:The question not many ask is: why are the laws of physics like they are? ~ Paul Davies, #NFDB
332:We have a responsibility to disobey and violate unjust rules and laws. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
333:As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
334:Dice have their laws, which the courts of justice cannot undo. ~ Saint Ambrose of Milan, #NFDB
335:Each time laws were passed to control the people rather than serve them ~ Chris Dietzel, #NFDB
336:If you want to understand how a government works, the laws tell you. ~ Peter F Hamilton, #NFDB
337:It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
338:Know my feelings about traffic laws? Cop didn't see it? I didn't do it. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
339:Laws and traditions that hold back women, hold back entire societies. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
340:Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel; then what should war be? ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
341:Silent enim leges inter arma (Laws are silent in times of war). ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
342:Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws. ~ Barbara Kingsolver, #NFDB
343:The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
344:The laws can't be enforced against the man who is the laws' master. ~ Benvenuto Cellini, #NFDB
345:the laws work for those who fear them, not for those who violate them. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
346:There's no accounting for laws. Or the changes wrought by men and time. ~ James Crumley, #NFDB
347:The universe does not have laws. It has habits. And habits can be broken. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
348:Werewolves had to obey the laws of physics just like everyone else. The ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
349:Books are for use. ~ Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan, Five Laws of Library Science (1928)., #NFDB
350:Countries, states, cities, corporations and laws are all words on paper. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
351:for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
352:He wandered in the high, hot lands where men have few laws and many slaves. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
353:Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict. ~ Rose Macaulay, #NFDB
354:I CAN DO MAGIC! FEAR ME, LAWS OF PHYSICS, I'M COMING TO VIOLATE YOU! ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB
355:Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obey them. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
356:Laws, enforced by the sword, control behavior but cannot change hearts. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
357:One, two, three, four, we don't want your fuckin' laws of thermodynamics! ~ David Rakoff, #NFDB
358:Privacy laws are our biggest impediment to us obtaining our objectives. ~ Michael Eisner, #NFDB
359:The beauty of scientific laws shows the beauty of God himself. ~ Vern Sheridan Poythress, #NFDB
360:The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are ~ Cesare Beccaria, #NFDB
361:The privacy laws are paramount. They come before even common sense... ~ Michael Swanwick, #NFDB
362:There was no recourse, were no laws but the ones rewritten every day. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
363:But against all the odds, against even the laws of physics and logic, we did. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
364:Customs may not be as wise as laws, but they are always more popular. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
365:Do the laws against sexual assault not apply to strippers? To girlfriends? ~ Patty Blount, #NFDB
366:Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
367:If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
368:Laws which are consistent in theory often prove chaotic in practice. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
369:Members of Congress must live according to the same laws as everyone else. ~ Bobby Jindal, #NFDB
370:Mother-in-laws are necessary, as are mosquitoes, athlete's foot, and beets. ~ Ed Williams, #NFDB
371:Nature’s laws are the invisible government of the earth. —Alfred Montapert ~ Cesar Millan, #NFDB
372:Propriety is the least of all laws, and the most observed. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
373:Self-will seems to be the only virtue that takes no account of man-made laws. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
374:The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
375:The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
376:The laws of the Unknown create the known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #NFDB
377:There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there be. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
378:There are no laws, there are no rules, just grab your friend and love him. ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
379:The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
380:The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
381:The whole of creation, with all of its laws, is a revelation of God. ~ William Ralph Inge, #NFDB
382:...we live in a different world, you and me - governed by different laws... ~ John Geddes, #NFDB
383:We need to use antitrust laws. You know, we need to create real media again. ~ Jill Stein, #NFDB
384:Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws. ~ Robert Peel, #NFDB
385:Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila, #NFDB
386:Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
387:Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions. ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
388:Freemasonry embraces the highest moral laws and will bear the test of ~ Douglas MacArthur, #NFDB
389:I am trying to bend the laws of time so I can get here five minutes earlier ~ Cath Crowley, #NFDB
390:Laws are black and white. The lives of women are a thousand shades of gray. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
391:Let those who will write the nation's laws, if I can write its textbooks. ~ Paul Samuelson, #NFDB
392:The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
393:the more bureaucrats there are, the more laws are needed to keep them fed. I ~ John Varley, #NFDB
394:The program of our movement stems from the fundamental moral laws and order. ~ Lech Walesa, #NFDB
395:God's laws are eternal and unalterable and not separable from God Himself. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
396:if we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
397:In seeming contradiction of physical laws, time is heavy only when it is empty. ~ Trevanian, #NFDB
398:Other than the laws of physics, rules have never really worked out for me. ~ Craig Ferguson, #NFDB
399:Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
400:@philosophytweet "When the state is most corrupt, then laws are most multiplied." ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
401:Some of us do not accept the Establishment myth that bad laws must be obeyed. ~ Tom Driberg, #NFDB
402:To seize control over the laws of Mother Nature one must attain self-mastery. ~ Yehuda Berg, #NFDB
403:Who says I like right angles? These are not my laws, these are not my rules. ~ Ani DiFranco, #NFDB
404:All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB
405:Called an inquiry into the laws which determine the division of the produce. ~ David Ricardo, #NFDB
406:In other words, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
407:Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature. ~ Bill Nye, #NFDB
408:Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie. ~ Simonides, #NFDB
409:The laws of gravity cannot be held responcible for people falling in love. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
410:The violation of some laws is a normal part of the behavior of every citizen. ~ Stuart Chase, #NFDB
411:Through his spoken word, man is continually making laws for himself. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB
412:We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form. ~ Janine M Benyus, #NFDB
413:Ancient laws remain in force long after the people have the power to change them. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
414:And Americans always think international laws are for other people anyway, ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
415:Each juggler should be trained in the ignorance of the laws of physics. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
416:Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
417:How many laws could she break now that she was in a position to uphold them all? ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
418:It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearly! ~ Enrico Fermi, #NFDB
419:Marry an orphan: you'll never have to spend boring holidays with the in-laws. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
420:stability of government and dependability of laws which attracted foreigners. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
421:Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
422:Even when the laws have been written down, they ought not always remain unchanged. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
423:Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
424:Everyone complains about the laws of physics, but no one does anything about them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
425:I'm anti-making new laws. I feel like assault is already against the law. ~ Mary Katharine Ham, #NFDB
426:I'm not a big believer in our copyright laws; I find them way too restrictive. ~ Michael Moore, #NFDB
427:Love obeys no laws other than its own. That's what always made it frightening. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
428:Man is a godlike animal, and free twice over: once by nature, and again by his laws. ~ Erasmus, #NFDB
429:Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
430:The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
431:The most mighty of nature's laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
432:There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
433:The search for historical laws is, I maintain, mistaken in principle. ~ George Gaylord Simpson, #NFDB
434:The stress of making small talk with in-laws is called being part of a family. ~ Judith Martin, #NFDB
435:We have laws against polluting our rivers but not against polluting our minds. ~ Robert Barron, #NFDB
436:Criminals are just regular people who didn’t have time to read all the laws. ~ Mariska Hargitay, #NFDB
437:I care not who makes th' laws iv a nation, if I can get out an injunction. ~ Finley Peter Dunne, #NFDB
438:Laws and Institutions Must Go Hand in Hand with the Progress of the Human Mind. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
439:Laws are effective only when authorities enforce them and society submits. ~ William Manchester, #NFDB
440:Laws matter, but typically changing the law by itself accomplishes little. ~ Nicholas D Kristof, #NFDB
441:Let reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion of the nation. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
442:Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
443:Marriage laws, the police, armies and navies are the mark of human incompetence. ~ Dora Russell, #NFDB
444:Possible reality [is obtained] by slightly bending physical and chemical laws. ~ Marcel Duchamp, #NFDB
445:Principles are like lighthouses. They are natural laws that cannot be broken. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
446:The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
447:The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
448:There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.” ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
449:There are two laws discreteNot reconciled,Law for man, and law for thing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
450:We change the Clave,” said Alec. “From inside. We make new Laws. Better ones. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
451:When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
452:Again what city ever received Plato's or Aristotle's laws, or Socrates' precepts? But, ~ Erasmus, #NFDB
453:As important as it is to change the light bulbs, its more important to change the laws ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
454:Dove parlano tamburi, tacciono le leggi. Where drums beat, laws are silent. An ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
455:Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
456:I canna’ change the laws of physics, Captain! –SCOTTY, CHIEF ENGINEER IN STAR TREK ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
457:If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
458:Not violence, nor untruth but non-violence and Truth are the laws of our being. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
459:One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
460:Some mother in laws should eat their makeup so they can be pretty on the inside too. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
461:Thanks to those pesky laws of physics, when things aren't sustainable, they stop. ~ Paul Gilding, #NFDB
462:The law is rough. I'm not talking about new laws, the existing law is very rough. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
463:the laws of God, like the law of gravity, do not depend upon how I feel about them. ~ Scott Hahn, #NFDB
464:There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.” ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
465:There are two things nobody should ever have to watch being made, sausage and laws. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
466:The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
467:True works of art are a manifestation of the higher laws of nature. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
468:Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have to respect the Turkish Republic's laws ~ Recep Tayyip Erdogan, #NFDB
469:We need good laws, but no law can change a human heart - only God can do that. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
470:When EVIL men make bad laws, righteous men disobey them."
Pastor Butch Paugh ~ Tarrin P Lupo,#NFDB
471:Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
472:A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
473:He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
474:I adhere to the philosophy, "I don't care who writes the laws, let me write the songs." ~ Chuck D, #NFDB
475:It is often the case that laws must change before fears about change dissipate. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
476:Laws are made to protect the trusting as well the suspicious. - Hugo L. Black ~ Max Allan Collins, #NFDB
477:Laws have never been able to change human nature, and only God can change hearts. ~ Siri Mitchell, #NFDB
478:Laws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
479:Let the gods into your life and you rapidly lose faith in the natural laws. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
480:Massachusetts’s poor laws required that boys be taught to write and girls to read.7 ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
481:Only by working within the laws that govern the flow of water will happiness be achieved. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
482:Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule. ~ Gerald R Ford, #NFDB
483:The average American doesnt realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists. ~ Eric Schmidt, #NFDB
484:The laws of man are made only to be broken, because they are stupid and unjust. ~ Dennis Wheatley, #NFDB
485:The laws of physics demand the existence of something called ‘negative energy’. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
486:The lesson of the book is that the universe is governed by the laws of science. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
487:The man has the possibilities of getting free gradually from the mechanical laws. ~ G I Gurdjieff, #NFDB
488:The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
489:There are some laws of nature you just know. You don’t go poking lions with sticks. ~ Talia Vance, #NFDB
490:Usually state laws refer to touching intimate parts, it can be breasts or buttocks. ~ Megyn Kelly, #NFDB
491:Attitude is your acceptance of the natural laws, or your rejection of the natural laws. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
492:Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
493:Laws could be passed to keep the leader of a government from getting too much power. ~ Thomas More, #NFDB
494:Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
495:Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature. ~ Michael Faraday, #NFDB
496:Once you are a proper, serious law-maker, you can't break the laws you're writing. ~ Louise Mensch, #NFDB
497:Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: Not like hard life, of laws. ~ George Meredith, #NFDB
498:Real lobbying reform must end the practice of corporate lobbyists writing our laws. ~ Marty Meehan, #NFDB
499:Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws. ~ Walter Lippmann, #NFDB
500:Thankfully for us, water seems unaware of the rules of chemistry or laws of physics. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
501:The DOE and DOD are among the most notorious offenders of our hazardous waste laws. ~ John Dingell, #NFDB
502:Things have their laws as well as men, and things refuse to be trifled with. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
503:...those who can bear to observe only unwritten laws-they all head for the taiga. ~ Sylvain Tesson, #NFDB
504:All electoral laws in Europe are more democratic than they are in the United States. ~ Peter Camejo, #NFDB
505:As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
506:Dont count on Congress. Laws come into being because people on the ground demand it. ~ Terri Sewell, #NFDB
507:God [is] the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion. ~ Robert Boyle, #NFDB
508:Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
509:Ideas exist in our minds that can be accounted for by no established laws. ~ Charles Brockden Brown, #NFDB
510:I don't like to think of laws as rules you have to follow, but more as suggestions. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
511:If a man can’t remember the laws,” Ragnar said, “then he’s got too many of them. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
512:If you don't control the borders, it doesn't matter what immigration laws you have. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
513:I've taken advantage of the laws. And frankly, so has everybody else in my position. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
514:Laws are a fine thing on paper, but painful when no bribery can ease their bind. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi, #NFDB
515:Laws aren't ghosts in this country, they walk around with the smell of earth on them. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
516:Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws. ~ Huey Newton, #NFDB
517:Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary ourselves by resisting them. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
518:Minimum-wage laws are one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of racists. ~ Walter E Williams, #NFDB
519:Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature. ~ Michael Faraday, #NFDB
520:The laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics. ~ Galileo Galilei, #NFDB
521:The laws of physics in my stories are poetic. So they don’t complain when I break them. ~ Ben Loory, #NFDB
522:The physical laws, in their observable consequences, have a finite limit of precision. ~ Kurt Godel, #NFDB
523:There are laws that only apply to people with HIV - we're becoming a viral underclass. ~ Sean Strub, #NFDB
524:The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all laws. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
525:To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
526:We all work with one Infinite Power. We all guide ourselves by exactly the same laws. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
527:You need to realize that most writing rules aren't laws, they're rules of thumb. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
528:A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws. ~ Learned Hand, #NFDB
529:An orderly society cannot exist if every man may decide which laws he will obey. ~ Lewis F Powell Jr, #NFDB
530:A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
531:Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
532:No inanimate object is ever fully determined by the laws of physics and chemistry. ~ Michael Polanyi, #NFDB
533:Some laws, though unwritten, are more firmly established than all written laws. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
534:The problem is we don't fight on the same level. We have laws that protect everybody. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
535:There are laws of the universe and if you practice them they will respond to you. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
536:What does what we know or don't know have to do with the laws that govern the world? ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
537:Whoever yields properly to Fate, is deemed Wise among men, and knows the laws of heaven. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
538:Who is a good man? He who keeps the decrees of the fathers, and both human and divine laws. ~ Horace, #NFDB
539:All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
540:Equal laws protecting equal rights…the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
541:Forgetting and remembering are governed by laws, but we cannot find out what they are. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
542:Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
543:How history negotiates its terms and collects its dues from those who break its laws. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
544:In the realm of political action, laws are few and far indeed: skills are everything. ~ Isaiah Berlin, #NFDB
545:Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws. ~ Huey P Newton, #NFDB
546:Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
547:Time puts an end to speculation in opinions, and confirms the laws of nature. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
548:Vitality and beauty are gifts of Nature for those who live according to its laws. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
549:A great team with no bench eventually collapses. The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
550:Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
551:An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
552:Bull markets and Bear markets can obscure mathematical laws, they cannot repeal them. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
553:Changing the laws of a country is not the same as changing its hearts and minds. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde, #NFDB
554:He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
555:Laws are like medicine; they generally cure an evil by a lesser or a passing evil. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
556:Laws are like the statues of certain divinities which on some occasions must be veiled.’13 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
557:One of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
558:Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
559:"Reverence for parents" stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
560:Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism, fools making laws for the breaking of jaws. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
561:[The Devil's] laws are easy, and his gentle sway, Makes it exceeding pleasant to obey . ~ Daniel Defoe, #NFDB
562:The general laws of Nature are not, for the most part, immediate objects of perception. ~ George Boole, #NFDB
563:The laws of history tell us that only when the old is gone can the new take its place. ~ Wei Jingsheng, #NFDB
564:There are two things civilized Man should never see being made: Sausages and Laws. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
565:Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations. ~ David Gerrold, #NFDB
566:When people can't control their desires... we have to pass laws to stop their desires. ~ Rick Santorum, #NFDB
567:You can't stop insane people from doing insane things with insane laws. That's insane! ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
568:Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
569:Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hands makes them obey its laws. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
570:Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd; For not to know we sinn'd is innocence. ~ William Davenant, #NFDB
571:He who understands one thing understands everything, for the same laws are in all. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
572:Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
573:Mayors do not have that authority to pick and choose what laws they're going to enforce. ~ Lou Barletta, #NFDB
574:Men promise freedom while establishing laws; God promises laws while establishing freedom. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
575:...[P]hysics... [is] the philosophy of nature, so far as it is based on empirical laws. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
576:Space and time emerge from the laws rather than providing an arena in which things happen. ~ Lee Smolin, #NFDB
577:...the laws of nature have continually all my life offended me more than anything. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
578:You Americans and your gun laws. So easy to get hold of. No wonder so many people get shot. ~ Matt Shaw, #NFDB
579:And, I, Easton Royal, am bound by the laws of the universe to pursue all things interesting. ~ Erin Watt, #NFDB
580:Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
581:A Supreme Court nomination and appointment is not a roving commission to rewrite our laws. ~ John Cornyn, #NFDB
582:Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them - and with as little impunity. ~ Ralph Chaplin, #NFDB
583:But nature did not deem it her business to make the discovery of her laws easy for us. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
584:Conscience is an instinct to pass judgment upon ourselves in accordance with moral laws. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
585:Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature! ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
586:How small, of all that human hearts endure,/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
587:If laws are unjust, they must be continually broken until they are altered. ~ Josephine St Pierre Ruffin, #NFDB
588:laws of karma: ‘Every action has consequences. Why blame the instrument of karma for ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
589:Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state, Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
590:Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
591:Orbán decides to visit his in-laws in Szolnok. I’d never been to Szolnok, so I tag along ~ Tibor Fischer, #NFDB
592:So. The laws of physics were the OS of some inconceivable supercomputer called reality. At ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
593:The laws of karma were complicated, and ultimately, one never escaped them. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
594:The laws of physics were the OS of some inconceivable supercomputer called reality. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
595:to cite Montaigne, “Nature always gives us happier laws than those we give ourselves.”125 ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
596:What our laws show is the extent and degree to which conflict has to be suppressed. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, #NFDB
597:His second motto: Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws my services are bound. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss, #NFDB
598:Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.’” Alice ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
599:Shyness has laws you can only give yourself; tragically to those who least understand. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
600:Stop quoting laws, we carry weapons! ~ Pompey to the defenders of a besieged city who were crying outrage, #NFDB
601:The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
602:The children born of thee are sword and fire,
Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws, ~ Alfred Tennyson,#NFDB
603:The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they sleep at night. ~ Bill Browder, #NFDB
604:There is a way to flow and cooperate with universal laws which can be beautiful and kind. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
605:Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
606:Why put yourself in charge of Heaven's cause?
Does Heaven need our help to enforce its laws? ~ Moli re,#NFDB
607:will not hold ourselves bound to obey the laws in which we have no voice of representation. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
608:A mathematician thinks in numbers, a lawyer in laws, and an idiot thinks in words. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
609:But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later. ~ Lydia M Child, #NFDB
610:But there are few rules or unwritten laws that are not broken when circumstances demand, ~ Harry Bernstein, #NFDB
611:HIV brings out the best and the worst in humanity, and the laws reflect these attitudes. ~ Shereen El Feki, #NFDB
612:Human laws, moral laws, religious laws, they seemed artificial and basic, almost childlike. ~ John Marsden, #NFDB
613:[It] is the interest as well as duty of a sovereign to maintain the authority of the laws. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
614:Like laws and sausages, if you love parchment it is perhaps best not to see it being made. ~ Keith Houston, #NFDB
615:Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light. ~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
616:Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. That pursuit fills me with wonder. ~ Bill Nye, #NFDB
617:reality does not have the same closed and symmetric laws and regulations as games. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
618:Slums are always a marvel; how human desperation can seem to warp the very laws of physics. ~ Sam J Miller, #NFDB
619:The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
620:The laws of physics have already been violated. What happens if they decide to press charges? ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
621:The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
622:The most sacred laws of justice are the laws which guard the life and person of our neighbor. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
623:The mother-in-laws themselves weren't natural jokes but most comedians used to use that. ~ Allen Toussaint, #NFDB
624:What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary? ~ Marion Barry, #NFDB
625:When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. ~ Derek Sivers, #NFDB
626:You are the master of all the laws of nature if you know the transcendental field. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
627:You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let's just get rid of all the drug laws. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
628:Because federal hate crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
629:Certain laws have not been written, but they are more fixed than all the written laws. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
630:Economics (...) is not a matter of discovering laws: it is essentially a question of design. ~ Kate Raworth, #NFDB
631:God is in no sense the Creator of natural forces and laws; He is the director of them. The ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
632:How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
633:I don't know who made the laws; But I know there ain't no law that you got to go hungry. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
634:If you want to diminish the number of abortions, you've got to change hearts and not laws. ~ Stephen Harper, #NFDB
635:Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
636:laws had not been created to resolve problems but in order to prolong quarrels indefinitely. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
637:Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws which govern its acquisition. ~ George S Clason, #NFDB
638:Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light! ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
639:Neither the U.S. Constitution nor laws governing prosecution of people who commit murder abroad ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
640:One of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
641:Sanity is, in essence, nothing more than the ability to live in harmony with nature's laws. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
642:Shyness has laws: you can only give yourself, tragically, to those who least understand. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
643:Thankfully for us, water seems unaware of the rules of chemistry or laws of physics. Everyone ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
644:The Bible speaks not of God’s laws, as if many of them, but of God’s Law as a single whole. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
645:The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in the laws. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
646:The morality of customs,the spirit of the laws, produces the man emancipated from the law. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
647:The old laws do not stand. Everything can be remade. Marriage does not mean marriage now ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
648:Therefore, in accordance with our laws, I sentence you, Jenna of Saura, to death." Her ~ Catherine Spangler, #NFDB
649:When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
650:All you are is a bag of particles acting out the laws of physics. That to me is pretty clear. ~ Brian Greene, #NFDB
651:Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced! ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
652:Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
653:Atal felt a spectral change in the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
654:Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. ~ Francis Bacon, Proposition touching Amendment of Laws., #NFDB
655:Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of America because you were born in it? ~ Mark Steyn, #NFDB
656:Einstein occasionally used “God” as a metaphor for the unknown fundamental laws of nature. ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
657:Far from being laws to protect women, antipolygamy statutes may really do more to protect men. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
658:Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
659:I supposed if you were going to make a career of breaking laws, you might as well know them. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
660:Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
661:Laws are meaningless, child. There is nothing more important than love. And no law higher. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
662:Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. ~ Tom Daschle, #NFDB
663:Otto von Bismarck quipped, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. ~ Cory Doctorow, #NFDB
664:Public morals are natural complement of all laws they are by themselves an entire code. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
665:The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not. ~ Emanuel Lasker, #NFDB
666:The old laws do not stand. Everything can be remade. Marriage does not mean marriage now. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
667:There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors. ~ William Graham Sumner, #NFDB
668:We do not need more laws . No country suffers from a shortage of laws. We need a new model . ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
669:We had gambled with the intrinsic laws of nature and now we were paying the ultimate price. ~ Jill Thrussell, #NFDB
670:What a novel illustration of the tender laws of England! They let the paupers go to sleep! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
671:considering this is a country where in-laws burn brides, they did seem like nice people. More ~ Chetan Bhagat, #NFDB
672:Each of us is a complicated assymetrical outcome of the laws of electromagnetism and gravity. ~ John D Barrow, #NFDB
673:Environmental laws were not passed to protect our air and water, they were passed to get votes. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
674:How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cuse or cure! ~ Samuel Johnson,#NFDB
675:I don't think you can write according to a set of rules and laws; every writer is so different. ~ Kiran Desai, #NFDB
676:If magic violates the fundamental laws of nature, they clearly weren't all that fundamental. ~ Ruthanna Emrys, #NFDB
677:It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity. ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
678:Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
679:Laws or ordinances unobserved, or partially attended to, had better never have been made. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
680:Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve. ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
681:Let him destroy by deep meditation the qualities that are opposed to the divine nature. ~ Laws of Manu VI. 72, #NFDB
682:Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
683:Like hatred, jealousy is forbidden by the laws of life because it is essentially destructive. ~ Alexis Carrel, #NFDB
684:Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
685:No matter how hard we may try, we can only travel forward. The relativistic laws guarantee it. ~ Kip S Thorne, #NFDB
686:Such is the nature of man-made laws: ignorant of the past and insensitive to the present. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
687:The dead and the unborn make their presence known through traditions, institutions, and laws. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
688:The laws of physics say if there’s a party, Isla will eventually end up dancing on a table. ~ Corey Ann Haydu, #NFDB
689:The object of pure Mathematic (is) that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence. ~ James Joseph Sylvester, #NFDB
690:What are we going to do if citizens are disarmed, and the government doesn't obey its own laws? ~ Jeff Cooper, #NFDB
691:7 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
692:Fear is the underminer of all determinations; and necessity, the victorious rebel of all laws. ~ Philip Sidney, #NFDB
693:I know how to make sausage, and now that I've seen how laws are made, I'll stick with sausage. ~ Tom Colicchio, #NFDB
694:I'm trying to help you."
"I don't know what you're doing, but I'm sure there are laws about it! ~ G A Aiken,#NFDB
695:I observe to the letter all laws that make sense but combat those that are obsolete or absurd. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
696:It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
697:laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
698:Newton came up with Newton's laws of motion and gravity. They worked. They were working. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
699:No idiot should try quoting the laws when he couldn’t tell his asshole from a hole in the ground. ~ Celia Kyle, #NFDB
700:Oh judge! Your damn laws! The good people don't need them, and the bad people don't obey them. ~ Ammon Hennacy, #NFDB
701:One of the basic laws of human existence is: find yourself, know yourself, be yourself. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
702:Sumptuary laws, as they were known, laid down precisely, if preposterously, who could wear what. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
703:Tenancy laws can be so complicated; I want to make sure OP is protected as much as possible. ~ Mallory Ortberg, #NFDB
704:The heart has its own laws... and the truth is... the truth is that you are the law of mine. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay, #NFDB
705:The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
706:The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. ~ George Mason, #NFDB
707:The laws of physics have already been violated. What happens if they decide to press charges? ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
708:the laws of self-preservation and of self-destruction are equally powerful in this world. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
709:The thing is, a lot of laws are stupid, too, and they don't always keep people out of danger. ~ Becky Chambers, #NFDB
710:This was why Singers clung to tradition. To Laws. Surprises conflicted too much with duty. Sellis ~ Fran Wilde, #NFDB
711:27And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
712:Action is the great business of mankind, and the whole matter about which all laws are conversant. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
713:Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
714:Americans often change their laws, but the foundation of the Constitution is respected. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
715:Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. ~ Aristotle, Politics, II, 8, #NFDB
716:For the provision of God constantly to be at work in our lives we must activate the laws of God. ~ Phil Pringle, #NFDB
717:Funny how being on a new planet at the edges of the universe isn’t as scary as meeting my in-laws. ~ Ruby Dixon, #NFDB
718:Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
719:How small, of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. ~ Samuel Johnson,#NFDB
720:If people lack moral values and integrity, no system of laws and regulations will be adequate. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
721:In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
722:I suppose, mother-in-laws are frightening figures. Especially, more so for mother-in-laws to be. ~ Sonia Gandhi, #NFDB
723:It is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
724:It is the function of the President, representing the executive principle, to execute the laws. ~ Garet Garrett, #NFDB
725:Laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
726:Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
727:Live the law of love. We encourage obedience to the laws of life when we live the laws of love. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
728:Man cannot contradict the Laws of Nature. But are all the laws of Nature yet discovered? ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB
729:Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
730:The liberty to make our laws does not give us the freedom nor the license to break our laws! ~ William McKinley, #NFDB
731:There ain't no justice, laws of nature rule this land. Better hide your horses, bury your whiskey. ~ Toby Keith, #NFDB
732:These three laws of Kepler give a complete description of the motion of the planets around the sun. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
733:universal laws prescribe how things will behave not, like human laws, how they ought to behave. ~ John D Barrow, #NFDB
734:When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
735:Why can't mother in laws come with a battery operated mouth and the batteries never seem to charge? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
736:You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work. ~ Louis Antoine de Saint Just, #NFDB
737:All law is from God, not from man. So, all laws are derived from the divine text, or the Koran. ~ Anjem Choudary, #NFDB
738:All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects. ~ George Edward Moore, #NFDB
739:All repressive laws must be revoked, and laws introduced to protect the rights of the people. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
740:A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
741:Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
742:But Jesus doesn’t want to talk about tangible rules or laws. He isn’t into current events either. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
743:didn't receive God's approval by obeying his laws.... I have God's approval through faith in Christ. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
744:Economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings. —Franklin D. Roosevelt ~ David Cay Johnston, #NFDB
745:Everything obeys its own inner laws. Everything is greedy, and moving toward a version of light. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
746:How blind and unreasoning and arbitrary are some of the laws of nature - the most of them, in fact! ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
747:If you [Hillary Clinton] want to change the laws, you've been there a long time, change the laws. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
748:In 1905, the court ruled that states could enact compulsory laws to protect public health. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
749:Laws institutionalized men's unfounded superiority over women by defining marriage as ownership ~ Marilyn French, #NFDB
750:The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
751:The rule of law doesn't mean the police are in charge, but that we all answer to the same laws. ~ Edward Snowden, #NFDB
752:the thing about fear is that it defies the laws of rationality. It creates its own laws instead ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
753:The universal laws of physics are the most terrifying weapons, and also the most effective defenses. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
754:The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
755:To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws. ~ Nataly Kelly, #NFDB
756:We're living based on laws and ideas that we, as a society, embraced back in the days of slavery. ~ Ava DuVernay, #NFDB
757:We should not have drug laws or a court system that disproportionately punishes the black community. ~ Rand Paul, #NFDB
758:Wise people, after they have listened to the laws, become serene, like a deep, smooth, and still lake. ~ Various, #NFDB
759:America, where thanks to Congress, there are forty million laws to enforce the Ten Commandments. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
760:Any one of the strange laws we suffer is a compromise between a fad and a vested interest. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
761:Ethics evolve naturally, and we trample upon them with laws created by reason and experience. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
762:If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
763:In order to retain a certain respect for sausages and laws, one must not see them being made. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
764:Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
765:My goal for reform is not necessarily to pass laws but to make sure the laws are being followed. ~ Chuck Grassley, #NFDB
766:Reasoned and willing obedience to the laws of the State is the first lesson in non-co-operation. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
767:That’s what made it so
frightening to the lawmakers: Love obeys
no laws other than its own. ~ Lauren Oliver,#NFDB
768:The Greens have never been on the ballot in Georgia because of restrictive ballot access laws. ~ Cynthia McKinney, #NFDB
769:The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions. ~ Naguib Mahfouz, #NFDB
770:The laws of democracy remain a dead letter, its freedom is anarchy, its equality the equality of unequals ~ Plato, #NFDB
771:The laws will not be silent in time of war but they'll speak with a somewhat different voice. ~ William Rehnquist, #NFDB
772:The problem is that many of our policymakers want to base sweeping laws on those feelings. ~ Melissa Harris Perry, #NFDB
773:To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all laws into contempt. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
774:A nation that will not enforce its laws has no claim to the respect and allegiance of its people. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
775:Dirksen's Three Laws of Politics: 1. Get elected. 2. Get re-elected. 3. Don't get mad, get even. ~ Everett Dirksen, #NFDB
776:Failure is usually boring. It is the credible but unrealized threat of failure that is interesting. ~ Robin D Laws, #NFDB
777:I mean, we’re not really breaking any laws. We’re just circumventing some bureaucratic challenges. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
778:It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can't be enforced weakens all other laws. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
779:Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
780:Some laws are wrong, and we have an obligation to speak out against those laws wherever they are. ~ Julian McMahon, #NFDB
781:Start with the idea that you can't repeal the laws of economics. Even if they are inconvenient. ~ Lawrence Summers, #NFDB
782:The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
783:The laws of human beings were counterintuitive and absurd, broken as often as they were followed. ~ Chloe Benjamin, #NFDB
784:War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the human will. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
785:We are still a nation of laws. You just have to check with Barack Obama every day to see what they are. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
786:We had to break those laws or agree to the slaveholder's image of us: three fifths of a human being. ~ June Jordan, #NFDB
787:As long as the superstition that people should obey unjust laws exists, so long will slavery exist ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
788:despite the fact that blacks and whites violated traffic laws at almost exactly the same rate. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
789:Hard lives begat hard laws, not just in the necessities of living, but also in those of believing. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
790:If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
791:If I am going to pick and choose the laws I defend, I wouldn't be doing my duty as attorney general. ~ Kelly Ayotte, #NFDB
792:In short, we do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
793:I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
794:It certainly makes no sense to enact more laws if we cannot, or do not, enforce the ones we have. ~ Blanche Lincoln, #NFDB
795:Laws and ethics are what make an army or a navy something different than a mob of assholes with guns. ~ Elliott Kay, #NFDB
796:Mathematics is man's own handiwork, subject only to the limitations imposed by the laws of thought. ~ Edward Kasner, #NFDB
797:Modern science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist. ~ Robert Lanza, #NFDB
798:People are more afraid of the laws of Man than of God, because their punishment seems to be nearest. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
799:Praying is begging for an unseen deity to alter the laws of nature for someone admittedly unworthy. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
800:The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings. ~ Max Beckmann, #NFDB
801:The laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
802:There is no jewel in the world comparable to learning; no learning so excellent as knowledge of laws. ~ Edward Coke, #NFDB
803:The War on Drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
804:To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
805:We are usually on bended knee before laws or angrily reacting against them, both immature responses. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
806:When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete. ~ Louis Antoine de Saint Just, #NFDB
807:Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
808:I decided that I'm not going to pound my fist anymore at those folks and at laws that I can't change. ~ Larry Gatlin, #NFDB
809:I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
810:Nothing so upholds the laws as the punishment of persons whose rank is as great as their crime. ~ Cardinal Richelieu, #NFDB
811:Once a nation parts with the control of its credit, it matters not who makes the laws. ~ William Lyon Mackenzie King, #NFDB
812:Reason we call that faculty innate in us of discovering laws and applying them with thought. ~ Hermann von Helmholtz, #NFDB
813:So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton's equations, are reversible. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
814:Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.”—Barbara Kingsolver Copyright ~ Austin J Bailey, #NFDB
815:The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
816:The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object. ~ Pierre Bonnard, #NFDB
817:They had a lot of rules that got in the way," Kade said dismissively.
"Those are called laws, Kade ~ Tiffany Snow,#NFDB
818:Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator. ~ Antonio Gaudi, #NFDB
819:Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
820:We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
821:All men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, their codes. ~ Marilyn French, #NFDB
822:Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
823:He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
824:I deeply, deeply believe in the mystical laws. I know that every thought sends an eternity in motion. ~ Caroline Myss, #NFDB
825:"I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
826:Monarch, thou wishest to cover thyself with glory; be the first to submit to the laws of thy empire. ~ Bias of Priene, #NFDB
827:Our new faith-based laws have removed government as a roadblock to people of faith who hear the call. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
828:Self-defense is the clearest of all laws; and for this reason - the lawyers didn't make it. ~ Douglas William Jerrold, #NFDB
829:That is how we test proposed scientific laws – by seeing if the consequences they predict actually occur. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
830:The Laws are very simple. Thought is creative. Fear attracts like energy. Love is all there is. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
831:The laws are very simple: thought is creative; fear attracts like energy; love is all there is. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
832:The laws of God, like the law of gravity, do not depend upon how I feel about them. They are inexorable. ~ Scott Hahn, #NFDB
833:The origin and the operation of the universe do not require any violations of the laws of physics. ~ Victor J Stenger, #NFDB
834:There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers. ~ Susan B Anthony, #NFDB
835:To the extent to which we believe in this world, we are heir to the laws which rule this place. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
836:Without the intervention of the civil authority what would our percepts become?- Platonic laws. ~ Philipp Melanchthon, #NFDB
837:By not doing evil to creatures and mastering one’s senses...one arrives here below at the supreme goal. ~ Laws of Manu, #NFDB
838:Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
839:good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws ~ Plato, #NFDB
840:It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
841:Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
842:Miracles do not go against the laws of nature; we only think that because we do not know nature's laws. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
843:Now by the laws of war, better than defeating a country by fire and the sword, is to take it without strife. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
844:[ on the "tropicalization" of intellectual property laws ] To make the digital world join in the samba. ~ Gilberto Gil, #NFDB
845:There are laws of hate in the universe, shaping even its loves, and it is time I made them work for me. ~ Fritz Leiber, #NFDB
846:Things change, people change,
change is the inevitable laws of nature exacting its toll on lives. ~ Nicholas Sparks,#NFDB
847:This tendency to make laws that are convenient or advantageous rather than right has mushroomed. ~ John Howard Griffin, #NFDB
848:To the scientist, the universality of physical laws makes the cosmos a marvelously simple place. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
849:We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
850:When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable. ~ Emile Durkheim, #NFDB
851:When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable. ~ mile Durkheim, #NFDB
852:All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
853:Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
854:Everyone knew I was the least favorite Decker and how tenuous my relationship had been with my in-laws. ~ Jennifer Peel, #NFDB
855:Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. ~ Plato, #NFDB
856:I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
857:It strengthens the bonds between nations to have the same civil laws and the same monetary system. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
858:It was one thing to defy the laws of biology, but defying the laws of geometry was downright condescending. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
859:Laws against the possession of weapons only disarm those who have no intention of committing a crime. ~ Cesare Beccaria, #NFDB
860:Nor does this understanding require a prolonged grounding in the not yet established laws of psychology. ~ Gilbert Ryle, #NFDB
861:... one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65] ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
862:Rules, guidelines, and even laws are someone's opinion about how things should be done. Nothing more. ~ Johnny B Truant, #NFDB
863:The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
864:The Labor Party is a party with no ideals, regulations or laws, and it is a party I will not be a part of. ~ Ami Ayalon, #NFDB
865:The laws of Caesar are one thing, those of Christ, another. Papinianus judges one way, our Paul another. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
866:The ultimate cause of human disease is the consequence of our transgression of the universal laws of life. ~ Paracelsus, #NFDB
867:We either have a country or we don't. America is a country of laws. We either have a border or we don't. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
868:You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
869:After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth. ~ Grover Cleveland, #NFDB
870:But then, as the man himself often said, laws were there to be stretched and explored, were they not? ~ Charlie Cochrane, #NFDB
871:Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
872:Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
873:Indeed, the Roman laws allowed no person to be carried to the wars but he that was in the soldiers roll. ~ Philip Sidney, #NFDB
874:In Islam, the legislative power and competence to establish laws belong exclusively to God Almighty. ~ Ruhollah Khomeini, #NFDB
875:Laws tend to be temporary over the long haul, Moneo. There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
876:Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
877:Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe. ~ Charles Hard Townes, #NFDB
878:Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
879:Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
880:Romans 2:14–15 (see Ephesians 2:3)—How can those who are by nature sinners keep God’s laws of nature? ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
881:The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
882:The object of a Constitution is to restrain the Government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals. ~ John C Calhoun, #NFDB
883:There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
884:The so-called laws of nature are nothing more than the physical expression of the steady will of Christ. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
885:The Terrible Truth is that brutality is part of human nature, and all the laws in the world can't neuter it. ~ Greg Iles, #NFDB
886:They don't have special rights because we have civil rights laws that protect them. The laws work both ways. ~ Tom Allen, #NFDB
887:You don't need lawyers making laws. Regular citizens can make laws. Let the lawyers work under the laws. ~ Jesse Ventura, #NFDB
888:Animals that fly seem to violate the laws of physics, but only until you learn a bit more about physics. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
889:If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician I am glad to have laws. ~ Jennifer Palmieri, #NFDB
890:I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power. ~ Salvador Dal, #NFDB
891:I wish that there were more stringent laws to make guns sold anywhere that they're legal harder to get. ~ Rosie O Donnell, #NFDB
892:Learn what are the duties which are engraved in the hearts of men as their means of arriving to beatitude. ~ Laws of Manu, #NFDB
893:Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
894:No other animal in the world would try to defy the laws of nature, but humans are a very peculiar species. ~ Hiro Arikawa, #NFDB
895:One of the cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
896:[S]ince the dawn of civilization, getting in-laws has been one of marriage's most important functions. ~ Stephanie Coontz, #NFDB
897:The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the laws of diminishing returns. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
898:There is a fantastic courage in this, to live without laws, without fetters, without thought of consequences. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
899:To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect. ~ Hosea Ballou, #NFDB
900:We live a short period of time in this world, but we live it according to the laws of eternal life. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
901:All laws and philosophy merely tell us what should be done, but they do not provide the strength to do it. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
902:Congress voted for tougher laws on corporations. So now when a corporation buys a senator, they need a receipt. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
903:Gay and lesbian people are equal. They deserve equal protection of the laws, and they deserve it now. ~ Donald Verrilli Jr, #NFDB
904:If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
905:Islamic state means a state based on justice and democracy and structured upon Islamic rules and laws. ~ Ruhollah Khomeini, #NFDB
906:I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power. ~ Salvador Dali, #NFDB
907:Like wars, forest fires and bad marriages, really stupid laws are much easier to begin than they are to end. ~ Matt Taibbi, #NFDB
908:Moral values, and a culture and a religion, maintaining these values are far better than laws and regulations. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
909:No laws can be of avail except in so far as they are founded on religion. ~ Park, J., Williams v. Paul (1830), 6 Bing. 653, #NFDB
910:People hand over the power to you withimmense faith. It's your job to ensure tough implementation of laws. ~ Raj Thackeray, #NFDB
911:Simple the life, simpler will be your instincts, the laws that govern universe will obey your simplicity. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
912:The founder brought the laws from the lawgiver; the faithful are meant to announce the laws to the lawgiver. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
913:There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
914:Virtue alone is not sufficient for the exercise of government; laws alone cannot carry themselves into practice. ~ Mencius, #NFDB
915:We have never had the will to enforce the immigration laws. What you see is what you'll continue to get. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
916:When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
917:Why, in our age of science, [do] we still have laws and policies which come from an age of superstition? ~ Shereen El Feki, #NFDB
918:Wouldst thou know if a people be well governed, or if its laws be good or bad, examine the music it practices. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
919:Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books."
[Proposition touching Amendment of Laws] ~ Francis Bacon,#NFDB
920:Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
921:God is not naïve in the giving of His laws; He anticipates our disobedience even as He commands our obedience. ~ Max Anders, #NFDB
922:His rules were unencumbered by my constraints—the Constitution and the laws promulgated thereunder. Still, ~ Jeffery Deaver, #NFDB
923:I don't want to be pitted as a person who is anti-Latino or anti-Hispanic because I believe in the laws. ~ Andrew Breitbart, #NFDB
924:I have not the power adequately to describe them without committing a breach of the laws of decent speech. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
925:I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution. ~ Ulysses S Grant, #NFDB
926:I think that the 'laws of nature' are also prone to evolve; I think they are more like habits than laws. ~ Rupert Sheldrake, #NFDB
927:It is essential to link enterprises on the basis of objective laws of a socialist economy and legal system. ~ Samora Machel, #NFDB
928:It's not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It's those who write the songs. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
929:Reality imposes its law on man, laws that he can only escape in dreams or in states of trance—or in insanity. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
930:Some always want more than they have. And many who make our laws do not believe they should apply to them. ~ J A Sutherland, #NFDB
931:The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
932:The objective laws of form and color help to strengthen a person's powers and to expand his creative gift. ~ Johannes Itten, #NFDB
933:The observance of the laws of Christ cannot be less necessary than the observance of the laws of Moses was. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
934:There is nothing which any way pertaineth to the worship of God left to the determination of human laws. ~ George Gillespie, #NFDB
935:These limitations and restraints were laws. To be obedient to them was to escape hurt and make for happiness. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
936:The universe is a machine governed by principles or laws – laws that can be understood by the human mind. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
937:to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy’. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
938:What mostly prevents black people from voting is that drug laws send them to prison, and then they can't vote. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
939:All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws. ~ Pierre Simon Laplace, #NFDB
940:America and Mexico are both a nation of immigrants and we are a nation of laws and we can act accordingly. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
941:A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws, but rather represents laws which are incomprehensible to us. ~ G I Gurdjieff, #NFDB
942:Breaking into a country signals quite reliably a willingness to break yet more of the invaded country's laws. ~ Ilana Mercer, #NFDB
943:Just because someone gets arrested doesn't mean what they are doing is wrong. Some laws are unfair and unjust. ~ Tim Robbins, #NFDB
944:My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
945:One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. ~ Yuval Noah Harari, #NFDB
946:Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
947:Study not man in his animal nature - man following the laws of the jungle - but study man in all his glory. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
948:There’s this assumption that most people, if you strip society and its laws away, are capable of evil. ~ Holly Goddard Jones, #NFDB
949:The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression. ~ Eugene Wigner, #NFDB
950:The soul is its own witness, the soul is its own refuge. Never despise thy soul, that supreme witness in men. ~ Laws of Manu, #NFDB
951:The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
952:[We should] suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
953:Blackhole doesn't crush those things in the vicinity.
It miniaturises everything in different laws of physics. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
954:Breaking through the cyclical laws of physical nature is the basis of the spiritual process that Adiyogi explored. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
955:Bur I guess the thing about fear is that it defies the laws of rationality. It creates its own laws instead. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
956:But I guess the thing about fear is that it defies the laws of rationality. It creates its own laws instead. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
957:God has provided principles and laws in his Word that outline the process of developing maturity in his people. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
958:good individuals cannot exist without good education, and good education cannot exist without good laws, ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
959:Humans are organisms, subject to physical laws, including, alas, the one that says entropy always increases. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
960:I didn’t arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.”—A. Einstein ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
961:If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
962:I refute a god who would do such a thing to test people who have done their best to live according to his laws. ~ Ann Aguirre, #NFDB
963:It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, #NFDB
964:Nature in everything demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
965:Nature is with us if we can learn how to align with it and not break the basic laws that generate life. ~ Frances Moore Lappe, #NFDB
966:Our human bodies are miracles, not because they defy laws of nature, but precisely because they obey them. ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
967:Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made. ~ Grover Cleveland, #NFDB
968:Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
969:Somewhat, lawbreakers are lawmakers for they give lawmakers real reasons to make and strengthen laws ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
970:Spread the truth-the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere. ~ Lawrence Summers, #NFDB
971:The inscrutable laws of sex have so arranged that even a timid woman is not afraid of a fierce and haughty man. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
972:There are laws of nature - of course there are - even if they don't exist in some sort of bizarre Platonic Heaven. ~ L A Paul, #NFDB
973:There are still very few laws against thinking, although I am sure they're working hard on that in Washington. ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
974:The [Ronald] Reagan administration told the business world that they were not going to enforce the labor laws. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
975:We are Muslims. My father would pawn off his Muslim in-laws as Hindus just so that he could get free pancakes. ~ Aasif Mandvi, #NFDB
976:When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. ~ Stephen M R Covey, #NFDB
977:A pair of legs engineered to defy the laws of physics and a mindset to master the most epic of splits. ~ Jean Claude Van Damme, #NFDB
978:Balzac wrong when he wrote, ‘Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
979:Forget the laws. If the laws don't make sense, if they run contrary to your conscience, you have to disobey them. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
980:Gavin did. I figured after all the gray hair I’ve given him, it would be nice to ask before I broke any more laws. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
981:Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws - Plato ~ Plato, #NFDB
982:In 1649 the laws were tightened even further—to the extent that swearing at a parent became punishable by death. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
983:It's not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It's the hand that casts the ballot. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
984:Laws exist in every state that make animal cruelty a crime. Horse slaughter is simply another form of animal abuse. ~ Bo Derek, #NFDB
985:People who reject law and order change their minds when they can lay down the laws and give the orders. ~ Suzanne Woods Fisher, #NFDB
986:Prior to the seventeenth century the laws of probability were defined by the intuition and experience of gamblers, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
987:Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile." "But ~ Larry Niven, #NFDB
988:The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. ~ Giordano Bruno, #NFDB
989:the “logic” of the facts—that is, as it sought to deduce laws or universals from the raw data of the particulars. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
990:Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
991:What a pity if we do not live this short time according to the laws of the long time,--the eternal laws! ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
992:A child who has been taught to respect the laws of God will have little difficulty respecting the laws of men. ~ J Edgar Hoover, #NFDB
993:Everything not forbidden by the laws of nature, he assured her - quoting a colleague down the hall - is mandatory. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
994:Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
995:It is the quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
996:It's a product of the fractal laws that govern the world at an informational level. There is no deeper truth. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
997:Laws must never be made compatible with crimes, no more than lying should be in harmony with the truth. ~ Saint Vincent de Paul, #NFDB
998:Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
999:Mr. President, no one is saying you broke any laws, we're just saying it's a little bit weird you didn't have to. ~ John Oliver, #NFDB
1000:No social being is less protected than the young Parisian girl—by laws, regulations, and social customs. ~ Cathy Marie Buchanan, #NFDB
1001:Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
1002:Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. That is where the true evil lies. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1003:The fundamental laws are in the long run merely statements that every event is itself and not some different event. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1004:The God Spinoza revered is my God, too: I meet Him everyday in the harmonious laws which govern the universe. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1005:The magician to some degree is trying to drive him or herself mad in a controlled setting, within controlled laws. ~ Alan Moore, #NFDB
1006:There are greater issues in life than sport, and the greatest of these is loyalty to the great laws of the soul. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1007:Thus Blackstone is right when he says, "Human laws are invalid, because they are contrary to the laws of nature. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1008:When you are a king, you may make as many ridiculous laws as you like. That is what being a king is all about. ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
1009:When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia. ~ Derek Sivers, #NFDB
1010:When you think good, good follows—when you think evil, evil follows. These are simple examples of laws of mind. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1011:A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold. ~ John Paul Stevens, #NFDB
1012:A •practical philosophy doesn’t commit itself to explanations of what happens but to laws about what ought to happen ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1013:A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as forThy laws Makes it and th'action fine. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1014:For he who is a corrupter of the laws is more than likely to be a corrupter of the young and foolish portion of mankind. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1015:He kept his eyes upon her as the natural laws is the universe brought them closer together with each revolution. ~ Daniel Suarez, #NFDB
1016:I can only say that friendship should rise above man-made laws, which tend to be capricious by their very nature. ~ Tendai Huchu, #NFDB
1017:It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
1018:Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
1019:Minimum wage laws make it illegal for a worker to accept a job that pays less, even if the worker needs that job. ~ Peter Schiff, #NFDB
1020:Our pre-9/11 gun laws allow our enemies in the War on Terror to arm themselves right here in our own country. ~ Carolyn McCarthy, #NFDB
1021:People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
1022:The good thing about the laws of physics is that they require no law enforcement agencies to maintain them ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1023:The laws of the universe dictate that for every positive action, there is an unequal and sucky reaction. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
1024:The particle and the planet are subject to the same laws and what is learned of one will be known of the other. ~ James Smithson, #NFDB
1025:there can be no dharma without the spirit of generosity. Without genuine love, laws and rules are worthless. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1026:to pray’: ‘to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy’. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1027:Well, I think we need to have attrition by enforcement. We need to secure our borders. We need to enforce our laws. ~ Allen West, #NFDB
1028:When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1029:Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1030:A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1031:As long as it's a world, it has laws. Why, I don't know, it's just the way it is. In Nirvana, there are no laws. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1032:Civics lessons and biology lessons intermingled, hormones spoken of alongside the laws that governed their excesses. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
1033:Civilisation and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life. ~ Ernst Haeckel, #NFDB
1034:Civilization and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life. ~ Ernst Haeckel, #NFDB
1035:He felt like a criminal, though the only laws he'd broken were his own, and he wasn't sure which ones they were. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
1036:I'm still strongly opposed to antismoking laws, strongly opposed to any law that regulates personal behavior. ~ John Perry Barlow, #NFDB
1037:Just as it is the duty of all men to obey just laws, so it is the duty of all men to disobey unjust laws. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1038:Laws not only provide concrete benefits, they can even change the hearts of men—some men, anyhow—for good or evil. ~ Gilbert King, #NFDB
1039:Mother's milk would be banned by the food safety laws of industrialized nations if it were sold as a packaged good. ~ Paul Hawken, #NFDB
1040:Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1041:Our laws might seem harsh but we're not inhuman. We treasure every unique individual. We make room for difference. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
1042:The laws of physics ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose. ~ Paul Davies, #NFDB
1043:[T]he laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated ... without recourse to the concept of consciousness. ~ Eugene Wigner, #NFDB
1044:The origin of the universe might be forever unknown, but all that had happened after obeyed the laws of physics ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
1045:The state and its elites must be subject, in theory and in practice, to the same laws that its poorest citizens are. ~ Mo Ibrahim, #NFDB
1046:The underlining assumption of all the new laws is that women can't be trusted to make their own health decisions; ~ Willie Parker, #NFDB
1047:Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society. Only my society and the one making the laws are different. ~ Owsley Stanley, #NFDB
1048:We all share in the same cosmic rhythm... For all natural laws are like the rhythm of the strings of the harp. ~ Ernesto Cardenal, #NFDB
1049:We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1050:We may form free constitutions, but our vices will destroy them; we may enact laws, but they will not protect us. ~ Lyman Beecher, #NFDB
1051:Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people. ~ Archibald Cox, #NFDB
1052:According to the laws of early twenty-first century cinema, anyone speaking Japanese is in a horror movie. If ~ Seth Grahame Smith, #NFDB
1053:...behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1054:Crime to many is not crime but simply a way of life. If laws are inconvenient, ignore them, they dont apply to you. ~ Dick Francis, #NFDB
1055:I also am sure that there is no such thing as free thinking in asmuch as all thinking must be bound by its own laws. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
1056:I think we're seeing privacy diminish, not by laws... but by young people who don't seem to value their privacy. ~ Alan Dershowitz, #NFDB
1057:Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
1058:One of the peculiarities of Delhi is that the term 'reform' is associated only with passing of laws in Parliament. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1059:Our existing media system today is the direct result of government laws and subsidies that created it. ~ Robert Waterman McChesney, #NFDB
1060:Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them. ~ James Anthony Froude, #NFDB
1061:Reason and reality are the only means to just laws; mindless wishes, if given sovereignty, become deadly masters. ~ Terry Goodkind, #NFDB
1062:sometimes people think they're above the laws the rest of us live by. they're blind to their own imperfections. ~ Ellen Wittlinger, #NFDB
1063:True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
1064:What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1065:Whenever society begins to create policies and laws rooted in fear and anger, there will be abuse and injustice. ~ Bryan Stevenson, #NFDB
1066:All laws and ideas are historical and relative, not absolute. They are relevant to their particular time and place ~ Harry Harrison, #NFDB
1067:Before, Europe was about treaties, laws and our sovereign right to govern ourselves. Now, it's about everyday lives. ~ Nigel Farage, #NFDB
1068:Fascism will perish for the very reason that it has applied to man the laws applicable to atoms and cobblestones! ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
1069:God Himself has reserved no right of revision of His own laws nor is there any need for Him for any such revision. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1070:Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
1071:No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.' ~ John Adams, #NFDB
1072:Perform no miracles for me, But justify Thy laws to me Which, as the years pass by me. All soundlessly unfold. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1073:SOLOMON'S LAWS 4. If you're going to all the trouble to make a fool of yourself, be sure to have plenty of witnesses. ~ Paul Levine, #NFDB
1074:The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
1075:The laws of war right now say that we can respond when our country is threatened. That is what international law says. ~ Jill Stein, #NFDB
1076:The logic of thought is derivative of the laws of nature.
Laws of nature is subject to the idea that creates nature. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
1077:The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1078:...the test of truth is proof combined with reason.
Philo of Alexandria; Book 30: The Special Laws, IV ~ Philo of Alexandria,#NFDB
1079:We are all bound thither; we are hastening to the same common goal. Black death calls all things under the sway of its laws. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
1080:We must proceed with a full realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. ~ Warren G Harding, #NFDB
1081:We want to create the purely organic building, boldly emanating its inner laws, free of untruths or ornamentation. ~ Walter Gropius, #NFDB
1082:A Confucian or Jewish love of learning would gain minorities far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass. ~ Richard Lamm, #NFDB
1083:By 1927, the average state was spending eight times more on enforcing fish and game laws than it spent on Prohibition. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1084:Having a manor distant from one’s in-laws usually means that when they do visit, they have a tendency to stay. ~ Mary Lydon Simonsen, #NFDB
1085:I don't care who writes a nation's laws - or crafts its advanced treaties - if I can write its economics textbooks. ~ Paul Samuelson, #NFDB
1086:If we can keep ourselves from interfering with the natural laws of life, mistakes can be our child's finest teachers. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1087:Laws are important and valuable in the exact natural sciences, in the measure that those sciences are universally valid. ~ Max Weber, #NFDB
1088:Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1089:Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1090:There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
1091:We are better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history. ~ John E Jones III, #NFDB
1092:All the laws of Nature exist inside us, and if we don't find them inside ourselves we will never find them outside. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
1093:Democracy comes naturally to him who is habituated normally to yield willing obedience to all laws, human or divine. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1094:How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors. ~ Daniel O Connell, #NFDB
1095:I flatter myself [we] have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
1096:If laws and principles were fixed and invariable, nations would not change them as readily as we change our shirts. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
1097:I get to cry to Barbara Walters, when things don't go my way. I'll get community service no matter which laws I break. ~ Brad Paisley, #NFDB
1098:In inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame of things, the highest reason is always the truest. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1099:It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1100:Kremlin, the regime has passed laws that ban ‘propaganda for homosexuality’, and imposed a criminal liability for libel. ~ Nick Cohen, #NFDB
1101:Peace does not mean an absence of conflict, because opposition, polarity and conflict are natural and universal laws. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
1102:Politics is the enemy of a sound economic entity, he mused. New laws, harsher tax rates, meddling . . . and now this. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1103:The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies. ~ John Lescroart, #NFDB
1104:The EU leaves us no freedom to determine our own immigration and asylum laws. That's why leaving the EU is necessary. ~ Geert Wilders, #NFDB
1105:the laws of Newton, appropriate tools for a clockmaker deity who could create a world and set it running for eternity. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
1106:The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws. ~ Michael Cunningham, #NFDB
1107:The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1108:Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
1109:Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note. ~ Wynton Marsalis, #NFDB
1110:Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1111:If one were not animated with the desire to discover laws, they would escape the most enlightened attention. ~ Joseph Louis Gay Lussac, #NFDB
1112:in-laws for their generosity and many kindnesses. To the rest of my wonderful family, I remain indebted and grateful ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
1113:it is bocs that does yfel i saes all bocs the boc of the crist the boc of the cyng all laws from abuf mor efry year. ~ Paul Kingsnorth, #NFDB
1114:Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern. ~ Alan Dershowitz, #NFDB
1115:Legislatures and parliaments can get together and pretend to change God's laws, but it has no effect on eternal truth. ~ John Bytheway, #NFDB
1116:Metaphysics,--the science which determines what can and what cannot be known of being and the laws of being. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
1117:My role was to bring about fairness in the workplace. All I did was implement the laws that were currently on the books. ~ Hilda Solis, #NFDB
1118:Nothing exists without a purpose. And we humans are subject to the laws of nature just as everything else on earth is. ~ Caroline Myss, #NFDB
1119:Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes laws for our today. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1120:The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
1121:the power to charm the female has sometimes been more important than the power to conquer other males in battle. LAWS ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
1122:The smallest thought could not exist unless the entire universe and the laws of physics were in some way encouraging it. ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
1123:A country without a patent office and good patent laws is just a crab, and can't travel any way but sideways and backways. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1124:Although everyone knew it as freedom from the laws of Islam, no one was quite sure what else westernization was good for. ~ Orhan Pamuk, #NFDB
1125:he understood well that code of by-laws which was presumed to constitute the character of a gentleman in his circle. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
1126:His projects conduct electricity, engage motion with toothed wheels, react in concert with universal laws of physics. ~ Cristina Garc a, #NFDB
1127:In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
1128:It is hoped that we will never see 32768 protocols, but Murphy made some laws which don't allow us to make this assumption. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1129:I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
1130:Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1131:Laws are like spiders webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape. ~ Solon, #NFDB
1132:Leave the ass burdened with laws behind in the valley. But your conscience, let it ascend with Isaac into the mountain. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1133:Look, I'm a member of the House of Lords and I'm the first to admit that I don't understand how one gets new laws through. ~ Alan Sugar, #NFDB
1134:natural laws are not immutable because they are descriptions of what happens, not prescriptions of what must happen. ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
1135:Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
1136:Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the Deity. ~ James G Frazer, #NFDB
1137:There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end ofthe search for the ultimate laws of nature. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1138:There is evidence that high minimum wage laws also increase crime because they condemn some people to chronic unemployment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1139:... there's a vast gap between what we know and what we allow, what objective science affirms and what the laws permit. ~ Wayne Pacelle, #NFDB
1140:This is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
1141:We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1142:We need laws that protect everyone - men and women, straights and gays, regardless of sexual perversion...ah, persuasion. ~ Bella Abzug, #NFDB
1143:We've investigated the gun lobby and its political donations and how it spread the Stand Your Ground laws from Florida. ~ Clara Jeffery, #NFDB
1144:A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1145:For centuries we have been living in the society where not laws but people ruled, where there was no legal state. ~ Nursultan Nazarbayev, #NFDB
1146:General Zia brought in Islamic laws which reduced a woman’s evidence in court to count for only half that of a man’s. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
1147:I am not like other men, and the ordinary laws of morality and rules of propriety do not apply to me,” Napoleon vaunted. ~ Kate Williams, #NFDB
1148:I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws but to repeal them. ~ Barry Goldwater, #NFDB
1149:If you think it is hard to get humans to follow traffic laws, imagine convincing an asteroid to move along an ellipse. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1150:It is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that laws written in the 1970s are adequate for today's intelligence challenges. ~ Bob Barr, #NFDB
1151:It is found by experience that admirable laws and right precedents among the good have their origin in the misdeeds of others. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
1152:Life itself is but the expression of a sum of phenomena, each of which follows the ordinary physical and chemical laws. ~ Rudolf Virchow, #NFDB
1153:No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being. ~ Benjamin Constant, #NFDB
1154:the most important point: that the universe is governed by a set of rational laws that we can discover and understand. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1155:The power and beauty of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1156:When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear. Rules and laws fly straight out the window. ~ M L Stedman, #NFDB
1157:As the poet Alexander Pope said: Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1158:Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1159:Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws. Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743–1812) ~ Milton William Cooper, #NFDB
1160:I do have an obligation to make sure that I am following some of the rules. I can't simply ignore laws that are out there. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1161:In 2056, I think you'll be able to buy T-shirts on which are printed equations describing the unified laws of our universe. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
1162:In America the government took the land from the Indians and then established laws protecting private property. ~ Alvin Francis Poussaint, #NFDB
1163:It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
1164:It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws. ~ Vladimir Lenin, #NFDB
1165:[I]t is the powerful who write the laws of the world-- and the powerful who ignore these laws when expediency dictates. ~ Michael Parenti, #NFDB
1166:Many states have laws against cousin marriage, which I think are ridiculous - people should be allowed to make that choice. ~ Amber Heard, #NFDB
1167:Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1168:Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1169:Ordinary human laws are the means -- however imperfect -- by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
1170:People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws. EDMUND BURKE ~ Conn Iggulden, #NFDB
1171:Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
1172:Surely you couldn't be a good doctor and a terrible human being---surely the laws of man, if not God, didn't allow it. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
1173:The failed stimulus, along with Obamacare's long list of failures, show what happens when Congress passes laws in a rush. ~ John Barrasso, #NFDB
1174:The fundamental laws of the universe which correspond to the two fundamental theorems of the mechanical theory of heat. ~ Rudolf Clausius, #NFDB
1175:The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy. ~ John Quincy Adams, #NFDB
1176:The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom. Without access to true chaos, we’ll never have true peace. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1177:There are some laws that are coded into the very nature of the universe, and one is: There Is Never Enough Shelf Space. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1178:This paperwork gave John Jones and the three young agents immunity from American laws for the duration of the mission. ~ Robert Muchamore, #NFDB
1179:Trade on the Internet is becoming very widespread. The problem is our laws have not caught up with electronic commerce. ~ Susan Bysiewicz, #NFDB
1180:We have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, since you were here.' He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1181:When pain has been constant, it has its own momentum and laws. The vital thing is to break its ascendancy over the mind. ~ Suzanne Massie, #NFDB
1182:Where the realm of freedom of thought and action begin, the determination of individuals according to generic laws ends. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
1183:"Adaptation demands an observance of laws far more universal in their application than purely local and temporary conditions." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1184:As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. ~ Anne Hutchinson, #NFDB
1185:God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1186:It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1187:John Lott has done the most extensive, thorough and sophisticated study we have on the effects of loosening gun control laws. ~ Gary Kleck, #NFDB
1188:Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice."
"Justice is always lost where Trade is concerned. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi,#NFDB
1189:Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1190:The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
1191:The existence of laws for the association of ideas, as for all intellectual operations, insults our native indiscipline. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
1192:This book is set in 1988, but the tangle of laws that hinder prosecution of rape cases on many reservations still exists. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
1193:Whatever the final laws of nature may be, there is no reason to suppose that they are designed to make physicists happy. ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
1194:What would you do if you ruled the world?” The gigolo replied that he would abolish all laws. Barthes said: “Even grammar? ~ Laurent Binet, #NFDB
1195:Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
1196:All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws. ~ John Coltrane, #NFDB
1197:Empirical laws [...] have only slight or even no value beyond the limits within which they have been observed to be true. ~ Vilfredo Pareto, #NFDB
1198:God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1199:It is an old adage, "All is fair in love as in war," but I thought not of general laws, and only felt a private grievance. ~ Jane Swisshelm, #NFDB
1200:It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws ~ Hans Hofmann, #NFDB
1201:Painting is a science pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature...Observation is considered the key to natural science. ~ Bridget Riley, #NFDB
1202:Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
1203:Regarding the Laws of Thermodynamics: "(1) You can't win, (2) you can't break even, and (3) you can't get out of the game. ~ Dennis Overbye, #NFDB
1204:The laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1205:The United States is a country of laws and not men and that we will provide safety to those who come to us for safety.”) ~ Elizabeth Strout, #NFDB
1206:We chase gravity of the micro world, but after leaving its world we try to perfect the laws here that do not exist there. ~ Akiane Kramarik, #NFDB
1207:Whatever love laws have to be broken, the first few seconds suffice. After that everything is a matter of time and incident. ~ Amruta Patil, #NFDB
1208:Without God, all seeing and perceiving of things and laws become abstraction, a separation from both origin and goal. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1209:All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land. ~ William Kingdon Clifford, #NFDB
1210:downright ridiculous legislation (such as laws specifically prohibiting blacks and whites from playing chess together). ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1211:Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take. ~ A R Ammons, #NFDB
1212:For as laws are necessary that good manners be preserved, so there is need of good manners that law may be maintained. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
1213:Gun bans disarm victims, putting them at the mercy of murderers or terrorists who think nothing of breaking the gun laws. ~ Michael Badnarik, #NFDB
1214:It's very clear that we are going to have 10 different [abortion] laws and that we are going to have these laws made by judges ~ Paul Martin, #NFDB
1215:No government can be free that does not allow all its citizens to participate in the formation and execution of her laws. ~ Thaddeus Stevens, #NFDB
1216:Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
1217:The European and international authorities have never taken steps to implement the necessary laws and regulations, however. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1218:The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1219:We are bound to our lives, to our pasts, to the laws of what we consider right or wrong, and suddenly, everything changes. We ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1220:You can't change laws without first changing human nature... You can't change human nature without first changing the law. ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
1221:Adrift upon the sea of time, the lonely god wanders from shore to distant shore, upholding the laws of the stars above. ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
1222:A good person will resist an evil system with his whole soul. Disobedience of the laws of an evil state is therefore a duty. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1223:because the laws of the universe support it by random chance, or the alternative: the universe was created to foster human life. ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
1224:For Krishna, there can be no dharma without the spirit of generosity. Without genuine love, laws and rules are worthless. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1225:God instituted laws whereby [the Spirits that He would send into the world] could have a privilege to advance life himself. ~ Joseph Smith Jr, #NFDB
1226:I don’t know the language or the laws and I’m completely unfamiliar with the currency . . . but, God, is it ever beautiful here. ~ Kyra Davis, #NFDB
1227:In visualizing, or making a mental picture you are not endeavoring to change the laws of nature. You are fulfilling them. ~ Genevieve Behrend, #NFDB
1228:Laws can regulate only outer actions, and all outer actions are worthless when they do not arise from inner necessity. ~ Benjamin Carter Hett, #NFDB
1229:Mayer Rothschild believed his oft-repeated quote, “Permit me to control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws. ~ Jim Marrs, #NFDB
1230:More and more Congressmen now stay in Washington all year-round because they can't stay at home under the laws they've passed. ~ Sam Levenson, #NFDB
1231:Our leaders will serve the common good with better laws and better actions only when we serve it first, by casting better votes. ~ Alan Keyes, #NFDB
1232:Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between poor whites and African Americans ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1233:The laws of nature are structured so that we grow and change, and get to experience the full spectrum of biological existence. ~ Robert Lanza, #NFDB
1234:The laws of supply and demand drive up the price, inevitably, over time. But solar and wind are abundant and renewable resources. ~ Van Jones, #NFDB
1235:[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1236:There are so many forms, I believe people are bright enough to make their own laws, more subtle ones than we've had before. ~ Joan Littlewood, #NFDB
1237:The time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
1238:To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance. ~ Dan Barker, #NFDB
1239:When you go against the flow of nature and betray the spiritual laws existing within, there will always be a negative reaction. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1240:A lot of industry groups have said they support a federal law. They don't want to have to deal with 50 different state laws. ~ William Jackson, #NFDB
1241:A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
1242:Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
1243:[Christianity] existed and flourishes, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
1244:Death, decay, entropy, and destruction are the true suspensions of God's laws; miracles are the early glimpses of restoration. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1245:For then only will you be strong, when you cherish the laws, and when the revolutionary attempts of lawless men shall have ceased. ~ Aeschines, #NFDB
1246:I don't believe that laws against things that people do regularly, like safe and responsible use of marijuana, make any sense. ~ Peter B Lewis, #NFDB
1247:if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1248:If you can imagine something, then it is possible within the physical laws of this universe. So says some Greek philosopher. ~ Heather O Neill, #NFDB
1249:Nothing can create something all the time due to the laws of quantum mechanics, and it's - it's fascinatingly interesting. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
1250:Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
1251:The American people love immigration. They just want it obeyed. They want the laws obeyed. They want there to be assimilation. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1252:The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
1253:There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own. ~ Dalton Trumbo, #NFDB
1254:There are plenty of laws to protect guys’ money even in war time but there’s nothing on the books says a man’s life’s his own. ~ Dalton Trumbo, #NFDB
1255:There is a beauty in these laws that mirrors something that is built into the structure of the universe at a very deep level ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
1256:There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
1257:The Russians wanted to enjoy the peace and prosperity of a civilized world, without the encumbrances of following any of its laws. ~ Brad Thor, #NFDB
1258:The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life. ~ Carl Jung, The Red Book, #NFDB
1259:they followed strange laws of which we could know nothing, they obeyed the tangled orders of their own subconscious minds. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
1260:Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1261:"We can never fully know. I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1262:We can never make sense of death,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t obey any laws or follow any rules. Death is an intractable anarchist. ~ Henning Mankell, #NFDB
1263:what does it mean, our being free to make decisions, if our behavior does nothing but follow the predetermined laws of nature? ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
1264:When unjust laws are duly weighed,
The king, too, may be disobeyed.
They owed their true prince everything. ~ Pedro Calder n de la Barca,#NFDB
1265:All my originality consists?in giving life in human fashion to beings which are impossible according to the laws of possibility. ~ Odilon Redon, #NFDB
1266:Because it's important. Laws can be reversed, Supreme Court decisions can be overturned, gender classifications can continue. ~ Carolyn Maloney, #NFDB
1267:Dwell far above the laws that govern men
And are not to be mapped by mortal judgments. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#NFDB
1268:Everything, including that which happens in our brains, depends on these and only on these: A set of fixed, deterministic laws. ~ Marvin Minsky, #NFDB
1269:I believe that the laws of karma do not apply to show business, where good things happen to bad people on a fairly regular basis. ~ Chuck Lorre, #NFDB
1270:I’m thinking of the quote you cite from Levi-Strauss—“a universe of information where the laws of savage thought reign once more. ~ Chris Kraus, #NFDB
1271:I think it's a conundrum. If we have no laws on this, people take it to one extension further, does it have to be humans, you know? ~ Rand Paul, #NFDB
1272:It's as if we think the laws of physics are subject to debate and amendment and political contributions can sway the laws of physics. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
1273:Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1274:National legislation will prevent other states' flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1275:Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1276:Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1277:The body is just the body. It has it's own structures, it's own laws. It's a thing unto itself. When it breaks down, that's it. ~ Tiffany Baker, #NFDB
1278:The president-elect [Donald Trump] has a duty and obligation to abide by the law. And he's except from most all of these laws. ~ Jason Chaffetz, #NFDB
1279:There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1280:There is nothing more potentially hostile than the indigenous ego interpreting the laws of his conqueror upon his own people ~ Domingo Martinez, #NFDB
1281:We understand that athletes aren't necessarily role models, but we at least expect them to abide by the basic laws of the state. ~ Tim Pawlenty, #NFDB
1282:Don't you know that I'd lie with you in the groves, under the light of the moon? That I'd defy the laws of gods and men for you? ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
1283:For as laws are necessary that good manners may be preserved, so there is need of good manner that laws may be maintained. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
1284:I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives. ~ Raoul Dufy, #NFDB
1285:In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
1286:It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1287:It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness. ~ Eugene Wigner, #NFDB
1288:Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1289:Laws are sometimes put on the books not for purposes of strict enforcement but as statements about the community’s values. ~ Annette Gordon Reed, #NFDB
1290:Of course you cannot free yourself from the laws of nature; but the laws of nervous systems are not the same as the physical laws. ~ Mario Bunge, #NFDB
1291:The freedom of a government does not depend on the quality of its laws, but upon the power that has the right to create them. ~ Thaddeus Stevens, #NFDB
1292:The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield. ~ Bill McKibben, #NFDB
1293:The laws of cricket tell of the English love of compromise between a particular freedom and a general orderliness, or legality. ~ Neville Cardus, #NFDB
1294:The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me. ~ A E Housman, #NFDB
1295:The laws of nature may be operative up to a certain limit, beyond which they turn against themselves to give birth to the absurd. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1296:The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
1297:The world is full of strange phenomena that cannot be explained by the laws of logic or science. Dennis Rodman is only one example. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
1298:we can help pave the roads of those around us, but we can’t choose their direction. Even trying is against the laws of samsara. ~ Michelle Moran, #NFDB
1299:We can use laws to prosecute and make people think twice before going to do something like blowing up Buddhas and other things. ~ Robert M Edsel, #NFDB
1300:When man, governed by reasonable laws, enjoys his natural freedom, let him despise woman, if she do not share it with him. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
1301:...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost. ~ Montesquieu, #NFDB
1302:All creative scientists know that the true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions they uncover the laws of truth. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1303:As if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1304:Hunger and necessity are poor teachers of morality. A society that cannot provide the basics of life does not get its laws obeyed. ~ A J Quinnell, #NFDB
1305:If human values were relative, all laws-whether those based on revealed religions or those devised by man-would become meaningless. ~ Anwar Sadat, #NFDB
1306:If I want to understand the laws of physics I have to first believe what I read about physics. I have to have faith in what I read. ~ Ray Comfort, #NFDB
1307:In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed. ~ Saul Alinsky, #NFDB
1308:Law is not theater. Before we write laws reflecting gaudy and dramatic feelings, we must be very sure we understand the difference. ~ Nancy Kress, #NFDB
1309:Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man's origin, capacity and responsibility. ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
1310:Life and death have equal authority in nature. When laws contradict so fundamentally they cause mere confusion in the average soul ~ Steve Aylett, #NFDB
1311:Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood. ~ Booker T Washington, #NFDB
1312:My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
1313:That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
1314:The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
1315:The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1316:[T]hese instances are enough to show, that the body can by the sole laws of its nature do many things which the mind wonders at. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
1317:We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1318:America's highest economic need is higher ethical standards -- enforced by strict laws and upheld by responsible business leaders. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1319:And he set to rhyme his ale-measures,
And he sang aloud his laws,
Because of the joy of giants,
The joy without a cause. ~ G K Chesterton,#NFDB
1320:And with the laws, the punishments—and there were only two—a quick and murderous fight or ostracism; and ostracism was the worst. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1321:A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction. ~ A R Ammons, #NFDB
1322:Frenchman Honoré de Balzac wrong when he wrote, ‘Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1323:He couldn’t imagine such a moment, believed instead that Serena’s beauty was like certain laws of math and physics, fixed and immutable ~ Ron Rash, #NFDB
1324:I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science. It has no beginning and no end. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1325:Laws are like spider's webs: If some poor weak creature comes up against them, it is caught; but a big one can break through and get away. ~ Solon, #NFDB
1326:Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1327:Success should be measured by the yardstick of happiness; by your ability to remain in peaceful harmony with cosmic laws. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1328:That Hellboy gun of Yours? It's not scientifically possible. It flaunts the laws of physics like a teenager on Rumspringa... ~ Michael R Underwood, #NFDB
1329:The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
1330:There is no such thing as political science, but there are tenancies so strong that they might as well be called laws of nature. ~ Jeff Greenfield, #NFDB
1331:The road to freedom lies not through mysteries or occult performances, but through the intelligent use of natural forces and laws. ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
1332:To understand the precise point when the possible becomes the impossible, you have to appreciate and understand the laws of physics. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1333:Trump's creating laws for crimes that don't exist. In Canada, we have Prime Minister Trudeau in the gay Pride parade waving a flag. ~ Eric Walters, #NFDB
1334:We have got so many regulatory laws already that in general I feel that we would be just as well off if we didn't have any more. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
1335:We simply do not find anything in the laws of nature that in any way corresponds to ideas of goodness, justice, love, or strife, ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
1336:Beyond violating our laws, visa overstays, pose - and they really are a big problem, pose a substantial threat to national security. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
1337:Christ does not make new laws; he rectifies the wrong interpretations of the scribes which had vitiated the purity of the law of God. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1338:Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete proving nature's laws wrong it learned 2 walk without having feet ~ Tupac Shakur, #NFDB
1339:God transcends world and is not bound by any law of Nature. He uses laws, laws do not use Him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #NFDB
1340:I can't think of many other laws we might need. For now, though, we'll be talking to German Muslims over issues of coexistence. ~ Wolfgang Schauble, #NFDB
1341:It is in the laws of a commonwealth, as in the laws of gaming: Whatsoever the gamesters all agree on, is injustice to none of them. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
1342:Mathematicians are inexorably drawn to nature, not just describing what is to be found there, but in creating echoes of natural laws. ~ Roger Lewin, #NFDB
1343:No town can live peacefully whatever its laws when its citizens do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love ~ Plato, #NFDB
1344:Robert Owen’s was a true insight: market economy if left to evolve according to its own laws would create great and permanent evils. ~ Karl Polanyi, #NFDB
1345:[Scientific humanism is] the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
1346:She is human and bound by the same laws of nature—gravity, in particular—as everyone else. Try as she might, she will never grow wings. ~ Amy Zhang, #NFDB
1347:States should have the right to enact laws... particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1348:The American people have the right to know and understand the laws they live under. And they tend to demand answers sooner or later. ~ John Podesta, #NFDB
1349:There`s a long conversation we`re going to have about how to enforce immigration laws. But physically securing the border is essential. ~ Paul Ryan, #NFDB
1350:Thou art Justice ne'er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold As laws are in England thou Shield'st alike the high and low. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
1351:Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
1352:When the mind is attuned to the cosmic law, all the laws of nature are in perfect harmony with the aspirations of the mind. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
1353:when you thumb your nose at the laws of physics like you've been doing, the universe tends to get you back through biology." Atticus ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
1354:Willful ignorance and endless laws become the replacement for self-education and self-restraint, because ignorance and laws are easy. ~ Holly Lisle, #NFDB
1355:With bad laws and good civil servants it's still possible to govern. But with bad civil servants even the best laws can't help. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
1356:An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1357:Here we will solve with laws and dollars, problems that too many people around the world still must solve with violence and civil war. ~ Marco Rubio, #NFDB
1358:It's lawmakers know better than anyone that laws are more a matter of practical compromise than any kind of moral imperative. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
1359:No part of the human community can live entirely on its own planet, with its own laws of motion and cut off from the rest of humanity. ~ Hugo Chavez, #NFDB
1360:She eagerly meets society’s rules and laws until they conflict with her own inner sense of justice—at which point she rejects them. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
1361:Sometimes it seems that those with the greatest disregard for our laws are the same people in charge of creating or enforcing them. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
1362:The thing to keep in mind is that laws are framed by those who happen to be in power and for the purpose of keeping them in power. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
1363:They were Republicans, Nixon Republicans, and so didn't subscribe to the notion that laws are supposed to apply to all people equally. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1364:We cannot bring the good old days back but, if we must eat mass-made foods, get laws passed to insist upon its goodness and purity. ~ Flora Thompson, #NFDB
1365:We live in an in-between universe where things change all right...but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1366:Whenever we tamper with natural laws, there are consequences,” the count said. “The larger the disruption, the larger the consequence. ~ Maile Meloy, #NFDB
1367:According to Waggoner, the trouble is that complicated laws enrich those who make the laws while making the rest of society poorer. ~ Peter Schweizer, #NFDB
1368:Anarchism...stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1369:By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
1370:Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work. ~ Alfred Austin, #NFDB
1371:highly corrupt governments usually have big problems in delivering services, enforcing laws, and representing the public interest. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1372:Hollywood is a place where if you abide by the rules and laws, you can get depressed. That's why faith and spirituality is a higher law. ~ Derek Luke, #NFDB
1373:In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science ~ Mary Baker Eddy, #NFDB
1374:I saw in the Nineties that we were increasing police power with get tough policies and 3 strikes laws, but without additional oversights. ~ Van Jones, #NFDB
1375:Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. ~ Alfred Tennyson,#NFDB
1376:Most conduct is guided by norms rather than by laws. Norms are voluntary and are effective because they are enforced by peer pressure. ~ Paul Collier, #NFDB
1377:Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1378:Nor is it of much Importance to us to know the Manner in which Nature executes her laws; 'tis enough to know the Laws themselves. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1379:One of the notable aspects of the democratic process is that one need not know anything about a subject in order to pass laws about it. ~ Jeff Cooper, #NFDB
1380:The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1381:Those terrifying verbal jungles called laws are simply such directives, accumulated, codified, and systematized through the centuries. ~ S I Hayakawa, #NFDB
1382:To do research on the fundamental laws that govern the universe would require a commitment of time that most people don’t have; the ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1383:Beyond the corridor of our space-time there are infinite numbers of universes, each of them is governed by its own set of laws and physics. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
1384:Careful, boy,” rumbled Gwyn. “You have your Laws and we have ours. The difference is only that we do not pretend ours are not cruel. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1385:Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete proving nature's laws wrong it learned 2 walk
without having feet ~ Tupac Shakur,#NFDB
1386:How to make real change: step by step, year by year, sometimes even door by door...you need to change hearts AND change laws. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
1387:I began peering into the corners of the room, making sure all the shadows were cast by objects and obeying known laws of physics. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
1388:If you have to make laws to hurt a group of people just to prove your morals and faith, then you have no true morals or faith to prove. ~ George Takei, #NFDB
1389:Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1390:I lost the job because one of Jack's employees complained to the department of labor that he was in violation of child labor laws. ~ Walter E Williams, #NFDB
1391:I love that India has declared dolphins non-human people with all laws that apply to human. I'm fascinated with the alien-ness of that. ~ Bryan Fuller, #NFDB
1392:In reality, we haven't escaped the gravity of life at all. We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form. ~ Janine Benyus, #NFDB
1393:It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed. ~ James Prescott Joule, #NFDB
1394:Just laws are no restraint upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires nothing which a just law will interfere with. ~ James Anthony Froude, #NFDB
1395:Kip Thorne says, “By 2020, physicists will understand the laws of quantum gravity, which will be found to be a variant of string theory. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1396:Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1397:Look, buddy, I see a stranger show up acting odd, then giving me attitude, I start thinking about breaking something other than laws. ~ David E Manuel, #NFDB
1398:Newt Gingrich wants to repeal child labor laws. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the man that we need to lead us into the 18th century. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
1399:Physics is essentially an intuitive and concrete science. Mathematics is only a means for expressing the laws that govern phenomena. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1400:She hated the love she had been given because it had asked for nothing in return, which was absurd, unreal, against the laws of nature. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1401:She hated the love she had been given, because it had asked for nothing in return, which was absurd, unreal, against the laws of nature ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1402:Strict shopping laws mean that most German shops close on Saturday afternoons, reopening only on Monday when everybody is back at work. ~ Luke Harding, #NFDB
1403:The government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
1404:We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws. ~ Hunter S Thompson, #NFDB
1405:Whenever you bring up women's internal workings, guys want to change the subject. Unless, of course, they're trying to change the laws. ~ Gail Collins, #NFDB
1406:And laws cannot change that my mother was a queen and my father is a king. Even if no one else believed it, I would still be a princess. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
1407:As in Western Europe, apparently liberal laws the authorities say are aimed against the hate crimes of extremists suffocate wider debates. ~ Nick Cohen, #NFDB
1408:Cicero once wrote that to be completely free one must become a slave to a set of laws. In other words, accepting limitations is liberating. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1409:Explanation is not focused on facts, laws, or specifics. Explanation is the art of showing why the facts, laws, and specifics make sense. ~ Lee LeFever, #NFDB
1410:Follow your principles as though they were laws. Do not worry if others criticize or laugh at you, for their opinions are not your concern. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1411:Other developed nations don’t have this problem. They have commonsense laws to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
1412:People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
1413:Proverbs were anterior to boots, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
1414:The foetus is the property of the entire society.Anyone having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity. ~ Nicolae Ceausescu, #NFDB
1415:The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1416:The previous Governments took pride in making laws, but I am happier removing laws. Let's open the windows, let some fresh air come in. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1417:We are redefining terms and rewriting laws and removing fences everywhere you turn, and we seem to think we can do that with impunity. ~ Ravi Zacharias, #NFDB
1418:Without action, words are just words. Without violence, laws are just words. Violence isn’t the only answer, but it is the final answer. ~ Jack Donovan, #NFDB
1419:Apparently, the isomorphisms of laws rest in our cognition on the one hand, and in reality on the other. ~ Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory, #NFDB
1420:As disciples of Christ, we have a sacred obligation to uphold His laws and commandments and the covenants which we take upon ourselves. ~ Robert D Hales, #NFDB
1421:But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1422:Do not become archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them. ~ Ivan Pavlov, #NFDB
1423:Having a baby changes the way you view your in-laws. I love it when they come to visit now. They can hold the baby and I can go out. ~ Matthew Broderick, #NFDB
1424:[It is] useful to know the laws of nature - for that enables us to obey them. To act otherwise would be to rise in revolt against heaven. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1425:It is wrong to kill anyone. It is wrong to kill those who kill. It is wrong to kill the executioner. The laws on murder must be killed! ~ Charles Nodier, #NFDB
1426:Laws are broken. Existence holds to no laws. Existence is what persists, and to persist is to struggle. In the end, the struggle fails. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1427:That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how.
And how much. ~ Arundhati Roy,#NFDB
1428:The Bible teaches that God owns the world. He distributes to every man according to His own good pleasure, conformably to general laws. ~ Henry Van Dyke, #NFDB
1429:The laws of life are written into every atom, molecule and heartbeat. We are immersed in the sweet law of unfolding mystery called life. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
1430:The moral laws of the Universe are deeply embedded in the constitution of things. We do not break them - we break ourselves upon them. ~ E Stanley Jones, #NFDB
1431:There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1432:There are two worlds we live in: a material world, bound by the laws of physics, and the world inside our mind, which is just as important. ~ Alan Moore, #NFDB
1433:The seeds of future events are carried within ourselves. They are implicit in us and unfold according to the laws of their own nature ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
1434:The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1435:Well, you probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and I don't think there is any need for a law against fraud. ~ Alan Greenspan, #NFDB
1436:When the colony's laws, or even the King's laws, run ag'in the laws of God, they get to be onlawful, and ought not to be obeyed. ~ James Fenimore Cooper, #NFDB
1437:Why are the Jews hated? It is the inevitable result of their laws; they either have to conquer everybody or be hated by the whole human race. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1438:A fair question could be posed in this fashion: If people are not obeying existing laws, what makes us think they would obey any new laws? ~ J D Hayworth, #NFDB
1439:a law is but a deduction from experience and experiment, and therefore laws must conform with historical facts, not facts with law. ~ Immanuel Velikovsky, #NFDB
1440:As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1441:As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1442:Englishmen are said to love their laws; - that is the reason, I suppose, they give us so many of them, and in different editions. ~ Anna Letitia Barbauld, #NFDB
1443:Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1444:Every time women make tremendous strides, the right wing gets terrified and creates laws making it hard to get an abortion or birth control. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
1445:Freemasonry is founded on the immutable laws of Truth and Justice and its grand object is to promote the happiness of the human race. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
1446:Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future. ~ Brian Greene, #NFDB
1447:In my day you got married and spent one holiday with one set of in-laws and another with the others. None of this bonding business. ~ Katherine Hall Page, #NFDB
1448:Man has made 32 million laws since the Commandments were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai... but he has never improved on God's law. ~ Cecil B DeMille, #NFDB
1449:Members of the legislature, people who have run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, #NFDB
1450:Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1451:Newton's laws of physics can rarely be applied to the real world. There is more to life than cause and effect. Things just aren't that simple ~ Amy Zhang, #NFDB
1452:Robert Conquest once announced three laws of politics, the first of which says that everyone is right-wing in the matters he knows about. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1453:singularities, he asserted, “are a place in which the fiery marriage of Einstein’s relativistic laws with the quantum laws is consummated. ~ Kip S Thorne, #NFDB
1454:The more closely our maps or paradigms are aligned with these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1455:...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
1456:Although it is illegal in eighteen states, to ask employees to take the polygraph test, employers reportedly can find ways around those laws. ~ Paul Ekman, #NFDB
1457:Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1458:Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1459:Freedom is of no use without taste and without the ordinary competence to follow the particular laws of what we have been given to do. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1460:Honour your parents; worship the gods; hurt not animals. ~ Triptolemus, according to Porphyry (On Abstinence IV.22) From his traditional laws or precepts., #NFDB
1461:In fact, the most important reforms are those needed, without new laws, at various levels of Government, in work practices and procedures. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1462:Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1463:Morals — all correct moral laws — derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1464:Prayer for the Day I pray that I will find happiness in doing the right thing. I pray that I will find satisfaction in obeying spiritual laws. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1465:Seeing God hath thus set us at liberty, what rashness it is for worms of the earth to make new laws; as though God had not been wise enough. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1466:The computer is a greater threat to the [nuclear] family than all the abortion laws and gay rights movements and pornography in the world. ~ Alvin Toffler, #NFDB
1467:The Plus Factor makes its appearance in a person's life in proportion as that person is in harmony with God and His universal laws. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
1468:There's, under Obama, an epidemic has developed of abusing national security laws to crack down on legitimate use of the First Amendment. ~ Julian Assange, #NFDB
1469:We are a nation of laws. And nobody can ignore our Constitution. No one's above the law. And that includes the president of the United States. ~ John Yang, #NFDB
1470:We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
1471:According to the universal laws, the magician will form his own point of view about the universe which henceforth will be his true religion. ~ Franz Bardon, #NFDB
1472:America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity. ~ Shirley Chisholm, #NFDB
1473:As much as I like my sister-in-law, I didn't want her two cents. This was a conversation for siblings, with in-laws as invested observers. ~ Elisabeth Egan, #NFDB
1474:Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent should suffer. —Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1766) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1475:Democracy cannot breathe, indeed will die, if those enjoined to protect it and uphold the laws snuff it out - with no consequences. ~ Marian Wright Edelman, #NFDB
1476:Governments throughout the English-speaking sphere are creating and then ratcheting the torque on "hate-speech" laws with frightening eagerness. ~ Jim Goad, #NFDB
1477:If a man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he…thinks laws in his own case superfluous. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1478:In part because there are so many laws to break; and the more laws there are to break, the harder it is to prevent them from being broken ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1479:...kids are like pissing cats or burrowing moles, marking off land within land, each section with its own rules, beliefs, laws of engagement. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
1480:Mankind can live free in a society hemmed in by laws, but we have yet to find a historical example of mankind living free in lawless anarchy. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1481:Marriages are buffeted by more important things, like money and sex and children and jobs and in-laws, in constantly changing combinations. ~ Beth Pattillo, #NFDB
1482:Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. ~ Samuel Adams, #NFDB
1483:[Self-defense is] justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the laws of society. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
1484:Sometimes he felt as if he had stepped into an alternate universe where the old laws of nature and what was right and wrong did not apply. ~ Joe R Lansdale, #NFDB
1485:Stop trying, stop struggling; begin to be calm, to trust in the higher laws of life, even though you do not see them; they are still there. ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
1486:The American people can be - and deserve to be - assured that actions taken in their defense are consistent with their values and their laws. ~ Eric Holder, #NFDB
1487:The government passed more laws to protect women from dirty jokes than to protect men from death by faulty rafters at a construction site. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
1488:The laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
1489:The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
...
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers. ~ Lao Tzu,#NFDB
1490:Then a lawyer said, But what of our laws, master? And he answered: 'You delight in laying down laws. Yet you delight more in breaking them. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
1491:Throughout history, every period of enlightenment has been accompanied by darkness, pushing in opposition. Such are laws of nature and balance. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
1492:You will come to understand that what is sorcery and magic to you is only the forgotten laws of the universe." (Irusan, the shape-shifter) ~ Katlynn Brooke, #NFDB
1493:analyze them in terms of the 48 laws of power, and you extract from them a lesson and an oath: “I shall never repeat such a mistake; I shall ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
1494:A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
1495:*Article 370, which gave J&K the right not to implement certain laws passed by parliament, became a part of the Indian Constitution in 1950. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1496:Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws. ~ P D Ouspensky, #NFDB
1497:Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
1498:Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1499:For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren’t written down anywhere. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1500:I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
264 Integral Yoga
130 Poetry
79 Occultism
74 Christianity
56 Philosophy
38 Fiction
30 Yoga
19 Psychology
14 Theosophy
13 Science
12 Integral Theory
10 Mythology
9 Philsophy
8 Kabbalah
5 Mysticism
5 Education
5 Baha i Faith
4 Cybernetics
3 Islam
3 Hinduism
2 Sufism
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
182 Sri Aurobindo
114 The Mother
68 Satprem
55 Nolini Kanta Gupta
34 Aleister Crowley
33 H P Lovecraft
27 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
24 Walt Whitman
23 William Wordsworth
21 Saint Augustine of Hippo
20 Plotinus
19 Sri Ramakrishna
18 Rudolf Steiner
15 Franz Bardon
15 Carl Jung
14 A B Purani
13 Percy Bysshe Shelley
12 James George Frazer
11 Plato
10 Aldous Huxley
9 Ralph Waldo Emerson
8 Swami Krishnananda
8 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
8 Ovid
6 Robert Browning
6 George Van Vrekhem
6 Friedrich Nietzsche
6 Baha u llah
5 Jorge Luis Borges
4 Norbert Wiener
4 Lucretius
4 Jordan Peterson
4 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
4 Friedrich Schiller
4 Alice Bailey
3 William Butler Yeats
3 Swami Vivekananda
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Paul Richard
3 Muhammad
3 John Keats
3 Henry David Thoreau
3 Anonymous
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Rabindranath Tagore
2 Nirodbaran
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Ken Wilber
2 Joseph Campbell
2 Edgar Allan Poe
2 Boethius
2 Al-Ghazali
33 Lovecraft - Poems
28 The Synthesis Of Yoga
23 Wordsworth - Poems
22 Whitman - Poems
20 Magick Without Tears
20 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
18 The Human Cycle
18 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
18 City of God
17 The Life Divine
16 Savitri
15 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
14 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
13 Shelley - Poems
12 The Golden Bough
12 Liber ABA
11 The Phenomenon of Man
11 Essays On The Gita
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
10 The Perennial Philosophy
10 Theosophy
10 The Future of Man
10 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
9 On the Way to Supermanhood
9 Emerson - Poems
9 Agenda Vol 09
8 The Study and Practice of Yoga
8 The Practice of Magical Evocation
8 Questions And Answers 1953
8 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
8 Metamorphoses
8 General Principles of Kabbalah
8 Agenda Vol 11
7 Words Of Long Ago
7 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
7 Questions And Answers 1956
7 Initiation Into Hermetics
7 Agenda Vol 03
6 Vedic and Philological Studies
6 Twilight of the Idols
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Bible
6 Record of Yoga
6 Questions And Answers 1954
6 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
6 Preparing for the Miraculous
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
6 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
6 Isha Upanishad
6 Collected Poems
6 Browning - Poems
6 Agenda Vol 10
5 The Problems of Philosophy
5 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
5 Questions And Answers 1955
5 Mysterium Coniunctionis
5 Letters On Yoga IV
5 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
5 Essays Divine And Human
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
5 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
4 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
4 Schiller - Poems
4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
4 Of The Nature Of Things
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Letters On Yoga II
4 Letters On Yoga I
4 Cybernetics
4 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
4 Agenda Vol 07
3 Yeats - Poems
3 Walden
3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Quran
3 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
3 On Education
3 Let Me Explain
3 Labyrinths
3 Keats - Poems
3 Hymn of the Universe
3 Agenda Vol 06
3 Agenda Vol 02
3 Agenda Vol 01
2 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Alchemy of Happiness
2 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2 Talks
2 Tagore - Poems
2 Symposium
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Raja-Yoga
2 Prayers And Meditations
2 Poe - Poems
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
2 Goethe - Poems
2 Faust
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Aion
2 Agenda Vol 13
2 Agenda Vol 12
2 Agenda Vol 1
2 Agenda Vol 05
2 Agenda Vol 04
2 5.1.01 - Ilion
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
- and it is terribly disturbing for all those who still climb trees in the old, millennial way. Perhaps it is even a heresy. Unless it is some cerebral disorder? A first man in his little clearing had to have a great deal of courage. Even this little clearing was no longer so sure. A first man is a perpetual question. What am I, then, in the midst of all that? And where is my law? What is the law? And what if there were no more laws? ... It is terrifying. Mathematics - out of order. Astronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the world's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, c laws all around, a lot of c laws against this uncommon creature. A first man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable for the pre-human 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.
One day, we were like this first man in the great, stridulant night of the Oyapock. Our heart was beating with the rediscovery of a very ancient mystery - suddenly, it was absolutely new to be a man amidst the diorite cascades and the pretty red and black coral snakes slithering beneath the leaves. It was even more extraordinary to be a man than our old confirmed tribes, with their infallible equations and imprescriptible biologies, could ever have dreamed. It was an absolutely uncertain 'quantum' that delightfully eluded whatever one thought of it, including perhaps what even the scholars thought of it. It flowed otherwise, it felt otherwise. It lived in a kind of flawless continuity with the sap of the giant balata trees, the cry of the macaws and the scintillating water of a little fountain. It 'understood' in a very different way. To understand was to be in everything. Just a quiver, and one was in the skin of a little iguana in distress. The skin of the world was very vast.
To be a man after rediscovering a million years was mysteriously like being something still other than man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. It was not in the dictionary, it was fluid and boundless - it had become a man through habit, but in truth, it was formidably virgin, as if all the old laws belonged to laggard barbarians. Then other moons began whirring through the skies to the cry of macaws at sunset, another rhythm was born that was strangely in tune with the rhythm of all, making one single flow of the world, and there we went, lightly, as if the body had never had any weight other than that of our human thought; and the stars were so near, even the giant airplanes roaring overhead seemed vain artifices beneath smiling galaxies. A man was the overwhelming Possible. He was even the great discoverer of the Possible.
Never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to discover that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After rediscovering a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done.
--
There is nothing more pious than the old species. There is nothing more legal. Mother was searching for the path of the new species as much against all the virtues of the old as against all its vices or laws. For, in truth, 'Something Else' ... is something else.
We landed there, one day in February 1954, having emerged from our Guianese forest and a certain number of dead-end peripluses; we had knocked upon all the doors of the old world before reaching that point of absolute impossibility where it was truly necessary to embark into something else or once and for all put a bullet through the brain of this slightly superior ape. The first thing that struck us was this exotic Notre Dame with its burning incense sticks, its effigies and its prostrations in immaculate white: a Church. We nearly jumped into the first train out that very evening, bound straight for the Himalayas, or the devil. But we remained near Mother for nineteen years. What was it, then, that could have held us there? We had not left Guiana to become a little saint in white or to enter some new religion. 'I did not come upon earth to found an ashram; that would have been a poor aim indeed,' She wrote in 1934. What did all this mean, then, this 'Ashram' that was already registered as the owner of a great spiritual business, and this fragile, little silhouette at the center of all these zealous worshippers? In truth, there is no better way to smother someone than to worship him: he chokes beneath the weight of worship, which moreover gives the worshipper claim to ownership. 'Why do you want to worship?' She exclaimed. 'You have but to become! It is the laziness to become that makes one worship.' She wanted so much to make them
--
death does not exist, time does not exist, disease does not exist, nor do 'scar' and 'far' - another way of being IN A BODY. For so many millions of years we have lived in a habit and put our own thoughts of the world and of Matter into equations. No more laws! Matter is FREE. It can create a little lizard, a chipmunk or a parrot - but it has created enough parrots. Now it is SOMETHING
ELSE ... if we want it.
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
These other worlds are constituted in other ways than ours. Their contents are different and the laws that obtain there are also different. It would be a gross blunder to attempt a chart of any of these other systems, to use an Einsteinian term, with the measures and conventions of the system to which our external waking consciousness belongs. For, there "the sun shines not, nor the moon, nor the stars, neither these lightnings nor this fire." The difficulty is further enhanced by the fact that there are very many unseen worlds and they all differ from the seen and from one another in manner and degree. Thus, for example, the Upanishads speak of the swapna, the suupta, and the turya, domains beyond the jgrat which is that where the rational being with its mind and senses lives and moves. And there are other systems and other ways in which systems exist, and they are practically innumerable.
If, however, we have to speak of these other worlds, then, since we can speak only in the terms of this world, we have to use them in a different sense from those they usually bear; we must employ them as figures and symbols. Even then they may prove inadequate and misleading; so there are Mystics who are averse to all speech and expression they are mauni; in silence they experience the inexpressible and in silence they communicate it to the few who have the capacity to receive in silence.
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Algeria and in France or of her current experiences; and gradually, She opened the mind of the rebellious and materialistic Westerner that we were and made us understand the laws of the worlds, the play of forces, the working of past lives - especially this latter, which was an important factor in the difficulties with which we were struggling at that time and which periodically made us abscond.
Mother would be seated in this rather medieval-looking chair with its high, carved back, her feet on a little tabouret, while we sat on the floor, on a slightly faded carpet, conquered and seduced, revolted and never satisfied - but nevertheless, very interested. Treasures, never noted down, were lost until, with the cunning of the Sioux, we succeeded in making Mother consent to the presence of a tape recorder. But even then, and for a long time thereafter, She carefully made us erase or delete in our notes all that concerned Her rather too personally - sometimes we disobeyed Her.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Those who, armed with the tools provided by the Qabalah, have made the journey within and crossed beyond the barriers of illusion, have returned with an impressive quantity of knowledge which conforms strictly to the definition of "science" in Winston's College Dictionary: "Science: a body of knowledge, general truths of particular facts, obtained and shown to be correct by accurate observation and thinking; knowledge condensed, arranged and systematized with reference to general truths and laws."
Over and over their findings have been confirmed, proving the Qabalah contains within it not only the elements of the science itself but the method with which to pursue it.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
were given their minds with which to discover and employ the generalized laws
governing all physical and metaphysical, omniinteraccommodative, ceaseless
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The first effect of the draught on the educated Hindus was a complete effacement from their minds of the time-honoured beliefs and traditions of Hindu society. They came to believe that there was no transcendental Truth; The world perceived by the senses was all that existed. God and religion were illusions of the untutored mind. True knowledge could be derived only from the analysis of nature. So atheism and agnosticism became the fashion of the day. The youth of India, taught in English schools, took malicious delight in openly breaking the customs and traditions of their society. They would do away with the caste-system and remove the discriminatory laws about food. Social reform, the spread of secular education, widow remarriage, abolition of early marriage — they considered these the panacea for the degenerate condition of Hindu society.
The Christian missionaries gave the finishing touch to the process of transformation. They ridiculed as relics of a barbarous age the images and rituals of the Hindu religion. They tried to persuade India that the teachings of her saints and seers were the cause of her downfall, that her Vedas, Puranas, and other scriptures were filled with superstition. Christianity, they maintained, had given the white races position and power in this world and assurance of happiness in the next; therefore Christianity was the best of all religions. Many intelligent young Hindus became converted. The man in the street was confused. The majority of the educated grew materialistic in their mental outlook. Everyone living near Calcutta or the other strong-holds of Western culture, even those who attempted to cling to the orthodox traditions of Hindu society, became infected by the new uncertainties and the new beliefs.
--
Mathur had faith in the sincerity of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual zeal, but began now to doubt his sanity. He had watched him jumping about like a monkey. One day, when Rani Rasmani was listening to Sri Ramakrishna's singing in the temple, the young priest abruptly turned and slapped her. Apparently listening to his song, she had actually been thinking of a law-suit. She accepted the punishment as though the Divine Mother Herself had imposed it; but Mathur was distressed. He begged Sri Ramakrishna to keep his feelings under control and to heed the conventions of society. God Himself, he argued, follows laws. God never permitted, for instance, flowers of two colours to grow on the same stalk. The following day Sri Ramakrishna presented Mathur Babu with two hibiscus flowers growing on the same stalk, one red and one white.
Mathur and Rani Rasmani began to ascribe the mental ailment of Sri Ramakrishna in part, at least, to his observance of rigid continence. Thinking that a natural life would relax the tension of his nerves, they engineered a plan with two women of ill fame. But as soon as the women entered his room, Sri Ramakrishna beheld in them the manifestation of the Divine Mother of the Universe and went into samadhi uttering Her name.
--
Sri Ramakrishna, on the other hand, though fully aware, like his guru, that the world is an illusory appearance, instead of slighting maya, like an orthodox monist, acknowledged its power in the relative life. He was all love and reverence for maya, perceiving in it a mysterious and majestic expression of Divinity. To him maya itself was God, for everything was God. It was one of the faces of Brahman. What he had realized on the heights of the transcendental plane, he also found here below, everywhere about him, under the mysterious garb of names and forms. And this garb was a perfectly transparent sheath, through which he recognized the glory of the Divine Immanence. Maya, the mighty weaver of the garb, is none other than Kali, the Divine Mother. She is the primordial Divine Energy, Sakti, and She can no more be distinguished from the Supreme Brahman than can the power of burning be distinguished from fire. She projects the world and again withdraws it. She spins it as the spider spins its web. She is the Mother of the Universe, identical with the Brahman of Vedanta, and with the Atman of Yoga. As eternal Lawgiver, She makes and unmakes laws; it is by Her imperious will that karma yields its fruit. She ensnares men with illusion and again releases them from bondage with a look of Her benign eyes. She is the supreme Mistress of the cosmic play, and all objects, animate and inanimate, dance by Her will. Even those who realize the Absolute in nirvikalpa samadhi are under Her jurisdiction as long as they still live on the relative plane.
Thus, after nirvikalpa samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna realized maya in an altogether new role. The binding aspect of Kali vanished from before his vision. She no longer obscured his understanding. The world became the glorious manifestation of the Divine Mother. Maya became Brahman. The Transcendental Itself broke through the Immanent. Sri Ramakrishna discovered that maya operates in the relative world in two ways, and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya". Avidyamaya represents the dark forces of creation: sensuous desires, evil passions, greed, lust, cruelty, and so on. It sustains the world system on the lower planes. It is responsible for the round of man's birth and death. It must be fought and vanquished. But vidyamaya is the higher force of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates man to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya the devotee rids himself of avidyamaya; he then becomes mayatita, free of maya. The two aspects of maya are the two forces of creation, the two powers of Kali; and She stands beyond them both. She is like the effulgent sun, bringing into existence and shining through and standing behind the clouds of different colours and shapes, conjuring up wonderful forms in the blue autumn heaven.
--
supernatural cause to a natural phenomenon. They believed that the Master's body, a material thing, was subject, like all other material things, to physical laws. Growth, development, decay, and death were laws of nature to which the Master's body could not but respond. But though holding differing views, they all believed that it was to him alone that they must look for the attainment of their spiritual goal.
In spite of the physician's efforts and the prayers and nursing of the devotees, the illness rapidly progressed. The pain sometimes appeared to be unbearable. The Master lived only on liquid food, and his frail body was becoming a mere skeleton. Yet his face always radiated joy, and he continued to welcome the visitors pouring in to receive his blessing. When certain zealous devotees tried to keep the visitors away, they were told by Girish, "You cannot succeed in it; he has been born for this very purpose — to sacrifice himself for the redemption of others."
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
process of death and begetting, which are the laws of
the universe.
--
unconscious, perfectly indifferent, it obeys the laws of
Cohesion and of Gravitation.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
May it enable seekers of Truth to grasp the subtle laws of the supersensuous realm, and unfold before man's restricted vision the spiritual foundation of the universe, the unity of existence, and the divinity of the soul!
- Sw mi Nikhilnanda
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
While it takes but meager search to discover that many well-known concepts are false, it takes considerable search and even more careful examination of one's own personal experiences and inadvertently spontaneous reflexing to discover that there are many popularly and even professionally unknown, yet nonetheless fundamental, concepts to hold true in all cases and that already have been discovered by other as yet obscure individuals. That is to say that many scientific generalizations have been discovered but have not come to the attention of what we call the educated world at large, thereafter to be incorporated tardily within the formal education processes, and even more tardily, in the ongoing political-economic affairs of everyday life. Knowledge of the existence and comprehensive significance of these as yet popularly unrecognized natural laws often is requisite to the solution of many of the as yet unsolved problems now confronting society. Lack of knowledge of the solution's existence often leaves humanity confounded when it need not be.
Intellectually advantaged with no more than the child's facile, lucid eagerness to understand constructively and usefully the major transformational events of our own times, it probably is synergetically advantageous to review swiftly the most comprehensive inventory of the most powerful human environment transforming events of our totally known and reasonably extended history. This is especially useful in winnowing out and understanding the most significant of the metaphysical revolutions now recognized as swiftly tending to reconstitute history. By such a comprehensively schematic review, we might identify also the unprecedented and possibly heretofore overlooked pivotal revolutionary events not only of today but also of those trending to be central to tomorrow's most cataclysmic changes.
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
for judging and deciding, and that the laws of Nature are laws -
in other words, any exception to them is a miracle. This is false.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
to this conclusion that mental life, far from being a recent appearance in man, is the swift repetition in him of a previous achievement from which the Energy in the race had undergone one of her deplorable recoils. The savage is perhaps not so much the first forefa ther of civilised man as the degenerate descendant of a previous civilisation. For if the actuality of intellectual achievement is unevenly distributed, the capacity is spread everywhere. It has been seen that in individual cases even the racial type considered by us the lowest, the negro fresh from the perennial barbarism of Central Africa, is capable, without admixture of blood, without waiting for future generations, of the intellectual culture, if not yet of the intellectual accomplishment of the dominant European. Even in the mass men seem to need, in favourable circumstances, only a few generations to cover ground that ought apparently to be measured in the terms of millenniums. Either, then, man by his privilege as a mental being is exempt from the full burden of the tardy laws of evolution or else he already represents and with helpful conditions and in the right stimulating atmosphere can always display a high level of material capacity for the activities of the intellectual life.
It is not mental incapacity, but the long rejection or seclusion from opportunity and withdrawal of the awakening impulse that creates the savage. Barbarism is an intermediate sleep, not an original darkness.
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
completely transformed and no longer subject to any of the laws
governing it at present.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Transmuted chance recurrences into laws,
A chaos of signs into a universe.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The spiritual life (adhyatma jvana), the religious life (dharma jvana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance.
The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The laws of the Unknown create the known.
The events that shape the appearance of our lives
--
He is governed by her subtle and mighty laws.
His consciousness is a babe upon her knees,
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This criss-cross tangle of invisible laws;
His infallible rules, his covered processes,
--
In her mystery's moods divorced from the Maker's laws
She too as sovereignly creates her field,
--
Thence to the initiate who observes her laws
She brings the light of her mysterious realms:
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, a spiritual communism embraces individualism and collectivism, fuses them in a higher truth, establishes them in an intimate and absolute harmony. The individual is the centre, the group is the circumference and the two form one whore circle. The individual by fulfilling the truth of his real individuality fulfils also the truth of a commonality. There are no different laws for the two. The individuals do not stand apart from and against one another, the dharma of one does not clash with the dharma of the other. The ripples in the bosom of the sea, however distinct and discrete in appearance, form but a single mass, all follow the same law of hydrodynamics that the mother sea incarnates. Stars and planets and nebulae, each separate heavenly body has its characteristic form and nature and function and yet all fulfil the same law of gravitation and beat the measure of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being.
Communism takes man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside downurdhomulo' vaksakhah and establishes him upon his soul, his inner godhead. Thus established the individual soul finds and fulfils the divine law that by increasing itself it increases others and by increasing others it increases itself and thus by increasing one another they attain the supreme good. Unless man goes beyond himself and reaches this self, this godhead above, he will not find any real poise, will always swing between individualism and collectivism, he will remain always boundbound either in his freedom or in his bondage.
--
As a matter of fact, the individual is not and cannot be such an isolated thing as our egoistic sense would like to have it. The sharp angularities of the individual are being, at every moment, chastened by the very primary conditions of life; and to fail to recognise this is the blindest form of ignorance. It is no easy task to draw exactly the line of distinction between our individual being and our social or communal being. In actual life they are so blended together that in trying to extricate them from each other, we but tear and lacerate them both. The highest wisdom is to take the two together as they are, and by a gradual purifying processboth internal and external, internal in thought and knowledge and will, external in life and actionrestore them to their respective truth and lawsatyam and Ritam.
The individual who leads a severely individual life from the very beginning, whose outlook of the world has been fashioned by that conception, can hardly, if at all, enter at the end the communal life. He must perforce be either a vagabond or a recluse: But the recluse is not an integral man, nor the vagabond an ideal personality. The individual need not be too chaste and shy to associate with others and to give and take as freely and fully as he can. Individuality is not necessarily curtailed or mutilated in this process, but there is this other greater possibility of its getting enlarged and enhanced. Rather it is when you shut yourself up in your own self, that you stick to only one line of your personality, to a single phase of your self and thus limit and diminish yourself; the breadth and height and depth of your self, the cubic completeness of your personality you can attain only through a multiple and variegated stress by which you come in contact with the world and things.
So first the individual and then the commune is not the natural nor the ideal principle. On the other hand, first the commune and then the individual would appear to be an equally defective principle. For first a commune means an organisation, its laws and rules and regulations, its injunctions and prohibitions; all which signifies or comes to signify that every individual is not free to enter its fold and that whoever enters must know how to dovetail himself therein and thus crush down the very life-power whose enhancement and efflorescence is sought. First a commune means necessarily a creed, a dogma, a set form of being and living indelibly marked out from beforehand. The individual has there no choice of finding and developing the particular creed or dogma or mode of being and living, from out of his own self, along his particular line of natural growth; all that is imposed upon him and he has to accept and make it his own by trial and effort and self-torture. Even if the commune be a contractual association, the members having joined together in a common cause to a common end, by voluntarily sacrificing a portion of their personal choice and freedom, even then it is not the ideal thing; the collective soul will be diminished in exact proportion as each individual soul has had to be diminished, be that voluntary or otherwise. That commune is plenary and entire which ensures plenitude and entirety to each of its individuals.
Now how to escape the dilemma? Only if we take the commune and the individual togetheren bloc, as has already been suggested. This means that the commune should be at the beginning a subtle and supple thing, without form and even without name, it should be no more than the circumambient aura the sukshma deha that plays around a group of individuals who meet and unite and move together by a secret affinity, along a common path towards a common goal. As each individual develops and defines himself, the commune also takes a more and more concrete shape; and when at the last stage the individual rises to the full height of his godhead, takes possession of his integral divinity, the commune also establishes its solid empire, vivid and vibrant in form and name.
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Any real reconstruction of society, any permanent reformation of the world presupposes a real reconstruction, a permanent reformation of human nature. Otherwise any amount of casting and recasting the mere machineries would not bring about any appreciable result, but leave the thing as it is. Change the laws as much as you like, but if you do not change the nature of man, the world will not change. For it is man that makes laws and not laws that make man. laws express at best the demand which man feels within himself. A truth must realise itself in human nature before it can be codified. You may certainly legalise an ideal, but that does not necessarily mean realising it. The realisation must come first in nature and character, then it is naturally translated into laws and institutions. A man lives the laws of his soul and being and not the law given him by the shastras. He violates the shastras, modifies them, utilises them according to the greater imperative of his Swabhava.
The French Revolution wanted to remould human society and its ideal was liberty, equality and fraternity. It pulled down the old machinery and set up a new one in its stead. And the result? "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" remained always in effect a cry in the wilderness. Another wave of idealism is now running over the earth and the Bolshevists are its most fiercely practical exponents. Instead of dealing merely with the political machinery, the Socialistic Revolution tries to break and remake, above all, the social machinery. But judged from the results as yet attained and the tendencies at work, few are the reasons to hope but many to fear the worst. Even education does not seem to promise us anything better. Which nation was better educatedin the sense we understood and still commonly understand the wordthan Germany?
--
Our ideals have been mental constructions, rather than spiritual realitiesrealities of the deepest and highest being. And the power by which we sought to realise those ideals was mainly the insistence of our emotional urges, rather than Nature's Truth-Power. For this must be understood that the mental, the vital and the physical form a nexus of reality which works in its own inexorable law and so long as we are within them we cannot but obey the laws that guide them. Of these three strata which form the human adhara, it is the vital which holds the key to man's nature. It is the executive power, the force that fashions the realities on the physical plane; it is what creates the character. The power of thought and sentiment is often much too exaggerated, even so the power of the body, that of physical and external rules and regulations. The mental or the physical or both together can mould the vital only to a limited extent, to the extent which is allowed by the inherent law of the vital. If the demands of the mental and the physical are stretched too far and are not suffered by the vital, a crash and catastrophe is bound to come in the end.
This is the meaning of the Reformist's pessimism. So long as we remain within the domain of the triple nexus, we must always take account of an original sin, an aboriginal irredeemability in human nature. And it, is this fact which a too hasty optimistic idealism is apt to ignore. The point, however, is that man need not be necessarily bound to this triple chord of life. He can go beyond, transcend himself and find a reality which is the basis of even this lower poise of the mental and vital and physical. Only in order to get into that higher poise we must really transcend the lower, that is to say, we must not be satisfied with experiencing or envisaging it through the mind and heart but must directly commune with it, be it. There is a higher law that rules there, a power that is the truth-substance of even the vital and hence can remould it with a sovereign inevitability, according to a pattern which may not and is not the pattern of mental and emotional idealism, but the pattern of a supreme spiritual realism.
--
The Divine Nature only can permanently reform the vital nature that is ours. Neither laws and institutions, which are the results of that vital nature, nor ideas and ideals which are often a mere revolt from and more often an auxiliary to it, can comm and the power to regenerate society. If it is thought improbable for any group of men to attain to that God Nature, then there is hardly any hope for mankind. But improbable or probable, that is the only way which man has to try and test, and there is none other.
***
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The human mind naturally, without any effort on its part, takes to one or more of these devices to control and conceal the aboriginal impulses. But this spontaneous process can be organised and consciously regulated and made to serve better the purpose and urge of Nature. And this is the beginning of yoga the conscious fulfilment of Nature. The Psycho-analysts have given us the first and elementary stage of this process of yoga. It is, we may say, the fourth line of control. With this man enters a new level of being, develops a new mode of life. It is when the automatism of Nature is replaced by the power of Conscious Control. Man is not here, a blind instrument of forces, his activities (both indulging and controlling) are not guided according to an ignorant submission to the laws of almost subconscious impulsions. Conscious control means that the mind does not fight shy of or seek to elude the aboriginal insistences, but allows them to come up freely, meets them squarely, recognises them and establishes an easy mastery over them.
The method of unconscious or subconscious nature is fundamentally that of repression. Apart from Defence Reaction which is a thing of pure coercion, even in Substitution and Sublimation there always remains in the background a large amount of repressed complexes in all their primitive strength. The system is never entirely purified but remains secretly pregnant with those urges; a part only is deflected and camouflaged, the surface only assumes a transformed appearance. And there is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether forces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, sovereignly above the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So far so good. For it is not far enough. The being or becoming that is demanded in fulfilment of the divine advent in humanity must go to the very roots of life and nature, must seize God in his highest and sovereign status. No prejudice of the past, no notion of our mental habits must seek to impose its law. Thus, for example, in the matter of redeeming the senses by the influx of the higher light, our author seems to consider that the senses will remain more or less as they are, only they will be controlled, guided, used by the higher light. And he seems to think that even the sex relation (even the institution of marriage) may continue to remain, but sublimated, submitted to the laws of the Higher Order. This, according to us, is a dangerous compromise and is simply the imposition of the lower law upon the higher. Our view of the total transformation and divinisation of the Lower is altogether different. The Highest must come down wholly and inhabit in the Lowest, the Lowest must give up altogether its own norms and lift itself into the substance and form too of the Highest.
Viewed in this light, Blake's memorable mantra attains a deeper and more momentous significance. For it is not merely Earth the senses and life and Matter that are to be uplifted and affianced to Heaven, but all that remains hidden within the bowels of the Earth, the subterranean regions of man's consciousness, the slimy viscous undergrowths, the darkest horrors and monstrosities that man and nature hide in their subconscient and inconscient dungeons of material existence, all these have to be laid bare to the solar gaze of Heaven, burnt or transmuted as demanded by the law of that Supreme Will. That is the Hell that has to be recognised, not rejected and thrown away, but taken up purified and transubstantiated into the body of Heaven itself. The hand of the Highest Heaven must extend and touch the Lowest of the lowest elements, transmute it and set it in its rightful place of honour. A mortal body reconstituted into an immemorial fossil, a lump of coal revivified into a flashing carat of diamond-that shows something of the process underlying the nuptials of which we are speaking.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
attitude be towards the customs and laws of society?
If most people here think and feel like that, it is an obvious proof
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the earliest and primitive society men lived totally in a mass consciousness. Their life was a blind obedienceobedience to the chief the patriarch or pater familiasobedience to the laws and customs of the collectivity to which one belonged. It was called duty; it was called even dharma, but evidently on a lower level, in an inferior formulation. In reality it was more of the nature of the mechanical functioning of an automaton than the exercise of conscious will and deliberate choice, which is the very soul of the conception of duty.
The conception of Right had to appear in order to bring out the principle of individuality, of personal freedom and fulfilment. For, a true healthy collectivity is the association and organisation of free and self-determinate units. The growth of independent individuality naturally means at first clash and rivalry, and a violently competitive society is the result. It is only at this stage that the conception of duty can fruitfully come in and develop in man and his society the mode of Sattwa, which is that of light and wisdom, of toleration and harmony. Then only a society is sought to be moulded on the principle of co-ordination and co-operation.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
No. From the minute it is conscious, it is conscious of its own falsehood! It is conscious of this law, of that law, of this third law that fourth law, this tenth laweverything is a law. We are subject to physical laws: this will produce such and such a result if you do that, this will happen, etc. Oh! It reeks! I know it well. I know it very well. These laws reek of falsehood. In the body, we have no faith in the divine Grace, none, none, none, none! Those who have not undergone a tapasya2 as I have, say, Yes, all these inner moral things, feelings, psychology, all that is very good; we want the Divine and we are ready to But all the same, material facts are material facts, they have their concrete reality, after all an illness is an illness, food is food, and everything you do has a consequence, and when you are bah, bah, bah, bah, bah!
We must understand that this isnt trueit isnt true, its a falsehood, all this is sheer falsehood. It is NOT TRUE, it is not true!
--
From the negative point of view I mean the difficulties to be overcomeone of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially. All this is an unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that remains independent and absolute even in the face of the eternal divine Reality.
And it is so automatic that it is unconscious.
When it is a question of movements like anger, desire, etc., you recognize that they are wrong and must disappear, but when material laws are in question laws of the body, for example, its needs, its health, its nourishment, all those things they have such a solid, compact, established and concrete reality that it appears absolutely unquestionable.
Well, to be able to cure that, which of all the obstacles is the greatest (I mean the habit of putting spiritual life on one side and material life on the other, of acknowledging the right of material laws to exist), one must make a resolution never to legitimize any of these movements, at any cost.
To be able to see the problem as it is, it is absolutely indispensable, as a first step, to get out of the mental consciousness, even out of a mental transcription (in the highest mind) of the supramental vision and truth. A thing cannot be seen as it is, in its truth, except in the supramental consciousness, and if you try to explain, it immediately begins to escape you because you are obliged to give it a mental formulation.
--
Consequently, if you do not remember having had the experience, you are left in the same condition as before, but with the difference that now you know, you can know, that these material laws do not correspond to the truth thats all. They do not at all correspond to the truth, so consequently, if you want to be faithful to your aspiration, you must in no way legitimize all that. Rather, you must say that it is an infirmity from which we are suffering for the moment, for an intermediate periodit is an infirmity and an ignorance for it really is an ignorance (this is not just a word): it is ignorance, it is not the thing as it is, even in regard to our present material bodies. Therefore, we will not legitimize anything. What we say is thisit is an infirmity which has to be endured for the time being, until we get out of it, but we do NOT ACKNOWLEDGE all this as a concrete reality. It does NOT have a concrete reality, it has a false realitywhat we call concrete reality is a false reality.
And the proof I have the proof because I experienced it myselfis that from the minute you are in the other consciousness, the true consciousness, all these things which appear so real, so concrete, change INSTANTLY. There are a number of things, certain material conditions of my bodymaterial that changed instantly. It did not last long enough for everything to change, but some things changed and never returned, they remained changed. In other words, if that consciousness were kept constantly, it would be a perpetual miracle (what we would call a miracle from our ordinary point of view), a fantastic and perpetual miracle! But from the supramental point of view, it would not be a miracle at all, it would be the most normal of things.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
That was a grace. I was given every experience without knowing ANYTHING of what it was all aboutmy mind was absolutely blank. There was no active correspondence in the formative mind. I only knew about what had happened or the laws governing these happenings AFTERWARDS, when I was curious and inquired to find out what it related to. Then I found out. But otherwise, I didnt know. So that was the clear proof that these things existed entirely outside of my imagination or thought.
It doesnt happen very frequently in this world. And thats why these experiences, which otherwise seem quite natural, quite obvious, appear to be extravagant fancies to people who know nothing.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But its explained very well in Savitri! All these things have their laws and their conventions (and truly speaking, a really FORMIDABLE power is needed to change anything of their rights, for they have rightswhat they call laws) Sri Aurobindo explains this very well when Savitri, following Satyavan into death, argues with the god of Death.3 Its the Law, and who has the right to change the Law? he says. And then comes this wonderful passage at the end where she replies, My God can change it. And my God is a God of Love. Oh, how magnificent!
And by force of repeating this to him, he yields She replies in this way to EVERYTHING.
--
So Im trying to come to an understanding, to reach an agreement these are very complicated matters (!). For its a whole totality You see, we are trying something here which really is contrary to all those laws and practices, something which disturbs everything. So they propose things that have me advancing like this (sinuous motion), without disturbing things too much, and without having to call in forces (Mother makes a gesture of a lance thrust into the pack) forces a bit too great, which may disturb things too much. Like that, we can keep tacking back and forth.
A while ago You know that I have TREMENDOUS financial difficulties. In fact, I have handed the whole matter over to the Lord, telling Him, Its your affair; if you want us to continue this experience, well, you must provide the means. But this upsets some of them, so they come along with all kinds of suggestions to keep me from having to to resort to something so drastic. They suggest all kinds of things; some time ago they said, What about a good cyclone, or a good earthquake? A lot of damage to the Ashram, a public appeal that would bring in some funds! (Mother laughs) Yes, its of this order! And its all quite clear and definitewe have veritable conversations!
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the final analysis, everything obviously depends upon the Supremes Will because, if one looks deeply enough into the question, even physical laws and resistances are nothing for Him. But this kind of direct intervention takes place only at the extreme limit; if His Will is to be expressed in opposition, as it were, to the whole set of laws governing the Manifestationwell, that only comes at the very last second. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this so well in Savitri, so well! At least three times in the book he has expressed this Will that abolishes all established laws, all of them, and all the consequences of these laws, the whole formidable colossus of the Manifestation, so that in the face of it all, That can express itself and this takes place at the very last second, so to speak, at the extreme limit of possibility.
I must say that there was a time when, as Sri Aurobindo had entrusted his work to me, there was a kind of tension to do it (it cant be called an anxiety); a tension in the will. This too has now ended (Mother stretches her arms into the Infinite). Its finished. But there MAY still be something tense lurking somewhere in the subconscient or the inconscient I dont know, its possible. Why? I dont know. I mean I have never been told, at any time, neither through Sri Aurobindo nor directly, whether or not I would go right to the end. I have never been told the contrary, either. I have been told nothing at all. And if at times I turn towards Thatnot to question, but simply to know the answer is always the same: Carry on, its not your problem; dont worry about it. So now I have learned not to worry about it; I am consciously not worried about it.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Note that modern astronomy is divided between the theory of endless phases of contraction-explosion-expansion, and the theory of a universe in infinite expansion starting with a 'Big Bang,' which seems quite as catastrophic, since the universe is then plunging at vertiginous speed into an increasingly cold, empty, and fatal infinity, like a bullet released from all restraints of gravity, until... until what? According to astronomers, an exact measurement of the quantity of matter in a cubic meter of the present universe (one atom for every 400 liters of space) should enable us to decide between these two theories and learn which way it will be best for us to die. If there is more than one atom per 400 liters of space, this quantity of matter will create sufficient gravitation to halt the present expansion of galaxies and induce a contraction, ending with an explosion within an infinitesimal space. If there is less than one atom per 400 liters of space, the quantity of matter and thus the gravitational effect will be insufficient to retain the galaxies within their invisible net, and everything will spin off endlesslyunless we discover, with Mother, a third position, that of a 'progressive equilibrium,' in which the quantity of matter in the universe proves in fact to be a quantity of consciousness, whose contraction or expansion will be regulated by the laws of consciousness.
When the veil of falsehood has gone: the supramental consciousness.
0 1961-08-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
X's astonishment raises an extremely important point, drawing the exact dividing line between all the traditional yogas and the new yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mother. To a tantric, for example, it seems unthinkable that Mother, with a consciousness so powerful as to scoff at the laws of nature and comm and the elements (if she wishes), could be subjected to absurd head colds or an eye hemorrhage or even more serious disorders. For him, it is enough to simply lift a finger and emit a vibration which instantly muzzles the disorderyes, of course, but for Mother it is not a question of 'curing' a head cold by imposing a higher POWER on Matter, but of getting down to the cellular root and curing or transforming the source of the evil (which causes death as easily as head colds, for it is the same root of disorder). It is not a question of imposing oneself on Matter through a 'power,' but of transforming Matter. Such is the yoga of the cells.
***
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Besides, if you remember the beginning of Savitri (I read it only recently, I hadnt known it), in the second canto, speaking of Savitri, he says she has come (he puts it poetically, of course!) to (laughing) kick out all the rulesall the taboos, the rules, the fixed laws, all the closed doors, all the impossibilitiesto undo it all.
I went one better; I didnt even know the rules so I didnt need to fight them! All I had to do was ignore them, so they didnt exist that was even better.
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And with this change, the bodily substance, the very stuff of the cells, was constantly being told, Dont you forget, now you see that miracles CAN happen. In other words, the way things work out in physical substance may not at all conform to the laws of Nature. Dont forget, now! It kept coming back like a refrain: Dont forget, now! This is how it is. And I saw how necessary this repetition was for the cells: they forget right away and try to find explanations (oh, how stupid can you be!). Its a sort of feeling (not at all an individual way of thinking), its Matters way of thinking. Matter is built like that, its part of its make-up. We call it thinking for lack of a better word, but its not thinking: it is a material way of understanding things, the way Matter is able to understand.
Oh, thats enough talk for now!
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The same goes for all those beings the Tantrics deal withtheir origin is not vital, they belong to Nature. They are personified natural forces obedient to the laws of Nature. In other words, they originate from below, not from the vital but the physical world. They are vital forces in the physical, but not of vital origin.
The other day, didnt I tell you the story of those entities working for me? (It wasnt you? Id had a vision.) In fact, I very often see entities like Nature spirits when I enter the subtle physical and work there (usually for people here and the Ashram, and for the world at large), I very, very often have them with me, or else I meet them in the course of my work. They are forces, generally feminine in appearance, that do some work and have a great deal of power. They are usually the ones that respond to Tantric invocations (I dont mean the Tantrics who call on Kali or Durga, thats something else altogether, those belong to a totally different world). Most of the time these Nature forces are very willing to helpat any rate, they are wonderfully obliging with me! But they are limited beings, with their own ideas and laws, their own volition, and when vexed they can do unpleasant things. Yet they are not hostile beings, nor are they vital beings: they are personified forces of physical Nature, in the subtle physical.
A world of things could be said.
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The individual can give the initial impulse, point out the path, WALK the path himself (I mean show the path by realizing it) but he cant bring the work to fulfillment. The fulfillment of the work depends on certain collective laws that are the expression of a particular aspect of the Eternal and Infinitenaturally, its all one and the same Being! There arent different individuals and personalities, its all one and the same Being. But the same Being expressing itself in a particular way that for us translates as a group or a collectivity.
Well, thenany other questions on this?
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We can readily imagine a world where you would live in that state Ive been speaking of, and which would develop according to its own laws. But would the existence of such a world cancel out this one?
So you see, here we face a problem that has yet to be solved.
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There must be certain laws laws expressing a Wisdom far beyond us for the experience seems to follow a sort of curve which, because I am in it, I dont understand. And it wont be understood till the end is reached; but I am right in the middle of it, or maybe at the very beginning.
(long silence)
--
Even now, my one feeling about this form is that its too rigid. Those stupendous inner revelations, those great movements of creative consciousness are constantly hampered by this. Its trying, its trying its best, but it is still governed by such appallingly rigid laws! Appalling. How long will it take to overcome this?
We mustnt be in a hurry.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, burned. Or shut up in a box without air and lightwhile FULLY CONSCIOUS. And just because they can no longer express themselves, people say they are dead. They dont waste any time declaring them dead! But they are conscious. They are conscious. Imagine someone who can no longer speak or moveaccording to human laws, he is dead. He is dead but he is conscious. He is conscious, so he sees the people around him: some of them are weeping, some of them are if hes a bit clairvoyant, he also sees that some of them are rejoicing. And then he sees himself put into a box, sees the lid nailed down, shutting him in: Ah, now its all over, theyre going to cover me with earth! Or hes taken over there [to the cremation ground], and then its fire in the mouthFULLY conscious.
I have lived this in recent days. I have seen it. Last night or the night before, I spent at least two hours in a world the subtle physical worldwhere the living mingle with the dead with no sense of difference, it makes absolutely no difference there. For instance, when Mridu1 was in her body I used to see her at night maybe once a year (maybe not even that much). For years she was utterly nonexistent in my consciousness but since she left her body, I see her almost every night! There she is, just as she was, you know (rotund gesture), but no longer troubled, thats all. No longer troubled. And there were both living and what we call the living and the deadthey were both there together, eating together, moving around together, having fun together; and all in a lovely, tranquil lightpleasant, very pleasant. There! I thought, and humans have drawn a sharp line, saying, Now hes dead! Dead! And what really takes the cake is the way they treat the body like an unconscious object, and its still conscious!
0 1963-01-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As I told you, Sri Aurobindo lives there permanently, as though in a house of his own: you can see him, you can stay with him, he is busy. It is very much like the physical, but a physical that would be less grating, you understand, where things are more harmonious and satisfying, less excited. There is less of that feeling of haste and uncertainty. In that house where Sri Aurobindo lives, life unfolds very, very harmoniously: people come and go, there are meals even. But all that obeys more general laws, and a sense of security and certainty not to be found in physical life. And the symbolism is more exact (I dont know how to express it), the symbolic transcription of things is less distorted, more exact.
This is the subtle physical as I know it, I cant say if it is the same for everyone. Sri Aurobindo said, There is a true physical, well, I have a feeling that this is what he calls the true physicala subtler physical, the true physical which is behind.
0 1963-08-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time an experience of that kind occurs, the entire vision of things and of the relationship between things is changed (gesture of reversal). Even from a quite practical viewpoint. You see, Life is a sort of chessboard on which all the pawns are arranged according to certain inner laws, and every time it all changes: everything changes, the chessboard changes, the pawns change, the types of organization change. Also the inner quality of the pawnsvery much so.
For instance, these last few days I had a whole vision of X, of what he represents, the people around him, his relationship with the Ashramall that entirely changed. Every element took a new place in relation to all the others. And I have nothing to do with it, I dont try to understand, I dont try to see, nothing: the thing is simply shown to me. Like pictures that are shown to me. Each thing has its own special flavor, its own special color, its own special quality and its own special relationship with the restall the relationships are different.
0 1964-10-10, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know its laws, I am only a spectator. And it obeys a will of an absolutely different order from the will at work in the physical world.
(silence)
0 1964-10-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But they are constantly trying to make general laws, when its always an individual question.
Absolutely.
--
Its easier! Yes, laws, laws, laws. They havent understood yet.
I would have nothing to say against that poster if there had been several quotations, with mine among the others; but what I rose up against is that they used it as a circular which they sent to all the Departments! And it was a private letter.
0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For instance, Ive had the opportunity of studying this: For me, circumstances, characters, all events and all beings move about according to certain laws, if I may say so, which arent rigid, but which I perceive and because of which I can see: This will lead to that, and that will lead there, and this person being like that, such-and-such a thing is going to happen to him, and Its growing increasingly precise. I could, if it were necessary, make predictions based on that. But the relation of cause and effect in that domain is, for me, absolutely obvious and corroborated by facts. While for them, who do not have that vision and that consciousness of the soul, as Sri Aurobindo says, circumstances unfold according to other, superficial laws, which they consider to be the natural consequences of things; quite superficial laws that do not stand up to a deeper analysis, but they dont have the inner capacity, so that doesnt bother them, they find it obvious.
I mean that this inner knowledge doesnt have the power to convince them, thats an experience I have almost every day. So that when, concerning some event or other, I see, Oh, but its perfectly, perfectly obvious (for me): I saw the Lords Force act there, I saw such-and-such a thing happen, and so, quite naturally, this is what must take place, for me, its as obvious as could be, but I dont tell what I know, because it doesnt correspond to anything in their experience, so to them its raving or pretension. Which means that when you havent had the experience yourself, anothers experience isnt convincing, it cannot convince you.
0 1965-06-18 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My impression is that Sri Aurobindo already has his subtle supramental form. For instance, when he has to move, he doesnt give the impression of being subject to the same laws as we are; but as its subtle, it doesnt appear surprising. And also a sort of ubiquity: he is in several places at the same time. And a plasticity, an adaptability according to the work he wants to do, the people he meets. In those activities I am quite aware that I see him in a certain way, but I think others dont see him the same waythey see him differently, probably wearing clothes. When he ran in the forest, we were all alone, and it was a large forest without anyone there; then a few minutes later, we were somewhere else and there were people, other people to whom he spoke, and I didnt at all feel that the others were seeing him without clothes: they were certainly seeing him wearing clothes.
I saw him once, rather long ago: I told you the story of his boat, made also of clay.
0 1965-07-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have looked at all the cases (because it interests me a lot), I have looked at your case, I have looked at her case, I have looked at every case, but there isnt one case in which one can say it is a true illness. The idea of illness is: a body (a physical being, anyway) that lives according to certain laws, till suddenly a disorder, something works its way into the body, establishes itself and upsets it; but its not that! Its not that: its something that isnt in order the body isnt in order; only, something predominates in the consciousness, something which is in contact with the disorder, but isnt bothered by it and keeps going. And I have done the same study with supposedly healthy people: its the same thing. So the conclusion is that the full power should be released, which means that all that sort of disorderly muddle must be made to be governed by a higher Will that imposes itselfit imposes itself. Then, if order isnt completely restored, at least its kept within certain limits and the body can go on being used as an instrument for the Will that seeks to manifest.
I see this very clearly, not only for this body for the others too; but for this body, it is seen in the minutest details, because the observation is more constant: it would already have had at least a hundred reasons to die, and if it hasnt died, its not to blame. Its not to blame, its because there was something (which fortunately isnt a personal will) that said, No, go on! Go on, carry on, dont pay attention to yourself. Otherwise, its falling to pieces.
0 1966-03-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If He told me Whatever He wants the body to do, it can do; it no longer depends on physical laws.
What He wants to see it can see; what He wants to hear it can hear.
0 1966-08-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the 15th, that boy, the Communist architect who was here left, because he found that moral laws arent sufficiently respected! His very words. He left. But then, his thought keeps coming all the timenot thought: something from here (the heart), it keeps coming and coming. He must be quite unhappy at having left! And he asked me It was on the afternoon of the 15th, it kept coming and it was tormented and it asked: How can one know the Truth? What is the Truth? How can one know? Sri Aurobindo was there, and he said to me IN FRENCH (!):
La Vrit ne peut se formuler en mots, mais elle peut tre vcue, si lon est assez pur et plastique.1
0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oddly, these last few days again, this has been the subject of my meditations (not willed ones: they are imposed from above). Because in all the transition from plant to animal and from animal to man (especially from animal to man), the differences of form are, ultimately, minor: the true transformation is the intervention of another agent of consciousness. All the differences between the life of the animal and the life of man stem from the intervention of the Mind; but the substance is essentially the same and it obeys the same laws of formation and construction. There isnt much difference, for instance, between the calf being formed in a cows womb and the child being formed in its mothers womb. There is one difference: that of the Minds intervention. But if we envisage a PHYSICAL being, that is, as visible as the physical now is and with the same density, for instance a body that wouldnt need blood circulation and bones (especially these two things: the skeleton and blood circulation) its very hard to imagine. And as long as it is like this, with this blood circulation, this functioning of the heart, we could imaginewe can imagine the renewal of strength, of energy through a power of the Spirit, through other means than food. Its conceivable. But the rigidity, the solidity of the body, how is it possible without a skeleton? So it would be an infinitely greater transformation than that from animal to man; it would be a transition from man to a being that would no longer be built in the same way, that would no longer function in the same way, that would be like a densification or concretization of something. Up till now, it doesnt correspond to anything we have seen physically, unless the scientists have found something I am not aware of.
We may conceive of a new light or force giving the cells a sort of spontaneous life, a spontaneous strength.
--
Something is needed that has the power to resist the contagion. Man cannot resist the contagion from the animal, he cant, he has constant relationships. Well, how will that being manage? It would seem that for a long timea long timehe will still be subject to the laws of contagion.
I dont know, it doesnt seem impossible to me.
0 1966-11-23, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He has bound all life with his implacable laws;
He answers not the ignorant voice of prayer.
0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate.
Is that all?
--
No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate.
What I mean is that usually (always till now, and more and more so), men establish mental rules according to their conceptions and their ideal, then they apply them (Mother lowers her fist, as if to show the world under the mental grip). And thats absolutely false, arbitrary, unreal, with the result that things revolt, or else waste away and disappear. Its the experience of LIFE ITSELF that must slowly work out rules AS SUPPLE AND VAST as possible, in order that they remain ever progressive. Nothing must be fixed. Thats the immense error of governments: they build a framework and say, Here is what weve established, now we must live under it. So naturally, Life is crushed and prevented from progressing. It is Life itself, developing more and more in a progression towards Light, Knowledge, Power, that must progressively establish rules as general as possible, so as to be extremely supple and capable of changing according to needof changing AS RAPIDLY as habits and needs do.
--
Its an extremely interesting experience: how the same actions, the same work, the same observations, the same relationship with the people around (near or far), how they take place in the mind, through intelligence, and how they take place in the consciousness, by experience. And thats what this body is now learningto replace the mental government of intelligence by the spiritual government of the consciousness. And it makes (it looks like nothing, one may not notice it), it makes a tremendous difference, to the point of multiplying the bodys possibilities a hundredfold. When the body is subjected to rules, even if they are broad, even if they are comprehensive, it is a slave to those rules and its possibilities are limited by them. But when its governed by the Spirit and the Consciousness that gives it an incomparable possibility and flexibility! And thats what will give it the capacity to prolong its life, to last longer: its by replacing the mental, intellectual government by the government of the Spirit, of the Consciousness THE Consciousness. Outwardly, it doesnt seem to make much difference, but My experience is like this (because now my body no longer obeys the mind or the intelligence at all, not any moreit doesnt even understand how that can be done), and more and more, and better and better, it follows the direction and impulsion of the Consciousness. But then, it sees, almost at each minute, the tremendous difference that it makes. For instance, time has lost its value (its rigid value): you can do exactly the same thing in very little time or in much time. Necessities have lost their authority: you can adapt yourself this way, adapt yourself that way. All the lawsthose laws that were laws of Naturehave lost all their despotism, we may say: it no longer works that way. All you have to do is always, always be supple, attentive, and responsive (if any such thing can be!) to the influence of the Consciousness the Consciousness in its all-powerfulnessso as to go through all this with extraordinary suppleness.
That is the discovery being made more and more.
--
Its like a progressive victory over all constraints. So naturally, all the laws of Nature, all the human laws, all habits, all rules, they all become increasingly supple and finally nonexistent. Yet it is possible to keep a regular rhythm that facilitates actionits not contrary to this suppleness. But its a suppleness in the execution, in the adaptation, which comes and changes everything. From the point of view of hygiene, health, organization, from the point of view of relationships with others, all that has not only lost its aggressiveness (because for that, it suffices to be wisewise and level-headed and calm), but also its absolutism, its imperative rule: thats completely gonegone.
And then you see: as the process grows more and more perfectperfect means integral, total, leaving nothing behindit NECESSARILY, inevitably means victory over death. Not that this dissolution of the cells which death represents stops existing, but it would exist only when necessary: not as an absolute law, but as ONE of the processes, when necessary.
0 1968-01-06, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That makes speaking difficult, because of this old habit (maybe also a necessity to make oneself understood) of using the word II, whats this I? It no longer corresponds to anything, except for a mere appearance. And this appearance is the only contradiction. Thats the interesting point: this appearance is clearly a contradiction of the truth; its something that still belongs to the old laws, at least, in fact, in its appearance. And because of that, you are forced to say things in a certain way, but it doesnt correspondit doesnt correspond to your state of consciousness, not in the least. There is a fluidity, a breadth, a sort of totality, and above all, more and more strongly the sense that this (pointing to the body) must grow INCREASINGLY SUPPLEsupple, fluid, so to speak, so as to express without resistance or distortion the vision the real vision, the real state of consciousness. To the consciousness, this possibility of fluidity, of plasticity, is growing more and more evident, with only, only just something outwardly which is increasingly becoming an illusion. And yet, yet thats what others see, understand, know and call me. And it truly strives and strives to adapt more and more, but time still appears to have its importance.
(long silence)
0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time the rule or domination of Natures ordinary laws is, on one point or another, replaced (or must be or is going to be replaced on any point) by the authority of the Divine Consciousness, that creates a state of transition with all the appearances of a tremendous disorder and a very great danger. And as long as the body doesnt know, as long as its in its state of ignorance, it gets panic-stricken (which is what happens in almost everyone), panic-stricken, it thinks its a serious illness, and sometimes, with the help of imagination, it may even result in an illness. But originally its not that: its a withdrawal, the withdrawal of Natures ordinary law with its adjunct of personal vital and mental law (but Natures law in the body is generally much stronger than the minds and the vitals law); well, its the withdrawal of that law and its replacement by the other. So there is a moment when its neither this nor that, and that moment is critical. But if the body begins to know, it remains still and has faithtrust and faith; it remains still, then all goes well. The difficulty soon passes and all goes well. So long as the body doesnt know its reactions are disastrous. But for it to know automatically and spontaneously, it means that a large part of its elements must already be conscious and transformed. Now, its all right. Not so long ago it was still necessary to stop, to fall silent, concentrate, to call the Presence, call on its faith, then everything was back in order. Now the movement is spontaneous.
And the surface, the very part that gives the sense of bark, is what will change lastwhats going to happen? I dont know I dont know. But it will change last.
0 1968-02-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first is (one more English word) a reliance that is, it should lean on the Divine ALONE for support, for the source of its strength, its health, its capacity; it means that all material rules and laws are rejected and must cease to have any importance.
Thats the bodys experience almost every minute.
0 1968-02-14, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday I was shown the photo of a man who is the guru of many people.1 I do not know what he claims to be, but he is an Indian who went to Europe and America and has lotsthousands and thousandsof disciples, followers, believers. He says there is only one way to bring peace on earth, and that is total and complete freedom: intellectual and moral freedom, of course, but also vital and physical freedom. That is, freeing oneself from all subjections and all laws, living according to ones own impulsion. Then, he says, something (I forget what he calls it) will govern you and will make you do what must be done. Its not the individual who decides, its that. And if he is asked, But how? How do you know that is it? How do you find that?, he simply answers, Come and sit down beside me in meditation, and you will know. And he is convinced he can bring peace to earth with that.
I saw his photo yesterday. Vitally, he is extraordinarily strong. I dont know if its his own force or if its what he receives from others, because you can find that out only through physical contact.
0 1968-03-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the effect of a combination of three things: bad will (at the worst, a refusal to follow the movement), a more or less total bad will; an ignorance of the laws and their consequences, that is, the causes and effects (a complete ignorance); and, of course, a form of inertiaits all a form of inertia, but the greatest form of inertia is the incapacity to receive and respond. These three things combined are what creates diseases and so on, and the final effectdeath. That is, the disintegration of created harmony.
But from the collective point of view, the point of view of collective influence, its the other way around; in other words, thats what is taken to be the cause of disorders: instead of being the effect, its the causewhich is absurd.
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It means abdicating with regard to the general functioning of the physical substance, of the body, and having illnesses you get cured of or not, depending on other laws than physical laws. But there is every minuteevery minute the possibility to choose the true consciousness, or there is, yes, a disorder or disequilibrium. Its something which is unable to follow the movement of progressive harmony, or sometimes even which doesnt want to. I am talking about cells and groups of cells.
Most of the time, its a sort of laziness, something unwilling to make an effort, to make a resolve: it prefers to leave the responsibility to others. In English I would call it the remnant, the residue of the Inconscient. Its a sort of spinelessness (gesture of groveling) which accepts a general, impersonal law: you paddle about in illness. And in response to that, there is inside, every minute, the sense of the true attitude, which in the cells is expressed with great simplicity: There is the Lord, who is the all-powerful Master. Something like that. It depends entirely on Him. If a surrender is to be made, its to Him. I make sentences, but for the cells its not sentences. Its a tiny little movement that expresses itself by repeating the mantra; then the mantra is fullfull of force and there is instantly the surrender: May Your Will be done, and a tranquillitya luminous tranquillity. And one sees that there was absolutely no imperative need to be ill or for the disequilibrium to occur.
0 1968-06-26, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The education of the physical consciousness (not the bodys global consciousness, but the consciousness of the cells) consists in teaching them First of all its a choice (it looks like one): its choosing the divine Presence the divine Consciousness, the divine Presence, the divine Power (all that wordlessly), the something we define as the absolute Master. Its a choice of EVERY SECOND between the old laws of Naturewith some mental influence and the whole life as it has been organized the choice between that, the government by that, and the government by the supreme Consciousness, which is equally present (the feeling of the Presence is equally strong); the other thing is more habitual, and then theres the Presence. Its every second (its infinitely interesting), and with illustrations: the nerves, for instance if a nerve obeys all the various laws of Nature and mental conclusions and all that the whole caboodle then it starts aching; if it obeys the influence of the supreme Consciousness, then a strange phenomenon takes place its not like something getting cured I might rather say, like an unreality fading away.
And thats the life of every second, for the smallest thing, the whole bodily functioning: sleep, food, washing, activities, everything, everythingevery second. And the body is learning. There are naturally hesitations stemming from the power of habit and also old ideas floating about in the air (gesture of a swarming in the atmosphere): none of that is personal. As a work, its tremendous.
0 1968-09-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have told you many times, and couldnt repeat it too often, that we are not made of a piece. Within ourselves we have lots of states of being, and each state of being has its own life. All that is gathered together in a single body, as long as you have one, and acts through a single body; thats what gives you the sense of a single person, a single being. But there are many of them, and there are in particular concentrations on different planes: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, a mental being, a psychic being, and many others with all possible intermediaries. So when you leave your body, all those beings will scatter. Its only if you are a very advanced yogi and have been capable of unifying your being around the divine center that those beings remain linked together. If you havent been able to unify yourself, then at the time of death, all that will scatter: every being will go back to its own region. With the vital being, for example, your various desires will separate and each of them will go and chase its realization quite independently, because there will no longer be a physical being to hold them together. While if you have united your consciousness to the psychic consciousness, when you die you will remain conscious of your psychic being, and the psychic being will return to the psychic world which is a world of bliss, joy, peace, tranquillity, and growing knowledge. But if you have lived in your vital and all its impulses, each impulse will try to realize itself here and there. For instance, for the miser who was concentrated on his money, when he dies the part of his vital that was concerned with his money will hook on there and will keep watching over the money so no one takes it. People wont see him, but he is there nonetheless, and very unhappy if something happens to his dear money. Now, if you live exclusively in your physical consciousness (which is difficult, because, after all, you have thoughts and feelings), if you live exclusively in your physical, when the physical being disappears, you disappear along with it, its over. There is a spirit of the form: your form has a spirit that lives on for seven days after your death. The doctors have declared you dead, but the spirit of your form is alive, and not only alive but conscious in most cases. It lasts for seven to eight days, and after that, it too dissolves I am not talking about yogis, I am talking about ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, its quite different; for them the world is different. I am talking about ordinary people living an ordinary life; for them its like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to center it on a part of your being which is immortal; otherwise it will evaporate like a flame into thin air. And happily so, because if it were otherwise, there might be gods or kinds of superior men who would create hells and heavens as they do in their material imagination, inside which they would shut you up. (Question:) It is said that there is a god of death. Is it true? Yes. As for me, I call him a genius of death. I know him very well. And its an extraordinary organization. You cant imagine how organized it is! I think there are many of those genii of death, hundreds of them. I met at least two of them. One I met in France, the other in Japan, and they were very different. Which leads me to believe that depending on the mental culture, the education, the countries and beliefs, there must be different genii. But there are genii for all manifestations of Nature: there are genii of fire, genii of air, water, rain, wind; and there are genii of death. Any one genius of death is entitled to a certain number of dead every day. Its truly a fantastic organization. Its a sort of alliance between the vital forces and the forces of Nature. If, for example, he decided, Here is the number of people I am entitled to, say four or five, or six, or one or two (it varies from day to day), if he decided so many people would die, hell go straight and set himself up near the person whos going to die. But if you (not the person) happen to be conscious, if you see the genius going to the person but do not want him or her to die, then, if you have a certain occult power, you can tell him, No, I forbid you to take this person. Thats something which happened, not once but several times, in Japan and here. It wasnt the same genius. Which makes me say there must be many of them. If you can tell him, I forbid you to take this person and have the power to send him away, theres nothing he can do but go away; but he wont give up his due and will go elsewhere there will be a death elsewhere. (Question:) Some people, when they are about to die, are aware of it. Why dont they tell the genius to go away? Two things are needed. First, nothing in your being, no part of your being, should wish to die. That doesnt often happen. You always have, somewhere in you, a defeatist: something tired or disgusted, which has had enough, something lazy or which doesnt want to fight and says, Ah, well, let it be over, so much the better. Thats enoughyoure dead. But its a fact: if nothing, absolutely nothing in you consents to die, you will not die. For someone to die, there is always a second, if a hundredth part of a second, when he consents. If there isnt that second of consent, he will not die. But who is certain he doesnt have within himself, somewhere, a tiny bit of a defeatist which just yields and says, Oh well? Hence the need to unify oneself. Whatever the path we may follow, the subject we may study, we always reach the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine center; that way he becomes a real individual, master of himself and of his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of the forces, which toss him about like a cork in a stream. He goes where he doesnt want to, is made to do what he doesnt want to, and finally he gets lost in a hole without any way to stop himself doing so. But if you are consciously organized, unified around the divine center, governed and led by it, you are the master of your destiny. Its worth trying. At any rate, I find its better to be the master rather than the slave. The feeling of being pulled by strings and being made to do things you may or may not want to do is a rather unpleasant sensation. Its quite irksome. Well, I dont know, I, for one, found it quite irksome even when I was a small child. When I was five, I began finding it wholly intolerable, and I sought a way for it to be otherwisewithout anyone being able to tell me anything. Because I knew no one capable of helping me, and I didnt have the luck you havesomeone who can tell you, Here is what you must do. There was no one to tell me. I had to find it all by myself. I found it. I began at the age of five. And you, its a long time since you were five?
Well cut out the end.
0 1968-12-21, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive often had an impression that all those so-called human or natural laws are only an immense morbid imagination that has been collectively fixed thats the box.
Yes, thats it! Thats right.
0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its strangely fragile at the same time, thats the curious thing. Theres a sense of having gone out of all ordinary laws, and its hanging in suspense, like that. Something which is seeking to be established.
And extremely sensitive to what comes (the two things at the same time), extremely sensitive to what comes from others, and at the same time, with a sort of extraordinary power to enter into them and work there. As if a whole kind of limits were (Mother slips the fingers of one hand through the fingers of the other) done away with.
0 1969-04-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
8) The Mother also said to convey to Indira that she must know that the laws of man cannot stand before the laws of the Divine and ultimately it is the laws of the Divine that will prevail.
9) The Mother said that the new Consciousness that has descended on the 1st of January is very active, and that we have come to a very critical time in the history of the world, and it is most interesting to watch how things are happening. This new Consciousness is preparing for the Superman and so there are big changes happening all around. When the first man developed, the animal had no mind and could not appreciate the evolution. Man has mind and can appreciate the evolution. That is why this is the most interesting time in history. If one can stand in that consciousness and watch the happenings from above, one can see how small and futile they are and one can then act upon them with a great Power.
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two nights ago, I spent more than three hours with Sri Aurobindo, and I showed him all that was going to descend for Auroville. It was rather interesting. There were games, there was art, there was even cooking! But all that was very symbolic. I explained it to him as if on a table, in front of a large landscape; I explained the principle on whose basis physical exercises and games were going to be organized. It was very clear, very precise, I even did a demonstration, as if showing him on a very small scale: a representation on a very small scale of what was going to be done. I moved people, things (gesture as if on a chessboard). But it was very interesting, and he was interested: he gave kinds of broad laws of organization (I dont know how to explain).
There was art and it was lovely, it was fine. And how to make houses pleasant and beautiful, with what principle of construction. And cooking too, it was very amusing! There were the different manners of presenting a dish; take a fish, for instance, with the different ways of preparing it, and everyone came with his own invention. It went on for more than three hours (three hours of the night, thats huge). I woke up at 4 oclock with that (4 oclock, and I had gone back to bed at I oclock: I to 4 is three hours I can still calculate!). Very interesting.
0 1969-09-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(A.R.:) Thank you I come to you as a child thirsting and hungering for Truth, Justice, and the Knowledge of spiritual laws. Please give me this nourishment that is the knowledge of the laws, so I may serve the Divine in the most perfect universal Harmony.
(silence)
--
But I dont know any law! I dont know what he calls the law I dont know any laws.
(Satprem to A.R.:) What do you call the law?
0 1969-11-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then (laughing) its surely that! Its collective evolution, as it is according to the laws of ordinary nature, and what you represented there was the higher knowledge wanting to change the pace, change the course of the ship. Its very clear. And of course (laughing), you know the ways of the world: it doesnt want to be troubled! So you had to hide.
Oh, yes, I was chased, I ran from one cabin to another, looking for some corner or the other to take refuge.
0 1969-12-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The habitual concentration of Nature (produced by Nature) is a MECHANICAL concentration which is subject to all sorts of mechanical laws too, but (Mother reads out her note) Here is what came:
The very first step towards immortality is to replace the mechanical centralization by a willed centralization.
0 1970-02-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
laws, customs, armies are temporary necessities imposed on us for a few groups of centuries because God has concealed His face from us. When it appears to us again in its truth and beauty, then in that light they will vanish.
And what did I answer?
--
Someone from Auroville wrote to me that he thought he had come here to obey no one but himself (or words to that effect), but he noticed there are rules and laws. And he said, I am not going to do any of this; I am a free man and refuse to do this. This was reported to me, naturally,2 so I wrote to him (I dont remember): One is free only when one is conscious of the Divine and conscious that it is the Divine who makes decisions in everyone, otherwise one is the slave of ones desires, ones habits, of all conventions. I sent him that, and he kept quiet.
Thats what I wanted to add here [to this aphorism]. We should say: One is free only when it is the Divine who makes decisions in each of us, otherwise men are the slaves of their desires, their habits, of all conventions, all laws, all rules. And the more they think themselves free, the more bound they are!
(silence)
0 1970-03-14, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All the experiences others had had of making contact with the higher worlds, used to leave the physical here as it is. (How should I put it?) From the very beginning of existence up to Sri Aurobindos departure, I lived in the awareness that one may rise, one may know, one may have all experiences (and one did have them), but when one came back into this body it was those for-mid-able old laws of the mind that ruled everything. So then, all these years have been years spent preparing and preparingfreeing oneself and preparing and these last few days, it was ah! the body PHYSICALLY noting that things had changed.
It has to be worked out, as they say, realized in every detail, but the change IS DONEthe change is done.
--
But its as if from every sideevery sidethose mental forces, mental powers were rising in protest, violent in their protest, so as to impose their old laws: But things have always been this way! But its over. They wont always be this way, thats all.
(long silence)
0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Industries were the great means of earning moneynow thats quite finished. All profits are taken by the government. Or else, we had here small industries which had been freed from taxes on condition that they give 75% of their profits to the Ashramnow they have changed their laws and its no longer 75%, its all of it.
To the Ashram, you mean to the State?
--
For the body consciousness that remains conscious when the body is asleep, the world as it is is dark and muddyalways. That is, its always a half-darknessyou can hardly seeand mud. And that isnt an opinion or a thought: its a material FACT. Consequently, this [body] consciousness is already conscious of a world that would no longer be subject to the same laws.
The cells are quite, absolutely convinced that (Ill put it in the simplest way) the Lord is all-powerful, you understand? Only, what theyre not convinced of is whether He WANTS (laughing) it to be this way or that, that is to say, whether He wants the transformation to be done in an already existing body, or in stages.
0 1970-04-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, he told me he was very struck to discover practically that laws dont hold up, so-called laws disappear.
(silence)
0 1970-04-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In last nights experience, it was everything at the same time: the body felt, acted, it was conscious, it observed, decidedeverything, just everything at the same time. There even was I dont know, I didnt have a vision of Sri Aurobindo, but I had the sensation of his presence (that often happens: at times Ill see him and he wont speak; at other times I wont see him but Ill hear him, hell speak to me the laws are no longer the same), and he made me notice, or rather I noted that although the body was suffering a lot (the situation was critical, you know), there wasnt the shadow of a fear in the body. Then he told me, Yes, its because it is able not to be afraid that you can do the work.
The absence of fear is really the result of the yoga for so many years for half a century.
--
Yes. And then, when you are in that subtle physical consciousness, the laws changeyou can change the material law if you are in that consciousness.
Yes, it doesnt at all work in the same way.
--
I mean, once or twice I had such an intense perception that its almost an experience, even if its merely mental, that in a certain state of consciousness, all physical laws collapsed.
Yes, yes.
--
They have no meaning, to such a point that I remember one thing last night: suddenly I saw a functioning, and I said to myself, Oh, if we knew this, HOW MANY THINGShow many fears, how many combinations, how many would crumble away, would lose all meaning! It was what we see as laws of Nature, ineluctable things, it all was absurd, an absurdity!
Yes, and I felt it as something flimsy, like a thin film, something without Those awesome laws were something very flimsy.
Yes, yes!
--
At times, the body feels such a great strength that it gets the feeling it could do (it feels, it clearly sees, the hands are strong), a strength of a different quality, but much greater than before. And at other times, it cant even hold itself upright, and for a reason which isnt It no longer obeys the same laws as those that keep us upright. So And all that takes place in a single day!
(silence)
0 1970-05-13, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its very similar [to the material world]. Only, there doesnt seem to be the same laws of (how do they call it?), what they said is the result of attraction to the center of the earth?
Gravitation.
Yes, there doesnt seem to be the same laws of gravitation, because you can move about like this (Mother gestures with a finger, as if bounding from one point to another), through the will. You dont have to walk or (same gesture). The consciousness and the will have a far greater power than in the material physical.
Theres a greater fluidity, but still you find things again [from one visit to the next]: you find things again and with changes, you understand? They are things that exist independently of our will.
0 1970-05-27, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Maybe, yes. Whats trying to take place is a stronger and more direct influence on purely material circumstances. Yes, this is it: action on this subtle physical has an effect according to the laws of the material world in the material world.
You see, amidst many other things (it lasted a long time and was a very complex thing), but as one example amidst other things, it had to do with the consequences, even current ones, of certain things Amrita did when he was here and handled money. But I spoke to him and arranged things with him as if he were present, not as if he had left.
0 1970-09-12, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And when you ask doctors to tell you what they know, you get a feeling that its only a partial, superficial observation, and the true thing is lacking. So when you ask them, they say, Ah no, that we dont know. So there we are, like that You understand, I feel as if I am plunged in a world I do not know, struggling with laws I do not know and to work out a change I do not know eitherwhats the nature of this change?
Its not too pleasant.
--
Yes, but Mother, I really feel that through this darkness, this ignorance of the laws, you are being KNOWINGLY carried to the point where the solution will be foundall this is organised, its not adverse circumstances, you really are carried.
You are right. Youre right. If you like, I might say that I think that way (I dont think, but), there is a perception like that. But theres everything in between.
0 1971-06-05, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Humanity has a dread (it must have been necessary at one time, some thousands of years ago, I dont know), a dread of the Divine. The human animal. For him, it is equivalent to disappearing. And in effect it is the disappearance of the ego. And the disappearance of that [physical] ego for a long time one has had the impression that if the ego disappears, the being disappears, the form disappears but thats not true! It isnt true. In any case, it has become ready [Mothers body] to live without an ego. The trouble is that lifes ordinary laws no longer hold. Which means all the old habit, plus the new thing to be learned.
Its as if the cellsnot the bodys cells: the organization that makes up the form (that holds everything together and makes up a form, a form we call human), its as if that had to learn it can go on living without the sense of separate individuality. Curious. Without the sense of ego. While for thousands of years its been accustomed to existing separately only because of the egowithout ego it goes on according to another law the body doesnt yet know, and which it finds incomprehensible. It has nothing to do with a will, its not I dont know a something a way of being. But then, billions of ways of being.
0 1971-12-11, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, the prison is already starting to collapse. The end of a stage of evolution, announced by Sri Aurobindo, is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolution.6 Everywhere about us we see this paroxysmal shattering of all the old forms: our borders, our churches, our laws, our morals are collapsing on all sides. They are not collapsing because we are bad, immoral, irreligious, or because we are not sufficiently rational, scientific or human, but because we have come to the end of the human! To the end of the old mechanism for we are on our way to SOMETHING ELSE. The world is not going through a moral crisis but through an evolutionary crisis. We are not going towards a better worldnor, for that matter, towards a worse onewe are in the midst of a MUTATION to a radically different world, as different as the human world was from the ape world of the Tertiary Era. We are entering a new era, a supramental Quinary. We leave our countries, wander aimlessly, we go looking for drugs, for adventure, we go on strike here, enact reforms there, foment revolutions and counterrevolutions. But all this is only an appearance; in fact, unwittingly, we are looking for the new being. We are in the midst of human evolution.
And Sri Aurobindo gives us the key. It may be that the sense of our own revolution escapes us because we try to prolong that which already exists, to refine it, improve it, sublimate it. But the ape may have made the same mistake amid its revolution that produced man; perhaps it sought to become a super-ape, better equipped to climb trees, hunt and run, a more agile and clever ape. With Nietzsche we too sought a superman who was nothing more than a colossalization of man, and with the spiritualists a super-saint more richly endowed with virtue and wisdom. But human virtue and wisdom are useless! Even when carried to their highest heights they are nothing more than the old poverties gilded over, the obverse of our tenacious misery. Supermanhood, says Sri Aurobindo, is not man climbed to his own natural zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, genius, saintliness, love, purity or perfection.7 It is SOMETHING ELSE, another vibration of being, another consciousness.
But if this new consciousness is not to be found on the peaks of the human, where then, are we to find it? Perhaps, quite simply in that which we have most neglected since we entered the mental cycle, in the body. The body is our base, our evolutionary foundation, the old stock to which we always return, and which painfully compels our attention by making us suffer, age and die. In that imperfection, Sri Aurobindo assures us, is the urge towards a higher and more many-sided perfection. It contains the last finite which yet yearns to the Supreme Infinite. God is pent in the mire but the very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison.8 That is the old, uncured Illness, the unchanged root, the dark matrix of our misery, hardly different now from what it was in the time of Lemuria. It is this physical substance which we must transform, otherwise it will topple, one after another, all the human or superhuman devices we try to graft on it. This body, this physical cellular substance contains almighty powers,9 a dumb consciousness that harbors all the lights and all the infinitudes, just as much as the mental and spiritual immensities do. For, in truth, all is Divine and unless the Lord of all the universe resides in a single little cell he resides nowhere. It is this original, dark cellular Prison which we must break open; for as long as we have not broken it, we will continue to turn vainly in the golden or iron circles of our mental prison. These laws of Nature, says Sri Aurobindo, that you call absolute merely mean an equilibrium established to work in order to produce certain results. But, if you change the consciousness, then the groove also is bound to change.10
Such is the new adventure to which Sri Aurobindo invites us, an adventure into mans unknown. Whether we like it or not, the whole earth is moving into a new groove, but why shouldnt we like it? Why shouldnt we collaborate in this great, unprecedented adventure? Why shouldnt we collaborate in our own evolution, instead of repeating endlessly the same old story, instead of chasing hallucinatory paradises which will never quench our thirst or otherworldly paradises which leave the earth to rot along with our bodies? Why be born if it is to get out at the end? exclaims the Mother, who continues Sri Aurobindos work. What is the use of having struggled so much, suffered so much, of having created something which, in its outer appearance at least, is so tragic and dramatic, if it is only to learn how to get out of itit would have been better not to start at all. Evolution is not a tortuous course that brings us back, somewhat battered, to the starting point. Quite the contrary, it is meant, says Mother, to teach the whole of creation the joy of being, the beauty of being, the grandeur of being, the majesty of a sublime life, and the perpetual development, perpetually progressive, of this joy, this beauty, this grandeur. Then everything has a meaning.11
This body, this obscure beast of burden we inhabit, is the experimental field of Sri Aurobindos yogawhich is a yoga of the whole earth, for one can easily understand that if a single being among our millions of sufferings succeeds in negotiating the evolutionary leap, the mutation of the next age, the face of the earth will be radically altered. Then all the so-called powers of which we boast today will seem like childish games before the radiance of this almighty embodied spirit. Sri Aurobindo tells us that it is possiblenot only possible but that it will be done. It is being done. And perhaps everything depends not so much on a sublime effort of humanity to transcend its limitations for that means still using our own human strength to free ourselves from human strengthas on a call, a conscious cry of the earth to this new being which the earth already carries within itself. All is already there, within our hearts, the supreme Source which is the supreme Poweronly we must call it into our forest of cement, we must understand the meaning of man, the meaning of ourselves. The amplified cry of the earth, of its millions of men and women who cannot bear it anymore, who no longer accept their prison, must open a crack to let the new vibration in. Then all the apparently ineluctable laws that bind us in their hereditary and scientific groove will crumble before the Joy of the sun-eyed children.12 Expect nothing from death, says Mother, life is your salvation. It is in life that you must transform yourself. It is on earth that you progress and on earth that you realize. It is in the body that you win the Victory.13
Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear, says Sri Aurobindo, for it is the hour of the unexpected.14
0 1972-05-17, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its strange, luckilyluckilyone thing happens after another, one after another, but every single bodily function is changing (whats the right word?), I have it, changing government. Functions that worked naturally that is, in accord with the laws of Natureall of a sudden, brrm, finished! They stop. Then something which I call the Divineperhaps Sri Aurobindo called it the Supramental, I dont know; its something like that, something that is plainly concerned with Matter, with this Manifestation, and which is tomorrows realization (I dont know how to name it); so when everything is thoroughly upset and I feel really awful, then That consents to intervene.
The transition isnt pleasant. Thats all.
0 1972-07-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, Mother! In the essential truth, I am with you forever, as you know, there is no doubt about it. So far so good But when I deal with Matter, I have to fight using Matters laws along with whatever truth I may have. As far as Matter is concerned, I saw there was falsehood; Im fighting against that falsehood, and Im asking your help to fight it. Or else one simply withdraws from all action altogether.
But I know that falsehood! I told M.! And thats what baffles me, theres something I dont understand. Because not only did I tell M. that his doings were not proper, but I also told him what he had to do. So I am completely baffled. Who has? Theres something fishy somewhere.
02.03 - National and International, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Kurukshetra is a turning-point in history. The battle was between an old order that had to go and a new order that was taking birth. The old order was supported, on the one hand, by Bhishma and Drona, personating its codes and laws, its morals, and, on the other, by Duryodhana and Sisupala as its dynamic actors and executors. The new order was envisaged by Krishna and its chief protagonists were the five brothers. The old order meant the supremacy of the family and the clan: that was the central unit round which society grew and was held together. Krishna came to break that mould and evolve a higher and larger unit of collective life. It was not yet the nation, but an intermediary stage something like a League of clans, (as we in our day are trying another higher stage in the League of Nations). The Rajasuya celebrates the establishment of this New Order of a larger, a greater human organisation, Dharmarajya, as it was called.
We have just passed through another, a far greater, a catastrophic Kurukshetra, the last Act (Shanti Parvam) of which we are negotiating at the present moment. The significance of this cataclysm is clear and evident if we only allow ourselves to be led by the facts and not try to squeeze the facts into the groove of our past prejudices and set notions. All the difficulties that are being encountered on the way to peace and reconstruction arise mainly out of the failure to grasp what Nature has forced upon us. It is as simple as the first axiom of Euclid: Humanity is one and all nations are free and yet interdependent members of that one and single organism. No nation can hope henceforth to stand in its isolated grandeurnot even America or Russia. Subject or dependent nations too who are struggling to be free will be allowed to work out their freedom and independence, on condition that the same is worked out in furtherance and in collaboration with the ideal of human unity. That ideal has become dynamic and insistent the more man refuses to accept it, the more he will make confusion worse confounded.
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.
The Immortal bound himself to do her works;
02.04 - The Kingdoms of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It pondered not on the magic of her laws,
It thirsted not for the secret wells of Truth,
02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our conscious life obeys the Inconscient's laws;
To ignorant purposes and blind desires
--
And Chance coerced by fixed immutable laws,
A scene was set for Nature's conscious play.
--
It studies surface laws by surface thought,
Life's steps surveys and Nature's process sees,
02.06 - Boris Pasternak, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The laws of nature would have intervened.
But a miracle is a miracle, a miracle is God.
02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Proclaim as falsehoods the eternal laws,
And load the dice of Doom with wizard lies;
02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Immutable laws man has no right to change,
A sacred legacy from the great dead past
--
Tracing the scriptural verses of her laws
The daedal of her patterned arabesques,
--
Explained the world and mastered all its laws,
Touched the dumb roots, woke veiled tremendous powers;
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its free caprice they bound by rhythmic laws
And compelled to accept its posture and its line
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In ancient times too there were conscious attempts to build and remould human society. The Rishis were not merely spiritual seers, but creators of the social order also. They saw by their vision the inner truths of things, they found principles and laws, right principles and correct laws which establish peace and stability, on the one hand, no doubt, but on the other hand serve also as the frame for the growth and fulfilment of the individual being. The king with his executive body was there to see that the laws were observed and honoured. The later law-givers (the makers of codes, smritis) had not the direct and large vision of the Rishis, but they tried their best to maintain the laws as they understood them, elaborate them, change or modify wherever possible or needed under given circumstances. In ancient Europe too, it was Plato who envisaged the ideal Republic, a government of philosophers the wise who are not actively engaged in the turmoil of life, but stand aloof and detached and can see more of the game and accordingly legislate all the better. In modern times also the rise of a Feuhrer or a Dictator seems to have been a psychological necessity: the mass consciousness is in sore need of a guide, and as the right guide is not easily available, the way of the false prophet is smooth and wide open. As a protection and antidote against such a calamity, we tried here and there to found and organise a government of all talents.
But again, who are the talents and where are they? For a modern society produces at best clever politicians, but very few great souls if at all, who can inspire, guide and create. Not a system or organization, but such centres of forces, with creative vision and power, it is that that mankind sorely needs at this hour. System and organization come after, they can only be the embodiment of a creative vision.
03.02 - Aspects of Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The scientific spirit, in one word, is rationalisationrationalisation of Mind as well as of Life. With regard to Mind, rationalisation means to get knowledge exclusively on the data of the senses; it is the formulation, in laws and principles, of facts observed by the physical organs, these laws and principles being the categories of the arranging, classifying, generalising faculty, called reason; its methodology also demands that the laws are to be as few as possible embracing as many facts as possible. Rationalisation of life means the government of life in accordance with these laws, so that the wastage in natural life due to the diversity and disparity off acts may be eliminated, at least minimised, and all movements of life ordered and organised in view of a single and constant purpose (which is perhaps the enhancement of the value of life). This rationalisation means further, in effect, mechanisation or efficiency, as its protagonists would prefer to call it. However, mechanistic efficiency, whether in the matter of knowledge or of lifeof mind or of morals was the motto of the early period of the gospel of science, the age of Huxley and Haeckel, of Bentham and the Mills. The formula no longer holds good either in the field of pure knowledge or in its application to life; it does not embody the aspiration and outlook of the contemporary mind, in spite of such inveterate rationalists as Russell and Wells or even Shaw (in Back to Methuselah, for example), who seem to be already becoming an anachronism in the present age.
The contemporary urge is not towards rationalisation, but rather towards irrationalisation. Orthodox science itself is taking greater and greater cognisance today of the irrational movements of nature, even of physical nature. Intuition and instinct are now welcomed as surer and truer instruments of knowledge and action than reason.
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The exclusive concentration was the logical and inevitable final term of a movement of separativity and exteriorisation. It had its necessity and utility. Its special function was utilised by Nature for precision and perfection in details of execution in the most material order of reality. Indeed, what can be more exact and accurate than the laws of physics, the mathematical laws that govern the movements of the material particles? Furthermore, if we look at the scientist himself, do we not find in him an apt image of the same phenomenon? A scientist means a specialist the more specialised and restricted his view, the surer he is likely to be in his particular domain. And specialised knowledge means a withdrawal from other fields and viewpoints of knowledge, an ignorance of them. Likewise, a workman who moulds the head of a pin is all concentrated upon that single point of existencehe forgets the whole world and himself in that act whose perfect execution seems to depend upon the measure of his self-oblivion. But evidently this is not bound to be so. A one-pointed self-absorption that is Ignoranceis certainly an effective way of dealing with material objectsthings of Ignorance; but it is not the only way. It is a way or mechanism adopted by Nature in a certain status under certain conditions. One need not always forget oneself in the act in order to do the act perfectly. An unconscious instinctive act is not always best doneit can be done best consciously, intuitively. A wider knowledge, a greater acquaintance with objects and facts and truths of other domains too is being more and more insisted upon as a surer basis of specialisation. The pinpointed (one might almost say geometrically pointed) consciousness in Matter that resolves itself into unconsciousness acts perfectly but blindly; the vast consciousness also acts there with absolute perfection but consciouslyconscious in the highest degree.
As we have said, super-consciousness does not confine itself to the supreme status alone, to the domain of pure infinity, but it comes down and embraces the most inferior status too, the status of the finite. Precisely because it is infinity, it is not bound to its infinity but can express its infinity in and through infinite limits.
03.07 - Some Thoughts on the Unthinkable, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
God is, if he is at all to be compared to a king, more like a constitutional sovereign. He does not act as he chooses and pleases. There is a system, a plan, a procedure of governance; there are principles and laws and rules, and he abides by them. There are even agents and intermediaries, officers and servantsinstruments through whom he works out his purpose. He is the supreme dharmarja, the lord and guardian of the Law. Not that he is pound by his constitution, in the sense that he is a slave to it and cannot alter it, even when he finds it necessary to do so, but that once the rules of the game have been laid, he agrees to follow them so long as he plays the particular game.
The Divine does not announce his presence or advent by miracles, by sudden catastrophes and upheavals. The power, the knowledge or the love that belongs to him is just like the air that surrounds us, whose silent and tranquil, yet constant pressure energises the heart of living things, whose very translucency is the stuff out of which is fashioned Earth's richly variegated life.
03.08 - The Spiritual Outlook, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When the Divine acts, it acts always in and through this transcendental and innermost truth of things. When it helps the seeker, it touches and inspires the secret soul in himhis truthnot like the human teacher or reformer who addresses himself to the outer personality, to laws and codes, prohibitions and injunctions, reward and punishment, for the education and instruction of his pupil. Indeed, the Divine chastises also in the same way. The Asura or the anti-divine he does not kill with one blow nor even with many blows of his thunderbolt or burn away with his red wrath. The image of Zeus or Jehovah is a human figuration: it depicts the human way of dealing with one's enemies. The Divine deals with the undivine in the divine way, for the undivine too is not something outside the Divine. The Asura also has; his truth, his truth in the Divine, only it has been degraded and deformed under circumstances. The Divine simply disengages, picks up that core of truth and takes it away so that it can no longer be appropriated and deformed by the Asura who now losing the secret support of his truth automatically crumbles to pieces as mere husk and chaff. If there is something more than the merely human in the image of Durga, the Goddess transfixing her lance right into the heart of the Asura may be taken as indicative of this occult truth.
There is then this singular and utter harmony in the divine consciousness resolving all contraries and incompatibles. Neha nnsti kicana, there is no division or disparity here. Established in this consciousness, the spiritual man naturally and inevitably finds that he is in all and all are in him and that he is all and all are he, for all and he are indivisibly that single (yet multiple) reality. The brotherhood of man is only a derivative from the more fundamental truth of the universal selfhood of man.
03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All art is based upon this peculiar virtue of the mind that naturally and spontaneously transforms or distorts the objective world presented to its purview. The question, then, is only of the degree to which the metamorphosis has been carried. At the one end, there is the art of photography, in which the degree of metamorphosis is at its minimum; at the other, there seems to be no limit, for the mind's capacity to dissolve and recreate the world of sense-perception is infinite and many modern schools of European art have gone even beyond the limit that the "unnatural" Indian art did not consider it necessary to transgress. Now, the classical artist selects a position as close as he can to the photographer, tries to give the mind's view of Nature and creation, as far as possible, in the style and norm of the sense-perceptions. He takes his stand upon these and from there reaches out towards whatever imaginative reconstructions are justified within the bounds laid out by them. The general ground-plan is, almost rigorously, the form given by the physical eye. The art of the East, and even, to a large extent, the art of mediaeval Europe, followed a different line. Here the scheme of the sense-perceptions was rejected, the artist sought to build on other foundations. His procedure was, first, to get a focus within the mind, to discover a psychological standpoint, and from there and in accordance with the subtler laws and conventions of an inner vision create a world that is unique and stands by itself. The aim was always to build from within, at the most, from within outwards, but not from without, not even from without inwards. This inner world has its own laws and they differ from the laws of optics which govern the physical sight; but there is no reason why it should be called unnatural. It is unnatural only in the sense that it does not copy physical Nature; it is quite natural in the 1 sense that it is a faithful reproduction of another, a psychological Nature.
Indian art is pre-eminently and par excellence the art of this inner re-formation and revaluation. It has thrown down completely and clearly the rigid scaffolding of the physical vision. We take here a sudden leap, as it were, into another world, and sometimes the feeling is that everything is reversed; it is not exactly that we feel ourselves standing on our heads, but it is, as if, in the Vedic phrase, the foundations were above and all the rest branched out from them downwards. The artist sees with an eye, and constructs upon a plan that conveys the merest excuse of an actual visible world. There are other schools in the East which have also moved very far away from the naturalistic view; yet they have kept, if not the form, at least, the feeling of actuality in their composition. Thus a Chinese, a Japanese, or a Persian masterpiece cannot be said to be "natural" in the sense in which a Tintoretto, or even a Raphael is natural; yet a sense of naturalness persists, though the appearance is not naturalistic. What Indian art gives is not the feeling of actuality or this sense of naturalness, but a feeling of truth, a sense of realityof the deepest reality.
03.11 - Modernist Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In general, however, and as we come down to more and more recent times we find we have missed the track. As in the material field today, we seek to create and achieve by science and organisation, by a Teutonic regimentation, as in the moral life we try to save our souls by attending to rules and regulations, codes and codicils of conduct, even so a like habit and practice we have brought over into our sthetic world. But we must remember that Napoleon became the invincible military genius he was, not because he followed the art of war in accordance with laws and canons set down by military experts; neither did Buddha become the Enlightened because of his scrupulous adherence to the edicts which Asoka engraved centuries later on rocks and pillars, nor was Jesus the Christ because of his being an exemplar of the Sermon on the Mount.
The truth of the matter is that the spirit bloweth where it listeth. It is the soul's realisation and dynamic perception that expresses itself inevitably in a living and au thentic manner in all that the soul creates. Let the modernist possess a soul, let it find out its own inmost being and he will have all the newness and novelty that he needs and seeks. If the soul-consciousness is burdened with a special and unique vision, it will find its play in the most categorically imperative manner.
03.14 - From the Known to the Unknown?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For may not the contrary motto" from the unknown to the known"be equally valid, both as a matter of fact and as a matter of principle? Do we not, sometimes at least, take for granted and start with the unknown number x to find out the solution to our problem? Why go far, the very first step that the child takes in his adventurous journey of life, is it not a veritable step into the unknown? Indeed, many, in fact most of the scientific laws the laws of Natureare they strictly the result of calculation and deduction from known and observed data or are they not rather "brilliant surmises", "sudden revelations" that overwhelm by their un-expected appearance? Newton did not arrive at his Law of Gravitation in the trail of a logical argument from given premises towards unforeseen conclusions. Nor did Einstein discover his version of the Law in any syllogistic way either. The fact seems to be more often true that the unknown reveals itself all on a sudden and is not reached through a continuous series of known steps. Examples could be easily multiplied from the history of scientific discoveries.
For the fact is that man, the being that knows, is composed not merely of known elements, known to himself and to others, but possesses a hidden, an unknown side which is nonetheless part of himself. And even though unknown, it is not inactive,it always exerts its influence, imposes its presence. Man has a submerged consciousness which is in contact and communion with similarly submerged worlds of consciousness. Man's consciousness possesses aerials that catch vibrations from unknown regions. He has a secret sensitiveness that receives intimations from other where than his physical senses and his logical reason. His external mind does not always recognise such unorthodox or abnormal movements; he only expresses his surprise or amazement at the luminosity, the au thenticity of solutions that come so simply, suddenly, inevitably, the unknown revealing itself miraculously.
04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To a mechanic mind tied by earth's laws;
Yet are they instruments of a Will supreme,
05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The gods are glorious beings; they are aspects and personalities of the Divine, presiding and ruling over the cosmic laws, each with his own truth and norm and dominion, although, in the higher status, all work together and harmoniously. Even then they do not possess a soul, a psychic core of being. They are forms and powers of consciousness organised round a divine truth, a typal Idea; but they do not have this exquisite presence secretly seated in the heart, which is the privilege of the terrestrial creature.
And the exquisiteness, the special quality of this inner Heart is mostly if not wholly derived from a particular factor of terrestrial evolution. For the journey here is a sacrifice, a passage through pain and suffering, even through frustration and death. The tears that accompany the mortal being in his calvary of an earthly life serve precisely as a holy unction of purification, give a sweet intensity to all his urges in the progressive march to Resurrection. This is the Immanent Divine who has to be worshipped and realised as much as the Transcendent Divine, if man is to fulfil himself wholly and earth justify its existence.
--
Our dark destinies move under vast laws that nothing diverts, nothing softens. Thou canst not have sudden clemencies that disturb the world, O God, Spirit tranquil!Victor Hugo, A Villequier.
***
05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
He consoles and comforts himself, lays the flattering unction to his soul by taking to a less exacting ideal, a substitute without tears, as it were. Therefore he looks outside, seeks to reform society, changing its laws and constitution, and wants to believe that in that way society can be remodelled and mankind transformed.
It should have been proved beyond doubt by now that the fact is not so. The only way to cure the world outside is to cure oneself first inside. The ancient proverb still holds good: the macrocosm is only an enlargement of the microcosm, the microcosm is the macrocosm in miniature. The universe is a transcript, a projection on a large scale of the individual nature within. What is there is here and what is not here is not found there. When we see some wrong in the world, something that has got to be set right, instead of rushing out and trying to tackle it in the external field, if one were to hold oneself back and look within, one would surely find, perhaps to his surprise I and enlightenment, a very similar movement, often an exact I replica in one's own consciousness and character of what one finds in the larger anonymous movements of nature and society. Now it may be admitted that one has no control or almost none over one's nature; the outside world is beyond our reach and we cannot order or mould it as we like. But the smaller world which is ourselves is not too far or too great for us; our own individual nature and character is ours and we have been given sufficient freedom and power to reform, renew and remake it. That is the secret, although it seems to be a very simple truth, almost a truism.
05.03 - Satyavan and Savitri, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And knew the secret laws and sorceries
That make of Matter mind's bewildered slave:
05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed the second way of approach to the problem is the positivist's own way. That is to say, let us take our stand on the terra firmaof the physical and probe into it and find out whether there are facts there which open the way or point to the other side of nature, whether there are signs, hints, intimations, factors involved there that lead to conclusions, if not inevitable, at least conformable to supraphysical truths. It is usually asserted, for example, that the scientist the positivist par excellencefollows a rigid process of ratiocination, of observation, analysis and judgment. He collects facts and a sufficient number of them made to yield a general law the probability of a generic factwhich is tested or exemplified by other correlate facts. This is however an ideal, a theoretical programme not borne out by actual practice, it is a rationalisation of a somewhat different actuality. The scientist, even the most hard-headed among them, the mathematician, finds his laws often and perhaps usually not by a long process of observation and induction or deduction, but all on a sudden, in a flash of illumination. The famous story of Newton .and the falling apple, Kepler's happy guess of the elliptical orbit of the planetsand a host of examples can be cited as rather the rule than the exception for the methodology of scientific discovery. Prof. Hadamard, the great French mathematician the French are well-known for their intransigent, logical and rational attitude in Science,has been compelled to admit the supreme role of an intuitive faculty in scientific enquiry. If it is argued that the so-called sudden intuition is nothing but the final outburst, the cumulative resultant of a long strenuous travail of thinking and reasoning and arguing, Prof. Hadamard says', in reply, that it does not often seem to be so, for the answer or solution that is suddenly found does not lie in the direction of or in conformity with the, conscious rational research but goes against it and its implications.
This faculty of direct knowledge, however, is not such a rare thing as it may appear to be. Indeed if we step outside the circumscribed limits of pure science instances crowd upon us, even in our normal life, which would compel one to conclude that the rational and sensory process is only a fringe and a very small part of a much greater and wider form of knowing. Poets and artists, we all know, are familiar only with that form: without intuition and inspiration they are nothing. Apart from that, modern inquiries and observations have established beyond doubt certain facts of extra-sensory, suprarational perceptionof clairvoyance and clairaudience, of prophecy, of vision into the future as well as into the past. Not only these unorthodox faculties of knowledge, but dynamic powers that almost negate or flout the usual laws of science have been demonstrated to exist and can be and are used by man. The Indian yogic discipline speaks of the eight siddhis, super-natural powers attained by the Yogi when he learns to control nature by the force of his consciousness. Once upon a time these facts were challenged as facts in the scientific world, but it is too late now in the day to deny them their right of existence. Only Science, to maintain its scientific prestige, usually tries to explain such phenomena in the material way, but with no great success. In the end she seems to say these freaks do not come within her purview and she is not concerned with them. However, that is not for us also the subject for discussion for the moment.
The first point then we seek to make out is that even from a rigid positivist stand a form of knowledge that is not strictly positivist has to be accepted. Next, if we come to the content of the knowledge that is being gained, it is found one is being slowly and inevitably led into a world which is also hardly positivistic. We have in our study of the physical world come in close contact with two disconcerting facts or two ends of one fact the infinitely small and the infinitely large. They have disturbed considerably the normal view of things, the view that dominated Science till yesterday. The laws that hold good for the ordinary sensible magnitudes fail totally, in the case of the infinite magnitudes (whether big or small). In the infinite we begin squaring the circle.
Take for instance, the romantic story of the massof a body. Mass, at one time, was considered as one of the fundamental constants of nature: it meant a fixed quantity of substance inherent in a body, it was an absolute quality. Now we have discovered that this is not so; the mass of a body varies with its speed and an object with infinite speed has an infinite masstheoretically at least it should be so. A particle of matter moving with the speed of light must be terribly massive. Butmirabile dictue!a photon has no mass (practically none). In other words, a material particle when it is to be most materialexactly at the critical temperature, as it wereis dematerialised. How does the miracle happen?
--
Let us leave the domain, the domain of inorganic matter for a while and turn to another set of facts, those of organic matter, of life and its manifestation. The biological domain is a freak in the midst of what apears to be a rigidly mechanistic material universe. The laws of life are not the laws of matter, very often one contravenes the other. The two converging lenses of the two eyes do not make the image twice brighter than the one produced by a single lens. What is this alchemy that forms the equation 1=1 (we might as well put it as 1+1=1)? Again, a living wholea cellfissured and divided tends to live and grow whollyin each fragment. In life we have thus another strange equation: part=whole (although in the mathematics of infinity such an equation is a normal phenomenon). The body (of a warm-blooded animal) maintaining a constant temperature whether it is at the Pole or at the Equator is a standing miracle which baffles mere physics and chemistry. Thirdly, life is immortal the law of entropy (of irrevocably diminishing energy) that governs the fate of matter does not seem to hold good here. The original life-cells are carried over physically from generation to generation and there is no end to the continuity of the series, if allowed to run its normal course. Material energy also, it is said, is indestructible; it is never destroyed, but changes form only. But the scientific conception of material energy puts a limit to its course, it proceeds, if we are to believe thermodynamics, towards a dead equilibrium there is no such thing as "perpetual movement" in the field of matter.
Again the very characteristic of life is its diversity, its infinite variety of norms and forms and movements. The content and movement of material nature is calculable to a great extent. A few mathematical equations or formulae can after all be made to cover all or most facts concerning it. But the laws of life refuse systematisation. A few laws purporting to govern the physical bases of life claim recognition, but they stand on precarious grounds. The laws of natural selection, of heredity or genetics are applicable within a very restricted frame of facts. The variety of material substances revolves upon the gamut of 92 elements based upon 4 or 5 ultimate types of electric unitand that is sufficient to make us wonder. But the variety in life-play is simply incalculablefrom the amoeba or virus cell to man, what a bewildering kaleidoscope and each individual in each group is unique in its way! The few chromosomes that seem to be the basis of all diversity do not explain the mystery the mystery becomes doubly mysterious: how does a tiny seed contain the thing that is to become a banyan tree, how does a speck of plasma bring forth from within an object of Hamletian dimensions! What then is this energy or substance of life welling out irrepressively into multitudinous forms and modes? The chemical elements composing an organic body do not wholly exhaust its composition; there is something else besides. At least in one field, the life element has received recognition and been given an independent name and existence. I am obviously referring to the life element in food-stuff which has been called vitamin.
Life looks out of matter as a green sprout in the midst of a desert expanse. But is matter really so very different and distinct from life? Does Matter mean no Life? Certain facts and experiments have thrown great doubt upon that assumption. An Indian, a scientist of the first order in the European and modern sense, has adduced proofs that obliterate the hard and fast line of demarcation between the living and the non-living. He has demonstrated -the parallelism, if not the identity, of the responses of those two domains: we use the term fatigue in respect of living organisms only, but Jagadish Chandra Bose says and shows, that matter too, a piece of metal for instance, undergoes fatigue. Not only so, the graph, the periodicity of the reactions as shown by a living body under a heightened or diminished stimulus or the influence of poison or drug is repeated very closely by the so-called dead matter under the same treatment.
--
One remarkable thing in the material world that has always attracted and captivated man's attention, since almost the very dawn of his consciousness, is the existence of a pattern, of an artistic layout in the composition and movement of material things. When the Vedic Rishi sings out: "These countless stars that appear glistening night after night, where do they vanish during the day?" he is awed by the inviolable rhythm of the Universe, which other sages in other climes sang as the music of the spheres. The presence of Design in Nature has been in the eyes of Believers an incontrovertible proof of the existence of a Designer. What we want to say is not that a watch (if we regard the universe as a watch) presupposes the existence of a watch-maker: we say the pattern itself is the expression of an idea, it involves a conception not imposed or projected from outside but inherent in itself. The Greek view of the artist's mode of operation is very illuminating in this connection. The artist, according to this view, when he carves out a statue for example, does not impose upon the stone a figure that he has only in his mind, but that the stone itself contains the figure, the artist has the vision to see it, his chisel follows the lines he sees imbedded in the stone. It is why we say that the geometry in the structure of a crystal or an atom or an astronomical system, the balance and harmony, the symmetry and polarity that govern the composition of objects and their relations, the blend of colour schemes, the marshalling of lines and the building of volumes, in a word, the artistic make-up, perfect in detail and in the ensemble that characterise all nature's body and limbs and finally the mathematical laws that embrace and picture as it were Nature's movements, all point to the existence of a truth, a reality whose characteristic marks are or are very much like those of consciousness and Idea-Force. We fight shy of the wordconsciousness for it brings in a whole association of anthropomorphism and pathetic fallacy. But in our anxiety to avoid a ditch let us not fall over a precipice. If it is blindness to see nothing but the spirit, it is not vision to see nothing but Matter.
A hypothesis, however revolutionary or unorthodox it may seem for the moment, has to be tested by its effective application, in its successful working out. All scientific discoveries in the beginning appear as inconveniences that upset the known and accepted order. Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Maxwell or Einstein in our day enunciated principles that were not obvious sense-given axioms. These are at the outset more or less postulates that have to be judged by their applicability.
05.05 - Of Some Supreme Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The true gods belong to higher reaches, they are powers of the Superior Hemisphere; living beyond the triple mundane consciousness, in the Fourth-turya-they are native to the domain of the Spirit. They embody the mighty universal laws of that vaster Truth-Consciousness (tam).
To go beyond all the dharmas of this threefold Lower Nature, attain to the Truth-Consciousness of the Fourth Status, incarnate in all that we are, know, will, feel and do the Law or Dharma of the Spirit and of the Spirit alone, is what we mean by Spirituality.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
First, that this universe is made up of particles that push and pull each other, the particles having certain constant values, such as in respect of mass and volume. secondly, that the laws governing the relations among the particles, in other words, their push and pull, are laws of simple mechanics; they are fixed and definite and give us determinable and mensurable quantities called co-ordinatesby which one can ascertain the pattern or configuration of things at a given moment and deduce from that the pattern or configuration of things at any other moment: the chain that hangs things together is fixed and uniform and continuous and is not broken anywhere.
The scientific view of things thus discovered or affirmed certain universal and immutable factsaxiomatic truthswhich were called constants of Nature. These were the very basic foundations upon which the whole edifice of scientific knowledge was erected. The chief among them were:(I) conservation of matter, (2) conservation of energy, (3) uniformity of nature and (4) the chain of causality and continuity. Above all, there was the fundamental implication of an independentan absolutetime and space in which all things existed and moved and had their being.
The whole business of experimental science was just to find the absolutes of Nature, that is to say, facts and laws governing facts that do not depend for their existence upon anything but themselves. The purely objective world without any taint of an intruding subject was the field of its inquiry. In fact, the old-world or Mediaeval Science there was a Science even thencould not develop properly, did not strike the right line of growth, precisely because it had a strong subjective bias: the human factor, the personal element of the observer or experimenter was unconsciously (at times even deliberately) introduced into the facts and explanations of Nature. The new departure of Modern Science consisted exactly in the elimination of this personal element and making observation and experiment absolutely impersonal and thoroughly objective.
Well, the old-world spirit has had its revenge complete and absolute in a strange manner. We are coming to that presently. Now, the constants or absolutes of which we spoke, which were the bed-rock of Modern Science, were gradually found to be rather shakyvery inconstant and relative. Take, for example, the principle of conservation of matter. The principle posited that in a given system the quantity of matter is constant in and through all transformations. Modern Science has found out that this law holds good only in respect of gross matter belonging to man-size Nature. But as soon as we enter into the domain 'of the ultimate constituents of matter, the units of electric charges, the infinitesimals, we find that matter is destroyed and is or can be recreated: material particles are dematerialised into light waves or quanta, and light quanta are precipitated back again into electric particles of matter. Similarly, the law of conservation of energy that energy= mv (m being mass, v velocity)does not hold good in respect of particles that move with the speed of light: mass is not a constant as in Newtonian mechanics, but varies with velocity. Again, in classical mechanics, position and velocity are two absolute determinates for all scientific measurement, and Science after all is nothing if not a system of measurements. Now, in the normal size world, the two are easily determined; but in the sub-atomic world things are quite different; only one can be determined accurately; the more accurate the one, the less so the other; and if both are to be determined, it can be only approximatively, the closer the approximation, the hazier the measure, and the farther the approximation, the more definite the measure. That is to say, here we find not the exact measures of things, but only the probable measures. Indeed, not fixity and accuracy, but probability has become the central theme of modern physical calculation.
The principle of indeterminacy carries two revolutionary implications. First, that it is not possible to determine the movement of the ultimate particles of matter individually and severally, it is not possible even theoretically to follow up the chain of modulations of an electron from its birth to its dissolution (if such is the curve of its destiny), as Laplace considered it quite possible for his super-mathematician. One cannot trace the complete evolution of each and every or even one particular particle, not because of a limitation in the human capacity, but because of an inherent impossibility in the nature of things. In radioactive substances, for example, there is no ground or data from which one can determine which particle will go off or not, whether it will go off the chance that seems to reign here. In radiation too, there is no formula, and no formula can be framed for determining the course of a photon in relation to a half-reflecting surface, whether it will pass through or be reflected. In this field of infinitesimals what we know is the total behaviour of an assemblage of particles, and the laws of nature are only laws of average computation. Statistics has ousted the more exact and rigid arithmetics. And statistics, we know, is a precarious science: the knowledge it gives is contingent, contingent upon the particular way of arranging and classifying the data. However, the certainty of classical mechanistic knowledge is gone, gone too the principle of uniformity of nature.
The second element brought in in the indeterminacy picture is the restoration of the "subject" to its honoured or even more than the honoured place it had in the Mediaeval Ages, and from which it was pulled down by young arrogant Science. A fundamental question is now raised in the very methodology of the scientific apparatus. For Science, needless to say, is first and foremost observation. Now it is observed that the very fact of observation affects and changes the observed fact. The path of an electron, for example, has to be observed; one has then to throw a ray of lighthurl a photonupon it: the impact is sufficient to deflect the electron from the original path. If it is suggested that by correction and computation, by a backward calculation we can deduce the previous position, that too is not possible. For we cannot fix any position or point that is not vitiated by the observer's interference. How to feel or note the consistency of a thing, if the touch itself, the temperature of the finger, were sufficient to change the consistency? The trouble is, as the popular Indian saying goes, the very amulet that is to exorcise the ghost is possessed by the ghost itself.
So the scientists of today are waking up to this disconcerting fact. And some have put the question very boldly and frankly: do not all laws of Nature contain this original sin of the observer's interference, indeed may not the laws be nothing else but that? Thus Science has landed into the very heart the bog and quagmire, if you likeof abstruse metaphysics. Eddington says, there is no other go for Science today but to admit and delcare that its scheme and pattern of things, as described by what is called laws of Nature, is only a mental construct of the Scientist. The "wonderful" discoveries are nothing but jugglery and legerdemain of the mindwhat it puts out of itself unconsciously into the outside world, it recovers again and is astonished at the miracle. A scientific law is a pure deduction from the mind's own disposition. Eddington goes so far as to say that if a scientist is sufficiently introspective he can trace out from within his brain each and every law of Nature which he took so much pains to fish out from Nature by observation and experiment. Eddington gives an analogy to explain the nature of scientific law and scientific discovery. Suppose you have a fishing net of a particular size and with interstices of a particular dimension; you throw it into the sea and pull out with fishes in it. Now you count and assort the fishes, and according to the data thus obtained, you declare that the entire sea consists of so many varieties of fish and of such sizes. The only error is that you could not take into account the smaller fishes that escaped through the interstices and the bigger ones that did not at all fall into the net. Scientific statistics is something of this kind. Our mind is the net, and the pattern of Nature is determined by the mind's own pattern.
Eddington gives us absolutely no hope for any knowledge of an objective world apart from the objectification of mind's own constructs. This is a position which a scientist, quascientist, finds it difficult to maintain. Remedies and loop-holes have been suggested with what result we shall presently see.
--
Again, the generalised law of relativity (that is to say, laws governing all motions, even accelerated motion and hot merely uniform motion) that sought to replace the laws of gravitation did away also with the concepts of force and causality: it stated that things moved not because they were pulled or pushed but because they followed the natural curve of space (they describe geodesics, i.e., move in the line of least distance). Space is not a plain surface, smooth and uniform, but full of dimples and hollows, these occurring in the vicinity of masses of matter, the sun, for instance, (although one does not see how or why a mass of matter should roll down the inclined plane of a curved surface without some kind of push and pull the problem is not solved but merely shifted and put off). All this means to say that the pattern of the universe is absolutely geometrical and science in the end resolves itself into geometry: the laws of Nature are nothing but theorems or corollaries deduced and deducible from a few initial postulates. Once again, on this line, of enquiry also the universe is dissolved into abstract and psychological factors.
Apart from the standpoint of theoretical physics developed by Einstein, the more practical aspect as brought out in Wave Mechanics leads us into no less an abstract and theoretical domain. The Newtonian particle-picture, it is true, has been maintained in the first phase of modern physics which specialised in what is called Quantum Mechanics. But waves or particlesalthough the question as to their relative validity and verity still remains opendo not make much difference in the fundamental outlook. For in either view, the individual unit is beyond the ken of the scientist. A wave is not a wave but just the probability of a wave: it is not even a probable wave but a probability wave. Thus the pattern that Wave Mechanics weaves to show the texture of the ultimate reality is nothing more than a calculus of probabilities. By whichever way we proceed we seem to arrive always at the same inevitable conclusion.
So it is frankly admitted that what Science gives is not a faithful description of actuality, not a representation of material existence, but certain conventions or convenient signs to put together, to make a mental picture of our sensations and experiences. That does not give any clue to what the objective reality mayor may not be like. Scientific laws are mental rules imposed upon Nature. It may be asked why does Nature yield to such imposition? There must be then some sort of parallelism or commensurability between Nature and the observing Mind, between the pattern of Nature and the Mind's scheme or replica of it. If we successfully read into Nature things of the Mind, that means that there must be something very common between the two. Mind's readings are not mere figments, hanging in the air; for they are justified by their applicability, by their factual translation. This is arguing in a circle, a thorough-going mentalist like Eddington would say. What are facts? What is life? Anything more than what the senses and the mind have built up for us?
Jeans himself is on the horns of a dilemma.2 Being a scientist, and not primarily a mathematician like Eddington, he cannot very well acquiesce in the liquidation of the material world; nor can he refute successfully the facts and arguments that Science itself has brought forward in favour of mentalism. He wishes to keep the question open for further light and surer grounds. In the meanwhile, however, he is reconciled to a modified form of mentalism. The laws of Nature, he says, are surely subjective in the sense that astronomical or geographical concepts, for example, such as the system of latitudes, longitudes, equator and axis, ellipse and quadrant and sextant, are subjective. These lines and figures are' not drawn physically upon the earth or in space: they are mental constructs, they are pointers or notations, but they note and point to the existence and the manner of existence of real objects in a real world.
In other words, one tries to come back more or less to the common-sense view of things. One does not argue about what is naturally given as objective reality; whatever the mental gloss over it, it is there all the same. One accepts it, takes it on trust, if you likeone can admit even that it is an act of faith, as Russell and the Neo-Realists would maintain.
--
Jeans is not alone to have such a revolutionary and unorthodox view. He seems to take courage from Dirac also. Dirac too cannot admit an annihilation of the material world. His proposal to save and salvage it follows a parallel line. He says that the world presented or pictured by physical science may not be and is not the actual world, but it posits a substratum of reality to which it conforms: the pattern presented by subjective laws is so composed because of a pressure, an impact from an analogous substratum. There is no chain of causal relation in the pattern itself, the relation of causality is between the substratum reality and the pattern that it bodies forth. Here again we find ourselves at the end of physical inquiry driving straight into the tenuous spaces of spiritual metaphysics. We have one more example of how a modern physicist is metamorphosed into a mystic. What Dirac says is tantamount to the very well-known spiritual experience that the world as it appears to us is a vesture or symbol of an inner order of reality out of which it has been broadcastsah paryagtand the true causes of things are not on the surface, the so-called antecedents, but behind in the subtler world called therefore the causal world, kraa jagat.
Even Eddington is not so absurd or impossible as it may seem to some. He says, as we have seen, that all so-called laws of Nature can be discovered from within the mind itself, can be deduced logically from psychologically given premises: no empiricial observation or objective experimentation is necessary to arrive at them: they are found a priori in the subject. Now, mystic experience always lays stress on extra-sensory knowledge: it declares that such a knowledge is not only possible, but that this alone is the right and correct knowledge. All thingsmatter and mind and life and allbeing but vibrations of consciousness, even as the colours of a spectrum are vibrations, electro-magnetic waves of different frequency, mystic discipline enables one to enter into that condition in which one's consciousness mingles with all consciousness or with another particular consciousness (Patanjali's term is samyama), and one can have all knowledge that one wishes to have by this inner contact or concentration or identification, one discovers the knowledge within oneself, no external means of sense observation and experimental testing, no empirical inductive process is needed. We do not say that Eddington had in view anything of this kind, but that his attitude points in this direction.
That seems to be the burden, the underlying preoccupation of modern physical science: it has been forced to grope towards some kind of mystic perception; at least, it has been put into a frame of mind, due to the crumbling of the very fundamentals of the past structure, which is less obstructive to other sources and spheres and ways of knowledge. Certainly, we must admit that we have moved very far from Laplace when we hear today a hard-boiled rationalist like De Broglie declare:
05.10 - Knowledge by Identity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In seeking to disvalue the principle of identity as a fundamental element in knowing, Prof. Das brings in to witness on his side the logical copula. Some logicians, of course, assert a parallelism if not identity between the laws of thought and the laws of language, language being conceived as the very imagea photographof thought, but the truth of the matter is that it is and it is not so, as in many other things. However, here when it is stated that the copula disjoining the subject and the predicate is the very pattern of all process of knowledge, one mistakes, we are afraid, a scheme or a formula, for the thing itself, a way of understanding a fact for the fact itself. Such a formula for understanding, however it may be valid for more or less analytical languages, those of later growth, need not and did not have the same propriety in respect of other older languages. We know the evolution of language has been in the direction of more and more disjunction of its component limbs even like the progression of the human mind and intellect. The modern analytical languages with their army of independent prepositions have taken the place of the classical languages which were predominantly inflexional. The Greek and Latin started the independent prepositional forms in the form of a fundamentally inflexional structure. Still further back, in Sanskrit for example, the inflexional form reigns supreme. Prefixes and affixes served the role of prepositions. And if we move further backward, the synthetic movement is so complete that the logical components (the subject, the copula, the predicate) are fused together into one symbol (the Chinese ideogram). We are here nearer to the original nature and pattern of knowledgea single homogeneous movement of apperception. There is no sanctity or absoluteness in the logical disposition of thought structure; the Aristotelian makes it a triplicity, the Indian Nyaya would extend the dissection to five or seven limbs. But whatever the logical presentation, the original psychological movement is a single indivisible lan and the Vedantic fusion of the knower, the knowledge and the known in identity remains the fundamental fact.
Calcutta Review, 1948 August-September.
05.31 - Divine Intervention, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But we have arrived today at a stage when this old-world view has perforce to be discarded. We can no longer take Laplace seriously: for scientists themselves have established as a fact in physical Nature the indeterminacy of her movements, the impossibility of foretelling a laLaplace, not because of any deficiency in the human instrument but because of the very nature of things. Science is of course at a loss to explain the why or even the how of this indeterminacy. We say, however, that it is nothing but the intrusion of another, a different kind of force in the field of the forces actually at play. That force comes from a higher, a subtler level. Things and forces move in their ordinary round, according to the normal laws, bound ,within their present frame: but always there drops in from elsewhere an unknown element, a force or energy or impulse of another quality, which causes a shift of emphasis in the actual, brings about a change unaccountable and unforeseen. This is what is called miracle: the imposition of a higher law, a generic law governing subtler forms and forces upon an inferior and grosser sphere. And the higher or subtler the plane from which the new force descends the plane can be anything between the one nearest to the material, the subtle physical or ethereal, and the one nearest to the other extreme, the spiritual the greater will be the change in nature, quality and extent in the lower order. Such miracles, interventions, providential happenings are not rare. They are always occurring, only they do not attract attention. For it is these phenomena that are the real causes of all progresscosmic as well as individual. Evolution is based upon this truth of Nature.
Man is not bound to the present pattern or complex of his nature and character: he is not irrevocably fixed to the framea Procrustean bedgiven by the parallelogram of actual forces in or around him. Always he can call down forces or forces can descend into him from otherwhere and bring about a change, even a revolution in the mode and make-up of his character and nature and life. What we call "opening" in our. Sadhana refers to this factor in our consciousness. It means the possibility of the descent of a higher force in our normal nature. Nature is not such a solid stream-lined structure as not to admit of any interstices in it. We know of the comparatively vast spaces that separate atom from atom, the immense emptiness across which even the ultimate nuclear particles have to act upon each other. These are the loop-holes in the great net and it is precisely through them that other forces percolate.
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A Magician's formulas have made Matter's laws
And while they last, all things by them are bound;
07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Why should I strive with earth's unyielding laws
Or stave off death's inevitable hour?
--
To pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws?
Shall there be no new tables, no new Word,
07.22 - Mysticism and Occultism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Occultism is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science, altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry or physics; for occult knowledge is very much like scientific knowledge, only science deals with material objects and forces, while occultism deals with invisible entities and energies, their potentials of combination and association. And as by your chemical or physical knowledge you control material phenomena, in the same way by the occult knowledge you control subtle phenomena, make them active and effective. The procedure also is quite scientific. It is to be learnt exactly as you do a science. It is not a matter of feeling or emotion: it is nothing vague or uncertain. You must work as in a laboratory. You have to learn the laws of action and reaction and apply them. Only there are not many people to teach you. Also it is not without danger. There are in this field combinations as explosive as any chemical combination.
It is a thing, however, that can be learnt. But one must have the aptitude. If you have the power latent in you, you can develop it by practice; but if you have not, you can try for 50 years, it will come to nothing. Everybody cannot have the occult power; it is as if you said that everybody in the world could be a musician or a painter or a poet. There are people who can and there are those who cannot. Usually, if you are interested in the subject, unless it is a mere idle curiosity, it is a sign that you have the gift. You then try. But, as I say, it is to be done with great precaution.
07.35 - The Force of Body-Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is nothing impossible in the world. We ourselves put the bar: always we say, this is possible, that is impossible, one can do this, one cannot do that. Sometimes we admit a thing to be possible but ask who would do it, so it is impossible and so on. Like slaves, like prisoners we bind ourselves to our limits. You call it common sense, but it is a stupid, narrow and ignorant sense; it does not truly know the laws of life. The laws of life are not what we think them to be, what our mind or intellect conceives them to be; they are quite otherwise.
***
08.21 - Human Birth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Last week I spoke of birth and how a soul enters into a body. I told you that the body is formed in a very unsatisfactory manner almost in the case of every person, the exceptions are so rare that one need not mention them. I told you that because of this obscure birth man is made to carry with him quite a bundle of things which later on he has generally to get rid of, if he wishes to progress truly in life. I told you in effect that you are made to come by force, conditions are imposed upon you by force, and by force you obey the laws of heredity. Now, I am asked who or what is it that forces? I shall answer as clearly as possible.
The body is formed by a man and a woman who are the father and the mother; these when they form the body have no means to ask of the being whom they are bringing into the world whether he likes it or whether it is agreeable to his destiny. They impose upon the body, by the force of necessity, an atavism, an environment and subsequently an education which are almost always obstacles to future growth. A growing soul or a soul full-grown taking birth in a body has to fight against these circumstances that are forced upon him by the animal birth in order to find his true path and discover his own self in its fullness.
09.02 - The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The great laws thou hast violated, moved,
Open at last on thee their marble eyes."
09.11 - The Supramental Manifestation and World Change, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I may add one word, a practical word, to what I have already said; it is an illustration of a detail, but it will be a kind of reply to some other questions put to me some time ago about the so-called laws of Nature, causes and effects, inevitable consequences in the material world, more particularly from the point of view of health: we are told that if some precautions are not taken, if we do not eat as we should, if we do not follow certain rules, necessarily there will be consequences.
True. But if you look at the thing in the light of what I have told you that there are no two universal combinations that are alike then how can you establish laws and what is the absolute truth of such laws?
There is no such truth. For, if you are logical, that is to say, with a little higher logic, how can you say that a thing repeats itself, since there are no two things, no two combinations, no two universal manifestations that are the same? The "sameness" could be only an appearance, not a fact. The mind sets up rigid laws, and when it does that, you do not cut yourself off from the apparent surface existence, for the surface, in a very obliging manner, seems to satisfy these laws. But that is an appearance, and it does cut you off from the creative Power of the Spirit, cut you off from the true Power of Grace. You can understand that if, by your aspiration and your attitude, you bring down a higher element, a new elementwhich now we may call the Supramentalinto the existing combinations, you can all on a sudden change their nature and then all these so-called necessary and inexorable laws become absurdities. It is you, with your conception, your attitude, your acceptance of certain so-called principles, it is yourself who shut the door against the possibility of what you call miracles. They are not miracles, if you know how they come about, but evidently for your consciousness they have the look of the miraculous.
It is you who say with a logic that appears quite reasonable: "If I do this, necessarily this will happen," or "If I do not do this, this other thing will surely come about," and that is how you put, as it were, an iron curtain between yourself and the free action of the Grace.
100.00 - Synergy, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
166.00 The prime eternal laws governing design science as thus far accrued to
that of the cosmic law of generalized design-science exploration are realizability
--
will always be fundamental to the design laws, both primary and corollary.
172.00 Biological designs a priori to human alteration contriving are directly
10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Conquered and used the laws that rule the world,
And hoped to ride the heavens and reach the stars,
--
Matter's machine worked out the laws of thought,
Life's engines served the labour of a soul:
--
A huge caprice self-bound by iron laws,
And shut God into an enigmatic world:
--
Persuade first Nature's fixed immutable laws
And make the impossible thy daily work.
--
Show me thy strength and freedom from my laws."
But Savitri answered, "Surely I shall find
--
Hard laws forbid and thy ironic fate.
My will once wrought remains unchanged through Time,
10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Philosophies and disciplines and laws,
And the dead spirit of old societies,
--
He has bound all life with his implacable laws;
He answers not the ignorant voice of prayer.
--
Touch not the seated lines, the ancient laws,
Respect the calm of great established things."
--
Even God himself obeys the laws he made:
The Law abides and never can it change,
10.05 - Mind and the Mental World, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The mental world, the world of thoughts, is a world in itself It is autonomous. It moves in its own way with its own laws. We human beings, we believe that it is we who think, that is, produce or create our thoughts. We are the makers of our notions and ideas. But in reality it is not so. Thoughts, ideas, notions, all movements of the mind are self-existent realities. They go about or flow on like the waves of a vast sea. Human beings are mere instruments, receptacles that capture or seize some undulations of this vast ocean. Man is man, that is to say, a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind is a sort of crossroads where all kinds of thoughts from all places meet, cross one another and make an ideal market place. In fact, an individual does not possess any thought-movement which can be called his own. He only catches a contagion. And like a contagion thought-movements pass from one person to another although one may think or feel that the movement is one's own.
In order to have one's own thought, in order to think by oneself, a long process of education and training is necessary. A growing personal individual consciousness is the first requisite and for that one must do what the Vedic Rishi I spoke of sought to do, gather the thoughts that one has, collect them, sift them and try to have a control over them. One must develop the habit of admitting certain thoughts and rejecting others. Thoughts that are useful, that carry light and peacefulness and happiness, are naturally those that are worth accepting. Those that are of a contrary nature should be pushed out. This is an exercise that develops the individual consciousness and the individual will.
1.005 - The Table, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
50. Is it the laws of the time of ignorance that they desire? Who is better than God in judgment for people who are certain?
51. O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies; some of them are allies of one another. Whoever of you allies himself with them is one of them. God does not guide the wrongdoing people.
10.06 - Beyond the Dualities, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What the mind forgets or ignores is that the law of self-contradiction belongs exclusively to the finite. It does not hold good in infinity. The Infinite is infinite because it has transcended the laws and categories of the finite, even as Eternity has transcended the temporal. In the transcendental consciousness the reality is single and multiple at the same time, simultaneously (although the conception of time is not there at all); also God is both with form and without form at the same time. The mind may not be able to conceive it but the fact is that, for one can rise above the mind and see and experience the reality.
There are other dualities that are confusing to the mind. It is said two objects cannot occupy together the same spot or position. One object must drive out another to occupy its position. Obviously this is a truth belonging to the material world for it is said matter is impenetrable. But this law, however valid in the material plane, becomes less and less applicable in regions subtler and less and less material. Two movements or two vibrations of consciousness, may exist together without annihilating each other's identity, being a total identity.
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
First. In the study of the etheric body lies hid (for scientists and those of the medical profession) a fuller comprehension of the laws of matter and the laws of health. The word health has become too localised in the past, and its meaning confined to the sanity of the body corporeal, to the co-operative action of the atoms of the physical body of man, and to the full expression of the powers of the physical elemental. In days to come it will be realised that the health of man is dependent upon the health of all allied evolutions, and upon the co-operative action and full expression of the matter of the planet and of the planetary elemental who is himself a composite manifestation of the physical elementals of all manifested nature.
Second. In the study of the etheric body and prana lies the revelation of the effects of those rays of the sun which (for lack of better expression), we will call "solar pranic emanations." These solar pranic emanations are the produced effect of the central heat of the sun approaching other bodies within the solar system by one of the three main channels of contact, and producing on the bodies then contacted certain effects differing somewhat from those produced by the other emanations. These effects might be considered as definitely stimulating and constructive, and (through their essential quality) as producing conditions that further the growth of cellular matter, and concern its adjustment to environing conditions; they concern likewise the internal health (demonstrating as the heat of the atom and its consequent activity) and the uniform evolution of the form of which that particular atom of matter forms a constituent part. Emanative prana does little in connection with [79] form building; that is not its province, but it conserves the form through the preservation of the health of its component parts. Other rays of the sun act differently, upon the forms and upon their substance. Some perform the work of the Destroyer of forms, and others carry on the work of cohering and of attracting; the work of the Destroyer and of the Preserver is carried on under the Law of Attraction and Repulsion. Some rays definitely produce accelerated motion, others produce retardation. The ones we are dealing with herepranic solar emanationswork within the four ethers, that matter which (though physical) is not as yet objectively visible to the eye of man. They are the basis of all physical plane life considered solely in connection with the life of the physical plane atoms of matter, their inherent heat and their rotary motion. These emanations are the basis of that "fire by friction" which demonstrates in the activity of matter.
--
Science, as we know, is fast reaching the point where it will be forced to admit the fact of the etheric body, because the difficulties of refusing to acknowledge it, will be far more insuperable than an admission of its existence. Scientists admit already the fact of etheric matter; the success of photographic endeavor has demonstrated the reality of that which has hitherto been considered unreal, because (from the standpoint of the physical) intangible. Phenomena are occurring all the time which remain in the domain of the supernatural unless accounted for through the medium of etheric matter, and in their anxiety to prove the spiritualists wrong, scientists have aided the cause of the true and higher spiritism by falling back on reality, and on the fact of the etheric body, even though they consider it a body of [89] emanative radiationbeing concerned with the effect and not having yet ascertained the cause. Medical men are beginning to study (blindly as yet) the question of vitality, the effect of solar rays upon the physical organism, and the underlying laws of inherent and radiatory heat. They are beginning to ascribe to the spleen functions hitherto not recognised, to study the effect of the action of the glands, and their relation to the assimilation of the vital essences by the bodily frame. They are on the right road, and before long (perhaps within this century) the FACT of the etheric body and its basic function will be established past all controversy, and the whole aim of preventive and curative medicine will shift to a higher level. All we can do here is to give simply, and in a condensed form, a few facts which may hasten the day of recognition, and further the interest of the true investigator. Let me, therefore, briefly state what will be dealt with in our remaining three points:
The functions of the etheric body.
--
This is that vital and magnetic fluid which radiates from the sun, and which is transmitted to man's etheric body through the agency of certain deva entities of a very high order, and of a golden hue. It is passed through their bodies and emitted as powerful radiations, which are applied direct through certain plexi in the uppermost part of the etheric body, the head and shoulders, and passed down to the etheric correspondence of the physical organ, the spleen, and from thence forcibly transmitted into the spleen itself. These golden hued pranic entities are in the air above us, and are specially active in such parts of the world as California, in those tropical countries where the air is pure and dry, and the rays of the sun are recognised as being specially beneficial. Relations between man and this group of devas are very close, but fraught as yet with much danger to man. These devas are of a very powerful order, and, along their own line, are further evolved than man himself. Unprotected man lies at their mercy, and in this lack of protection, and man's failure to understand the laws of magnetic resistance, or of solar repulsion comes, for instance, the menace of sunstroke. When the etheric body and its assimilative processes are comprehended scientifically, man will then be immune from dangers due to solar radiation. He will protect himself by the application of the laws governing [91] magnetic repulsion and attraction, and not so much by clothing and shelter. It is largely a question of polarisation. One hint might here be given: When men understand the deva evolution somewhat more correctly and recognise their work along certain lines in connection with the Sun and realise that they represent the feminine pole as they themselves represent the masculine (the fourth Creative Hierarchy being male) [xxxix]39 they will comprehend the mutual relationship, and govern that relationship by law.
These solar devas take the radiatory rays of the sun which reach from its centre to the periphery along one of the three channels of approach, pass them through their organism and focalise them there. They act almost as a burning glass acts. These rays are then reflected or transmitted to man's etheric body, and caught up by him and again assimilated. When the etheric body is in good order and functioning correctly, enough of this prana is absorbed to keep the form organised. This is the whole object of the etheric body's functioning, and is a point which cannot be sufficiently emphasised. The remainder is cast off in the form of animal radiation, or physical magnetismall terms expressing the same idea. Man therefore repeats on a lesser scale the work of the great solar devas, and in his turn adds his quota of repolarised or remagnetised emanation to the sumtotal of the planetary aura.
--
We will now study the etheric body, and its ills and also its after death condition. This matter can be only briefly touched upon. All that may now be indicated is a general idea of the fundamental ailments to which the etheric may be subject, and the trend which applied medicine may later take when occult laws are better understood. One fact must here be brought outa fact but little comprehended or even apprehended. This is the significant fact that the ills of the etheric vehicle, in the case of the microcosm, will be found likewise in the Macrocosm. Herein lies the knowledge that ofttimes explains the apparent miseries of nature. Some of the great world evils have their source in etheric ills, extending the idea of the etheric to planetary conditions and even to solar. As we touch upon the causes of etheric distress in man, their planetary and solar correspondences and reactions may perhaps be realised. We will need to bear carefully in mind when studying this matter, that all the diseases of the etheric body will appertain to its threefold purpose and be either:
a. Functional and thereby affecting its apprehension of prana,
1.00d - Introduction, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But since the terrestrial body is one, the remedy is one, like Truth, and a single point transmuted will transmute all the others. That point, however, is not to be found in the improvement of our laws, our systems or sciences, our religions, schools of thought or many-hued isms all those are part of the old Machinery; not a single nut needs to be tightened, added or improved anywhere: we are suffocating in the extreme. Moreover, that point has nothing to do with our intelligence that is what has contrived the whole Machine in the first place or even with improving Man, which would amount only to glorifying his weaknesses and past greatness. The imperfection of Man is not the last word of Nature, said Sri Aurobindo, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit. Indeed, this point lies in a future beyond the grasp of our intelligence, but it is growing in the depths of the being like the flowers of the flame tree when all its leaves have fallen.
But there is a handle to the future, provided we go to the heart of the thing. But where is that heart if it is not in our human standards? One day, the first reptiles out of the water sought to fly, the first primates out of the jungle cast a strange new look over the world: one and the same irresistible urge was making them contemplate another state. And perhaps all the transforming power was already contained in that simple look TOWARD something else, as if that look, that urge, that point of the unknown crying out, had the power to unlock the floodgates to the future.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The Third Logos. The third Logos, or Brahma, is characterised by active intelligence; His mode of action is that which we call rotary, or that measured revolution of the matter of the system, first as a grand totality, setting in movement the material circumscribed by the entire ring-pass-not, and secondly differentiating it, according to seven vibratory rates or measures into the seven planes. On each of these planes the process is pursued, and the matter of any plane within the plane ring-pass-not shows first as a totality and then as a sevenfold differentiation. This differentiation of matter is brought about by rotary motion, and is controlled by the Law of Economy (one of the cosmic laws) with which we will deal later, only pausing here to say that this Law of Economy might be considered as the controlling factor in the life of the third Logos. Therefore:
a. His goal is the perfect blending of Spirit and matter.
--
The activity of the second Logos is carried on under the cosmic Law of Attraction. The Law of Economy has for one of its branches a subsidiary Law of marked development called the Law of Repulsion. The cosmic laws of Attraction and Economy are therefore the raison d'tre (viewed from one angle) of the eternal repulsion that goes on as Spirit seeks ever to liberate itself from form. The matter aspect always follows the line of least resistance, and repulses all tendency to group formation, while Spirit, governed by the Law of Attraction, seeks ever to separate itself from matter by the method of attracting an ever more adequate type of matter in the process of distinguishing the real from the unreal, and passing from one illusion to another until the resources of matter are fully utilised.
[145]
--
Let us keep clearly in our minds that we are simply considering the three qualities of matter itself and are not considering consciousness. Inertia is the result of lack of activity and the relative quiescence of the fires of matter. These fires, during obscuration or Pralaya, though latent, are free from the stimulation that comes from the aggregation of atoms into form, and the consequent interplay of the forms upon each other. Where form exists and the laws of Repulsion and Attraction are coming into force, making radiation therefore possible, then comes stimulation, emanative effect, and a gradual speeding up which eventually, from within the atom itself, by its own rotary movement produces the next quality.
[158]
--
He touches or feels the vibration of the form or not-self in all its various grades, recognises his identity in time and space, and for purposes of existence or being and by means of the three laws of Economy, Attraction and Synthesis utilises, blends and eventually dissociates himself. He sees the threefold evolutionary process and by means of the development of the inner vision, sees within the heart of the system macrocosmic and microcosmic, the one SELF in many forms, and finally identifies himself with that one Self by the conscious rejection of the not-self after its complete subjugation and utilisation.
d. Tasting. He tastes then finally and discriminates, for taste is the great sense that begins to hold sway during the discriminating process that takes place when the illusory nature of matter is in process of realisation. Discrimination is the educatory process to which the Self subjects itself in the process of developing intuition that faculty whereby the Self recognises its own essence in and under all forms. Discrimination concerns the duality of nature, the Self and the not-self, and is the means of their differentiation in the process of abstraction; the intuition concerns unity and is the capacity of the Self to contact other selves, and is not a faculty whereby the not-self is contacted. Hence, its rarity these days owing to the intense individualisation of the Ego, and its identification with the forma necessary identification at this particular time. As the sense of taste on the higher planes is developed, it leads one to ever finer distinctions till one is finally led through the form, right to the heart of one's nature.
--
e. By the application of the Rod, the fire of kundalini is aroused, and its upward progress directed. The fire at the base of the spine, and the fire of mind are [210] directed along certain routes, or triangles, by the action of the Rod as it moves in a specified manner. There is a definite occult reason, under the laws of Electricity, behind the known fact that every initiate, presented to the Initiator, is accompanied by two of the Masters, who stand one on either side of him. The three of them together form a triangle which makes the work possible.
The force of the Rod is twofold, and its power terrific. Apart and alone the initiate could not receive the voltage from the Rod without serious hurt, but in triangular formation transmission comes safely. The two Masters Who thus sponsor the initiate, represent two polarities of the electric All; part of Their work is therefore to stand with all applicants for initiation when they come before the Great Lord.
1.00f - DIVISION F - THE LAW OF ECONOMY, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
II. Its subsidiary laws.
1. The law of vibration.
--
Thus can be seen the wonderful synthesis brought about by the evolutionary working of these three cosmic laws,each of them embodying the mode of work of certain cosmic Entities or Existences. The final two will be taken up in their right place. Now we will touch but briefly upon the law of matter, that of Economy.
This is the law that lies back of what has been mistakenly called "The Fall" by religious writers, by which is defined in reality the involutionary process, cosmically considered. It led to a sevenfold differentiation in the matter of the system. Just as the Law of Attraction led to the sevenfold psychic differentiation of the Sons of Mind, and the Law of Synthesis results in the sevenfold perfection of the same Manasaputras, so we have an interesting connection between
--
This Law of Economy has several subsidiary laws which govern its effects on the different grades of matter. As said before, this is the Law swept into action by the sounds as uttered by the Logos. The Sacred Word, or the uttered Sound of the Creator, exists in different forms, and though in reality but one Word, has several syllables. The syllables all together form a solar [217] phrase; separated they form certain words of power, producing different effects. [xciv] 92
The great WORD that peals through one hundred years of Brahma or persists in reverberation throughout a solar system, is the sacred sound of A U M. In differentiation and as heard in time and space, each of those three mystic letters stands for the first letter of a subsidiary phrase, consisting of various sounds. One letter, with a sequence of four sounds, makes up the vibration or note of Brahma, which is the intelligence aspect dominant in matter. Hence the mystery hidden in [218] the pentagon, in the fifth principle of mind, and in the five planes of human evolution. These five letters when sounded forth on the right note, give the key to the true inwardness of matter and also to its control,this control being based on the right interpretation of the Law of Economy.
--
When the sense of hearing on all planes is perfected (which is brought about by the Law of Economy rightly understood) these three great Words or phrases will be known. The Knower will utter them in his own true key, thus blending his own sound with the entire volume of vibration, and thereby achieving sudden realisation of his essential identity with Those Who utter the words. As the sound of matter or of Brahma peals forth in his ears on all the planes, he will see all forms as illusion and will be freed, knowing himself as omnipresent. As the sound of Vishnu reverberates within himself, he knows himself as perfected wisdom, and distinguishes [219] the note of his being (or that of the Heavenly Man in whose Body he finds place) from the group notes, and knows himself as omniscient. As the note of the first or Mahadeva aspect, follows upon the other two, he realises himself as pure Spirit and on the consummation of the chord is merged in the Self, or the source from which he came. Mind is not, matter is not, and nought is left but the Self merged in the ocean of the Self. At each stage of relative attainment, one of the laws comes into sway,first the law of matter, then the law of groups, to be succeeded by the law of Spirit and of liberation.
II. THE SUBSIDIARY laws
The subsidiary laws under the Law of Economy are four in number, dealing with the lower quaternary:
1. The Law of Vibration, dealing with the key note or measure of the matter of each plane. By knowledge of this law the material of any plane in its seven divisions can be controlled.
--
Every atom of matter can be studied in four aspects, and is governed by one or other, or all of the four above mentioned laws.
a. An atom vibrates to a certain measure.
1.00 - INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
When the primordial ray of intelligent activity, the divine ray of intelligent love, and the third cosmic ray of intelligent will meet, blend, merge, and blaze forth, the Logos will take His fifth initiation, thus completing one of His cycles. When the rotary, the forward, and the spiral cyclic movements are working in perfect synthesis then the desired vibration will have been reached. When the three laws of Economy, of Attraction, and of Synthesis work with perfect adjustment to each other, then nature will perfectly display the needed functioning, and the correct adaptation of the material form to the indwelling spirit, of matter to life, and of consciousness to its vehicle.
II. FIRE IN THE MICROCOSM
--
b. The working of the flame divine under the Law of Synthesisa generic term which will be seen eventually to include the other two laws as subdivisions.
c. The subsequent result of forward progressive motiona motion which is rotary, cyclic and progressive.
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed. It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Source of Divine inspiration.
They whom God hath endued with insight will readily recognize that the precepts laid down by God constitute the highest means for the maintenance of order in the world and the security of its peoples. He that turneth away from them is accounted among the abject and foolish. We, verily, have commanded you to refuse the dictates of your evil passions and corrupt desires, and not to transgress the bounds which the Pen of the Most High hath fixed, for these are the breath of life unto all created things. The seas of Divine wisdom and Divine utterance have risen under the breath of the breeze of the All-Merciful. Hasten to drink your fill, O men of understanding! They that have violated the Covenant of God by breaking His commandments, and have turned back on their heels, these have erred grievously in the sight of God, the All-Possessing, the Most High.
--
Say: From My laws the sweet-smelling savour of My garment can be smelled, and by their aid the standards of Victory will be planted upon the highest peaks. The Tongue of My power hath, from the heaven of My omnipotent glory, addressed to My creation these words: "Observe My commandments, for the love of My beauty." Happy is the lover that hath inhaled the divine fragrance of his Best-Beloved from these words, laden with the perfume of a grace which no tongue can describe. By My life! He who hath drunk the choice wine of fairness from the hands of My bountiful favour will circle around My commandments that shine above the Dayspring of My creation.
Think not that We have revealed unto you a mere code of laws. Nay, rather, We have unsealed the choice Wine with the fingers of might and power. To this beareth witness that which the Pen of Revelation hath revealed. Meditate upon this, O men of insight!
We have enjoined obligatory prayer upon you, with nine rak'ahs, to be offered at noon and in the morning and the evening unto God, the Revealer of Verses. We have relieved you of a greater number, as a comm and in the Book of God. He, verily, is the Ordainer, the Omnipotent, the Unrestrained. When ye desire to perform this prayer, turn ye towards the Court of My Most Holy Presence, this Hallowed Spot that God hath made the Centre round which circle the Concourse on High, and which He hath decreed to be the Point of Adoration for the denizens of the Cities of Eternity, and the Source of Command unto all that are in heaven and on earth; and when the Sun of Truth and Utterance shall set, turn your faces towards the Spot that We have ordained for you. He, verily, is Almighty and Omniscient.
Everything that is hath come to be through His irresistible decree. Whenever My laws appear like the sun in the heaven of Mine utterance, they must be faithfully obeyed by all, though My decree be such as to cause the heaven of every religion to be cleft asunder. He doeth what He pleaseth. He chooseth, and none may question His choice. Whatsoever He, the Well-Beloved, ordaineth, the same is, verily, beloved. To this He Who is the Lord of all creation beareth Me witness. Whoso hath inhaled the sweet fragrance of the All-Merciful, and recognized the Source of this utterance, will welcome with his own eyes the shafts of the enemy, that he may establish the truth of the laws of God amongst men. Well is it with him that hath turned thereunto, and apprehended the meaning of His decisive decree.
We have set forth the details of obligatory prayer in another Tablet. Blessed is he who observeth that whereunto he hath been bidden by Him Who ruleth over all mankind. In the Prayer for the Dead six specific passages have been sent down by God, the Revealer of Verses. Let one who is able to read recite that which hath been revealed to precede these passages; and as for him who is unable, God hath relieved him of this requirement. He, of a truth, is the Mighty, the Pardoner.
--
Should the son of the deceased have passed away in the days of his father and have left children, they will inherit their father's share, as prescribed in the Book of God. Divide ye their share amongst them with perfect justice. Thus have the billows of the Ocean of Utterance surged, casting forth the pearls of the laws decreed by the Lord of all mankind.
If the deceased should leave children who are under age, their share of the inheritance must be entrusted to a reliable individual, or to a company, that it may be invested on their behalf in trade and business until they come of age. The trustee should be assigned a due share of the profit that hath accrued to it from being thus employed.
--
Say: This is that hidden knowledge which shall never change, since its beginning is with nine, the symbol that betokeneth the concealed and manifest, the inviolable and unapproachably exalted Name. As for what We have appropriated to the children, this is a bounty conferred on them by God, that they may render thanks unto their Lord, the Compassionate, the Merciful. These, verily, are the laws of God; transgress them not at the prompting of your base and selfish desires. Observe ye the injunctions laid upon you by Him Who is the Dawning-place of Utterance. The sincere among His servants will regard the precepts set forth by God as the Water of Life to the followers of every faith, and the Lamp of wisdom and loving providence to all the denizens of earth and heaven.
The Lord hath ordained that in every city a House of Justice be established wherein shall gather counsellors to the number of Baha, and should it exceed this number it doth not matter. They should consider themselves as entering the Court of the presence of God, the Exalted, the Most High, and as beholding Him Who is the Unseen. It behoveth them to be the trusted ones of the Merciful among men and to regard themselves as the guardians appointed of God for all that dwell on earth. It is incumbent upon them to take counsel together and to have regard for the interests of the servants of God, for His sake, even as they regard their own interests, and to choose that which is meet and seemly. Thus hath the Lord your God commanded you. Beware lest ye put away that which is clearly revealed in His Tablet. Fear God, O ye that perceive.
--
Exile and imprisonment are decreed for the thief, and, on the third offence, place ye a mark upon his brow so that, thus identified, he may not be accepted in the cities of God and His countries. Beware lest, through compassion, ye neglect to carry out the statutes of the religion of God; do that which hath been bidden you by Him Who is compassionate and merciful. We school you with the rod of wisdom and laws, like unto the father who educateth his son, and this for naught but the protection of your own selves and the elevation of your stations. By My life, were ye to discover what We have desired for you in revealing Our holy laws, ye would offer up your very souls for this sacred, this mighty, and most exalted Faith.
Whoso wisheth to make use of vessels of silver and gold is at liberty to do so. Take heed lest, when partaking of food, ye plunge your hands into the contents of bowls and platters. Adopt ye such usages as are most in keeping with refinement. He, verily, desireth to see in you the manners of the inmates of Paradise in His mighty and most sublime Kingdom. Hold ye fast unto refinement under all conditions, that your eyes may be preserved from beholding what is repugnant both to your own selves and to the dwellers of Paradise. Should anyone depart therefrom, his deed shall at that moment be rendered vain; yet should he have good reason, God will excuse him. He, in truth, is the Gracious, the Most Bountiful.
--
O Most Mighty Ocean! Sprinkle upon the nations that with which Thou hast been charged by Him Who is the Sovereign of Eternity, and adorn the temples of all the dwellers of the earth with the vesture of His laws +F1 Khurasan through which all hearts will rejoice and all eyes be brightened.
Should anyone acquire one hundred mithqals of gold, nineteen mithqals thereof are God's and to be rendered unto Him, the Fashioner of earth and heaven. Take heed, O people, lest ye deprive yourselves of so great a bounty. This We have commanded you, though We are well able to dispense with you and with all who are in the heavens and on earth; in it there are benefits and wisdoms beyond the ken of anyone but God, the Omniscient, the All-Informed. Say: By this means He hath desired to purify what ye possess and to enable you to draw nigh unto such stations as none can comprehend save those whom God hath willed. He, in truth, is the Beneficent, the Gracious, the Bountiful. O people! Deal not faithlessly with the Right of God, nor, without His leave, make free with its disposal. Thus hath His commandment been established in the holy Tablets, and in this exalted Book. He who dealeth faithlessly with God shall in justice meet with faithlessness himself; he, however, who acteth in accordance with God's bidding shall receive a blessing from the heaven of the bounty of his Lord, the Gracious, the Bestower, the Generous, the Ancient of Days. He, verily, hath willed for you that which is yet beyond your knowledge, but which shall be known to you when, after this fleeting life, your souls soar heavenwards and the trappings of your earthly joys are folded up. Thus admonisheth you He in Whose possession is the Guarded Tablet.
Various petitions have come before Our throne from the believers, concerning laws from God, the Lord of the seen and the unseen, the Lord of all worlds. We have, in consequence, revealed this Holy Tablet and arrayed it with the mantle of His Law that haply the people may keep the commandments of their Lord.
Similar requests had been made of Us over several previous years but We had, in Our wisdom, withheld Our Pen until, in recent days, letters arrived from a number of the friends, and We have therefore responded, through the power of truth, with that which shall quicken the hearts of men.
--
Adorn your heads with the garlands of trustworthiness and fidelity, your hearts with the attire of the fear of God, your tongues with absolute truthfulness, your bodies with the vesture of courtesy. These are in truth seemly adornings unto the temple of man, if ye be of them that reflect. Cling, O ye people of Baha, to the cord of servitude unto God, the True One, for thereby your stations shall be made manifest, your names written and preserved, your ranks raised and your memory exalted in the Preserved Tablet. Beware lest the dwellers on earth hinder you from this glorious and exalted station. Thus have We exhorted you in most of Our Epistles and now in this, Our Holy Tablet, above which hath beamed the Day-Star of the laws of the Lord, your God, the Powerful, the All-Wise.
121
--
Verily, He revealed certain laws so that, in this Dispensation, the Pen of the Most High might have no need to move in aught but the glorification of His own transcendent Station and His most effulgent Beauty. Since, however, We have wished to evidence Our bounty unto you, We have, through the power of truth, set forth these laws with clarity and mitigated what We desire you to observe. He, verily, is the Munificent, the Generous.
143
--
Ye have been forbidden in the Book of God to engage in contention and conflict, to strike another, or to commit similar acts whereby hearts and souls may be saddened. A fine of nineteen mithqals of gold had formerly been prescribed by Him Who is the Lord of all mankind for anyone who was the cause of sadness to another; in this Dispensation, however, He hath absolved you thereof and exhorteth you to show forth righteousness and piety. Such is the commandment which He hath enjoined upon you in this resplendent Tablet. Wish not for others what ye wish not for yourselves; fear God, and be not of the prideful. Ye are all created out of water, and unto dust shall ye return. Reflect upon the end that awaiteth you, and walk not in the ways of the oppressor. Give ear unto the verses of God which He Who is the sacred Lote-Tree reciteth unto you. They are assuredly the infallible balance, established by God, the Lord of this world and the next. Through them the soul of man is caused to wing its flight towards the Dayspring of Revelation, and the heart of every true believer is suffused with light. Such are the laws which God hath enjoined upon you, such His commandments prescribed unto you in His Holy Tablet; obey them with joy and gladness, for this is best for you, did ye but know.
149
--
Though he was occupied both night and day in setting down what he conceived to be the laws and ordinances of God, yet when He Who is the Unconstrained appeared, not one letter thereof availed him, or he would not have turned away from a Countenance that hath illumined the faces of the well-favoured of the Lord. Had ye believed in God when He revealed Himself, the people would not have turned aside from Him, nor would the things ye witness today have befallen Us. Fear God, and be not of the heedless.
167
1.00 - The Constitution of the Human Being, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
existence. A year after I go again over the same meadow. Other flowers are there. New joy arises in me through them. My joy of the former year will appear as a memory. It is in me; the object which aroused it in me is gone. But the flowers which I. now see are of the same species as those I saw the year before; they have grown in accordance with the same laws as did the others. If I have enlightened myself regarding this species and these laws, I find them again in the flowers of this year as I recognized them in those of the former year. And I shall perhaps muse as follows: "The flowers of last year are gone; my joy in them remains only in my remembrance. It is bound up with my existence alone. That, however, which I recognized in the flowers of the former year and recognize again this year, will remain as long as such flowers grow. That is something that revealed itself to me, but which is not dependent on my existence in the same way as my joy is. My feelings of joy remain in me; the laws, the being of the flowers, remain outside of me in the world."
Man continually links himself in this threefold way with the things of the world. One
--
and lets the things speak about themselves, about that which has significance not for him but for them. Man looks up at the starry heavens; the delight his soul experiences belongs to him; the eternal laws of the stars which he comprehends in thought, in spirit, belong not to him but to the stars themselves.
Thus man is citizen of three worlds. Through his body he belongs to the world which he perceives through his body; through his soul he constructs for himself his own world; through his spirit a world reveals itself to him which is exalted above both the others.
1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
Believe me. 23 It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path therefore I fol. i(v)/ii(r) cannot teach you. The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, 24 nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.
Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself?
--
Giving laws, wanting improvements, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way.
The way leads to mutual love in community. Men will come to see and feel the similarity and commonality of their ways.
laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that they may escape the pressure of undersirable contact, but solitude makes people hostile and venomous.
Therefore give people dignity and let each of them stand apart, so that each may find his own fellowship and love it.
--
26. The Draft continues: My tongue shall wither if I serve up laws, if I prattle to you about teachings. Those who seek such will leave my table hungry (p. 10).
27. The Draft continues: only one law exists, and that is your law. Only one truth exists, and that is your truth (p. IO)
1.012 - Sublimation - A Way to Reshuffle Thought, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
As long as we see a meaning in a thing, there is no doubt about it, and nobody else can influence us. No law, no order will work against a meaning that is seen by a person with open eyes. If I tell you that it is midnight, you will not believe it. "Why are you saying it is midnight? You can see it is daylight." We have faith that it is daytime on account of our clear perception of daylight. We are seeing it directly, and why is someone saying it is something else? So when consciousness sees a peculiar and definite meaning or significance in an object in front of it which it regards as valuable, worthwhile and necessary for its happiness, then no law or order will operate against it. It breaks all laws, be they social, personal, or moral any law, whatever it is because it is the law of reality, and the law of reality is more powerful than any other law that is made by man. Why is it called the law of reality? It is called the law of reality because it is seen physically as an indubitable something about which there is no doubt in the mind, and we cannot frame a law contrary to what we see physically and palpably as something real.
We now come to a very crucial point. All of this amounts to saying that we cannot easily practise self-control. It is not so cheap an affair; it is a terrible job. It is terrible, no doubt, but there is a way out. The way out is to reshuffle the ways in which we think under given conditions. Emotions rise up under certain conditions, and under certain other conditions they may not be so forceful. The meaning that the emotion reads into its object is to be transformed. Are we correct in reading this meaning in the object? This is a philosophical question that we have to ask ourselves. Is it correct that because we see a meaning in something we can regard it as real? This is a simple question, for which there is a simple answer. But, another question can be raised are we sure that our perception is correct?.
10.17 - Miracles: Their True Significance, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Usually, the name 'miracle' is given to something that seems to us "unnatural", that is to say, something that does not, conform to the laws of nature or what we think to be the laws of nature. A man standing in the air without any support or squatting on the waterfeats familiar to the yogisare termed veritable miracles. The famous rope trick is a legendary miracle. Some of these miracles done by yogis are au thentic facts. They apparently seem to violate the prevailing so-called laws of nature, but if we knew the process, the mechanism behind the event because it is not apparent to the external logical mind, if we had a slightly different perception, the whole glamour of a miracle would fall to the ground.
A miracle is nothing but the intervention of a force from another plane of consciousness. It must be recognised at the very outset that the physical plane of existence is not the only reality, there are many other planes superimposed' one upon another, each having its own special consciousness and power, its own laws of being and action. Obviously we all know apart from the material or physical being there is the vital being, the life-force and there is the mental being, the mind-force. And there are many other levels like these. A miracle happens, that is to say, a material formation behaves in an abnormal way because a force has come down from the vital region and has influenced or taken control of the material object. So the material object instead of obeying the material law is obliged to obey a vital law which is of a much greater potency. Yogis who do miracles possess this vital power, they have acquired it through a regular discipline and training. Spirit-calling, table-turning, even curing diseases and ailments in a moment and many other activities of the kind are manifestations of very elementary energies of life. From the occult point of view these are very crude and rudimentary examples of what a different kind of force can achieve on a different plane. Even the vital plane possesses deeper and higher energies whose action on the material plane is of deeper and higher category. A deeper or higher vital power can change radically your character and long-standing habits, help to mould them into a different, nobler and more beautiful pattern. The mind too is capable of performing miracles, a strong mental energy can dictate its terms to life and even to the body. Only the miracles here are not of a dazzling kind that astound or confound you. They have a subtler composition, yet they belong to the same category. In the mind itself miracles happen also when a higher light, a superior consciousness intuition, inspiration, revelationdescends into the normal mental working and creates there a thing that is abnormal in beauty and truth and reality. Thus for example, a matter of fact mind is seen turned into a fine poet or a workaday hand is transmuted into a consummate artist.
A miracle can be said to be doubly a miracle; first of all, because it means an intervention from another plane, a superior level of being, and secondly because the process or the action of the intervention is not deployed or staged out but is occult and telescoped, the result being almost simultaneous with the pressure of the moving force. .
1.01 - An Accomplished Westerner, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Humanly speaking, Sri Aurobindo is close to us, because once we have respectfully bowed before the "wisdom of the East" and the odd ascetics who seem to make light of all our fine laws, we find that our curiosity has been aroused but not our life; we need a practical truth that will survive our rugged winters. Sri Aurobindo knew our winters well; he experienced them as a student, from the age of seven until twenty. He lived from one lodging house to another at the whim of more or less benevolent landladies, with one meal a day, and not even an overcoat to put on his back, but always laden with books: the French symbolists, Mallarm, Rimbaud, whom he read in the original French long before reading the Bhagavad Gita in translation. To us Sri Aurobindo personifies a unique synthesis.
He was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872, the year of Rimbaud's Illuminations, just a few years before Einstein; modern physics had already seen the light of day with Max Planck, and Jules Verne was busy probing the future. Yet, Queen Victoria was about to become Empress of India, and the conquest of Africa was not even completed; it was the turning point from one world to another.
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
flect a superior knowledge of life's laws. It is just the most un-
expected, the most terrifyingly chaotic things which reveal
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or, at least, careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of mans existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
By the words, _necessary of life_, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it.
1.01 - How is Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
knowledge will shun no exertion and fear no obstacle in his search for an initiate who can lead him to the higher knowledge of the world. On the other hand, everyone may be certain that initiation will find him under all circumstances if he gives proof of an earnest and worthy endeavor to attain this knowledge. It is a natural law among all initiates to withhold from no man the knowledge that is due him but there is an equally natural law which lays down that no word of esoteric knowledge shall be imparted to anyone not qualified to receive it. And the more strictly he observes these laws, the more perfect is an initiate. The bond of union embracing all initiates is spiritual and not external, but the two laws here mentioned form, as it were, strong clasps by which the component parts of this bond are held together. You may live in intimate friendship with an initiate, and yet a gap severs you from his essential self, so long as you have not become an initiate yourself. You may enjoy in the fullest sense the heart, the love of an initiate, yet he will only confide his knowledge to you when you are ripe for it. You may flatter him; you may torture him; nothing can induce him to betray anything
p. 5
--
If we do not develop within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve to something higher. The initiate has only acquired the strength to lift his head to the heights of knowledge by guiding his heart to the depths of veneration and devotion. The heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility. You can only acquire right knowledge when you have learnt to esteem it. Man has certainly the right to turn his eyes to the light, but he must first acquire this right. There are laws in the spiritual life, as in the physical life. Rub a glass rod with an appropriate material and it will become electric, that is, it will receive the power of attracting small bodies. This is in keeping with a law of nature. It is known to all who have learnt a little physics. Similarly, acquaintance with the first principles of spiritual science shows that every
p. 8
--
No teacher of the spiritual life wishes to establish a mastery over other persons by means of such rules. He would not tamper with anyone's independence. Indeed, none respect and cherish human independence more than the spiritually experienced. It was stated in the preceding pages that the bond of union embracing all initiates is spiritual, and that two laws form, as it were, clasps by which the component parts of this bond are held together. Whenever the initiate leaves
p. 19
1.01 - Introduction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The mind that looks deeply into existence, finds there no shadow but that of appearances, and the most obscure and infinitesimal of these can uncover to its search sovereign realities, once it has accustomed its gaze to the light of the mystery which every appearance conceals. Where the indifferent sees only a valueless object or a fortuitous and unimportant detail, the thinker whom no coverings can deceive, is able to detect one of the signs by which eternal laws yield up their secret. A stone that falls, a ripe fruit that opens, become to his vision initiating symbols, keys to a supreme knowledge. By relativities that all disdain, the Absolute delivers up to him the secrets reserved for the sages.
For him the very darkness becomes light, because all is light. But what light can be sufficient for eyes that keep themselves closed, for the mind which remains sealed?
--
From this point of view it would be true to say that things visible are transitory and things eternal invisible,-invisible at least for those of our senses that are constructed according to the laws of our ephemeral being, but not for that vision of the profundities of existence, present in us already in its rudiments, which we awaken to the perception of its proper world when we take cognizance within ourselves of that which is eternal.
***
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that
soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.
1.01 - Necessity for knowledge of the whole human being for a genuine education., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
We can ask: What are the laws that govern the development of the world beyond humankind? However, none of the answers come close to the essence of what lives within the limits of the human skin. Answers are so inadequate that people today havent a clue about the ways that external natural processes are actually transformed within the human being through breathing, blood circulation, nutrition, and so on.
Consequently, we have come to the point where, even in terms of the soul, we do not look at the soul itself, but study its exter- nal manifestations in the human body. Today people experiment with external means on human beings. However, I dont intend to criticize psychological or pedagogical experimentation. We have to acknowledge what can be accomplished in this way, but mostly this approach is a symptom of our cultural milieu, since in fact the results of such experiments should at least be mentioned.
1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
closed mechanics, the fundamental laws of this mechanics were
unaltered by the transformation of the time variable t into its
--
Newtonian laws, or any other system of causal laws whatever, all
that we can predict at any future time is a probability distribu-
--
but explainable by natural laws-by which that square would
cease to exist. Our counterpart would have exactly similar ideas50
1.01 - Principles of Practical Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
The road the individual follows is defined by his knowledge of the laws
that are peculiar to himself; otherwise he will get lost in the arbitrary
--
on its own with its own peculiar laws. Its nature cannot be deduced from
the principles of other sciences without doing violence to the idiosyncrasy
1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
veloped factors, laws, and elements of existence. Those are the
pearls of the fabled submarine palaces of the nixies, tritons, and
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Modern Science, obsessed with the greatness of its physical discoveries and the idea of the sole existence of Matter, has long attempted to base upon physical data even its study of Soul and Mind and of those workings of Nature in man and animal in which a knowledge of psychology is as important as any of the physical sciences. Its very psychology founded itself upon physiology and the scrutiny of the brain and nervous system. It is not surprising therefore that in history and sociology attention should have been concentrated on the external data, laws, institutions, rites, customs, economic factors and developments, while the deeper psychological elements so important in the activities of a mental, emotional, ideative being like man have been very much neglected. This kind of science would explain history and social development as much as possible by economic necessity or motive,by economy understood in its widest sense. There are even historians who deny or put aside as of a very subsidiary importance the working of the idea and the influence of the thinker in the development of human institutions. The French Revolution, it is thought, would have happened just as it did and when it did, by economic necessity, even if Rousseau and Voltaire had never written and the eighteenth-century philosophic movement in the world of thought had never worked out its bold and radical speculations.
Recently, however, the all-sufficiency of Matter to explain Mind and Soul has begun to be doubted and a movement of emancipation from the obsession of physical science has set in, although as yet it has not gone beyond a few awkward and rudimentary stumblings. Still there is the beginning of a perception that behind the economic motives and causes of social and historical development there are profound psychological, even perhaps soul factors; and in pre-war Germany, the metropolis of rationalism and materialism but the home also, for a century and a half, of new thought and original tendencies good and bad, beneficent and disastrous, a first psychological theory of history was conceived and presented by an original intelligence. The earliest attempts in a new field are seldom entirely successful, and the German historian, originator of this theory, seized on a luminous idea, but was not able to carry it very far or probe very deep. He was still haunted by a sense of the greater importance of the economic factor, and like most European science his theory related, classified and organised phenomena much more successfully than it explained them. Nevertheless, its basic idea formulated a suggestive and illuminating truth, and it is worth while following up some of the suggestions it opens out in the light especially of Eastern thought and experience.
The theorist, Lamprecht, basing himself on European and particularly on German history, supposed that human society progresses through certain distinct psychological stages which he terms respectively symbolic, typal and conventional, individualist and subjective. This development forms, then, a sort of psychological cycle through which a nation or a civilisation is bound to proceed. Obviously, such classifications are likely to err by rigidity and to substitute a mental straight line for the coils and zigzags of Nature. The psychology of man and his societies is too complex, too synthetical of many-sided and intermixed tendencies to satisfy any such rigorous and formal analysis. Nor does this theory of a psychological cycle tell us what is the inner meaning of its successive phases or the necessity of their succession or the term and end towards which they are driving. But still to understand natural laws whether of Mind or Matter it is necessary to analyse their working into its discoverable elements, main constituents, dominant forces, though these may not actually be found anywhere in isolation. I will leave aside the Western thinkers own dealings with his idea. The suggestive names he has offered us, if we examine their intrinsic sense and value, may yet throw some light on the thickly veiled secret of our historic evolution, and this is the line on which it would be most useful to investigate.
Undoubtedly, wherever we can seize human society in what to us seems its primitive beginnings or early stages,no matter whether the race is comparatively cultured or savage or economically advanced or backward,we do find a strongly symbolic mentality that governs or at least pervades its thought, customs and institutions. Symbolic, but of what? We find that this social stage is always religious and actively imaginative in its religion; for symbolism and a widespread imaginative or intuitive religious feeling have a natural kinship and especially in earlier or primitive formations they have gone always together. When man begins to be predominantly intellectual, sceptical, ratiocinative he is already preparing for an individualist society and the age of symbols and the age of conventions have passed or are losing their virtue. The symbol then is of something which man feels to be present behind himself and his life and his activities,the Divine, the Gods, the vast and deep unnameable, a hidden, living and mysterious nature of things. All his religious and social institutions, all the moments and phases of his life are to him symbols in which he seeks to express what he knows or guesses of the mystic influences that are behind his life and shape and govern or at the least intervene in its movements.
1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
sacred grove, and that the laws which he gave the Romans had been
inspired by communion with her divinity. Plutarch compares the
1.01 - The Rape of the Lock, #The Rape of the Lock, #unset, #Zen
For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.
1.01 - THE STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
whose laws are valid for whatever space it fills, but which is
wholly contained in a single mesh.
--
B. The Numerical laws
What ancient thought half perceived and imagined as a natural
--
of the laws of energy. That part of them that is indispensable and
accessible to every world-historian may be simply summarised.
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(Illustration: If I want pure water to drink, I dig a well in a place where there is underground water; I prevent it from leaking away; and I arrange to take advantage of water's accordance with the laws of Hydrostatics to fill it.)
19. Man's sense of himself as separate from, and opposed to, the Universe is a bar to his conducting its currents. It insulates him.
--
27. Every man should make Magick the keynote of his life. He should learn its laws and live by them.
(Illustration: The Banker should discover the real meaning of his existence, the real motive which led him to choose that profession. He should understand banking as a necessary factor in the economic existence of mankind, instead of as merely a business whose objects are independent of the general welfare. He should learn to distinguish false values from real, and to act not on accidental fluctuations but on considerations of essential importance. Such a banker will prove himself superior to others; because he will not be an individual limited by transitory things, but a force of Nature, as impersonal, impartial and eternal as gravitation, as patient and irresistible as the tides. His system will not be subject to panic, any more than the law of Inverse Squares is disturbed by Elections. He will not be anxious about his affairs because they will not be his; and for that reason he will be able to direct them with the calm, clear-headed confidence of an onlooker, with intelligence unclouded by self-interest and power unimpaired by passion.)
1.020 - The World and Our World, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Everything does not seem to be in our hands. We cannot change the pattern of things. We cannot make the sun rise in the west merely because we think that it should be so. So there seems to be something which is outside the jurisdiction of mental operations, to which the operations of the mind should accord, and whose law the mind has to follow. We cannot suddenly imagine that a cup of milk is identical with a stone. The stone and the milk are not identical, and the mind cannot change one into the other by any amount of thought. So, the hard reality, in the form of an external something which the world presents before the mind, has led many to conclude that the mind cannot determine the objects. On the other hand, the objects have a reality of their own and they influence the mind, so that the mind subjects itself to the conditions of the object, rather than conditions the object by its own laws.
We are in a world of interrelated facts and figures, and Eastern thought has tried to solve this question by positing a Creator for the world, independent of individual percipients. We have standard expositions on this theme in such texts as the Panchadasi, Vichara Sagara, etc. on the basis of certain proclamations in the Upanishads, for instance. Nobody has seen the Creator. Nobody can imagine that a Creator can exist, or must exist, or does exist. But the necessity of thought, the conditions of thinking seem to demand the presence of such a thing as a Creator for the world; otherwise, we cannot explain perception. The very fact of the perception of things the inherent meaning that we see in objects of perception compels us to accept the existence of a prior cause behind the objects of perception, and it seems that the world could exist even if we do not exist. We have arguments by modern scientists biologists and evolutionists who tell us that once upon a time the world was unpopulated; there were no percipients of the world. According to the astronomical theory, the world, the earth, is only a chip off the block of the sun, and was boiling and incandescent in its original state, so naturally no human being or nothing living could have existed at that time, not even a plant or a shrub. But did it exist? The earth did exist. So the earth could exist even if there is nobody to look at it or observe it.
1.02.1 - The Inhabiting Godhead - Life and Action, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Yet in their relation of principle of movement and result of movement they are continent and contained, world in world, movement in movement. The individual therefore partakes of the nature of the universal, refers back to it for its source of activity, is, as we say, subject to its laws and part of cosmic Nature.
* 1. All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement
1.02.2.1 - Brahman - Oneness of God and the World, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
The laws of the relativity, upheld by the gods, are Its temporary
creations. Their apparent eternity is only the duration, immeasurable to us, of the world which they govern. They are laws
regularising motion and change, not laws binding the Lord of
the movement. The gods, therefore, are described as continually
10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such is the mode of human aspiration. And Ashwapati in his quest begins to explore the world and see what it is, the way it is built up. He observes it rising tier upon tier, level upon level of consciousness. He mounts these stairs, takes cognisance of the modes and functions of each and passes on enriched by the experiences that each contri butes to his developing consciousness. The ascent he finds is from ignorance to knowledge. The human being starts from the darkest bed of ignorance, the solid basis of rock as it were, the body, the material existence. Ignorance here is absolute inconscience. Out of the total absence of consciousness, the being begins to awake and rise to a gradually developingwidening, deepening and heighteningconsciousness. That is how Ashwapati advances, ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in And mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one and gives place to directed and motivated energies. He meets beings and creatures appropriate to those levels crawling and stirring and climbing, moved by the laws governing the respective regions. In this way Ashwapati passes on into the higher vital, into the border of the mental.
Ashwapati now observes with a clear vividness that all these worlds and the beings and forces that inhabit them are stricken as it were with a bar sinister branded upon their bodies. In spite of an inherent urge of ascension the way is not a straight road but devious and crooked breaking into by-lanes and blind alleys. There is a great corruption and perversion of natural movements towards Truth: falsehoods and pretensions, arrogance of blindness reign here in various degrees. Ashwapati sought to know the wherefore of it all. So he goes behind, dives down and comes into a region that seems to be the source and basis of all ignorance and obscurity and falsehood. He comes into the very heart of the Night, the abyss of consciousness. He meets there the Mother of Evil and the sons of darkness. He stands before
--
Why should I strive with earth's unyielding laws
Or stave off death's inevitable hour?||116.11||
1.02 - Groups and Statistical Mechanics, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
according to a certain system of forces under the Newtonian laws
which link force and acceleration. In the vast majority of practi-
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
What he could not determine, by law, however, he was to provide by example (as the body of laws, as
embodiment of past wisdom, is insufficient to deal with the challenges of the present). This idea is
--
will, and follow their own laws of being and development despite our wishes. However, the job of
determining what a thing is in the absence of the subject is much more difficult than might initially be
--
and love of her is the keeping of her laws,
and giving heed to her laws is assurance of immortality,
and immortality brings one near to God;
--
power than the laws which govern his behavior). Christs body (represented, in the communion ritual, by
the ever-resurrecting wheaten wafer), is the container of the incarnated spirit of the dying, reborn and
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Know also that all our acts cannot be devotional. Those acts only are devotional which harmonize with the law. [57] But it is not possible to be totally exempt from sensuous passions, for if the body should be deprived of food and drink for example, it would perish. There is occasion therefore for making distinctions between our acts; but these distinctions, the individual is not capable of making for himself, because the animal soul necessarily casts a veil over the truth and inclines it to vanity. On this account we are obliged to follow after and imitate others - such persons as the prophets. They have been purified and enlightened by the eternal Truth Himself, and have been sent forth to communicate precepts and laws, and to decide upon all circumstances. Every one is therefore bound to imitate them within the limits of the law, and in the regulation of his moral conduct, that he may attain felicity and be preserved from danger of eternal destruction.
Those careless and indifferent persons, O seeker after the divine mysteries, who from ignorance, stupidity and sin have turned away from God and his prophet, and have wandered from the path of religion, may be arranged in seven classes.
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
bound by laws, Nature never had a bond for you. That is what
the Yogi tells you; have patience to learn it. And the Yogi
1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
The Seven Habits are not a set of separate or piecemeal psyche-up formulas. In harmony with the natural laws of growth, they provide an incremental, sequential, highly integrated approach to the development of personal and interpersonal effectiveness. They move us progressively on a Maturity
Continuum from dependence to interdependence.
--
As part of an interdependent world, you have to relate to that world every day. But the acute problems of that world can easily obscure the chronic character causes. Understanding how what you are impacts every interdependent interaction will help you to focus your efforts sequentially, in harmony with the natural laws of growth.
Habit 7 is the habit of renewal -- a regular, balanced renewal of the four basic dimensions of life. It circles and embodies all the other habits. It is the habit of continuous improvement that creates the upward spiral of growth that lifts you to new levels of understanding and living each of the habits as you come around to them on a progressively higher plane.
1.02 - The Age of Individualism and Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For, eventually, the evolution of Europe was determined less by the Reformation than by the Renascence; it flowered by the vigorous return of the ancient Graeco-Roman mentality of the one rather than by the Hebraic and religio-ethical temperament of the other. The Renascence gave back to Europe on one hand the free curiosity of the Greek mind, its eager search for first principles and rational laws, its delighted intellectual scrutiny of the facts of life by the force of direct observation and individual reasoning, on the other the Romans large practicality and his sense for the ordering of life in harmony with a robust utility and the just principles of things. But both these tendencies were pursued with a passion, a seriousness, a moral and almost religious ardour which, lacking in the ancient Graeco-Roman mentality, Europe owed to her long centuries of Judaeo-Christian discipline. It was from these sources that the individualistic age of Western society sought ultimately for that principle of order and control which all human society needs and which more ancient times attempted to realise first by the materialisation of fixed symbols of truth, then by ethical type and discipline, finally by infallible authority or stereotyped convention.
Manifestly, the unrestrained use of individual illumination or judgment without either any outer standard or any generally recognisable source of truth is a perilous experiment for our imperfect race. It is likely to lead rather to a continual fluctuation and disorder of opinion than to a progressive unfolding of the truth of things. No less, the pursuit of social justice through the stark assertion of individual rights or class interests and desires must be a source of continual struggle and revolution and may end in an exaggerated assertion of the will in each to live his own life and to satisfy his own ideas and desires which will produce a serious malaise or a radical trouble in the social body. Therefore on every individualistic age of mankind there is imperative the search for two supreme desiderata. It must find a general standard of Truth to which the individual judgment of all will be inwardly compelled to subscribe without physical constraint or imposition of irrational authority. And it must reach too some principle of social order which shall be equally founded on a universally recognisable truth of things; an order is needed that will put a rein on desire and interest by providing at least some intellectual and moral test which these two powerful and dangerous forces must satisfy before they can feel justified in asserting their claims on life. Speculative and scientific reason for their means, the pursuit of a practicable social justice and sound utility for their spirit, the progressive nations of Europe set out on their search for this light and this law.
They found and held it with enthusiasm in the discoveries of physical Science. The triumphant domination, the all-shattering and irresistible victory of Science in nineteenth-century Europe is explained by the absolute perfection with which it at least seemed for a time to satisfy these great psychological wants of the Western mind. Science seemed to it to fulfil impeccably its search for the two supreme desiderata of an individualistic age. Here at last was a truth of things which depended on no doubtful Scripture or fallible human authority but which Mother Nature herself had written in her eternal book for all to read who had patience to observe and intellectual honesty to judge. Here were laws, principles, fundamental facts of the world and of our being which all could verify at once for themselves and which must therefore satisfy and guide the free individual judgment, delivering it equally from alien compulsion and from erratic self-will. Here were laws and truths which justified and yet controlled the claims and desires of the individual human being; here a science which provided a standard, a norm of knowledge, a rational basis for life, a clear outline and sovereign means for the progress and perfection of the individual and the race. The attempt to govern and organise human life by verifiable Science, by a law, a truth of things, an order and principles which all can observe and verify in their ground and fact and to which therefore all may freely and must rationally subscribe, is the culminating movement of European civilisation. It has been the fulfilment and triumph of the individualistic age of human society; it has seemed likely also to be its end, the cause of the death of individualism and its putting away and burial among the monuments of the past.
For this discovery by individual free-thought of universal laws of which the individual is almost a by-product and by which he must necessarily be governed, this attempt actually to govern the social life of humanity in conscious accordance with the mechanism of these laws seems to lead logically to the suppression of that very individual freedom which made the discovery and the attempt at all possible. In seeking the truth and law of his own being the individual seems to have discovered a truth and law which is not of his own individual being at all, but of the collectivity, the pack, the hive, the mass. The result to which this points and to which it still seems irresistibly to be driving us is a new ordering of society by a rigid economic or governmental Socialism in which the individual, deprived again of his freedom in his own interest and that of humanity, must have his whole life and action determined for him at every step and in every point from birth to old age by the well-ordered mechanism of the State.1 We might then have a curious new version, with very important differences, of the old Asiatic or even of the old Indian order of society. In place of the religio-ethical sanction there will be a scientific and rational or naturalistic motive and rule; instead of the Brahmin Shastrakara the scientific, administrative and economic expert. In the place of the King himself observing the law and compelling with the aid and consent of the society all to tread without deviation the line marked out for them, the line of the Dharma, there will stand the collectivist State similarly guided and empowered. Instead of a hierarchical arrangement of classes each with its powers, privileges and duties there will be established an initial equality of education and opportunity, ultimately perhaps with a subsequent determination of function by experts who shall know us better than ourselves and choose for us our work and quality. Marriage, generation and the education of the child may be fixed by the scientific State as of old by the Shastra. For each man there will be a long stage of work for the State superintended by collectivist authorities and perhaps in the end a period of liberation, not for action but for enjoyment of leisure and personal self-improvement, answering to the Vanaprastha and Sannyasa Asramas of the old Aryan society. The rigidity of such a social state would greatly surpass that of its Asiatic forerunner; for there at least there were for the rebel, the innovator two important concessions. There was for the individual the freedom of an early Sannyasa, a renunciation of the social for the free spiritual life, and there was for the group the liberty to form a sub-society governed by new conceptions like the Sikh or the Vaishnava. But neither of these violent departures from the norm could be tolerated by a strictly economic and rigorously scientific and unitarian society. Obviously, too, there would grow up a fixed system of social morality and custom and a body of socialistic doctrine which one could not be allowed to question practically, and perhaps not even intellectually, since that would soon shatter or else undermine the system. Thus we should have a new typal order based upon purely economic capacity and function, guakarma, and rapidly petrifying by the inhibition of individual liberty into a system of rationalistic conventions. And quite certainly this static order would at long last be broken by a new individualist age of revolt, led probably by the principles of an extreme philosophical Anarchism.
On the other hand, there are in operation forces which seem likely to frustrate or modify this development before it can reach its menaced consummation. In the first place, rationalistic and physical Science has overpassed itself and must before long be overtaken by a mounting flood of psychological and psychic knowledge which cannot fail to compel quite a new view of the human being and open a new vista before mankind. At the same time the Age of Reason is visibly drawing to an end; novel ideas are sweeping over the world and are being accepted with a significant rapidity, ideas inevitably subversive of any premature typal order of economic rationalism, dynamic ideas such as Nietzsches Will-to-live, Bergsons exaltation of Intuition above intellect or the latest German philosophical tendency to acknowledge a suprarational faculty and a suprarational order of truths. Already another mental poise is beginning to settle and conceptions are on the way to apply themselves in the field of practice which promise to give the succession of the individualistic age of society not to a new typal order, but to a subjective age which may well be a great and momentous passage to a very different goal. It may be doubted whether we are not already in the morning twilight of a new period of the human cycle.
1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
Proofs, such as external sensory appearances, through observa- tion and experiment, might be compared to a man who notices that an unsupported object falls, and that its attracted by the Earths gravity and therefore must be supported until it rests on solid ground. And then this man says, Go ahead, tell me that the Earth and the other heavenly bodies hover freely in space, but I cant understand it. Everything has to be supported or it will fall. Nevertheless, the Earth, Sun, and other heavenly bodies dont fall. We need to change our way of thinking completely when we move from earthly conditions into the cosmos. In cosmic space, heavenly bodies support one another; the laws of Earth dont ap- ply there.
This is also true of spiritual facts. When we speak of the material nature of plants, animals, minerals, or the human physical body, we need to prove our statements through experiment and sense observation. This kind of proof, like the example mentioned, suggests that an object must be supported. In the free realm of the spirit, however, truths support one another. The only validation required is their mutual support. Thus, in representing spiritual reality, every idea needs to be placed clearly within the whole, just as Earth or any other heavenly body moves freely in cosmic space. Truths must support one another. Anyone who tries to understand the spiritual realm must first examine truths coming from other directions, and how they support the one truth through the free activity of their gravitational force of proof, as it were. In this way, that single truth is kept free in the cosmos, just as a heavenly body is supported freely in the cosmos by the countering forces of gravity. We need to develop the capacity to think the spiritual as a fundamental, inner disposition; otherwise, though we may be able to understand and educate the human soul, well remain unable to grasp, cultivate, and educate the spirit that also lives and moves within us as human beings.
1.02 - The Human Soul, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
20.: The devil's chief aim here is to cool the charity and lessen the mutual affection of the nuns, which would injure them seriously. Be sure, my daughters, that true perfection consists in the love of God and our neighbour, and the better we keep both these command- ments, the more perfect we shall be. The sole object of our Rule and Constitutions is to help us to observe these two laws.
21.: Indiscreet zeal about others must not be indulged in; it may do us much harm; let each one look to herself. However, as I have spoken fully on this subject elsewhere,31' I will not enlarge on it here, and will only beg you to remember the necessity of this mutual affection. Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's if we are always criticizing trivial actions which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through ignorance of their motives. See how much it costs to attain perfection! Sometimes the devil tempts nuns in this way about the Prioress, which is still more dangerous. Great prudence is then required, for if she disobeys the Rule or Constitutions the matter must not always be overlooked, but should be mentioned to her;32' if, after this, she does not amend, the Superior of the Order should be informed of it. It is true charity to speak in this case, as it would be if we saw our sisters commit a grave fault; to keep silence for fear that speech would be a temptation against charity, would be that very temptation itself.33
1.02 - The Magic Circle, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Therefore I intend to give the studious and eager magician a completely satisfactory description of the magic circle according the Universal laws and Analogies.
A true magic circle represents the symbolic lay-out of the macrocosm and the microcosm, that is, of the perfect man. It stands for the Beginning and the Ending for the Alpha and the Omega, as well as for Eternity, which has no beginning and no end. The magic circle, therefore, is a symbolic diagram of the Infinite, of Divinity in all its aspects, as can be comprehended by the microcosm, i. e. by the true adept, the perfect magician. To draw a magic circle means to symbolize the Divine in His perfection, to get into contact with Him. This happens, above all, at the moment the magician is standing in the centre of the magic circle, for it is by this act that the contact with the Divinity is demonstrated graphically. It is the magician's contact with the macrocosm in his highest step of consciousness. Therefore, from the point of view of true magic, it is quite logical that standing in the centre of the magic circle is equivalent to being, in one's consciousness, a unity with the Universal Divinity. From this one can see clearly that a magic circle is not only a diagram for protection from unwanted negative influences, but security and inviolability are brought about by this conscious and spiritual contact with the Highest. The magician who stands in the centre of the magic circle is protected from any influence, no matter, whether good or evil, for himself is, in fact, symbolizing the Divine in the universe. Furthermore, by standing in the centre of the magic circle, the magician also represents the Divinity in the microcosm and controls and rules the beings of the universe in a totalitarian manner.
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Finally we come to such occurrences as faith healing and levitationoccurrences supernormally strange, but nevertheless attested by masses of evidence which it is hard to discount completely. Precisely how faith cures diseases (whether at Lourdes or in the hypnotists consulting room), or how St. Joseph of Cupertino was able to ignore the laws of gravitation, we do not know. (But let us remember that we are no less ignorant of the way in which minds and bodies are related in the most ordinary of everyday activities.) In the same way we are unable to form any idea of the modus operandi of what Professor Rhine has called the PK effect. Nevertheless the fact that the fall of dice can be influenced by the mental states of certain individuals seems now to have been established beyond the possibility of doubt. And if the PK effect can be demonstrated in the laboratory and measured by statistical methods, then, obviously, the intrinsic credibility of the scattered anecdotal evidence for the direct influence of mind upon matter, not merely within the body, but outside in the external world, is thereby notably increased. The same is true of extra-sensory perception. Apparent examples of it are constantly turning up in ordinary life. But science is almost impotent to cope with the particular case, the isolated instance. Promoting their methodological ineptitude to the rank of a criterion of truth, dogmatic scientists have often branded everything beyond the pale of their limited competence as unreal and even impossible. But when tests for ESP can be repeated under standardized conditions, the subject comes under the jurisdiction of the law of probabilities and achieves (in the teeth of what passionate opposition!) a measure of scientific respectability.
Such, very baldly and briefly, are the most important things we know about mind in regard to its capacity to influence matter. From this modest knowledge about ourselves, what are we entitled to conclude in regard to the divine object of our nearly total ignorance?
1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The contrary philosophical argument of the idealistic schools is that in studying the laws of Nature, we only study the laws of our own minds; that it would be quite simple to demonstrate that, after all, we really attach very little meaning to such ideas as matter, motion, and weight, etc., other than a purely idealistic one; that they are mere phases of our thought.
Qabalists and all the various schools of Mystics generally begin from a still more absolute point of view, arguing that the whole controversy is a purely verbal one; for all such ontological propositions can, with a little ingenuity, be reduced to one form or another. There is in consequence of this observation in the realm of modern Philosophy what is
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
the path to higher knowledge unless we guard our thoughts and feelings in just the same way we guard out steps in the physical world. If we see a wall before us, we do not attempt to dash right through it, but turn aside. In other words, we guide ourselves by the laws of the physical world. There are such laws, too, for the soul and thought world, only they cannot impose themselves on us from without. They must flow out of the life of the soul itself. This can be attained if we forbid ourselves to harbor wrong thoughts and feelings. All arbitrary flitting to and fro in thought, all accidental ebbing and flowing of emotion must be forbidden in the same way. In so doing we do not become deficient in feeling. On the contrary, if we regulate our inner life in this way, we shall soon find ourselves becoming rich in feelings and creative with genuine imagination. In the place of petty emotionalism and capricious flights of thought, there appear significant emotions and thoughts that are fruitful. Feelings and thoughts of this kind lead the student to orientation in the spiritual world. He gains a right position in relation to the things of the spiritual world; a distinct and definite result comes into effect in his favor.
p. 44
--
be guided only by the results of his higher perception and reading of the occult script, in order to produce the changes in question in these higher regions of existence. Should he, in the course of his activity, introduce any of his own opinions and desires, or should he diverge for one moment from the laws which he has recognized to be right, in order to follow his own willful inclination, then the result produced would differ entirely from what was intended. He would lose sight of the goal to which his action tended, and confusion would result. Hence ample opportunity is given him in the course of this trial to develop self-control. This is the object in view. Here again, this trial can be more easily passed by those whose life, before initiation, has led them to acquire self-control. Anyone having acquired the faculty of following high principles and ideals, while putting into the background all personal predilection; anyone capable of always performing his duty, even though inclinations and sympathies would like to seduce him from this duty-such a person is unconsciously an initiate in the midst of ordinary life. He will need but little to succeed in this particular trial. Indeed, a certain
p. 89
--
People whose mode of thought tends to fancifulness and superstition can never make progress on the path to higher knowledge. It is indeed a precious treasure that the student is to acquire. All doubt regarding the higher worlds is removed from him. With all their laws they reveal themselves to his gaze. But he cannot acquire this treasure so long as he is the prey of fancies and illusions. It would indeed be fatal if his imagination and his prejudices ran away with his intellect. Dreamers and fantastical people are as unfit for the path to higher knowledge as superstitious people. This cannot be over-emphasized. For
p. 91
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
Above and beyond this Leonardos establishment of the laws of perspective is significant in that it made technical drafting feasible and thereby initiated the technological age. This concluded a process which had required centuries before it entered human consciousness and effected a fundamental transformation of man's world. It is only after Leonardo that the unperspectival world finally passes out of its dream-like state, and the perspectival world definitely enters awareness. Having attempted to show the initial thrust toward awareness of space documented in Petrarch's letter, and to account for the process of painful withdrawal from traditional perceptions, we would here like to indicate the nature of Leonardos decisive development, for it was he who fully realized Petrarch's discovery.
Among the thousands of Leonardo's notes and diary entries, there are several which, if we compare those of presumably earlier with those of presumably later origin, can document the course of his emergent spatial awareness and thus his extrication from the world he inherited.
1.02 - The Two Negations 1 - The Materialist Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
20:But there is always a limit and an encumbrance, - the limit of the material field in the Knowledge, the encumbrance of the material machinery in the Power. But here also the latest trend is highly significant of a freer future. As the outposts of scientific Knowledge come more and more to be set on the borders that divide the material from the immaterial, so also the highest achievements of practical Science are those which tend to simplify and reduce to the vanishing-point the machinery by which the greatest effects are produced. Wireless telegraphy is Nature's exterior sign and pretext for a new orientation. The sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of the physical force is removed; it is only preserved at the points of impulsion and reception. Eventually even these must disappear; for when the laws and forces of the supraphysical are studied with the right starting-point, the means will infallibly be found for Mind directly to seize on the physical energy and speed it accurately upon its errand. There, once we bring ourselves to recognise it, lie the gates that open upon the enormous vistas of the future.
21:Yet even if we had full knowledge and control of the worlds immediately above Matter, there would still be a limitation and still a beyond. The last knot of our bondage is at that point where the external draws into oneness with the internal, the machinery of ego itself becomes subtilised to the vanishing-point and the law of our action is at last unity embracing and possessing multiplicity and no longer, as now, multiplicity struggling towards some figure of unity. There is the central throne of cosmic Knowledge looking out on her widest dominion; there the empire of oneself with the empire of one's world;10 there the life11 in the eternally consummate Being and the realisation of His divine nature12 in our human existence.
1.02 - THE WITHIN OF THINGS, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
clearly when we have discerned the qualitative laws that govern
in their growth and variation the manifestations of what we have
--
2. THE QUALITATIVE laws OF GROWTH
To harmonise objects in time and space, without presuming to
--
reveal themselves by overall effects which arc subject to the laws
of statistics. Collectively, that is, they obey the laws of mathe-
matics. This is the proper field of physico-chemistry.
--
the laws of thermo-dynamics. As regards this we may remark
the following :
1.031 - Intense Aspiration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Spiritual aspiration is a non-ethical movement of consciousness where it becomes superior to all conditions either of morality, or ethics, or law, because it has a law of its own. The law of divine love is different from the law of the world. It cannot be appreciated by ordinary minds, nor can it be understood, because every desire, every wish, every effort, every longing, every love in this world has an ulterior purpose. Whenever we love something in this world, it is with an ulterior motive. We want to achieve something out of it, so the love is not an end in itself. It is the means to the achievement of something else and, therefore, we cannot understand the nature of that love, which is a law unto itself. We are acquainted only with that love which is conditioned by other laws. What are those laws? They are the laws of achievement of an ulterior object, for which purpose love is used as a means or an instrument. So, we are not really unselfish lovers in this world.
Unselfish love is unknown, because love is used as an instrument for the achievement of something else. How then can we call it unselfish? But here, love is a law unto itself in the sense that it has no object outside it it is itself the object. We may ask how it is possible. Here the divine aspiration, or the love of the Supreme Reality, is not an emotion. It is not merely a psychological function. It is not the mind thinking of something, or feeling in respect of an external object. It is a rising up of the soul towards a higher condition of itself. This is a great differentiating factor between ordinary objects which are sought in the world, and the spiritual object which is the goal of yoga or spiritual life.
10.33 - On Discipline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But obedience to a person is in the last analysis a symbolsymbol of obedience to a principle. The person signifies and embodies a principle, a law to which we render our obedience. In normal life it is these principles or laws that demand our obedience. These laws or rules are meant for the welfare of collective living and therefore individuals are expected to restrain or forego their personal impulses, their so-called liberties in order to live together in harmony. Discipline is meant exactly to control one's personal idiosyncrasies, place them under the yoke of the common collective law. All laws or rules that make for a harmonious collective living, that is, social or national welfare, are limbs of discipline. By submitting himself to such a process of self-abnegation the individual gains in self-control and self-mastery. But there are rules and rules, laws and laws. For that depends on the ideal or the purpose set before oneself. If the purpose is narrow, limited, superficial, the rules are necessarily likewise, and although effective in a particular field, they have a restricting, even deadening effect on the consciousness of the individual. If discipline means obedience, the obedience must be to a larger and higher law, and the perfect discipline will come only from obedience to the highest law.
The heart of discipline then is the effort to surmount oneself. Instead of a lower self following the law of an inferior consciousness one is to rise to a higher level of consciousness and a greater law of being. Discipline thus is only another term for tapasy, replacing the lower law gradually by a higher and higher law.
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
utilitarian dolts say, feeling smart submitting abjectly to capricious laws, as anarchists say, feeling
free, even free-spirited. But the curious fact is that all there is or has been on earth of freedom,
--
capricious laws; and in all seriousness, the probability is by no means small that precisely this is
nature and natural and not that laisser aller.
--
obeys thousandforld laws precisely then, laws that precisely on account of their hardness and
determination defy all formulation through concepts (even the firmest concept is, compared with them,
--
The pathological state takes imitation of the body of the laws to an extreme, and attempts to govern
every detail of individual life. This total imitation reduces the behavioral flexibility of the state, and
1.03 - A Sapphire Tale, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All were content, for they knew no bitter rivalries and could each devote themselves to the occupation or the study that pleased him. Since they were happy they had no need for many laws, and their Code was only this: a very simple counsel to all, "Be yourself", and for all a single law to be strictly observed, the law of Charity, whose highest part is Justice, the charity which will permit no wastage and which will hinder no one in his free evolution. In this way, very naturally, everyone works at once for himself and for the collectivity.
This orderly and harmonious country was ruled by a king who was king simply because he was the most intelligent and wise, because he alone was capable of fulfilling the needs of all, he alone was both enlightened enough to follow and even to guide the philosophers in their loftiest speculations, and practical enough to watch over the organisation and well-being of his people, whose needs were well known to him.
--
"It would be a joy to me, my father, to be able to tell you, `I have found the one whom my whole being awaits', but, alas, this is yet to be. The most refined maidens in the kingdom are all known to me, and for several of them I feel a sincere liking and a genuine admiration, but not one of them has awakened in me the love which can be the only rightful bond, and I think I can say without being mistaken that in return none of them has conceived a love for me. Since you are so kind as to value my judgment, I will tell you what is in my mind. It seems to me that I should be better fitted to rule our little nation if I were acquainted with the laws and customs of other countries; I wish therefore to travel the world for a year, to observe and to learn. I ask you, my father, to allow me to make this journey, and who knows? - I may return with my life's companion, the one for whom I can be all happiness and all protection."
"Your wish is wise, my son. Go - and your father's blessing be with you."
1.03 - Fire in the Earth, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
most universal laws of being: so naturally has it
flooded every element, every energy, every con-
1.03 - Hymns of Gritsamada, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4. Pure, the Priest of the annunciation is born along with the pure will. The man who knows the laws of his workings that are steadfast for ever, climbs them one by one like branches.
5. The milch-cows come to and cleave to the hue of Light17 of this Priest of the lustration, the Sisters who have gone once and again to that Supreme over the three.18
1.03 - Man - Slave or Free?, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The exclusive pursuit of Yoga by men who seclude themselves either physically or mentally from the contact of the world has led to an erroneous view of this science as something mystic, far-off and unreal. The secrecy which has been observed with regard to Yogic practices,a necessary secrecy in the former stages of human evolution,has stereotyped this error. Practices followed by men who form secret circles and confine the instruction in the mysteries strictly to those who have a certain preparatory fitness, inevitably bear the stamp to the outside world of occultism. In reality there is nothing intrinsically hidden, occult or mystic about Yoga. Yoga is based upon certain laws of human psychology, a certain knowledge about the power of the mind over the body and the inner spirit over the mind which are not generally realised and have hitherto been considered by those in the secret too momentous in their consequences for disclosure until men should be trained to use them aright. Just as a set of men who had discovered and tested the uttermost possibilities of mesmerism and hypnotism might hesitate to divulge them freely to the world lest the hypnotic power should be misused by ignorance or perversity or abused in the interests of selfishness and crime, so the Yogins have usually preserved the knowledge of these much greater forces within us in a secrecy broken only when they were sure of the previous ethical and spiritual training of the neophyte and his physical and moral fitness for the Yogic practices. It became therefore an established rule for the learner to observe strict reserve as to the inner experiences of Yoga and for the developed Yogin as far as possible to conceal himself. This has not prevented treatises and manuals from being published dealing with the physical or with the moral and intellectual sides of Yoga. Nor has it prevented great spirits who have gained their Yoga not by the ordinary careful and scientific methods but by their own strength and the special grace of God, from revealing themselves and their spiritual knowledge to mankind and in their intense love for humanity imparting something of their power to the world. Such were Buddha, Christ, Mahomed, Chaitanya, such have been Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. It is still the orthodox view that the experiences of Yoga must not be revealed to the uninitiated. But a new era dawns upon us in which the old laws must be modified Already the West is beginning to discover the secrets of Yoga. Some of its laws have revealed themselves however dimly and imperfectly to the scientists of Europe while others through Spiritualism, Christian Science, clairvoyance, telepathy and other modern forms of occultism are being almost discovered by accident as if by men groping in the dark and stumbling over truths they cannot understand. The time has almost come when India can no longer keep her light to herself but must pour it out upon the world. Yoga must be revealed to mankind because without it mankind cannot take the next step in the human evolution.
The psychology of the human race has not yet been discovered by Science. All creation is essentially the same and proceeds by similar though not identical laws. If therefore we see in the outside material world that all phenomena proceed from and can be reduced to a single causal substance from which they were born, in which they move and to which they return, the same truth is likely to hold good in the psychical world. The unity of the material universe has now been acknowledged by the scientific intellect of Europe and the high priests of atheism and materialism in Germany have declared the ekam evdvityam in matter with no uncertain voice. In so doing they have merely reaffirmed the discovery made by Indian masters of the Yogic science thousands of years ago. But the European scientists have not discovered any sure and certain methods, such as they have in dealing with gross matter, for investigating psychical phenomena. They can only observe the most external manifestations of mind in action. But in these manifestations the mind is so much enveloped in the action of the outer objects and seems so dependent on them that it is very difficult for the observer to find out the springs of its action or any regularity in its workings. The European scientists have therefore come to the conclusion that it is the stimulations of outside objects which are the cause of psychical phenomena, and that even when the mind seems to act of itself and on its own material it is only associating, grouping together and manipulating the recorded experiences from outside objects. The very nature of mind is, according to them, a creation of past material experience transmitted by heredity with such persistence that we have grown steadily from the savage with his rudimentary mind to the civilised man of the twentieth century. As a natural result of these materialistic theories, science has found it difficult to discover any true psychical centre for the multifarious phenomena of mind and has therefore fixed upon the brain, the material organ of thought, as the only real centre. From this materialistic philosophy have resulted certain theories very dangerous to the moral future of mankind. First, man is a creation and slave of matter. He can only master matter by obeying it Secondly, the mind itself is a form of gross matter and not independent of and master of the senses. Thirdly, there is no real free will, because all our action is determined by two great forces, heredity and environment. We are the slaves of our nature, and where we seem to be free from its mastery, it is because we are yet worse slaves of our environment, worked on by the forces that surround and manipulate us.
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.
***
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the West, the mystics went some way towards liberating Christianity from its unfortunate servitude to historic fact. (or, to be more accurate, to those various mixtures of contemporary record with subsequent inference and phantasy, which have, at different epochs, been accepted as historic fact). From the writings of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroeck, of Boehme, William Law and the Quakers, it would be possible to extract a spiritualized and universalized Christianity, whose narratives should refer, not to history as it was, or as someone afterwards thought it ought to be, but to processes forever unfolded in the heart of man. But unfortunately the influence of the mystics was never powerful enough to bring about a radical Mahayanist revolution in the West. In spite of them, Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in timeevents and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine. Moreover such improvements on history as were made in the course of centuries were, most imprudently, treated as though they themselves were a part of historya procedure which put a powerful weapon into the hands of Protestant and, later, of Rationalist controversialists. How much wiser it would have been to admit the perfectly avowable fact that, when the sternness of Christ the Judge had been unduly emphasized, men and women felt the need of personifying the divine compassion in a new form, with the result that the figure of the Virgin, mediatrix to the mediator, came into increased prominence. And when, in course of time, the Queen of Heaven was felt to be too awe-inspiring, compassion was re-personified in the homely figure of St. Joseph, who thus became me thator to the me thatrix to the me thator. In exactly the same way Buddhist worshippers felt that the historic Sakyamuni, with his insistence on recollectedness, discrimination and a total dying to self as the principal means of liberation, was too stern and too intellectual. The result was that the love and compassion which Sakyamuni had also inculcated came to be personified in Buddhas such as Amida and Maitreyadivine characters completely removed from history, inasmuch as their temporal career was situated somewhere in the distant past or distant future. Here it may be remarked that the vast numbers of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of whom the Mahayanist theologians speak, are commensurate with the vastness of their cosmology. Time, for them, is beginningless, and the innumerable universes, every one of them supporting sentient beings of every possible variety, are born, evolve, decay and the, only to repeat the same cycleagain and again, until the final inconceivably remote consummation, when every sentient being in all the worlds shall have won to deliverance out of time into eternal Suchness or Buddhahood This cosmological background to Buddhism has affinities with the world picture of modern astronomyespecially with that version of it offered in the recently published theory of Dr. Weiszcker regarding the formation of planets. If the Weiszcker hypothesis is correct, the production of a planetary system would be a normal episode in the life of every star. There are forty thousand million stars in our own galactic system alone, and beyond our galaxy other galaxies, indefinitely. If, as we have no choice but to believe, spiritual laws governing consciousness are uniform throughout the whole planet-bearing and presumably life-supporting universe, then certainly there is plenty of room, and at the same time, no doubt, the most agonizing and desperate need, for those innumerable redemptive incarnations of Suchness, upon whose shining multitudes the Mahayanists love to dwell.
For my part, I think the chief reason which prompted the invisible God to become visible in the flesh and to hold converse with men was to lead carnal men, who are only able to love carnally, to the healthful love of his flesh, and afterwards, little by little, to spiritual love.
1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Of laws and miracles
Science tells us that the universe functions according
to laws which the human mind can find out and formulate.
The scientific culture that arose in Western Europe, of
--
to the absolute invariance of laws of Nature, which thereby
underwrote the meaningfulness of the scientific enterprise
--
In recent times, however, the laws of physics, once re-
garded as cast in tablets of stone, began to look less defini-
--
As soon as the laws are confined to some abstract realm
of ideal mathematical forms, there is no problem, writes
Paul Davies, but if the laws are considered to inhabit, not
a transcendent Platonic realm, but the real universe, then
--
squarely: The fundamental laws [of physics] are now
about possibilities and no longer about certitudes.
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
ANSWER: In the laws revealed in Persian We have ordained that in this Most Mighty Dispensation the residence and the household furnishings are exempt-that is, such furnishings as are necessary.
43. QUESTION: Concerning the betrothal of a girl before maturity.
1.03 - Some Aspects of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
history man has been the maker of his own laws; and even if, as Freud
seems to think, they were the invention of our malevolent forefa thers, it is
1.03 - Some Practical Aspects, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
Special attention must be paid in esoteric training to the education of the life of desires. This does not mean that we are to become free of desire, for if we are to attain something we must also desire it, and desire will always tend to fulfillment if backed by a particular force. This force is derived from a right knowledge. Do not desire at all until you know what is right in any one sphere. That is one of the golden rules for the student. The wise man first ascertains the laws of the world, and then his desires become powers which realize themselves. The following example brings this out clearly. There are certainly many people who would like to learn from their own observation something about their life before birth. Such a desire is altogether useless and leads to no result so long as the person in question has not acquired a knowledge of the laws that govern the nature of the eternal, a knowledge of these laws in their subtlest and most intimate character, through the study of spiritual science. But if, having really acquired this knowledge,
p. 104
--
[paragraph continues] Anyone practicing in an environment filled only with self-seeking interests, as for example, the modern struggle for existence, must be conscious of the fact that these interests are not without their effect on the development of his spiritual organs. It is true that the inner laws of these organs are so powerful that this influence cannot be fatally injurious. Just as a lily can never grow into a thistle, however inappropriate its environment, so, too, the eye of the soul can never grow to anything but its destined shape even though it be subjected to the self-seeking interests of modern cities. But under all circumstances it is well if the student seeks, now and again, his environment in the restful peace, the inner dignity and sweetness of nature. Especially fortunate is the student who can carry out his esoteric training surrounded by the green world of plants, or among the sunny hills, where nature weaves her web of sweet simplicity. This environment develops the inner organs in a harmony which can never ensue in a modern city. More favorably situated than the townsman is the person who, during his childhood at least, had been able to brea the the fragrance of pines, to gaze on snowy peaks, and observe
p. 112
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the laws
of Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are not
--
magic according to the laws of thought which underlie them:
Sympathetic Magic
--
application of sympathetic magic, with its two great laws of
similarity and contact. Though these laws are certainly not
formulated in so many words nor even conceived in the abstract by
--
inevitably follow in virtue of one or other of these laws; and if
the consequences of a particular act appear to him likely to prove
--
brought about in accordance with the laws of similarity and contact.
And just as the desired consequence is not really effected by the
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In Europe and in modern times this has taken the form of a clear and potent physical Science: it has proceeded by the discovery of the laws of the physical universe and the economic and sociological conditions of human life as determined by the physical being of man, his environment, his evolutionary history, his physical and vital, his individual and collective need. But after a time it must become apparent that the knowledge of the physical world is not the whole of knowledge; it must appear that man is a mental as well as a physical and vital being and even much more essentially mental than physical or vital. Even though his psychology is strongly affected and limited by his physical being and environment, it is not at its roots determined by them, but constantly reacts, subtly determines their action, effects even their new-shaping by the force of his psychological demand on life. His economic state and social institutions are themselves governed by his psychological demand on the possibilities, circumstances, tendencies created by the relation between the mind and soul of humanity and its life and body. Therefore to find the truth of things and the law of his being in relation to that truth he must go deeper and fathom the subjective secret of himself and things as well as their objective forms and surroundings.
This he may attempt to do for a time by the power of the critical and analytic reason which has already carried him so far; but not for very long. For in his study of himself and the world he cannot but come face to face with the soul in himself and the soul in the world and find it to be an entity so profound, so complex, so full of hidden secrets and powers that his intellectual reason betrays itself as an insufficient light and a fumbling seeker: it is successfully analytical only of superficialities and of what lies just behind the superficies. The need of a deeper knowledge must then turn him to the discovery of new powers and means within himself. He finds that he can only know himself entirely by becoming actively self-conscious and not merely self-critical, by more and more living in his soul and acting out of it rather than floundering on surfaces, by putting himself into conscious harmony with that which lies behind his superficial mentality and psychology and by enlightening his reason and making dynamic his action through this deeper light and power to which he thus opens. In this process the rationalistic ideal begins to subject itself to the ideal of intuitional knowledge and a deeper self awareness; the utilitarian standard gives way to the aspiration towards self-consciousness and self-realisation; the rule of living according to the manifest laws of physical Nature is replaced by the effort towards living according to the veiled Law and Will and Power active in the life of the world and in the inner and outer life of humanity.
All these tendencies, though in a crude, initial and ill-developed form, are manifest now in the world and are growing from day to day with a significant rapidity. And their emergence and greater dominance means the transition from the ratio-nalistic and utilitarian period of human development which individualism has created to a greater subjective age of society. The change began by a rapid turning of the current of thought into large and profound movements contradictory of the old intellectual standards, a swift breaking of the old tables. The materialism of the nineteenth century gave place first to a novel and profound vitalism which has taken various forms from Nietzsches theory of the Will to be and Will to Power as the root and law of life to the new pluralistic and pragmatic philosophy which is pluralistic because it has its eye fixed on life rather than on the soul and pragmatic because it seeks to interpret being in the terms of force and action rather than of light and knowledge. These tendencies of thought, which had until yesterday a profound influence on the life and thought of Europe prior to the outbreak of the great War, especially in France and Germany, were not a mere superficial recoil from intellectualism to life and action,although in their application by lesser minds they often assumed that aspect; they were an attempt to read profoundly and live by the Life-Soul of the universe and tended to be deeply psychological and subjective in their method. From behind them, arising in the void created by the discrediting of the old rationalistic intellectualism, there had begun to arise a new Intuitionalism, not yet clearly aware of its own drive and nature, which seeks through the forms and powers of Life for that which is behind Life and sometimes even lays as yet uncertain hands on the sealed doors of the Spirit.
1.03 - THE EARTH IN ITS EARLY STAGES, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
earth increases in conformity with the laws of thermo-dynamics
in the particular, superficial zone in which its elements polymerise.
--
accident ; but, in accordance with one of the most general laws of
evolution, scarcely had this accident happened than it was
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
to these laws like an animal: he assimilates and transforms them,
investing them with a meaning and an intelligible moral value.
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the maintenance of family morality, of the social law and the law of the nation? These are the very standards that will be destroyed by this civil war; the family itself will be brought to the point of annihilation, corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race will be engendered, the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family will be destroyed. Ruin of the race, the collapse of its high traditions, ethical degradation and hell for the authors of such a crime, these are the only practical results possible of this monstrous civil strife. "Therefore," cries
Arjuna, casting down the divine bow and inexhaustible quiver given to him by the gods for that tremendous hour, "it is more for my welfare that the sons of Dhritarashtra armed should slay me unarmed and unresisting. I will not fight."
1.03 - THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[22] In this psychologem all the implications of the Sol-Luna allegory are carried to their logical conclusion. The daemonic quality which is connected with the dark side of the moon, or with her position midway between heaven and the sublunary world,155 displays its full effect. Sun and moon reveal their antithetical nature, which in the Christian Sol-Luna relationship is so obscured as to be unrecognizable, and the two opposites cancel each other out, their impact resultingin accordance with the laws of energeticsin the birth of a third and new thing, a son who resolves the antagonisms of the parents and is himself a united double nature. The unknown author of the Consilium156 was not conscious of the close connection of his psychologem with the process of transubstantiation, although the last sentence of the text contains clearly enough the motif of teoqualo, the god-eating of the Aztecs.157 This motif is also found in ancient Egypt. The Pyramid text of Unas (Vth dynasty) says: Unas rising as a soul, like a god who liveth upon his fathers and feedeth upon his mothers.158 It should be noted how alchemy put in the place of the Christian sponsus and sponsa an image of totality that on the one hand was material, and on the other was spiritual and corresponded to the Paraclete. In addition, there was a certain trend in the direction of an Ecclesia spiritualis. The alchemical equivalent of the God-Man and the Son of God was Mercurius, who as an hermaphrodite contained in himself both the feminine element, Sapientia and matter, and the masculine, the Holy Ghost and the devil. There are relations in alchemy with the Holy Ghost Movement which flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was chiefly connected with the name of Joachim of Flora (11451202), who expected the imminent coming of the third kingdom, namely that of the Holy Ghost.159
[23] The alchemists also represented the eclipse as the descent of the sun into the (feminine) Mercurial Fountain,160 or as the disappearance of Gabricus in the body of Beya. Again, the sun in the embrace of the new moon is treacherously slain by the snake-bite (conatu viperino) of the mother-beloved, or pierced by the telum passionis, Cupids arrow.161 These ideas explain the strange picture in Reusners Pandora,162 showing Christ being pierced with a lance by a crowned virgin whose body ends in a serpents tail.163 The oldest reference to the mermaid in alchemy is a quotation from Hermes in Olympiodorus: The virginal earth is found in the tail of the virgin.164 On the analogy of the wounded Christ, Adam is shown in the Codex Ashburnham pierced in the side by an arrow.165
1.03 - The Phenomenon of Man, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
psychology, or to isolate the laws governing the exchanges
of products and services in the growing complexity of our
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
" Gods " are the forces of Nature ; their " Names " are the laws of Nature ; they are therefore eternal, omnipresent, and omnipotent - only, however, for the cycle of time, almost infinite though it be, wherein they are manifested or projected.
The names of the Gods are important, for, according to magical doctrine, to know the name of an intelligence is at once to possess peculiar control of it. Prof. W. M. Flinders
1.03 - The Spiritual Being of Man, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The soul being of man is not determined by the body alone. Man does not wander aimlessly and without a goal from one sensation to another; neither does he act under the influence of every casual incitement directed on him either from without or through the processes of his body. He thinks about his perceptions and his acts. By thinking about his perceptions he gains knowledge of things; by thinking about his acts he introduces a reasonable coherence into his life. He knows also that he will fulfill his duty as a human being only when he lets himself be guided by correct thinking in knowledge as well as in acts. The soul of man, therefore, faces a twofold necessity. The laws of the body govern it in accordance with the necessities of nature, but it allows itself to be governed by
p. 21
the laws which guide it to exact thinking because it voluntarily acknowledges their necessity. Nature subjects man to the laws of the change of matter, but he subjects himself to the laws of thought. By this means he makes himself a member of a higher order than that to which he belongs through his body. And this order is the spiritual. The soul is as different from the body as the body is different from the soul. So long as one speaks only of the particles of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen which stir in the body, one has not the soul in view. The soul life begins only when within the motion of these particles sensation arises, and one can say: "I taste sweetness" or "I feel pleasure." Just as little has one the spiritual in view when one considers merely the soul experiences which course through a man who gives himself over entirely to the outer world and his bodily life. Rather is this soul life merely the basis for the spiritual, just as the body is the basis of the soul life. The naturalist, or investigator of nature, has to do with the body, the investigator of the soul (the psychologist) with the soul, and the investigator of the spirit with the spirit. To
p. 22
1.03 - THE STUDY (The Exorcism), #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
In Hell itself, then, laws are reckoned?
That's well! So might a compact be
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:It is true that the glimpse of supraphysical realities acquired by methodical research has been imperfect and is yet ill-affirmed; for the methods used are still crude and defective. But these rediscovered subtle senses have at least been found to be true witnesses to physical facts beyond the range of the corporeal organs. There is no justification, then, for scouting them as false witnesses when they testify to supraphysical facts beyond the domain of the material organisation of consciousness. Like all evidence, like the evidence of the physical senses themselves, their testimony has to be controlled, scrutinised and arranged by the reason, rightly translated and rightly related, and their field, laws and processes determined. But the truth of great ranges of experience whose objects exist in a more subtle substance and are perceived by more subtle instruments than those of gross physical Matter, claims in the end the same validity as the truth of the material universe. The worlds beyond exist: they have their universal rhythm, their grand lines and formations, their self-existent laws and mighty energies, their just and luminous means of knowledge. And here on our physical existence and in our physical body they exercise their influences; here also they organise their means of manifestation and commission their messengers and their witnesses.
8:But the worlds are only frames for our experience, the senses only instruments of experience and conveniences. Consciousness is the great underlying fact, the universal witness for whom the world is a field, the senses instruments. To that witness the worlds and their objects appeal for their reality and for the one world or the many, for the physical equally with the supraphysical we have no other evidence that they exist. It has been argued that this is no relation peculiar to the constitution of humanity and its outlook upon an objective world, but the very nature of existence itself; all phenomenal existence consists of an observing consciousness and an active objectivity, and the Action cannot proceed without the Witness because the universe exists only in or for the consciousness that observes and has no independent reality. It has been argued in reply that the material universe enjoys an eternal self-existence: it was here before life and mind made their appearance; it will survive after they have disappeared and no longer trouble with their transient strivings and limited thoughts the eternal and inconscient rhythm of the suns. The difference, so metaphysical in appearance, is yet of the utmost practical import, for it determines the whole outlook of man upon life, the goal that he shall assign for his efforts and the field in which he shall circumscribe his energies. For it raises the question of the reality of cosmic existence and, more important still, the question of the value of human life.
1.041 - Detailed, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
12. So He completed them as seven universes in two days, and He assigned to each universe its laws. And We decorated the lower universe with lamps, and for protection. That is the design of the Almighty, the All-Knowing.
13. But if they turn away, say, “I have warned you of a thunderbolt, like the thunderbolt of Aad and Thamood.”
1.042 - Consultation, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
21. Or is it that they have partners who litigate for them religious laws never authorized by God? Were it not for the conclusive decision, it would have been settled between them. The wicked will have a painful punishment.
22. You will see the unjust terrified of what they have earned, and it will befall them. As for those who believe and do good deeds, they will be in the Meadows of the Gardens; they will have whatever they please in the presence of their Lord; that is the supreme blessing.
1.04 - A Leader, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are not strong enough to fight by force, for we are not united enough, not organised enough. We must develop our intelligence to understand better the deeper laws of Nature, and to learn better how to act in an orderly way, to co-ordinate our efforts. We must teach the people around us, we must train them to think for themselves and to reflect so that they can become aware of the precise aim we want to attain and thus become an effective help to us, instead of being the hindrance they most often are at the moment.
I have told them that for a nation to win its freedom, it must first of all deserve it, make itself worthy of it, prepare itself to be able to enjoy it. This is not the case in Russia, and we shall have much to do to educate the masses and pull them out of their torpor; but the sooner we set to the task, the sooner we shall be ready for renewed action.
1.04 - Body, Soul and Spirit, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
[paragraph continues] In this way he enlightens himself regarding the outside world. The child that has burnt itself thinks it over, and reaches the thought "fire burns." Also man does not follow blindly his impulses, instincts, passions; his thought over them brings about the opportunity by which he can gratify them. What one calls material civilization moves entirely in this direction. It consists in the services which thinking renders to the sentient-soul. Immeasureable quantities of thought-power are directed to this end. It is thought-power that has built ships, railways, telegraphs, telephones; and by far the greatest proportion of all this serves only to satisfy the needs of the sentient-soul. Thought-force permeates the sentient-soul in a similar way to that in which the life-force permeates the physical body. Life-force connects the physical body with forefa thers and descendants, and thus brings it under a system of laws with which the purely mineral body is in no way concerned. In the same way thought-force brings the soul under a system of laws to which it does not belong as mere sentient-soul. Through the sentient-soul man is related to the animals.
p. 35
--
By thinking man is raised above and beyond his own personal life. He acquires something that extends beyond his soul. He comes to take for granted his conviction that the laws of thought are in conformity with the laws of the world. And he feels at home in
p. 36
--
it may be filled by it. The I lives in body and soul; but the spirit lives in the I. And what there is of spirit in the I is eternal. For the I receives its nature and significance from that with which it is bound up. Inasmuch as it lives in the physical body, it is subject to the laws of the mineral world; through its ether-body to the laws of propagation and growth; by virtue of the sentient and intellectual souls to the laws of the soul world; in so far as it receives the spiritual into itself it is subject to the laws of the spirit. That which the mineral laws and the life laws construct comes into being and vanishes; but the spirit has nothing to do with becoming and perishing.
The I lives in the soul. Although the highest manifestation of the I belongs to the consciousness-soul, one must nevertheless say that this I, raying out from it, fills the whole of the soul, and through the soul affects the body. And in the I the spirit is alive. It rays into it and lives in it as in a "sheath" or veil, just as the I lives in its sheaths, the body and the soul. The spirit develops the I from within, outward; the mineral world develops it from without, inward. The spirit forming
--
recognizes the revelations of the corporal world; in what is true and good, the revelations of the spiritual world. In the same sense in which the revelation of the corporal world is called sensation, let the revelation of the spiritual be called intuition. Even the most simple thought contains intuition, for one cannot touch it with the hands or see it with the eyes; one must receive its revelation from the spirit through the I. If an undeveloped and a developed man look at a plant, there lives in the I of the one something quite different from that which is in the ego of the other. And yet the sensations of both are called forth by the same object. The difference lies in this, that the one can make far more perfect thoughts about the object than the other can. If objects revealed themselves through sensation alone, there could be no progress in spiritual development. Even the savage is affected by nature, but the laws of nature reveal themselves only to the thoughts, fructified by intuition, of the more highly developed man. The excitations from the outer world are felt even by the child as incentives to the will; but the commandments of
p. 48
--
Just as within the physical world each human body is built up as a separate being, so is the spirit-body within the spirit world. In the spirit world there is for man an inner and an outer, just as there is in the physical world. As man takes in the materials of the physical world around him and assimilates them within his physical body, so does he take the spiritual from the spiritual environment and make it into his own. The spiritual is the eternal nourishment of man. And as man is born of the physical world, he is also born of the spirit through the eternal laws of the True and the Good. He is separated from the spirit world outside of him, as he is separated from the whole physical world, as
p. 50
1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And by what laws the people were restrain'd.
Which told; the teller a like freedom takes,
1.04 - Feedback and Oscillation, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
different laws of growth, but, to arrive at a steady state of oscil-
lation, these two quantities must be identical. Thus the level of
1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws
of nature as conceived by him. To neglect these rules, to break
these laws in the smallest particular, is to incur failure, and may
even expose the unskilful practitioner himself to the utmost peril.
--
certain, being determined by immutable laws, the operation of which
can be foreseen and calculated precisely; the elements of caprice,
--
of the nature of the particular laws which govern that sequence. If
we analyse the various cases of sympathetic magic which have been
--
of two great fundamental laws of thought, namely, the association of
ideas by similarity and the association of ideas by contiguity in
--
eternal laws of the physical world. The winds, the storms, the hail,
and the rain are at his comm and and obey his will. The fire also is
1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The doctors of the law have not commented upon these topics to the people in general. But this is not to be wondered at, when we consider that the mass of the people regard themselves as fixed in their character and position, and not as pilgrims and travellers to a higher state. There is no possibility of unveiling the things of truth, to those who settle down without desiring to make any progress, and who are contented with the first stages and degrees of the sensible world and of the world of fancy. They can neither attain to a spiritual state, nor understand spiritual laws and precepts. We have ventured, however, to unveil a little of the mysteries, as a type of the knowledge belonging to the future state, so that men might be prepared to understand the questions and affairs relating to that state. But if we had entered into any farther developments, they would not have been able to understand us, for none but those who are endowed with penetration and experience can by any possibility understand the topics to which we have alluded.
There is a class of foolish people, O inquirer after the divine mysteries, who have neither capacity for knowledge, or sound judgment to be able to understand anything of themselves, and who have remained doubting and speculating about the nature of the future state, till they have become bewildered. Finally, as the lusts of the world harmonized with their natures, they have yielded to the whisperings of Satan, and deny that there is any future state. They pretend that the only need there is of speaking of heaven and hell, is for the sake of correcting and guiding the conduct of the people, and they regard as folly the course of those who follow the law and are constant in their devotions.
1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
the scientific field of cosmic energy and its necessary laws.
Indeed, the more I strive, in love and wonder, to measure the
--
or another the place it deserves at the head of the structural laws
of our Universe. Plainly the first result will be precisely to bring
1.04 - The Core of the Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rule principally dependent on external status and the rule independent of status and entirely dependent on the thought and conscience. The Gita does not teach us to subordinate the higher plane to the lower, it does not ask the awakened moral consciousness to slay itself on the altar of duty as a sacrifice and victim to the law of the social status. It calls us higher and not lower; from the conflict of the two planes it bids us ascend to a supreme poise above the mainly practical, above the purely ethical, to the Brahmic consciousness. It replaces the conception of social duty by a divine obligation. The subjection to external law gives place to a certain principle of inner self-determination of action proceeding by the soul's freedom from the tangled law of works. And this, as we shall see, - the Brahmic consciousness, the soul's freedom from works and the determination of works in the nature by the Lord within and above us, - is the kernel of the Gita's teaching with regard to action.
The Gita can only be understood, like any other great work of the kind, by studying it in its entirety and as a developing argument. But the modern interpreters, starting from the great writer Bankim Chandra Chatterji who first gave to the Gita this new sense of a Gospel of Duty, have laid an almost exclusive stress on the first three or four chapters and in those on the idea of equality, on the expression kartavyam karma, the work that is to be done, which they render by duty, and on the phrase "Thou hast a right to action, but none to the fruits of action" which is now popularly quoted as the great word, mahavakya, of the
--
His grace thou shalt attain to the supreme peace and the eternal status. So have I expounded to thee a knowledge more secret than that which is hidden. Further hear the most secret, the supreme word that I shall speak to thee. Become my-minded, devoted to Me, to Me do sacrifice and adoration; infallibly, thou shalt come to Me, for dear to me art thou. Abandoning all laws of conduct seek refuge in Me alone. I will release thee from all sin; do not grieve."
The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great steps by which action rises out of the human into the divine plane leaving the bondage of the lower for the liberty of a higher law.
1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The objective view of society has reigned throughout the historical period of humanity in the West; it has been sufficiently strong though not absolutely engrossing in the East. Rulers, people and thinkers alike have understood by their national existence a political status, the extent of their borders, their economic well-being and expansion, their laws, institutions and the working of these things. For this reason political and economic motives have everywhere predominated on the surface and history has been a record of their operations and influence. The one subjective and psychological force consciously admitted and with difficulty deniable has been that of the individual. This predominance is so great that most modern historians and some political thinkers have concluded that objective necessities are by law of Nature the only really determining forces, all else is result or superficial accidents of these forces. Scientific history has been conceived as if it must be a record and appreciation of the environmental motives of political action, of the play of economic forces and developments and the course of institutional evolution. The few who still valued the psychological element have kept their eye fixed on individuals and are not far from conceiving of history as a mass of biographies. The truer and more comprehensive science of the future will see that these conditions only apply to the imperfectly self-conscious period of national development. Even then there was always a greater subjective force working behind individuals, policies, economic movements and the change of institutions; but it worked for the most part subconsciously, more as a subliminal self than as a conscious mind. It is when this subconscious power of the group-soul comes to the surface that nations begin to enter into possession of their subjective selves; they set about getting, however vaguely or imperfectly, at their souls.
Certainly, there is always a vague sense of this subjective existence at work even on the surface of the communal mentality. But so far as this vague sense becomes at all definite, it concerns itself mostly with details and unessentials, national idiosyncrasies, habits, prejudices, marked mental tendencies. It is, so to speak, an objective sense of subjectivity. As man has been accustomed to look on himself as a body and a life, the physical animal with a certain moral or immoral temperament, and the things of the mind have been regarded as a fine flower and attainment of the physical life rather than themselves anything essential or the sign of something essential, so and much more has the community regarded that small part of its subjective self of which it becomes aware. It clings indeed always to its idiosyncrasies, habits, prejudices, but in a blind objective fashion, insisting on their most external aspect and not at all going behind them to that for which they stand, that which they try blindly to express.
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The present essays are merely intended to raise the subject, not to exhaust it, to offer suggestions, not to establish them. The theory of Vedic religion which I shall suggest in these pages, can only be substantiated if it is supported by a clear, full, simple, natural and harmonious rendering of the Veda standing on a sound philological basis, perfectly consistent in itself and proved in hymn after hymn without any hiatus or fatal objection. Such a substantiation I shall one day place before the public. The problem of Vedic interpretation depends, in my view, on three different tests, philological, historic and psychological. If the results of these three coincide, then only can we be sure that we have understood the Veda. But to erect this Delphic tripod of interpretation is no facile undertaking. It is easy to misuse philology. I hold no philology to be sound & valid which has only discovered one or two bye laws of sound modification and for the rest depends upon imagination & licentious conjecture,identifies for instance ethos with swadha, derives uloka from urvaloka or prachetasa from prachi and on the other [hand] ignores the numerous but definitely ascertainable caprices of Pracritic detrition between the European & Sanscrit tongues or considers a number of word-identities sufficient to justify inclusion in a single group of languages. By a scientific philology I mean a science which can trace the origins, growth & structure of the Sanscrit language, discover its primary, secondary & tertiary forms & the laws by which they develop from each other, trace intelligently the descent of every meaning of a word in Sanscrit from its original root sense, account for all similarities & identities of sense, discover the reason of unexpected divergences, trace the deviations which separated Greek & Latin from the Indian dialect, discover & define the connection of all three with the Dravidian forms of speech. Such a system of comparative philology could alone deserve to stand as a science side by side with the physical sciences and claim to speak with authority on the significance of doubtful words in the Vedic vocabulary. The development of such a science must always be a work of time & gigantic labour.
But even such a science, when completed, could not, owing to the paucity of our records be, by itself, a perfect guide. It would be necessary to discover, fix & take always into account the actual ideas, experiences and thought-atmosphere of the Vedic Rishis; for it is these things that give colour to the words of men and determine their use. The European translations represent the Vedic Rishis as cheerful semi-savages full of material ideas & longings, ceremonialists, naturalistic Pagans, poets endowed with an often gorgeous but always incoherent imagination, a rambling style and an inability either to think in connected fashion or to link their verses by that natural logic which all except children and the most rudimentary intellects observe. In the light of this conception they interpret Vedic words & evolve a meaning out of the verses. Sayana and the Indian scholars perceive in the Vedic Rishis ceremonialists & Puranists like themselves with an occasional scholastic & Vedantic bent; they interpret Vedic words and Vedic mantras accordingly. Wherever they can get words to mean priest, prayer, sacrifice, speech, rice, butter, milk, etc, they do so redundantly and decisively. It would be at least interesting to test the results of another hypothesis,that the Vedic thinkers were clear-thinking men with at least as clear an expression as ordinary poets have and at least as high ideas and as connected and logical a way of expressing themselvesallowing for the succinctness of poetical formsas is found in other religious poetry, say the Psalms or the Book of Job or St Pauls Epistles. But there is a better psychological test than any mere hypothesis. If it be found, as I hold it will be found, that a scientific & rational philological dealing with the text reveals to us poems not of mere ritual or Nature worship, but hymns full of psychological & philosophical religion expressed in relation to fixed practices & symbolic ceremonies, if we find that the common & persistent words of Veda, words such as vaja, vani, tuvi, ritam, radhas, rati, raya, rayi, uti, vahni etc,an almost endless list,are used so persistently because they expressed shades of meaning & fine psychological distinctions of great practical importance to the Vedic religion, that the Vedic gods were intelligently worshipped & the hymns intelligently constructed to express not incoherent poetical ideas but well-connected spiritual experiences,then the interpreter of Veda may test his rendering by repeating the Vedic experiences through Yoga & by testing & confirming them as a scientist tests and confirms the results of his predecessors. He may discover whether there are the same shades & distinctions, the same connections in his own psychological & spiritual experiences. If there are, he will have the psychological confirmation of his philological results.
--
(6) Man, although living here in Bhu, belongs to Swar & Bhuvar. He is manu, the Thinker,the soul in him is the manomayah pranasarira neta of the Upanishad, the mental captain & guide of life & body. He has to become vijnanamaya (mahan) and anandamaya, to become in a word immortal, divine in all his laws of being (vrata & dharman). By rising to Mahas in himself he enters into direct touch with ideal Truth, gets truth of knowledge by drishti, sruti & smriti, the three grand ideal processes, and by that knowledge truth of being, truth of action (satyadharma), truth of bliss (satyaradhas) constituting amritam, swarajyam & samrajyam, immortality, self-rule & mastery of the world. It is this evolution which the Vedic hymns are intended to assist.
(7) In his progress man is helped by the gods, resisted by the Asuras & Rakshasas. For the worlds behind have their own inhabitants, who, the whole universe being inextricably one, affect & are affected by the activities of mankind. The Bhuvar is the great place of struggle in which forces work behind the visible movements we see here and determine all our actions & fortunes. Swar is mans resting place but not his final or highest habitation which is Vishnus highest footing, Vishnoh paramam padam, high in the supreme parardha.
--
But we have first one more step in our evidence to notice,the final & conclusive link. In the Taittiriya Upanishad we are told that there are three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, but the Rishi Mahachamasya insisted on a fourth, Mahas. What is this fourth vyahriti? It is evidently some old Vedic idea and can hardly fail to be our maho arnas. I have already, in my introduction, outlined briefly the Vedic, Vedantic & Puranic system of the seven worlds and the five bodies. In this system the three vyahritis constitute the lower half of existence which is in bondage to Avidya. Bhurloka is the material world, our dwelling place, in which Annam predominates, in which everything is subject to or limited by the laws of matter & material consciousness. Bhuvar are the middle worlds, antariksha, between Swar & Bhur, vital worlds in which Prana, the vital principle predominates and everything is subject to or limited by the laws of vitality & vital consciousness. Swarloka is the supreme world of the triple system, the pure mental kingdom in which manasei ther in itself or, as one goes higher, uplifted & enlightened by buddhipredominates & by the laws of mind determines the life & movements of the existences which inhabit it. The three Puranic worlds Jana, Tapas, Satya,not unknown to the Vedaconstitute the Parardha; they are the higher ranges of existence in which Sat, Chit, Ananda, the three mighty elements of the divine nature predominate respectively, creative Ananda or divine bliss in Jana, the power of Chit (Chich-chhakti) or divine Energy in Tapas, the extension [of] Sat or divine being in Satya. But these worlds are hidden from us, avyaktalost for us in the sushupti to which only great Yogins easily attain & only with the Anandaloka have we by means of the anandakosha some difficult chance of direct access. We are too joyless to bear the surging waves of that divine bliss, too weak or limited to move in those higher ranges of divine strength & being. Between the upper hemisphere & the lower is Maharloka, the seat of ideal knowledge & pure Truth, which links the free spirits to the bound, the gods who deliver to the gods who are in chains, the wide & immutable realms to these petty provinces where all shifts, all passes, all changes. We see therefore that Mahas is still vijnanam and we can no longer hesitate to identify our subjective principle of mahas, source of truth & right thinking awakened by Saraswati through the perceptive intelligence, with the Vedantic principle of vijnana or pure buddhi, instrument of pure Truth & ideal knowledge.
We do not find that the Rishi Mahachamasya succeeded in getting his fourth vyahriti accepted by the great body of Vedantic thinkers. With a little reflection we can see the reason why. The vijnana or mahat is superior to reasoning. It sees and knows, hears and knows, remembers & knows by the ideal principles of drishti, sruti and smriti; it does not reason and know.Or withdrawing into the Mahan Atma, it is what it exercises itself upon and therefore knowsas it were, by conscious identity; for that is the nature of the Mahan Atma to be everything separately and collectively & know it as an object of his Knowledge and yet as himself. Always vijnana knows things in the whole & therefore in the part, in the mass & therefore in the particular. But when ideal knowledge, vijnana, looks out on the phenomenal world in its separate details, it then acquires an ambiguous nature. So long as it is not assailed by mind, it is still the pure buddhi and free from liability to errors. The pure buddhi may assign its reasons, but it knows first & reasons afterwards,to explain, not to justify. Assailed by mind, the ideal buddhi ceases to be pure, ceases to be ideal, becomes sensational, emotional, is obliged to found itself on data, ends not in knowledge but in opinion and is obliged to hold doubt with one hand even while it tries to grasp certainty by the other. For it is the nature of mind to be shackled & frightened by its data. It looks at things as entirely outside itself, separate from itself and it approaches them one by one, groups them & thus arrives at knowledge by synthesis; or if [it] looks at things in the mass, it has to appreciate them vaguely and then take its parts and qualities one by one, arriving at knowledge by a process of analysis. But it cannot be sure that the knowledge it acquires, is pure truth; it can never be safe against mixture of truth & error, against one-sided knowledge which leads to serious misconception, against its own sensations, passions, prejudices and false associations. Such truth as it gets can only be correct even so far as it goes, if all the essential data have been collected and scrupulously weighed without any false weights or any unconscious or semi-conscious interference with the balance. A difficult undertaking! So we can form reliable conclusions, and then too always with some reserve of doubt,about the past & the present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses or on its own inner sensations & perceptions & it can never be sure that these are informing it correctly or are, even, in their nature anything but lying instruments. Therefore we say we know the objective world on the strength of a perpetual hypothesis. The subjective world we know only as in a dream, sure only of our own inner movements & the little we can learn from them about others, but there too sure only of this objective world & end always in conflict of transitory opinions, a doubt, a perhaps. Yet sure knowledge, indubitable Truth, the Vedic thinkers have held, is not only possible to mankind, but is the goal of our journey. Satyam eva jayate nanritam satyena pantha vitato devayanah yenakramantyrishayo hyaptakama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam. Truth conquers and not falsehood, by truth the path has been extended which the gods follow, by which sages attaining all their desire arrive where is that Supreme Abode of Truth. The very eagerness of man for Truth, his untameable yearning towards an infinite reality, an infinite extension of knowledge, the fact that he has the conception of a fixed & firm truth, nay the very fact that error is possible & persistent, mare indications that pure Truth exists.We follow no chimaera as a supreme good, nor do the Powers of Darkness fight against a mere shadow. The ideal Truth is constantly coming down to us, constantly seeking to deliver us from our slavery to our senses and the magic circle of our limited data. It speaks to our hearts & creates the phenomenon of Faith, but the heart has its lawless & self-regarding emotions & disfigures the message. It speaks to the Imagination, our great intellectual instrument which liberates us from the immediate fact and opens the mind to infinite possibility; but the imagination has her pleasant fictions & her headlong creative impulse and exaggerates the truth & distorts & misplaces circumstances. It speaks to the intellect itself, bids it criticise its instruments by vichara and creates the critical reason, bids it approach the truth directly by a wide passionless & luminous use of the pure judgment, and creates shuddha buddhi or Kants pure reason; bids it divine truth & learn to hold the true divination & reject the counterfeit, and creates the intuitive reason & its guardian, intuitive discrimination or viveka. But the intellect is impatient of error, eager for immediate results and hurries to apply what it receives before it has waited & seen & understood. Therefore error maintains & even extends her reign. At last come the logician & modern rationalist thinker; disgusted with the exaggeration of these movements, seeing their errors, unable to see their indispensable utility, he sets about sweeping them away as intellectual rubbish, gets rid of faith, gets rid of flexibility of mind, gets rid of sympathy, pure reason & intuition, puts critical reason into an ill lightened dungeon & thinks now, delivered from these false issues, to compass truth by laborious observation & a rigid logic. To live on these dry & insufficient husks is the last fate of impure vijnanam or buddhi confined in the data of the mind & sensesuntil man wronged in his nature, cabined in his possibilities revolts & either prefers a luminous error or resumes his broadening & upward march.
--
Indra and Varuna are called to give victory, because both of them are samrat. The words samrat & swarat have in Veda an ascertained philosophical sense.One is swarat when, having self-mastery & self-knowledge, & being king over his whole system, physical, vital, mental & spiritual, free in his being, [one] is able to guide entirely the harmonious action of that being. Swarajya is spiritual Freedom. One is Samrat when one is master of the laws of being, ritam, rituh, vratani, and can therefore control all forces & creatures. Samrajya is divine Rule resembling the power of God over his world. Varuna especially is Samrat, master of the Law which he follows, governor of the heavens & all they contain, Raja Varuna, Varuna the King as he is often styled by Sunahshepa and other Rishis. He too, like Indra & Agni & the Visvadevas, is an upholder & supporter of mens actions, dharta charshaninam. Finally in the fifth sloka a distinction is drawn between Indra and Varuna of great importance for our purpose. The Rishi wishes, by their protection, to rise to the height of the inner Energies (yuvaku shachinam) and have the full vigour of right thoughts (yuvaku sumatinam) because they give then that fullness of inner plenty (vajadavnam) which is the first condition of enduring calm & perfection & then he says, Indrah sahasradavnam, Varunah shansyanam kratur bhavati ukthyah. Indra is the master-strength, desirable indeed, (ukthya, an object of prayer, of longing and aspiration) of one class of those boons (vara, varyani) for which the Rishis praise him, Varuna is the master-strength, equally desirable, of another class of these Vedic blessings. Those which Indra brings, give force, sahasram, the forceful being that is strong to endure & strong to overcome; those that attend the grace of Varuna are of a loftier & more ample description, they are shansya. The word shansa is frequently used; it is one of the fixed terms of Veda. Shall we translate it praise, the sense most suitable to the ritual explanation, the sense which the finally dominant ritualistic school gave to so many of the fixed terms of Veda? In that case Varuna must be urushansa, because he is widely praised, Agni narashansa because he is strongly praised or praised by men,ought not a wicked or cruel man to be nrishansa because he is praised by men?the Rishis call repeatedly on the gods to protect their praise, & Varuna here must be master of things that are praiseworthy. But these renderings can only be accepted, if we consent to the theory of the Rishis as semi-savage poets, feeble of brain, vague in speech, pointless in their style, using language for barbaric ornament rather than to express ideas. Here for instance there is a very powerful indicated contrast, indicated by the grammatical structure, the order & the rhythm, by the singular kratur bhavati, by the separation of Indra & Varuna who have hitherto been coupled, by the assignment of each governing nominative to its governed genitive and a careful balanced order of words, first giving the master Indra then his province sahasradavnam, exactly balancing them in the second half of the first line the master Varuna & then his province shansyanam, and the contrast thus pointed, in the closing pada of the Gayatri all the words that in their application are common at once to all these four separated & contrasted words in the first line. Here is no careless writer, but a style careful, full of economy, reserve, point, force, and the thought must surely correspond. But what is the contrast forced on us with such a marshalling of the stylists resources? That Indras boons are force-giving, Varunas praiseworthy, excellent, auspicious, what you will? There is not only a pointless contrast, but no contrast at all. No, shansa & shansya must be important, definite, pregnant Vedic terms expressing some prominent idea of the Vedic system. I shall show elsewhere that shansa is in its essential meaning self-expression, the bringing out of our sat or being that which is latent in it and manifesting it in our nature, in speech, in our general impulse & action. It has the connotation of self-expression, aspiration, temperament, expression of our ideas in speech; then divulgation, publication, praiseor in another direction, cursing. Varuna is urushansa because he is the master of wide self-expression, wide aspirations, a wide, calm & spacious temperament, Agni narashansa because he is master of strong self-expression, strong aspirations, a prevailing, forceful & masterful temperament;nrishansa had originally the same sense, but was afterwards diverted to express the fault to which such a temper is prone,tyranny, wrath & cruelty; the Rishis call to the gods to protect their shansa, that which by their yoga & yajna they have been able to bring out in themselves of being, faculty, power, joy,their self-expression. Similarly, shansya here means all that belongs to self-expression, all that is wide, noble, ample in the growth of a soul. It will follow from this rendering that Indra is a god of force, Varuna rather a god of being and as it appears from other epithets, of being when it is calm, noble, wide, self-knowing, self-mastering, moving freely in harmony with the Law of things because it is aware of that Law and accepts it. In that acceptance is his mighty strength; therefore is he even more than the gods of force the king, the giver of internal & external victory, rule, empire, samrajya to his votaries. This is Varuna.
We see the results & the conditions of the action ofVaruna in the four remaining verses. By their protection we have safety from attack, sanema, safety for our shansa, our rayah, our radhas, by the force of Indra, by the protecting greatness of Varuna against which passion & disturbance cast themselves in vain, only to be destroyed. This safety & this settled ananda or delight, we use for deep meditation, ni dhimahi, we go deep into ourselves and the object we have in view in our meditation is prarechanam, the Greek katharsis, the cleansing of the system mental, bodily, vital, of all that is impure, defective, disturbing, inharmonious. Syad uta prarechanam! In this work of purification we are sure to be obstructed by the powers that oppose all healthful change; but Indra & Varuna are to give us victory, jigyushas kritam. The final result of the successful purification is described in the eighth sloka. The powers of the understanding, its various faculties & movements, dhiyah, delivered from self-will & rebellion, become obedient to Indra & Varuna; obedient to Varuna, they move according to the truth & law, the ritam; obedient to Indra they fulfil with that passivity in activity, which we seek by Yoga, all the works to which mental force can apply itself when it is in harmony with Varuna & the ritam. The result is sharma, peace. Nothing is more remarkable in the Veda than the exactness with which hymn after hymn describes with a marvellous simplicity & lucidity the physical & psychological processes through which Indian Yoga proceeds. The process, the progression, the successive movements of the soul here described are exactly what the Yogin experiences today so many thousands of years after the Veda was revealed. No wonder, it is regarded as eternal truth, not the expression of any particular mind, not paurusheya but impersonal, divine & revealed.
1.04 - THE STUDY (The Compact), #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
All rights and laws are still transmitted
Like an eternal sickness of the race,
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
guardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soul
of existence!
--
ian of the eternal laws, but who is always too destroying in
order that he may new-create, who is Time, who is Death,
1.04 - Yoga and Human Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The whole burden of our human progress has been an attempt to escape from the bondage to the body and the vital impulses. According to the scientific theory, the human being began as the animal, developed through the savage and consummated in the modern civilised man. The Indian theory is different. God created the world by developing the many out of the One and the material out of the spiritual. From the beginning, the objects which compose the physical world were arranged by Him in their causes, developed under the law of their being in the subtle or psychical world and then manifested in the gross or material world. From kraa to skma, from skma to sthla, and back again, that is the formula. Once manifested in matter the world proceeds by laws which do not change, from age to age, by a regular succession, until it is all withdrawn back again into the source from which it came. The material goes back into the psychical and the psychical is involved in its cause or seed. It is again put out when the period of expansion recurs and runs its course on similar lines but with different details till the period of contraction is due. Hinduism regards the world as a recurrent series of phenomena of which the terms vary but the general formula abides the same. The theory is only acceptable if we recognise the truth of the conception formulated in the Vishnu Purana of the world as vijna-vijmbhitni, developments of ideas in the Universal Intelligence which lies at the root of all material phenomena and by its indwelling force shapes the growth of the tree and the evolution of the clod as well as the development of living creatures and the progress of mankind. Whichever theory we take, the laws of the material world are not affected. From aeon to aeon, from kalpa to kalpa Narayan manifests himself in an ever-evolving humanity which grows in experience by a series of expansions and contractions towards its destined self-realisation in God. That evolution is not denied by the Hindu theory of yugas. Each age in the Hindu system has its own line of moral and spiritual evolution and the decline of the dharma or established law of conduct from the Satya to the Kaliyuga is not in reality a deterioration but a detrition of the outward forms and props of spirituality in order to prepare a deeper spiritual intensity within the heart. In each Kaliyuga mankind gains something in essential spirituality. Whether we take the modern scientific or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanity is a fact. The wheel of Brahma rotates for ever but it does not turn in the same place; its rotations carry it forward.
The animal is distinguished from man by its enslavement to the body and the vital impulses. Aany mtyu, Hunger who is Death, evolved the material world from of old, and it is the physical hunger and desire and the vital sensations and primary emotions connected with the pra that seek to feed upon the world in the beast and in the savage man who approximates to the condition of the beast. Out of this animal state, according to European Science, man rises working out the tiger and the ape by intellectual and moral development in the social condition. If the beast has to be worked out, it is obvious that the body and the pra must be conquered, and as that conquest is more or less complete, the man is more or less evolved. The progress of mankind has been placed by many predominatingly in the development of the human intellect, and intellectual development is no doubt essential to self-conquest. The animal and the savage are bound by the body because the ideas of the animal or the ideas of the savage are mostly limited to those sensations and associations which are connected with the body. The development of intellect enables a man to find the deeper self within and partially replace what our philosophy calls the dehtmaka-buddhi, the sum of ideas and sensations which make us think of the body as ourself, by another set of ideas which reach beyond the body, and, existing for their own delight and substituting intellectual and moral satisfaction as the chief objects of life, master, if they cannot entirely silence, the clamour of the lower sensual desires. That animal ignorance which is engrossed with the cares and the pleasures of the body and the vital impulses, emotions and sensations is tamasic, the result of the predominance of the third principle of nature which leads to ignorance and inertia. That is the state of the animal and the lower forms of humanity which are called in the Purana the first or tamasic creation. This animal ignorance the development of the intellect tends to dispel and it assumes therefore an all-important place in human evolution.
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
already many years ago: If you accept the ordinary laws
of science, you have to suppose that human life in general
1.056 - Lack of Knowledge is the Cause of Suffering, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The point they make out is that if we are in tune with the way in which society expects us to live, we are normal. If we are not able to live in that manner, we are abnormal. The laws of society are supposed to be what they call the super-ego in psychoanalytical language. It has nothing to do with the ego that we are speaking of in philosophy; it is something different altogether. The superego is a Freudian word which implies the check that is put upon individual instincts and desires by the laws of human society outside. On account of this pressure that is exerted perpetually upon inward desires by the reality of social rules and regulations outside, every human being is kept in tension. Therefore, there is a tendency to revolt against society. No one is really happy with society, ultimately. There is a disrespect and a dislike and a discontent, but because we cannot wag our tail before this monster called society, we keep quiet. But sometimes we become vehement, and then so many consequences follow inwardly as well as outwardly.
The attunement of the inward conduct and character of the individual with the conditions prevailing outside in human society is supposed to be the normal behaviour of the mind, according to psychoanalysis. The word used for this prevailing condition outside is reality, because that is what persists always, whereas individual instincts may go on changing. But the definition of reality as applied to the social laws would not hold water for long, because anything that is subject to change cannot be called real. The constitution of human society is subject to transformation on account of the mutations of history the changes that we see in the world through the process of evolution. Therefore, laws will change, and our concept of normalcy also will change.
The root cause of unhappiness, therefore, is an irreconcilability between the individual and its environment. This environment is a very peculiar word which has deep connotations. It means anything and everything. The circumstances in which we find ourselves are of the environment the geographical conditions, the social conditions, the psychological conditions, the astronomical conditions. All these have to be taken into consideration when we speak of the environment of an individual. These are vast things, insurmountable by ordinary human thinking. It is not usually practicable for the mind to tune itself to all these things that are outside. If it succeeds in one line, it will fail in another, so that there is always some kind of difficulty, one coming after the other. And so, there is a perpetual restlessness within.
1.05 - BOOK THE FIFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Who laws of hospitality approve,
Who faith protect, and succour injur'd right,
--
And with just laws the wicked world supply'd:
All good from her deriv'd, to her belong
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility. Where there is no disinterested love (or, more briefly, no charity), there is only biased self-love, and consequently only a partial and distorted knowledge both of the self and of the world of things, lives, minds and spirit outside the self. The lust-dieted man slaves the ordinances of Heaven that is to say, he subordinates the laws of Nature and the spirit to his own cravings. The result is that he does not feel and therefore makes himself incapable of knowledge. His ignorance is ultimately voluntary; if he cannot see, it is because he will not see. Such voluntary ignorance inevitably has its negative reward. Nemesis follows hubris sometimes in a spectacular way, as when the self-blinded man (Macbeth, Othello, Lear) falls into the trap which his own ambition or possessiveness or petulant vanity has prepared for him; sometimes in a less obvious way, as in the cases where power, prosperity and reputation endure to the end but at the cost of an ever-increasing imperviousness to grace and enlightenment, an ever completer inability to escape, now or hereafter, from the stifling prison of selfness and separateness. How profound can be the spiritual ignorance by which such enslavers of Heavens ordinances are punished is indicated by the behaviour of Cardinal Richelieu on his death-bed. The priest who attended him urged the great man to prepare his soul for its coming ordeal by forgiving all his enemies. I have never had any enemies, the Cardinal replied with the calm sincerity of an ignorance which long years of intrigue and avarice and ambition had rendered as absolute as had been his political power, save only those of the State. Like Napoleon, but in a different way, he was feeling heavens power, because he had refused to feel charity and therefore refused to know the whole truth about his own soul or anything else.
Here on earth the love of God is better than the knowledge of God, while it is better to know inferior things than to love them. By knowing them we raise them, in a way, to our intelligence, whereas by loving them, we stoop towards them and may become subservient to them, as the miser to his gold.
1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The appearance of stability is given by constant repetition and recurrence of the same vibrations and formations,4 because it is always the same wavelengths that we pick up or, rather, that picks us up, consistent with the laws of our environment or education; it is always the same mental, vital or other vibrations that return through our centers, and that we appropriate automatically, unconsciously, and endlessly. In reality, everything is in a state of constant flux, and everything comes to us from a mind vaster than ours (a universal mind), a vital vaster than ours (a universal vital), from lower subconscious regions, or from higher superconscious ones. Thus this small frontal being48 is surrounded, overhung, supported, pervaded by and set in motion by a whole hierarchy of "worlds," as ancient wisdom well knew: "Without effort one world moves in the other," says the Rig Veda (II.24-5), or, as Sri Aurobindo says, by a gradation of planes of consciousness, which range without break from pure Spirit to Matter, and are directly connected to each of our centers. Yet we are conscious only of some bubbling on the surface.49
What remains of ourselves in all this? Not much, to tell the truth,
1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5. O Fire, universal Godhead, none could do violence to the laws of thy mighty workings because even in thy birth in the lap of the Father and the Mother thou hast discovered the light of intuition of the Days in manifested things.5
6. The heights of heaven were measured into form by the eye of this universal Force, they were shaped by the intuition of the Immortal. All the worlds are upon his head; the seven far-flowing rivers climbed from him like branches.
--
2. Fire is the guardian of the laws of all workings and he kept safe the laws of his action and motion even in the moment of his birth in the supreme ether. The Universal mighty of will measured into shape the middle world and touched heaven with his greatness.
3. The Wonderful, the Friend propped up earth and heaven and made the darkness a disappearing thing by the Light. He rolled out the two minds like skins; the Universal assumed every masculine might.
--
9. O Fire, according to the laws of thy works thou pervadest
either race; thou art the messenger of the Gods and rangest
1.05 - Morality and War, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Moral laws have only a very relative value from the point of view of Truth. Besides, they vary considerably according to country, climate and period.
Discussions are generally sterile and without productive value. If each one makes a personal effort of perfect sincerity, uprightness and good-will, the best conditions for the work will be realised.
1.05 - MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
the laws of life is fulfilled by the definite canon "thou shalt,"
"thou shalt not," and any sort of obstacle or hostile element in the
1.05 - Ritam, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the next hymn the word ritam does not occur, but the continual refrain of its strophes is the cognate word ritunpibartun, Medhatithi cries to each of the gods in turn,ritun yajnam sh the .. ritubhir ishyata, pibatam ritun yajnavhas, ritun yajnanr asi. Ritu is supposed to have here & elsewhere its classical & modern significance, a season of the year; the ritwik is the priest who sacrifices in the right season; the gods are invited to drink the soma according to the season! It may be so, but the rendering seems to me to make all the phrases of this hymn strangely awkward & improbable. Medhatithi invites Indra to drink Soma by the season, Mitra & Varuna are to taste the sacrifice, this single sacrifice offered by this son of Kanwa, by the season; in the same single sacrifice the priests or the gods are to be impelled by the seasons, by many seasons on a single sacrificial occasion! the Aswins are to drink the Soma by the sacrifice-supporting season! To Agni it is said, by the season thou art leader of the sacrifice. Are such expressions at all probable or even possible in the mouth of a poet using freely the natural language of his age? Are they not rather the clumsy constructions of the scholar drawn to misinterpret his text by the false clue of a later & inapplicable meaning of the central word ritu? But if we suppose the sacrifice to be symbolic &, as ritam means ideal truth in general, so ritu to mean that truth in its ordered application, the ideal law of thought, feeling or action, then this impossible awkwardness vanishes & gives place to a natural construction & a lucid & profound significance. Indra is to drink the wine of immortality according to or by the force of the ideal law, by that ideal law Varuna &Mitra are to enjoy the offering of Ananda of the human mind & the human activity, the gods are to be impelled in their functioning ritubhih, by the ideal laws of the truth,the plural used, in the ordinary manner of the Veda, to express the particular actions of the law of truth, the singular its general action. It is the ideal law that supports the human offering of our activities to the divine life above us, ritun yajnavhas; by the force of the law of Truth Agni leads the sacrifice to its goal.
In this suggestive & significant hymn packed full of the details of the Vedic sacrificial symbolism we again come across Daksha in close connection with Mitra, Varuna & the Truth.
1.05 - Solitude, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. _Next_ to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. _Next_ to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth!
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
clairvoyance begins. For these flowers are the sense-organs of the soul, and their revolutions express the fact that the clairvoyant perceives supersensibly. What was said previously concerning spiritual seeing applies equally to these revolutions and even to the lotus flowers themselves. No one can perceive the supersensible until he has developed his astral senses in this way. Thanks to the spiritual organ situated in the vicinity of the larynx, it becomes possible to survey clairvoyantly the thoughts and mentality of other beings, and to obtain a deeper insight into the true laws of natural phenomena. The organ situated near the heart permits of clairvoyant knowledge of the sentiments and disposition of other souls. When developed, this organ also makes it possible to observe certain deeper forces in animals and plants. By means of the organ in the so-called pit of the stomach, knowledge is acquired of the talents and capacities of souls; by its means, too, the part played by animals, plants, stones, metals, atmospheric phenomena and so on in the household of nature becomes apparent.
The organ in the vicinity of the larynx has
--
It must be clearly understood that the perceptions of each single organ of soul or sprit bear a different character. The twelve and sixteen-petalled lotus flowers transmit quite different perceptions. The latter perceives forms. The thoughts and mentality of other beings and the laws governing natural phenomena become manifest, through the sixteen-petalled lotus, as figures, not rigid motionless figures but mobile forms
p. 147
--
the result of complete mastery and control of the whole personality through consciousness of self, so that body, soul and spirit form one harmonious whole. The functions of the body, the inclinations and passions of the soul, the thoughts and ideas of the spirit must be tuned to perfect unison. The body must be so ennobled and purified that its organs incite to nothing that is not in the service of soul and spirit. The soul must not be impelled through the body to lusts and passions which are antagonistic to pure and noble thought. Yet the spirit must not stand like a slave-driver over the soul, dominating it with laws and commandments; the soul must rather learn to obey these laws and duties out of its own free inclination. The student must not feel duty to be an oppressive power to which he unwillingly submits, but rather something which he performs out of love. His task is to develop a free soul that maintains equilibrium between body and spirit, and he must perfect himself in this way to the extent of being free to abandon himself to the functions of the senses, for these should be so purified that they lose the power to drag him down to their level. He must no longer require
p. 160
--
awaken in others, and who are unquestionably in a position to know whether the directions they give lead to the exact results desired. If the student follows the directions that have been given him, he introduces into his etheric body currents and movements which are in harmony with the laws and the evolution of the world to which he belongs. Consequently these instructions are reflections of the great laws of cosmic evolution. They consist of the above-mentioned and similar exercises in meditation and concentration which, if correctly practiced, produce the results described. The student must at certain times let these instructions permeate his soul with their content, so that he is inwardly entirely filled with it. A simple start is made with a view to the deepening of the logical activity of the mind and the producing of an inward intensification of thought. Thought it thereby made free and independent of all sense impressions and experiences; it is concentrated in one point which is held entirely under control. Thus a preliminary center is formed for the currents of the etheric body. This center is not yet in the region of the heart but in the head, and it appears to the clairvoyant
p. 168
--
It is at this stage of development especially that the value of sound judgment and a training in clear and logical thought come to the fore. The higher self, which hitherto slumbered unconsciously in an embryonic state, is now born into conscious existence. This is not a figurative but a positive birth in the spiritual world, and the being now born, the higher self, must enter that world with all the necessary organs and aptitudes if it is to be capable of life. Just as nature must provide for a child being born into the world with suitable eyes and ears, to too, the laws of self-development must provide for the necessary capacities with which the higher self can enter existence. These laws governing the development of the higher spiritual organs are none other than the laws of sound reason and morality of the physical world. The spiritual self matures in the
p. 184
physical self as a child in the mother's womb. The child's health depends upon the normal functioning of natural laws in the maternal womb. The constitution of the spiritual self is similarly conditioned by the laws of common intelligence and reason that govern physical life. No one can give birth to a soundly constituted higher self whose life in thought and feeling, in the physical world, is not sound and healthy. Natural, rational life is the basis of all genuine spiritual development. Just as the child when still in the maternal womb lives in accordance with the natural forces to which it has access, after its birth, through its organs of sense, so, too, the human higher self lives in accordance with the laws of the spiritual world, even during physical existence. And even as the child, out of a dim life instinct, acquired the requisite forces, so, too, can man acquire the powers of the spiritual world before his higher self is born. Indeed, he must do this if the latter is to enter the world as a fully developed being. It would be quite wrong for anyone to say: "I cannot accept the teachings of spiritual science until I myself become a seer," for without inward application
p. 185
--
These, then, are the gifts which the student owes to his development at this stage: insight into his higher self; insight into the doctrine of the incarnation of this higher being in a lower; insight into the laws by which life in the physical world is regulated according to its spiritual connections, that is, the law of karma; and finally, insight into the existence of the great initiates.
Thus it is said of a student who has reached this stage, that all doubt has vanished from him. His former faith, based on reason and sound thoughts, is now replaced by knowledge and insight which nothing can undermine. The various religions have presented, in their ceremonies, sacraments, and rites, externally
1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A Yoga turned towards an all-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the dreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid toil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself In the human creature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the world too must be part of the sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none else, to the Divine shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with the right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bondslave of material Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance. But otherwise, apart from this division, all activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials for a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues and utilises his world and environment, and the noble and beautiful Arts which are at once work and knowledge, -- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expressions-all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its works, to express that One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from the high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, -- for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose.
At the same time the Yogin who knows the Supreme is not subject to any need or compulsion in these activities; for to him they are neither a duty nor a necessary occupation for the mind nor a high amusement, nor imposed by the loftiest human purpose. He is not attached, bound and limited by any nor has he any personal motive of fame, greatness or personal satisfaction in these works; he can leave or pursue them as the Divine in him wills, but he need not otherwise abandon them in his pursuit of the higher integral knowledge. He will do these things just as the supreme Power acts and creates, for a certain spiritual joy in creation and expression or to help in the holding together and right ordering or leading of this world of God's workings. The Gita teaches that the man of knowledge shall by his way of life give to those who have not yet the spiritual consciousness, the love and habit of all works and not only of actions recognised as pious, religious or ascetic in their character; he should not draw men away from the world-action by his example. For the world must proceed in its great upward aspiring; men and nations must not be led to fall away from even an ignorant activity into a worse ignorance of inaction or to sink down into that miserable disintegration and tendency of dissolution which comes upon communities and peoples when there predominates the tamasic principle, the principle whether of obscure confusion and error or of weariness and inertia. "For I too," says the Lord in the Gita, "have no need to do works, since there is nothing I have not or must yet gain for myself; yet I do works in the world; for if I did not do works, all laws would fall into confusion, the worlds would sink towards chaos and I would be the destroyer of these peoples." The spiritual life does not need, for its purity, to destroy interest in all things except the Inexpressible or to cut at the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and Life. It may well be one of the effects of an integral spiritual knowledge and activity to lift them out of their limitations, substitute for our mind's ignorant, limited, tepid or trepidant pleasure in them a free, intense and uplifting urge of delight and supply a new source of creative spiritual power and illumination by which they can be carried more swiftly and profoundly towards their absolute light in knowledge and their yet undreamed possibilities and most dynamic energy of content and form and practice. The one thing needful must be pursued first and always, but all things else come with it as its outcome and have not so much to be added to us as recovered and reshaped in its self-light and as portions of its self-expressive force.
This then is the true relation between divine and human knowledge; it is not a separation into disparate fields, sacred and profane, that is the heart of the difference, but the character of the consciousness behind the working. All is human knowledge that proceeds from the ordinary mental consciousness interested in the outside or upper layers of things, in process, in phenomena for their own sake or for the sake of some surface utility or mental or vital satisfaction of Desire or of the Intelligence. But the same activity of knowledge can become part of the Yoga if it proceeds from the spiritual or spiritualising consciousness which seeks and finds in all that it surveys or penetrates the presence of the timeless Eternal and the ways of manifestation of Eternal in Time. It is evident that the need of a concentration indispensable for the transition out of the Ignorance may make it necessary for the seeker to gather together his energies and focus them only on that which will help the transition and to leave aside or subordinate for the time all that is not directly turned towards the one object. He may find that this or that pursuit of human knowledge with which he was accustomed to deal by the surface power of the mind still brings him, by reason of this tendency or habit, out of the depths to the surface or down from the heights which he has climbed or is nearing, to lower levels. These activities then may have to be intermitted or put aside until secure in a higher consciousness he is able to turn its powers on all the mental fields; then, subjected to that light or taken up into it, they are turned, by the transformation of his consciousness, into a province of the spiritual and divine. All that cannot be so transformed or refuses to be part of a divine consciousness he will abandon without hesitation, but not from any preconceived prejudgment of its emptiness or its incapacity to be an element of the new inner life. There can be no fixed mental test or principle for these things; he will therefore follow no unalterable rule, but accept or repel an activity of the mind according to his feeling, insight or experience until the greater Power and Light are there to turn their unerring scrutiny on all that is below and choose or reject their material out of what the human evolution has prepared for the divine labour.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The constant search for security, rather than the embodiment of freedom, is wish for rule by laws letter,
rather than laws spirit. The resultant forcible suppression of deviance is based upon desire to support the
pretence that the unknown does not exist. This suppression has as its consequence the elimination of
--
conscience. And with regard to practical use, it is only natural that a mystical respect for laws should be
accompanied by a rudimentary knowledge and application of their contents, while a rational and wellfounded respect is accompanied by an effective application of each rule in detail.535
--
form of the list. A list of laws of moral rules straightforwardly and simply defines what constitutes
acceptable behavior and what does not. An explicit list serves as an admirable guide for the adolescent,
--
know the statutes of God, and his laws. (Exodus 18: 13-16).
Adoption of such a role entails (voluntary) acceptance of tremendous intrapsychic strain strain
--
Old Testament as a series of past events, laws and images coming permanently alive in the Messianic
context, and body, which he supplies.554
--
inevitable consequence of the structure of the list of laws. He plays a deadly serious game with the
temporal representatives of then-traditional order, represented in the New Testament in the form of
--
permanently, and concretely, with the list of laws. Such a list is always insufficient, however, for the
purposes of complete adaptation. Lao-Tzu can therefore say, with sufficient justification:
--
and of Light into Bodies is entirely in conformity with the laws of Nature, for Nature seems ravished by
Transmutation. According to Dobbs, Newtons alchemical thoughts were so securely established that
--
psychological laws, simply had to grow up at a time when the classical religions had become obsolete. It
was founded on the perception of symbols thrown up by the unconscious individuation process which
--
guise, and follow what are apparently their own intrinsic and often incomprehensible laws of behaviour [see Jung, C.G.
(1968b). for an analysis of an extensive series of dreams (the physicist Wolfgang Paulis, as it happens)].
1.05 - THE NEW SPIRIT, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
A cosmogenesis embracing and expanding the laws of our in-
dividual ontogenesis on a universal scale, in the form of Noogene-
--
mentary laws of individual justice, empirically established and
blindly followed, who can say what is good and what is evil? Can
1.05 - Yoga and Hypnotism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What is this force that enables or compels a weak man to become so rigid that strong arms cannot bend him? that reverses the operations of the senses and abrogates pain? that changes the fixed character of a man in the shortest of periods? that is able to develop power where there was no power, moral strength where there was weakness, health where there was disease? that in its higher manifestations can exceed the barriers of space and time and produce that far-sight, far-hearing and far-thinking which shows mind to be an untrammelled agent or medium pervading the world and not limited to the body which it informs or seems to inform? The European scientist experimenting with hypnotism is handling forces which he cannot understand, stumbling on truths of which he cannot give a true account. His feet are faltering on the threshold of Yoga. It is held by some thinkers, and not unreasonably if we consider these phenomena, that mind is all and contains all. It is not the body which determines the operations of the mind, it is the mind which determines the laws of the body. It is the ordinary law of the body that if it is struck, pierced or roughly pressed it feels pain. This law is created by the mind which associates pain with these contacts, and if the mind changes its dharma and is able to associate with these contacts not pain but insensibility or pleasure, then they will bring about those results of insensibility or pleasure and no other. The pain and pleasure are not the result of the contact, neither is their seat in the body; they are the result of association and their seat is in the mind. Vinegar is sour, sugar sweet, but to the hypnotised mind vinegar can be sweet, sugar sour. The sourness or sweetness is not in the vinegar or sugar, but in the mind. The heart also is the subject of the mind. My emotions are like my physical feelings, the result of association, and my character is the result of accumulated past experiences with their resultant associations and reactions crystallising into habits of mind and heart summed up in the word, character. These things like all the rest that are made of the stuff of associations are not permanent or binding but fluid and mutable, anity sarvasaskr. If my friend blames me, I am grieved; that is an association and not binding. The grief is not the result of the blame but of an association in the mind. I can change the association so far that blame will cause me no grief, praise no elation. I can entirely stop the reactions of joy and grief by the same force that created them. They are habits of the mind, nothing more In the same way though with more difficulty I can stop the reactions of physical pain and pleasure so that nothing will hurt my body. If I am a coward today, I can be a hero tomorrow. The cowardice was merely the habit of associating certain things with pain and grief and of shrinking from the pain and grief; this shrinking and the physical sensations in the vital or nervous man which accompany it are called fear, and they can be dismissed by the action of the mind which created them. All these are propositions which European Science is even now unwilling to admit, yet it is being proved more and more by the phenomena of hypnotism that these effects can be temporarily at least produced by one man upon another; and it has even been proved that disease can be permanently cured or character permanently changed by the action of one mind upon another. The rest will be established in time by the development of hypnotism.
The difference between Yoga and hypnotism is that what hypnotism does for a man through the agency of another and in the sleeping state, Yoga does for him by his own agency and in the waking state. The hypnotic sleep is necessary in order to prevent the activity of the subjects mind full of old ideas and associations from interfering with the operator. In the waking state he would naturally refuse to experience sweetness in vinegar or sourness in sugar or to believe that he can change from disease to health, cowardice to heroism by a mere act of faith; his established associations would rebel violently and successfully against such contradictions of universal experience. The force which transcends matter would be hampered by the obstruction of ignorance and attachment to universal error. The hypnotic sleep does not make the mind a tabula rasa but it renders it passive to everything but the touch of the operator. Yoga similarly teaches passivity of the mind so that the will may act unhampered by the saskras or old associations. It is these saskras, the habits formed by experience in the body, heart or mind, that form the laws of our psychology. The associations of the mind are the stuff of which our life is made. They are more persistent in the body than in the mind and therefore harder to alter. They are more persistent in the race than in the individual; the conquest of the body and mind by the individual is comparatively easy and can be done in the space of a single life, but the same conquest by the race involves the development of ages. It is conceivable, however, that the practice of Yoga by a great number of men and persistence in the practice by their descendants might bring about profound changes in human psychology and, by stamping these changes into body and brain through heredity, evolve a superior race which would endure and by the law of the survival of the fittest eliminate the weaker kinds of humanity. Just as the rudimentary mind of the animal has been evolved into the fine instrument of the human being so the rudiments of higher force and faculty in the present race might evolve into the perfect buddhi of the Yogin.
Yo yacchraddha sa eva sa. According as is a mans fixed and complete belief, that he is,not immediately always but sooner or later, by the law that makes the psychical tend inevitably to express itself in the material. The will is the agent by which all these changes are made and old saskras replaced by new, and the will cannot act without faith. The question then arises whether mind is the ultimate force or there is another which communicates with the outside world through the mind. Is the mind the agent or simply the instrument? If the mind be all, then it is only animals that can have the power to evolve; but this does not accord with the laws of the world as we know them. The tree evolves, the clod evolves, everything evolves Even in animals it is evident that mind is not all in the sense of being the ultimate expression of existence or the ultimate force in Nature. It seems to be all only because that which is all expresses itself in the mind and passes everything through it for the sake of manifestation. That which we call mind is a medium which pervades the world. Otherwise we could not have that instantaneous and electrical action of mind upon mind of which human experience is full and of which the new phenomena of hypnotism, telepathy etc. are only fresh proofs. There must be contact, there must be interpenetration if we are to account for these phenomena on any reasonable theory. Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument. There is an ulterior force which works through this subtle medium called mind. An animal species develops, according to the modern theory, under the subtle influence of the environment. The environment supplies a need and those who satisfy the need develop a new species which survives because it is more fit. This is not the result of any intellectual perception of the need nor of a resolve to develop the necessary changes, but of a desire, often though not always a mute, inarticulate and unthought desire. That desire attracts a force which satisfies it What is that force? The tendency of the psychical desire to manifest in the material change is one term in the equation; the force which develops the change in response to the desire is another. We have a will beyond mind which dictates the change, we have a force beyond mind which effects it. According to Hindu philosophy the will is the Jiva, the Purusha, the self in the nandakoa acting through vijna, universal or transcendental mind; this is what we call spirit. The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action. Behind both is the single Self of the universe which contains both Jiva and Prakriti, spirit and material energy. Yoga puts these ultimate existences within us in touch with each other and by stilling the activity of the saskras or associations in mind and body enables them to act swiftly, victoriously, and as the world calls it, miraculously. In reality there is no such thing as a miracle; there are only laws and processes which are not yet understood.
Yoga is therefore no dream, no illusion of mystics. It is known that we can alter the associations of mind and body temporarily and that the mind can alter the conditions of the body partially. Yoga asserts that these things can be done permanently and completely. For the body conquest of disease, pain and material obstructions, for the mind liberation from bondage to past experience and the heavier limitations of space and time, for the heart victory over sin and grief and fear, for the spirit unclouded bliss, strength and illumination, this is the gospel of Yoga, is the goal to which Hinduism points humanity.
1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
The history of the formulation of the laws of motion is
fascinating, if only because of the difficulties Galileo and
--
tem? ... When the laws of thermodynamics are applied to
living organisms there seems to be a problem, writes Paul
--
order increases. This is the opposite of the second laws bid
ding. The growth of an embryo, the formation of a DNA
--
everything had come about by the universal laws and con
stants, obeying Chance. The following are two examples of
--
nothing courtesy of the force of gravity, and the laws of
nature are an accident of the particular slice of universe we
1.06 - Dhyana and Samadhi, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
This, in short, is the idea of Samadhi. What is its application? The application is here. The field of reason, or of the conscious workings of the mind, is narrow and limited. There is a little circle within which human reason must move. It cannot go beyond. Every attempt to go beyond is impossible, yet it is beyond this circle of reason that there lies all that humanity holds most dear. All these questions, whether there is an immortal soul, whether there is a God, whether there is any supreme intelligence guiding this universe or not, are beyond the field of reason. Reason can never answer these questions. What does reason say? It says, "I am agnostic; I do not know either yea or nay." Yet these questions are so important to us. Without a proper answer to them, human life will be purposeless. All our ethical theories, all our moral attitudes, all that is good and great in human nature, have been moulded upon answers that have come from beyond the circle. It is very important, therefore, that we should have answers to these questions. If life is only a short play, if the universe is only a "fortuitous combination of atoms," then why should I do good to another? Why should there be mercy, justice, or fellow-feeling? The best thing for this world would be to make hay while the sun shines, each man for himself. If there is no hope, why should I love my brother, and not cut his throat? If there is nothing beyond, if there is no freedom, but only rigorous dead laws, I should only try to make myself happy here. You will find people saying nowadays that they have utilitarian grounds as the basis of morality. What is this basis? Procuring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number. Why should I do this? Why should I not produce the greatest unhappiness to the greatest number, if that serves my purpose? How will utilitarians answer this question? How do you know what is right, or what is wrong? I am impelled by my desire for happiness, and I fulfil it, and it is in my nature; I know nothing beyond. I have these desires, and must fulfil them; why should you complain? Whence come all these truths about human life, about morality, about the immortal soul, about God, about love and sympathy, about being good, and, above all, about being unselfish?
All ethics, all human action and all human thought, hang upon this one idea of unselfishness. The whole idea of human life can be put into that one word, unselfishness. Why should we be unselfish? Where is the necessity, the force, the power, of my being unselfish? You call yourself a rational man, a utilitarian; but if you do not show me a reason for utility, I say you are irrational. Show me the reason why I should not be selfish. To ask one to be unselfish may be good as poetry, but poetry is not reason. Show me a reason. Why shall I be unselfish, and why be good? Because Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so say so does not weigh with me. Where is the utility of my being unselfish? My utility is to be selfish if utility means the greatest amount of happiness. What is the answer? The utilitarian can never give it. The answer is that this world is only one drop in an infinite ocean, one link in an infinite chain. Where did those that preached unselfishness, and taught it to the human race, get this idea? We know it is not instinctive; the animals, which have instinct, do not know it. Neither is it reason; reason does not know anything about these ideas. Whence then did they come?
1.06 - Hymns of Parashara, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
of all things that are, he who knows the laws of the divine
workings and knows the birth of the human being.
1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Thus the ancient Hindoo law-book called _The laws of Manu_ describes
as follows the effects of a good king's reign: "In that country
1.06 - On Induction, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
It is obvious that if we are asked why we believe that the sun will rise to-morrow, we shall naturally answer 'Because it always has risen every day'. We have a firm belief that it will rise in the future, because it has risen in the past. If we are challenged as to why we believe that it will continue to rise as heretofore, we may appeal to the laws of motion: the earth, we shall say, is a freely rotating body, and such bodies do not cease to rotate unless something interferes from outside, and there is nothing outside to interfere with the earth between now and to-morrow. Of course it might be doubted whether we are quite certain that there is nothing outside to interfere, but this is not the interesting doubt. The interesting doubt is as to whether the laws of motion will remain in operation until to-morrow. If this doubt is raised, we find ourselves in the same position as when the doubt about the sunrise was first raised.
The _only_ reason for believing that the laws of motion will remain in operation is that they have operated hitherto, so far as our knowledge of the past enables us to judge. It is true that we have a greater body of evidence from the past in favour of the laws of motion than we have in favour of the sunrise, because the sunrise is merely a particular case of fulfilment of the laws of motion, and there are countless other particular cases. But the real question is: Do _any_ number of cases of a law being fulfilled in the past afford evidence that it will be fulfilled in the future? If not, it becomes plain that we have no ground whatever for expecting the sun to rise to-morrow, or for expecting the bread we shall eat at our next meal not to poison us, or for any of the other scarcely conscious expectations that control our daily lives. It is to be observed that all such expectations are only _probable_; thus we have not to seek for a proof that they _must_ be fulfilled, but only for some reason in favour of the view that they are _likely_ to be fulfilled.
Now in dealing with this question we must, to begin with, make an important distinction, without which we should soon become involved in hopeless confusions. Experience has shown us that, hitherto, the frequent repetition of some uniform succession or coexistence has been a
--
The problem we have to discuss is whether there is any reason for believing in what is called 'the uniformity of nature'. The belief in the uniformity of nature is the belief that everything that has happened or will happen is an instance of some general law to which there are no exceptions. The crude expectations which we have been considering are all subject to exceptions, and therefore liable to disappoint those who entertain them. But science habitually assumes, at least as a working hypothesis, that general rules which have exceptions can be replaced by general rules which have no exceptions. 'Unsupported bodies in air fall' is a general rule to which balloons and aeroplanes are exceptions. But the laws of motion and the law of gravitation, which account for the fact that most bodies fall, also account for the fact that balloons and aeroplanes can rise; thus the laws of motion and the law of gravitation are not subject to these exceptions.
The belief that the sun will rise to-morrow might be falsified if the earth came suddenly into contact with a large body which destroyed its rotation; but the laws of motion and the law of gravitation would not be infringed by such an event. The business of science is to find uniformities, such as the laws of motion and the law of gravitation, to which, so far as our experience extends, there are no exceptions.
In this search science has been remarkably successful, and it may be conceded that such uniformities have held hitherto. This brings us back to the question: Have we any reason, assuming that they have always held in the past, to suppose that they will hold in the future?
It has been argued that we have reason to know that the future will resemble the past, because what was the future has constantly become the past, and has always been found to resemble the past, so that we really have experience of the future, namely of times which were formerly future, which we may call past futures. But such an argument really begs the very question at issue. We have experience of past futures, but not of future futures, and the question is: Will future futures resemble past futures? This question is not to be answered by an argument which starts from past futures alone. We have therefore still to seek for some principle which shall enable us to know that the future will follow the same laws as the past.
The reference to the future in this question is not essential. The same question arises when we apply the laws that work in our experience to past things of which we have no experience--as, for example, in geology, or in theories as to the origin of the Solar System. The question we really have to ask is: 'When two things have been found to be often associated, and no instance is known of the one occurring without the other, does the occurrence of one of the two, in a fresh instance, give any good ground for expecting the other?' On our answer to this question must depend the validity of the whole of our expectations as to the future, the whole of the results obtained by induction, and in fact practically all the beliefs upon which our daily life is based.
It must be conceded, to begin with, that the fact that two things have been found often together and never apart does not, by itself, suffice to _prove_ demonstratively that they will be found together in the next case we examine. The most we can hope is that the oftener things are found together, the more probable it becomes that they will be found together another time, and that, if they have been found together often enough, the probability will amount _almost_ to certainty. It can never quite reach certainty, because we know that in spite of frequent repetitions there sometimes is a failure at the last, as in the case of the chicken whose neck is wrung. Thus probability is all we ought to seek.
1.06 - On Thought, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You will observe within yourself certain thoughts that are stronger and more tenacious than others, thoughts concerning social usages, customs, moral rules and even general laws that govern earth and man.
They are your opinions on these subjects or at least those you profess and by which you try to act.
--
Since we have goodwill and endeavour to be integrally sincere, that is, to make our actions conform to our thoughts, we are now convinced that we act according to mental laws we receive from outside, not after having maturely considered and analysed them, not by deliberately and consciously receiving them, but because unconsciously we are subjected to them through atavism, by our upbringing and education, and above all because we are dominated by a collective suggestion which is so powerful, so overwhelming, that very few succeed in avoiding it altogether.
How far we are from the mental individuality we want to acquire!
1.06 - Origin of the four castes, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
gu is the seventh, and kulattha, pulse, the eighth: the others are, Syāmāka, a sort of panic; Nīvāra, uñcultivated rice; Jarttila, wild sesamum; Gavedukā (coix); Markata, wild panic; and (a plant called) the seed or barley of the Bambu (Venu-yava). These, cultivated or wild, are the fourteen grains that were produced for purposes of offering in sacrifice; and sacrifice (the cause of rain) is their origin also: they again, with sacrifice, are the great cause of the perpetuation of the human race, as those understand who can discriminate cause and effect. Thence sacrifices were offered daily; the performance of which, oh best of Munis, is of essential service to mankind, and expiates the offences of those by whom they are observed. Those, however, in whose hearts the dross of sin derived from Time (Kāla) was still more developed, assented not to sacrifices, but reviled both them and all that resulted from them, the gods, and the followers of the Vedas. Those abusers of the Vedas, of evil disposition and conduct, and seceders from the path of enjoined duties, were plunged in wickedness[8]. The means of subsistence having been provided for the beings he had created, Brahmā prescribed laws suited to their station and faculties, the duties of the several castes and orders[9], and the regions of those of the different castes who were observant of their duties. The heaven of the Pitris is the region of devout Brahmans. The sphere of Indra, of Kṣetriyas who fly not from the field. The region of the winds is assigned to the Vaisyas who are diligent in their occupations and submissive. Śūdras are elevated to the sphere of the Gandharvas. Those Brahmans who lead religious lives go to the world of the eighty-eight thousand saints: and that of the seven Ṛṣis is the seat of pious anchorets and hermits. The world of ancestors is that of respectable householders: and the region of Brahmā is the asylum of religious mendicants[10]. The imperishable region of the Yogis is the highest seat of Viṣṇu, where they perpetually meditate upon the supreme being, with minds intent on him alone: the sphere where they reside, the gods themselves cannot behold. The sun, the moon, the planets, shall repeatedly be, and cease to be; but those who internally repeat the mystic adoration of the divinity, shall never know decay. For those who neglect their duties, who revile the Vedas, and obstruct religious rites, the places assigned after death are the terrific regions of darkness, of deep gloom, of fear, and of great terror; the fearful hell of sharp swords, the hell of scourges and of a waveless sea[11].
Footnotes and references:
1.06 - The Breaking of the Limits, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
So we looked intently right and left: where is me, who is me?... There is no me! Not a trace, not a single ripple of it. What is the use? There is this little shadow in front, which appropriated and piled up feelings, thoughts, powers, plans, like a beggar afraid of being robbed, afraid of destitution; it hoarded desperately on its island, yet kept dying of thirst, a perpetual thirst in the middle of the lovely sheet of water; it kept building lines of defense and fortresses against that overwhelming vastness. But we left the leaden island; we let the stronghold fall, which was not so strong as all that. We entered another current that seemed inexhaustible, a treasure giving itself unsparingly: why should we hold back anything from the present minute when at the next one there were yet other riches? Why should we think or plan anything when life organized itself according to another plan, which foiled all the old plans and, sometimes, for a second, in a sort of ripple of laughter, let us catch a glimpse of an unexpected marvel, a sudden freedom, a complete disengagement from the old program, a light and unfettered little law that opened all doors, toppled the ineluctable consequences and all the old iron laws with the flick of a finger, and left us stunned for a minute, on the threshold of an inconceivable expanse of sunlight, as though we had stepped into another solar system which is perhaps not a system at all as if breaking the mechanical limits inside had caused the same breaking of the mechanical limits outside. Maybe because the Machinery we are facing is one and the same: The world of man is what he thinks it; its laws are the result of his own constraint.
Yet this other way of being is not without logic, and that logic is what we should try to capture, if possible, if we want to pass consciously into the other state, not only in our inner life but in our outer one as well. We must know the rules of the passage.
To tell the truth, they do not reveal themselves easily because they are too simple. It takes tireless experimenting, looking, observing, and above all above all looking at the microscopic. We imagine that the great primates of the past that were uncertainly progressing toward manhood must have discovered the secret of the other state gradually, in thousands of little split seconds, when they noticed that the mysterious little vibration that came between them and their mechanical act had the power to make their gesture and the result of their gesture different: a nonmaterial principle was surreptitiously starting to change matter and the laws of tree climbing. And, we further image, they were perhaps eventually struck by the insignificance of the movement that triggered such formidable consequences (which is why it escaped them for so long; it was too simple): It never concerned itself with big things, the great affairs of apes, but with minuscule gestures, the chance pebble one picks up on the edge of the path and holds a moment in one's palm, the ray of sun playing on one young sapling among millions of other identical but vain saplings in the forest. But that sapling and that pebble are looked at differently. And everything is in that difference.
Therefore, nothing is too small for the seeker of the new world; the slightest fluctuation of the inner vibratory state is carefully noted, along with the gesture that accompanies it, the circumstance that springs up or the face that passes. But we did say vibration: thoughts have very little to do with this; they belong to the old mental acrobatics and are about as consequential for the new consciousness as tree climbing was for the first thought. It is more like a change of inner coloration, a play of fleeting shadows and sudden sunshine, of lightness and heaviness, a minute alteration of the rhythm sharp jolts or leisurely flowings, abrupt pressures that compel our attention, sudden breaks in the clouds, moments of malaise, inexplicable sinkings. Nothing is useless; there are no vain saplings in the forest, no nuisances, nothing to discard, no unhappy circumstances, no adverse locations, no untimely encounters, no unfortunate accidents everything is good for the seeker of the new world, everything is his field of study.... It almost seems as though everything were given to him so he could learn the trade. Thus, the seeker begins to put his finger on the first rule of the passage: Everything is part of it. Everything points in that direction! There is no nuisance, no foes, no obstacles, no accidents, no negative things everything is supremely positive, gives us signs, invites us to the discovery. There are no insignificant things, only moments of unconsciousness. There are no contrary circumstances, only wrong attitudes.
--
Our look is false because it perceives everything through the distorting prism of its routine, which is multifarious and subtle, made of thousands of years of habits which are as distorting in their deviltry as they are in their wisdom. This is the residue of the anthropoid, which had to erect barriers to protect his little life, his little family, his little clan, draw a line here, a line there, boundary markers, and generally insure his precarious existence by encasing it in a shell of individual and collective self. It follows that there is good and evil, right and wrong, useful and harmful, dos and don'ts we have slowly become entangled in a huge police network in which we scarcely have the spiritual freedom to brea the and even that air is polluted by countless decalogues that are barely one step above the pollution by the carbon monoxide of our engines. In short, we are forever correcting the world. But we are beginning to realize that this correction is not all that straight. Never for a moment do we stop putting our multicolored glasses on things in order to see them in the blue of our hopes, the red of our desires, the yellow of our morals and ready-made laws, and in black, in the endless grayness of a machinery that keeps grinding and grinding forever. The look the true look that will have the power to break free from this mental spell is therefore the one that will be able to cast itself on things clearly, without immediately correcting them: to rest here, upon this face, that circumstance or object the way one gazes at the infinite sea, without trying to solidify something to let itself be carried by that tranquil and fluid infinity, to ba the in what we see, to sink into the thing, until slowly, as if from far away, from the depths of a tranquil sea, there emerges a perception of the thing seen, of the puzzling circumstance or face near us; a perception that is not a thought, not a judgment, hardly a sensation, but is like the true vibratory content of the thing, its special mode of being, its quality of being, its innermost music, its relation with the great Rhythm that flows everywhere. Then, slowly, the seeker of the new world will see a sort of little spark of pure truth in the heart of the object, circumstance, face or accident, a little cry of true being, a true vibration beneath all the black and yellow and blue and red coatings something that is the truth of each thing, each being, each circumstance, each accident, as if the truth were everywhere, every instant, every step, only coated in black. The seeker will thus have put his finger on the second rule of the passage and the greatest of all the simple secrets: Look at the truth that is everywhere.
Armed with these two rules, firmly established in his sunlit position, that quiet clearing, the seeker of the new world moves within a greater self, perhaps infinite, which embraces this street and these beings and all the little gestures of the hour; he moves steadily on, as though carried by a great rhythm, which also carries the beings and things around him, the thousands of encounters sprung from nowhere and disappearing into the distance; he looks at this little walking shadow, which seems to have walked so long, walked for many lives perhaps, repeated the same small gestures, stumbled here and there, exchanged the same comments on the mood of the times; and it all seems so similar, so mixed with sweetness that this street and these beings and passing encounters seem to be cast from the same mold, issued from the depths of night, recalled from the same identical story, under the sky of Egypt or India or Vermont, today, yesterday or five thousand years ago and what has really changed? There is a little being walking with his fire of truth, his fire of need, so intense amid the turmoil of time a fire is perhaps the only thing that is truly he, a call of being from the depths of time, an unchanging cry amid the immense flow of things. And what is he calling for, this being; what is he crying for? Is he not in that vast and growing sunlight, in that rhythm carrying everything? He is and he is not. He has one foot in an untroubled eternity and the other stumbling and groping in the dark the other in a little self of fire yearning to fill this second of time, this empty gesture, this step among thousands of similar steps, with a fullness of true existence as complete as all the millennia put together, with as unfailing an exactness as the crisscrossing of the stars above our heads; yearning for everything to be true, true, completely true and filled with meaning, in this enormous whirlwind of vanity; yearning for this line he crosses, this street he goes down, this hand he extends, this word he utters to be linked to the great flowing of the worlds, to the rhythm of the stars, to the lines, the countless lines that furrow this universe and form a total song, a truth filled with the whole and each fragment of the whole. So he looks at all these little passing things, he fills them with his fire of entreaty, he looks and looks at that little truth everywhere as if it were going to burst out, forced into being by his fire.
--
This new functioning seems indeed to be radically new. It is unlike any of the so-called spiritual or occult powers one can obtain by scaling the ladder of consciousness: these are not prophetic powers, or healing powers, or powers of levitation the thousand and one poor powers that have never healed the world's poverty they are not dazzling lights that comm and men's attention for an instant, only to leave them afterwards as they were before, half asleep and afflicted with cancer; not brief, compelling impositions from above that come and upset the laws of matter, only to let it fall back the next moment into its heavy and stubborn obstinacy. It is a new consciousness new, entirely new, like a young shoot on the tree of the world a direct power from matter to matter, without interference from above, without descending course, distorting intermediary or diluting passage. Truth here answers truth there, instantly and automatically. It is a global consciousness, innumerably and infinitesimally conscious of the truth of each point, each thing, each being, each second. We could say a divine consciousness of matter, the very one that one day cast this seed upon our good earth, and these millions of wild seeds, and these millions of stars, which knows perfectly every moment all the degrees of its unfolding, down to the tiniest leaf everything harmonizes when one harmonizes with the Law. Because, in fact, there is only one Law, a Law of Truth.
Truth is supreme effectiveness.
1.06 - THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
morality contains it Priests and the promulgators of moral laws are the
promoters of this perversion of reason.--Let me give you an example.
1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The principle of subjectivism entering into human thought and action, while necessarily it must make a great difference in the view-point, the motive-power and the character of our living, does not at first appear to make any difference in its factors. Subjectivism and objectivism start from the same data, the individual and the collectivity, the complex nature of each with its various powers of the mind, life and body and the search for the law of their self-fulfilment and harmony. But objectivism proceeding by the analytical reason takes an external and mechanical view of the whole problem. It looks at the world as a thing, an object, a process to be studied by an observing reason which places itself abstractly outside the elements and the sum of what it has to consider and observes it thus from outside as one would an intricate mechanism. The laws of this process are considered as so many mechanical rules or settled forces acting upon the individual or the group which, when they have been observed and distinguished by the reason, have by ones will or by some will to be organised and applied fully much as Science applies the laws it discovers. These laws or rules have to be imposed on the individual by his own abstract reason and will isolated as a ruling authority from his other parts or by the reason and will of other individuals or of the group, and they have to be imposed on the group itself either by its own collective reason and will embodied in some machinery of control which the mind considers as something apart from the life of the group or by the reason and will of some other group external to it or of which it is in some way a part. So the State is viewed in modern political thought as an entity in itself, as if it were something apart from the community and its individuals, something which has the right to impose itself on them and control them in the fulfilment of some idea of right, good or interest which is inflicted on them by a restraining and fashioning power rather than developed in them and by them as a thing towards which their self and nature are impelled to grow. Life is to be managed, harmonised, perfected by an adjustment, a manipulation, a machinery through which it is passed and by which it is shaped. A law outside oneself,outside even when it is discovered or determined by the individual reason and accepted or enforced by the individual will,this is the governing idea of objectivism; a mechanical process of management, ordering, perfection, this is its conception of practice.
Subjectivism proceeds from within and regards everything from the point of view of a containing and developing self-consciousness. The law here is within ourselves; life is a self-creating process, a growth and development at first subconscious, then half-conscious and at last more and more fully conscious of that which we are potentially and hold within ourselves; the principle of its progress is an increasing self-recognition, self-realisation and a resultant self-shaping. Reason and will are only effective movements of the self, reason a process in self-recognition, will a force for self-affirmation and self-shaping. Moreover, reason and intellectual will are only a part of the means by which we recognise and realise ourselves. Subjectivism tends to take a large and complex view of our nature and being and to recognise many powers of knowledge, many forces of effectuation. Even, we see it in its first movement away from the external and objective method discount and belittle the importance of the work of the reason and assert the supremacy of the life-impulse or the essential Will-to-be in opposition to the claims of the intellect or else affirm some deeper power of knowledge, called nowadays the intuition, which sees things in the whole, in their truth, in their profundities and harmonies while intellectual reason breaks up, falsifies, affirms superficial appearances and harmonises only by a mechanical adjustment. But substantially we can see that what is meant by this intuition is the self-consciousness feeling, perceiving, grasping in its substance and aspects rather than analysing in its mechanism its own truth and nature and powers. The whole impulse of subjectivism is to get at the self, to live in the self, to see by the self, to live out the truth of the self internally and externally, but always from an internal initiation and centre.
1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
and in changes of the laws and ... in the coming of prophets and of prophesy-
ing and of miracles in parties and offices of state."
1.06 - The Three Schools of Magick 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Magick investigates the laws of Nature with the idea of making use of them. It only differs from "profane" science by always keeping ahead of it. As Fraser has shown, Magick is science in the tentative stage; but it may be, and often is, more than this. It is science which, for one reason or another, cannot be declared to the profane.
Religion, on the contrary, seeks to ignore the laws of Nature, or to escape them by appeal to a postulated power which is assumed to have laid them down. The religious man is, as such, incapable of understanding what the laws of Nature really are. (They are generalizations from the order of observed fact.)
The History of Magick has never been seriously attempted. For one reason, only initiates pledged to secrecy know much about it; for another, every historian has been talking about some more or less conventional idea of Magick, not of the thing itself. But Magick has led the world from before the beginning of history, if only for the reason that Magick has always been the mother of Science. It is, therefore, of extreme importance that some effort should be made to understand something of the subject; and there is, therefore, no apology necessary for essaying this brief outline of its historical aspects.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
to eliminate enemies or by passing laws. There has to be a transformation
reflections on a song of longing for tara, the infallible
1.07 - BOOK THE SEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
That for old Aeson with the laws of Fate
They would dispense, and leng then his short date;
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
thereby a glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human and
divine. Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion, though
1.07 - On Our Knowledge of General Principles, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
These three laws are samples of self-evident logical principles, but are not really more fundamental or more self-evident than various other similar principles: for instance, the one we considered just now, which states that what follows from a true premiss is true. The name ' laws of thought' is also misleading, for what is important is not the fact that we think in accordance with these laws, but the fact that things behave in accordance with them; in other words, the fact that when we think in accordance with them we think _truly_. But this is a large question, to which we must return at a later stage.
In addition to the logical principles which enable us to prove from a given premiss that something is _certainly_ true, there are other logical principles which enable us to prove, from a given premiss, that there is a greater or less probability that something is true. An example of such principles--perhaps the most important example is the inductive principle, which we considered in the preceding chapter.
--
On the other hand, even that part of our knowledge which is _logically_ independent of experience (in the sense that experience cannot prove it) is yet elicited and caused by experience. It is on occasion of particular experiences that we become aware of the general laws which their connexions exemplify. It would certainly be absurd to suppose that there are innate principles in the sense that babies are born with a knowledge of everything which men know and which cannot be deduced from what is experienced. For this reason, the word 'innate' would not now be employed to describe our knowledge of logical principles. The phrase
'_a priori_' is less objectionable, and is more usual in modern writers.
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
I desist from giving my own impression of the incomparable epic. I have no such competence and though I have been made a poet by the Master I leave it to more efficient authorities. One fact alone makes me dumb with a reverent awe and exalted admiration: the colossal labour Sri Aurobindo put forth to build this unique structure. It reminds me of one of those majestic ancient temples like Konarak or of a Gothic cathedral like Notre Dame before which you stand and stare in speechless ecstasy, your soul takes a flight beyond time and space. Before I knew much about Sri Aurobindo, I asked him in my foolish way, why, himself being the master of inspiration and having all higher planes at his command, sending inspiration to others, should he still have to work so hard? With his consciousness entirely silent, he had only to hitch to the right source and words, images, ideas would tumble down in a Brahmaputra of inspiration! To which he answered in his habitual indulgent tone, perhaps a bit piqued by my facile observation: "The highest planes are not so accommodating as all that. If they were so, why should it be so difficult to bring down and organise the supermind in the physical consciousness? What happy-go-lucky fancy-web-spinning ignoramuses you all are. You speak of silence, consciousness, overmental, supramental, etc. as if they were so many electric buttons you have only to press and there you are. It may be one day, but meanwhile I have to discover everything about the working of all possible modes of electricity, all the laws, possibilities, perils, etc., construct roads of connection and communication, make the whole far-wiring system, try to find out how it can be made foolproof and all that in the course of a single lifetime. And I have to do it while my blessed disciples are firing off their gay or gloomy a priori reasonings at me from a position of entire irresponsibility and expecting me to divulge everything to them not in hints but at length. Lord God in omnibus!"
Then, with regard to hard labour on Savitri, he wrote: "That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular if part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact, Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished; but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment."
1.07 - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4:But what then must be the spiritual position of the personal worker? What is his true relation in dynamic Nature to this one cosmic Being and this one total movement? He is a centre only - a centre of differentiation of the one personal consciousness, a centre of determination of the one total movement; his personality reflects in a wave of persistent individuality the one universal Person, the Transcendent, the Eternal. In the Ignorance it is always a broken and distorted reflection because the crest of the wave which is our conscious waking self throws back only an imperfect and falsified similitude of the divine Spirit. All our opinions, standards, formations, principles are only attempts to represent in this broken, reflecting and distorting mirror something of the universal and progressive total action and its many-sided movement towards some ultimate self-revelation of the Divine. Our mind represents it as best it can with a narrow approximation that becomes less and less inadequate in proportion as its thought grows in wideness and light and power; but it is always an approximation and not even a true partial figure. The Divine Will acts through the aeons to reveal progressively not only in the unity of the cosmos, not only in the collectivity of living and thinking creatures, but in the soul of each individual something of its divine Mystery and the hidden truth of the Infinite. Therefore there is in the cosmos, in the collectivity, in the individual, a rooted instinct or belief in its own perfectibility, a constant drive towards an ever increasing and more adequate and more harmonious self-development nearer to the secret truth of things. This effort is represented to the constructing mind of man by standards of knowledge, feeling, character, aesthesis and action, - rules, ideals, norms and laws that he essays to turn into universal dharmas.
5:If we are to be free in the spirit, if we are to be subject only to the supreme Truth, we must discard the idea that our mental or moral laws are binding on the Infinite or that there can be anything sacrosanct, absolute or eternal even in the highest of our existing standards of conduct. To form higher and higher temporary standards as long as they are needed is to serve the Divine in his world march; to erect rigidly an absolute standard is to attempt the erection of a barrier against the eternal waters in their onflow. Once the nature-bound soul realises this truth, it is delivered from the duality of good and evil. For good is all that helps the individual and the world towards their divine fullness, and evil is all that retards or breaks up that increasing perfection. But since the perfection is progressive, evolutive in Time, good and evil are also shifting quantities and change from time to time their meaning and value. This thing which is evil now and in its present shape must be abandoned was once helpful and necessary to the general and individual progress. That other thing which we now regard as evil may well become in another form and arrangement an element in some future perfection. And on the spiritual level we transcend even this distinction; for we discover the purpose and divine utility of all these things that we call good and evil. Then have we to reject the falsehood in them and all that is distorted, ignorant and obscure in that which is called good no less than in that which is called evil. For we have then to accept only the true and the divine, but to make no other distinction in the eternal processes.
6:To those who can act only on a rigid standard, to those who can feel only the human and not the divine values, this truth may seem to be a dangerous concession which is likely to destroy the very foundation of morality, confuse all conduct and establish only chaos. Certainly, if the choice must be between an eternal and unchanging ethics and no ethics at all, it would have that result for man in his ignorance. But even on the human level, if we have light enough and flexibility enough to recognise that a standard of conduct may be temporary and yet necessary for its time and to observe it faithfully until it can be replaced by a better, then we suffer no such loss, but lose only the fanaticism of an imperfect and intolerant virtue. In its place we gain openness and a power of continual moral progression, charity, the capacity to enter into an understanding sympathy with all this world of struggling and stumbling creatures and by that charity a better right and a greater strength to help it upon its way. In the end where the human closes and the divine commences, where the mental disappears into the supramental consciousness and the finite precipitates itself into the infinite, all evil disappears into a transcendent divine Good which becomes universal on every plane of consciousness that it touches.
--
18:For, long after the individual has become partially free, a moral organism capable of conscious growth, aware of an inward life, eager for spiritual progress, society continues to be external in its methods, a material and economic organism, mechanical, more intent upon status and self-preservation than on growth and self-perfection. The greatest present triumph of the thinking and progressive individual over the instinctive and static society has been the power he has acquired by his thoughtwill to compel it to think also, to open itself to the idea of social justice and righteousness, communal sympathy and mutual compassion, to feel after the rule of reason rather than blind custom as the test of its institutions and to look on the mental and moral assent of its individuals as at least one essential element in the validity of its laws. Ideally at least, to consider light rather than force as its sanction, moral development and not vengeance or restraint as the object even of its penal action, is becoming just possible to the communal mind. The greatest future triumph of the thinker will come when he can persuade the individual integer and the collective whole to rest their life-relation and its union and stability upon a free and harmonious consent and selfadaptation, and shape and govern the external by the internal truth rather than to constrain the inner spirit by the tyranny of the external form and structure.
19:But even this success that he has gained is rather a thing in potentiality than in actual accomplishment. There is always a disharmony and a discord between the moral law in the individual and the law of his needs and desires, between the moral law proposed to society and the physical and vital needs, desires, customs, prejudices, interests and passions of the caste, the clan, the religious community, the society, the nation. The moralist erects in vain his absolute ethical standard and calls upon all to be faithful to it without regard to consequences. To him the needs and desires of the individual are invalid if they are in conflict with the moral law, and the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by his conscience. This is his absolute solution for the individual that he shall cherish no desires and claims that are not consistent with love, truth and justice. He demands from the community or nation that it shall hold all things cheap, even its safety and its most pressing interests, in comparison with truth, justice, humanity and the highest good of the peoples.
1.07 - The Continuity of Consciousness, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
himself, from seed to fruit. The effort required for concentration and meditation must therefore be carefully and accurately maintained, for it contains the laws governing the germination and fruition of the higher human soul-being. The latter must appear at its birth as a harmonious, well-proportioned organism. Through an error in following the instructions, no such normal being will come to existence in the spiritual spheres, but a miscarriage incapable of life.
That this higher soul-being should be born during deep sleep will be easily grasped, for if that delicate organism lacking all power of resistance chanced to appear during physical every-day life it could not prevail against the harsh and powerful processes of this life. Its activity would be of no account against that of the body. During sleep, however, when the body rests in as far as its activity is dependent on sense perception, the activity of the higher soul, at first so delicate and inconspicuous, can come into evidence. Here again the student must bear in mind that these experiences during sleep may not be regarded as fully valid knowledge, so long as he is not in a position to carry over his awakened higher soul
1.07 - The Fire of the New World, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
And we return again to our question: What is this new consciousness? Where did it come from if it is not the fruit of our precious brain?... At bottom, the dread of the materialist is to find himself suddenly face to face, without warning, with a God to adore, and we certainly sympathize with him when we see the puerile pictures the religions have painted of Him. The apes, too, if they had such an idea, would have painted as childish a picture of the supernatural and divine powers of man. Is to be worshipped what makes us wider, more beautiful, more sunlit; and ultimately, that wideness, beauty and sunlight are accessible to us only because they are already there in us, otherwise we would not recognize them. Only the like recognizes the like. This growing likeness is the only godhead worthy of worship. But we want to believe that it does not stop with the gilded mediocrity of our scientific feats, any more than it stopped with the prowess of the Pithecanthropus. This new consciousness is therefore not so new; it is our look which is new, the likeness which is growing more perfect (we should perhaps say the world's exactitude which is drawing closer). This world, as we now all know, is not as it appears; this matter, so solid to our eyes, this water so crystalline, this exquisite rose vanish into something else, and the rose never was rose, nor the water crystalline; this water flows and bubbles as much as this table and this rock, and nothing is immobile. We have widened our field of vision. But what destroyed the rose? Which is right, the microscope or our eyes? Probably both, and neither completely. The microscope neither cancels nor negates our superficial vision; it only touches another degree of reality, a second level of the same thing. And because the microscope sees differently, it can act differently and open up to us a whole spectrum of rays that are going to change our surface. But there may be a third, unexplored level of the same eternal Thing yet another look, for what is new under the stars except our look at the stars? And most likely there are still more levels, infinitely more levels awaiting our discovery, for what could possibly put a final stop to the great efflorescence? There is no stop, no distant Goal; there is our growing look and a Goal which is here at each instant. There is a great blossoming gradually stripping its marvel, petal by petal. And each new look changes our world and all the surface laws as drastically as the laws of Einstein have changed Newton's world. To see differently is to be able to do differently. That third level is the new consciousness. And it cancels neither the rose nor the microscope nothing is canceled in the end, except, gradually, our folly. It only links that rose to the great total blossoming, and that bubbling water, that chance pebble, that little being alone in his corner, to the great flow of the one and only Power which gradually molds us into the golden likeness of a great inner Look. And perhaps it will open for us the door to less monstrous miracles: tiny natural miracles that bring the great Goal alive at each instant and reveal the totality of the marvel in one point.
But where is the mysterious key to that third level? In reality, it is not mysterious after all, although it is full of mysteries. It does not depend on complicated instruments, does not hide under a secret knowledge, does not fall from the sky for the elect it is there, almost visible to the naked eye, utterly simple and natural. It has been there since the beginning of time, in that seed harboring a smoldering fire: a need to reach out and take; in that great nebula gathering its grains of atoms: a need to grow and be; under those sleeping waters already simmering with an impatient fire of life: a need for air and open space. And everything began to move, impelled by the same fire: the heliotrope toward the sun, the dove toward its companion and man toward we know not what. An immense Need in the heart of the worlds, all the way to the galaxies out there, to the limits of Andromeda, which drew each other into a mortal gravitational embrace. That need we see at our own level; it is small or less small, it asks for air or sunlight, a companion and children, books, art and music, objects by the millions but it has really only one object, it asks for only one music, a single sun and a single air. It is a need for infinity. For it was born out of infinity. And so long as it does not meet its one object, it will not stop, nor will the galaxies stop devouring each other, nor men struggling and toiling to seize the one thing they think they do not have, but which pushes and prods inside, poking its unsatisfied fire until we attain the ultimate satisfaction and at once the plenitude of millions of vain objects, of an ephemeral rose and a trivial little gesture. It is this Fire that is the key, because it is born out of the supreme Power that set the world on fire; it is this Fire that sees, because it is born out of the supreme Vision that conceived this seed; it is this Fire that knows, because it recognizes itself everywhere, in things and beings, in the pebble and the stars. This is the Fire of the new world which burns in the heart of man, This that wakes in the sleepers, says the Upanishad.14 And it will not rest until everything is restored to its full truth, and the world to its joy, for it is born of Joy and for Joy.
But, at first, this self of fire is mixed with its obscure undertakings; it toils and desires, struggles and strains; it crawls with the worm, sniffs the wind for the scent of its prey. It has to keep alive, to survive. It feels the world with its small antennae; it sees in fragments, according to its needs. In man, the conscious animal, it widens its scope; it still feels, adds up its pieces, systematizes its data: it makes laws, scholarly treatises, gospels. Yet, behind, there is that self of fire pushing, the something that will not quit, that grows impatient with laws and systems and gospels, that senses a wall behind each captured truth, each framed law, that senses a trap closing on each discovery, as if capturing were to be captured, trapped; there is the something that directs the antenna, which grows impatient even with the antenna, impatient with levers and all the machinery for apprehending the world, as if that machinery and that antenna and that look draped one last veil over the world and prevented it from attaining its naked reality. There is that cry of being in the depths which yearns to see, which really so much needs to see and come out in the open at last: the master of the antenna and not its slave. As if, really, a master had been confined there forever, arduously casting out its pseudopods, its tentacles and all its multicolored nets to try to join with the outside. Then, one day, under the pressure of that fire of need, the machinery begins to crack. Everything cracks: laws, gospels, knowledge and all the jurisprudence of the world. We've had enough! Even of the best we've had enough. It is still a prison, a trap thoughts, books, art and our-Father-which-art-in-heaven. Something else, something else! Oh, something we so much need, which is without a name, except for its blind need!... So we demechanize with the same fury with which we had mechanized. Everything is burned, nothing is left, save that pure fire. That fire which does not know, does not see anything, nothing at all anymore, not even the little fragments it had so conscientiously gathered together. It is an almost painful fire. It struggles and toils and searches and bumps into things; it wants truth, it wants the other thing, as once it wanted objects, the millions of objects of this world, and strained to get. And little by little, everything is consumed. Even the desire for the other thing, even the hope of ever clasping that impossible pure truth, even personal effort melts away; everything slips between our fingers.
A pure little flame is left.
1.07 - The Ideal Law of Social Development, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
True, his life and growth are for the sake of the world, but he can help the world by his life and growth only in proportion as he can be more and more freely and widely his own real self. True, he has to use the ideals, disciplines, systems of cooperation which he finds upon his path; but he can only use them well, in their right way and to their right purpose if they are to his life means towards something beyond them and not burdens to be borne by him for their own sake or despotic controls to be obeyed by him as their slave or subject; for though laws and disciplines strive to be the tyrants of the human soul, their only purpose is to be its instruments and servants and when their use is over they have to be rejected and broken. True it is, too, that he has to gather in his material from the minds and lives of his fellow-men around him and to make the most of the experience of humanitys past ages and not confine himself in a narrow mentality; but this he can only do successfully by making all this his own through assimilation of it to the principle of his own nature and through its subservience to the forward call of his enlarging future. The liberty claimed by the struggling human mind for the individual is no mere egoistic challenge and revolt, however egoistically or with one-sided exaggeration and misapplication it may sometimes be advanced; it is the divine instinct within him, the law of the Self, its claim to have room and the one primary condition for its natural self-unfolding.
Individual man belongs not only to humanity in general, his nature is not only a variation of human nature in general, but he belongs also to his race-type, his class-type, his mental, vital, physical, spiritual type in which he resembles some, differs from others. According to these affinities he tends to group himself in Churches, sects, communities, classes, coteries, associations whose life he helps, and by them he enriches the life of the large economic, social and political group or society to which he belongs. In modern times this society is the nation. By his enrichment of the national life, though not in that way only, he helps the total life of humanity. But it must be noted that he is not limited and cannot be limited by any of these groupings; he is not merely the noble, merchant, warrior, priest, scholar, artist, cultivator or artisan, not merely the religionist or the worldling or the politician. Nor can he be limited by his nationality; he is not merely the Englishman or the Frenchman, the Japanese or the Indian; if by a part of himself he belongs to the nation, by another he exceeds it and belongs to humanity. And even there is a part of him, the greatest, which is not limited by humanity; he belongs by it to God and to the world of all beings and to the godheads of the future. He has indeed the tendency of self-limitation and subjection to his environment and group, but he has also the equally necessary tendency of expansion and transcendence of environment and groupings. The individual animal is dominated entirely by his type, subordinated to his group when he does group himself; individual man has already begun to share something of the infinity, complexity, free variation of the Self we see manifested in the world. Or at least he has it in possibility even if there be as yet no sign of it in his organised surface nature. There is here no principle of a mere shapeless fluidity; it is the tendency to enrich himself with the largest possible material constantly brought in, constantly assimilated and changed by the law of his individual nature into stuff of his growth and divine expansion.
1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
As a consequence of these laws, atoms having a certain definite number of electrons, namely 6, 26 to 28 . . . have certain special properties which show themselves in the phenomenon of life, magnetism, and radio-activity respectively."
These numbers 6, 26, 27, and 28 all link up quite definitely with conceptions held in the Qabalistic scheme to sym- bolize the same qualities recognized by scientific thinkers to inhere in atoms with the number of electrons just men- tioned. The carbon atom with its six electrons can be attri buted harmoniously to the sixth Sephirah as was done above, and we may now examine the other three numbers with the view of ascertaining in what way they connect with the philosophic principles heretofore outlined.
1.07 - The Magic Wand, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
By means of the electromagnetic fluid, which radiates as a brilliant light from the rod, any realization on the physical world will be possible. Initiates usually apply this wand for influencing sick people and for all magnetic phenomena. This magic electromagnetic wand is, by the Law of the Universe, an excellent condenser with the same kind of oscillation as the universe, but in a most subtle way. The person meditating on this will be able to find other methods easily due to the universal laws. The magician will, for instance, be able to either pull the fluid out of the universe like an antenna and store it in his body, or to transfer it by force of imagination to other people, near him or far away.
The wand will soon be an indispensible implement for the magician, for the positive and negative powers concentrated in it will help him to create the necessary oscillation in his electromagnetic fluid.
1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"An insignificant tenant was once engaged in a lawsuit with a big landlord. People realized that there was a powerful man behind the tenant. Perhaps another big landlord was directing the case from behind. Man is an insignificant creature. He cannot fulfil the difficult task of a teacher without receiving power direct from God."
VIJAY: "Don't the teachings of the Brahmo Samaj bring men salvation?"
1.07 - The Prophecies of Nostradamus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
be brought under astrological laws. He was alluding in particu-
lar to Roger Bacon, who had revived the theory that Christianity
1.07 - The Psychic Center, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
and we are not this body either, for its parts are made of Matter, which obeys universal laws greater than ours. What, then, is the element in us that is not our environment, not our family, not our traditions or marriage or job, that is not the play of universal Nature in us or of circumstances, yet gives us a sense of self, even if everything else collapses and especially when everything else has collapsed, at our hour of truth?
In the course of our exploration, we have encountered various centers or levels of consciousness, and we have seen that a consciousness-force was alive behind each of these centers,
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Modern " spiritualism ", for instance, attempted to con- struct a noumenal world on the model of the phenomenal ; but it wanted to prove at all costs that the " other world " is logical from our standpoint ; that the same laws operated there in much the same way they do here, and that the other world " is nothing more or less than a copy and an extension of ours. It is, in short, a crude and barbaric formulation of the unknown.
Positive Philosophy naturally perceived the absurdity of all these dualistic theses, but having no power to expand or
1.08 - BOOK THE EIGHTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
To curb the conquer'd, and new laws devise,
The fleet, by his command, with hoisted sails,
1.08 - Civilisation and Barbarism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is true that the first tendencies of Science have been materialistic and its indubitable triumphs have been confined to the knowledge of the physical universe and the body and the physical life. But this materialism is a very different thing from the old identification of the self with the body. Whatever its apparent tendencies, it has been really an assertion of man the mental being and of the supremacy of intelligence. Science in its very nature is knowledge, is intellectuality, and its whole work has been that of the Mind turning its gaze upon its vital and physical frame and environment to know and conquer and dominate Life and Matter. The scientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them. Life and Matter are after all our standing-ground, our lower basis and to know their processes and their own proper possibilities and the opportunities they give to the human being is part of the knowledge necessary for transcending them. Life and the body have to be exceeded, but they have also to be utilised and perfected. Neither the laws nor the possibilities of physical Nature can be entirely known unless we know also the laws and possibilities of supraphysical Nature; therefore the development of new and the recovery of old mental and psychic sciences have to follow upon the perfection of our physical knowledge, and that new era is already beginning to open upon us. But the perfection of the physical sciences was a prior necessity and had to be the first field for the training of the mind of man in his new endeavour to know Nature and possess his world.
Even in its negative work the materialism of Science had a task to perform which will be useful in the end to the human mind in its exceeding of materialism. But Science in its heyday of triumphant Materialism despised and cast aside Philosophy; its predominance discouraged by its positive and pragmatic turn the spirit of poetry and art and pushed them from their position of leadership in the front of culture; poetry entered into an era of decline and decadence, adopted the form and rhythm of a versified prose and lost its appeal and the support of all but a very limited audience, painting followed the curve of Cubist extravagance and espoused monstrosities of shape and suggestion; the ideal receded and visible matter of fact was enthroned in its place and encouraged an ugly realism and utilitarianism; in its war against religious obscurantism Science almost succeeded in slaying religion and the religious spirit. But philosophy had become too much a thing of abstractions, a seeking for abstract truths in a world of ideas and words rather than what it should be, a discovery of the real reality of things by which human existence can learn its law and aim and the principle of its perfection. Poetry and art had become too much cultured pursuits to be ranked among the elegances and ornaments of life, concerned with beauty of words and forms and imaginations, rather than a concrete seeing and significant presentation of truth and beauty and of the living idea and the secret divinity in things concealed by the sensible appearances of the universe. Religion itself had become fixed in dogmas and ceremonies, sects and churches and had lost for the most part, except for a few individuals, direct contact with the living founts of spirituality. A period of negation was necessary. They had to be driven back and in upon themselves, nearer to their own eternal sources. Now that the stress of negation is past and they are raising their heads, we see them seeking for their own truth, reviving by virtue of a return upon themselves and a new self-discovery. They have learned or are learning from the example of Science that Truth is the secret of life and power and that by finding the truth proper to themselves they must become the ministers of human existence.
1.08 - Information, Language, and Society, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
ity, from private criticism by the laws of libel and the possession
of the means of communication, that ruthlessness can reach its
1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
contradiction with the totality of the laws of the Manifesta-
tion, that happens just at the last moment at the ultimate
1.08 - The Change of Vision, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Is this to say that nobody has ever touched this Truth? Of course it has been touched, but on the mental heights, in rare illuminations that left a trace here or there, on a Buddha's face in Indonesia, an Athena in the Par thenon, a smile in Rheims, in some marvelous Upanishads, a few words of grace that have survived as a golden and adorable anachronism, hardly real amidst our concrete structures and civilized savagery; it has been touched in the depths of the heart, stammered out by Saint Francis of Assisi or Sri Ramakrishna. But then the world goes on, and we all know that the last word belongs to the bomb and to the triumph of the latest democratic hero, who will soon join another one under the same layer of inanity. But it has never been touched in matter; it has never been touched there. And so long as it is not touched there, it will remain what it has always been, a brilliant dream over the chaos of the ages, and the world will go on whirling vainly, adding its discoveries that discover nothing and its pseudo-knowledge that always ends up stifling us. Indeed, we labor under a bizarre delusion: we right a wrong here only to cause another one to sprout there; we seal a crack here only to see the wound open wider somewhere else. And it is always the same wound; there is only one wound in the world, and so long as we do not want to be cured of that ill, our millions of drugs and parliaments and systems and laws millions of laws, on every street corner and right in our mailbox will never cure us or the world's illness. We philanthropize and altruize, we distribute and share and equalize; but our good deeds seem to go hand in hand with our misdeeds, and the misery, the great misery of the world, infiltrates everything and gnaws surreptitiously at our functional homes and empty hearts; our equalizations are the huge, gray uniformity that descends upon the earth, smothering equally the good and the less good, the rich and the poor, the crowds from here or there the great mechanized human crowd, disincarnate, manipulated by a thousand radios and newspapers that scream and rumble all the way up to Himalayan villages. And no news at all. Not a single bit of news in those billions of novelties! Not an iota of novelty under the stars: men suffer and die in cities teeming with mental disorders. But tomorrow will be better, we think, with more machines, more drugs, more red or blue or green crosses, more laws and still more laws to remedy the world's cancer. And we seem to hear, from far, far away in the past, six thousand years in the past, the moving little voice of Lopamudra, the wife of Rishi Agastya: Many autumns have I toiled night and day; the dawns age me, age dims the glory of our bodies...,16 and that of Maitreya echoing her: What shall I do with that by which the nectar of Immortality is not attained?17
Does this mean that we have not progressed? We certainly have not progressed as we imagine. We are not any more human than the Theban or the Athenian, no more advanced than they despite all our machines. As Sri Aurobindo put it, Machinery is necessary to modern humanity because of our incurable barbarism.18 We think we have mastered, but we have mastered nothing at all! Our machines are a testimony to our impotence, a huge prosthesis to correct our incapacity to see far, hear far, penetrate the heart of things and understand instantly and directly. We do not know any better now than ten thousand years ago how to modify matter through willpower (perhaps we even knew it better then), how to illuminate with consciousness and understand through vision. Under all our apparatus, we are less advanced than the animal with its sixth sense and the pygmy of Central Africa. Our machines see better than we, feel better than we, count better than we, and perhaps they will end up living better than we. Matter escapes us completely. It takes a simple power failure for us to revert to the caveman. For progress is not improving the existing world or discovering new procedures: it is a change of consciousness and vision.
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
Literal or mythic Christianity, for example, originating from the magic-mythic and mythic stages of development, and beset by "mythic dissociation," imagines God as a Cosmic Father set above and apart from nature (ontologically divorced), and thus any action on God's part is and must be "supernatural"-a "miraculous" suspension of the laws of nature on behalf of "His children," activities that are all nonetheless variations on turning spinach into potatoes.
This dissociation of "natural" and "supernatural," and a praying, a begging, for the latter to miraculously intervene in the former, Emerson calls "meanness and theft," a vicious craving for commodities:
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Finally, crowning all the others, comes the physical liberation or liberation from the law of material cause and effect. By a total self-mastery, one is no longer a slave of Natures laws which make men act according to subconscious or semi-conscious impulses and maintain them in the rut of ordinary life. With this liberation one can decide in full knowledge the path to be taken, choose the action to be accomplished and free oneself from all blind determinism, so that nothing is allowed to intervene in the course of ones life but the highest will, the truest knowledge, the supramental consciousness.
Bulletin, August 1953
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the great gods of the Veda belong to a higher order than these beings who attach themselves to the individual object and the particular movement. They are great world-powers; they support the wide laws & universal functions of the world. Their dwelling-place is in Swar, the world of pure mind, and they only enter into and are not native to or bound by life & matter.
***
1.08 - The Splitting of the Human Personality during Spiritual Training, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
these especially important experiences, for instance, the meeting with Guardian of the Threshold, will be described in the following chapters. Yet we must realize that the hostile powers are none the less present, even though we know nothing of them. It is true that in this case their relation to man is ordained by higher power, and that this relation alters when the human being consciously enters this world hitherto concealed from him. But at the same time his own existence is enhanced and the circle of his life enriched by a great and new field of experience. A real danger can only arise if the student, through impatience or arrogance, assumes too early a certain independence with regard to the experiences of the higher worlds; if he cannot wait to gain really sufficient insight into the supersensible laws. In these spheres, modesty and humility are far less empty words than in ordinary life. If the student possesses these qualities in the very best sense he may be certain that his ascent into the higher life will be achieved without danger to all that is commonly called health and life. Above all things, no disharmony must ensue between the higher experiences and the events and demands of every-day life. Man's task must be entirely
p. 220
--
After these preliminary observations that should dispel any element of terror, a description of some of the so-called dangers will be given. It is true that great changes take place in the student's finer bodies, as described above. These changes are connected with certain processes in the development of the three fundamental forces of the soul, with willing, feeling, and thinking. Before esoteric training, these forces are subject to a connection ordained by higher cosmic laws. Man's willing, feeling and thinking are not arbitrary. A particular idea arising in the mind is attended by a particular feeling, according to natural laws; or it is followed by a resolution of the will in equally natural sequence. We enter a room, find it stuffy, and open the window. We hear our name called and follow the call. We are questioned and we answer. We perceive an ill-smelling object and experience a feeling of disgust. These are simple connections between thinking, feeling, and willing. When we survey human life we find that everything is built up on such connections. Indeed, life is not termed normal unless such a connection, founded on the laws of human nature, is observed between thinking, feeling
p. 222
and willing. It would be found contrary to these laws if the sight of an ill-smelling object gave anyone pleasure, or if anyone, on being questioned, did not answer. The success anticipated from a right education or fitting instruction is based upon the presumption that a connection between thinking, feeling, and willing, corresponding to human nature, can be established in the pupil. Certain ideas are conveyed to him on the assumption that they will be associated, in regular fashion, with his feelings and volitions.
All this arises from the fact that in the finer soul-vehicles of man the central points of the three forces-thinking, feeling and willing-are connected with each other according to laws. This connection in the finer soul organism has its counterpart in the coarser physical body. In the latter, too, the organs of will are connected according to laws with those of thinking and feeling. A particular thought, therefore, inevitably evokes a feeling or an activity of will. In the course of higher development, the threads interconnecting the three fundamental forces are severed. At first this severance occurs only within the finer soul organism, but at a still higher stage
p. 223
--
Thus the organs of thinking, feeling, and willing become individualized; their connection henceforth is not maintained by laws inherent in themselves, but must be managed by the awakened higher consciousness of the individual. This, then, is the change which the student observes coming over him: that no connection arises of itself between an idea and a feeling or a will-impulse, unless he himself provides one. No impulse urges him from thought to action unless he himself in freedom give rise to this impulse. He can henceforth confront, devoid of feeling, a fact which before his training would have filled him with glowing love or bitter hatred; and he can remain impassive at the thought which formerly
p. 224
--
connection between the soul-forces is maintained as established by higher cosmic laws, no injurious irregularity, in a higher sense, can occur through the predominance of one force or another. Predominating will, for instance, is prevented by the leveling influence of thinking and feeling from lapsing into any particular excesses. When, however, a person of such predominating will undertakes esoteric training, feeling and thinking cease to exert their regular influence on the will when the latter constantly presses on to great exertions of power If, then, such a person is not sufficiently advanced to control completely the higher consciousness and himself restore harmony, the will pursues its own unbridled way, continually overpowering its possessor. Feeling and thought lapse into complete impotence; the individual is scourged by his over-mastering will. A violent nature is the result, rushing from one unbridled action to another.
A second deviation occurs when feeling unduly shakes off its proper control. A person inclined to the revering of others may then diverge into unlimited dependence, to the extent of losing all personal will and thoughts. Instead of higher knowledge,
--
Yet a really serious danger cannot threaten the student until he has acquired the ability to include in his waking consciousness the experiences forthcoming during sleep. As long as there is only the question of illumination of the intervals of sleep, the life of the senses, regulated by universal cosmic laws, reacts during the waking hours
p. 229
1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:IN THE light of this progressive manifestation of the Spirit, first apparently bound in the Ignorance, then free in the power and wisdom of the Infinite, we can better understand the great and crowning injunction of the Gita to the Karmayogin, "Abandoning all dharmas, all principles and laws and rules of conduct, take refuge in me alone." All standards and rules are temporary constructions founded upon the needs of the ego in its transition from Matter to Spirit. These makeshifts have a relative imperativeness so long as we rest satisfied in the stages of transition, content with the physical and vital life, attached to the mental movement, or even fixed in the ranges of the mental plane that are touched by the spiritual lustres. But beyond is the unwalled wideness of a supramental infinite consciousness and there all temporary structures cease. It is not possible to enter utterly into the spiritual truth of the Eternal and Infinite if we have not the faith and courage to trust ourselves into the hands of the Lord of all things and the Friend of all creatures and leave utterly behind us our mental limits and measures. At one moment we must plunge without hesitation, reserve, fear or scruple into the ocean of the free, the infinite, the Absolute. After the Law, Liberty; after the personal, after the general, after the universal standards there is something greater, the impersonal plasticity, the divine freedom, the transcendent force and the supernal impulse. After the strait path of the ascent the wide plateaus on the summit.
2:There are three stages of the ascent, - at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are halflights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
--
5:For, even after he is free, the sadhaka will be in the world and to be in the world is to remain in works. But to remain in works without desire is to act for the good of the world in general or for the kind or the race or for some new creation to be evolved on the earth or some work imposed by the Divine Will within him. And this must be done either in the framework provided by the environment or the grouping in which he is born or placed or else in one which is chosen or created for him by a divine direction. Therefore in our perfection there must be nothing left in the mental being which conflicts with or prevents our sympathy and free self-identification with the kind, the group or whatever collective expression of the Divine he is meant to lead, help or serve. But in the end it must become a free selfidentification through identity with the Divine and not a mental bond or moral tie of union or a vital association dominated by any kind of personal, social, national, communal or credal egoism. If any social law is obeyed, it will not be from physical necessity or from the sense of personal or general interest or for expediency or because of the pressure of the environment or from any sense of duty, but solely for the sake of the Lord of works and because it is felt or known to be the Divine Will that the social law or rule or relation as it stands can still be kept as a figure of the inner life and the minds of men must not be disturbed by its infringement. If, on the other hand, the social law, rule or relation is disregarded, that too will not be for the indulgence of desire, personal will or personal opinion, but because a greater rule is felt that expresses the law of the Spirit or because it is known that there must be in the march of the divine All-Will a movement towards the changing, exceeding or abolition of existing laws and forms for the sake of a freer larger life necessary to the world's progress.
6:There is still left the moral law or the ideal and these, even to many who think themselves free, appear for ever sacred and intangible. But the sadhaka, his gaze turned always to the heights, will abandon them to Him whom all ideals seek imperfectly and fragmentarily to express; all moral qualities are only a poor and rigid travesty of his spontaneous and illimitable perfection. The bondage to sin and evil passes away with the passing of nervous desire; for it belongs to the quality of vital passion, impulsion or drive of propensity in us (rajogun.a) and is extinguished with the transformation of that mode of Nature. But neither must the aspirant remain subject to the gilded or golden chain of a conventional or a habitual or a mentally ordered or even a high or clear sattwic virtue. That will be replaced by something profounder and more essential than the minor inadequate thing that men call virtue. The original sense of the word was manhood and this is a much larger and deeper thing than the moral mind and its structures. The culmination of Karmayoga is a yet higher and deeper state that may perhaps be called "soulhood", - for the soul is greater than the man; a free soulhood spontaneously welling out in works of a supreme Truth and Love will replace human virtue. But this supreme Truth cannot be forced to inhabit the petty edifices of the practical reason or even confined in the more dignified constructions of the larger ideative reason that imposes its representations as if they were pure truth on the limited human intelligence. This supreme Love will not necessarily be consistent, much less will it be synonymous, with the partial and feeble, ignorant and emotion-ridden movements of human attraction, sympathy and pity. The petty law cannot bind the vaster movement; the mind's partial attainment cannot dictate its terms to the soul's supreme fulfilment.
1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The powers are not really miracles as most people think. They are revelations of the forces of nature which are hidden, through which one passes when one rises from one realm to another realm. In each realm a particular law operates, just as different laws operate in different countries. When one gains entry into a particular realm, one becomes one with the law that operates in that realm; and to a lower realm, that upper law looks like a miracle. The aim of yoga is the liberation of the spirit. The highest perfections are not control of the elements, or bodily perfection, etc., as mentioned. The eight siddhis etc. are not the aim of yoga. Rather, they are obstacles if they are independently aimed at. The purpose is Cosmic-consciousness, which also is an incidental experience to the last stage which is called liberation, or moksha. Omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence are the last powers that come to a person. That is Ishvara shakti: entering into the mind of a yogi. That is the last perfection, and is connected with the Pure Spirit, or the purusha.
These perfections come in various ways: sometimes without ones knowing that they have come, or sometimes they become objects of ones mental awareness. All people are not of the same kind. Every yogi is a specific character by himself or herself, so we cannot compare one with the other. Though many people may practise a similar technique of meditation, the experiences will not be uniform; they will vary because of the peculiarity or novelty of the physical and the mental strain of the individual concerned. These powers and experiences are the reactions set up in the personality of the yogi by the powers of nature as a whole, and inasmuch as the individualities of the yogis vary in the structure and the makeup of their organism, the reactions also vary in nature. Hence, experiences vary. Sometimes we may see light, sometimes we may not see light, and so on.
1.098 - The Transformation from Human to Divine, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The personalities are not personalities at all for yogic vision. They are not persons. They are only configurations of a cosmical significance, which has to be grasped very well before we are able to face anything. We have to guard ourselves well in every respect. The beginning of yogic perception is the recognition of the fact that we are citizens of the universe, not citizens of India or America or any country nothing of the kind. We are not even inhabitants of this earth; we are something more than that. We are denizens of the whole cosmos, and the laws of the universe will act upon us, and they will subject us to obedience. They are the forces that we are facing.
In yoga, we are not facing crows and cows and trees and persons. We are facing the whole cosmos in front of us. One has to be prepared for the consequences before one actually enters into this arduous enterprise; this is a great caution meted out to us by the Yoga Shastra. When this vision is kept up clearly, continuously, without break, we will be able to understand even the meaning of the oppositions and impediments that come before us. And when they are detected, they cease to be impediments they become friends. The dismal look that may appear to be there at the beginning will put on a new face altogether, and a new contour. The darkness will be dispelled, and light will manifest itself. These are hard things for the mind to grasp.
1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Thus, the aspect which is emphasised here in this sutra, in the context of yoga practice, is the function that the practicant performs in his discipline called yoga. There is spontaneity manifest everywhere. Nature is spontaneity, in other words. Everything happens of its own accord. On the other hand, we may say that the pains that we experience in our lives are not part of nature, because pain is not a part of natural action. It is a peculiar situation that is created by not allowing the forces of nature to enter into ones own system. Ultimately, it is neither pleasure nor pain that is a characteristic of nature. Pleasures and pains are the emotional reactions of the mind. These two reactions cease, and something new altogether arises and comes into play when we become as natural as prakriti itself. Yoga practice is a process of becoming more and more natural in ones being, and eliminating those causes which have made us unnatural. What is it that is natural, and what is unnatural? Anything that cannot harmonise with the laws of prakriti should be regarded as unnatural; and anything that is in harmony with the laws of prakriti is natural. What are these laws of prakriti?
We have been told much about it in earlier sutras. But essentially, the law of prakriti is such that it has no internal distinction within itself. To create internal distinctions or differences of bodies, personalities, individualities, etc., would be a result of disharmony of some kind or the other. In the totality of nature, internal differences are unknown, just as the body, our individual bodily organism, has no feeling of internal differences. There is a principle which brings all these forces together and creates in us a sense of oneness. Likewise in nature, there is a principle which brings all the forces together. The more we approach this centre of unification of nature, the more are we natural, and the more we depart from it, the more are we unnatural. This is the meaning of this particular sutra, nimmita aprayojaka praktn varaabheda tu tata ketrikavat (IV.3): The instrumental cause, which is the practice of yoga, is not actually the creator of the powers or siddhis, but only an agent which allows the operation of natural forces, in the same way as the farmer operates as an instrumental cause in the movements of waters in the fields. This is the literal meaning of this sutra.
To sum up the teaching of these two sutras cited just now, the present state of existence of a human individual is unnatural, and we should not make the mistake of thinking that we are living a normal life. Our present way of life is abnormal in the sense that it does not harmonise with what eternally exists. The temporal features that we are manifesting in our personal lives are the opposites of the eternal features of prakriti. Hence, yoga is an instrumental agent in bringing about conditions by which there is a spontaneity of entry of eternal laws into our personality. And in this process of the entry of the eternal characters of prakriti into us, we develop various powers. Thus, the powers, or siddhis, are nothing but experiences which are incumbent upon our gradual proximity to the ultimate nature of prakriti. This is what the sutra tells us.
1.09 - BOOK THE NINTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
But say shou'd I in spight of laws comply,
Yet cruel Caunus might himself deny,
1.09 - Civilisation and Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature starts from Matter, develops out of it its hidden Life, releases out of involution in life all the crude material of Mind and, when she is ready, turns Mind upon itself and upon Life and Matter in a great mental effort to understand all three in their phenomena, their obvious action, their secret laws, their normal and abnormal possibilities and powers so that they may be turned to the richest account, used in the best and most harmonious way, elevated to their highest as well as extended to their widest potential aims by the action of that faculty which man alone of terrestrial creatures clearly possesses, the intelligent will. It is only in this fourth stage of her progress that she arrives at humanity. The atoms and the elements organise brute Matter, the plant develops the living being, the animal prepares and brings to a certain kind of mechanical organisation the crude material of Mind, but the last work of all, the knowledge and control of all these things and self-knowledge and self-control,that has been reserved for Man, Natures mental being. That he may better do the work she has given him, she compels him to repeat physically and to some extent mentally stages of her animal evolution and, even when he is in possession of his mental being, she induces him continually to dwell with an interest and even a kind of absorption upon Matter and Life and his own body and vital existence. This is necessary to the largeness of her purpose in him. His first natural absorption in the body and the life is narrow and unintelligent; as his intelligence and mental force increase, he disengages himself to some extent, is able to mount higher, but is still tied to his vital and material roots by need and desire and has to return upon them with a larger curiosity, a greater power of utilisation, a more and more highly mental and, in the end, a more and more spiritual aim in the return. For his cycles are circles of a growing, but still imperfect harmony and synthesis, and she brings him back violently to her original principles, sometimes even to something like her earlier conditions so that he may start afresh on a larger curve of progress and self-fulfilment.
It would seem at first sight that since man is pre-eminently the mental being, the development of the mental faculties and the richness of the mental life should be his highest aim,his preoccupying aim, even, as soon as he has got rid of the obsession of the life and body and provided for the indispensable satisfaction of the gross needs which our physical and animal nature imposes on us. Knowledge, science, art, thought, ethics, philosophy, religion, this is mans real business, these are his true affairs. To be is for him not merely to be born, grow up, marry, get his livelihood, support a family and then die,the vital and physical life, a human edition of the animal round, a human enlargement of the little animal sector and arc of the divine circle; rather to become and grow mentally and live with knowledge and power within himself as well as from within outward is his manhood. But there is here a double motive of Nature, an insistent duality in her human purpose. Man is here to learn from her how to control and create; but she evidently means him not only to control, create and constantly re-create in new and better forms himself, his own inner existence, his mentality, but also to control and re-create correspondingly his environment. He has to turn Mind not only on itself, but on Life and Matter and the material existence; that is very clear not only from the law and nature of the terrestrial evolution, but from his own past and present history. And there comes from the observation of these conditions and of his highest aspirations and impulses the question whether he is not intended, not only to expand inwardly and outwardly, but to grow upward, wonderfully exceeding himself as he has wonderfully exceeded his animal beginnings, into something more than mental, more than human, into a being spiritual and divine. Even if he cannot do that, yet he may have to open his mind to what is beyond it and to govern his life more and more by the light and power that he receives from something greater than himself. Mans consciousness of the divine within himself and the world is the supreme fact of his existence and to grow into that may very well be the intention of his nature. In any case the fullness of Life is his evident object, the widest life and the highest life possible to him, whether that be a complete humanity or a new and divine race. We must recognise both his need of integrality and his impulse of self-exceeding if we would fix rightly the meaning of his individual existence and the perfect aim and norm of his society.
1.09 - FAITH IN PEACE, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
makes for peace, and the zoological laws of conservation and sur-
vival must wear an opposite sign if they are to be applied to Man.
1.09 - Man - About the Body, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
If the disturbance of the elements is such as to render visible this disharmony, it is no longer solely a disharmony but we have to deal with an illness. This will mean that more drastic remedies will be necessary to reestablish the indispensable harmony, providing we desire to bring the body back to its normal function and complete recovery. All the curing methods known up to this day have been based on this fundament. I desist from particularizing such methods, as most of them are generally known. The natural therapy employs thermic effects such as bathing, poultices, herbs, massages, etc. The allopathist utilizes concentrated medicines, which are causing the effects corresponding to the elements and destined to repair health. The homoeopathist brings to life the contrasting element according to the device Similia similibus curantur to achieve the balance of all that is in danger in conformity with the polarity laws. The electro-homoeopathist by use of his remedies, influences the electrical and magnetical fluids directly to balance the disorderly elements, according to the kind of illness, by a suitable reinforcement of these fluids.
And so each curing method serves the purpose of restoring the disturbed equipoise of the elements. By studying these influences of the elements on our body, the magnetopath or magnetizer has far more possibilities of influencing the body through his powers, especially if he is capable to awake the electrical or magnetical fluid consciously in himself, increasing and transferring it into the part of the body that has come into disharmony. I have dedicated a special heading of this book to the practical side of this treatment.
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
is a law among laws:--such power expresses itself quite naturally in
grandeur of style.
1.09 - Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
larity. Reducing, in accordance with the laws of physics
and cosmology known at present, the expanding universe
--
nowhere, completely in accordance with the laws of quan
tum physics, and creates along the way all the matter and
--
Neither the laws or the possibilities of physical Na
ture can be entirely known unless we know also the laws
and possibilities of supraphysical Nature, wrote Sri Au
1.09 - The Absolute Manifestation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The many million relations which constitute our worlds are only one formula of the infinite algebra and all the harmony that we can celebrate in the laws of our universe is null in its perfection compared with this childs play of the Absolute.
Everywhere full consciousness, full light, full joy are born from the full union of love between things or beings, thoughts and souls and bodies.
1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
penalty appointed by the old German laws for such as dared to peel
the bark of a standing tree. The culprit's navel was to be cut out
11.03 - Cosmonautics, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we know, Nature has pushed up its secret consciousness to the human level and is still pushing it up, upward to levels of the higher man, towards the Superman. She has moulded the body for the jelly-fish and moved up through all the intermediaries to the human body. Man's body like his consciousness has to be remoulded in such a way as to be able to enclose and express the superman-consciousness. The rigid natural laws that bind down the body the so-called natural laws of temperature and pressure, of respiration and circulation, of assimilation and rejectionhave to be turned, obviated, neutralised so that man may be actually, physically a citizen of the world.
Now, the discipline that the physical body is made to undergo at present, in order to accustom itself to high flying, may one day point to the way for a new adaptation and disposition for the body. As it is, the disruption that has been made in the earth atmosphere because of Science's new adventure is also a way to acclimatising the human body to new conditions. The new conditions are becoming even more and more new and the body is being forced to follow suit. At the beginning the result is a rupture but that is the way towards a new disposition, a new dispensation.
1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Apart from the prescription of the recession of the effect into the cause, the great method prescribed by Patanjali as the remedy for this problem of the vrittis is the sutra: dhynahey tadvttaya (II.11). We cannot do anything with them, except do meditation once again. Meditation is the only remedy for the difficulty that has arisen due to lack of meditation. There is no other remedy. Then we have to set ourselves up once again and gird up our loins, and know where we stand without any complacency in respect of our achievements. It is not possible to face the powers of nature. Always it is wisdom on the part of every individual to be friendly with nature and never oppose the forces of nature. Even in the name of God, we should not directly face and confront the powers of nature. That is no use because, after all, nature is the face of God. The forces of nature are the laws of God operating in a particular manner.
Thus, it would be appropriate on the part of everyone to move harmoniously with the requirements of the forces of nature, which is a great judicious act, no doubt, and it requires guidance from inside as well as outside inwardly from our own conscience, outwardly from the Guru. Otherwise, there will be tremendous opposition, and we may have to cut off all our practices. We may be bedridden by the psychological onslaughts of those little children whom we ignored earlier when we were very young, and they will come up when we are old.
11.09 - Towards the Immortal Body, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Naturally however, the Supreme Grace is always there and if it chooses it can suspend or even cancel all laws and do things as it chooses, but that is a different matter.
***
1.10 - BOOK THE TENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
While Phoebus thus the laws of Fate reveal'd,
Behold, the blood which stain'd the verdant field,
--
Ye Gods, ye sacred laws, my soul defend
From such a crime as all mankind detest,
--
What tyrant then these envious laws began,
Made not for any other beast, but Man!
--
Whom nor ill-natur'd laws from pleasure bind,
Nor thoughts of sin disturb their peace of mind.
--
Have dash'd a spice of envy in the laws,
And straining up too high, have spoil'd the cause.
--
And own no laws, but those which love ordains;
Where happy daughters with their sires are join'd,
--
Ev'n on these laws the fair they rashly sought,
And danger in excess of love forgot.
1.10 - Concentration - Its Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Thus is it with us all in this My, this dream world, where it is all misery, weeping and crying, where a few golden balls are rolled, and the world scrambles after them. You were never bound by laws, nature never had a bond for you. That is what the Yogi tells you. Have patience to learn it. And the Yogi shows how, by junction with nature, and identifying itself with the mind and the world, the Purusha thinks itself miserable. Then the Yogi goes on to show you that the way out is through experience. You have to get all this experience, but finish it quickly. We have placed ourselves in this net, and will have to get out. We have got ourselves caught in the trap, and we will have to work out our freedom. So get this experience of husbands, and wives, and friends, and little loves; you will get through them safely if you never forget what you really are. Never forget this is only a momentary state, and that we have to pass through it. Experience is the one great teacher experience of pleasure and pain but know it is only experience. It leads, step by step, to that state where all things become small, and the Purusha so great that the whole universe seems as a drop in the ocean and falls off by its own nothingness. We have to go through different experiences, but let us never forget the ideal.
-
1.10 - Farinata and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. Discourse on the Knowledge of the Damned., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Against my race in each one of its laws?"
Whence I to him: "The slaughter and great carnage
1.10 - Fate and Free-Will, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The first is the answer of the devout and submissive mind in its dependence on God, but, unless we adopt a Calvinistic fatalism, the admission of the guiding and overriding will of God does not exclude the permission of freedom to the individual. The second is the answer of the scientist; Heredity determines our Nature, the laws of Nature limit our action, cause and effect compel the course of our development, and, if it be urged that we may determine effects by creating causes, the answer is that our own actions are determined by previous causes over which we have no control and our action itself is a necessary response to a stimulus from outside. The third is the answer of the Buddhist and of post-Buddhistic Hinduism. It is our fate, it is written on our forehead, when our Karma is exhausted, then alone our calamities will pass from us;this is the spirit of tamasic inaction justifying itself by a misreading of the theory of Karma.
If we go back to the true Hindu teaching independent of Buddhistic influence, we shall find that it gives us a reconciliation of the dispute by a view of mans psychology in which both Fate and Free-will are recognised. The difference between Buddhism and Hinduism is that to the former the human soul is nothing, to the latter it is everything. The whole universe exists in the spirit, by the spirit, for the spirit; all we do, think and feel is for the spirit. Nature depends upon the Atman, all its movement, play, action is for the Atman.
There is no Fate except insistent causality which is only another name for Law, and Law itself is only an instrument in the hands of Nature for the satisfaction of the spirit. Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together. This action in the universal, the parts, the individuals is called Karma, work, action, energy in play, and the definition of Dharma or Law is action as decided by the nature of the thing in which action takes place,svabhva-niyata karma. Each separate existence, each individual has a swabhava or nature and acts according to it, each group, species or mass of individuals has a swabhava or nature and acts according to it, and the universe also has its swabhava or nature and acts according to it. Mankind is a group of individuals and every man acts according to his human nature, that is his law of being as distinct from animals, trees or other groups of individuals. Each man has a distinct nature of his own and that is his law of being which ought to guide him as an individual. But beyond and above these minor laws is the great dharma of the universe which provides that certain previous karma or action must lead to certain new karma or results.
The whole of causality may be defined as previous action leading to subsequent action, Karma and Karmaphal. The Hindu theory is that thought and feeling, as well as actual speech or deeds, are part of Karma and create effects, and we do not accept the European sentiment that outward expression of thought and feeling in speech or deed is more important than the thought or feeling itself. This outward expression is only part of the thing expressed and its results are only part of the Karmaphal. The previous karma has not one kind of result but many. In the first place, a certain habit of thought or feeling produces certain actions and speech or certain habits of action and speech in this life, which materialise in the next as good fortune or evil fortune. Again, it produces by its action for the good or ill of others a necessity of happiness or sorrow for ourselves in another birth. It produces, moreover, a tendency to persistence of that habit of thought or feeling in future lives, which involves the persistence of the good fortune or evil fortune, happiness or sorrow. Or, acting on different lines, it produces a revolt or reaction and replacement by opposite habits which in their turn necessitate opposite results for good or evil. This is the chain of karma, the bondage of works, which is the Hindu Fate and from which the Hindus seek salvation.
--
But in order to feel its mastery of Nature, the human soul must put itself into communion with the infinite and universal Spirit. Its will must be one with the universal Will. The human soul is one with the universal Spirit, but in the body it stands out as something separate and unconnected, because a certain freedom is permitted it in order that the swabhava of things may be diversely developed in different bodies. In using this freedom the soul may do it ignorantly or knowingly. If it uses it ignorantly, it is not really free, for ignorance brings with it the illusion of enslavement to Nature. Used knowingly, the freedom of the soul becomes one with surrender to the universal Will. Either apparent bondage to Fate in Nature or realised freedom from Nature in the universal freedom and lordship of the Paramatman and Parameshwara, this is the choice offered to the human soul. The gradual self-liberation from bondage to Nature is the true progress of humanity. The inert stone or block is a passive sport of natural laws, God is their Master. Man stands between these two extreme terms and moves upward from one to the other.
***
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is the delegated image of God, replied Cheng. Your life is not your own. It is the delegated harmony of God. Your individuality is not your own. It is the delegated adaptability of God. Your posterity is not your own. It is the delegated exuviae of God. You move, but know not how. You are at rest, but know not why. You taste, but know not the cause. These are the operations of Gods laws. How then should you get Tao so as to have it for your own?
Chuang Tzu
1.10 - Harmony, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
There are no miracles. There is a vast Harmony which governs the world with a precision and delicacy as faultless in the meeting of atoms and the cycle of flowering and the return of migrating birds as in the meeting of men and the unfolding of events at a particular juncture. There is a vast, unique movement we thought we were separated from because we had built our little mental turrets on the frontier of our comprehension and black dotted lines on the softness of a great earthly hill, as others had built their hunting grounds, and the sea gulls, their white archipelago on the foam-flecked waters. And because we had put on these blinders or others to protect ourselves from the formidable magnitude of our lands, erected these dwarf fences to farm our little acre, the little wave of energy trapped in our sails, the little golden (or less golden) fireflies caught in the net of our intelligence, the little note captured from too great a Harmony, we have thought that the world behaved according to our laws, or at least our laws to the factual wisdom of our instruments and calculations, and that anything that exceeded this partitioning of the world or slipped through the meshes was unthinkable or nonexistent, miraculous hallucinatory. We were caught in our own trap. And by some gracious kindness which is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries to elucidate the world began to resemble our drawings of erudite children, our illnesses to follow the doctor's prognosis, our bodies to obey the prescribed medicine, our lives to travel in the designated groove between two walls of impossibility, and even our events to bow obligingly before our statistics and our thought of events. The world actually became mentalized from one end to the other and from top to bottom. Thought is the latest magician on the list, after the Mongolian shaman, the Theban occultist or the Bantu witchdoctor. It remains to be seen whether our magic is better than the others but magic it is, and we are not yet aware of all its power. But, in truth, there is only one Power, which uses an amulet, a Tantric yantra23 or an incantation, equally as well as a differential equation or even our simple and futile little thought. What do we want? That is the question.
We manipulate thought haphazardly. Generally, we do not even manipulate it; it manipulates us. We are besieged by a thousand useless thoughts that run back and forth through our inner realm, automatically, futilely, ten, perhaps a hundred times by the time we have walked down the boulevard or climbed the stairs. It is hardly thought; it is a sort of thinking current that got into the habit of following some of our convolutions and circumvolutions and assumes a more or less neutral color, more or less brilliant, depending on our taste or inclination, our heredity, our environment, and is expressed by preferred or customary words, blue or gray philosophies in one language or another but it is one and the same current running everywhere. It is the mental machinery clicking and rumbling and working sempiternally the same range or intensity of the general current. This activity veils everything, envelops everything, and casts a pall over everything with its thick and sticky cloud. But the seeker of the new world is one step removed from this machinery; he has discovered the quiet little clearing behind; he has lit a fire of need in the center of his being; he takes his fire everywhere he goes. And everything is different for him. Unclouded in his little clearing, he begins to see the functioning of the mind; he watches the great play, uncovers step by step the secrets of the mental magic which ought perhaps to be called mental illusion, though if it is an illusion, it is a very effective one. And all sorts of phenomena begin to attract his notice, a little disorderly, in recurring little spurts that end up making a coherent picture. The more he sees, the stronger his control.
--
Indeed, it is magic. The seeker repeats the same experience ten, a hundred times. And he begins to stare in fascination. He begins, through a tiny experience, to ask himself a stupendous why?... Oh, the world's secrets are not concealed in thunder and flames! They are here, just waiting for a consenting look, a simple way of being that does not constantly put up its habitual barriers, its possibles or impossibles, its you-can'ts and you-mustn'ts, its buts and more buts, its ineluctables, and the whole train of its iron laws, the old laws of an animal-man who goes round and round in the cage built with his own hands. He looks about himself, and the experience multiplies, as if it were thrust before his very eyes, as if that simple little effort for truth sparked innumerable answers, precipitated circumstances, encounters, demonstrations, as if it were saying, Look, look, this is how it works. A consciousness beyond words lays its finger of light upon each encounter. The true picture emerges from behind appearances. A breath of truth here elicits the same truth in each thing and each movement. And he sees.... He does not see miracles or rather, he sees sordid little miracles blindly contrived by blind magicians. He sees poor humans in droves weaving the pretty bubble, patiently and tirelessly inflating it, each day adding their little breath of defeat or desire or helplessness, their miasma of self-doubt, their little noxious thoughts, stretching and nurturing the iridescent bubble of their knowledge and petty triumphs, the implacable bubble of their science, the bubble of their charity or virtue. And they go on, prisoners of a bubble, entangled in the network of force they have carefully woven, accumulated, piled up day after day. Each act results from that thrust; each circumstance is the obscure gravitation of that attraction, and everything moves mechanically, ineluctably, mathematically as we have willed it in a black or yellow or decrepit little bubble. And the more we kick and strain and struggle and draw this force inside to break the pretty or not so pretty wall, the harder it becomes, as if our ultimate effort still brought to it an ultimate strength. And we say we are the victims of circumstances, victims of this or that; we say we are poor, sick, ill-fated; we say we are rich, virtuous, triumphant. We say we are thousands of things under thousands of colors and bubbles, and there is nothing of the kind, no rich, no poor, no sick, no virtuous or victim; there is something else, oh, radically different, which is awaiting its hour. There is a secret godhead smiling.
And the bubble grows. It takes in families, peoples, continents; it takes in every color, every wisdom, every truth, and envelops them. There is that breath of light, that note of beauty, the miracle of those few lines caught in architecture or geometry, that instant of truth that heals and delivers, that lovely curve glimpsed in a flash which links that star to this destiny, this asymptote to that hyperbola, this man to that song, this gesture to that effect and more men come, men by the thousands, who come puffing and inflating the little bubble, creating pink and blue and everlasting religions, infallible salvations in the great bubble, summits of light that are the sum of their compounded little hopes, abysses of hell that are the sum of their cherished fears; who come adding this note and that idea, this grain of knowledge and that healing second, this conjunction and that curve, that moment of effectiveness beneath the dust of the myriads of galaxies, chromatic temples, devising unquestionable medicines under the great bubble, irreducible sciences, implacable geometries, charts of illness, charts of recovery, charts of destiny. And everything twists and turns as the doctor willed it under the great fateful Bubble, as the scientist willed it, as that moment of coincidence among the countless myriads of lines in the universe has decided it for the eternity of time. We have seized a minute of the world and made it into the huge amber light that blinds and suffocates us in the great mental bubble. And there is nothing of the kind not one single law, not one single illness, not one single medical or scientific dogma, not one single temple is true,, not one perpetual chart, not one single destiny under the stars there is a tremendous mental hypnotism, and behind, far, far behind, and yet right here, so much here, immediately here, something impregnable, unseizable by any snare, unrestricted by any law, invulnerable to every illness and every hypnotism, unsaved by our salvations, unsullied by our sins, unsullied by our virtues, free from every destiny and every chart, from every golden or black bubble a pure, infallible bird that can recreate the world in the twinkling of an eye. We change our look, and everything changes. Gone is the pretty bubble. It is here if we want.
1.10 - On our Knowledge of Universals, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
We believe that all men are mortal because we know that there are innumerable instances of men dying, and no instances of their living beyond a certain age. We do not believe it because we see a connexion between the universal _man_ and the universal _mortal_. It is true that if physiology can prove, assuming the general laws that govern living bodies, that no living organism can last for ever, that gives a connexion between _man_ and _mortality_ which would enable us to assert our proposition without appealing to the special evidence of _men_ dying. But that only means that our generalization has been subsumed under a wider generalization, for which the evidence is still of the same kind, though more extensive. The progress of science is constantly producing such subsumptions, and therefore giving a constantly wider inductive basis for scientific generalizations. But although this gives a greater _degree_ of certainty, it does not give a different _kind_: the ultimate ground remains inductive, i.e. derived from instances, and not an _a priori_ connexion of universals such as we have in logic and arithmetic.
Two opposite points are to be observed concerning _a priori_ general propositions. The first is that, if many particular instances are known, our general proposition may be arrived at in the first instance by induction, and the connexion of universals may be only subsequently perceived. For example, it is known that if we draw perpendiculars to the sides of a triangle from the opposite angles, all three perpendiculars meet in a point. It would be quite possible to be first led to this proposition by actually drawing perpendiculars in many cases, and finding that they always met in a point; this experience might lead us to look for the general proof and find it. Such cases are common in the experience of every mathematician.
1.10 - THE FORMATION OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
the laws of stellar physics. But in another sense nothing will be
ended: for at this point, and at the height of its powers, individual
1.10 - The Roughly Material Plane or the Material World, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The earthy element implies the four-pole magnet with its polarity and the effect of the other elements. The fiery principle, in its active form, causes the vivifying principle in nature and in the negative form the destructive and disintegrating one. The principle of water, in its negative form, is operating the contrary effect. The principle of air, with its bipolar polarity, represents the neutral, the balancing and the preserving essence in nature. The earthy element, according to its peculiarity of cohesion, has as a basis the two great fundamental elements of fire and water together with the neutralization of the airy principle. Hence it must be regarded as the most grossly material element. By the interaction of the fiery and the watery element, we have, as already mentioned in connection with the body, got the magnetic and the electric fluid, the two basic fluids originating, according to the same laws, in the body and having their mutual effects. Both these elements, with their fluids, are the cause of all that happens materially on our earth; they influence all the chemical processes inside and outside of the earth in the kingdoms of minerals, plants and animals. Hence you see that the electric fluid is to be found in the centre of the earth, whereas the magnetic one is on the surface of our earth. This magnetic fluid of the earth surface, apart from the property of the principle of water or the cohesion, attracts and holds all material and compound things.
According to the specific properties of a body, which depend on the composition of the elements, each object, with respect to the electric fluid, owns certain emanations, the so-called electronic vibrations that are attracted by the general magnetic fluid of the entire material world. This attraction is called the weight. Consequently, weight is an appearance of the attractive power of the earth. The well known attractive power of iron and nickel is a little example respecting an imitation of that which is happening, in a big measure, on our whole earth. What we understand, on our earth, a magnetism and electricity, is nothing else but an appearance of the four-pole magnet. For, as we know already, by an arbitrary pole-changing, electricity can be obtained from magnetism and, in a mechanical way, we get magnetism through electricity. The transmutation of one power into another, properly speaking, is already an alchemistic or magic process, which, however, in the course of time, has been generalized so much that it is no longer regarded as alchemy or magic, but is simply ascribed to physics. For this reason, it is obvious that the four-pole magnet can be used here also.
According to the law concerning the problems of magnetism and electricity not only in the body as mentioned in the foregoing chapter but also in the grossly materialistic world, each hermeticist exactly knows that what is above is also that which is below. Each adept who knows how to employ the powers of the element or the great secret of the Tetragrammaton on all planes is also capable to achieve great things in our material world, things which the outsider would regard as miracles. The adept, however, sees no miracles in them for, backed by the knowledge of the laws; he will be able to explain even the most rema rkable curiosity.
Everything on our earth, all thriving, ripening, life and death depend on the statements made in these chapters. Hence the adept fully conceives that physical death does not mean disintegration, passing into nothingness, but what we consider as annihilation or death is nothing else but the transition from one stage into another. The material world has emerged from the principle of akasa, i.e., the known ether. The world also is controlled and kept by this same principle. Therefore it is understandable that it is the transmission of the electric or the magnetic fluid on which are based all the inventions connected with the communication at distance, through the ether, such as radio, telegraphy, telephony, television and all the other invent ions to be achieved in the future, with the aid of the electric or magnetic fluid in the ether. But the fundamental principles and laws were, are and always will be the same.
A very extensive and exciting book could be written solely about the effects of the various magnetic and electric fluids on the grossly material plane. But the interested reader who has decided to walk on the path of initiation and will not be deterred by the study of the principles, will find out by himself all about the varieties of powers and properties. The fruits and the insights he earned, in the course of his studies, will indemnify him amply.
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We should realise that these so-called Sciences of Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology on which the European interpretation of Veda is founded are not true Sciences at all. They are, rather, if Sciences at all, then pseudo-Sciences. All the European mental sciences, not excluding Psychology, though that is now proceeding within certain narrow limits by a sounder method, belong to a doubtful class of branches of research which have absorbed the outward method of Science, without its inward spirit. The true scientists in Germany, the home of both Science & Philology, accustomed to sound methods, certain results, patient inquiry, slow generalisations, have nothing but contempt for the methods of Philology, its patchiness, its haste, its guesswork, and profess no confidence in its results; the word Philologe is even, in their mouths, a slighting & discourteous expression. This contempt, itself no doubt excessive, is practically admitted to be just by the great French thinker, Renan, who spent the best part of his life in philological & kindred researches, when he described apologetically his favourite pursuits as petty conjectural sciences. Now, a Science that is conjectural, a Science that proceeds not by fixed laws and certain methods, but by ingenious inference & conjecture, & this is in truth the nature of Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology,is no science at all; it is a branch of research, a field of inquiry & conjecture in which useful discoveries may be made; it may even contain in itself the germs of a future science, but it is not yet itself worthy of that name & its results have no right to cloak themselves falsely in the robe of authority which belongs only to the results of the true Sciences. So long as a science is conjectural, its results are also conjectural, can at any moment be challenged and ought at all times even in its most brilliant & confident results to be carefully and sceptically scrutinised.
Among such branches of research which can even now be used in spite of new & hostile conclusions as a sort of side support to the modern theory of the Veda stand in a curious twilit corner of their own the researches of the ethnologists. There is no more glaring instance of the conjectural and unsubstantial nature of these pseudo-Sciences than the results of Ethnology which yet claims to deduce its results from fixed and certain physical tests and data. We find the philological discovery of the Aryan invasion supported by the conclusions of ethnologists like Sir Herbert Risley, who make an ethnological map of India coloured in with all shades of mixed raciality, Dravidian,Scytho-Dravidian, Mongolo-Dravidian, Scytho-Aryan. More modern schools of ethnology assert positively on the strength of [the] same laws & the same tests that there is but one homogeneous Indo-Afghan race inhabiting the whole peninsula from theHimalayas to Cape Comorin. What are we to think of a science of which the tests are so pliant and the primary results so irreconcilable? Or how, if the more modern theory is correct, if a distinct homogeneous race inhabits India, can we fail to doubt strongly as a philological myth the whole story of the Aryan invasion & colonisation of Northern India, which has been so long one of the most successful & loudly proclaimed results of the new philology? As a result perhaps of these later conclusions we find a tendency even in philological scholarship towards the rise of new theories which dispute the whole legend of an Aryan invasion, assert an indigenous or even a southern origin for the peoples of the Vedic times and suppose Aryanism to have been a cult and not a racial distinction. These new theories destroy all fixed confidence in the old without themselves revealing any surer foundations for their own guesses; both start from conjectural philology & end in an imaginatively conjectural nation-building or culture-building. It is exceedingly doubtful whether the Vedic terms Aryan & unAryan at all refer to racial or cultural differences; they may have an entirely different and wholly religious & spiritual significance & refer to the good and evil powers & mortals influenced by them. If this prove to be the truth, and the close contiguity & probable historical connection between the Vedic Indians & the Zoroastrian Persians gives it a great likelihood, then the whole elaborate edifice built up by the scholars of an Aryan invasion and an Aryan culture begins to totter & seek the ground, there to lie in the dust amid the wrecks of other once confident beliefs and triumphant errors.
The substance of modern philological discovery about the Vedas consists, first, in the picture of an Aryan civilisation introduced by northern invaders and, secondly, in the interpretation of the Vedic religion as a worship of Nature-powers & Vedic myths as allegorical legends of sun & moon & star & the visible phenomena of Nature. The latter generalisation rests partly on new philological renderings of Vedic words, partly on the Science of Comparative Mythology. The method of this Science can be judged from one or two examples. The Greek story of the demigod Heracles is supposed to be an evident sun myth. The two scientific proofs offered for this discovery are first that Hercules performed twelve labours and the solar year is divided into twelve months and, secondly, that Hercules burnt himself on a pyre on Mount Oeta and the sun also sets in a glory of flame behind the mountains. Such proofs seem hardly substantial enough for so strong a conclusion. By the same reasoning one could prove the emperor Napoleon a sun myth, because he was beaten & shorn of his glory by the forces of winter and because his brilliant career set in the western ocean and he passed there a long night of captivity. With the same light confidence the siege of Troy is turned by the scholars into a sun myth because the name of the Greek Helena, sister of the two Greek Aswins, Castor & Pollux, is philologically identical with the Vedic Sarama and that of her abductor Paris is not so very different from the Vedic Pani. It may be noted that in the Vedic story Sarama is not the sister of the Aswins and is not abducted by the Panis and that there is no other resemblance between the Vedic legend & the Greek tradition. So by more recent speculation even Yudhishthira and his brothers and the famous dog of theMahabharat are raised into the skies & vanish in a starry apotheosis,one knows not well upon what grounds except that sometimes the Dog Star rages in heaven. It is evident that these combinations are merely an ingenious play of fancy & prove absolutely nothing. Hercules may be the Sun but it is not proved. Helen & Paris may be Sarama & one of the Panis, but itis not proved. Yudhishthira & his brothers may be an astronomical myth, but it is not proved. For the rest, the unsubstantiality & rash presumption of the Sun myth theory has not failed to give rise in Europe to a hostile school of Comparative Mythologists who adopt other methods & seek the origins of early religious legend & tradition in a more careful and flexible study of the mentality, customs, traditions & symbolisms of primitive races. The theory of Vedic Nature-worship is better founded than these astronomical fancies. Agni is plainly the God of Fire, Surya of the Sun, Usha of the Dawn, Vayu of the Wind; Indra for Sayana is obviously the god of rain; Varuna seems to be the sky, the Greek Ouranos,et cetera. But when we have accepted these identities, the question of Vedic interpretation & the sense of Vedic worship is not settled. In the Greek religion Apollo was the god of the sun, but he was also the god of poetry & prophecy; Athene is identified with Ahana, a Vedic name of the Dawn, but for the Greeks she is the goddess of purity & wisdom; Artemis is the divinity of the moon, but also the goddess of free life & of chastity. It is therefore evident that in early Greek religion, previous to the historic or even the literary period, at an epoch therefore that might conceivably correspond with the Vedic period, many of the deities of the Greek heavens had a double character, the aspect of physical Nature-powers and the aspect of moral Nature-powers. The indications, therefore,for they are not proofs,even of Comparative Mythology would justify us in inquiring whether a similar double character did not attach to the Vedic gods in the Vedic hymns.
1.10 - The Yoga of the Intelligent Will, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A bold and absolute promise and one to which the fearful and hesitating mind beset and stumbling in all its paths cannot easily lend an assured trust; nor is the large and full truth of it apparent unless with these first words of the message of the Gita we read also the last, "Abandon all laws of conduct and take refuge in
Me alone; I will deliver you from all sin and evil; do not grieve."
11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such then are the stages in the progression of consciousness; they are clearly observable and admitted practically on all hands. Only Sri Aurobindo points out two crucial characters of this movement. First: Matter, Life, Mind-Intelligence these are not distinct or separate entities, one coming after another, the succeeding one simply adding itself to the preceding, coming we do now know from where. Not so, for something cannot come out of nothing. If life came out of Matter, it is because life was there hidden in Matter, Matter was secretly housing, was instinct with life. That only can evolve which was involved. So, again, if Mind came out of life, it is because Mind was involved in life and therefore also in Matter although at a farther remove. Yet again, vital mind developed into Intelligence and consciousness proper, and it could be only because that too was its secret nature and hence the secret nature of Life and even brute Matter. Thus the whole chain of gradation is linked together indissolubly and the binding reality that runs through all is consciousness, overt or covert. It is indeed consciousness that lies at the root of existence the basic substance, Matter is nothing but consciousness become unconscious; and the whole scheme or processus of the cosmos is the increasing manifestation and expression of that consciousness. Secondly, the other character is that at each cross-over, there is not only a rise in consciousness but also a reversal of consciousness, that is to say, the level attained turns back upon the preceding levels, influencing and moulding them as far as possible in its own mode and law of existence. When life appeared in Matter, wherever there was material life, the matter thus taken up by life behaved differently from dead matter: an organic body does not follow the strict mechanical laws of inanimate bodies. Likewise a life endowed with mind has a different functioning than mere life. And a body which houses a life and mind, which has, as it were, flowered into life and mind moves and acts in another way than an inert body or even a vitalised body. Man's intelligence and reason have reoriented or tend to reorient his vital instincts and reactions, even his bodily functions and forms. A conscious regulation, even refashioning of his life and body is the very essence of human consciousness, the urge of his nature, instead of a spontaneous laissez-faire movement of pure vitality or the mechanical go-round of the material base. These three major provinces or layers of consciousness Matter, Life and Mindman has taken up into himself and in the light of his consciousness his Intelligencehas studied and classified them arranging them serially as the well-known sciences of Physics Biology and Psychology.
Now, Sri Aurobindo says, evolution marches onward and will rise beyond mind to another status of consciousness which he calls Supermind. In the earthly scheme there will thus manifest a new type, a higher functioning of consciousness and a new race or species will appear on earth with this new consciousness as the ruling principle. Out of the rock and mineral came the plant, out of the plant the animal, out of the mere animal man has come and out of man the Superman will come inevitably.
1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In actual practice moral insight is never a strictly personal matter. The judge administers a system of law and is guided by precedent. In other words, every individual is the member of a community, which has a moral code based upon past findings of what in fact is good in the longer run and the wider context. In most circumstances most of the members of any given society permit themselves to be guided by the generally accepted code of morals; a few reject the code, either in its entirety or in part; and a few choose to live by another, higher and more exacting code. In Christian phraseology, there are the few who stubbornly persist in living in a state of mortal sin and antisocial lawlessness; there are the many who obey the laws, make the Precepts of Morality their guide, repent of mortal sins when they commit them, but do not make much effort to avoid venial sins; and finally there are the few whose righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, who are guided by the Counsels of Perfection and have the insight to perceive and the character to avoid venial sins and even imperfections.
Philosophers and theologians have sought to establish a theoretical basis for the existing moral codes, by whose aid individual men and women pass judgment on their spontaneous evaluations. From Moses to Bentham, from Epicurus to Calvin, from the Christian and Buddhist philosophies of universal love to the lunatic doctrines of nationalism and racial superiority the list is long and the span of thought enormously wide. But fortunately there is no need for us to consider these various theories. Our concern is only with the Perennial Philosophy and with the system of ethical principles which those who believe in that philosophy have used, when passing judgment on their own and other peoples evaluations. The questions that we have to ask in this section are simple enough, and simple too are the answers. As always, the difficulties begin only when we pass from theory to practice, from ethical principle to particular application.
1.11 - Higher Laws, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
object:1.11 - Higher laws
author class:Henry David Thoreau
--
Higher laws
As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of
--
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instants truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. In the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universes Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud sweet satire on the meanness of our lives.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. That in which men differ from brute beasts, says Mencius, is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully. Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. A comm and over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the minds approximation to God. Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.
1.11 - The Change of Power, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
We have therefore come to a new change of power. A new power such as there has never been since the first anthropoids, a tidal wave of power that has nothing to do with our little philosophical and spiritual meditations of past ages, a worldwide, collective and perhaps universal phenomenon as radically new as the first surge of thought upon the world, when mind took over from the simian order and overthrew all its laws and instinctual mechanisms. But here and this is really the characteristic of the new world being born the power is not a power of abstraction, not a talent for getting a bird's-eye view of things and reducing the scattered data of the world into an equation in order to make a synthesis, which is always wobbly the mind has turned everything into abstraction; it lives in an image of the world, a yellow or blue reflection of the great bubble, like a man inside a glass statue not a discursive and contingent power that only adds and subtracts, not a gathering of knowledge that never makes a whole. It is a direct power of the truth of each instant and each thing harmonized with the total truth of the millions of instants and things, a power to enter the truth of each gesture and each circumstance, which accords with all other gestures and circumstances because Truth is one and the Self is unique, and if this point is touched, everything else is instantly touched, like cell and cell of the same body. It is a tremendous power of concretization of Truth, acting directly upon the same Truth contained in each point of space and each second of time, or rather, compelling each moment, each circumstance, each gesture, each cell of matter to yield its truth, its right note, its own innate power buried under all the layers of our vital and mental accretions a tremendous truing of the world and each being. We could say a tremendous Movement of realization the world is not real! It is a distorted appearance, a mental approximation, which looks more like a nightmare, a black and white translation of something we still have not seized. We do not have our real eyes yet! For, in the end, there is only one reality, and that is the reality of Truth a truth that has grown, that had to protect itself behind walls, to limit and dim itself under one shell or another, one bubble or another, to make itself felt by a caterpillar or a man, then bursts open in its own Sunlight when the wings of the great Self we always were begin to open.
But this change of power, this transition from the indirect and abstract truths of the mind to the direct and concrete Truth of the great Self is obviously not effected on the summits of the Spirit it has nothing to do with mental gymnastics, just as the other power had nothing to do with the ape's skills. It is effected in a most down-to-earth way, in everyday life, in the minuscule, the futility of the moment, which is futile only to us, if we understand that a speck of dust contains as much truth as the totality of all space, and just as much power. It therefore applies itself to utterly material mechanisms. The play takes place in the substance. Therefore it comes up against age-old resistances, against a bubble that is perhaps the first self-defensive bubble of the protoplasm in its water hole. But in the end resistances turn out to have assisted by the resistance much more than they have impeded the intention of the great Creatrix and her Mover,26 and we do not know, finally, if there is a single shadow and pain that does not secretly build up the very power we are trying to manifest. If it emerged too soon, truth would be incomplete, or unbearable for the other animalcules that share our water hole and which would soon disgorge it we are a single human body, we always forget, and our mistakes or slowness are the mistakes and slowness of the world. But if we can win a victory here, in this little point of matter, each of us human beings has a formidable task to carry out, if he understands. Being born in this world is a far more powerful mystery than we had thought.
--
But this is still a negative and human way of approaching the experience. In fact, the Harmony, the marvelous Harmony that attends to everything, does not want to teach us the laws of hell, even a minute hell. It wants the sunlit law. It flings its typhoons and illnesses at us, casts us down into the black pit, only as much as is necessary for us to learn the lesson, not one minute more. And the second we have recaptured the speck of sun, the little note, the miraculous and tranquil little flowing in the heart of things, everything changes, is cured, tilts into the light an instantaneous miracle. Actually, it is not a miracle. The miracle is everywhere, at each instant; it is the very nature of the universe, its air, its sun, its breathing of harmony. Only we keep blocking the way, putting up our walls, our sciences, our millions of devices that know better than this Harmony. We must learn to let it flow freely, to let go there is no other secret. It does not push us down to crush us or punish us, but to teach us the technique of mastery. It wants us to be the true masters of its solar Secret, to be fully what we have always been, free and kings and joyous, and it will pound and pound our miserable secrets until we are forced to knock at its sunlit door, to open our hands and let its sweetness flow over the world and into our hearts.
For there is an even greater Secret. We face this enormous universe bristling with difficulties and problems and negations and obstacles everything is a sort of constant impossibility to be overcome by dint of intelligence, willpower, material or spiritual muscles. But, by so doing, we are on equal terms with the caterpillar, on equal terms with the fear-stricken gnome in its death hole. And, because we believe in difficulty, we are compelled to believe in our muscles of steel or not which always collapse. And we believe in death, we believe in evil, we believe in suffering, as the mole believes in the virtues of its tunnels. But by our morbid belief, our age-old belief, our gray elf-look, we have hardened the difficulty, armed it with a host of instruments and remedies that inflated it even more, planted it more firmly in its implacable groove. The world is enveloped in a formidable elfin illusion. It is in the grip a of formidable Death, which is but our fear of immortality. It is being torn apart by a formidable suffering, which is our refusal of joy and sunshine. Yet everything is here, every possible miracle, in the great open sunlight, every dreamed and undreamed possibility, every simple, spontaneous and natural mastery, every simple power of the Great Harmony. It asks only to pour over the world, flow through our channels and our bodies. All it asks is that we open the passageway. If we let that lightness, that divine ease, that solar smile, flood for a second our little aggregate of flesh, everything melts, obstacles dissolve, illnesses vanish, circumstances are straightened out as if by miracle, the darkness is illumined, the wall collapses as though they never existed. And once again, it is not even a miracle; it is simplicity reestablished, reality restored. It is the point of harmony here contacting Harmony everywhere and spontaneously, automatically, instantly bringing (or restoring) harmony there, in that gesture, that circumstance, that word, that particular conjunction of events and everything is a marvel of conjunction because everything flows from the Law. The walls never were; the obstacles never were; evil, suffering and death never were. But we had that look of evil, that look of suffering and death, that look of the imprisoned elf. The world is as we see it, as we want it. There is another Look within us which can transfigure everything. My children, said She who continued Sri Aurobindo's work, you all live in an enormous sea of vibrations and you don't even realize it! Because you are not receptive. There is such a resistance in you that if something manages to penetrate, three quarters of what enters is violently thrown out because of an incapacity to contain it.... Take simply the example of the consciousness of Forces, such as the force of love, the force of comprehension, the force of creation (it is the same for all of them: the force of protection, the force of growth, the force of progress, all of them), just take Consciousness, the consciousness that covers everything, permeates everything, that is everywhere and in everything it is almost felt as something trying to impose itself violently on the being, which balks!... Whereas if you were open and simply breathed that's all, just breathed you would brea the in Consciousness, Light, Comprehension, Force, Love and all the rest.29 Everything is there under our eyes, the total marvel of the world, just waiting for our consent, our look of faith in beauty, in freedom, in the supreme possibility that is knocking at our doors, pounding on the walls of our intelligence, suffering and pettiness. This is the supreme change of power, which is knocking at the world's doors and hammering away at nations, churches and Sorbonnes, hammering at human consciousness and all our geometric and well-thought-out certainties. And if once, only once, man's consciousness opens up to one ray of that living miracle, if the consciousness of a single nation among all our blind nations opens up to one spark of that Grace, then this implacable civilization walled up in its science and laws, in an elf of terror and suffering this enormous structure in which we have been born and which seems so inescapable, so indestructible and triumphant in its heavy miracles of steel and uranium, this clever prison in which we go in circles will crumble as rust. Then we will be man at last, or superman rather. We will have joy, natural oneness, freedom without walls and power without tricks. Then we will realize that all this suffering, these walls and difficulties which besiege our life were only the spur of the Sun of Truth, an original restriction to increase our strength, our need for space and our power of truth, a veil of illusion to protect our eyes from too strong a light, a dark passage from the instinctive spontaneity of the animal to the conscious spontaneity of the superman and that in the end everything is simple, unbelievably simple, like Truth itself, and unbelievably easy, like the very Joy that conceived these worlds. For, in truth, the path of the gods is a sunlit path on which difficulties lose all reality.30
1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Reason can indeed make itself a mere servant of life; it can limit itself to the work the average normal man demands from it, content to furnish means and justifications for the interests, passions, prejudices of man and clo the them with a misleading garb of rationality or at most supply them with their own secure and enlightened order or with rules of caution and self-restraint sufficient to prevent their more egregious stumbles and most unpleasant consequences. But this is obviously to abdicate its throne or its highest office and to betray the hope with which man set forth on his journey. It may again determine to found itself securely on the facts of life, disinterestedly indeed, that is to say, with a dispassionate critical observation of its principles and processes, but with a prudent resolve not to venture too much forward into the unknown or elevate itself far beyond the immediate realities of our apparent or phenomenal existence. But here again it abdicates; either it becomes a mere critic and observer or else, so far as it tries to lay down laws, it does so within very narrow limits of immediate potentiality and it renounces mans drift towards higher possibilities, his saving gift of idealism. In this limited use of the reason subjected to the rule of an immediate, an apparent vital and physical practicality man cannot rest long satisfied. For his nature pushes him towards the heights; it demands a constant effort of self-transcendence and the impulsion towards things unachieved and even immediately impossible.
On the other hand, when it attempts a higher action reason separates itself from life. Its very attempt at a disinterested and dispassionate knowledge carries it to an elevation where it loses hold of that other knowledge which our instincts and impulses carry within themselves and which, however imperfect, obscure and limited, is still a hidden action of the universal KnowledgeWill inherent in existence that creates and directs all things according to their nature. True, even Science and Philosophy are never entirely dispassionate and disinterested. They fall into subjection to the tyranny of their own ideas, their partial systems, their hasty generalisations and by the innate drive of man towards practice they seek to impose these upon the life. But even so they enter into a world either of abstract ideas or of ideals or of rigid laws from which the complexity of life escapes. The idealist, the thinker, the philosopher, the poet and artist, even the moralist, all those who live much in ideas, when they come to grapple at close quarters with practical life, seem to find themselves something at a loss and are constantly defeated in their endeavour to govern life by their ideas. They exercise a powerful influence, but it is indirectly, more by throwing their ideas into Life which does with them what the secret Will in it chooses than by a direct and successfully ordered action. Not that the pure empiric, the practical man really succeeds any better by his direct action; for that too is taken by the secret Will in life and turned to quite other ends than the practical man had intended. On the contrary, ideals and idealists are necessary; ideals are the savour and sap of life, idealists the most powerful diviners and assistants of its purposes. But reduce your ideal to a system and it at once begins to fail; apply your general laws and fixed ideas systematically as the doctrinaire would do, and Life very soon breaks through or writhes out of their hold or transforms your system, even while it nominally exists, into something the originator would not recognise and would repudiate perhaps as the very contradiction of the principles which he sought to eternise.
The root of the difficulty is this that at the very basis of all our life and existence, internal and external, there is something on which the intellect can never lay a controlling hold, the Absolute, the Infinite. Behind everything in life there is an Absolute, which that thing is seeking after in its own way; everything finite is striving to express an infinite which it feels to be its real truth. Moreover, it is not only each class, each type, each tendency in Nature that is thus impelled to strive after its own secret truth in its own way, but each individual brings in his own variations. Thus there is not only an Absolute, an Infinite in itself which governs its own expression in many forms and tendencies, but there is also a principle of infinite potentiality and variation quite baffling to the reasoning intelligence; for the reason deals successfully only with the settled and the finite. In man this difficulty reaches its acme. For not only is mankind unlimited in potentiality; not only is each of its powers and tendencies seeking after its own absolute in its own way and therefore naturally restless under any rigid control by the reason; but in each man their degrees, methods, combinations vary, each man belongs not only to the common humanity, but to the Infinite in himself and is therefore unique. It is because this is the reality of our existence that the intellectual reason and the intelligent will cannot deal with life as its sovereign, even though they may be at present our supreme instruments and may have been in our evolution supremely important and helpful. The reason can govern, but only as a minister, imperfectly, or as a general arbiter and giver of suggestions which are not really supreme commands, or as one channel of the sovereign authority, because that hidden Power acts at present not directly but through many agents and messengers. The real sovereign is another than the reasoning intelligence. Mans impulse to be free, master of Nature in himself and his environment cannot be really fulfilled until his self-consciousness has grown beyond the rational mentality, become aware of the true sovereign and either identified itself with him or entered into constant communion with his supreme will and knowledge.
1.11 - The Second Genesis, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
But if nothing but the spontaneity of desire can explain the principle and characteristics of the actual manifestation we observe, if, as we shall see, the very spectacle of its progressive evolution, the history of the cosmic epos, the memory of the dark abysses and brutal origins whence life was born, bear witness to and unceasingly confirm the truth that the first law was that of a blind and violent impulsion, yet can it not be affirmed that other laws and other principles have not combined with it and even been present in it to help in forming the worlds.
***
1.11 - The Soul or the Astral Body, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
As it has been said before, according to the elements, the soul is divided in exactly the same way as the body. The psychic functions, powers and properties also have their seat respectively in the soul and certain centres analogous to all the elements, which the Indian philosophy designates as charkas. The awakening of these charkas is named Kundalini yoga in the Indian doctrine. I desist, however, from a comment on these lotuses or centres, because the student interested in this problem will find all the necessary enlightenment in the respective literature. I will touch on it only slightly and say that the lowest centre is the so-called Muladhara or earth centre, having its seat in the lowest part of the soul. The next centre is that of the water, with its seat in the region of the sexual organs and designated in the Indian terminology as Swadisthana. The centre of fire, as centre of the soul, is in the umbilical region and is named Manipura. The centre of air as compensatory element is in the region of the heart and is termed Anahata. The centre of the ether or principle of akasa is found in the region of the neck and is named Visudha. Another centre, that of volition and intellect, is between the eyebrows and is called Ajna. As the supreme and most divine centre is regarded as the thousand-petaled lotus, named Sahasrara from which derive and are influenced all the other powers of the centres. Beginning at the top, from the supreme centre, along the neck, down to the lowest centre, like a channel runs the socalled Susumna or the akasa-principle already known to us, liable for the connection and control of the entire centres. Later on, I shall come back to the problem of the evocation of the snake-power in the single centres. In describing the soul, the principal task will be to establish the connection of the elements with their positive and negative polarities in the soul, and give a neat idea of it. One will see that the body, as well as the soul, with their effects are alive and working, that their preservation and destruction are subject to the immutable laws of the four-pole magnet, i.e., the secret of the tetragrammaton, and governed by them. If he who is to be initiated will attentively meditate about it, he will win a clear idea not only of the bodily functions, but also of those of the soul, and come to a sound notion of the mutual interaction according to the original laws.
1.12 - BOOK THE TWELFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Prevail'd; and pity yielding to the laws,
Fair Iphigenia the devoted maid
--
Left both to be determin'd by the laws;
And to the Graecian chiefs transferr'd the cause.
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature. To
know and possess its true nature, free, absolute, master of itself
1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
governed by the judgments of men or the laws laid down by the
ignorant; he obeys an inner voice and is moved by an unseen
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M: "It is possible to make new discoveries by applying the laws of Western astronomy.
Observing the irregular movement of Uranus, the astronomers looked through their telescopes and discovered Neptune shining in the sky. They can also foretell eclipses."
1.12 - The Office and Limitations of the Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Meanwhile, the intellect performs its function; it leads man to the gates of a greater self-consciousness and places him with unbandaged eyes on that wide threshold where a more luminous Angel has to take him by the hand. It takes first the lower powers of his existence, each absorbed in its own urge, each striving with a blind self-sufficiency towards the fulfilment of its own instincts and primary impulses; it teaches them to understand themselves and to look through the reflecting eyes of the intelligence on the laws of their own action. It enables them to discern intelligently the high in themselves from the low, the pure from the impure and out of a crude confusion to arrive at more and more luminous formulas of their possibilities. It gives them self-knowledge and is a guide, teacher, purifier, liberator. For it enables them also to look beyond themselves and at each other and to draw upon each other for fresh motives and a richer working. It streng thens and purifies the hedonistic and the aesthetic activities and softens their quarrel with the ethical mind and instinct; it gives them solidity and seriousness, brings them to the support of the practical and dynamic powers and allies them more closely to the strong actualities of life. It sweetens the ethical will by infusing into it psychic, hedonistic and aesthetic elements and ennobles by all these separately or together the practical, dynamic and utilitarian temperament of the human being. At the same time it plays the part of a judge and legislator, seeks to fix rules, provide systems and regularised combinations which shall enable the powers of the human soul to walk by a settled path and act according to a sure law, an ascertained measure and in a balanced rhythm. Here it finds after a time that its legislative action becomes a force for limitation and turns into a bondage and that the regularised system which it has imposed in the interests of order and conservation becomes a cause of petrifaction and the sealing up of the fountains of life. It has to bring in its own saving faculty of doubt. Under the impulse of the intelligence warned by the obscure revolt of the oppressed springs of life, ethics, aesthetics, the social, political, economic rule begin to question themselves and, if this at first brings in again some confusion, disorder and uncertainty, yet it awakens new movements of imagination, insight, self-knowledge and self-realisation by which old systems and formulas are transformed or disappear, new experiments are made and in the end larger potentialities and combinations are brought into play. By this double action of the intelligence, affirming and imposing what it has seen and again in due season questioning what has been accomplished in order to make a new affirmation, fixing a rule and order and liberating from rule and order, the progress of the race is assured, however uncertain may seem its steps and stages.
But the action of the intelligence is not only turned downward and outward upon our subjective and external life to understand it and determine the law and order of its present movement and its future potentialities. It has also an upward and inward eye and a more luminous functioning by which it accepts divinations from the hidden eternities. It is opened in this power of vision to a Truth above it from which it derives, however imperfectly and as from behind a veil, an indirect knowledge of the universal principles of our existence and its possibilities; it receives and turns what it can seize of them into intellectual forms and these provide us with large governing ideas by which our efforts can be shaped and around which they can be concentrated or massed; it defines the ideals which we seek to accomplish. It provides us with the great ideas that are forces (ides forces), ideas which in their own strength impose themselves upon our life and compel it into their moulds. Only the forms we give these ideas are intellectual; they themselves descend from a plane of truth of being where knowledge and force are one, the idea and the power of self-fulfilment in the idea are inseparable. Unfortunately, when translated into the forms of our intelligence which acts only by a separating and combining analysis and synthesis and into the effort of our life which advances by a sort of experimental and empirical seeking, these powers become disparate and conflicting ideals which we have all the difficulty in the world to bring into any kind of satisfactory harmony. Such are the primary principles of liberty and order, good, beauty and truth, the ideal of power and the ideal of love, individualism and collectivism, self-denial and self-fulfilment and a hundred others. In each sphere of human life, in each part of our being and our action the intellect presents us with the opposition of a number of such master ideas and such conflicting principles. It finds each to be a truth to which something essential in our being responds,in our higher nature a law, in our lower nature an instinct. It seeks to fulfil each in turn, builds a system of action round it and goes from one to the other and back again to what it has left. Or it tries to combine them but is contented with none of the combinations it has made because none brings about their perfect reconciliation or their satisfied oneness. That indeed belongs to a larger and higher consciousness, not yet attained by mankind, where these opposites are ever harmonised and even unified because in their origin they are eternally one. But still every enlarged attempt of the intelligence thus dealing with our inner and outer life increases the width and wealth of our nature, opens it to larger possibilities of self-knowledge and self-realisation and brings us nearer to our awakening into that greater consciousness.
--
It is not only that he has to contrive continually some new harmony between the various elements of his being, physical, vitalistic, practical and dynamic, aesthetic, emotional and hedonistic, ethical, intellectual, but each of them again has to arrive at some order of its own disparate materials. In his ethics he is divided by different moral tendencies, justice and charity, self-help and altruism, self-increase and self-abnegation, the tendencies of strength and the tendencies of love, the moral rule of activism and the moral rule of quietism. His emotions are necessary to his development and their indulgence essential to the outflowering of his rich humanity; yet is he constantly called upon to coerce and deny them, nor is there any sure rule to guide him in the perplexity of this twofold need. His hedonistic impulse is called many ways by different fields, objects, ideals of self-satisfaction. His aesthetic enjoyment, his aesthetic creation forms for itself under the stress of the intelligence different laws and forms; each seeks to impose itself as the best and the standard, yet each, if its claim were allowed, would by its unjust victory impoverish and imprison his faculty and his felicity in its exercise. His politics and society are a series of adventures and experiments among various possibilities of autocracy, monarchism, military aristocracy, mercantile oligarchy, open or veiled plutocracy, pseudo-democracy of various kinds, bourgeois or proletarian, individualistic or collectivist or bureaucratic, socialism awaiting him, anarchism looming beyond it; and all these correspond to some truth of his social being, some need of his complex social nature, some instinct or force in it which demands that form for its effectuation. Mankind works out these difficulties under the stress of the spirit within it by throwing out a constant variation of types, types of character and temperament, types of practical activity, aesthetic creation, polity, society, ethical order, intellectual system, which vary from the pure to the mixed, from the simple harmony to the complex; each and all of these are so many experiments of individual and collective self-formation in the light of a progressive and increasing knowledge. That knowledge is governed by a number of conflicting ideas and ideals around which these experiments group themselves: each of them is gradually pushed as far as possible in its purity and again mixed and combined as much as possible with others so that there may be a more complex form and an enriched action. Each type has to be broken in turn to yield place to new types and each combination has to give way to the possibility of a new combination. Through it all there is growing an accumulating stock of self-experience and self-actualisation of which the ordinary man accepts some current formulation conventionally as if it were an absolute law and truth,often enough he even thinks it to be that,but which the more developed human being seeks always either to break or to enlarge and make more profound or subtle in order to increase or make room for an increase of human capacity, perfectibility, happiness.
This view of human life and of the process of our development, to which subjectivism readily leads us, gives us a truer vision of the place of the intellect in the human movement. We have seen that the intellect has a double working, dispassionate and interested, self-centred or subservient to movements not its own. The one is a disinterested pursuit of truth for the sake of Truth and of knowledge for the sake of Knowledge without any ulterior motive, with every consideration put away except the rule of keeping the eye on the object, on the fact under enquiry and finding out its truth, its process, its law. The other is coloured by the passion for practice, the desire to govern life by the truth discovered or the fascination of an idea which we labour to establish as the sovereign law of our life and action. We have seen indeed that this is the superiority of reason over the other faculties of man that it is not confined to a separate absorbed action of its own, but plays upon all the others, discovers their law and truth, makes its discoveries serviceable to them and even in pursuing its own bent and end serves also their ends and arrives at a catholic utility. Man in fact does not live for knowledge alone; life in its widest sense is his principal preoccupation and he seeks knowledge for its utility to life much more than for the pure pleasure of acquiring knowledge. But it is precisely in this putting of knowledge at the service of life that the human intellect falls into that confusion and imperfection which pursues all human action. So long as we pursue knowledge for its own sake, there is nothing to be said: the reason is performing its natural function; it is exercising securely its highest right. In the work of the philosopher, the scientist, the savant labouring to add something to the stock of our ascertainable knowledge, there is as perfect a purity and satisfaction as in that of the poet and artist creating forms of beauty for the aesthetic delight of the race. Whatever individual error and limitation there may be, does not matter; for the collective and progressive knowledge of the race has gained the truth that has been discovered and may be trusted in time to get rid of the error. It is when it tries to apply ideas to life that the human intellect stumbles and finds itself at fault.
1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Brahman-fire." The former conceive of the Divine in various forms and powers and seek him by various means, ordinances, dharmas, laws or, as we might say, settled rites of action, selfdiscipline, consecrated works; for the latter, those who already know, the simple fact of sacrifice, of offering whatever work to the Divine itself, of casting all their activities into the unified divine consciousness and energy, is their one means, their one dharma. The means of sacrifice are various; the offerings are of many kinds. There is the psychological sacrifice of self-control and self-discipline which leads to the higher self-possession and self-knowledge. "Some offer their senses into the fires of control, others offer the objects of sense into the fires of sense, and others offer all the actions of the sense and all the actions of the vital force into the fire of the Yoga of self-control kindled by knowledge." There is, that is to say, the discipline which receives the objects of sense-perception without allowing the mind to be disturbed or affected by its sense-activities, the senses themselves becoming pure fires of sacrifice; there is the discipline which stills the senses so that the soul in its purity may appear from behind the veil of mind-action, calm and still; there is the discipline by which, when the self is known, all the actions of the senseperceptions and all the action of the vital being are received into that one still and tranquil soul. The offering of the striver after perfection may be material and physical, dravya-yajna, like that consecrated in worship by the devotee to his deity, or it may be the austerity of his self-discipline and energy of his soul directed to some high aim, tapo-yajna, or it may be some form of Yoga like the Pranayama of the Rajayogins and Hathayogins, or any other yoga-yajna. All these tend to the purification of the being; all sacrifice is a way towards the attainment of the highest.
The one thing needful, the saving principle constant in all these variations, is to subordinate the lower activities, to diminish the control of desire and replace it by a superior energy, to abandon the purely egoistic enjoyment for that diviner delight
1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But the very conditions of the uprooting of the old order may for a long time falsify the quest for the new order. And at first, this new order does not exist; it has to be made. A whole world has to be invented. And the aspiring superman or let us simply say the aspirant to something else must confront a primary reality: the law of freedom is a very demanding one, infinitely more demanding than all the laws imposed by the Machine. It is not a coasting into just anything, but a methodical uprooting from thousands of little slaveries; it does not mean abandoning everything, but, on the contrary, taking charge of everything, since we no longer want to depend on anybody or anything. It is a supreme apprenticeship of responsibility that of being oneself, which in the end is being all. It is not an escape, but a conquest; not a vacation from the Machine, but a great Adventure into man's unknown. And anything that may hamper this supreme freedom, at whatever level or under whatever appearance, must be fought as fiercely as the police or lawmakers of the old world. We are not leaving the slavery of the old order to fall into the worse slavery of ourselves the slavery of drugs, of a party, of one religion or another, one sect or another, a golden bubble or a white one. We want the one freedom of smiling at everything and being light everywhere, identical in destitution and pomp, in prison and palace, in emptiness and fullness and everything is full because we burn with the one little flame that possesses everything forever.
What will they do, these wanderers, these transhumans of a new country that does not yet exist? In the first place, they will perhaps not move at all. They will perhaps have understood that the change has to be wrought inside and that, if nothing changes inside, nothing will ever change outside for centuries and centuries. They will perhaps stay right where they are, in this little street, this gray country, in a humble disguise, an old routine, but it will no longer be a routine because they will do everything with another look, in another way, with another attitude an inner way that changes all ways. And if they persevere, they will notice that this one little drop of true light they carry within themselves has the power to change everything about them surreptitiously. In their unpretentious little circle, they will have worked for the new world and precipitated a little more truth upon earth. But no circle is little when it has that center, since it is the center of everything. Or else, one day, perhaps they will feel impelled to join with their peers of the new world and with them build some living testimony of their common aspiration, as others built pyramids or cathedrals perhaps a city of the new world. And this is the beginning of a great enterprise, and a great danger.
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
In his iron cage in the middle of the courtroom, Sri Aurobindo had reached the end of the road. One after another, he had realized the Immanent, the Transcendent, and the Universal that cage scarcely held anything more than a body: in his consciousness, he was everywhere at will. But perhaps he was recalling an individual named Aurobindo, who since Cambridge and his years in the West had continuously accumulated consciousness in that body, and now the infinite Consciousness was a reality, but that body remained the same as millions of others, subject to the same laws of Nature, hungry, thirsty, and occasionally ill, like all the other bodies, and advancing slowly but surely towards disintegration. The consciousness is vast, luminous, immortal, but underneath everything remains the same. And because he was clear-sighted, because he was no longer fooled by all the masks added on by morality or decency, perhaps he was also espying, in the subconscient, the animal grimace beneath the infinite Consciousness, and the same material squalor intact beneath the lovely halo for underneath everything continues as usual, and nothing is changed. Perhaps he was also looking, beyond the cage, at all his other selves who continued to judge and hate and suffer. Who is saved unless all is saved? And what did that infinite Consciousness do for all these people? It sees, it knows, but what can it do? Had he not left Baroda to act, to do something concrete? There he was, watching everything in his infinite consciousness, experiencing the immense joy above, feeling joy laugh nude on the peaks of the Absolute,163 but what could his joy do if the above were not also everywhere below? Below, everything continues as before, suffering, and dying. He was not listening to the judges, or even answering the questions on which his life depended; he was only hearing the Voice repeating: I am guiding, therefore fear not. Turn to your own Work for which I have brought you to jail. Thus Sri Aurobindo kept his eyes closed in that cage, searching within. Was there not a totality above that could be also the totality below? Had the road come to an end with this golden impotence?164 What was the sense of this whole journey?
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 so-called natural laws that rule our life and the world, and if we want to implement this change through a power of consciousness, then two conditions are required. First, we must work in our own individual body without seeking any escape in the beyond, since this body is the very point of insertion of consciousness into Matter; and secondly, we must seek to discover the principle of consciousness that will have the power to transform Matter. So far, as we can readily see, none of the forms of consciousness or levels of consciousness known to humanity has had the power to bring about this change, neither mental consciousness nor vital consciousness nor physical consciousness. True, through sheer discipline some individuals have managed to defy natural laws and to overcome gravity, cold, hunger, illness, etc. But, first, these were individual changes that could never be passed along, and secondly, they do not really transform Matter: the laws governing the body remain essentially the same, while certain special effects, supernatural in appearance, are superimposed more or less temporarily over nature. Here we can recall the example of another revolutionary yogi, a companion of Sri Aurobindo's, who was once bitten by a rabid dog. Using his power of consciousness, he immediately blocked the effects of the virus and went on with his life as if nothing had happened (let us note in passing that had this yogi been in a perfect state of consciousness, he could not have been bitten in the first place). But one day, during a particularly stormy political meeting, he lost his temper and flew into a rage at one of the speakers.
A few hours later he was dying in the terrible throes of rabies. His power came only from the control of his consciousness, and the instant his consciousness faltered, everything returned as it was before, because the laws of the body had not been changed, only muzzled. Therefore, the kind of change Sri Aurobindo and Mother envision has nothing to do with acquiring more or less temporary "supernatural" powers and draping them over our natural powers, but with changing man's very nature as well as his physical conditioning; it is not control but actual transformation. Furthermore, if we seek an earth-wide realization, this new principle of existence, which Sri Aurobindo calls supramental, must definitively establish itself among us, at first in a few individuals, then, by contagion, in all those who are ready much as the mental principle and the life principle have become naturally and definitively established on earth. In other words, it involves creating a divine superhumanity on earth, which will no longer be subject to the laws of ignorance, suffering, and decay.
The undertaking may seem formidable or chimerical, but this is only because we see things on the scale of a few decades. Actually, it would be very much in keeping with the evolutionary process itself.
--
If we are religious-minded, perhaps we will see the gods who inhabit this world. Beings, forces, sounds, lights, and rhythms are just so many true forms of the same indefinable, but not unknowable, Essence we call "God"; we have spoken of God, and made temples, laws or poems to try to capture the one little pulsation filling us with sunshine, but it is free as the wind on foam-flecked shores. We may also enter the world of music, which in fact is not different from the others but a special extension of this same, great inexpressible Vibration. If once, only once, even for a few moments in a lifetime, we can hear that Music, that Joy singing above, we will know what Beethoven and Bach heard; we will know what God is because we will have heard God. We will probably not say anything grandiose; we will just know that That exists, whereupon all the suffering in the world will seem redeemed.
At the extreme summit of the overmind, there only remain great waves of multi-hued light, says the Mother, the play of spiritual forces, which later translate sometimes much later into new ideas, social changes, or earthly events, after crossing one by one all the layers of consciousness and suffering a considerable distortion and loss of light in the process. There are some rare and silent sages on this earth who can wield and combine these forces and draw them down onto the earth, the way others combine sounds to write a poem. Perhaps they are the true poets. Their existence is a living mantra precipitating the Real upon earth. This concludes the description of the ascent Sri Aurobindo underwent alone in his cell at Alipore. We have only presented a few human reflections of these higher regions; we have said nothing about their essence, nothing about these worlds as they exist in their glory, independently of our pale translations: one must hear and see that for oneself!
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Finally we come to the arguments directed against those who have asserted that the eternal Ground can be unitively known by human minds. This claim is regarded as absurd because it involves the assertion, At one time I am eternal, at another time I am in time. But this statement is absurd only if man is a being of a twofold nature, capable of living on only one level. But if, as the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy have always maintained, man is not only a body and a psyche, but also a spirit, and if he can at will live either on the merely human plane or else in harmony and even in union with the divine Ground of his being, then the statement makes perfectly good sense. The body is always in time, the spirit is always timeless and the psyche is an amphibious creature compelled by the laws of mans being to associate itself to some extent with its body, but capable, if it so desires, of experiencing and being identified with its spirit and, through its spirit, with the divine Ground. The spirit remains always what it eternally is; but man is so constituted that his psyche cannot always remain identified with the spirit. In the statement, At one time I am eternal, at another time I am in time, the word I stands for the psyche, which passes from time to eternity when it is identified with the spirit and passes again from eternity to time, either voluntarily or by involuntary necessity, when it chooses or is compelled to identify itself with the body.
The Sufi, says Jalal-uddin Rumi, is the son of time present. Spiritual progress is a spiral advance. We start as infants in the animal eternity of life in the moment, without anxiety for the future or regret for the past; we grow up into the specifically human condition of those who look before and after, who live to a great extent, not in the present but in memory and anticipation, not spontaneously but by rule and with prudence, in repentance and fear and hope; and we can continue, if we so desire, up and on in a returning sweep towards a point corresponding to our starting place in animality, but incommensurably above it. Once more life is lived in the moment the life now, not of a sub-human creature, but of a being in whom charity has cast out fear, vision has taken the place of hope, selflessness has put a stop to the positive egotism of complacent reminiscence and the negative egotism of remorse. The present moment is the only aperture through which the soul can pass out of time into eternity, through which grace can pass out of eternity into the soul, and through which charity can pass from one soul in time to another soul in time. That is why the Sufi and, along with him, every other practising exponent of the Perennial Philosophy is, or tries to be, a son of time present
--
Dr. Trapp was the author of a religious tract entitled On the Nature, Folly, Sin and Danger of Being Righteous Overmuch. One of laws controversial pieces was an answer to this work.
Benares is to the East, Mecca to the West; but explore your own heart, for there are both Rama and Allah.
1.12 - Truth and Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
The other objection to this definition of truth is that it assumes the meaning of 'coherence' known, whereas, in fact, 'coherence' presupposes the truth of the laws of logic. Two propositions are coherent when both may be true, and are incoherent when one at least must be false. Now in order to know whether two propositions can both be true, we must know such truths as the law of contradiction. For example, the two propositions, 'this tree is a beech' and 'this tree is not a beech', are not coherent, because of the law of contradiction. But if the law of contradiction itself were subjected to the test of coherence, we should find that, if we choose to suppose it false, nothing will any longer be incoherent with anything else. Thus the laws of logic supply the skeleton or framework within which the test of coherence applies, and they themselves cannot be established by this test.
For the above two reasons, coherence cannot be accepted as giving the
1.13 - And Then?, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
He may also lead a revolution or accomplish an awe-inspiring and striking deed, if such is the flow of the Truth in him. He is unpredictable, elusive as Truth itself; he chaffs as he looks grave and smiles as he pores over the world's misery; for he listens to invisible calls and works ceaselessly to pour the Rhythm over the earth's wounds. He does not perform miracles that flare up like a flash in the pan, then leave the earth to its unrepentant darkness; he does not play with occult siddhis36 that upset the laws of matter for a time, then let it fall back into its old routine of pain; he has no need to convert men or preach to nations, for he knows all too well that men are not converted by ideas or words or by sensational demonstrations, but by a change of inner density, which creates a sudden little breath of ease and sunshine in the darkness he sows another law in the world, opens the window to another sun; he changes the density of hearts by the tranquil outpouring of his ray. He does not strike or break, does not condemn or judge; he tries to free the same particle of truth contained in each being and each thing and each event, and convert each by its own sun. His power is a power of truth, of matter to matter, and his vision embraces everything, because he has found the little point within that contains all points and beings and places. In this beggar walking by, that cloud tinged with pink, this chance accident, the little nothing that jostles his house or the young shoot growing, he sees the whole earth and its millions of buds growing toward their kindred Truth, and the world's exact position in a faltering of chance or the remark of a passerby. Everything is his field of action. Through the minuscule, he acts upon the whole; in the minuscule, he deciphers the whole. From one end of the world to the other, he touches his own body.
But the work is not finished. Evolution has not reached its summit; it has not even entered its solar Truth. If the Work were to stop here, we would have reached the summit of man and produced a super-man, but not the being of the next age. Our widened consciousness, our direct perceptions, our refined senses, our exact gestures and movements, our perfect actions, our right thoughts and right wills, our unalterable joy would still rest upon an animal body an aging, precarious and decaying body, which would threaten our luminous poise with abrupt collapse at every moment, checking the operation of our truth-consciousness with a tiny grain of sand and what kind of truth is that if it is so fragile? Truth is or is not, and it is immortal, infinite, invulnerable. It is light and luminous, incorruptible, and it cannot be prevented from being all that it is, any more than the mango tree can prevent itself from being a full tree with all its flowers and every one of its golden fruits. It will not stop at that limited accomplishment and will not rest until the whole earth and all beings are in its likeness, since the whole earth and all beings are in fact its own seeds. The superman, too, is a transitional being. He is the forerunner of another being on earth, as different from man as we are from the ape, and maybe even more, for man is still made of the same substance as the ape while the new being will be made of another substance immortal, luminous and light as Truth itself. He is the elaborator of the supramental being announced by Sri Aurobindo, and his substance is the humble laboratory of a perilous adventure.
1.13 - BOOK THE THIRTEENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Though he had judg'd himself by his own laws,
And stood condemn'd, I help'd the common cause:
--
And honour's cause by laws of honour try'd:
For if he plead proximity of blood;
--
Urge the foul rape, and violated laws;
Accuse the foes, as authors of the strife,
1.13 - Conclusion - He is here, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Along with his mysterious self-immolation another question which is also somewhat mysterious puzzles us: Why did he choose the "natural way" to leave his body when he could have easily left it in the yogic way, as Yogis usually do? The answer that I have found is that Sri Aurobindo's life has respected the rules and laws of Nature, what he has called the conditions of the game. But even these conditions are adapted to a new direction of which Nature, though not pursuing it, is secretly capable. Thus Nature is put to a supernatural use. Whenever any directly miraculous or special intervention has been made either in his own case or in the case of others, then too it is not by utter flouting of those rules and laws, a freakish and ultimately inconsequential movement. A process is still followed. Sri Aurobindo sums up the several sides of the Divine's action thus: "The Divine also acts according to the conditions of the game. He may change them, but he has to change them first, not proceed, while maintaining the conditions, to act by a series of miracles." In following this course of Nature, he probably wanted to have the concrete experience of Death which would help him in the conquest of the Power of Death for the world from across the barrier. Also this natural way created conditions of crisis which would bring about an urgent and extraordinary response from the spiritual Force so that side by side with the progression towards death there would be the precipitation of the Supramental Light. A sign of what was being done may be seen from the Mother's statement: "As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he had called the Mind of Light got realised in me." We can understand also how after death and as a result of it, the Supramental Light suffused his body for several days.
The shock and desolation, however, that we felt can be more imagined than described. Though we could see the Master only four times a year, his Presence was vibrant in the very air we breathed, in our sleep, in every moment of our life; particularly after the accident, even physically he seemed to have come nearer. So the sudden absence was felt like a yawning abyss ready to engulf our very existence. I wonder what would have happened to the vast life qf the Ashram, if the Mother was not there to envelop all of us, the whole earth, in the embrace of her infinite love and compassion. Yet, have we any measure of knowing what she must have felt, though she is the Divine? Just as he "worked, struggled, suffered", so did she suffer and bear. We witnessed it in the early period of the accident; but the command was upon her from the Lord to carry on his work. And the immense vacuum that was created could be filled by her alone. From these verses in Savitri in a different context we get such an indication:
1.13 - Reason and Religion, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Reason has indeed a part to play in relation to this highest field of our religious being and experience, but that part is quite secondary and subordinate. It cannot lay down the law for the religious life, it cannot determine in its own right the system of divine knowledge; it cannot school and lesson the divine love and delight; it cannot set bounds to spiritual experience or lay its yoke upon the action of the spiritual man. Its sole legitimate sphere is to explain as best it can, in its own language and to the rational and intellectual parts of man, the truths, the experiences, the laws of our suprarational and spiritual existence. That has been the work of spiritual philosophy in the East andmuch more crudely and imperfectly doneof theology in the West, a work of great importance at moments like the present when the intellect of mankind after a long wandering is again turning towards the search for the Divine. Here there must inevitably enter a part of those operations proper to the intellect, logical reasoning, inferences from the data given by rational experience, analogies drawn from our knowledge of the apparent facts of existence, appeals even to the physical truths of science, all the apparatus of the intelligent mind in its ordinary workings. But this is the weakest part of spiritual philosophy. It convinces the rational mind only where the intellect is already predisposed to belief, and even if it convinces, it cannot give the true knowledge. Reason is safest when it is content to take the profound truths and experiences of the spiritual being and the spiritual life, just as they are given to it, and throw them into such form, order and language as will make them the most intelligible or the least unintelligible to the reasoning mind. Even then it is not quite safe, for it is apt to harden the order into an intellectual system and to present the form as if it were the essence. And, at best, it has to use a language which is not the very tongue of the suprarational truth but its inadequate translation and, since it is not the ordinary tongue either of the rational intelligence, it is open to non-understanding or misunderstanding by the ordinary reason of mankind. It is well-known to the experience of the spiritual seeker that even the highest philosophising cannot give a true inner knowledge, is not the spiritual light, does not open the gates of experience. All it can do is to address the consciousness of man through his intellect and, when it has done, to say, I have tried to give you the truth in a form and system which will make it intelligible and possible to you; if you are intellectually convinced or attracted, you can now seek the real knowledge, but you must seek it by other means which are beyond my province.
But there is another level of the religious life in which reason might seem justified in interfering more independently and entitled to assume a superior role. For as there is the suprarational life in which religious aspiration finds entirely what it seeks, so too there is also the infrarational life of the instincts, impulses, sensations, crude emotions, vital activities from which all human aspiration takes its beginning. These too feel the touch of the religious sense in man, share its needs and experience, desire its satisfactions. Religion includes this satisfaction also in its scope, and in what is usually called religion it seems even to be the greater part, sometimes to an external view almost the whole; for the supreme purity of spiritual experience does not appear or is glimpsed only through this mixed and turbid current. Much impurity, ignorance, superstition, many doubtful elements must form as the result of this contact and union of our highest tendencies with our lower ignorant nature. Here it would seem that reason has its legitimate part; here surely it can intervene to enlighten, purify, rationalise the play of the instincts and impulses. It would seem that a religious reformation, a movement to substitute a pure and rational religion for one that is largely infrarational and impure, would be a distinct advance in the religious development of humanity. To a certain extent this may be, but, owing to the peculiar nature of the religious being, its entire urge towards the suprarational, not without serious qualifications, nor can the rational mind do anything here that is of a high positive value.
1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the theologies of the various religions, salvation is also regarded as a deliverance out of folly, evil and misery into happiness, goodness and wisdom. But political and economic means are held to be subsidiary to the cultivation of personal holiness, to the acquiring of personal merit and to the maintenance of personal faith in some divine principle or person having power, in one way or another, to forgive and sanctify the individual soul. Moreover the end to be achieved is not regarded as existing in some Utopian future period, beginning, say, in the twenty-second century or perhaps even a little earlier, if our favourite politicians remain in power and make the right laws; the end exists in heaven. This last phrase has two very different meanings. For what is probably the majority of those who profess the great historical religions, it signifies and has always signified a happy posthumous condition of indefinite personal survival, conceived of as a reward for good behaviour and correct belief and a compensation for the miseries inseparable from life in a body. But for those who, within the various religious traditions, have accepted the Perennial Philosophy as a theory and have done their best to live it out in practice, heaven is something else. They aspire to be delivered out of separate selfhood in time and into eternity as realized in the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Since the Ground can and ought to be unitively known in the present life (whose ultimate end and purpose is nothing but this knowledge), heaven is not an exclusively posthumous condition. He only is completely saved who is delivered here and now. As to the means to salvation, these are simultaneously ethical, intellectual and spiritual and have been summed up with admirable clarity and economy in the Buddhas Eightfold Path. Complete deliverance is conditional on the following: first, Right Belief in the all too obvious truth that the cause of pain and evil is craving for separative, ego-centred existence, with its corollary that there can be no deliverance from evil, whether personal or collective, except by getting rid of such craving and the obsession of I, me, mine"; second, Right Will, the will to deliver oneself and others; third, Right Speech, directed by compassion and charity towards all sentient beings; fourth, Right Action, with the aim of creating and maintaining peace and good will; fifth, Right Means of Livelihood, or the choice only of such professions as are not harmful, in their exercise, to any human being or, if possible, any living creature; sixth, Right Effort towards Self-control; seventh, Right Attention or Recollectedness, to be practised in all the circumstances of life, so that we may never do evil by mere thoughtlessness, because we know not what we do"; and, eighth, Right Contemplation, the unitive knowledge of the Ground, to which recollectedness and the ethical self-naughting prescribed in the first six branches of the Path give access. Such then are the means which it is within the power of the human being to employ in order to achieve mans final end and be saved. Of the means which are employed by the divine Ground for helping human beings to reach their goal, the Buddha of the Pali scriptures (a teacher whose dislike of footless questions is no less intense than that of the severest experimental physicist of the twentieth century) declines to speak. All he is prepared to talk about is sorrow and the ending of sorrow the huge brute fact of pain and evil and the other, no less empirical fact that there is a method, by which the individual can free himself from evil and do something to diminish the sum of evil in the world around him. It is only in Mahayana Buddhism that the mysteries of grace are discussed with anything like the fulness of treatment accorded to the subject in the speculations of Hindu and especially Christian theology. The primitive, Hinayana teaching on deliverance is simply an elaboration of the Buddhas last recorded words: Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your own salvation with diligence. As in the well-known passage quoted below, all the stress is upon personal effort.
Therefore, Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, shall not look for refuge to anyone beside themselves it is they who shall reach the very topmost Height. But they must be anxious to learn.
1.13 - System of the O.T.O., #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I do beg you to mark well, dear sister, that a true Magical Operation is never "against Nature." It must go smoothly and serenely according to Her laws. One can bring in alien energies and compel an endothermic reaction; but "Pike's Peak or bust?" The answer will always be BUST!
To return for a moment to that question of Secrecy: there is no rule to prohibit you from quoting against me such of my brighter remarks as "Mystery is the enemy of Truth;" but, for one thing, I am, and always have been, the leader of the Extreme Left in the Council-Chamber of the City of the Pyramids, so that if I acquiesce at all in the system of the O.T.O. so far as the "secret of secrets" of the IX is concerned, it is really on a point of personal honour. My pledge given to the late Frater Superior and O.H.O., Dr. Theodor Reuss. For all that, in this particular instance it is beyond question a point of common prudence, both because the abuse of the Secret is, at least on the surface, so easy and so tempting, and because, if it became a matter of general knowledge the Order itself might be in danger of calumny and persecution; for the secret is even easier to misinterpret that to profane.
1.13 - THE HUMAN REBOUND OF EVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
tion now taking place in Mankind? The iron laws binding eco-
9 "It is perhaps inevitable that, having reached the limit beyond which the sure
--
beyond question transformed in the very laws of its internal devel-
10 This is an old idea which I advanced nearly twenty years ago in an unpub-
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Spiritual practice with a view to winning a lawsuit and earning money, or to helping others win in court and acquire property, shows a very mean understanding.
Good use of money
--
"Once a rich man came here and said to me: 'Sir, you must do something so that I may win my lawsuit. I have heard of your reputation and so I have come here.' 'My dear sir,'
I said to him, 'you have made a mistake. I am not the person you are looking for; Achalananda is your man.'
1.13 - The Pentacle, Lamen or Seal, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Many magicians make use of the Pentacle Salomonis as a symbol of coercion for all beings. The magician surely will not choose a symbol the construction of which he would not find analogous to the universal laws, for with such a symbol he could not make obvious the authority he needs for his purposes. Only by completely understanding the meaning of his symbol and by being able to take the right attitude towards it will the magician get true magical results. A magician should always think of this. He should only use symbols which are clear to him in meaning and which represent the idea of his power.
A seal, contrary to the pentacle, is the graphic representation of a being, power or sphere which is expressed by its symbolism.
--
2. There also exist universal seals which not only symbolize the qualities and range of action of beings but also their other characteristics. By applying the laws of analogy one may produce graphic constructions of such seals and charge them with the qualities of the relevant spirits by force of imagination. The being will have to react to such seals without resistance.
3. The magician may also produce seals entirely according to his own ideas, without following any analogous relations. He must, however, have such seals approved by the being concerned. The being's approval of such a seal or sign can be established as follows: the magician wanders with his spirit into the being's own sphere and has the being swear mentally to his seal, its shape, or representation, that it will always react to it.
1.13 - The Spirit, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
It would be too long to quote all the properties of the spirit with regard to the elements. The incipient adept can enlarge these qualities by serious studies and deep meditation, with respect to the analogous laws of the four-pole magnet. This happens to be a very meritorious work which never ought to be neglected, because it will lead to great success and secure results.
These three chapters relating to body, soul and spirit have represented man in his most perfect form. By now, the disciple ought to have realized how very important it is to know ones own microcosm for the initiation and especially for the magic and the mystic practice, as a matter of fact, for the whole of the secrets. Most of the authors, from sheer ignorance or for other cogent reasons, have omitted this extremely important part, the foundation.
1.14 - The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
In all that we have said hitherto concerning philosophy, we have scarcely touched on many matters that occupy a great space in the writings of most philosophers. Most philosophers--or, at any rate, very many--profess to be able to prove, by _a priori_ metaphysical reasoning, such things as the fundamental dogmas of religion, the essential rationality of the universe, the illusoriness of matter, the unreality of all evil, and so on. There can be no doubt that the hope of finding reason to believe such theses as these has been the chief inspiration of many life-long students of philosophy. This hope, I believe, is vain. It would seem that knowledge concerning the universe as a whole is not to be obtained by metaphysics, and that the proposed proofs that, in virtue of the laws of logic such and such things _must_ exist and such and such others cannot, are not capable of surviving a critical scrutiny. In this chapter we shall briefly consider the kind of way in which such reasoning is attempted, with a view to discovering whether we can hope that it may be valid.
The great representative, in modern times, of the kind of view which we wish to examine, was Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel's philosophy is very difficult, and commentators differ as to the true interpretation of it.
1.1.4 - The Physical Mind and Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The laws of this world as it is are the laws of the Ignorance and the Divine in the world maintains them so long as there is the Ignoranceif He did not, the universe would crumble to pieces, utsdeyur ime lok, as the Gita puts it. There are also, very naturally, conditions for getting out of the Ignorance into the Light. One of them is that the mind of the sadhak should cooperate with the Truth and that his will should cooperate with the Divine Power which, however slow its action may seem to the vital or to the physical mind, is uplifting the nature towards the Light. When that cooperation is complete, then the progress can be rapid enough; but the sadhak should not grudge the time and labour needed to make that cooperation fully possible to the blindness and weakness of human nature and effective.
All the call for faith, sincerity, surrender is only an invitation to make that cooperation more easily possible. If the physical mind ceases to judge all things including those that it does not know or are beyond it, like the deeper things of the spirit, then it becomes easier for it to receive the Light and know by illumination and experience the things that it does not yet know. If the mental and vital will place themselves in the Divine Hand without reservation, then it is easier for the Power to work and produce tangible effects. If there is resistance, then it is natural that it should take more time and the work should be done from within or as it might appear underground so as to prepare the nature and undermine the resistance. It seems to me that the demand for patience is not so terribly unreasonable.
--- Overview of noun laws
The noun laws has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. Torah, Pentateuch, Laws ::: (the first of three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures comprising the first five books of the Hebrew Bible considered as a unit)
--- Overview of noun law
The noun law has 7 senses (first 7 from tagged texts)
1. (50) law, jurisprudence ::: (the collection of rules imposed by authority; "civilization presupposes respect for the law"; "the great problem for jurisprudence to allow freedom while enforcing order")
2. (24) law ::: (legal document setting forth rules governing a particular kind of activity; "there is a law against kidnapping")
3. (11) law, natural law ::: (a rule or body of rules of conduct inherent in human nature and essential to or binding upon human society)
4. (5) law, law of nature ::: (a generalization that describes recurring facts or events in nature; "the laws of thermodynamics")
5. (3) jurisprudence, law, legal philosophy ::: (the branch of philosophy concerned with the law and the principles that lead courts to make the decisions they do)
6. (2) law, practice of law ::: (the learned profession that is mastered by graduate study in a law school and that is responsible for the judicial system; "he studied law at Yale")
7. (1) police, police force, constabulary, law ::: (the force of policemen and officers; "the law came looking for him")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun laws
1 sense of laws
Sense 1
Torah, Pentateuch, Laws
INSTANCE OF=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun law
7 senses of law
Sense 1
law, jurisprudence
=> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
law
=> legal document, legal instrument, official document, instrument
=> document, written document, papers
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
law, natural law
=> concept, conception, construct
=> idea, thought
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
law, law of nature
=> concept, conception, construct
=> idea, thought
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
jurisprudence, law, legal philosophy
=> philosophy
=> humanistic discipline, humanities, liberal arts, arts
=> discipline, subject, subject area, subject field, field, field of study, study, bailiwick
=> knowledge domain, knowledge base, domain
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 6
law, practice of law
=> learned profession
=> profession
=> occupation, business, job, line of work, line
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 7
police, police force, constabulary, law
=> force, personnel
=> organization, organisation
=> social group
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
=> law enforcement agency
=> agency, federal agency, government agency, bureau, office, authority
=> administrative unit, administrative body
=> unit, social unit
=> organization, organisation
=> social group
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun laws
Hyponyms of noun law
6 of 7 senses of law
Sense 1
law, jurisprudence
=> administrative law
=> canon law, ecclesiastical law
=> civil law
=> common law, case law, precedent
=> international law, law of nations
=> law of the land
=> martial law
=> mercantile law, commercial law, law merchant
=> military law
=> Mosaic law, Law of Moses
=> shariah, shariah law, sharia, sharia law, Islamic law
=> statutory law
=> securities law
=> tax law
Sense 2
law
=> anti-drug law
=> anti-racketeering law, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, RICO Act, RICO
=> antitrust legislation, antitrust law
=> statute of limitations
=> fundamental law, organic law, constitution
=> public law
=> blue law
=> blue sky law
=> gag law
=> homestead law
=> poor law
=> Riot Act
=> prohibition
Sense 3
law, natural law
=> divine law
=> principle
=> sound law
Sense 4
law, law of nature
=> all-or-none law
=> principle, rule
=> Archimedes' principle, law of Archimedes
=> Avogadro's law, Avogadro's hypothesis
=> Bernoulli's law, law of large numbers
=> Benford's law
=> Bose-Einstein statistics
=> Boyle's law, Mariotte's law
=> Coulomb's Law
=> Dalton's law, Dalton's law of partial pressures, law of partial pressures
=> distribution law
=> equilibrium law, law of chemical equilibrium
=> Fechner's law, Weber-Fechner law
=> Fermi-Dirac statistics
=> Gay-Lussac's law, Charles's law, law of volumes
=> Henry's law
=> Hooke's law
=> Hubble's law, Hubble law
=> Kepler's law, Kepler's law of planetary motion
=> Kirchhoff's laws
=> law of averages
=> law of constant proportion, law of definite proportions
=> law of diminishing returns
=> law of effect
=> law of equivalent proportions, law of reciprocal proportions
=> law of gravitation, Newton's law of gravitation
=> law of multiple proportions, Dalton's law
=> law of mass action
=> law of thermodynamics
=> Mendel's law
=> Newton's law of motion, Newton's law, law of motion
=> Ohm's law
=> Pascal's law, Pascal's law of fluid pressures
=> Pauli exclusion principle, exclusion principle
=> periodic law, Mendeleev's law
=> Planck's law
=> Planck's radiation law
=> principle of relativity
=> Stevens' law, power law, Stevens' power law
=> Weber's law
Sense 5
jurisprudence, law, legal philosophy
=> contract law
=> corporation law
=> matrimonial law
=> patent law
Sense 7
police, police force, constabulary, law
=> Europol, European Law Enforcement Organisation
=> gendarmerie, gendarmery
=> Mutawa'een, Mutawa
=> Royal Canadian Mounted Police, RCMP, Mounties
=> Scotland Yard, New Scotland Yard
=> secret police
=> Schutzstaffel, SS
=> posse, posse comitatus
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun laws
1 sense of laws
Sense 1
Torah, Pentateuch, Laws
INSTANCE OF=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun law
7 senses of law
Sense 1
law, jurisprudence
=> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
Sense 2
law
=> legal document, legal instrument, official document, instrument
Sense 3
law, natural law
=> concept, conception, construct
Sense 4
law, law of nature
=> concept, conception, construct
Sense 5
jurisprudence, law, legal philosophy
=> philosophy
Sense 6
law, practice of law
=> learned profession
Sense 7
police, police force, constabulary, law
=> force, personnel
=> law enforcement agency
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun laws
1 sense of laws
Sense 1
Torah, Pentateuch, Laws
-> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> scripture, sacred scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Adi Granth, Granth, Granth Sahib
HAS INSTANCE=> Avesta, Zend-Avesta
HAS INSTANCE=> Bhagavad-Gita, Bhagavadgita, Gita
HAS INSTANCE=> Mahabharata, Mahabharatam, Mahabharatum
=> Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> Paralipomenon
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah, Pentateuch, Laws
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah
HAS INSTANCE=> Tanakh, Tanach, Hebrew Scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Prophets, Nebiim
HAS INSTANCE=> Hagiographa, Ketubim, Writings
=> Testament
=> Gospel, Gospels, evangel
=> Synoptic Gospels, Synoptics
HAS INSTANCE=> Book of Mormon
=> prayer
=> service book
=> Apocrypha
=> sapiential book, wisdom book, wisdom literature
=> Pseudepigrapha
HAS INSTANCE=> Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book
=> Talmudic literature
HAS INSTANCE=> Gemara
HAS INSTANCE=> Mishna, Mishnah
=> Vedic literature, Veda
HAS INSTANCE=> Upanishad
=> mantra
=> psalm
HAS INSTANCE=> Psalm
Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun law
7 senses of law
Sense 1
law, jurisprudence
-> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
=> procession
=> pharmacopoeia
=> string
=> wardrobe
=> wardrobe
=> population, universe
=> armamentarium
=> art collection
=> backlog
=> battery
=> block
=> book, rule book
=> book
=> bottle collection
=> bunch, lot, caboodle
=> coin collection
=> collage
=> content
=> ensemble, tout ensemble
=> corpus
=> crop
=> tenantry
=> findings
=> flagging
=> flinders
=> pack
=> hand, deal
=> long suit
=> herbarium
=> stamp collection
=> statuary
=> sum, summation, sum total
=> agglomeration
=> gimmickry
=> nuclear club
=> pile, heap, mound, agglomerate, cumulation, cumulus
=> mass
=> combination
=> congregation
=> hit parade
=> Judaica
=> kludge
=> library, program library, subroutine library
=> library
=> mythology
HAS INSTANCE=> Nag Hammadi, Nag Hammadi Library
=> biota, biology
=> fauna, zoology
=> petting zoo
=> set
=> Victoriana
=> class, category, family
=> job lot
=> package, bundle, packet, parcel
=> defense, defence, defense team, defense lawyers
=> prosecution
=> planting
=> signage
=> generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP
=> pantheon
=> Free World
=> Third World
=> Europe
=> Asia
=> North America
=> Central America
=> South America
=> Oort cloud
=> galaxy
=> galaxy, extragalactic nebula
=> fleet
=> fleet
=> fleet
=> repertoire, repertory
=> repertory, repertoire
=> assortment, mixture, mixed bag, miscellany, miscellanea, variety, salmagundi, smorgasbord, potpourri, motley
=> batch, clutch
=> batch
=> rogue's gallery
=> exhibition, exposition, expo
=> convoy
=> traffic
=> aviation, air power
=> vegetation, flora, botany
=> law, jurisprudence
=> menagerie
=> data, information
=> ana
=> mail, post
=> treasure
=> treasure trove
=> trinketry
=> troponymy, troponomy
=> smithereens
HAS INSTANCE=> Wise Men, Magi
Sense 2
law
-> legal document, legal instrument, official document, instrument
=> articles of incorporation
=> derivative instrument, derivative
=> negotiable instrument
=> passport
=> ship's papers
=> manifest
=> debenture
=> power of attorney
=> letters of administration
=> letters testamentary
=> working papers, work papers, work permit
=> act, enactment
=> law
=> bill, measure
=> brief, legal brief
=> will, testament
=> living will
=> deed, deed of conveyance, title
=> assignment
=> trust deed, deed of trust
=> conveyance
=> tax return, income tax return, return
=> license, licence, permit
=> patent, letters patent
=> opinion, legal opinion, judgment, judgement
=> acquittance, release
=> writ, judicial writ
=> mandate, authorization, authorisation
=> affidavit
=> written agreement
=> indictment, bill of indictment
=> impeachment
=> arraignment
=> security, certificate
Sense 3
law, natural law
-> concept, conception, construct
=> conceptualization, conceptualisation, conceptuality
=> notion
=> category
=> rule, regulation
=> property, attribute, dimension
=> abstraction, abstract
=> quantity
=> part, section, division
=> whole
=> law, natural law
=> law, law of nature
=> lexicalized concept
=> hypothesis, possibility, theory
=> fact
=> rule, linguistic rule
Sense 4
law, law of nature
-> concept, conception, construct
=> conceptualization, conceptualisation, conceptuality
=> notion
=> category
=> rule, regulation
=> property, attribute, dimension
=> abstraction, abstract
=> quantity
=> part, section, division
=> whole
=> law, natural law
=> law, law of nature
=> lexicalized concept
=> hypothesis, possibility, theory
=> fact
=> rule, linguistic rule
Sense 5
jurisprudence, law, legal philosophy
-> philosophy
=> ethics, moral philosophy
=> etiology, aetiology
=> aesthetics, esthetics
=> axiology
=> jurisprudence, law, legal philosophy
=> metaphysics
=> dialectic
=> logic
=> epistemology
=> transcendentalism, transcendental philosophy
Sense 6
law, practice of law
-> learned profession
=> law, practice of law
=> medicine, practice of medicine
=> theology
Sense 7
police, police force, constabulary, law
-> force, personnel
=> guerrilla force, guerilla force
=> military service, armed service, service
=> military, armed forces, armed services, military machine, war machine
=> paramilitary, paramilitary force, paramilitary unit, paramilitary organization, paramilitary organisation
=> police, police force, constabulary, law
=> security force, private security force
=> military police, MP
=> work force, workforce, manpower, hands, men
=> patrol
=> military personnel, soldiery, troops
=> rank and file, rank
=> staff
=> line personnel
=> management personnel
-> law enforcement agency
=> Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI
=> Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, FLETC
=> Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN
=> Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, ATF
=> Criminal Investigation Command, CID
=> Drug Enforcement Administration, Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA
=> Federal Bureau of Prisons, BoP
=> Federal Judiciary
=> National Institute of Justice, NIJ
=> United States Marshals Service, US Marshals Service, Marshals
=> police, police force, constabulary, law
--- Grep of noun laws
bachelor of laws
doctor of laws
equal protection of the laws
kirchhoff's laws
laws
lawson's cedar
lawson's cypress
lawsuit
master of laws
owlclaws
Grep of noun law
action at law
administrative law
admiralty law
all-or-none law
anti-drug law
anti-racketeering law
antitrust law
avogadro's law
bear claw
benford's law
bernard law montgomery
bernoulli's law
blue law
blue sky law
boltzmann distribution law
boyle's law
brother-in-law
bylaw
canon law
case law
cat's-claw
catclaw
charles's law
civil law
claw
coleslaw
color of law
colour of law
commercial law
common-law marriage
common devil's claw
common law
conclusion of law
contract law
corporation law
coulomb's law
counselor-at-law
court of law
criminal law
dalton's law
dalton's law of partial pressures
daughter-in-law
devil's claw
distribution law
divine law
due process of law
ecclesiastical law
equality before the law
equilibrium law
european law enforcement organisation
father-in-law
fechner's law
federal job safety law
federal law enforcement training center
finding of law
first law of motion
first law of thermodynamics
flaw
fraud in law
frederick law olmsted
fundamental law
gag law
game law
gay-lussac's law
gestalt law of organization
gresham's law
grimm's law
harmonic law
heir-at-law
henry's law
higher law
homestead law
hooke's law
hubble's law
hubble law
in-law
international law
international law enforcement agency
islamic law
kepler's first law
kepler's law
kepler's law of planetary motion
kepler's second law
kepler's third law
law
law-breaking
law-makers
law agent
law degree
law enforcement
law enforcement agency
law firm
law merchant
law of action and reaction
law of archimedes
law of areas
law of averages
law of chemical equilibrium
law of closure
law of common fate
law of conservation of energy
law of conservation of mass
law of conservation of matter
law of constant proportion
law of continuation
law of definite proportions
law of diminishing returns
law of effect
law of equal areas
law of equivalent proportions
law of gravitation
law of independent assortment
law of large numbers
law of mass action
law of moses
law of motion
law of multiple proportions
law of nations
law of nature
law of parsimony
law of partial pressures
law of proximity
law of reciprocal proportions
law of segregation
law of similarity
law of the land
law of thermodynamics
law of volumes
law offender
law officer
law practice
law school
law student
lawbreaker
lawcourt
lawfulness
lawgiver
lawlessness
lawmaker
lawmaking
lawman
lawn
lawn bowling
lawn cart
lawn chair
lawn furniture
lawn mower
lawn party
lawn tennis
lawn tool
lawrence
lawrence durrell
lawrence george durrell
lawrence of arabia
lawrence peter berra
lawrencium
laws
lawson's cedar
lawson's cypress
lawsuit
lawton
lawyer
lawyer-client relation
lawyer bush
lawyer cane
lawyerbush
le chatelier's law
lynch law
marine law
mariotte's law
maritime law
martial law
matrimonial law
matter of law
maxwell-boltzmann distribution law
mendel's law
mendeleev's law
mercantile law
military law
mosaic law
mother-in-law
mother-in-law plant
murphy's law
natural law
newton's first law
newton's first law of motion
newton's law
newton's law of gravitation
newton's law of motion
newton's second law
newton's second law of motion
newton's third law
newton's third law of motion
ohm's law
organic law
outlaw
parkinson's law
parliamentary law
pascal's law
pascal's law of fluid pressures
patent law
periodic law
pilaw
planck's law
planck's radiation law
poor law
power law
practice of law
public law
question of law
rejoicing in the law
rejoicing of the law
rejoicing over the law
relative-in-law
roman law
rule of law
salic law
sand devil's claw
school of law
scofflaw
second law of motion
second law of thermodynamics
securities law
sergeant-at-law
serjeant-at-law
sharia law
shariah law
sir bernard law montgomery
sister-in-law
slaw
sod's law
son-in-law
sound law
statute law
statutory law
stevens' law
stevens' power law
tax law
third law of motion
third law of thermodynamics
tragic flaw
unwritten law
verner's law
weber's law
weber-fechner law
wroclaw
zeroth law of thermodynamics