TERMS STARTING WITH
menaccanite ::: n. --> An iron-black or steel-gray mineral, consisting chiefly of the oxides of iron and titanium. It is commonly massive, but occurs also in rhombohedral crystals. Called also titanic iron ore, and ilmenite.
menaced ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Menace
menaced ::: uttered or directed a threat against; threatened.
menace ::: n. --> The show of an intention to inflict evil; a threat or threatening; indication of a probable evil or catastrophe to come.
To express or show an intention to inflict, or to hold out a prospect of inflicting, evil or injury upon; to threaten; -- usually followed by with before the harm threatened; as, to menace a country with war.
To threaten, as an evil to be inflicted.
menacer ::: n. --> One who menaces.
menace ::: something likely to cause injury, damage etc.; a possible danger; a threat.
menacingly ::: adv. --> In a threatening manner.
menacing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Menace
menacing ::: threatening.
menage ::: n. --> See Manage.
A collection of animals; a menagerie.
menagerie ::: n. --> A piace where animals are kept and trained.
A collection of wild or exotic animals, kept for exhibition.
menagogue ::: n. --> Emmenagogue.
menaia ::: pl. --> of Menaion
menaion ::: n. --> A work of twelve volumes, each containing the offices in the Greek Church for a month; also, each volume of the same.
menald ::: a. --> Alt. of Menild
men,” and who honored and repudiated angels in almost the same breath? One thing I soon
men are admitted into the celestial abode.” Meta¬
mendable ::: a. --> Capable of being mended.
mendacious ::: a. --> Given to deception or falsehood; lying; as, a mendacious person.
False; counterfeit; containing falsehood; as, a mendacious statement.
mendacities ::: pl. --> of Mendacity
mendacity ::: n. --> The quality or state of being mendacious; a habit of lying.
A falsehood; a lie.
mendment ::: n. --> Amendment.
mended ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Mend
mended in The Book of the Angel Raziel.
mender ::: n. --> One who mends or repairs.
mendiant ::: n. --> See Mendinant.
mendicancy ::: n. --> The condition of being mendicant; beggary; begging.
mendicant ::: a. --> Practicing beggary; begging; living on alms; as, mendicant friars. ::: n. --> A beggar; esp., one who makes a business of begging; specifically, a begging friar.
mendicate ::: v. t.& i. --> To beg.
mendication ::: n. --> The act or practice of begging; beggary; mendicancy.
mendicity ::: n. --> The practice of begging; the life of a beggar; mendicancy.
mendinant ::: n. --> A mendicant or begging friar.
mending ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Mend
mendole ::: n. --> The cackerel.
mendregal ::: n. --> Medregal.
mends ::: n. --> See Amends.
mend ::: v. t. --> To repair, as anything that is torn, broken, defaced, decayed, or the like; to restore from partial decay, injury, or defacement; to patch up; to put in shape or order again; to re-create; as, to mend a garment or a machine.
To alter for the better; to set right; to reform; hence, to quicken; as, to mend one&
menger, Traditions of the Jews 1,18; Lea, Materials
menge ::: v. i. --> To mix.
menhaden ::: n. --> An American marine fish of the Herring familt (Brevoortia tyrannus), chiefly valuable for its oil and as a component of fertilizers; -- called also mossbunker, bony fish, chebog, pogy, hardhead, whitefish, etc.
men; hence, a fallen angel. [See Azazel.]
menhir ::: n. --> A large stone set upright in olden times as a memorial or monument. Many, of unknown date, are found in Brittany and throughout Northern Europe.
menial ::: n. --> Belonging to a retinue or train of servants; performing servile office; serving.
Pertaining to servants, esp. domestic servants; servile; low; mean.
A domestic servant or retainer, esp. one of humble rank; one employed in low or servile offices.
A person of a servile character or disposition. html{color:
menial ::: pertaining to domestic servants. In current usage, lowly and sometimes degrading; servile.
menild ::: a. --> Covered with spots; speckled; variegated.
menilite ::: n. --> See Opal.
meningeal ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the meninges.
meninges ::: n. pl. --> The three membranes that envelop the brain and spinal cord; the pia mater, dura mater, and arachnoid membrane.
meninges ::: The external covering of the brain; includes the pia, arachnoid, and dura mater.
meningitis ::: n. --> Inflammation of the membranes of the brain or spinal cord.
meniscal ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or having the form of, a meniscus.
menisci ::: pl. --> of Meniscus
meniscoid ::: a. --> Concavo-convex, like a meniscus.
meniscuses ::: pl. --> of Meniscus
meniscus ::: n. --> A crescent.
A lens convex on one side and concave on the other.
An interarticular synovial cartilage or membrane; esp., one of the intervertebral synovial disks in some parts of the vertebral column of birds.
menispermaceous ::: a. --> Pertaining to a natural order (Menispermace/) of climbing plants of which moonseed (Menispermum) is the type.
menispermic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or obtained from, moonseed (Menispermum), or other plants of the same family, as the Anamirta Cocculus.
menispermine ::: n. --> An alkaloid distinct from picrotoxin and obtained from the cocculus indicus (the fruit of Anamirta Cocculus, formerly Menispermum Cocculus) as a white, crystalline, tasteless powder; -- called also menispermina.
meniver ::: a. --> Same as Miniver.
menngak de. See MAN NGAG SDE
mennonist ::: n. --> Alt. of Mennonite
mennonite ::: n. --> One of a small denomination of Christians, so called from Menno Simons of Friesland, their founder. They believe that the New Testament is the only rule of faith, that there is no original sin, that infants should not be baptized, and that Christians ought not to take oath, hold office, or render military service.
menobranch ::: n. --> Alt. of Menobranchus
menobranchus ::: n. --> A large aquatic American salamander of the genus Necturus, having permanent external gills.
men of science; in the main, they were prophets, lawgivers, chroniclers, poets. They did not
men-of-war ::: pl. --> of Manofwar
meno: less; see meno mosso, for example, under mosso
menologia ::: pl. --> of Menology
menologies ::: pl. --> of Menology
menologium ::: n. --> Alt. of Menology
menology ::: n. --> A register of months.
A brief calendar of the lives of the saints for each day in the year, or a simple remembrance of those whose lives are not written.
menopause ::: n. --> The period of natural cessation of menstruation. See Change of life, under Change.
menopoma ::: n. --> Alt. of Menopome
menopome ::: n. --> The hellbender.
menorrhagia ::: n. --> Profuse menstruation.
Any profuse bleeding from the uterus; Metrorrhagia.
menostasis ::: n. --> Stoppage of the mences.
menostation ::: n. --> Same as Menostasis.
menow ::: n. --> A minnow.
menpeki 面壁. See MIANBI
men-pleaser ::: n. --> One whose motive is to please men or the world, rather than God.
men ::: pl. --> of Keelman
of Man ::: n. --> pl. of Man. ::: pron.
mensal ::: a. --> Belonging to the table; transacted at table; as, mensal conversation.
Occurring once in a month; monthly.
mense ::: n. --> Manliness; dignity; comeliness; civility. ::: v. t. --> To grace.
menses ::: n. pl. --> The catamenial or menstrual discharge, a periodic flow of blood or bloody fluid from the uterus or female generative organs.
men.
menstrual ::: a. --> Recurring once a month; monthly; gone through in a month; as, the menstrual revolution of the moon; pertaining to monthly changes; as, the menstrual equation of the sun&
menstruant ::: a. --> Subject to monthly flowing or menses.
menstrua ::: pl. --> of Menstruum
menstruate ::: a. --> Menstruous. ::: v. i. --> To discharge the menses; to have the catamenial flow.
menstruated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Menstruate
menstruating ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Menstruate
menstruation ::: n. --> The discharge of the menses; also, the state or the period of menstruating.
menstrue ::: n. --> The menstrual flux; menses.
menstruous ::: a. --> Having the monthly flow or discharge; menstruating.
Of or pertaining tj the monthly flow; catamenial.
menstruum ::: n. --> Any substance which dissolves a solid body; a solvent.
menstruums ::: pl. --> of Menstruum
mensurability ::: n. --> The quality of being mensurable.
mensurable ::: a. --> Capable of being measured; measurable.
mensurableness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being mensurable; measurableness.
mensural ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to measure.
mensurate ::: v. --> To measure.
mensuration ::: n. --> The act, process, or art, of measuring.
That branch of applied geometry which gives rules for finding the length of lines, the areas of surfaces, or the volumes of solids, from certain simple data of lines and angles.
mensuration: The act of measuring of length (and higher dimension equivalents: area and volume) of components geometric figures.
ment: accordingly, they pictured angels in their own image (i.e., in the guise of men), acting
mentagra ::: n. --> Sycosis.
mental age: the level of intellectual functioning which is suitable for children of a particular age. Typically, mental age is equivalent to chronological age, but if a child is of lower/higher intelligence the mental age will be accordingly lower/higher than chronological age.
mental ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the chin; genian; as, the mental nerve; the mental region.
Of or pertaining to the mind; intellectual; as, mental faculties; mental operations, conditions, or exercise. ::: n. --> A plate or scale covering the mentum or chin of a fish or
mental bhoga ::: mental or subjective ananda, or any of its forms, in the state of bhoga which is the second stage of bhukti.
mental cognition of things would see. the one Truth everj-where.
mental disorders: anxiety disorders, conduct disorder, depressive disorders,oppositional defiant disorder, pervasive development disorder or Tourette's syndrome.
mental health: a state of psychological and emotional well-being that enables an individual to work, love, relate to others effectively, and resolve conflicts.
mental (intelligence)
mental intuition ::: intuition acting in the buddhi, in contrast to ideal intuition.
mentalism ::: The view, in philosophy of mind, that the mind and mental states exist as causally efficacious inner states of persons. The view should be distinguished from substance dualism, which is the view that the mind and the body (or brain) are two distinct kinds of things, which nevertheless interact (somehow) with one another. Although this dualistic view of the mind-body connection entails mentalism, mentalism does not entail dualism. Jerry Fodor and Noam Chomsky have been two of mentalism's most ardent recent defenders.
mentality ::: n. --> Quality or state of mind.
mentally ::: adv. --> In the mind; in thought or meditation; intellectually; in idea.
mental ::: of or relating to the mind; done in the mind, esp. In the mind alone.
mental overmind ::: the plane of the overmind system that is "directly creative of all the formations that manifest below in the mental world". mental sama
mental physical ::: mechanical mind.
mental plane ::: a world of mental existence in which neither life, nor matter, but mind is the first determinant; mind there is not determined by material conditions or by the life-force, but itself determines and uses them for its own satisfaction.
mental: refers to the mind, the collective aspects of intellect and consciousness.
mental retardation: individuals who have significantly below average intellectualfunctioning, with IQ scores of 70-75 or below, combined with inability to use adaptive skills.
mental set: in Gestalt theory , the schema used to organise perception of a new problem.
mental tapas ::: mental will-power, whose working takes the form of "perceptions realising themselves if vijnanamaya, acting as forces, if pranamaya"; same as intellectual tapas.
mental vital ::: that part of the higher vital being which gives a mental expression by thought, speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations and other movements of the vital being.
ment apocryphon, gives an extract from the
mentary of the Revelation of St.John, p. 239].
mentary on Psalms). 2 vols. New Haven: Yale U.P.,
ment, as listed in Maseket Gan Edem and Gehinnom.
ment books the Book of Tobit, usually considered
ment Day, 2 angels, Sorush and Mihr, will stand
mente ::: imp. --> of Menge
mentha ::: n. --> A widely distributed genus of fragrant herbs, including the peppermint, spearmint, etc. The plants have small flowers, usually arranged in dense axillary clusters.
men the motions of the moon.
menthene ::: n. --> A colorless liquid hydrocarbon resembling oil of turpentine, obtained by dehydrating menthol. It has an agreeable odor and a cooling taste.
men. The Zoroastrian genius of fire is Atar ( q.v .).
menthol ::: n. --> A white, crystalline, aromatic substance resembling camphor, extracted from oil of peppermint (Mentha); -- called also mint camphor or peppermint camphor.
menthyl ::: n. --> A compound radical forming the base of menthol.
menticultural ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to mental culture; serving to improve or strengthen the mind.
ment in its version of Revelation 9:11.]
ment.] In the Masque of Angels, a one-act opera
mentionable ::: a. --> Fit to be mentioned.
mentioned, along with cherubim, powers, thrones,
mentioned along with numerous other such
mentioned along with thrones, lordships, authori¬
mentioned also in Waite, The Book of Ceremonial
mentioned) and Hemah. This Hemah was the angel of fury “forged at the beginning of the
mentioned as an extra in the list of the 7 Electors
mentioned by Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Mer-
mentioned ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Mention
mentioned in Ambelain, La Kabbale Pratique.
mentioned in Exodus 4:24ff.) and who hardened
mentioned in Gollancz, Clavicula Salomonis and
mentioned in Paradise Lost I, 678-681: “Mammon
mentioned in Paradise Lost IV, 550; XII, 590,
mentioned in Paradise Lost VI, 447 as “of Principal¬
mentioned in Pirke Hechaloth.
mentioned in Pistis Sophia gnosticism and referred of the gates of the East Wind. [Rf. Ozar Midrashim
mentioned in Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Mer-
mentioned in the Book of Powers.
mentioned in The Book of Protection. [R/ Budge,
mentioned in The Book of the Angel Raziel and in
mentioned in The Book of the Angel Raziel.
mentioned in the grimoires.
mentioned in Thomas Moore’s book-length poem
mentioning ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Mention
mention ::: n. --> A speaking or notice of anything, -- usually in a brief or cursory manner. Used especially in the phrase to make mention of. ::: v. t. --> To make mention of; to speak briefly of; to name.
mentions Gazardiel in Historia Religionis Veterum
mentions Gog and Magog as “spoiling the land.”
mentions the legend of Nathanael being sent down
mentions the order of guards in his poem “Eloa.”
ment is a great angel, one of the most glorious,
ment is Asmodel—who, however, in occult lore,
ment is Isda.
ment of 10 nations.” [Rf Baraita de Massechet
ment of one’s work. Psalms must be cited after
ment of Solomon].
men to judgment,” the 5 angels cited being
mentomeckelian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the chin and lower jaw. ::: n. --> The bone or cartilage forming the anterior extremity of the lower jaw in some adult animals and the young of others.
mentorial ::: a. --> Containing advice or admonition.
mentor ::: n. --> A wise and faithful counselor or monitor.
ment ::: p. p. --> of Menge ::: --> p. p. of Menge.
ment princes of the throne whose rank is superior
ment prophet by an angel (unnamed). In rabbinic
ment prophet. For a list of Lilith’s names, see
ments; also in Buber, ha-Shahar (Vienna, 1883).
ment.]
ments of a Faith Forgotten.]
ment). The King James version gives “rule” in
ment to The Zohar, there are also ten evil emanations (male), of which “only seven were permitted to endure.”
mentum ::: n. --> The front median plate of the labium in insects. See Labium.
ment—unless we include among the Old Testa¬
ment whom Moses encountered in Heaven, to
ment whom you desire,” etc. This would apply
menu bar "operating system" A permanently displayed {menu} spread horizontally across the top of the screen or window. When the mouse is pressed over an item on the menu bar, a {pull-down menu} appears. (1999-09-22)
menu bar ::: (operating system) A permanently displayed menu spread horizontally across the top of the screen or window. When the mouse is pressed over an item on the menu bar, a pull-down menu appears. (1999-09-22)
menuitis ::: /menyoo-i:tis/ A notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively simple-minded menu interface and no escape. Hackers find this intensely interfaces, especially those customisable via macros or a special-purpose language in which one can encode useful hacks.See user-obsequious, drool-proof paper, WIMP, for the rest of us.[Jargon File] (1994-12-02)
menuitis /men"yoo-i:"tis/ A notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively simple-minded {menu} interface and no escape. Hackers find this intensely irritating and much prefer the flexibility of command-line or language-style interfaces, especially those customisable via {macros} or a special-purpose language in which one can encode useful hacks. See {user-obsequious}, {drool-proof paper}, {WIMP}, {for the rest of us}. [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-02)
menu ::: n. --> The details of a banquet; a bill of fare.
menu "operating system" A list from which the user may select an operation to be performed. This is often done with a {mouse} or other pointing device under a {graphical user interface} but may also be controlled from the keyboard. Menus are very convenient for beginners because they show what commands are available and make experimentating with a new program easy, often reducing the need for user documentation. Experienced users however, often prefer keyboard commands, especially for frequently user operations, because they are faster to use. In situations such as text entry where the keyboard must be used anyway, having to move your hand to the mouse to invoke a menu operation is slow. There are many different ways of presenting menus but the most common are the {menu bar} (with {pull-down menus}) and the {context-sensitive menu}. The term "menu" tends to be reserved for a list of actions or global options, whereas a "{list box}" or other graphical {widget} might present any kind of choice. See also {menuitis}. (1994-12-02)
menu ::: (operating system) A list from which the user may select an operation to be performed. This is often done with a mouse or other pointing device under a graphical user interface but may also be controlled from the keyboard.Menus are very convenient for beginners because they show what commands are available and make experimentating with a new program easy, often reducing the use. In situations such as text entry where the keyboard must be used anyway, having to move your hand to the mouse to invoke a menu operation is slow.There are many different ways of presenting menus but the most common are the menu bar (with pull-down menus) and the context-sensitive menu.The term menu tends to be reserved for a list of actions or global options, whereas a list box or other graphical widget might present any kind of choice.See also menuitis. (1994-12-02)
menuse ::: v. i. --> See Amenuse.
Menachem Mendel of Kotsk ::: (1787-1859) Hasidic master; Poland.
Menadel —an angel of the order of powers,
Menafiel —in Waite, The Lemegeton, an angel
Menakel [Manakel]
Menander. See MILINDAPANHA.
Menander
Menaqel [Manakel]
Mencius: (Meng Tzu, Meng K'o, 371-289 B.C.) A native of Tsao (in present Shantung), studied under pupils of Tzu Ssu, grandson of Confucius, became the greatest Confucian in Chinese history. He vigorously attacked the "pervasive teachings" of Yang Chu and Mo Tzu. Like Confucius, he travelled for many years, to many states, trying to persuade kings and princes to practice benevolent government instead of government by force, but failed. He retired to teach and write. (Meng Tzu, Eng. tr. by James Legge: i.) -- W.T.C.
Mendelsohn, Moses: (1729-1786) A German Jewish popular philosopher, holding an admired position in German literature. He was the first to advocate the social emancipation of the Jews, to plead in Germany for the separation of the Church and the State and for freedom of belief and conscience. He is philosrohically best known for his adduced proofs of the immortality of the soul and of the existence of a personal God. Schriften z. Philos., Aesthetik u. Apologetik (ed. Brasch, 1880). -- H.H.
Mendelssohn, Moses (1729-86) ::: Important German Jewish thinker whose ideas helped lay the base for reform Judaism (see haskalah).
Mendrion —in the cabala [Rf. Waite, The
Mendrion.
Menerva (Menvra)—one of the Novensiles,
Mengele, Josef (1911-1978?) ::: SS physician at Auschwitz, notorious for pseudo-medical experiments, especially on twins and Gypsies. He “selected” new arrivals by simply pointing to the right or the left, thus separating those considered able to work from those who were not. Those too weak or too old to work were sent straight to the gas chambers, after all their possessions, including their clothes, were taken for resale in Germany. After the war, he spent some time in a British internment hospital but disappeared, went underground, escaped to Argentina, and later to Paraguay, where he became a citizen in 1959. He was hunted by Interpol, Israeli agents, and Simon Wiesenthal. In 1986, his body was found in Embu, Brazil.
Menial Bhakti is simply worship in the thought and idea without love In the heart.
Meniel —one of the 72 angels bearing the name
Men'o [biku] 面王[比丘]. See MOGHARĀJA
Menorah :::The Menorah is the seven-branched candelabrum that was lit daily in the sanctuary of the Tabernacle and, afterwards, in the Holy Temple. Also employed in reference to the eight-branched candelabrum used in the Jewish home to hold theChanukah lights.
Menorah ::: Jewish candelabrum with special religious significance; a nine-branched menorah is used at Hanukkah, while the seven- branched was used in the ancient Temple.
Menor —an angel conjured in the exorcism of
Menor.]
Menri. See SMAN RI
Mensambulism: Literally, table-walking; table-turning (q.v.).
Mensch ::: A special person with worth and dignity. One who can be respected.
Menschenschreck ::: “Human Horror.” When the Miedzyrzec transit ghetto was liquidated, the German police gave it this nickname.
Menstruum universale: The Latin name of the universal solvent (q.v.) sought by the alchemists.
Mental Being ::: The soul when it dwells in the principle of mind, not yet subject to but user of life and body, knows itself as a mental being working out its mental life and forces and images, bodies of the subtle mental substance, according to its individual knowledge, will and dynamis modified by its relation to other similar beings and powers in the universal mind.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 630
MENTAL BEING. ::: The true mental being is not the same as the inner mental ; true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error and ignorant thought and will of the lower Prakriti and directly open to the knowledge and guidance above.
Mental body: The “body” in which, according to occult philosophy, the conscious personality of man lives on the mental plane of existence, after “death” on the astral plane. Marc Edmund Jones calls it “the agency by which an individual functions in transcendental realms of idea, or through self-sufficient consciousness.”
Mental call (in difficulty): there is only one way if you cannot. exert your will: it is lo call the Force; csen the call
MENTAL-CAUSAL CONSCIOUSNESS Mental-causal consciousness is the monad&
Mental Chemistry: Psychological procedure, analogous to chemical analysis and synthesis, consisting in the attempted explanation of mental states as the products of the combination and fusion of psychic elements. See Associationism. -- L.W.
Mental chemistry: Psychological procedure, analogous to chemical analysis and synthesis, consisting in the attempted explanation of mental states as the products of the combination and fusion of psychic elements.
MENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS Mental consciousness is the monad&
MENTAL CULTURE The prerequisite of the stage of intellectual culture is a rational and non-contradictory world view and life view, which is free of dogmas and has been made available for all. This presupposes a system of education that develops the power of judgement. P 1.1.13
Mental culture presupposes mental self-reliance and mental self-determination.
Intellectual independence implies the ability critically to sift the material which culture has afforded us, to judge the kind of certainty and degree of probability accruing to the ideas we find. P 1.1.15
MENTAL ENVELOPE The monad&
Mentalism: Metaphysical theory of the exclusive reality of individual minds and their subjective states.
Mentalism: Metaphysical theory of the exclusive reality of individual minds and their subjective states. The term is applied to the individualistic idealism of Berkeley and Leibniz rather than to the absolutistic Idealism of Hegel and his followers. -- L.W.
MENTALIST Man at the mental stage (the stage of humanity).
Mental: (Lat. mens, mind) Pertaining to the mind either in its functional aspect (perceiving, imagining, remembering, feeling, willing, etc.) or in its contential aspects (sense data, images and other contents existing "in" the mind). See Mind. -- L.W.
MENTAL LIBERATION FROM EMOTIONALITY During incarnation the emotional and mental envelopes coalesce so as to form, as it were, one single envelope from the functional point of view. Since the emotional is incomparably more developed, it completely dominates the mental. A prerequisite of liberating the mental from the dependence on the emotional is that the coalescence be discontinued. This also results in mental objective consciousness. The method will remain esoteric until mankind has become humanized. Until then, the lowest mental (47:7) can at best dominate the two lowest emotional ones (48:6,7) and the two lowest mental ones (47:6,7) the four lower emotional
(48:4-7). K 6.8.8
From this it follows that only 47:5, perspective thinking, can control the higher emotionality (48:2,3). This explains why the great majority of people have difficulty in discovering the untenability of fictions that appeal to wishful thinking.
MENTAL LIFE BETWEEN INCARNATIONS Upon the dissolution of the emotional envelope, the individual in his mental envelope leads a life of thought that is absolutely subjective, not suspecting the impossibility of apprehending objective reality in this world. But apprehension of reality, bliss, and perfection, omniscience and omnipotence are absolute.
The independent life of the mental envelope can vary from a minute or so (in the case of the barbarian) to thousands of years. It all depends on the number of ideas the individual has collected during physical life and how vital they are. K 1.34.32f
It is significant that it is precisely those who have had a long sojourn in the mental world in between incarnations who are easy prey to the philosophy of illusion
(which says that all matter is illusion). K 5.33.16
Mental Plane ::: Also Briah. One of the Four Worlds as part of the Kabbalistic map of reality. A realm of reality between the Astral Plane and the Causal that serves as the abode of the roots of dualistic expression and the foundation upon which individual forms and archetypes can start to be created: those seeds of intent that drive reality through the lower two worlds. See also Mental Projection.
Mental plane; mental world: The plane of existence after the astral plane; the plane where man is believed by occultists to live in the mental body after “death” on the astral plane.
Mental Projection ::: The ability to firmly focus one's awareness at the level of the Mental Plane and to slip between and amongst the forms that characterize this level. Through practice this allows for exploring the realm of symbolic archetypes and raw information to the extent that the human mind can lucidly and persistently form structures around such ideas. See also Mental Plane.
Mental retardation is a term used when a person has certain limitations in mental functioning and in skills such as communicating, taking care of him or herself, and social skills.
MENTAL SELF Monad having its most important kind of self-consciousness in molecular world 47:4-7 within the solar system. Mental selves belonging to the human kingdom are at the stage of humanity.
MENTAL STAGE The mental stage is divided into the stages of humanity and ideality (or the causal stage). The humanist activates consciousness in the four lowest mental molecular kinds (47:4-7), the idealist in all six (47:2-7). The humanist is a mental self, the idealist a causal self. K 1.34.18
Mental surrender ::: A surrender by the mind and the W’ill in the mind.
Mental tests: Measurement of independent variables in a person to specific situations controlled by the medium of the instrument, expressing measurable differences in individuals. Chief form: intelligence test. -- J.E.B.
Mental transformation ::: All the works of the mind and intellect must first be heightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domains of a higher Intelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental Intuition, then again trans- formed into the dynamic outpourings of the Overmind radiance, and these transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the supramental Gnosis.
Mental visions arc meant to bring in the mind the influences of the things they represent.
Mental word: In Latin, verbum mentis; the concept; the intra-mental product of the act of intellection.
MENTAL WORLD Molecular world 47:4-7 in the solar system. The mental world can be said to be the particular world of men where consciousness is concerned.
Mental World ::: the powers of Mind, its ideas and principles that influence our earth-being, are found to have in the greater Mind-world their own field of fullness of self-nature, while here in human existence they throw out only partial formations which have much difficulty in establishing themselves because of their meeting and mixture with other powers and principles; this meeting, this mixture curbs their completeness, alloys their purity, disputes and defeats their influence
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 814
Mentat "language" (After the human computers in Frank Herbert's SF classic, "Dune") An {object-oriented} distributed language developed at the {University of Virginia} some time before Dec 1987. Mentat is an extension of {C++} and is portable to a variety of {MIMD} architectures. By 1994 Mentat was available for {Sun-3}, {Sun-4}, {iPSC}/2 with plans for {Mach}, {iPSC860}, {RS/6000} and {Iris}. The language is now (May 1998) supported in a new project, {Legion}. E-mail: "mentat@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu". ["Mentat: An Object-Oriented Macro Data Flow System", A. Grimshaw "grimshaw@cs.virginia.edu" et al, SIGPLAN Notices 22(12):35-47, Dec 1987, OOPSLA '87]. (1998-05-15)
Mentat ::: (language) (After the human computers in Frank Herbert's SF classic, Dune) An object-oriented distributed language developed at the University of Virginia some time before Dec 1987. Mentat is an extension of C++ and is portable to a variety of MIMD architectures.By 1994 Mentat was available for Sun-3, Sun-4, iPSC/2 with plans for Mach, iPSC860, RS/6000 and Iris. The language is now (May 1998) supported in a new project, Legion.E-mail: .[Mentat: An Object-Oriented Macro Data Flow System, A. Grimshaw et al, SIGPLAN Notices 22(12):35-47, Dec 1987, OOPSLA '87]. (1998-05-15)
Mentioned among numerous other guards in Ozar
Mentioned in Talmud Berakoth 57b.
Mentioned, with numerous others, in Ozar
Mentor: A mage who teaches another.
Mentor —an angel invoked in the exorcism of
MENTOR ::: CAI language. Computer Systems for Teaching Complex Concepts, Report 1742, BBN, Mar 1969.
MENTOR CAI language. "Computer Systems for Teaching Complex Concepts", Report 1742, BBN, Mar 1969.
Men tvith great capacities or «i tw. r . vital have yen- often more glaring dSeem “ f eh"'' nary men or at least the defeats of the huf 7 " "‘''■
Menucha offers a slightly different list of 10:
Menu costs of inflation - The costs associated wit having to adjust the price lists or labels.
Menuha 57a, Jaoel (Jehoel) is the principal angel
Menvra [Menerva]
MENYMA/S ::: [A Message Oriented Language for System Applications, A. Koch et al, Proc 3rd Intl Conf Distrib Comp Sys, IEEE 1982, pp. 824-832]. (1994-12-02)
MENYMA/S ["A Message Oriented Language for System Applications", A. Koch et al, Proc 3rd Intl Conf Distrib Comp Sys, IEEE 1982, pp. 824-832]. (1994-12-02)
Menzan Zuiho
Menzan Zuiho. (面山瑞方) (1683-1769). Japanese reformer of the SoToSHu of ZEN during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867), who is largely responsible for establishing DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253) as the font of orthodoxy for the Soto school and, during the modern and contemporary periods, as an innovative religious thinker. Born in Higo province in the Kumamoto region, Menzan studied with MANZAN DoHAKU (1636-1715) and later Sonno Soeki (1649-1705). At a thousand-day retreat Menzan led following Sonno's death, Menzan read texts by Dogen that had been neglected for centuries and subsequently used them as the scriptural authority from which he forged an entirely new vision of the Sotoshu; he then deployed this revisioning of Dogen to justify a reformation of long-held practices within the school. Menzan was a prolific author, with over a hundred works attributed to him, sixty-five of which have been published in modern Soto school collections; these works include everything from detailed philological commentaries to extended discussions of monastic rules and regulations. He remains best known for his Shobogenzo shotenroku, an eleven-roll encyclopedic commentary to Dogen's magnum opus, the SHoBoGENZo.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. Any abnormal phenomenon or product or unusual object; anomaly; aberration. 2. A sudden and apparently causeless change or turn or events; occurrence, etc. freaks.
1. Having momentous significance or consequences; decisively important. 2. Fatal, deadly, or disastrous. 3. Controlled or determined by destiny; inexorable. 4. Prophetic; ominous.
1. Imagination, caprice, whim, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained. 2. The forming of mental images, esp. wondrous, extravagant or visionary fancy. 3. A mental image, esp. when unreal or fantastic; vision. fantasies.
1. Imagination or fantasy, esp. as exercised in a capricious manner. 2. A mental image or conception. 3. An idea or opinion with little foundation; illusion. 4. A caprice; whim. 5. A sudden or irrational liking for a person or thing. fancy"s, Fancy"s, fancies.
1. Reduced to fragments. 2. Existing or functioning as though broken into separate parts; disorganized; disunified.
1. Something false; an untrue idea, belief, etc. 2. A false statement; lie. **Falsehood, falsehood"s, Falsehood"s, falsehoods.
1. The active opposition or mutual hostility of two opposing forces, physical or mental. 2. An opposing force, principle, or tendency.
1. The expenditure of something, such as time or labour, necessary for the attainment of a goal. Also fig. **2. The price paid or required for acquiring, producing, or maintaining something, usually measured in money, time, or energy; expense or expenditure; outlay. 3. **Suffering or sacrifice; loss; penalty.
1. To be inadequate or insufficient; fall short. 2. To fall short of success or achievement in something expected, attempted, desired, or approved. 3. To dwindle, pass, or die away. 4. To decline, as in strength or effectiveness; fig. of the heart. 5. Of some expected or usual resource: To prove of no use or help to. 6. Of a material thing: To break down under strain or pressure. fails, failed, failed.
A being of the lower vital planes who has assumed the discarded vital sheath of a departed human being or a fragment of his vital personality and appears and acts in the form and perhaps with the surface thoughts and memories of that person.
A being of the lower vital plane who by the medium of a living human being or by some other means or agency is able to materialise itself sufficiently so as to appear and act in a visible form or speak with an audible voice or, without so appearing, to move about material things, e.g., furniture or to materialise objects or to shift them from place to place. This accounts for what are called poltergeists , phenomena of stone-throwing, tree-inhabiting Bhutas, and other well-known phenomena.
A mental formation stamped by the thoughts and feelings of a departed human being on the atmosphere of a place or locality, wandering about there or repeating itself, till that formation either exhausts itself or is dissolved by one means or another. This is the explanation of such phenomena as the haunted house in which the scenes attending or surrounding or preceding a murder are repeated over and over again and many other similar phenomena.
absolute ::: adj. 1. Free from all imperfection or deficiency; complete, finished; perfect, consummate. 2. Of degree: Complete, entire; in the fullest sense. 3. Having ultimate power, governing totally; unlimited by a constitution or the concurrent authority of a parliament; arbitrary, despotic. 4. Existing without relation to any other being; self-existent; self-sufficing. 5. Capable of being thought or conceived by itself alone; unconditioned. 6. Considered independently of its being subjective or objective. n. 7. Something that is not dependent upon external conditions for existence or for its specific nature, size, etc. (opposed to relative). Absolute, Absolute"s, absolutes, absoluteness.
absolute reality ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I would myself say that bliss and oneness are the essential condition of the absolute reality, and love as the most characteristic dynamic power of bliss and oneness must support fundamentally and colour their activities; . . . .” Letters on Yoga
abstract ::: adj. 1. Withdrawn or separated from matter, from material embodiment, from practice, or from particular examples; theoretical. 2. In the fine arts, characterized by lack of or freedom from representational qualities. n. 3. Something that concentrates in itself the essential qualities of anything more extensive or more general, or of several things; essence.
accord ::: agreement or harmonious correspondence of things or their properties, as of colours or tints. Of sounds: Agreement in pitch and tone; harmony.
account ::: n. 1. A record of debts and credits, applied to other things than money or trade. 2. A particular statement or narrative of an event or thing; a relation, report, or description. v. 3. To render an account or reckoning of; to give a satisfactory reason for, to give an explanation.
ache ::: a continuous or abiding pain, in contrast to a sudden or sharp one. Used of both physical and mental sensations.
achievement ::: something accomplished, esp. by superior ability, special effort, great courage, etc. achievements.
"A cosmos or universe is always a harmony, otherwise it could not exist, it would fly to pieces. But as there are musical harmonies which are built out of discords partly or even predominantly, so this universe (the material) is disharmonious in its separate elements — the individual elements are at discord with each other to a large extent; it is only owing to the sustaining Divine Will behind that the whole is still a harmony to those who look at it with the cosmic vision. But it is a harmony in evolution in progress — that is, all is combined to strive towards a goal which is not yet reached, and the object of our yoga is to hasten the arrival to this goal. When it is reached, there will be a harmony of harmonies substituted for the present harmony built up on discords. This is the explanation of the present appearance of things.” Letters on Yoga
"Action is a resultant of the energy of the being, but this energy is not of one sole kind; the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of energies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire, passion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of truth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a pursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure, life-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or collective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction of the body.” The Life Divine*
"A divine Force is at work and will choose at each moment what has to be done or has not to be done, what has to be momentarily or permanently taken up, momentarily or permanently abandoned. For provided we do not substitute for that our desire or our ego, and to that end the soul must be always awake, always on guard, alive to the divine guidance, resistant to the undivine misleading from within or without us, that Force is sufficient and alone competent and she will lead us to the fulfilment along ways and by means too large, too inward, too complex for the mind to follow, much less to dictate. It is an arduous and difficult and dangerous way, but there is none other.” The Synthesis of Yoga
adj. 1. Not imprisoned or enslaved; being at liberty. 2. Unconstrained; unconfined. 3. Unobstructed; clear. 4. Ready or generous in using or giving; liberal; lavish. 5. Exempt from external authority, interference, restriction, etc., as a person or one"s will, thought, choice, action, etc.; independent; unrestricted. 6. Exempt or released from something specified that controls, restrains, burdens, etc. (usually followed by from or of). 7. Given readily or in profusion. freer, thought-free, world-free. *adv. *8. In a free manner; without constraints; unimpeded. v. 9. To make free; set at liberty; release from bondage, imprisonment, or restraint. 10. To disengage or clear something from an entanglement. 11. To relieve or rid of a burden, an inconvenience or an obligation. freed. set free. Released; liberated; freed.
"Adjustment for practical purposes of rival courses of action, systems, or theories, conflicting opinions or principles, by the sacrifice or surrender of a part of each. . . .” Essays Divine and Human*
adoration ::: 1. The act of paying honour, as to a divine being; worship. 2. Reverent homage. 3. Fervent and devoted love. **adoration"s.*Sri Aurobindo: "Especially in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that which one adores.” Letters on Yoga*
adorn ::: to beautify as an ornament does; decorate; to add beauty or lustre to. adorned.
advance ::: n. **1. Fig. Onward movement in any process or course of action; progress. v. 2. To move or go forward; to proceed. 3. Fig. To go forward or make progress in life, or in any course. 3. To move, put, or push (a thing) forward. Also fig. advances, advanced, advancing.**
"Aesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry, as it is of all art. But it is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of poetry and art; it extends to everything in the world: there is nothing we can sense, think or in any way experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction of our conscious being. Ordinarily, we suppose that aesthesis is concerned with beauty, and that indeed is its most prominent concern: but it is concerned with many other things also. It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the universal Ananda takes three major and original forms, beauty, love and delight, the delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things.” Letters on Savitri
affections ::: emotions; kind feelings, love, fondness, loving attachment.
afflicted ::: distressed with mental or bodily pain; troubled greatly; grievously depressed, oppressed, cast down; tormented.
afflicting ::: 1. Grievously painful, distressing. 2. Distressing with bodily or mental suffering; troubling grievously, tormenting. self-afflicting.
*[Agni]. Sri Aurobindo: "Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” *The Secret of the Veda
agreement ::: a contract or other document delineating an arrangement that is accepted by all parties to a transaction. (Sri Aurobindo capitalizes the word.)
algebra ::: the branch of mathematics that deals with general statements of relations, utilizing letters and other symbols to represent specific sets of numbers, values, vectors, etc., in the description of such relations. 2. Any special system of notation adapted to the study of a special system of relationship.
". . . a limited consciousness growing out of nescience is the source of error, a personal attachment to the limitation and the error born of it the source of falsity, a wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego the source of evil. But it is evident that their relative existence is only a phenomenon thrown up by the cosmic Force in its drive towards evolutionary self-expression.” The Life Divine
"All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.” ::: "The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings" or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined"? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see"?” Letters on Savitri
"All change must come from within with the felt or the secret support of the Divine Power; it is only by one"s own inner opening to that that one can receive help, not by mental, vital or physical contact with others.” Letters on Yoga
::: "All conscious being is one and indivisible in itself, but in manifestation it becomes a complex rhythm, a scale of harmonies, a hierarchy of states or movements.” The Upanishads
::: "All energies put into activity — thought, speech, feeling, act — go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga*
". . . all error is a disfiguration of some misunderstood fragments of truth. . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga*
"All phenomenal existence resolves itself into Force, into a movement of energy that assumes more or less material, more or less gross or subtle forms for self-presentation to its own experience.” The Life Divine
allured ::: 1. Attracted as to a lure; drawn or enticed to a place or to a course of action. 2. Attracted or tempted by something flattering or desirable; fascinated, charmed. alluring, **alluringly, allurement.
"Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and fill you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.” Letters on Yoga
amazed ::: greatly surprised; astounded; suddenly filled with wonder; astonished. amazing, amazement.
ambience ::: 1. The mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particularly of an environment or milieu. 2. That which surrounds or encompasses.
ambition ::: an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honour, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment. ambitions.
amusements ::: pleasurable pastimes of the mind or attention; mental diversions and enjoyments in lieu of more serious matters.
analyse ::: to examine carefully and in detail so as to identify causes, key factors, possible results; examine minutely and critically to determine the elements or essential features of. analysed.
anarchy ::: a state of society without government or law ; lawlessness, confusion, chaos, disorder.
::: "An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. Our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed.” The Synthesis of Yoga —**cosmic forces.**
**Angel of the Way *Sri Aurobindo: "Love fulfilled does not exclude knowledge, but itself brings knowledge; and the completer the knowledge, the richer the possibility of love. ‘By Bhakti" says the Lord in the Gita ‘shall a man know Me in all my extent and greatness and as I am in the principles of my being, and when he has known Me in the principles of my being, then he enters into Me." Love without knowledge is a passionate and intense, but blind, crude, often dangerous thing, a great power, but also a stumbling-block; love, limited in knowledge, condemns itself in its fervour and often by its very fervour to narrowness; but love leading to perfect knowledge brings the infinite and absolute union. Such love is not inconsistent with, but rather throws itself with joy into divine works; for it loves God and is one with him in all his being, and therefore in all beings, and to work for the world is then to feel and fulfil multitudinously one"s love for God. This is the trinity of our powers, [work, knowledge, love] the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start on our journey by the path of devotion with Love for the Angel of the Way to find in the ecstasy of the divine delight of the All-Lover"s being the fulfilment of ours, its secure home and blissful abiding-place and the centre of its universal radiation.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
anklet ::: an ornamental circlet worn around the ankle; an ankle-ring. anklet-bells.
annul ::: 1. To reduce to nothing; obliterate; annihilate. To put out of existence, extinguish. 2. To put an end or stop to (an action or state of things); to abolish, cancel, do away with. 3. To make void or null; abolish; cancel; invalidate; declare invalid. annuls, annulled, annulling, annulment.
anomalies ::: deviations from the common rule, type, arrangement, order, or form.
antechambers ::: 1. Chambers or rooms that serve as waiting rooms and entrances to larger rooms or apartments; anterooms. 2. Any areas that are entrances to other areas.
anxious ::: full of mental distress or uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune; greatly worried.
a person who is practised in or who studies geometry, the branch of mathematics that deals with the deduction of the properties, measurement, and relationships of points, lines, angles, and figures in space from their defining conditions by means of certain assumed properties of space. World-Geometer"s.
appear ::: 1. To come into sight; become visible; come into view, as from a place or state of concealment, or from a distance; esp. of angels, spirits, visions. 2. To come into existence; be created. 3. To be clear to the understanding. 4. To seem or look to be. appears, appeared, appearing.
appease ::: 1. To bring to a state of peace, quiet, ease, calm, or contentment; pacify; soothe. 2. To satisfy, allay, or relieve.
apprentice ::: a learner; novice; tyro; one who is learning the rudiments; a trainee. apprenticeship.
apsaras ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic conception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the moment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal raiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty and light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and gleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they are the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the soul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines, by the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the hero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage, musing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from his white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the attraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining background, but most in the older allegories, especially the strange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in the Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.
arabesques ::: 1. Any ornaments or ornamental objects such as rugs or mosaics, in which flowers, foliage, fruits, vases, animals, and figures are represented in a fancifully combined pattern. 2. *Fine Arts.* A sinuous, spiraling, undulating, or serpentine line or linear motif.
arbitrary ::: 1. Based on or subject to individual will, judgment or preference: judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one"s discretion. 2. Capricious; unreasonable; unsupported. 3. Derived from mere opinion or preference; capricious; uncertain. 4. Having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical.
arch ::: 1. An upwardly curved construction, for spanning an opening, consisting of a number of wedgelike stones, bricks, or the like, set with the narrower side toward the opening in such a way that forces on the arch are transmitted as vertical or oblique stresses on either side of the opening, either capable of bearing weight or merely ornamental; 2. Something bowed or curved; any bowlike part: the arch of the foot. 3. An arched roof, door; gateway; vault; fig. the heavens. arches.
architectonic ::: metaph. Of the systematic arrangement of knowledge.
architect ::: the deviser, maker, or creator of anything; one who builds up something, as, men are the architects of their own fortunes. Architect, architects.
architecture ::: 1. The profession of designing buildings and other artificial constructions and environments, usually with some regard to aesthetic effect. 2. The character or style of building. 3. Construction or structure generally. architectures.
archives ::: preserved historical records or documents, also the place where they are kept.
a religious official among the Romans, whose duty it was to predict future events and advise upon the course of public business, in accordance with omens derived from the flight, singing, and feeding of birds. Hence extended to: A soothsayer, diviner, or prophet, generally; one that foresees and foretells the future. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.) augured.
arenas ::: central stages, rings, areas, or the like, used for sports or other forms of entertainment, surrounded by seats for spectators.
argument ::: 1. A fact or statement put forth as proof or evidence; a reason; persuasive discourse, debate. 2. A process of reasoning; series of reasons.
arise ::: 1. To get up from sleep or rest; to awaken; wake up. 2. To go up, come up, ascend on high, mount. Now only poet. **3. To come into being, action, or notice; originate; appear; spring up. 4. Of circumstances viewed as results: To spring, originate, or result from. 5. To rise from inaction, from the peaceful, quiet, or ordinary course of life. 6. To rise in violence or agitation, as the sea, the wind; to boil up as a fermenting fluid, the blood; so of the heart, wrath, etc. Now poet. 7. Of sounds: To come up aloud, or so as to be audible, to be heard aloud. arises, arising, arose, arisen. *(Sri Aurobindo also employs arisen as an adj.*)
arraigned ::: called (an accused person) before a court to answer the charge made against him or her by indictment, information, or complaint, or brought before a court to answer to an indictment; accused, charged with fault.
array ::: an orderly, often imposing arrangement or series of things displayed; an imposing series.
"Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3.
ascension ::: the act or process of ascending; upward movement. flame-ascensions.
ascent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ascent or the upward movement takes place when there is a sufficient aspiration from the being, i.e., from the various mental, vital and physical planes.” *Letters on Yoga
aspiration ::: 1. A strong desire for high achievement. 2. A steadfast longing for something above oneself. **aspiration"s.
assent ::: 1. Agreement, as to a proposal; concurrence. 2. Acquiescence; compliance, concession. assents, assenting.
assuage ::: to mitigate, alleviate, soothe, relieve (physical or mental pain).
"As supramental Truth is not merely a sublimation of our mental ideas, so Divine Love is not merely a sublimation of human emotions; it is a different consciousness, with a different quality, movement and substance.” Letters on Yoga
astir ::: moving or stirring, esp. with much activity or excitement.
astuce ::: astuteness, i.e. of keen penetration or discernment, sagacious.
"A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
atmosphere ::: 1. A surrounding or pervading mood, environment, or influence. 2. The air.
atom ::: 1. A unit of matter, the smallest unit of an element, having all the characteristics of that element and consisting of a dense, central, positively charged nucleus surrounded by a system of electrons. 2. The smallest component of an element having the chemical properties of the element. 3. An extremely small part, quantity, or amount. The smallest conceivable unit of an element or of anything. atom"s, atoms, atomic.
atoned ::: expiated, made amends for.
attain ::: 1. To gain as an objective; achieve; reach, arrive at; accomplish. 2. To arrive at, as by virtue of persistence or the passage of time; To reach in the course of development. attained.
auspice-hour ::: an auspice is any divine or prophetic token; a favourable sign or propitious circumstance, esp. an indication of a happy future. Sri Aurobindo combines the word ‘hour" with auspice to emphasize a special moment.
austere ::: 1. Severe in manner or appearance; uncompromising; strict; forbidding; stark. 2. Rigorously self-disciplined and severely moral; ascetic; abstinent. 3. Grave; sober; solemn; serious. 4. Without excess, luxury, or ease; severely simple; without ornament. austerity.
autocracy ::: unlimited authority, power or influence; absolute government. autocracies.
autonomy ::: 1. Independence or freedom, as of the will or one"s actions. 2. Self-government. autonomies.
availed ::: to be of use, value, or advantage; to have the necessary force to accomplishment something.
avenge ::: to inflict a punishment or penalty in return for; take vengeance on behalf of. avenges.
a very small part or segment of anything; minute portion. fractions.
awed ::: 1. inspired or influenced by a feeling of fearful wonderment or reverence; 2. Inspired with reverential wonder combined with an element of latent fear.
awful ::: 1. Inspiring fear; terrible, dreadful, appalling, awe-inspiring. 2. Extremely impressive. 3. Profoundly inspired by a feeling of fearful wonderment or reverence.
babel ::: "The reference is to the mythological story of the construction of the Tower of Babel, which appears to be an attempt to explain the diversity of human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and tower ‘with its top in the heavens". God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The tower was never completed and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works Sri Aurobindo: "The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other"s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle
background ::: n.** 1. The general scene or surface against which designs, patterns, or figures are represented or viewed. 2. Fig. The complex of physical, cultural, and psychological factors that serves as the environment of an event or experience; the set of conditions against which an occurrence is perceived. backgrounds. adj. 3.** Of, pertaining to, or serving as a background.
balance ::: n. **1. A state of equilibrium or equipoise; mental, psychological or emotional. 2. A weighing device, especially one consisting of a rigid beam horizontally suspended by a low-friction support at its center, with identical weighing pans hung at either end, one of which holds an unknown weight while the effective weight in the other is increased by known amounts until the beam is level and motionless. 3. An undecided or uncertain state in which issues are unresolved. v. 4. To have an equality or equivalence in weight, parts, etc.; be in equilibrium. adj. 5. Being in harmonious or proper arrangement or adjustment, proportion. 6. Mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behaviour, judgement. balanced, balancing.**
bale ::: 1. Evil. 2. Woe, suffering, pain; 3. Mental suffering, anguish.
bank ::: a business establishment in which money is kept for saving or commercial purposes or is invested, supplied for loans, or exchanged.
bare ::: v. 1. To make bare; uncover or reveal. 2. Fig. To expose. bared, baring. adj. 3. Lacking clothing or covering; naked 4. Fig. Exposed to view; undisguised. 5. Just sufficient; mere. 6. Lacking embellishment or ornamentation; unembellished; simple; plain. 7. Unprotected; without defence. 8. Devoid of covering, a leafless trees. 9. Sheer, as bare cliffs. heaven-bare, bareness.
bargain ::: an agreement between parties fixing obligations, etc. that each promises to carry out.
basement ::: the substructure or foundation of a building usually below ground level.
based ::: 1. Formed or established as a base. 2. Supported as a base. 3. Conceived as the fundamental principle or underlying concept.
base ::: n. 1. The fundamental principle or underlying concept of a system or theory; a basis, foundation. 2. A fundamental ingredient; a chief constituent. adj. 3. Having or showing a contemptible, mean-spirited, or selfish lack of human decency; morally low. base"s. baser.
bathe ::: 1. To become immersed in or as if in liquid, as a bath or in other substances or elements. 2. To wash or pour over; suffuse or envelope, like sunshine. bathed, bathing.
beat ::: n. 1. A stroke or blow. 2. A regular sound or stroke. 3. The rhythmic contraction and expansion of the arteries with each beat of the heart. 4. A pulsating sound. 5. A forceful flapping of wings. beats, nerve-beat, hammer-beats, heart-beats, heart-beats", moment-beats, rhyme-beats. v. 6. To strike or pound with repeated blows. 7. To shape or break by repeated blows, as metal. 8. To sound in pulsations. 9. To throb rhythmically; pulsate, as the heart. 10. To flap, especially wings. 11. To strike with or as if with a series of violent blows, dash or pound repeatedly against, as waves, wind, etc. beats, beaten, beating. *adj. *sun-beat.
behaviour ::: 1. Manner of behaving or conducting oneself. 2. The aggregate of the responses or reactions or movements made by an organism in any situation, or the manner in which a thing acts under such circumstances. behaviour"s.
::: ". . . behind visible events in the world there is always a mass of invisible forces at work unknown to the outward minds of men, and by yoga, (by going inward and establishing a conscious connection with the Cosmic Self and Force and forces,) one can become conscious of these forces, intervene consciously in the play, and to some extent at least determine things in the result of the play.” Letters on Yoga
being ::: 1. The state or quality of having existence. 2. The totality of all things that exist. 3. One"s basic or essential nature; self. 4. All the qualities constituting one that exists; the essence. 5. A person; human being. 6. The Divine, the Supreme; God. Being, being"s, Being"s, beings, Beings, beings", earth-being"s, earth-beings, fragment-being, non-being, non-being"s, Non-Being, Non-Being"s, world-being"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence.” *The Life Divine :::
"The Absolute manifests itself in two terms, a Being and a Becoming. The Being is the fundamental reality; the Becoming is an effectual reality: it is a dynamic power and result, a creative energy and working out of the Being, a constantly persistent yet mutable form, process, outcome of its immutable formless essence.” *The Life Divine
"What is original and eternal for ever in the Divine is the Being, what is developed in consciousness, conditions, forces, forms, etc., by the Divine Power is the Becoming. The eternal Divine is the Being; the universe in Time and all that is apparent in it is a Becoming.” Letters on Yoga
"Being and Becoming, One and Many are both true and are both the same thing: Being is one, Becomings are many; but this simply means that all Becomings are one Being who places Himself variously in the phenomenal movement of His consciousness.” The Upanishads :::
"Our whole apparent life has only a symbolic value & is good & necessary as a becoming; but all becoming has being for its goal & fulfilment & God is the only being.” *Essays Divine and Human
"Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
belief ::: 1. Confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. 2. Trust or confidence, faith. 3. Something believed; an opinion or conviction. beliefs.
Question: "Sweet Mother, l don"t understand very clearly the difference between faith, belief and confidence.”
Mother: "But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here. If you don"t understand, then. . . He has written ‘Faith is a feeling in the whole being." The whole being, yes. Faith, that"s the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence, one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one"s own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do. Faith is a certitude without any proof. Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 6.
bestial ::: resembling a beast; brutal; savage; lacking refinement; depraved.
beyond ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that it is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather the absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there found; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our limited senses.” The Upanishads *
binding ::: n. **1. The covering within which the pages of a book are abound. adj. 2.* Fig.* Commanding adherence to a commitment, obligatory.
bird ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” *The Secret of the Veda
"Birth is an assumption of a body by the spirit, death is the casting off [of] the body; there is nothing original in this birth, nothing final in this death. Before birth we were; after death we shall be. Nor are our birth and death a single episode without continuous meaning or sequel; it is one episode out of many, scenes of our drama of existence with its denouement far away in time.” Essays Divine and Human*
bit ::: cut into with or as with a sharp instrument or weapon. Also fig.
bits ::: small portions, pieces or amounts produced by cutting, or breaking; fragments.
blazing ::: 1. Burning with tremendous heat, etc. 2. Shining intensely.
bleak ::: 1. Exposed to the elements; unsheltered and barren; desolate; cold and cutting; raw, windswept. 2. Offering little or no hope or encouragement.
blind ::: adj. 1. Unable to see; lacking the sense of sight; sightless. Also fig. 2. Unwilling or unable to perceive or understand. 3. Lacking all consciousness or awareness. 4. Not having or based on reason or intelligence; absolute and unquestioning. 5. Not characterized or determined by reason or control. 6. Purposeless; fortuitous, random. 7. Undiscriminating; heedless; reckless. 8. Enveloped in darkness; dark, dim, obscure. 9. Dense enough to form a screen. 10. Covered or concealed from sight; hidden from immediate view. 11. Having no openings or passages for light; (a window or door) walled up. blindest, half-blind. v. 12. To deprive of sight permanently or temporarily. 13. To make sightless momentarily; dazzle. blinded.* n. 14. A blind person, esp. as pl., those who are blind. 15. Fig.* Any thing or action intended to conceal one"s real intention; a pretence, a pretext; subterfuge.
blind alley ::: 1. A road, alley, etc. that is open only at one end. 2. A position or situation offering no hope of progress or improvement. 3. A situation in which no further progress can be made.
blindness ::: 1. A lack or impairment of vision. 2. *Fig.* Lack of vision or awareness.
blink ::: n. **1. A glance, often with half-shut eyes; a wink. v. 2. To close and open one or both of the eyes rapidly; shut the eyelids momentarily and involuntarily; to wink for an instant. 3. To shut the eyes to; to evade, shirk, pass by, ignore. blinks, blinked.**
block ::: n. 1. A solid piece of a hard substance, such as wood, stone, etc. having one or more flat sides. Also fig. 2. Something that obstructs; an obstacle. blocks. *v. 3. To impede, retard, prevent or obstruct the progress or achievement of (someone or something). Also fig.*
bodily ::: 1. Physical as opposed to mental or spiritual. 2. Of, relating to, or belonging to the body or the physical nature of man.
bond ::: 1. Something, such as a fetter, cord, or band, that binds, ties, or fastens things together. Also fig. 2. A duty, promise, or other obligation by which one is bound. 3. Something that binds one to a certain circumstance or line of behaviour. 4. A uniting force or tie; a link. 5. A binding agreement; a covenant. bonds.
booths ::: partly enclosed compartments or partitioned areas.
bow ::: to bend (the head, knee, or body) to express greeting, consent, courtesy, acknowledgement, submission, or veneration. bows, bowed.
breadth ::: 1. The measure or the second largest dimension of a plane or solid figure; width. 2. Freedom from narrowness or restraint; liberality. 3. Tolerance; broadmindedness. breadths.
breaking ::: 1. Smashing, splitting, or dividing into parts violently; reducing to pieces or fragments. 2. Dawning upon; coming upon. 3. An opening made by breaking out from. breakings.
breaks out or from ::: bursts or springs out from restraint, confinement, or concealment. Said of persons and things material, also of fire, light, etc.
break ::: v. 1. To destroy by or as if by shattering or crushing. 2. To force or make a way through (a barrier, etc.). 3. To vary or disrupt the uniformity or continuity of. 4. To overcome or put an end to. 5. To destroy or interrupt a regularity, uniformity, continuity, or arrangement of; interrupt. 6. To intrude upon; interrupt a conversation, etc. 7. To discontinue or sever an association, an agreement, or a relationship. **8. To overcome or wear down the spirit, strength, or resistance of. 9. (usually followed by in, into or out). 10. To filter or penetrate as sunlight into a room. 11. To come forth suddenly. 12. To utter suddenly; to express or start to express an emotion, mood, etc. 13. Said of waves, etc. when they dash against an obstacle, or topple over and become surf or broken water in the shallows. 14. To part the surface of water, as a ship or a jumping fish. breaks, broke, broken, breaking.* *n. 15.** An interruption or a disruption in continuity or regularity.
breast ::: 1. Each of two milk-secreting glandular organs on the chest of a woman; the human mammary gland. 2. The front of the body from the neck to the abdomen; chest. 3. Fig. The seat of the affection and emotion. 4. Fig. A source of nourishment. 5. Something likened to the human breast, as a surface, etc. breasts, breasts".
breath ::: 1. The air inhaled and exhaled in respiration. Also fig. 2. A momentary stirring of air, a slight gust. 3. Spirit or vitality; life. 4. The vapour, heat, or odour of exhaled air. Also fig. **5. A slight suggestion; hint; whisper. Breath,* *breath-fastened.**
bud ::: 1. A rudimentary inflorescence, i.e. flower bud. 2. *Fig. Something in an undeveloped or immature condition. *buds, honey-buds, lotus-bud.
burn ::: 1. To be very eager; aflame with activity, as to be on fire. 2. To emit heat or light by as if by combustion; to flame.. 3. To give off light or to glow brightly. 4. To light; a candle; incense, etc.) as an offering. 5. To suffer punishment or death by or as if by fire; put to death by fire. 6. To injure, endanger, or damage with or as if with fire. 7. Fig. To be consumed with strong emotions; be aflame with desire; anger; etc. 8. To shine intensely; to seem to glow as if on fire. burns, burned, burnt, burning.
"But always the whole foundation of the gnostic life must be by its very nature inward and not outward. In the life of the Spirit it is the Spirit, the inner Reality, that has built up and uses the mind, vital being and body as its instrumentation; thought, feeling and action do not exist for themselves, they are not an object, but the means; they serve to express the manifested divine Reality within us: otherwise, without this inwardness, this spiritual origination, in a too externalised consciousness or by only external means, no greater or divine life is possible.” The Life Divine
"But in a higher than our present mental consciousness we find that this duality is only a phenomenal appearance. The highest and real truth of existence is the one Spirit, the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and it is the power of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all that we experience as universe. This universal Nature is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit. The mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance and the reality is the Spirit creating or manifesting its own being by its own power of being in all that is in Nature. Soul and Nature in us too are only a dual appearance of the one existence.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
"But in the path of knowledge as it is practised in India concentration is used in a special and more limited sense. It means that removal of the thought from all distracting activities of the mind and that concentration of it on the idea of the One by which the soul rises out of the phenomenal into the one reality.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
buttressed ::: supported; reinforced; sustained as by a buttress; (an external structure built against a wall for support or reinforcement.)
"By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above — as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements — it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter — if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga
cadence ::: 1. Balanced, rhythmic flow, as of poetry or oratory. 2. Music. A sequence of notes or chords that indicates the momentary or complete end of a composition, section, phrase, etc. 3. The flow or rhythm of events. 4. A recurrent rhythmical series; a flow, esp. the pattern in which something is experienced. 5. A slight falling in pitch of the voice in speaking or reading. cadences.
call ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
camouflage ::: concealment by some means that alters or obscures the appearance.
capacity ::: 1. The ability to receive, hold, or absorb. 2. The power to learn or retain knowledge; mental ability.
cape ::: a sleeveless outer garment fastened at the throat and worn hanging over the shoulders.
capital ::: 1. A town or city that is the official seat of government in a political entity, such as a state or nation. 2. Wealth in the form of money or property.
capitol ::: 1. A building occupied by a state legislature. 2. A building that is the seat of government. Also fig.
case ::: 1. A set of reasons or supporting facts; an argument. 2. The facts or evidence offered in support of a claim.
casements ::: window sashes that open outward by means of hinges.
cause ::: 1. A person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect. 2. A basis for an action or response; a reason. 3. Grounds for action; motive; justification. 4. Good or sufficient reason. 5. The principle, ideal, goal, or movement to which a person or group is dedicated. Cause.
cemented ::: bound with or as if with cement.
cenotaphs ::: monuments erected in honour of dead persons whose remains lie elsewhere.
centurion ::: the commander of a century (100 men) in the Roman army.
chamber ::: 1. Archaic or poetic: A room in a private house, esp. a bedroom. 2. An enclosed space; compartment. chamber"s, chambers, work-chamber.
chastisement ::: verbal (often physical) punishment; discipline.
chiaroscuro ::: 1. The arrangement of light and dark elements in a pictorial work of art. 2. *Poetic*: Contrasting sense as in, darkness and light, ‘joy and gloom", ‘praise and blame," etc.
childhood ::: 1. The time or state of being a child. 2. The early stage in the existence or development of something. childhood"s.
chime ::: to be in agreement or accord: harmonize; be compatible with.
chipped ::: broke or cut off a small piece or into small pieces with an implement such as an axe, etc. Also fig.
chrysalis ::: 1. The hard sheath encasing the larvae from which the mature insect emerges. 2. A protected stage of development.
clamour ::: 1. A loud uproar, as from a crowd of people. 2. A vehement expression of collective feeling or outrage. 3. A loud and persistent noise. clamours. clamouring.
clause ::: a distinct article, stipulation, or provision, in a document.
clauses, items, points, or particulars in a contract, treaty, or other formal agreement; conditions or stipulations in a contract.
clavichord ::: an early keyboard instrument producing a soft sound by means of metal blades attached to the inner ends of the keys gently striking the strings.
cleansed ::: freed from dirt, defilement, or guilt; purged or cleaned. cleansing.
clear ::: 1. Not obscured or darkened; bright. 2. Free from darkness, obscurity, or cloudiness; transparent. 3. Serene; calm; untroubled. 4. Free from doubt or confusion; certain. 5. Easily perceptible to the eye or ear; distinct. 6. Easily understood; without ambiguity. 7. Free from impediment, obstruction, or hindrance; open. clearer, sun-clear, surface-clear.
cleave ::: 1. To split with or as if with a sharp instrument. 2. To pierce or penetrate. cleaves, cloven, cleaving.
climax ::: the highest or most intense point in the development or resolution of something; culmination.
cloak ::: 1. A loose outer garment, such as a cape. 2. Anything that covers or conceals. 3. Something that covers or conceals; a disguise. world-cloak.
clusters ::: a group of the same or similar elements gathered or occurring closely together.
coin ::: 1. A small piece of metal, usually flat and circular, authorized by a government for use as money. 2. A mode of expression considered standard, a symbol; token.
colossal ::: anything of immense size; huge; gigantic.
columns ::: long, narrow formations of troops in which there are more members in line in the direction of movement than at right angles to the direction.—(distinguished from line).
commenced ::: began; started.
comedy ::: 1. The comic element of drama, of literature generally, or of life. 2. A humorous element of life or literature. Comedy (see also Divine Comedy).
comforts ::: a condition or feeling of pleasurable ease, well-being, and contentment.
commandment (‘s) ::: a divine command; an edict.
communiqué ::: an official communication or announcement, esp. to the press or public.
compact ::: an agreement or a covenant.
compass ::: an instrument for determining directions, as by means of a freely rotating magnetized needle that indicates magnetic north.
compeer ::: 1. An equal in rank, ability, accomplishment, etc.; peer; colleague. 2. A comrade, companion, or associate. compeers.
compendium ::: 1. A brief treatment or account of a subject, esp. an extensive subject; concise treatise. 2. A short, complete summary; an abstract.
compensates ::: makes satisfactory payment or reparation to; recompenses or reimburses.
complained ::: expressed feelings of pain, dissatisfaction, or resentment. complaining.
complaint ::: an expression of pain, dissatisfaction, discontent or resentment.
complements ::: 1. Things that complete, make up a whole, or bring to perfection. 2. Things that complete each other when combined and complete the whole.
composed ::: to be made up, formed, compounded of (a material, or constituent elements); to be constituted; to consist of.
compose ::: to make or create by putting together parts or elements.
compound ::: to combine so as to form a whole; mix; mix (elements). mix with.
compromise ::: 1. A settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.
conceive ::: 1. To form or hold an idea. 2. To begin, originate, or found (something) in a particular way (usually used in the passive). 3. To apprehend mentally; understand. 4. To be created or formed in the womb; to be engendered; begotten. conceives, conceived, self-conceived.
concentration ("s) ::: exclusive attention to one object; close mental application.
concept ::: 1. An idea, esp. an abstract idea or notion. 2. An idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct. 3. A directly conceived or intuited object of thought. concept"s, concept-maps.
conceptual ::: of or relating to concepts or mental conception.
concordat ::: an agreement, a compact, esp. an official one.
concords ::: harmony or agreement of interests or feelings; accords.
condemned ::: 1. Pronounced judgment against; sentenced. 2. Forced into a specific state or activity. condemning.
confine ::: 1. To enclose within bounds, limit, restrict. 2. To shut or keep in; prevent from leaving a place because of imprisonment, illness, discipline, etc. confined.
confines ::: 1. The limits of a space or area; the borders. 2. A bounded scope. 3. Restraining elements.
conflicting ::: in disagreement or opposition.
conquer ::: 1. To defeat or subdue by force, especially by force of arms. 2. To overcome (an enemy, army, etc.); defeat. 3. To overcome or surmount by physical, mental, or moral force. conquers, conquered, conquering.
conscious ::: 1. Having an awareness of one"s environment and one"s own existence, sensations, and thoughts. 2. Conscious implies being awake or awakened to an inner realization of a fact, a truth, a condition. half-conscious, half-consciously.
*consciousforce. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "In actual fact Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter; but it is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible extension, — no less subjective than Time.” The Life Divine
::: "Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations of sound — for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem to it unconscious, — supramental or overmental and submental ranges.” *Letters on Yoga
consistency ::: agreement or harmony between parts of something complex; compatibility.
consummation ::: an ultimate goal or end; fulfilment.
contain ::: 1. To be capable of holding. 2. To halt the spread or development of; check, esp. of opposition. 3. To hold or keep within limits; restrain. contained, contains, containing, all-containing, All-containing.
context ::: 1. The part of a text or statement that surrounds a particular word or passage and determines its meaning. 2. The set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.
contract ::: an agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law.
contradict ::: to assert or express the opposite of (a statement). contradicted, contradicting.
control-room ::: a room housing control equipment where certain operations are conducted.
convince ::: 1. To move by argument or evidence to belief, agreement, consent, or a course of action; persuade.
convinced ::: brought by the use of argument or evidence to a firm belief or a course of action.
coronet ::: 1. A crown worn by nobles or peers. 2. A crown-like ornament decorated with gold or jewels.
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic ::: of or pertaining to the cosmos and characteristic of its phenomena as forming a part of the material universe; infinite.
cosmic vision ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements — it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmogonic ::: relating to a theory or story of the origin and development of the universe, the solar system, or the earth-moon system.
cosmologist ::: one who studies the physical universe considered as a totality of phenomena in time and space.
costume ::: n. A style of dress, including garments, accessories, and hairstyle, especially as characteristic of a particular country, period, or people. costumes. *v. 2. To furnish with a mode of attire, set of garments; dress. *costuming.
course ::: 1. A direction or route taken or to be taken. 2. The path, route, or channel along which anything moves. 3. Advance or progression in a particular direction; forward or onward movement. 4. The continuous passage or progress through time or a succession of stages. chariot-course.
covenant ::: a binding agreement; a compact. covenants.
covert ::: 1. Secret or hidden from view or knowledge; not openly practiced or engaged in, shown or avowed. 2. Concealment; secrecy. 3. A covered place or shelter; hiding place.
cowl ::: n. 1. The hood or hooded robe worn especially by a monk. 2. A hood, especially a loose one; garment. v. 3. To cover with or as with a cowl.
crawl ::: n. 1. The action of moving slowly on the hands or knees or dragging the body along the ground. 2. A very slow movement or progress. v. 3. To move slowly, either by dragging the body along the ground or on the hands and knees. 4. To advance slowly, feebly, laboriously, or with frequent stops. crawls, crawled, crawling.
credentials ::: evidence of authority, status, rights, entitlement to privileges or the like, usually in written form.
credo ::: any formal or authorized statement of beliefs, principles, or opinions. credos.
creed ::: 1. A formal statement of religious belief; a confession of faith. 2. Any system or codification of belief or of opinion. creeds.
creeping ::: the act of creeping or a creeping movement.
crescent ::: the figure of the moon in its first or last quarter, resembling a segment of a ring tapering to points at the ends.
critic ::: one who forms and expresses judgments of the merits, faults, value, or truth of a matter; esp. one who finds fault.
critiqued ::: judged critically, made a critical assessment of or comment on (an action, person, etc.).
cross ::: 1. A structure consisting essentially of an upright and a transverse piece, upon which persons were formerly put to a cruel and ignominious death by being nailed or otherwise fastened to it by their extremities. 2. A representation or delineation of a cross on any surface, varying in elaborateness from two lines crossing each other to an ornamental design painted, embroidered, carved, etc.; used as a sacred mark, symbol, badge, or the like. 3. A trouble, vexation, annoyance; misfortune, adversity; sometimes anything that thwarts or crosses. v. 4. To go or extend across; pass from one side of to the other: pass over. 5. To extend or pass through or over; intersect. 6. To encounter in passing. crosses, crossed, crossing.
crown ::: n. **1. An ornament worn on the head by kings and those having sovereign power, often made of precious metal and ornamented with gems. 2. A wreath or garland for the head, awarded as a sign of victory, success, honour, etc. 3. The distinction that comes from a great achievement; reward, honour. 4. The top or summit of something, esp. of a rounded object. etc. 5. The highest or more nearly perfect state of anything. 6. An exalting or chief attribute. 7. The acme or supreme source of honour, excellence, beauty, etc. v. 8. To put a crown on the head of, symbolically vesting with royal title, powers, etc. 9. To place something on or over the head or top of. crowns, crowned.**
crucified ::: 1. Afflicted with severe pain or distress; tormented. 2. In reference to being put to death by nailing or otherwise fastening to a cross.
crucifies ::: treats with gross injustice; persecutes; torments; tortures.
crude ::: 1. In a raw or unprepared state; unrefined or natural; unfinished, coarse. 2. Lacking in intellectual subtlety, perceptivity, etc.; rudimentary; undeveloped. 3. Rough or primitive. 4. Lacking culture, refinement, tact. crudely.
crumble ::: 1. To fall into small pieces; break or part into small fragments. 2. To decay or disintegrate gradually. crumbles, crumbling.
cure ::: n. 1. A means of correcting or relieving anything that is troublesome or detrimental. v. 2. To remove or remedy (something harmful or disturbing). curing.
curt ::: short in any dimension.
customs-line ::: an area (or line) where a governmental agency checks baggage or merchandise for contraband and goods subject to duty.
dark ::: adj. 1. Lacking or having very little light. 2. Concealed or secret; mysterious. 3. Difficult to understand; obscure. 4. Characterized by gloom; dismal. 5. Fig. Sinister; evil; absent moral or spiritual values. 6. (used of color) Having a dark hue; almost black. 7. Showing a brooding ill humor. 8. Having a complexion that is not fair; swarthy. darker, darkest, dark-browed, dark-robed.* n. 9. Absence of light; dark state or condition; darkness, esp. that of night. 10. A dark place: a place of darkness. 11. The condition of being hidden from view, obscure, or unknown; obscurity. *in the dark: in concealment or secrecy.
darkling ::: 1. Dark; obscure. 2. Vaguely threatening or menacing.
darkness ::: 1. Absence of light or illumination. 2. Fig. Absence of moral or spiritual values. 3. Obscurity; lack of knowledge or enlightenment; an unenlightened state. 4. A condition of secrecy, mystery, characterized by things hidden. 5. Wickedness or evil. Darkness, darkness", darknesses.
darting ::: an act of darting; a sudden swift movement.
deafened ::: made deaf, especially momentarily by a loud noise. Also fig.
debate ::: 1. A discussion involving opposing points; an argument. 2. A formal contest in which the affirmative and negative sides of a proposition are advocated by opposing speakers.
deceit ::: the act or practice of deceiving; concealment or distortion of the truth for the purpose of misleading; duplicity; fraud; cheating.
deceive ::: 1. To mislead by a false appearance or statement; delude. 2. To mislead or falsely persuade others. deceives, deceived.
decorated ::: furnished or adorned with something ornamental or becoming; embellished.
decoration ::: an addition that renders something more attractive or ornate; adornment.
decorative ::: serving to decorate or embellish; ornamental.
deed ::: 1. Something that is done, performed, or accomplished; an act. 2. An exploit or achievement; feat. 3. Often plural as an act or gesture, esp. as illustrative of intentions, one"s character, or the like. deeds.
defeat ::: 1. A bringing to naught; frustration. 2. An overthrow or overturning; vanquishment. 3. The act or event of being bested; losing. **defeats, defeated.
deliberate ::: 1. Carefully weighed or considered; studied; intentional. 2. Leisurely and steady in movement or action; slow and even; unhurried.
delicate ::: 1. Distinguishing subtle differences. 2. Of instruments: precise, skilled, or sensitive in action or operation. 3. Marked by sensitivity of discrimination and skillful in expression, technique, etc. 4. Exquisitely or beautifully fine in texture, construction, or finish. 5. Exquisite, fine, or subtle in quality, character, construction, etc. 6. (of colour, tone, taste, etc.) Pleasantly subtle, soft, or faint.
delight ::: 1. A high degree of pleasure or enjoyment; joy; rapture. 2. Something that gives great pleasure. **delights, world-delight, World-Delight.
delirium ::: 1. A more or less temporary disorder of the mental faculties, as in fevers, disturbances of consciousness, or intoxication, characterised by restlessness, excitement, delusions, hallucinations, etc. 2. A state of violent excitement or emotion.
demand ::: n. 1. A formal claim. 2. An urgent requirement or need. demands. v. 3. To ask urgently or peremptorily, to claim as just or due. 4. To require as useful, just, proper, or necessary; call for. demands, demanded, demanding.
den ::: 1. The shelter or retreat of a wild animal; a lair. 2. A cave used as a place of shelter or concealment. 3. A squalid or vile abode or place.
denial ::: 1. A refusal to accept or believe something, such as a doctrine or belief. 2. A refusal to grant the truth of a statement or allegation; a contradiction; a disavowal. denial"s, denials.
denouement ::: the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel; solution, conclusion.
deny ::: 1. To refuse to recognize or acknowledge; disavow. 2. To declare untrue; contradict. 3. To refuse to fulfil the requests or expectations; refuse to give. 4. To give a refusal to; turn down or away. 5. To withhold the possession, user, or enjoyment of. denies, denied, denying.
depth ::: 1. The quality of a state of consciousness. 2. Beyond one"s knowledge or capability. 3. Emotional intensity, profundity. 4. The quality of being deep; deepness. 5. Complexity or profundity. 6. The extent, measurement, or distance downwards, backwards, or inwards. depths, depths", spirit-depths, wave-depths.
"Desire is at once the motive of our actions, our lever of accomplishment and the bane of our existence.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Desire is the root of all sorrow, disappointment, affliction, for though it has a feverish joy of pursuit and satisfaction, yet because it is always a straining of the being, it carries into its pursuit and its getting a labour, hunger, struggle, a rapid subjection to fatigue, a sense of limitation, dissatisfaction and early disappointment with all its gains, a ceaseless morbid stimulation, trouble, disquiet, asânti. ” The Synthesis of Yoga
desire ::: n. **1. A longing or craving, as for something that brings satisfaction or enjoyment. 2.** Sexual appetite or a sexual urge.
destroy ::: 1. To reduce anything to useless fragments, a useless form, or remains, as by rending, burning, or dissolving; injuring beyond repair or renewal; demolish; ruin; annihilate. 2. To subdue or defeat completely; crush. 3. To slay, to kill. destroys, destroyed, destroying, world-destroying.
"Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
detached ::: 1. Impartial or objective; disinterested; unbiased. 2. Not involved or concerned; aloof. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Detachment means that one stands back from [imperfections and weakness of the nature, etc.] , does not identify oneself with them or get upset or troubled because they are there, but rather looks on them as something foreign to one"s true consciousness and true self, rejects them and calls in the Mother"s Force into these movements to eliminate them and bring the true consciousness and its movements there.” Letters on Yoga
diameter ::: a straight line segment passing through the center of a figure, especially of a circle or sphere, and terminating at the periphery.
diapason ::: 1. A full, rich outpouring of melodious and harmonious sound. 2. The entire range of an instrument or voice.
diarchy ::: government in which power is vested in two rulers or authorities.
dimension ::: 1. A property of space; extension in a given direction; extension in time. 2. Measurement in length, width and thickness; scope, importance. dimensions.
difficulty ::: 1. The condition or quality of being difficult; 2. Something that is hard to do, understand or surmount; an impediment or obstacle.
discernment ::: **The act or process of exhibiting keen insight and keen perception; acuteness of judgement, discrimination and understanding. discernment"s.**
disciplined ::: 1. Trained mentally or physically by instruction or exercise. 2. Having or exhibiting discipline, i.e. activity, exercise or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training.
disciplines ::: branches of knowledge as well as training for the improvement of physical powers, self-control, etc.
disguise ::: n. 1. A mask, costume, or manner that conceals the identity of. 2. Something that serves or is intended for concealment of identity, character, or quality; a deceptive covering, condition, manner, etc. 3. The state of being disguised; masquerade. disguises, self-disguise. v. 4. To hide under a false appearance. disguised.
disintegrating ::: reducing to components, fragments, or particles. self-disintegrating.
disparate ::: fundamentally distinct or different in kind; entirely dissimilar.
disputed ::: 1. Engaged in argument or debate. 2. Questioned the truth or validity of; doubted. disputing.
dissatisfied ::: 1. Not satisfied or pleased; discontented. 2. Feeling or exhibiting a lack of contentment or satisfaction.
dissidence ::: disagreement.
dissolution ("s) ::: decomposition into fragments or parts; disintegration.
divided ::: 1. Separated; separate. 2. Disunited. 3. Being in a state of disagreement or disunity.
divine life ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.” *The Life Divine ::: "The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine
"Divine Love is of two kinds — the divine Love for the creation and the souls that are part of itself, and the love of the seeker and love for the Divine Beloved; it has both a personal and impersonal element, but the personal is free here from all lower elements or bondage to the vital and physical instincts.” Letters on Yoga
divine Mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” *The Mother
::: "Divinisation itself does not mean the destruction of the human elements; it means taking them up, showing them the way to their own perfection, raising them by purification and perfection to their full power and Ananda and that means the raising of the whole of earthly life to its full power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
djinn ::: (Islam) an invisible spirit mentioned in the Koran and believed by Muslims to inhabit the earth and influence mankind by appearing in the form of humans or animals. djinns .
docketed ::: labelled, tagged, ticketed as with a list of contents and statement of particulars.
document ::: something, such as a recording or a photograph, that can be used to furnish evidence or information. documents.
dole ::: grief, sorrow, mental distress.
dole ::: n. **1. A portion or allotment of money, food, etc., esp. as given at regular intervals by a charity or for maintenance. v. 2. To give out sparingly or in small quantities (usually followed by out). doled, doles.**
doom ::: 1. Fate, especially a tragic or ruinous one. 2. Inevitable destruction or ruin. 3. A judgement, decision, or sentence, esp. an unfavourable one. doom"s, doomed, doom-crack.
drag ::: n. 1. A slow, laborious motion or movement against resistance. v. 2. To pull along with difficulty or effort; haul. 3. To trail along the ground. 4. To be drawn or hauled along. 5. To introduce; inject; insert. drags, dragged, dragging.
dragon of the dark foundation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.” The Secret of the Veda
drawers ::: sliding, lidless horizontal compartments as in a piece of furniture, that may be drawn out horizontally in order to get access to them.
drift ::: n. 1. A driving movement or force; impulse; impetus; pressure. 2. A gradual deviation from an original course, model, method, or intention. 3. Tendency, trend, meaning, or purport. 4. A bank or pile, as of sand or snow, heaped up by currents of air or water. 5. Something moving along in a current of air or water. 6. Any group of stars having a random distribution of velocities; usually applied to a group of stars with an apparent systematic motion towards some point in the sky. v. 7. To be carried along by or as if by currents of air or water. 8. To move leisurely or sporadically from place to place, especially without purpose. drifts, drifted, drifting, sleet-drift, slow-drifting.
drive ::: v. 1. To impel; constrain; urge; compel. 2. To manoeuvre, guide or steer the progress of. 3. To impel (matter) by physical force; to cause (something) to move along by direct application of physical force; to propel, carry along. 4. To send, expel, or otherwise cause to move away or out by force or compulsion. 5. To strive vigorously and with determination toward a goal or objective. 6. To cause and guide the movement of (a vehicle, an animal, etc.). n. 7. A strong organized effort to accomplish a purpose, with energy, push or aggressiveness. 8. Impulse; impulsive force. adj. 9. Urged onward, impelled. 10. Pertaining to an inner urge that stimulates activity or inhibition. drives, drove, drov"st, driving, driven.
dual ::: 1. Composed of two usually like or complementary parts; double. 2. Having a two-fold, or double, character or nature. dual"s.
dullard ::: a person regarded as mentally dull; a dolt.
earth ::: 1. The realm of mortal existence; the temporal world. 2. The softer, friable part of land; soil, especially productive soil. **Earth, earth"s, earth-beauty"s, earth-being"s, earth-beings, earth-bounds, earth-bride, earth-fact, earth-force, Earth-Goddess, earth-hearts, earth-habit"s, earth-heart, earth-instruments, earth-kind, earth-life, earth-light, earth-made, earth-matter"s, earth-mind, earth-mind"s, earth-myth, earth-nature, earth-nature"s, Earth-Nature"s, earth-nursed, earth-pain, Earth-plasm, earth-poise, earth-scene, earth-scene"s, earth-seat, earth-shapes, earth-stage, earth-stuff, earth-time, earth-time"s, earth-use, earth-vision, earth-ways, summer-earth.
earthly life ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This earthly life need not be necessarily and for ever a wheel of half-joyous half-anguished effort; attainment may also be intended and the glory and joy of God made manifest upon earth.” The Life Divine
economy ::: careful, thrifty management of resources, such as money, materials, or labour. economised.
edge ::: n. 1. A dividing line; a border. Also fig. 2. Poet. A thin, sharpened side, as of the blade of a cutting instrument. 3. Fig. A brink or verge. 4. Sharpness or keenness of language, argument, tone of voice, appetite, desire, etc. flame-edge. *v. 5. To put a border or edge on . 6. Fig. To give keenness, sharpness, or urgency to. *edging.
effort ::: the use of physical or mental energy to do something; exertion. effort"s, efforts.
element ::: 1. A component or constituent of a whole. 2. One of the substances, usually earth, water, air, and fire, formerly regarded as constituting the material universe. 3. A natural habitat, sphere of activity, environment, etc. elements.
elemental ::: 1. Starkly simple, primitive, or basic. 2. Motivated by or symbolic of primitive and powerful natural forces or passions.
elements ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The first ripple or vibration in causal matter creates a new and exceedingly fine and pervasive condition of matter called Akasha or Ether; more complex motion evolves out of Ether a somewhat intenser condition which is called Vayu, Air; and so by ever more complex motion with increasing intensity of condition for result, yet three other matter-states are successively developed, Agni or Fire, Apah or Water and Prithvi or Earth.” *Supplement to the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library
else ::: adv. 1. In a different or additional time, place, or manner. adj. 2. Other than the persons or things mentioned or implied.
elusive ::: 1. Eluding clear perception or complete mental grasp; hard to express or define. 2. Cleverly or skilfully evasive.
embargo ::: a government order prohibiting the movement of merchant ships into or out of its ports.
embodiment ::: a person, being, or thing embodying a spirit, principle, etc.; incarnation. embodiments.
embroidered ::: fashioned or adorned with added embellishments; ornately embellished.
embryo ::: 1. Any organism in a developmental stage preceding birth. 2. The beginning or rudimentary stage of anything.
emerge ::: 1. To come forth into view or notice, as from concealment, or obscurity. 2. To rise or come forth from or as if from water or other liquid. 3. To come into existence; develop. 4. To rise, as from an inferior or unfortunate state or condition. emerges, emerged, emerging.
emolument ::: payment for an office or employment; compensation for services.
emotion ::: 1. An affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive or volitional states of consciousness. Also abstract ‘feeling" as distinguished from the other classes of mental phenomena. 2. A state of mental agitation or disturbance. **emotion"s, emotions.
"Emotion is a good element in yoga; but emotional desire becomes easily a cause of perturbation and an obstacle. Turn your emotions towards the Divine, aspire for their purification; they will then become a help on the way and no longer a cause of suffering.” Letters on Yoga*
empire ::: 1. Imperial or imperialistic sovereignty, domination, or control. 2. A group of nations or peoples ruled over by an emperor, empress, or other powerful sovereign or government.
empiric ::: empirical, i.e. derived from, guided by, provable by or verifiable by experience or experiment.
employment ::: the purpose for which something is used.
"Emptiness is not in itself a bad condition, only if it is a sad and restless emptiness of the dissatisfied vital. In sadhana emptiness is very usually a necessary transition from one state to another. When mind and vital fall quiet and their restless movements, thoughts and desires cease, then one feels empty. This is at first often a neutral emptiness with nothing in it, nothing in it either good or bad, happy or unhappy, no impulse or movement. This neutral state is often or even usually followed by the opening to inner experience. There is also an emptiness made of peace and silence, when the peace and silence come out from the psychic within or descend from the higher consciousness above. This is not neutral, for in it there is the sense of peace, often also of wideness and freedom. There is also a happy emptiness with the sense of something close or drawing near which is not yet there, e.g. the closeness of the Mother or some other preparing experience.” Letters on Yoga*
empyrean ::: 1. The highest heaven, supposed by the ancients to contain the pure element of fire. 2. The visible heavens; the firmament.
enchanted ::: 1. Possessing a magical influence or quality. 2. Under a spell; bewitched; magical. 3. Utterly delighted or captivated; fascinated; charmed. enchantment, enchantment"s, enchantments.
encirclement ::: the act of forming a circle around; enclosing within a circle; surrounding.
encyclopaedia ::: a book or set of books containing articles on various topics, usually in alphabetical arrangement, covering all branches of knowledge or, less commonly, all aspects of one subject.
engine ::: 1. An agent, instrument, or means of accomplishment. 2. Any instrument or device. engines.
enhanced ::: made greater, increased or intensified, as in value, beauty, or effectiveness; augmented.
enlighten ::: to give intellectual or spiritual light to; instruct; impart knowledge to. enlightened, enlightening, enlightenment.
enormous ::: greatly exceeding the common size, extent, etc.; huge; immense.
entangled ::: 1. Ensnarled; intertwined; enmeshed. 2. Confused or perplexed. entangling, entanglement, star-entangled.
enthusiasm ::: great excitement for or interest in a subject or cause.
enveloped ::: 1. Wrapped up in or as in a covering. 2. Surrounded entirely. enveloping, envelopment.
environment ::: the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu. **environments.
epitome ::: a person or thing that is typical of or possesses to a high degree the features of a whole class; embodiment, quintessence.
"Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness and it is this from which a sadhak deviates when he allows a vital movement to carry him away in feeling or speech or action. Equality is not the same thing as forbearance, — though undoubtedly a settled equality immensely extends, even illimitably, a man"s power of endurance and forbearance. Letters on Yoga
::: Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements, — anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest, — not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit.” *Letters on Yoga
equality ::: the condition of being equal; sameness; uniformity. equality"s.
::: "Erinyes, in Greek mythology, the goddesses of vengeance, usually represented as three winged maidens, with snakes in their hair. They pursued criminals, drove them mad, and tormented them in Hades. They were spirits of punishment, avenging wrongs done especially to kindred. In Roman literature they were called Furies.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works*
error ::: 1. A wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention; a deviation from accuracy or correctness. 2. The act or an instance of deviating from an accepted code of behaviour. **error"s, errors, errorless.
ether ::: 1. The regions of space beyond the earth"s atmosphere; the heavens. 2. The element believed in ancient and medieval civilizations to fill all space above the sphere of the moon and to compose the stars and planets. 3. A hypothetical medium formerly believed to permeate all space, and through which light and other electromagnetic radiation were thought to move. ether"s.
::: "Even Science believes that one day death may be conquered by physical means and its reasonings are perfectly sound. There is no reason why the supramental Force should not do it. Forms on earth do not last (they do in other planes) because these forms are too rigid to grow expressing the progress of the spirit. If they become plastic enough to do that there is no reason why they should not last.” Letters on Yoga
excerpts ::: passages or segments taken from a longer work.
excitement ::: something that excites; stimulation or thrill.
exile ::: n. 1. Enforced removal from one"s native country. 2. The condition or a period of living away from one"s native country. 3. A person banished or living away from his home or country; expatriate. v. 4. To expel from home or country, esp. by official decree as a punishment; banish. exiles, exiled, self-exiled.
expenditure ::: the act of expending something, especially funds; disbursement; consumption.
experiment ::: n. **1. A test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition, etc. v. 2.* To try something new, especially in order to gain experience. experiments. adj.* experimenting.
expression ::: 1. The act of expressing, conveying, or representing in something such as a movement, etc. 2. A manifestation. self-expression.
::: **"Faith is a certitude in the soul which does not depend on reasoning, on this or that mental idea, on circumstances, on this or that passing condition of the mind or the vital or the body. It may be hidden, eclipsed, may even seem to be quenched, but it reappears again after the storm or the eclipse; it is seen burning still in the soul when one has thought that it was extinguished for ever. The mind may be a shifting sea of doubts and yet that faith may be there within and, if so, it will keep even the doubt-racked mind in the way so that it goes on in spite of itself towards its destined goal. Faith is a spiritual certitude of the spiritual, the divine, the soul"s ideal, something that clings to that even when it is not fulfilled in life, even when the immediate facts or the persistent circumstances seem to deny it.” Letters on Yoga
feast ::: 1. A large, elaborately prepared meal, usually for many persons and often accompanied by entertainment; a banquet. 2. Something giving great pleasure or satisfaction.
feint ::: a movement made in order to deceive (an adversary). feints.
ferment ::: 1. A state of agitation or of turbulent change or development. 2. A process of nature involving the addition of yeasts, moulds and certain bacteria (to liquids or solids) causing an effervescence or internal commotion, with evolution of heat, in the substance operated on, and a resulting alteration of its properties.
fettered ::: bound with chains or ropes, etc. around the legs, as an animal, to restrict the movement of. Hence, fig. imposed restraint upon; confined, impeded, restrained.
feudal ::: of, pertaining to, or like the feudal system (the system of civil government which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages, and which was based on the relation of superior and vassal arising out of the holding of lands.)
fibre ::: 1. A filamentous substance; a web of thread-like tissue such as composes living tissue generally. 2. That which fundamentally constitutes the strength of a thing; sinew; stuff; character. fibres, fibred.
fierce ::: 1. Menacingly wild, savage, or hostile. 2. Violent in force, intensity, etc. 3. Extremely intense or ardent. fiercest.
fiery ::: 1. Like or suggestive of fire. 2. Burning or glowing. 3. Charged with emotion; fervent, vehement, impassioned. fierier, fiery-footed.
figment ::: something invented, made up, or fabricated by the mind.
fig. Hearts filled with despair; disillusionment; devastating sorrow, especially from disappointment or tragedy in love.
fine ::: 1. Of superior quality, skill, or appearance. 2. Superior or consummate in quality. 3. Exhibiting careful and delicate artistry. 4. Characterized by refinement or elegance. 5. Subtle or precise; refined. finer, fine-curved, fine-linked.
fireflies ::: nocturnal insects with a soft body and an organ at the rear of the abdomen that emits phosphorescent light.
firmament ::: the vault or expanse of the heavens; the sky. ::: firmaments.
"First, we affirm an Absolute as the origin and support and secret Reality of all things. The Absolute Reality is indefinable and ineffable by mental thought and mental language; it is self-existent and self-evident to itself, as all absolutes are self-evident, but our mental affirmatives and negatives, whether taken separatively or together, cannot limit or define it.” The Life Divine
flash ::: n.** 1. A brief, sudden burst of bright light. 2. A sudden thought, insight, inspiration, or vision. 3. A momentary brightness. 4. A very brief moment; instant. flashes, lightening-flash. v. 5. To move or proceed rapidly. 6. To communicate or reveal through flashes. 7. To appear or occur suddenly; come into perception. 8. To cause to flash, as powder by ignition or a sword by waving. flashes, flashed, flashing.**
flat ::: 1. Lacking interest or excitement; dull. 2. Without qualification; total.
flatter ::: 1. To compliment excessively and often insincerely, especially in order to win favour. 2. To try to please by complimentary remarks or attention. 3. To show to advantage. 4. To please the eye or ear; beguile. flatters, flattered, flattering.
flight ::: 1. The act or process of flying through the air with or without wings. 2. Fig. A passing above and beyond ordinary bounds. 3. A swift movement, transition, or progression. 4. A series of steps, terraces, etc., ascending without change of direction. flights.
floating ::: adj. 1. Being buoyed up on water or other liquid. 2. Having little or no attachment; moving from one place to another. 3. Continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another. 4. Being suspended in or as in a liquid with freedom to move; also, to move freely through (something).
flowered ::: flower 1. Blossomed or bloomed. Also fig. 2. Decorated with flowers. 3. Came into full development; matured; blossomed.
flower-symbol ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Flowers are the moment"s representations of things that are in themselves eternal.” On Himself
flute ::: n. 1. A high-pitched woodwind instrument; a slender tube closed at one end with finger holes on one end and an opening near the closed end across which the breath is blown. flutes. *v. 2. To play a flute. *fluted, fluting.
flutter ::: 1. To flap the wings rapidly or fly with flapping movements. 2. To move quickly in a nervous, restless, or excited fashion; flit. 3. Generally of the heart: to beat abnormally rapidly, esp. in a regular rhythm. 4. To wave, flap or toss about. 5. To move (a thing) in quick irregular motions. flutters, fluttered, fluttering, flutterest.
flux ::: 1. Constant or frequent change; fluctuation; movement. 2. A flowing or flow: Also used with reference to other forms of matter and energy that can be regarded as flowing, such as radiant energy, particles, etc.
follow ::: 1. To come or go after; proceed behind. 2. Lit. and fig. To move along the course of; take a path. 3. Fig. To come after in order, time, or position. 4. To occur or be evident as a consequence; result. 5. Fig. To accompany; attend. 6. To take (a person) as a guide, leader, or master; to accept the authority or example of, obey the dictates or guidance of; to adhere to, espouse the opinions, side, or cause of. 7. Fig. To go after in or as if in pursuit. 8. To accept and follow the leadership or command or guidance of. 9. To watch or trace the movements, progress, or course of. follows, followed, following. ::: following out. Proceeding; following; pursuing something to an end or conclusion.
foolish ::: lacking or exhibiting a lack of good sense or judgment; silly.
force, divine ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine Force can act on any plane — it is not limited to the supramental Force. The supramental is only one aspect of the power of the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
force, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love. Conscious always and in everything, in ourselves and in others, of the Master of Works possessing, inhabiting, enjoying through this Force that is himself, becoming through it all existences and all happenings, we shall have arrived at the divine union through works and achieved by that fulfilment in works all that others have gained through absolute devotion or through pure knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
::: " . . . for Dawn is the illumination of the Truth rising upon the mentality to bring the day of full consciousness into the darkness or half-lit night of our being.” The Secret of the Veda
foreboding ("s) ::: n. **1. A strong inner feeling or notion of a future misfortune, evil, etc.; presentiment. adj. 2.** Foretelling or predicting; indicating beforehand; portending.
forfeit ::: to lose or become liable to lose, as in consequence of crime, fault, or breach of engagement. forfeits, forfeited, forfeiting.
fork ::: something resembling or suggesting a pronged instrument in form; ::: hence a flash of lightning having a zigzag appearance.
formation ::: an organized structure or arrangement; creation. formations.
formats ::: plans, styles or types of arrangement; modes of procedure; organization.
formula ::: 1. A prescribed form; a rule or model; any fixed or conventional method for doing something. 2. An established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure. 3. Math. A general relationship, principle, or rule stated, often as an equation, in the form of symbols. 4. A representation of a substance using symbols for its constituent elements. formulas.
forth ::: 1. Onward or outward in place or space; forward. 2. Out, as from concealment or inaction; into view or consideration. 3. Out of; forth from a place or source.
fountain ::: 1. The source or origin of anything. 2. A jet or stream of water made by artificial means to spout or rise from an opening or structure, as to afford water for use, to cool the air, or to serve for ornament. fountain"s, fountains.
fragmentary
fragmented
fragment
frescoed ::: painted on fresh moist plaster with pigments dissolved in water. many-frescoed.
fretful ::: regretful; discontented; vexed; worried; tormented.
fretted ::: ornamented with elaborate patterns or angular designs.
fulfil ::: 1. To fill or meet a want or need. 2. To develop the full potential of. 3. To bring about the completion or achievement of (a desire, prophecy, promise, etc.). 4. To carry out or execute (a request, etc.). fulfils, fulfilled, fulfilling, all-fulfilling, self-fulfilling.
fury ::: one of the avenging deities, dread goddesses with snakes twined in their hair, sent from Tartarus to avenge wrong and punish crime: in later accounts, three in number (Tisiphone, Megaera, Alecto). Hence, an avenging or tormenting infernal spirit. Fury"s.
garments ::: outer coverings or outward appearances.
gauge ::: 1. To determine the exact dimensions, capacity, quantity, or force of; measure. 2. To appraise, estimate, or judge; assess; evaluate. gauged.
gem ::: 1. A pearl or mineral that has been cut and polished for use as an ornament. 2. Something that is valued for its beauty or perfection. gems.
germs ::: initial stages in development or evolution as germ cells or ancestral forms; rudiments of living organisms.
gestation ::: the period of development from conception until birth; pregnancy.
glimpse ::: n. 1. A very brief, passing look, sight, or view. 2. A momentary shining, a flash. lit. and fig. glimpses. v. 3. To catch sight of briefly or momentarily. 4. To obtain a brief, incomplete view of. Now only poet. glimpses, glimpsed, glimpsing.
gnawed ::: troubled or tormented by constant annoyance, worry, etc.
goal ::: 1. The result or achievement towards which effort is directed; aim; end. 2. The destination of a (more or less laborious) journey. goals.
good ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Below [the ethical] hides that secret of good in all things which the human being approaches and tries to deliver partially through ethical instinct and ethical idea; above is hidden the eternal Good which exceeds our partial and fragmentary ethical conceptions.” *Social and Political Thought
government ::: the exercise of political authority over the actions, affairs, etc., of a political unit, people, etc.
grave ::: 1. Serious or solemn. 2. Weighty, momentous or important. grave-eyed.
grin ::: to smile broadly, esp. as an indication of pleasure, amusement, vulgar merriment, or the like.
ground ::: 1. Base; foundation. 2. Earth or soil. 3. Any material surface, lit. and fig. 4. Background. 5. An area of land designated for a particular purpose, lit. and fig. **6. The foundation for an argument, a belief, or an action; a basis. soul-ground.**
guest ::: Sri Aurobindo: " When the Rishis speak of Indra or Agni or Soma in men, they are speaking of the god in his cosmic presence, power or function. This is evident from the very language when they speak of Agni as the immortal in mortals, the immortal Light in men, the inner Warrior, the Guest in human beings.” *Letters on Yoga
hallucination ::: 1. A sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind, caused by various physical and mental disorders. 2. A false notion, belief, or impression; illusion; delusion.
**"I certainly won"t have ‘attracted" [in place of ‘allured"] — there is an enormous difference between the force of the two words and merely ‘attracted by the Ecstasy" would take away all my ecstasy in the line — nothing so tepid can be admitted. Neither do I want ‘thrill" [in place of ‘joy"] which gives a false colour — precisely it would mean that the ecstasy was already touching him with its intensity which is far from my intention.Your statement that ‘joy" is just another word for ‘ecstasy" is surprising. ‘Comfort", ‘pleasure", ‘joy", ‘bliss", ‘rapture", ‘ecstasy" would then be all equal and exactly synonymous terms and all distinction of shades and colours of words would disappear from literature. As well say that ‘flashlight" is just another word for ‘lightning" — or that glow, gleam, glitter, sheen, blaze are all equivalents which can be employed indifferently in the same place. One can feel allured to the supreme omniscient Ecstasy and feel a nameless joy touching one without that Joy becoming itself the supreme Ecstasy. I see no loss of expressiveness by the joy coming in as a vague nameless hint of the immeasurable superior Ecstasy.” Letters on Savitri*
::: ". . . in such a view, the word consciousness changes its meaning. It is no longer synonymous with mentality but indicates a self-aware force of existence of which mentality is a middle term; below mentality it sinks into vital and material movements which are for us subconscient; above, it rises into the supramental which is for us the superconscient. But in all it is one and the same thing organising itself differently. This is, once more, the Indian conception of Chit which, as energy, creates the worlds.” *The Life Divine
"It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, ``Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you — if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time, — do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey."" Letters on Yoga
"It [the Cosmic Spirit] uses Truth and Falsehood, Knowledge and Ignorance and all the other dualities as elements in the manifestation and works out what has to be worked out till all is ready for a higher working.” Letters on Yoga*
"Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation.” Essays on the Gita
"Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.” The Life Divine
n. 1. A small part broken off or detached from any larger whole. 2. An incomplete and unfinished piece; portion. 3. An incomplete or isolated portion; a bit. fragments, fragment-being, fragment-mirrorings. *v. 4. To break or separate (something) into fragments. *fragmented.
"Nor can the human confusion of values which obliterates the distinction between spiritual and moral and even claims that the moral is the only true spiritual element in our nature be of any use to us; for ethics is a mental control, and the limited erring mind is not and cannot be the free and ever-luminous spirit.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Nothing can happen without the presence and support of the Divine, for Nature or Prakriti is the Divine Force and it is this that works out things, but it works them out according to the nature and through or with the will of each man which is full of ignorance — that goes on until men turn to the Divine and become conscious of Him and united with Him. Then only can it be said that all begins to be done in him by the direct Will of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
of or pertaining to geometry, the branch of mathematics that deals with the deduction of the properties, measurement, and relationships of points, lines, angles, and figures in space.
". . . One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.” On Himself
"Ordinarily we mean by it [consciousness] our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed.” Letters on Yoga
"Our ego is only a face of the universal being and has no separate existence; our apparent separative individuality is only a surface movement and behind it our real individuality stretches out to unity with all things and upward to oneness with the transcendent Divine Infinity. Thus our ego, which seems to be a limitation of existence, is really a power of infinity; the boundless multiplicity of beings in the world is a result and signal evidence, not of limitation or finiteness, but of that illimitable Infinity.” The Life Divine
::: "Our incapacity does not matter — there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable — but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one"s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga
"Perishable and transitory delight is always the symbol of the eternal Ananda, revealed and rapidly concealed, which seeks by increasing recurrence to attach itself to some typal form of experience in material consciousness. When the particular form has been perfected to express God in the type, its delight will no longer be perishable but an eternally recurrent possession of mental beings in matter manifest in their periods & often in their moments of felicity.” Essays Divine and Human*
*Sri Aurobindo: "Action is the first power of life. Nature begins with force and its works which, once conscious in man, become will and its achievements; therefore it is that by turning his action Godwards the life of man best and most surely begins to become divine.” The Synthesis of Yoga
*(Sri Aurobindo: "And finally all is lifted up and taken into the supermind and made a part of the infinitely luminous consciousness, knowledge and experience of the supramental being, the Vijnana Purusha.” The Synthesis of Yoga*) ::: Angel of the House. The guardian spirit of the home.
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a vital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something yet deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, to some form of the spirit"s delight of existence, Ananda.” *Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "Chance is not *in this universe; the idea of illusion is itself an illusion. There was never illusion yet in the human mind that was not the concealing [?shape] and disfigurement of a truth.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it — not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Day and Night, – the latter the state of Ignorance that belongs to our material Nature, the former the state of illumined Knowledge that belongs to the divine Mind of which our mentality is a pale and dulled reflection.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Ego is only a faculty put forward by the discriminative mind to centralise round itself the experiences of the sense-mind and to serve as a sort of lynch-pin in the wheel which keeps together the movement. It is no more than an instrument, although it is true that so long as we are limited by our normal mentality, we are compelled by the nature of that mentality and the purpose of the instrument to mistake our ego-function for our very self.” The Upanishads
*Sri Aurobindo: "For from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to so quicken and intensify our intellectual powers that they shall be prepared for those more puissant, direct and rapid faculties which constitute the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. It is not, then, a freak, an inexplicable phenomenon, but a perfectly natural next step in the right line of her [Nature"s] evolution.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"Sri Aurobindo: "It has been held that ecstasy is a lower and transient passage, the peace of the Supreme is the supreme realisation, the consummate abiding experience. This may be true on the spiritual-mind plane: there the first ecstasy felt is indeed a spiritual rapture, but it can be and is very usually mingled with a supreme happiness of the vital parts taken up by the Spirit; there is an exaltation, exultation, excitement, a highest intensity of the joy of the heart and the pure inner soul-sensation that can be a splendid passage or an uplifting force but is not the ultimate permanent foundation. But in the highest ascents of the spiritual bliss there is not this vehement exaltation and excitement; there is instead an illimitable intensity of participation in an eternal ecstasy which is founded on the eternal Existence and therefore on a beatific tranquillity of eternal peace. Peace and ecstasy cease to be different and become one. The Supermind, reconciling and fusing all differences as well as all contradictions, brings out this unity; a wide calm and a deep delight of all-existence are among its first steps of self-realisation, but this calm and this delight rise together, as one state, into an increasing intensity and culminate in the eternal ecstasy, the bliss that is the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "It is an achievement to have got rid so rapidly and decisively of the shimmering mists and fogs which modern intellectualism takes for Light of Truth. The modern mind has so long and persistently wandered – and we with it – in the Valley of the False Glimmer that it is not easy for anyone to disperse its mists with the sunlight of clear vision.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "It is true that when Matter first emerges it becomes the dominant principle; it seems to be and is within its own field the basis of all things, the constituent of all things, the end of all things: but Matter itself is found to be a result of something that is not Matter, of Energy, and this Energy cannot be something self-existent and acting in the Void, but can turn out and, when deeply scrutinised, seems likely to turn out to be the action of a secret Consciousness and Being: when the spiritual knowledge and experience emerge, this becomes a certitude, — it is seen that the creative Energy in Matter is a movement of the power of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "Man cannot by his own effort make himself more than man; the mental being cannot by his own unaided force change himself into a supramental spirit. A descent of the Divine Nature can alone divinise the human receptacle.” Essays Divine and Human
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force — it may be spiritual, mental or vital — to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion, — for example, anger, sorrow, etc., — which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "That (‘to blend and blur shades owing to technical exigencies"] might be all right for mental poetry — it won"t do for what I am trying to create — in that, one word won"t do for the other. Even in mental poetry I consider it an inferior method. ‘Gleam" and ‘glow" are two quite different things and the poet who uses them indifferently has constantly got his eye upon words rather than upon the object.” Letters on Savitri *
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss [is that] from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss without which nothing could remain in being. In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d"être of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "The duality is a position taken up, a double status accepted for the operations of the self-manifestation of the being; but there is no eternal and fundamental separateness and dualism of Being and its Consciousness-Force, of the Soul and Nature.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The earth is a material field of evolution. Mind and life, supermind, Sachchidananda are in principle involved there in the earth-consciousness; but only Matter is at first organized; then life descends from the life plane and gives shape and organization and activity to the life principle in Matter, creates the plant and animal; then mind descends from the mind plane, creating man. Now supermind is to descend so as to create a supramental race.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The motion of the world works under the government of a perpetual stability. Change represents the constant shifting of apparent relations in an eternal Immutability.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life"s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The timeless Spirit is not necessarily a blank; it may hold all in itself, but in essence, without reference to time or form or relation or circumstance, perhaps in an eternal unity. Eternity is the common term between Time and the Timeless Spirit. What is in the Timeless unmanifested, implied, essential, appears in Time in movement, or at least in design and relation, in result and circumstance. These two then are the same Eternity or the same Eternal in a double status; they are a twofold status of being and consciousness, one an eternity of immobile status, the other an eternity of motion in status.” The Life Divine ::: "The spiritual fullness of the being is eternity; . . . ” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘ghost" as used in popular parlance covers an enormous number of distinct phenomena which have no necessary connection with each other. To name a few only: ::: An actual contact with the soul of a human being in its subtle body and transcribed to our mind by the appearance of an image or the hearing of a voice.
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . we live in a false relation with our environment, because we know neither the universe nor ourselves for what they really are . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "We mean by the Absolute something greater than ourselves, greater than the cosmos which we live in, the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God, something without which all that we see or are conscious of as existing, could not have been, could not for a moment remain in existence. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities . . . The Absolute is for us the Ineffable.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "When there is some lowering or diminution of the consciousness or some impairing of it at one place or another, the Adversary — or the Censor — who is always on the watch presses with all his might wherever there is a weak point lying covered from your own view, and suddenly a wrong movement leaps up with unexpected force. Become conscious and cast out the possibility of its renewal, that is all that is to be done.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Yes: the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire.” *Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.” *Letters on Yoga
"Stability and movement, we must remember, are only our psychological representations of the Absolute, even as are oneness and multitude. The Absolute is beyond stability and movement as it is beyond unity and multiplicity. But it takes its eternal poise in the one and the stable and whirls round itself infinitely, inconceivably, securely in the moving and multitudinous.” The Life Divine
"The Absolute neither creates nor is created, — in the current sense of making or being made; we can speak of creation only in the sense of the Being becoming in form and movement what it already is in substance and status.” *The Life Divine
::: "The ancient Vedanta presents us with . . . the conception and experience of Brahman as the one universal and essential fact and of the nature of Brahman as Sachchidananda [Existence, Consciousness, Bliss]. In this view the essence of all life is the movement of a universal and immortal existence, the essence of all sensation and emotion is the play of a universal and self-existent delight in being, the essence of all thought and perception is the radiation of a universal and all-pervading truth, the essence of all activity is the progression of a universal and self-effecting good.” The Life Divine
The Apsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers and actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous and world-long struggle of the Gods against the forces that tend towards disruption by the Titans who would restore Matter to its original atomic condition or of dissolution by the sages and hermits who would make phenomena dissolve prematurely into the One who is above phenomena. They rose from the Ocean, says Valmiki, seeking who should choose them as brides, but neither the Gods nor the Titans accepted them, therefore are they said to be common or universal. The Harmony of Virtue
"The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow.” Essays on the Gita
"The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one"s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one"s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one"s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces — for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness — and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in ::: —the nature.” Letters on Yoga*
"The Divine Force can act on any plane — it is not limited to the supramental Force. The supramental is only one aspect of the power of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
"The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers.” Letters on Yoga
"The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine*
"The Eternal is our refuge; all the rest are false values, the Ignorance and its mazes, a self-bewilderment of the soul in phenomenal Nature.” The Life Divine*
"The form is the manifestation or appearance, the idea is the truth. The form is phenomenon, the idea is reality.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: "The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga
"The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.” Essays on the Gita
"The ‘I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear — the true being is felt in its place.” Letters on Yoga
::: The Mother: "With the Divine"s Love is the power of Transformation. It has this power because it is for the sake of Transformation that it has given itself to the world and manifested everywhere. Not only into man but into all the atoms of Matter it has infused itself in order to bring the world back to the original Truth. The moment you open to it, you also receive its power of Transformation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
"The other parts of our natural composition are not only mutable but perishable; but the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential possibilities of our manifestation but is not constituted by them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame.” *The Life Divine
::: "The perfect cosmic vision & cosmic sentiment is the cure of all error & suffering; but most men succeed only in enlarging the range of their ego.” Essays Divine and Human
"There is no such thing as death, for it is the body that dies and the body is not the man. That which really is, cannot go out of existence, though it may change the forms through which it appears, just as that which is non-existent cannot come into being. The soul is and cannot cease to be. This opposition of is and is not, this balance of being and becoming which is the mind"s view of existence, finds its end in the realisation of the soul as the one imperishable self by whom all this universe has been extended. Finite bodies have an end, but that which possesses and uses the body, is infinite, illimitable, eternal, indestructible. It casts away old and takes up new bodies as a man changes worn-out raiment for new; and what is there in this to grieve at and recoil and shrink? This is not born, nor does it die, nor is it a thing that comes into being once and passing away will never come into being again. It is unborn, ancient, sempiternal; it is not slain with the slaying of the body. Who can slay the immortal spirit? Weapons cannot cleave it, nor the fire burn, nor do the waters drench it, nor the wind dry. Eternally stable, immobile, all-pervading, it is for ever and for ever. Not manifested like the body, but greater than all manifestation, not to be analysed by the thought, but greater than all mind, not capable of change and modification like the life and its organs and their objects, but beyond the changes of mind and life and body, it is yet the Reality which all these strive to figure.” Essays on the Gita
"The surface mental individuality is, in consequence, always ego-centric; even its altruism is an enlargement of its ego: . . . . ” The Life Divine*
::: "The third step is to know the Divine Being who is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness ever living within us and the conscious instrument of its light and power and joy and beauty.” *The Life Divine
"The vital is the. . . being behind the Force of Life; in its outer form in the Ignorance it generates the desire-soul which governs most men and which they mistake often for the real soul. ::: The vital as the desire-soul and desire-nature controls the consciousness to a large extent in most men, because men are governed by desire.” Letters on Yoga
"This eternity is not of Time; the eternity of Time is an extension in movement of the Timeless.” Essays Divine and Human
::: **"This sraddhâ — the English word faith is inadequate to express it — is in reality an influence from the supreme Spirit and its light a message from our supramental being which is calling the lower nature to rise out of its petty present to a great self-becoming and self-exceeding.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga. and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. ” Letters on Savitri*
those who assist, guide, wait upon, accompany, give service or follow another to contribute to the fulfilment of a need or furtherance of an effort or purpose; subordinate companions.
Thought-images of themselves projected, often by people at the moment of death, which appear at that time or a few hours afterwards to their friends or relatives.
"To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote "His anger climbed against me in a stream", it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
"We are not the body, but the body is still something of ourselves. With realisation the erroneous identification ceases — in certain experiences the existence of the body is not felt at all. In the full realisation the body is within us, not we in it, it is an instrumental formation in our wider being, — our consciousness exceeds but also pervades it, — it can be dissolved without our ceasing to be the self.” Letters on Yoga
"We. . . become conscious, in our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"We now begin to have reason for concluding that the Flame, which is only another aspect of Light, is the Vedic symbol for the Force of the divine consciousness, of the supramental Truth.” The Secret of the Veda
"We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness.” The Life Divine
". . . what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature — this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised, — a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense.” The Life Divine
"When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created. It integrates, harmonises, establishes a new rhythm in the nature. It can bring down too a higher and yet higher force and range of the higher nature until, if that be the aim of the sadhana, it becomes possible to bring down the supramental force and existence. All this is prepared, assisted, farthered by the work of the psychic being in the heart centre; the more it is open, in front, active, the quicker, safer, easier the working of the Force can be. The more love and bhakti and surrender grow in the heart, the more rapid and perfect becomes the evolution of the sadhana. For the descent and transformation imply at the same time an increasing contact and union with the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
KEYS (10k)
83 Sri Aurobindo
36 Sri Ramakrishna
32 Saint Thomas Aquinas
12 Heraclitus
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9 Sri Ramana Maharshi
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4 Tao Te Ching
4 Ramesh Balsekar
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3 Thomas A Kempis
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3 Blaise Pascal
3 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
3 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
3 Aleister Crowley
3 Adyashanti
2 Zig Ziglar
2 William Blake
2 Tseu-tse
2 Tolstoy
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2 Stephen Covey
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2 Saint Thomas Aquinas
2 Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
2 Saint John Vianney
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2 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
2 Rabindranath Tagore
2 Our Lady to Fr. Stefano Gobbi
2 Oscar Wilde
2 Omar Khayyam
2 Nikola Tesla
2 Niccolo Machiavelli
2 Maya Angelou
2 ken-wilber
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2 Karl Popper
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2 Hippocrates
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1 Shaqeeq Balkhi]
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1 Napoleon Hill
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1 Meng-Tse. I V. II. XII
1 Meng-Tse II 5.17
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1 Maximus
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1 Confucius
1 Ahmad]
1 1 John 2:16-17
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
45 Anonymous
33 Clement Marot
32 Jennifer L Armentrout
13 Menander
13 H L Mencken
12 Plato
11 William Shakespeare
11 Homer
9 Aristotle
8 Jeanne Calment
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6 Voltaire
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6 Rumi
1:And justify the ways of God to men. ~ John Milton, #KEYS
2:His coming against men." ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #KEYS
3:To little men, gods send little things. ~ Callimachus, #KEYS
4:Wise men don't judge - they seek to understand." ~ Wei Wu Wei, #KEYS
5:What are men? Mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
6:Difficulty shows what men are. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
7:Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes. ~ Oscar Wilde, #KEYS
8:Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. ~ Martin Heidegger, #KEYS
9:History of the world is but the biography of great men.
~ Thomas Carlyle,#KEYS
10:A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men. ~ Anonymous, #KEYS
11:A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." ~ Roald Dahl, #KEYS
12:There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
13:Zeal is fit only for wise men, but is mostly found in fools.
~ Thomas Fuller,#KEYS
14:If men knew themselves, they would know God." ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
15:Things that are holy are revealed only to men who are holy. ~ Hippocrates, Law, V, #KEYS
16:Love is nothing but the brightness of God in men. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, #KEYS
17:Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
~ Blaise Pascal,#KEYS
18:Great men have the nature of a child. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
19:It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." ~ Frederick Douglass, #KEYS
20:Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
~ Plato,#KEYS
21:Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change." ~ Confucius, #KEYS
22:The sage's rule of moral conduct has its principle in the hearts of all men. ~ Tseu-tse, #KEYS
23:The gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
24:Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
25:Hard to animals, hard to men. ~ Proverb, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
26:The race of men is divine. ~ Pythagoras, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
27:Try to enjoy the great festival of life with other men! ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
28:Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
29:One should seek God among men. ~ Novalis, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
30:How quickly a little learning makes men vain! ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
31:Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life. ~ Buddha, #KEYS
32:While God waits for his temple to be built of love,
Men bring stones. ~ Rabindranath Tagore,#KEYS
33:All men participate in the possibility of self-knowledge. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
34:As a matter of fact, the company of holy men makes the heart pure forever. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
35:If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
36:If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life. ~ Wu-Men, #KEYS
37:It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.
~ Diogenes,#KEYS
38:All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
~ Blaise Pascal, [T5],#KEYS
39:Purity and peace make men upright. ~ Lao-Tsu-Te, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
40:Some of their faults men readily admit, but others not so readily. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
41:Think as the wise men think, but talk like the simple people do.
~ Aristotle,#KEYS
42:You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians, 7:23, #KEYS
43:All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
44:It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
45:This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power. ~ Herodotus, Histories, IX, 16, #KEYS
46:Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
47:... Women will abandon feelings of delicacy, and cohabit with men out of wedlock." ~ Saint Senanus, Ireland #KEYS
48:A wise man among the ignorant is as a beautiful girl in the company of blind men. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
49:Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." ~ Blaise Pascal, #KEYS
50:People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, #KEYS
51:Render unto all men that which is their due. ~ Corinthians, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
52:He must be good to animals, yet better to men. ~ Baha Ullah, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
53:When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #KEYS
54:All men have the capacity of knowing themselves and acting with moderation. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
55:... the blood of men will have to be spilled on the asphalt of our streets." ~ Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich , #KEYS
56:Even as men come to Me, so I accept them. It is my path that men follow from all sides,
~ Bhagavad Gita, (IV.11),#KEYS
57:For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca, #KEYS
58:Neither, do men put new wine into old bottles. ~ Matthew IX.17, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
59:Practising wisdom, men have respect one for another. ~ Lao Tee, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
60:There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain. ~ Plato, #KEYS
61:Men who love wisdom should acquaint themselves with a great many particulars. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
62:Men will only be happy when they all love each other. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
63:The passionate are like men standing on their heads, they see all things the wrong way. ~ Plato, #KEYS
64:The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil ment
~ Plato,#KEYS
65:He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS
66:As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #KEYS
67:Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden #KEYS
68:To compel men to do what appears good to oneself is the best means of making them disgusted with it. ~ Sri Ramakrishsa, #KEYS
69:Follow peace with all men. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Hebrews, XII. 14, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
70:The painful secret of gods and kings is that men are free... You know it and they do not. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre, The Flies, #KEYS
71:We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
~ George Orwell,#KEYS
72:Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.
~ Eric Hoffer,#KEYS
73:Seek only the intimacy of God and of His angels, and avoid the notice of men. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
74:...unless men work at occultism as they work for the prizes of their professions they will not achieve.
~ Dion Fortune,#KEYS
75:The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
76:All men participate in the possibility of self-knowledge. ~ Heraclitus, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
77:Put your trust in Allah, you will be the strongest of men. ~ Ahmad], @Sufi_Path #KEYS
78:When scientific power outruns spiritual power, we end up with guided missles and misguided men.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.,#KEYS
79:Have a care that ye sow not among men the seeds of discord. ~ Baha-ullah, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
80:Men perish because they cannot join the beginning and the end. ~ Alcineon, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
81:The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it. The evil is only that men will not seek it.
~ Mencius,#KEYS
82:Watch ye, stand fast, quit you like men, be strong.* ~ Corinthians XVI. 13, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
83:Surmount the desires of which gods and men are the subjects. ~ Uttana Sutta, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
84:When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships. ~ Johannes Kepler, #KEYS
85:It was clear through unlearned men that the cross was persuasive, in fact, it persuaded the whole world. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
86:Men have made kings that folly might have food. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II, #KEYS
87:This is a great fault in men, to love to be the models of others. ~ Meng-tse, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
88:Do not believe all that men say. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, XIX. 10, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
89:e who subdues men is only strong; he who subdues himself, is mighty. ~ Lao-Tse, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
90:In Islam
All men are equal underneath the King. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
91:Take heed that ye do not alms before, men, to be seen of them. ~ Matthew VI. 1, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
92:We fight to win sublime Wisdom; therefore men call us warriors. ~ Book of Wisdom, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
93:Let us respect men, and not only men of worth, but the public in general ~ Cicero, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
94:Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me. ~ Gita, #KEYS
95:By men is mightiness achieved ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Baji Prabhou, #KEYS
96:What is there more precious than a sage? He sets peace between all men. ~ Tsu-king, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
97:What you do not wish to be done to yourselves, do not do to other men. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
98:Do not believe in men's discourses before you have reflected well on them. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
99:this is the best season of your life. ~ "Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring" by Wu-Men, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, #KEYS
100:There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #KEYS
101:Be not children in understanding,be men. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians, XIV 20, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
102:Hegel's philosophy is so odd that one would not have expected him to be able to get some men to accept it, but he did." ~ Bertrand Russell, #KEYS
103:3) penance, preparing men to receive the effect of Christ's baptism ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.38.3)., #KEYS
104:The sage's rule of moral conduct has its principle in the hearts of all men. ~ Tseu-tse, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
105:Follow the instruction of holy men who have come to know the Lord after many a hard penance. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
106:Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #KEYS
107:A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. ~ Francis Bacon, Atheism, #KEYS
108:Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
~ Socrates,#KEYS
109:There is no loftier mission than to approach the Divinity nearer than other men, and to disseminate the divine rays among mankind. ~ Beethoven, #KEYS
110:World bound men, cannot resist the temptation of women and gold and direct their minds to God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
111:All education is the art of making men ethical (sittlich), of transforming the old Adam into the new Adam. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, [T5], #KEYS
112:And some men are as ignorant of what they do when awake as they are forgetful of what they do when asleep. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
113:Let the superior man regard all men who dwell within the four seas as his brothers. ~ Lun Yu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
114:Men quarrel among themselves about religion, each having seen some different aspect of the Deity ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
115:That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T0],#KEYS
116:Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again. ~ Brecht, #KEYS
117:We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
~ Plato,#KEYS
118:When Job felt this anger he reviled his enemies, calling them 'dishonourable men of no repute, lacking everything good.' ~ Saint Isaiah the Solitary, #KEYS
119:But its final effect is to lead men to the PERFECT GOOD ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on 2 Tim. 3, lect. 3)., #KEYS
120:Numberless sadhus, devotees, and men of realization have come to holy places to have a vision of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
121:All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. ~ Matthew VII. 12, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
122:If men had forgotten what it means to exist religiously, they had doubtless also forgotten what it means to exist as human beings. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #KEYS
123:To the eyes of men athirst the whole world seems in dream as a spring of water. ~ Sadi, Gulistan VII, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
124:Nature must flower into art
And science, or else wherefore are we men? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
125:Be indifferent to the praise and blame of men; consider it as if the croakings of frogs. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
126:Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves." ~ Native American saying., #KEYS
127:Eternal truth lives not with mortal men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #KEYS
128:There can be no true freedom and happiness so long as men have not understood their oneness. ~ Channing, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
129:All knowledge comes from the stars. Men do not invent or create ideas; the ideas exist and men are able to grasp them. ~ Paracelsus, #KEYS
130:Men work almost always without knowing for what they have worked. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Peril of the World-State, #KEYS
131:We must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
132:And this is the life of the Gods, and of Godlike men, a life without love of the world, a flight of the Alone to the Alone. ~ Plotinus, #KEYS
133:Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceit. ~ Romans X II, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
134:That Intelligence is God within us; by that men are gods and their humanity neighbours divinity. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
135:Men die that man may live and God be born. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
136:For if the truth has made you free, then you shall be free indeed, and you shall not care for the vain words of men. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
137:It is better to be good and to be called wicked by men than to be wicked and esteemed good. ~ Sadi Gulistan, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
138:More men follow the inclinations of their sentient nature than the order of reason ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.71.2ad3)., #KEYS
139:Fear not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revillings. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Isaiah, LI. 7, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
140:For the most part men are the slaves of their associations. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, On Translating the Upanishads, #KEYS
141:Men who possess virtue, wisdom, prudence, intelligence have generally been formed in tribulations. ~ Meng-tse, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
142:Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing. ~ Voltaire, #KEYS
143:He alone is truly a man who is illumined by the light of the true knowledge. Others are only men in name. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
144:Hard are God's terms and few can meet them of men who are mortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
145:I have preferred wisdom to kingdoms and thrones and I have believed that riches are nothing before wisdom, for she is an endless treasure for men. ~ Book of Wisdom, #KEYS
146:In one and the same movement, our Savior's passion raises men from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights. ~ Saint Maximus of Turin, #KEYS
147:I will show thee, hear me; and that which I have seen I will declare, which wise men have told: ~ Job XV. 17.18, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
148:The sins that we do against men come because each one does not respect the Divine Spirit in his like. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
149:To do to men what we would have them do to ourselves is what one may call the teaching of humanity. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
150:Men, despise not yourselves: the Son of God became a man; women, despise not yourselves, the Son of God was born of a woman. ~ Saint Augustine, De Agone Christ. XI), #KEYS
151:Through their own pride and curiosity, and because I am against them, such men often fall into great emptations and sins. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
152:When Divine grace descends, men having the germs of piety and goodness in them are changed at once into holy beings. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
153:Two are the angels of God whom men worship, strength and enjoyment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
154:Wisdom streng theneth the wise more than ten mighty men which are in a city. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
155:To compel men to do what appears good to oneself is the best means of making them disgusted with it. ~ Ramakrishss, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
156:All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
157:Kings are men,
And they are set above their fellow-mortals
To serve us, friends. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act IV,#KEYS
158:Truth! Seldom with her bright and burning wand
She touches the unwilling lips of men ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
159:Only one who knows not that God lives in him can attri bute to certain men more importance than to others. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
160:There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, #KEYS
161:Force cannot resist intelligence; in spite of force, in spite of men, intelligence passes on and triumphs. ~ Ramayana, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
162: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
163:If a man shows pity for animals, he is all the more disposed to take pity on his fellow-men ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.102.6ad8)., #KEYS
164:Men value their own goods; hence they think the Lord will view His own works, the sun, moon and stars, in the same light. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
165:The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
166: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
167:Realization will come in the fullness of time, by living constantly in the company of sadhus (holy men). ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W V. 268), #KEYS
168:Boys and young men of pure minds should be led early into the path of religion, before worldliness enters deeply into them. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
169:The Eternal is in every man, but all men are not in the Eternal; there lies the cause of their suffering. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
170:To lavish upon all men love and trust
Shows the heart's royalty, not the brain's craft. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
171: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
172:Thus thou shalt be in perfect accord with all that lives, thou shalt love men as thy brotheas. ~ Book of Golden Precepts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
173:But he turned and rebuked them, You do not understand, he said, what spirit it is you share. The Son of Man has come to save men's lives, not to destroy them. ~ Luke 9:54-56, #KEYS
174:Thou art man thou art a citizen of the world, thou art the son of God, thou art the brother of all men. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
175:He is a true man to whom money is a servant. Those who have it and do not know how to use it, do not deserve to be called men. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
176:If thou feel not love for men, busy thyself with thyself, handle things, do what thou wilt, but leave men alone. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
177:Love and serve men, but beware lest thou desire their approbation. Obey rather God within thee.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Bhakti,#KEYS
178:Who, then, are those brothers? Jerome says that men are called brothers in many ways ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on My 12, lect 4)., #KEYS
179:A perfected human world cannot be created by men or composed of men who are themselves imperfect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
180:A tiny child is born, who is a great king. Wise men are led to him from afar. They come to adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth. ~ Quodvultdeus, #KEYS
181:As the light of a torch illumines the objects in a dark room, even so the light of wisdom illumines all men, whosoever they be, if they turn towards it. ~ To-shu-hing-tsan-king, #KEYS
182:Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.
~ Miyamoto Musashi,#KEYS
183: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
184:Faith may vary with different men, in different epochs, but love is invariable in all. The true faith is ~ Ibrahim of Cordova, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
185:Men and women live in the world without yet having any idea either of the visible world or the invisible. ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
186:Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. ~ Frank Herbert, Dune, #KEYS
187:Sincerity, a profound, grand, ingenuous sincerity is the first characteristic of all men who are in any way heroic. ~ Carlyle, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
188:It is not by the water in which they plunge that men become pure but he becomes pure who follows the path of the Truth. ~ ibid, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
189:As the herdsman urges with his staff his cattle to the stall, so age and death drive before them the lives of men. ~ Udanavarga, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
190:Men shed rivers of tears for family, love and riches, but who sheds even a drop because he is not fortunate enough to see the Lord? ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
191:When wilt thou understand that the true happiness is always in thy power and that it is the love for all men. ~ Marcos Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
192:No matter if the enemy has thousands of men, there is fulfillment in simply standing them off and being determined to cut them all down, starting from one end. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #KEYS
193:Ah, let us live happy without hating those who hate us. In the midst of men who hate us, let us live without hatred. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
194:Symbolism is the language of the Mysteries. By symbols men have ever sought to communicate to each other those thoughts which transcend the limitations of language.
~ Manly P Hall,#KEYS
195:Whether it seem good or evil to men's eyes,
Only for good the secret Will can work.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
196:A perfected human world cannot be created by men or composed of men who are themselves imperfect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.28 - The Divine Life, #KEYS
197:Holy men are like onlookers at a game of chess. They see things in their true light and can judge better than the people of the world. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
198:In the sight of worldly men there are differences of position, but with divine sight there remains no distinction of the high and low. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
199:Men want absolute and permanent happiness. This does not reside in objects, but in the Absolute. It is Peace free from pain and pleasure - it is a neutral state. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
200:Of all the pursuits open to men, the search for wisdom is most perfect, more sublime, more profitable and more full of joy.
~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,#KEYS
201:Think not that when the sins of thy gross form are overcome, thy duty is over to nature and to other men. ~ Book of Golden Precepts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
202:And he is our peace who made the two into one: that we might be men of good will, sweetly linked by the bond of unity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
203:Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy. ~ Jack Kerouac in On The Road, #KEYS
204:It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
205:This is the Nemesis of men who rise
Too suddenly by fraud or violence
That they suspect all hearts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
206:This world is a people of friends, and these friends are first the gods and next men whom Nature has made for each other. ~ Epictetus, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
207:through whom all things are, He who leads men to glory, and who is the Author of human salvation suffered and died ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.34)., #KEYS
208:When we or other men commit sin, only then is it salutary to give in to sadness. But when we meet with misfortune in human affairs, then sadness has no efficacy. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
209:Men of superior virtue practise it without thinking of it; those of inferior virtue go about it with intention. ~ Lao-Tse: Tao-te-King, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
210:So the mind may be unattached and fixed upon God, you should often retire into solitude -- a place which is away from either men or women. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
211:When the people are wiser than their leaders and wise men, the democratic future of a country is assured. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Bengal and the Congress, #KEYS
212:... Colchis, Cyprus, the Turks and barbarians he will subdue and have all men worship the Crucified one. He will at length lay down his crown in Jerusalem." ~ Saint Cataldus of Tarentino , #KEYS
213:For men, women multiple wants of daily life, consequently the necessity for money arises, freedom of action is gone, replaced by servitude. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
214:God, who has the power to raise the dead, is the One who permitted us to die. He who can restore life is the One who permitted men to be killed ~ Saint Peter Chrysologos, Sermons, 1.101)., #KEYS
215:Men are fathers of their fate;
They dig the prison, they the crown command. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lines on Ireland,#KEYS
216:Men in their ordinary utilitarian course of life do not feel called upon to serve anyone except themselves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Work and Ideal, #KEYS
217:Avatars, like Krishna, act and behave to all appearance as common men, while their heart and soul are adsorbed in the Highest, beyond karma. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
218:Nothing divides men so much as pride, whether it be the pride of the individual, of the family, of the class or of the nation. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
219:Only the man who knows that God lives in his soul, can be humble; such a one is absolutely indifferent to what men say of him. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
220:Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
221:The raising of men towards the Divine is in the end the one effective way of helping mankind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Its Liberation, #KEYS
222:The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.
~ Yasunari Kawabata,#KEYS
223:But God's Word is our Lord Jesus Christ, who in these last times was made a man among men, that he might join the end to the beginning: that is, join man to God. ~ Irenaeus, Against Heresies, #KEYS
224:Compassion toward animals is essentially bound up with goodness of character. Whoever is cruel to them cannot be good to men ~ Sehopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
225:Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.
~ Benjamin Disraeli,#KEYS
226:I no longer wish to live after the manner of men, and my desire shall be fulfilled if you consent. Be willing, then, that you also may have your desires fulfilled. ~ Saint Ignatius of Antioch, #KEYS
227:Even a nation of strong men led by the weak, blind or selfish, becomes easily infected with the vices of its leaders. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #KEYS
228:Men never commit bad actions with more coolness and assurance in their rectitude than when they do them by virtue of a false belief. ~ Pascal, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
229:A man may conquer thousands and thousands of men in battle, but he is the greatest conqueror who has mastered himself. ~ Fo-shu-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
230:Only when men shall depend exclusively upon the Divine and upon nothing else will the incarnate god no longer need to die for them. ~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 1, 1951-1954, #KEYS
231:Some men only have the happiness to raise themselves to that perception of the Divine which exists only in God and in the human mind. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
232:We are born to contri bute to a mutual action like feet and hands. The hostility of men among themselves is against Nature. ~ Mar-cus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
233:All men are separated from each other by the body, but all are united by the same spiritual principle which gives life to everything. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
234:I tell you, on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. ~ Matthew 12:36-37, #KEYS
235:Put Wisdom at the head of the world; the world will fight its battle victoriously and will be the best world that men can constitute. ~ Carlyle, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
236:Such are they who have not acquired self-knowledge, men who vaunt their science, are proud of their wisdom, vain of their riches. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
237:The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean. ~ William Faulkner, #KEYS
238:There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.
~ Mark Twain,#KEYS
239:When you walk along the way, speak to yourself, speak to Christ. Hear him say to you: I desire that in every place men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
240:But Muslims and pagans accept neither one, so we must turn to natural reason, to which all men are forced to give their assent ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 1.2)., #KEYS
241:Chaff are men's armies
Threshed by the flails of Fate; 'tis the soul of the hero that conquers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
242:One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, No Propaganda or Proselytism, #KEYS
243:The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself. The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself" ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, #KEYS
244:What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men. ~ John Milton,#KEYS
245:So long as the mentality is inconstant and inconsequent, it is worthless, though one have a good teacher and the company of holy men. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
246:Strength men desire in their masters;
All men worship success and in failure and weakness abandon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
247:To take pleasure in another's evil belongs to hatred, which is contrary to the charity whereby we are bound to love all men. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.108.1)., #KEYS
248:His first coming was to fulfill his plan of love, to teach men by gentle persuasion. This time, whether men like it or not, they will be subjects of his kingdom by necessity. ~ Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, #KEYS
249:O my Lord, the stars glitter
and the eyes of men are closed.
Kings have locked their doors
and each lover is alone with his beloved.
Here, I am alone with you.
~ Rabia al-Adawiyya,#KEYS
250:The men of today boast of the ever growing extent of the modifications they impose on the world, and the consequence is that everything is thereby made more and more ‘artificial’ ... ~ Rene Guenon, #KEYS
251:You do not involve yourself in quarrels and dissensions any more. Another thing. It is 'lust and gold' that keeps men away from God. That is the barrier. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
252:Human thought in the generality of men is no more than a rough and crude acceptance of unexamined ideas. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Reincarnating Soul, #KEYS
253:Like common men he lived to whom the ray
Of a new sun but brings another day
Unmeaning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Khaled of the Sea,#KEYS
254:Why do men want to worship?
It is far better to become than to worship. It is the reluctance to change that makes one worship.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, [T5],#KEYS
255:The foundation of man's life is the dwelling in him of the divine Spirit equal in all men. And that is why men among themselves are all equal. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
256:Then another horse went forth. It was bright red, and its rider was granted permission to take away peace from the earth and to make men slay one another. And he was given a great sword." ~ Revelation 6:4, #KEYS
257:Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#KEYS
258:From the most exalted in position to the humblest and obscurest of men all have one equal duty, to correct incessantly and improve themselves. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
259:Men want to help each other with a motive behind or a feeling which proceeds from the ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #KEYS
260:A society that lives not by its men but by its institutions, is not a collective soul, but a machine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age, #KEYS
261:Since the race of women owed to men a debt, as from Adam without woman woman came, therefore without man the Virgin this day brought forth, and on behalf of Eve repaid the debt to man. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
262:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things. ~ Jorge Luis Borge, #KEYS
263:What torture, My daughter, for my maternal Heart! How sad I am to see that men do not change! Father's justice demands reparation, otherwise many will be lost! " ~ Our Lady to Bl. Sr. Elena Aiello (1895-1961), #KEYS
264:... I am now able to put myself into men and change them, removing the darkness and bringing light, giving them a new heart and a new mind.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes,#KEYS
265:The proud man wishes to distinguish himself from others and deprives himself thus of the best joy of life, of a free and joyful communion with men. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
266:We shall incur no slight injury but rather great danger, if we rashly yield ourselves to the inclinations of men who aim at exciting strife and tumults, so as to draw us away from what is good. ~ Saint Clement, #KEYS
267:The earth is full of adverse forces and of men who respond to these adverse forces; usually, the more one realises the Divine, the more enemies does he have around himself. ~ The Mother, #KEYS
268:There is no malady that can prevent the doing of thy duty. If thou canst not serve men by thy works, serve them by thy example of love and patience. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
269:What torture, My daughter, for my maternal Heart! How sad I am to see that men do not change! Father's justice demands reparation, otherwise many will be lost! " ~ Our Lady to Bl. Sister Elena Aiello (1895-1961), #KEYS
270:The Society of men is on the eve of the most terrible scourges and of gravest events. Mankind must expect to be ruled with an iron rod and to drink from the chalice of the wrath of God." ~ Our Lady of La Salette , #KEYS
271:The Victorian Age, for all its humbug, was a period of rapid progress, because men were dominated by hope rather than fear. If we are again to have progress, we must again be dominated by hope. ~ Bertrand Russell, #KEYS
272:Ah! let us live happy without desires among those who are given up to covetousness. In the midst of men full of desires, let us dwell empty of them. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
273:Christ wished to be born, when the light of day begins to increase in length, to show that He came so men might ascend to the Divine Light ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.35.8ad3)., #KEYS
274:Since an unlooked-for salvation was to be provided for men through the help of God, so also was the unlooked-for birth from a virgin accomplished; God giving this sign, but man not working it out. ~ Saint Irenaeus, #KEYS
275:And there is no more perfect life than that which is passed in the commerce and sociely of men when it is filled with charity towards one's neighbour. ~ J. Tauler, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
276:If it were permissible for bad men to rob other people of their property, it would tend to the detriment of the truth of life and justice ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.43.8ad2)., #KEYS
277:et all men accomplish only the works of righteousness, and they shall build for themselves a place of safety where they can store their treasures. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
278:I have preferred wisdom to kingdoms and thrones and I have believed that riches are nothing before wisdom, for she is an endless treasure for men. ~ Book of Wisdom, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
279:I say: When matters of great moment are inquired into by men of little ability, they usually make them men of great ability. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Contra Academicos 1.2.6, #KEYS
280:Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations. ~ Bahá'u'lláh, #KEYS
281:The Divine has an equal love for all human beings, but the obscurity of consciousness of most men prevents them from perceiving this divine love. Truth is wonderful. It is in our perception that it is distorted. ~ ?, #KEYS
282:But the higher you raise yourself, the smaller you will seem to the eyes that are envious. He who ranges on the heights is the one whom men most detest. ~ Nietzsche, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
283:Do not sleep under a roof. Carry no money or food. Go alone to places frightening to the common brand of men. Become a criminal of purpose. Be put in jail, and extricate yourself by your own wisdom. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #KEYS
284:A sole thing the Gods
Demand from all men living, sacrifice:
Nor without this shall any crown be grasped. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,#KEYS
285:The lives of mortal men are like vases of many colours made by the potter's hands; they are broken into a thousand pieces ; there is one end for all. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
286:When many Christians will be lovers of heresies, and wicked men will persecute the clergy and will hate justice, this should be the sign that Antichrist shall come without delay." ~ Saint Bridget of Sweden, (1303-1373), #KEYS
287:Let the superior man bear himself in the commerce of men with an always dignified deference, regarding all men that dwell in the world as his own brothers. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
288:Man is good when he raises very high his divine and spiritual "I", but frightful when he wishes to exalt above men his fleshly vain, ambitious and exclusive. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
289:Often men take for their conscience not the manifestation of the spiritual being but simply what is considered good or bad by the people in their environment. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
290:Avoid the society of evil friends and men of vulgar minds; have pleasure in that of the giants of wisdom and take as thy friends those who practice justice. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
291:Only in an uplifting hour of stress
Men answer to the touch of greater things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
292:You rouse men to take delight in praising you: for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 1.1)., #KEYS
293:In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is signed by God's name. ~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, (1855) #KEYS
294:Ordinary men pronounce a sackful of discourses on religion, but do not put a grain into practice, while the sage speaks little, but his whole life is religion put in to action ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
295:The superior man lives in peace with all men with- out acting absolutely like them. The vulgar man acts absolutely like them without being in accord with them. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
296:Men live like stars that see each other in heaven,
But one knows not the pleasure and the grief
The others feel ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,#KEYS
297:The dry gnarled trees stood up like dying men
Stiffened into a pose of agony, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
298:When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #KEYS
299:But what a force is that of the sage who can live at peace with men without having the mobility of water and remain in the midst of them firm and incorruptible ! ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
300:Hence, when many Christians will be lovers of heresies, and wicked men will persecute the clergy and will hate justice, this should be the sign that Antichrist shall come without delay." ~ Saint Bridget of Sweden, (1303-1373), #KEYS
301:Not of the fire am I terrified, not of the sword and its slaying;
Vileness of men appals me, baseness I fear and its voices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
302:The glory of the sacraments is the redemption of captives. Truly they are precious vessels, for they redeem men from death. That, indeed, is the true treasure of the Lord which effects what His blood effected. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
303:If one of theirs they see scale heaven's peaks,
Men then can hope to learn that titan climb. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
304:Man does not see God by his own powers; but God is seen by men when it pleases him that this should be so. He decides by whom he should be seen, and when, and how for God is powerful in all things. ~ Irenaeus, Against Heresies, #KEYS
305:Christianity says, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." And I say . "Recognise thyself in thy neighbour and that all men are in reality one and the same substance." ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
306:We hold not that all the persons of men have risen from the dead and taken their seat at the right hand of the Father, but that this has happened to the whole of our nature in the subsistence of Christ. ~ Saint John of Damascus, #KEYS
307:As the light of a torch illumines the objects in a dark room, even so the light of wisdom illumines all men, whosoever they be, if they turn towards it. ~ To-shu-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
308:Love with my love, think with my thoughts; the rest
Leave to much older wiser men whose schemings
Have made God's world an office and a mart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
309:Met the hounds of bale who hunt men's hearts
Baying across the veldts of Destiny, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
310:So we find the humility of the God-man praiseworthy in the extreme when He bore those abject things which He was called on to suffer for the salvation of men ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.55)., #KEYS
311:Great men and death
Such puissance great well-poisèd natures prove
To mould to their own likeness all they love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Khaled of the Sea,#KEYS
312:It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material posessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #KEYS
313:This is a great error to imagine that men can have a lofty spiritual life when the body remains in luxury and idleness. The body is ever the first disciple of the soul. ~ Thoreu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
314:Man cannot teach by his own power. One cannot conquer ignorance without the power of God. He who teaches men gets his power from God. None but a man of renunciation can teach others. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
315:There will be many wise and just men. The people will love justice, and peace will reign over the whole earth, for divine power will bind Satan for many years until the coming of the Son of Perdition." ~ Mitar Tarabich (1829-1899), #KEYS
316:Whatever may be a householder's profession, it is necessary for him to live in the company of holy men now and then. If a man loves God, he will himself seek the company of holy men. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
317:It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material possessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect." ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #KEYS
318:The great doors remain closed, but the spring fragrance comes inside anyway, and no one sees what takes place there. Men and women who have entered through both doors at once will understand this poem." ~ Kabir, #KEYS
319:The sin of a king brings ruin to his kingdom. Malice, deceit, killing of holy men-these are all sins. These lead to the suffering of the people and cause providential disturbances like war, earthquake, and famine. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
320:What men call chance is simply their ignorance of causes; if the statement that something had happened by chance were to mean that it had no cause, it would be a contradiction in terms. ~ Rene Guenon, The Crisis Of The Modern World, #KEYS
321:A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." ~ Francis Bacon, (1561-1626), an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author, Wikipedia., #KEYS
322:As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before." ~ Our Lady of Akita, #KEYS
323:He from whom men are born spiritually reborn is God, but men are spiritually reborn through the Holy Spirit. . . . So the Holy Spirit is God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on John 3, lect. 5)., #KEYS
324:Sugar and sand may be mixed together, but the ant rejects the sand and carries away the grains of sugar. So the holy Paramahamsas and pious men successfully sift the good from the bad. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
325:Christ tells us that if we are to join him, we shall travel the way he took. It is surely not right that the Son of God should go his way on the path of shame while the sons of men walk the way of worldly honor. ~ Saint John of Ávila, #KEYS
326:According to the statutes of the Church, which does not inflict death to the body, a pecuniary punishment is inflicted so that men may be deterred from sacrilege ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.99.4)., #KEYS
327:All the nations will be united in the Catholic faith. Men will seek the kingdom of God in all solicitude. The Lord will give good pastors to the Church. Men will live in peace, each in his own field." ~ Venerable Barthalomew Holzhauser, #KEYS
328:Bow down and adore where others bend the knee; for where so great a number of men pay the tribute of their adoration, the Impersonal must needs manifest Himself, for He is all compassion. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
329:Charmed men applaud the skilful purpose, the dexterous speaker;
This they forget that a Force decides, not the wiles of the statesman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
330:Disciple: Mother, where is God? ~ Sri Sarada Devi; Dear, where else is God except very close to His devotees? If worldly people even visit the place used by holy men, the very atmosphere of the place can remove the dross of their mind., #KEYS
331:... Excellent men shall be steeped in poverty, the people will become inhospitable to their guests, the voice of the parasite shall be more agreeable to them than the melody of the harp touched by the sage's finger. ~ Saint Columbcille, #KEYS
332:Wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
So men against their will
Learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods.
~ Aeschylus, Agamemnon,#KEYS
333:Know for a certainty that if men understood how terrible is even one solitary sin, they would rather be cast into a heated furnace, and there remain, living both in soul and body, than to support such a sight. ~ Saint Catherine of Genoa, #KEYS
334:I have never counted as real possessions either treasures or palaces or the places which give us credit and put authority in our hands or the pleasures of which men are slaves. ~ Cicero, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
335:Often, actually very often, God allows his greatest servants, those who are far advanced in grace, to make the most humiliating mistakes. This humbles them in their own eyes and in the eyes of their fellow men." ~ Saint Louis de Montfort, #KEYS
336:O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
And bring down God into the lives of men; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
337:We men are conceived twice: to the human body we owe our first conception, to the divine Spirit, our second. John says: "To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God." ~ Didymus of Alexandria, #KEYS
338:What boundless love for men! Christ's undefiled hands were pierced by the nails; he suffered the pain. I experience no pain, no anguish, yet by the share that I have in his sufferings he freely grants me salvation. ~ Jerusalem Catecheses, #KEYS
339:Blood and grief are the ransom of men for the joys of their transience,
For we are mortals bound in our strength and beset in our labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
340:Therefore neither you, O judges, nor men in general ought to fear death: they have only to remember one thing, that for a just man there is no ill in life and no ill in death. ~ Socrates, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
341:Let men blame him or praise, let fortune enter his house or go forth from it, let death come to him today or late, the man of firm mind never deviates from the straight path. ~ Bhartrihari, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
342:Hidden behind the fair outsides of life.
Its dangerous commerce is our suffering's cause.
Its breath is a subtle poison in men's hearts; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
343:Ordinary men pronounce a sackful of discourses on religion, but do not put a grain into practice, while the sage speaks little, but his whole life is religion put in to action ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
344:Ignorant like men born blind who know not light,
They could equate worst ill with highest good, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
345:The times are revolutionary, and revolutionary times demand men who know their own mind and are determined to make it the mind of the nation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Gospel according to Surendranath, #KEYS
346:But most men, I know not why, love better to deceive themselves and fight obstinately for an opinion which is to their taste than to seek without obduracy the truth ~ Cicero, "Academy" II. 13, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
347:Who help men's drab and heavy ignorant lives
To wake to beauty and the wonder of things
Touching them with glory and divinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
348:I taught the prophets from the beginning, and even to this day I continue to speak to all men. But many are hardened. Many are deaf to My voice. Most men listen more willingly to the world than to God. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
349:Thou wouldst exhort men to good ? but hast thou exhorted thyself ? Thou wouldst be useful to them ? Show by thy own example what men philosophy can make and do not prate uselessly. ~ Epictetus, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
350:If you go into solitude with a silent tongue, the silence of mute beings will share with you their rest. But if you go into solitude with a silent heart, the silence of creation will speak louder than the tongues of men or angels. ~ Thomas Merton, #KEYS
351:Walled from ours are other hearts:
For if life's barriers twixt our souls were broken,
Men would be free and one, earth paradise
And the gods live neglected. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
352:Wherefore, O my brothers, if men blame you, condemn you, persecute or attack you, you shall not be indignant, you shall not be discouraged and your spirit shall not be cast down. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
353:If a man is to be healed of sin his mind must necessarily cleave not only to God, but also to the mediator of God and men, Jesus Christ, in whom rests the remission of all sins ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.72)., #KEYS
354:Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men
To greatness: an inspired labour chisels
With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
355:Agreat part of our thoughts and feelings come into us from outside, from our fellow-men, both from individuals and from the collective mind of humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Planes of Our Existence, #KEYS
356:God will use the powers of darkness to exterminate these sectarian, iniquitous and criminal men, who plot to eradicate the Catholic Church, our Holy Mother, by tearing Her up by Her deepest roots, and casting Her on the ground. ~ Blessed Elizabeth , #KEYS
357:The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
Or a demon altar choose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour,#KEYS
358:God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour
And belief shall be not till the work is done. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
359:He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. ~ Athanasius, #KEYS
360:I keep men's own ideals intact. But this also I say to them 'Never feel that your path alone is right and that the paths of others a wrong and full of errors. A man can realize God by following his own path if his prayer is sincere. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
361:That the preaching of these men was indeed divine is brought home to us in the same way. For how otherwise could twelve uneducated men, who lived on lakes and rivers and wastelands, get the idea for such an immense enterprise? ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
362:There are men so weak in love,
They cannot bear more than an ass's load;
So high in their conceit, the tenderest
Kindest rebuke turns all their sweetness sour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act III,#KEYS
363:Christ is risen! He has burst open the gates of hell and let the dead go free; he has renewed the earth through the members of his Church now born again in baptism, and has made it blossom afresh with men brought back to life. ~ Saint Maximus of Turin, #KEYS
364:I pronounced a great day, not wherein any temporal potentate should minister, but wherein the Terrible Judge should reveal all men's consciences and try every man of each kind of religion. This is the day of change." ~ Saint Edmund Campion, (1540-1581), #KEYS
365:Men who are sovereignly perfect resemble the earth by the greatness and depth of their wisdom, the heavens by its height and splendour, Space and illimitable Time by its extent and duration. ~ Tsu-tse, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
366:MY CHILD, hear My words, words of greatest sweetness surpassing all the knowledge of the philosophers and wise men of earth. My words are spirit and life, and they are not to be weighed by man's understanding. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
367:Bow down and adore where others bend the knee; for where so great a number of men pay the tri bute of their adoration, the Impersonal must needs manifest Himself, for He is all compassion. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
368:Lord Naoshige said, The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish such things. Simply become insane and desperate.
~ HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1650 1720,#KEYS
369:There are men in the world who labour to attain to spirituality and sages who are pure and perfect and can explain this life and the other of which they have themselves acquired the knowledge. ~ Unknown, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
370:A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving … ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
371:Hearken to the word of the sage with the ear of the soul, even when his conduct has no similitude to his teachings. Men should listen to good counsel even though it be written on a wall. ~ Sadi; Sulistan, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
372:Beyond all other men make thyself the friend of him who is distinguished by his virtue. Yield always to his gentle warnings and observe his honourable and useful actions. ~ Pythagoras; "Golden Verses". 5-6, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
373:Men direct their gaze upon fugitive appearances and the transitory brilliance of this world of the senses and they lend no attention to the immutable Reality which remains unknown to them. ~ Tadeka Shingen, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
374:When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society." ~ Saint Pope John Paul II, #KEYS
375:When men will understand that the Divine knows better than they do what is the best for them, many of their difficulties will disappear.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Surrender to the Divine Will, Difficulties of Surrender,#KEYS
376:Difficult periods come on earth to compel men to overcome their small personal egoism and to turn exclusively to the Divine for help and light. The wisdom of men is ignorant. only the Divine knows. It came imperiously. ~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 12, 1971-12-15, #KEYS
377:For though I have with me good men, devout brethren, faithful friends, holy books, beautiful treatises, sweet songs and hymns, all these help and please but little when I am abandoned by grace and left to my poverty. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
378:I tell you that you should constantly live in the company of holy men. You know very well the suffering of the world. You suffer whenever you accept enjoyment. One finds peace of mind in the company of holy men. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
379:Just as all men naturally desire to know the truth, so there is inherent in men a natural desire to avoid errors, and refute them when they are able to do so. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas, #KEYS
380:Men are always more able to criticise sharply the work of others and tell them how to do things or what not to do than skilful to avoid the same mistakes themselves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Problems in Human Relations, #KEYS
381:Follow wise and intelligent men possessed of experience, patient and full of spirituality and elevation...Follow just and perfect men faithfully as the moon follows the path of the constellations. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
382:Sometimes I speak to men and women just as a little girl speaks to her doll. She knows, of course, that the doll does not understand her, but she creates for herself the joy of communication through a pleasant and conscious self-deception. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #KEYS
383:The blind nether forces still have power
And the ascent is slow and long is Time.
Yet shall Truth grow and harmony increase:
The day shall come when men feel close and one. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,#KEYS
384:And in this world, always a work of Illusion, men whose intelligence is troubled by desire, greed, envy and error, are rolled through different states with the idea that these states are real. ~ Bhagavata Purana, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
385:The Wise men fulfil their desire, and come to the child, the Lord Jesus Christ, the same star going before them. They adore the Word in flesh, the Wisdom in infancy, the Power in weakness, the Lord of majesty in the reality of man. ~ Pope Leo the Great, Sermon 31, #KEYS
386:Yet God is loving and kind and omnipotent, and so he gives the sight of God, the greatest gift of all, to those who love him. Even this was foretold by the prophets: For those things that are impossible with men, are possible with God. ~ Irenaeus, Against Heresies, #KEYS
387:The phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness ~ the world of things and animals and men and even gods ~ is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent., #KEYS
388:A fateful prison wall
Where men condemned wake through the creeping hours
Counted by the tollings of an ominous bell. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
389:At the first blow of His thundering sword, the mountains and all Nature will tremble in terror, for the disorders and crimes of men have pierced the vault of the heavens... Several cities will be shaken down and swallowed up by earthquakes." ~ Our Lady of La Salette , #KEYS
390:Whoever knows essentially his own nature, can know also that of other men and can penetrate into the nature of things. He can collaborate in the transformations and in the progress of heaven and of earth. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
391:Because there dwelt the Eternal's vast Idea
And his dynamic will in men and things,
So only could the enormous scene begin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
392:All is not finished in the unseen decree;
A Mind beyond our mind demands our ken,
A life of unimagined harmony
Awaits, concealed, the grasp of unborn men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Evolution - II,#KEYS
393:Reason can accept no convention merely because men are agreed upon it: it has to ask whether they are right in their agreement, whether it is not an inert and false acquiescence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Curve of the Rational Age, #KEYS
394:5. That which thinks not by the mind,^1 that by which the mind is thought, know That to be the Brahman and not this which men follow after here. ^1 Or "that which one thinks not with the mind" ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena And Other Upanishads, page 6, #KEYS
395:If men were not and all were brilliant gods,
The mediating stair would then be lost
By which the spirit awake in Matter winds ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
396:These holy servants of God shall purify the earth with the deaths of innumerable wicked men. The head and captain of these holy servants of God shall be one of your posterity, and he shall be the great reformer of the Church of God." ~ Saint Francis of Paola, (1416-1507), #KEYS
397:Thou canst live without constraint in profoundest peace of heart, even if all men clamoured against thee what they will, even if wild beasts tore the members of this nature in which thou art enveloped. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
398:Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
399:The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts … his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them." ~ George Fox, (1624 - 1691) English Dissenter, a founder of the Quakers., #KEYS
400:In tasting gall Jesus took on himself the bitterness and toil of man's mortal, painful life. By drinking vinegar he made his own the degradation men had suffered, and in the same act gave us the grace to better our condition treatise ~ Theodoret of Cyr, On the Incarnation)., #KEYS
401:Your eyes are blindfolded; because there is the cloud of Maya before you. Your mind is dirty. Wash it, cleanse it - this is Sadhana. Faith and conviction of mind will grow according to your surroundings. That is why the company of holy men is necessary. ~ Swami Akhandananda, #KEYS
402:As one age falls, another rises, different to mortal sight, but to immortals only the same; for we see the same characters repeated again & again, in animals, vegetables, minerals, and in men; nothing new occurs. Substance can never suffer change nor decay.
~ William Blake,#KEYS
403:Seeing how all men were under penalty of death: He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and unable to bear that death should dominate ... He takes unto Himself a body, and that of no different sort from ours. ~ Athanasius, #KEYS
404:To call up a demon you must learn its name. Men dreamed that, once, but now it is real in another way. You know that, Case. Your business is to learn the names of programs, the long formal names, names the owners seek to conceal. True names...
~ William Gibson, Neuromancer,#KEYS
405:"As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee." ~ Siva Mahimnah-stotra verse 7 #KEYS
406:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Funes the Memorious,#KEYS
407:Faith & reason I like to wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; & God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth... so that, by knowing & loving God, men & women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. ~ John Paul II, #KEYS
408:The great Gods use the pain of human hearts
As a sharp axe to hew their cosmic road:
They squander lavishly men's blood and tears
For a moment's purpose in their fateful work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
409:But I contend that the disgusting behavior of many of their alleged 'holy men' relieves us of any intellectual obligation to take the stuff seriously. No amount of sanctimonious rationalization can make such behavior anything but pathological.
~ Robert Heinlein, Tramp Royale.,#KEYS
410:Men know full well that if they put their hand into the fire, it will get burned; still they do it again and again. Not only that; they invite others to do likewise. If any man differs from them, they call him mad and even go to the point of persecuting him. ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA, #KEYS
411:Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one -- one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
412:All the splendour of outward greatness has no lustre for men who are in search of the Spirit. The greatness of men of the Spirit is obnoxious to the rich, the kings, the conquerors and all the men of the flesh. ~ Pascal: Penses, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
413:Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss." ~ Black Elk, (1863 - 1950) medicine man, holy man and heyoka of the Oglala Lakota people, Wikipedia., #KEYS
414:The Spirit frees us from sin and death, and changes us from the earthly men we were, men of dust and ashes, into spiritual men, sharers in the divine glory, sons and heirs of God the Father who bear a likeness to the Son and are his co-heirs and brothers. ~ Didymus of Alexandria, #KEYS
415:What is reprehensible is that while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some, fearing to offend, shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
416:When man has seen that he is one with the infinite being of the universe, all separation is at an end, all men, women, angels, gods, animals, plants, the whole world lost in this oneness, then all fear disappears. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
417:Faith & reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth... so that, by knowing & loving God, men & women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. ~ Fides et Ratio, #KEYS
418:Really no help is required. You are already in your original state; how can anyone help you to arrive where you already are? The help given is only to clear out your wrong notions. The great men, the gurus can help only by removing the obstacles in your way. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
419:The two angels add (to Pope): "Go quickly and console your children." Write your brothers dispersed throughout the world that there must be a reform in the morals of men. That cannot be obtained except by distributing to the people the bread of the Divine Word. ~ Saint John Bosco, #KEYS
420:Just as harvests are made white by the presence of the burning heat of the summer sun, so by the coming of the Sun of justice, i.e., Christ, his preaching, and power, men are made ready for salvation ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Jn. 4)., #KEYS
421:Obstructing the gods' open ways he makes
His own estate of the earth's air and light;
A monopolist of the world-energy,
He dominates the life of common men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
422:A river does not resemble a pond, a pond a tun, nor a tun a bucket : but in a pond, a river, a tun and a bucket there is the same water. And so too all men are different, but the spirit that lives in them all is the same. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
423:DEVOTEE: "What is the good of holy company?"
MASTER: "It begets yearning for God. It begets love of God. Nothing whatsoever is achieved in spiritual life without yearning. By constantly living in the company of holy men, the soul becomes restless for God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
424:How to account for the fact that these men, who in Christ's lifetime did not stand up to the attacks by the Jews, set forth to do battle with the whole world once Christ was dead-if, as you claim, Christ did not rise and speak to them and rouse their courage? ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
425:When a man has studied all sciences and learned what men know and have known, he will find that all these sciences taken as a whole are so insignificant that they bring with them no possibility of understanding the world. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
426:Their discourse was not of unimportant matters but of God and true religion, of the Gospel way of life and future judgement, yet it turned plain, uneducated men into philosophers. How the foolishness of God is wiser than men and his weakness stronger than men! ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
427:... They will be very ungrateful, lead a sinful life, in pride, vanity, unchastity, frivolity, hatred, avarice, gluttony, and many other vices, [so] that the sins of men will stink more than a pestilence before God." ~ Saint Methodius of Patara, (a martyred bishop of the 4th century), #KEYS
428:They who have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, 'You shall not kill.' ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
429:When there is contact of a desirable sort or memory thereof, and when there is freedom from undesirable contacts or memory thereof, we say there is happiness. Such happiness is relative and is better called pleasure. But men want absolute and permanent happiness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
430:The hearts of men are amorous of clay-kin
And bear not spirits lone and high who bring
Fire-intimations from the deathless planes
Too vast for souls not born to mate with heaven. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,#KEYS
431:Wherever they may be, upright men remain what they are in themselves. The desire of enjoyment can draw no word from the virtuous. In possession of happiness or in prey to misfortune the wise show neither pride nor dejection. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
432:Men insensate enter into the world seduced by a false brilliance. But just as it is easier to enter into a net than to issue out of it, so is it easier to enter into the world than to renounce it when once one has entered in. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
433:Men are guided by their own nature, whether good or bad; there is no gainsaying that. But in the world, there are always some who get intoxicated when they hear of God, and shed tears of joy when they read of God. Such men are true Bhaktas. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
434:359. Men burrow after little details of knowledge and group them into bounded and ephemeral thought systems; meanwhile all infinite wisdom laughs above their heads and shakes wide the glory of her iridescent pinions.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
435:358. Men hunt after petty successes and trivial masteries from which they fall back into exhaustion and weakness; meanwhile all the infinite force of God in the universe waits vainly to place itself at their disposal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
436:Open your heart and run to meet the Sun of eternal light that illuminates all men. Indeed that true light shines on all; but if anyone closes his shutters against it then he will defraud himself of the eternal light. To close the doors of your mind is to exclude Christ. ~ Saint Ambrose of Milan, #KEYS
437:That virtue of the soul, which is called Patience, is so great a gift of God, that even in Him who bestows the same upon us, whereby He waits for evil men that they may amend, is set forth by the name of Patience ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, On Patience 1)., #KEYS
438:All the miseries of men are caused not by bad harvests, conflagrations, brigands, but simply because they live in discord. They are in discord because they do not believe in the voice of love who lives in them and calls them to union. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
439:Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,
Fear not to enjoy;
For Death's a passage, grief a fancied thing
Fools to annoy.
From self escape and find in love alone
A higher joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,#KEYS
440:Think not that to seat thyself in gloomy forests, in a proud seclusion, aloof from men, think not that to live on roots and plants and quench thy thirst with the snow shall lead thee to the goal of the final deliverance. ~ Book of Golden Precepts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
441:If soul and body were not united in Christ, Christ was not a man. This goes against the Apostle's words ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (1 Tim. 2:5): "The mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.37)., #KEYS
442:But not only are vices of the soul voluntary, but those of the body also for some men, whom we accordingly blame; while no one blames those who are ugly by nature, we blame those who are so owing to want of exercise and care. ~ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 3, Chapter 5, #KEYS
443:Scared for their pathetic little lives, they would agree to be injected with literally anything. ~ For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a evil net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, 9:12, #KEYS
444:The study of truth requires a considerable effort - which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge - despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for such knowledge in the minds of men. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, #KEYS
445:What will one gain by merely quoting or hearing the scriptures? One must assimilate them. The almanac makes a forecast of the rainfall for the year, but you won't get a drop by squeezing its pages. To understand these things one needs to live with holy men ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
446:You tell me that even in Europe educated men become mad by thinking constantly of one subject. But how is it possible to lose one's intelligence and become mad by thinking of that Intelligence by which the whole world is made intelligent? ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
447:Those who were with Krishna were in all appearance men like other men. They spoke and acted with each other as men with men and were not thought of by those around them as gods. Krishna himself was known by most as a man-only a few worshipped him as the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
448:Like men who lengthen out departure's pain,
Unwilling to separate sorrowful clinging hands,
Unwilling to see for the last time a face, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain,#KEYS
449:Shed not the blood of the beings that people the earth, men, domesticated animals, wild beasts and birds: out of the depths of thy soul rises a voice that forbids thee to shed blood, for the blood is the life, and thou canst not restore life. ~ Lamartine, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
450:There is this difference between Christ and other men: whereas other men are born subject to the restrictions of time, Christ, as Lord and Maker of all time, chose a time in which to be born, just as He chose a mother and a birthplace ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.35.8)., #KEYS
451:There are five ways in which men are different. The first way is by sex, which Paul excludes when he says, there cannot be male and female, because men and women do not differ in mind, but in their physical sex ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Colossians 3, lect. 2)., #KEYS
452:The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! ~ Charlie Chaplin, #KEYS
453:Men are educated to consider wealth and glory above all things and they think only of getting as much as they can of glory and wealth. They ought to be educated to place love above all things and to consecrate all their powers to learn how to love. ~ Mols-Te, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
454:he true law of life is so simple, clear and intelligible that men cannot excuse their bad living under the pretext of ignorance. If men live in contradiction to the law of their true living, they are repudiating reason. And that is in fact what they do. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
455:These wars, carnage triumphant, ruin gone mad,
The work of centuries vanishing in an hour,
The blood of the vanquished and the victor's crown
Which men to be born must pay for with their pain, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
456:fifthly, of those who are united to Him in potentiality, which will never be reduced to act; such are those men existing in the world, who are not predestined, who, however, on their departure from this world, wholly cease to be members of Christ ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.8.3)., #KEYS
457:To be a common man mid common men
And live an unaspiring mortal life
Than call into oneself a Titan strength
Too dire and mighty for its human frame,
That only afflicts the oppressed astonished world,
Then breaks its user. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,#KEYS
458:It is natural to all men to love each other. The mark of this is the fact that, by some natural prompting, a man comes to the aid of another in need, even a stranger. For example, he may call him back from a wrong road, or help him up from a fall. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.117)., #KEYS
459:Pray to God with a longing heart. He will surely listen to your prayer if it is sincere. Perhaps He will direct you to holy men with whom you can keep company; and that will help you on your spiritual path. Perhaps someone will tell you, 'Do this and you will attain God.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
460:I have said that science is impossible without faith. ... Inductive logic, the logic of Bacon, is rather something on which we can act than something which we can prove, and to act on it is a supreme assertion of faith ... Science is a way of life which can only fluorish when men are free to have faith. ~ Norbert Wiener, #KEYS
461:Let him who finds fault with my discourse, see whether he can understand other men who have handled similar subjects and questions, when he does not understand me: and if he can, let him put down my book, or even, if he pleases, throw it away. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, #KEYS
462:Each man, before he is Austrian, Serb, Turk or Chinese, is first of all a man, that is to say a thinking and loving being whose one mission is to fulfil his destiny during the short lapse of time that he is to live in this world. That mission is to love all men. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
463:Man's law of progress progress perfection man
He [man] needs the help of the secret Divine above his mentality in his superconscient self; he needs the help also of the secret Divine around him in Nature and in his fellow-men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Ideal Law of Social Development,#KEYS
464:The life of men is painful only because they do not know that the soul which is in each of us lives in all men. It is thence that comes animosity, that some are rich, others poor, some are masters, others workers, thence that come envy, hatred and all human torments. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
465:47. When I was asleep in the Ignorance, I came to a place of meditation full of holy men and I found their company wearisome and the place a prison; when I awoke, God took me to a prison and turned it into a place of meditation and His trysting-ground.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Jnana,#KEYS
466:Even as civil authority has the disposal of men in matters of life and death, and all that touches the end of its government, namely justice, so God has all things at his disposal to direct them to the end of his government, which end is his Goodness ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (De Potentia 1.6ad4)., #KEYS
467:From what is left by parents and those nearest related, there is a share for men and a share for women, whether the property be small or large,a legal share. If at the time of division of the relatives are present,give them out from the property,and speak to them kindly. ~ 4: 7,8], @Sufi_Path #KEYS
468:Though diff't things are known and believed to be true by diff't people, certain things are true on which all men agree, such as the first principles of understanding, both speculative and practical, as an image of divine truth is reflected universally in all minds ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.47)., #KEYS
469:Men hail in my coming the Almighty's force
Or praise with thankful tears his saviour Grace.
I smite the Titan who bestrides the world
And slay the ogre in his blood-stained den.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
470:Why, O men born from the earth, do you yield yourselves to death, when it is permitted to you to obtain immortality? Return to yourselves, O you who walk in error and languish in ignorance, withdraw from the light that is darkness, renounce corruption, take part in immortality. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
471:Then as now men walked in the round which the gods have decreed them
Eagerly turning their eyes to the lure and the tool and the labour.
Chained is their gaze to the span in front, to the gulfs they are blinded
Meant for their steps. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
472:Sciences omnipotent in vain
By which men learn of what the suns are made,
Transform all forms to serve their outward needs,
Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea,
But learn not what they are or why they came; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
473:Greater it seems to my mind to be king over men than their slayer,
Nobler to build and to govern than what the ages have laboured
Putting their godhead forth to create or the high gods have fashioned,
That to destroy in our wrath of a moment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
474:One need only open the eyes to see that the conquests of industry which have enriched so many practical men would never have seen the light, if these practical men alone had existed and if they had not been preceded by unselfish devotees who died poor, who never thought of utility, and yet had a guide far other than caprice. (417) ~ Henri Poincare, #KEYS
475:247. Men in the world have two lights, duty and principle; but he who has passed over to God, has done with both and replaced them by God's will. If men abuse thee for this, care not, O divine instrument, but go on thy way like the wind or the sun fostering and destroying.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
476:In this state he will submit to destiny, making no more of disorder than of order. Death gives him a comprehension of immortality; he sees with the spiritual eye the mystery of resurrection in men and things and his heart makes him feel the divine wisdom in these infinite manifestations. ~ Baha ullah, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
477:All over earth men wept and bled and laboured, world-wide
Sowing Fate with their deeds and had other fruit than they hoped for,
Out of desires and their passionate griefs and fleeting enjoyments
Weaving a tapestry fit for the gods to admire, who in ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
478:Men have such a good opinion of themselves, of their mental superiority and intellectual depth; they believe themselves so skilled in discerning the true from the false, the path of safety from those of error, that they should be forbidden as much as possible the perusal of philosophic writings. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
479:Men must sow earth with their hearts and their tears that their country may prosper;
Earth who bore and devours us that life may be born from our remnants.
Then shall the Sacrifice gather its fruits when the war-shout is silent,
Nor shall the blood ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
480:Who among men has not thoughts that he holds for the wisest, though foolish?
Who, though feeble and nought, esteems not his strength o'er his fellow's?
Therefore the wisest and strongest choose out a king and a leader,
Not as a perfect arbiter armed ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
481:Stolen by the robbers of the Deep,
The golden shekels of the Eternal lie,
Hoarded from touch and view and thought's desire,
Locked in blind antres of the ignorant flood,
Lest men should find them and be even as Gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
482:O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence; live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues. ~ George Eliot, #KEYS
483:God said to David, "Be not too intimate with men; for two kinds of persons are excluded from My presence: those who are earnest in seeking reward and slack when they obtain it, and those who prefer their own thoughts to the remembrance of Me. The sign of My displeasure is that I leave such to themselves. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
484:Few among men come to that other shore of deliverance; the common run of mortals only wander parallel to its bank. But those who are consecrated to Truth and live according to its Law and strive for one only end, they shall come by that other shore and they shall swim across death's impetuous torrent. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
485:God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled... ~ Leonard Cohen, #KEYS
486:He who sees that in inaction there is an act and that in works there can be freedom from the act, is the wise among men...When a man has given up the fruit of his works and is eternally content and without dependence upon things, then though occupied in works, it is not he that is doing any act. ~ Bhagavad Gita. 4.18,20, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
487:In Hindustan, as in England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat for men & milk for babes; facts for the few, & fictions for the many, realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the philosopher, & exoteric fable for the fool. ~ Hurrychund Chintamon, quoted by H. P. Blavatsky, in New York (20 Jan. 1877) #KEYS
488:Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. ~ Charles Dickens, #KEYS
489:In order to live a happy life, man should understand what life is and what he can or cannot do. The best and wisest men in all nations have taught it to us from all times. All the doctrines of the sages meet in their foundation and it is this general sum of their doctrines, revealing the aim of human life and the conduct to be pursued, that constitutes real religion. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #KEYS
490:The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #KEYS
491:Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse. ~ H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, #KEYS
492:We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out,-and having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil. ~ Timothy VI.7, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
493:I stand upon earth's paths of danger and grief
And help the unfortunate and save the doomed.
To the strong I bring the guerdon of their strength,
To the weak I bring the armour of my force;
To men who long I carry their coveted joy: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
494:The crisis we are experiencing is unique in history. It is a world which must burst out of a crucible in which so many different energies are working. Let us thank God that He makes us live among the present problems... it is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre. All men have the imperative duty to remember that they have a mission to fulfill, that of doing the impossible. ~ Pope Pius XII, #KEYS
495:Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am a follower only of he or she who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
496:There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men. ~ C S Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943), #KEYS
497:When one considers the clamorous emptiness of the world, words of so little sense, actions of so little merit, one loves to reflect on the great reign of silence. The noble silent men scattered here and there each in his province silently thinking and silently acting of whom no morning paper makes mention, these are the salt of the earth. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
498:A sage was asked, "What is the most important work? who is the man the most important in life ?" The sage replied, The most important work is to love all men, because that is the life-work of each man. The most important man is the one with whom you have to do at this moment, because you can never know whether you will have to do with another. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
499:Why do men cling to a religion?
Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their integral purity and truth. The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS
500:He who knows that He is the supreme Lord, becomes that, and the gods themselves cannot prevent him...He who adores any other divinity, has not the knowledge. He is as cattle for the gods. Even as numerous cattle serve to nourish men, so each man serves to nourish the gods...That is why the gods love not that a man should know That. ~ Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
501:And I have found still four other kinds of men in the world and what are they? Men who do only the actions that are good; men who do only the actions that are evil; men who do actions that are in part good and in part evil; and men who do actions neither good nor evil, they who consecrate themselves to a work that leads to cessation of works. ~ Anguttara Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
502:We are astonished to see that there have been and still are men who kill their kind in order to eat them. But the time will come when our grandchildren will be astonished that their grandparents should have killed every day millions of animals in order to eat them when one can have a sound and substantial nourishment by the use of the fruits of the earth. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
503:Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for yoga: the science of mind control. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #KEYS
504:In order to live a happy life, man should understand what life is and what he can or cannot do. The best and wisest men in all nations have taught it to us from all times. All the doctrines of the sages meet in their foundation and it is this general sum of their doctrines, revealing the aim of human life and the conduct to be pursued, that constitutes real religion. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
505:I insist that in private life men should not admit their passions to be an end, indulging them and so degrading themselves to the level of the other animals, or suppressing them and creating neuroses. I insist that every thought, word and deed should be consciously devoted to the service of the Great Work. 'Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God' ~ Aleister Crowleys, Confessions of Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
506:In men, says the Upanishad, the Self-Existent has cut the doors of consciousness outward, but a few turn the eye inward and it is these who see and know the Spirit and develop the spiritual being. Thus to look into ourselves and see and enter into ourselves and live within is the first necessity for transformation of nature and for the divine life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.28 - The Divine Life, #KEYS
507:When the human race learns to read the language of symbolism, a great veil will fall from the eyes of men. They shall then know truth and, more than that, they shall realize that from the beginning truth has been in the world unrecognized, save by a small but gradually increasing number appointed by the Lords of the Dawn as ministers to the needs of human creatures struggling co regain their consciousness of divinity. ~ Manly P Hall, #KEYS
508:It is occult students for whom search is now being made, and not mystics; it is for clear-thinking men and women that the call has gone forth, and not for the fanatic or for the person who sees nothing but the ideal, and who is unable to work successfully with situations and things as they are, and who cannot, therefore, apply the necessary and unavoidable compromise. ~ Alice Bailey, "The Externalization of the Hierarchy" (1957) p. 654 #KEYS
509:But from time to time Thy sublime light shines in a being and radiates through him over the world, and then a little wisdom, a little knowledge, a little disinterested faith, heroism and compassion penetrates men's hearts, transforms their minds and sets free a few elements from that sorrowful and implacable wheel of existence to which their blind ignorance subjects them.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations,#KEYS
510:One could understand if men thought themselves unequal because one is stronger, loftier than another or more intelligent or more courageous or wiser or better. But it is not so that men are commonly distinguished from each other. It is deemed that men are not equal because one is called a count and the other a peasant, because one wears rich robes and the other wooden clogs. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
511:Reflect attentively with all thy knowledge on the divine manifestation in all things of a glorious unity ; purify thy understanding from the sentences of men that thou mayst hear the sacred and divine harmonies which come from all directions ; sanctify thy heart from all the superstitions of the past that thou mayst understand the simple, direct and marvellous Revelation. ~ Baha-nllah, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
512:The future of the earth depends on a change of consciousness.
The only hope for the future is in a change of man's consciousness and the change is bound to come.
But it is left to men to decide if they will collaborate for this change or if it will have to be enforced upon them by the power of crashing circumstances. So, wake up and collaborate! Blessings.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, August 1964,#KEYS
513:The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.
~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, 16 June 1960,#KEYS
514:The truth is that my work ~ I was going to say my mission ~ is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #KEYS
515:Mother, Does the Divine punish injustice? Is it possible at all for Him to punish anybody?
The Divine does not see things as men do and has no need to punish or reward. Each and every action carries in itself its fruit and its consequences. According to the nature of the action, it brings you near to the Divine or takes you away from Him, and that is the supreme consequence.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
516:The attempts of the positive critical reason to dissect the phenomena of the religious life sound to men of spiritual experience like the prattle of a child who is trying to shape into the mould of his own habitual notions the life of adults or the blunders of an ignorant mind which thinks fit to criticise patronisingly or adversely the labours of a profound thinker or a great scientist.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, 129,#KEYS
517:Our human consciousness has windows that open on the Infinite but generally men keep these windows carefully shut. They have to be opened wide and allow the Infinite freely to enter into us and transform us.
Two conditions are necessary for opening the windows:
1) ardent aspiration;
2) progressive dissolution of the ego.
The Divine help is assured to those who set to work sincerely. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
518:The superior man or the sage loves all beings that live, but has not for them the sentiments of humanity which he has for men. He has for men sentiments of humanity, but he does not love them with the love which he has for his father and mother. He loves his father and mother with filial love and he has for men sentiments of humanity. He has for men sentiments of humanity and he loves all beings that live. ~ Meug Tac, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
519:I know that most men ~ not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems ~ can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty ~ conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives., #KEYS
520:A DEVOTEE:"Sir, is there no help, then, for such a worldly person?"
MASTER:"Certainly there is. From time to time he should live in the company of holy men, and from time to time go into solitude and meditate on God. Furthermore, he should practice discrimination and pray to God, 'Give me faith and devotion.' Once a person has faith he has achieved everything. There is nothing greater than faith. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospels of Ramakrishna,#KEYS
521:The duty of man is to be useful to men: to a great number if he can, if not, to a small number, otherwise to his neighbours, otherwise to himself : in making himself useful to himself, he works for others. As the vicious man injures not only himself but also those to whom he might have been useful if he had been virtuous, likewise in labouring for oneself one labours also for others, since there is formed a man who can be of use to them. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
522:In a splendid extravagance of the waste of God
Dropped carelessly in creation's spendthrift work,
Left in the chantiers of the bottomless world
And stolen by the robbers of the Deep,
The golden shekels of the Eternal lie,
Hoarded from touch and view and thought's desire,
Locked in blind antres of the ignorant flood,
Lest men should find them and be even as Gods.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King The Yoga of the Souls Release,#KEYS
523:I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
524:I have learnt all that was hidden and all that was yet undiscovered because I was taught by wisdom herself that created everything. For there is in her a spirit of intelligence which is holy, unique, multiple in her effects, fine, copious, agile, spotless, dear, soft, friendly to good, penetrant, which nothing can prevent from acting, benevolent, friendly to men, kind, stable, infallible, calm, that achieves all, that sees all, that can comprehend all minds in itself, that is intelligible, pure and subtle. ~ Book of Wisdom, #KEYS
525:Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Isaiah, 40:28-31, #KEYS
526:Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read.
. . .
We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure time, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master's service. Paul cries, "Bring the books" - join in the cry.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,#KEYS
527:Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruit. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Matthew, 7:15-20 (KJV): #KEYS
528:For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present for the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of freedom and truth. ~ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, #KEYS
529:The modern techniques of brainwashing and menticide—those perversions of psychology—can bring almost any man into submission and surrender. Many of the victims of thought control, brainwashing, and menticide that we have talked about were strong men whose minds and wills were broken and degraded. But although the totalitarians use their knowledge of the mind for vicious and unscrupulous purposes, our democratic society can and must use its knowledge to help man to grow, to guard his freedom, and to understand himself. ~ Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind, #KEYS
530:It is not pillage, assassinations and executions that arc terrifying. What is pillage? It is the passing of property from some to others. That always has been and always will be and there is nothing in it that is terrifying. What are executions and asssassinalions? It is the passing of men from life to death. These passings have been, are and always will be, and there equally there is nothing that is terrifying. What is really terrifying is the hatred of men which engenders brigandage, theft and murder. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
531:I have learnt all that was hidden and all that was yet undiscovered because I was taught by wisdom herself that created everything. For there is in her a spirit of intelligence which is holy, unique, multiple in her effects, fine, copious, agile, spotless, dear, soft, friendly to good, penetrant, which nothing can prevent from acting, benevolent, friendly to men, kind, stable, infallible, calm, that achieves all, that sees all, that can comprehend all minds in itself, that is intelligible, pure and subtle. ~ Book of Wisdom, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
532:. . . misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed, so, if the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly--nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #KEYS
533:Everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavors and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
534:Who really crosses over the Illusion? One who has renounced evil company, associates with men of noble mind, has put away the idea of property, frequents solitary places, tears himself away from the servitude of the world, transcends the qualities of Nature and abandons all anxiety for his existence, renounces the fruit of his works, renounces works, is freed from the dualities, renounces even the Vedas, and helps others to the passage, such is the one who crosses over the Illusion; he indeed traverses it and he helps others to pass. ~ Anguttara Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
535:O Lord, O eternal Master, grant that all this may not be in vain, grant that the inexhaustible torrents of Thy divine Force may spread over the earth and penetrate its troubled atmosphere, the struggling energies, the violent chaos of battling elements; grant that the pure light of Thy Knowledge and the inexhaustible love of Thy Benediction may fill men's hearts, penetrate their souls, illumine their consciousness and, out of this obscurity, out of this sombre, terrible and potent darkness, bring forth the splendour of Thy majestic Presence!
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations,#KEYS
536:The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks Of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#KEYS
537:Evil will never cease to exist until selfishness and greed are overcome as factors in dictating the attitudes of men. It is the common thing for the concrete mind to sacrifice the eternal to the temporal. Man, concentrating upon the limited area of the known, loses sight of the effect of his actions upon the limitless area of the unknown. Shortsightedness, consequently, is the cause of endless misery. Moral shortsightedness results in vice, philosophical shortsightedness in materialism, religious shortsightedness in bigotry, rational short-sightedness in fanaticism. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #KEYS
538:The Japanese have a proverb: "The gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth." The boon bestowed on the worshiper is always scaled to his stature and to the nature of his dominant desire: the boon is simply a symbol of life energy stepped down to the requirements of a certain specific case. The irony, of course, lies in the fact that, whereas the hero who has won the favor of the god may beg for the boon of perfect illumination, what he generally seeks are longer years to live, weapons with which to slay his neighbor, or the health of his child. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Ultimate Boon, #KEYS
539:The man to whom all men are strangers, who sees no other existence than his own and considers his like as phantoms capable only of serving his ends or of opposing them, sees the whole world extinguished at the moment of his death. On the contraty, he who recognises himself in others, even in all that, lives, and pours his existence into that of every animated being, loses in dying only a feeble part of his life. Having destroyed the illusion which separated his consciousness from the rest of the world, he continues to live in all those whom he has loved. ~ Sehopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
540:As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault
Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods
A heart of silence in the hands of joy
Inhabited with rich creative beats
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple-door to things beyond.
Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;
Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
541:In Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a 'great daemon' (202d). She goes on to explain that 'everything daemonic is between divine and mortal' (202d-e), and she describes daemons as 'interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above...' (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimonion (literally, a 'divine something')[16] that frequently warned him-in the form of a 'voice'-against mistakes but never told him what to do.
~ Wikipedia, Daemon,#KEYS
542:What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The conditions for your existence are as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man-or woman-sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? ~ Erwin Schrodinger, #KEYS
543:We ought not to have or let ourselves be satisfied with any thought of God. When the thought goes, our God goes with it. No, what we want is a real (subsistent) God who far transcends the thoughts of men and creatures. This God does not disappear unless we turn our back on him of our own accord. He who has God thus, in reality, has gotten God divinely; to him God is apparent in all things. Everything smacks to him of God; everywhere God's image stares him in the face. God is gleaming in him all the time. In him there is riddance and return; the vision of his God is ever present to his mind. ~ Meister Eckhart, #KEYS
544:For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the great Men sent into the world: the soul of the world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.
~ Thomas Carlyle, 1966, p. 1,#KEYS
545:When a man attains the Knowledge of Brahman he shows certain characteristics. The Bhagavata describes four of them: the state of a child, of an inert thing, of a madman, and of a ghoul. Sometimes the knower of Brahman acts like a five-year-old child. Sometimes he acts like a madman. Sometimes he remains like an inert thing. In this state he cannot work; he renounces all action. You may say that jnanis like Janaka were active. The truth is that people in olden times gave responsibility to their subordinate officers and thus freed themselves from worry. Further, at that time men possessed intense faith. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
546:How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people ~ first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving., #KEYS
547:What Brahman is cannot be described in words. Somebody once said that everything in the world has been made impure, like food that has touched the tongue, and that Brahman alone remains undefiled. The meaning is this: All scriptures and holy books — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, and so forth — may be said to have been defiled because their contents have been uttered by the tongues of men; but what Brahman is no tongue has yet been able to describe. Therefore Brahman is still undefiled. One cannot describe in words the joy of play and communion with Satchidananda. He alone knows, who has realized it. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
548:Four kinds of men have I found in the world, and what are the four? Men who are their own torturers, but cause no suffering to others; men who prepare suffering for others, but not for themselves; men who do evil both to themselves and to others men who are the cause of pain neither to others nor to themselves. And I have found still four other kinds of men in the world, and what are the four? Men who think only of themselves and not of others men who think of others and not of themselves; men who think of others as much as of themselves; men who think neither of themselves nor of others. ~ Anguttara Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
549:The Song On Reaching The Mountain Peak :::
Hearken, my sons! If you want
To climb the mountain peak
You should hold the Self-mind's light,
Tie it with a great "Knot,"
And catch it with a firm "Hook."
If you practice thus
You can climb the mountain peak
To enjoy the view.
Come, you gifted men and women,
Drink the brew of Experience!
Come "inside" to enjoy the scene
See it and enjoy it to the full!
The Incapable remain outside;
Those who cannot drink pure
Beer may quaff small beer.
He who cannot strive for Bodhi,
Should strive for superior birth. ~ Jetsun Milarepa,#KEYS
550:It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.
~ Bram Stoker,#KEYS
551:The first proof of ignorance is selfishness, which includes what we term self-centeredness. To be selfish is to violate the basic principles of our kind. Yet, for ages the majority of mortals have considered selfishness a virtue. Those who are selfish then reveal a further degree of benightedness because those who are ignorant and selfish are also possessive. The desire to control, own, accumulate, and overshadow, is a common fault. It is unfortunately true that a common fault does not become a virtue merely because it is frequently indulged. If men were not selfish and possessive, there would be slight cause for war, crime, and poverty. ~ Manly P Hall, (HORIZON Summer 1955, p.6), #KEYS
552:Although there is a difference of procedure between a Shaman of the Tungas and a Catholic prelate of Europe or between a coarse and sensual Vogul and a Puritan Independent of Connecticut, there is no difference in the principle of their creeds; for they all belong to the same category of people whose religion consists not in becoming better, but in believing in and carrying out certain arbitrary regulations. Only those who believe that the worship of God consists in aspiring to a better life differ from the first because they recognize quite another and certainly a loftier principle uniting all men of good faith in an invisible temple which alone can be the universal temple. ~ Immanuel Kant, #KEYS
553:Love Is Not All
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,#KEYS
554:For it is in God alone, by the possession of the Divine only that all the discords of life can be resolved, and therefore the raising of men towards the Divine is in the end the one effective way of helping mankind. All the other activities and realisations of our self-experience have their use and power, but in the end these crowded sidetracks or these lonely paths must circle round to converge into the wideness of the integral way by which the liberated soul transcends all, embraces all and becomes the promise and the power of the fulfilment of all in their manifested being of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Its Liberation, 444, [T1],#KEYS
555:Where spring, the lord of seasons reigneth, there the unstruck music sounds of itself,
There the streams of light flow in all directions, few are the men who can cross to that shore!
There, where millions of Krishnas stand with hands folded,
Where millions of Vishnus bow their heads, where millions of Brahmas are reading the Vedas,
Where millions of Shivas are lost in contemplation, where millions of Indras dwell in the sky,
Where the demi-gods and the munis are unnumbered, where millions of Saraswatis, goddess of music play the vina,
There is my Lord self-revealed, and the scent of sandal and flowers dwells in those deeps. ~ Kabir, II.57, Translated by Rabindranath Tagore[26],#KEYS
556:There is only one Ethics, as there is only one geometry. But the majority of men, it will be said, are ignorant of geometry. Yes, but as soon as they begin to apply themselves a little to that science, all are in agreement. Cultivators, workmen, artisans have not gone through courses in ethics; they have not read Cicero or Aristotle, but the moment they begin to think on the subject they become, without knowing it, the disciples of Cicero. The Indian dyer, the Tartar shepherd and the English sailor know what is just and what is injust. Confucius did not invent a system of ethics as one invents a system of physics. He had discovered it in the heart of all mankind. ~ Voltaire, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
557:I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothloriene no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horselords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fanghorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystefied as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955" #KEYS
558:Although there is a difference of procedure between a Shaman of the Tungas and a Catholic prelate of Europe or between a coarse and sensual Vogul and a Puritan Independent of Connecticut, there is no difference in the principle of their creeds; for they all belong to the same category of people whose religion consists not in becoming better, but in believing in and carrying out certain arbitrary regulations. Only those who believe that the worship of God consists in aspiring to a better life differ from the first because they recognize quite another and certainly a loftier principle uniting all men of good faith in an invisible temple which alone can be the universal temple. ~ Kant, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
559:And I have found still four other kinds of men in the world, and what are the four? Men who work only for their own deliverance and not for the deliverance of others; men who work for the deliverance of others and not for their own; men who work as much for their own deliverance as for the deliverance of others; men who care neither for others' deliverance nor for their own. And I have found yet four other kinds of men in the world, and what are the four? Men who instruct themselves without instructing others; men who instruct others without instructing themselves; men who instruct themselves in instructing others; men who instruct none, neither others nor themselves. ~ Anguttara Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
560:The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem. ~ G K Chesterton, Tolstoy, #KEYS
561:The Silver Call
There is a godhead of unrealised things
To which Time's splendid gains are hoarded dross;
A cry seems near, a rustle of silver wings
Calling to heavenly joy by earthly loss.
All eye has seen and all the ear has heard
Is a pale illusion by some greater voice
And mightier vision; no sweet sound or word,
No passion of hues that make the heart rejoice
Can equal those diviner ecstasies.
A Mind beyond our mind has sole the ken
Of those yet unimagined harmonies,
The fate and privilege of unborn men.
As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,
Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, 594,#KEYS
562:Jordan Peterson's Book List
1. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
2. 1984 - George Orwell
3. Road To Wigan Pier - George Orwell
4. Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Beyond Good And Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
7. Ordinary Men - Christopher Browning
8. The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
9. The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang
10. Gulag Archipelago (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, & Vol. 3) - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
11. Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
12. Modern Man in Search of A Soul - Carl Jung
13. Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan B. Peterson
14. A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3) - Mircea Eliade
15. Affective Neuroscience - Jaak Panksepp ~ Jordan Peterson,#KEYS
563:None is travelling :::
None is travelling
Here along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
The first day of the year:
thoughts come - and there is loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.
An old pond
A frog jumps in -
Splash!
Lightening -
Heron's cry
Stabs the darkness
Clouds come from time to time -
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.
In the cicada's cry
There's no sign that can foretell
How soon it must die.
Poverty's child -
he starts to grind the rice,
and gazes at the moon.
Won't you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.
Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening! ~ Matsuo Basho,#KEYS
564:Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some would find fault with the morning-red, if they ever got up early enough. "They pretend," as I hear, "that the verses of Kabir have four different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas;" but in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man's writings admit of more than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #KEYS
565:The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their downfall: in the labyrinth, in hardness towards oneself and others, in experiment; their delight lies in self-mastery: asceticism is with them nature, need, instinct. The difficult task they consider a privilege; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation... Knowledge - a form of asceticism. - They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not exclude their being the cheerfullest, the kindliest. They rule not because they want to but because they are; they are not free to be second. - The second type: they are the guardians of the law, the keepers of order and security; they are the noble warriors, with the king above all as the highest formula of warrior, judge, and upholder of the law. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, #KEYS
566:You have spoken much today of my self-sacrifice and devotion to my country. I have heard that kind of speech ever since I came out of jail, but I hear it with embarrassment, with something of pain. For I know my weakness, I am a prey to my own faults and backslidings. I was not blind to them before and when they all rose up against me in seclusion, I felt them utterly. I knew them that I the man was a man of weakness, a faulty and imperfect instrument, strong only when a higher strength entered into me. Then I found myself among these young men and in many of them I discovered a mighty courage, a power of self-effacement in comparison with which I was simply nothing. I saw one or two who were not only superior to me in force and character, - very many were that, - but in the promise of that intellectual ability on which I prided myself. ~ ?, #KEYS
567:This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. ~ Walt Whitman, #KEYS
568:And all the time the experience lasted, one hourone hour of that time is longI was in a state of extraordinary joyfulness, almost in an intoxicated state. The difference between the two states of consciousness is so great that when you are in one, the other seems unreal, like a dream. When I came back what struck me first of all was the futility of life here; our little conceptions down here seem so laughable, so comical. We say that some people are mad, but their madness is perhaps a great wisdom, from the supramental point of view, and their behaviour is perhaps nearer to the truth of thingsI am not speaking of the obscure mad men whose brains have been damaged, but of many other incomprehensible mad men, the luminous mad: they have wanted to cross the border too quickly and the rest has not followed. ~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 1, 1958-02 #KEYS
569:The ship creaked and gravity shifted a degree to Miller's right. Course correction. Nothing interesting. Miller closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep. His mind was full of dead men and Julie and love and sex. There was something Holden had said about the war that was important, but he couldn't make the pieces fit. They kept changing. Miller sighed, shifted his weight so that he blocked one of his drainage tubes and had to shift back to stop the alarm.
When the blood pressure cuff fired off again, it was Julie holding him, pulling herself so close her lips brushed his ear. His eyes opened, his mind seeing both the imaginary girl and the monitors that she would have blocked if she'd really been there.
I love you too, she said, and I will take care of you.
He smiled at seeing the numbers change as his heart raced. ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,#KEYS
570:Dare to be wise! Energy and spirit is needed to overcome the obstacles which indolence of nature as well as cowardice of heart oppose to our instruction. It is not without significance that the old myth makes the goddess of Wisdom emerge fully armed from the head of Jupiter; for her very first function is warlike. Even in her birth she has to maintain a hard struggle with the senses, which do not want to be dragged from their sweet repose. The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error. Content if they themselves escape the hard labor of thought, men gladly resign to others the guardianship of their ideas, and if it happens that higher needs are stirred in them, they embrace with a eager faith the formulas which State and priesthood hold in readiness for such an occasion. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #KEYS
571:I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. This was the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin,#KEYS
572:And He will judge and will forgive all, the good and the evil, the wise and the meek . . . And when He has done with all of them, then He will summon us. 'You too come forth,' He will say, 'Come forth ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!' And we shall all come forth, without shame and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, 'Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!' And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, 'Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?' And He will say, 'This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.' And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before him . . . and we shall weep . . . and we shall understand all things! Then we shall understand everything! . . . and all will understand ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #KEYS
573:Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, - solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
574:II. POSTULATE: ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.
(Illustration: I wish to prepare an ounce of Chloride of Gold. I must take the right kind of acid, nitro-hydrochloric and no other, in sufficient quantity and of adequate strength, and place it, in a vessel which will not break, leak or corrode, in such a manner as will not produce undesirable results, with the necessary quantity of Gold, and so forth. Every Change has its own conditions.
In the present state of our knowledge and power some changes are not possible in practice; we cannot cause eclipses, for instance, or transform lead into tin, or create men from mushrooms. But it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature; and the conditions are covered by the above postulate.)
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Magick,#KEYS
575:When ye look at me I am an idle, idle man; when I look at myself I am a busy, busy man. Since upon the plain of uncreated infinity I am building, building the tower of ecstasy, I have no time for building houses. Since upon the steppe of the void of truth I am breaking, breaking the savage fetter of suffering, I have no time for ploughing family land. Since at the bourn of unity ineffable I am subduing, subduing the demon-foe of self, I have no time for subduing angry foe-men. Since in the palace of mind which transcends duality I am waiting, waiting for spiritual experience as my bride, I have no time for setting up house. Since in the circle of the Buddhas of my body I am fostering, fostering the child of wisdom, I have no time for fostering snivelling children. Since in the frame of the body, the seat of all delight, I am saving, saving precious instruction and reflection, I have no time for saving wordly wealth. ~ Jetsun Milarepa, Songs of Milarepa, #KEYS
576:Though I speak with the tongues of men and of an- gels and have not charity, I am as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not ; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up doth not behave itself unseemly seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinlceth no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth...And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity. Follow after charity. ~ I. Corinthians. 1. 8. 13-XIV. 8, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
577:Even on Earth, the first steps in this direction had been taken. There were millions of men, doomed in earlier ages, who now lived active and happy lives thanks to artificial limbs, kidneys, lungs, and hearts. To this process there could be only one conclusion - however far off it might be.
And eventually even the brain might go. As the seat of consciousness, It was not essential; the development of electronic intelligence had proved that. The conflict between mind and machine might be resolved at last in the eternal truce of complete symbiosis.
But was even this the end? A few mystically inclined biologists went still further. They speculated, taking their cues from the beliefs of many religions, that mind would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, long ago, men bad called "spirit."
And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.
~ Arthur C Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey,#KEYS
578:For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of ensuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one. Metaphysical proofs are, however, not the only ones which we are able to bring forth in support of this idea. Science, too, recognizes this connectedness of separate individuals, though not quite in the same sense as it admits that the suns, planets, and moons of a constellation are one body, and there can be no doubt that it will be experimentally confirmed in times to come, when our means and methods for investigating psychical and other states and phenomena shall have been brought to great perfection. Still more: this one human being lives on and on. The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains. Therein lies the profound difference between the individual and the whole. ~ Nikola Tesla, #KEYS
579:[E]very man hath liberty to write, but few ability. Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers, that either write for vain-glory, need, to get money, or as Parasites to flatter and collogue with some great men, they put out trifles, rubbish and trash. Among so many thousand Authors you shall scarce find one by reading of whom you shall be any whit better, but rather much worse; by which he is rather infected than any way perfected...
What a catalogue of new books this year, all his age (I say) have our Frankfurt Marts, our domestic Marts, brought out. Twice a year we stretch out wits out and set them to sale; after great toil we attain nothing...What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast Chaos and confusion of Books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning. For my part I am one of the number-one of the many-I do not deny it... ~ Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy,#KEYS
580:Now, on the other hand, there is an entirely different type of angel; and here we must be especially careful to remember that we include gods and devils, for there are such beings who are not by any means dependent on one particular element for their existence. They are microcosms in exactly the same sense as men and women are. They are individuals who have picked up the elements of their composition as possibility and convenience dictates, exactly as we do ourselves... I believe that the Holy Guardian Angel is a Being of this order. He is something more than a man, possibly a being who has already passed through the stage of humanity, and his peculiarly intimate relationship with his client is that of friendship, of community, of brotherhood, or Fatherhood. He is not, let me say with emphasis, a mere abstraction from yourself; and that is why I have insisted rather heavily that the term 'Higher Self' implies a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion. ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, #KEYS
581:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.
This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,#KEYS
582:Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present.
A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe. ~ Nikola Tesla,#KEYS
583:From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: ""You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem.
God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
584:To know, possess and be the divine being in an animal and egoistic consciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical men- tality into the plenary supramental illumination, to build peace and a self-existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitory satisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering, to establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents itself as a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and realise the immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant mutation, - this is offered to us as the manifestation of God in Matter and the goal of Nature in her terrestrial evolution. To the ordinary material intellect which takes its present organisation of consciousness for the limit of its possibilities, the direct contradiction of the unrealised ideals with the realised fact is a final argument against their validity. But if we take a more deliberate view of the world's workings, that direct opposition appears rather as part of Nature's profoundest method and the seal of her completest sanction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.01, #KEYS
585:Yes, from thenceforward, is there any suffering for one who sees this unity of the universe, this unity of life, this unity of the All? The separation between man and man, man and woman, man and child; nation and nation, that is the real cause of all the misery of the world. Now this separation is not at all real ; it is only apparent, it is only on the surface. In the very heart of things is the unity which is for ever. Go into yourself and you will find this unity between man and man, women and children, race and race, the great and the little, the rich and the poor, gods and men : all of us are one, even the animals, if you go down to a sufficient depth. And to the man who goes so far nothing can cause any illusion. ..where can there exist for him any illusion ? What can deceive him ? He knows the reality of everything, the secret of everything. Where can there exist any misery for him ? What can he desire ? He has discovered the reality of everything in the Lord who is the centre, the unity of all and who is the eternal felicity, the eternal knowledge, the eternal existence. ~ Virekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
586:15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold:The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world. Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided" The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
587:A word that rose to honor at the time of the Renaissance, and that summarized in advance the whole program of modern civilization is 'humanism'. Men were indeed concerned to reduce everything to purely human proportions, to eliminate every principle of a higher order, and, one might say, symbolically to turn away from the heavens under pretext of conquering the earth; the Greeks, whose example they claimed to follow, had never gone as far in this direction, even at the time of their greatest intellectual decadence, and with them utilitarian considerations had at least never claimed the first place, as they were very soon to do with the moderns. Humanism was form of what has subsequently become contemporary secularism; and, owing to its desire to reduce everything to the measure of man as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage until it has reached the level of the lowest elements in man and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim that is in any case quite illusory since it constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy. ~ Rene Guenon, The Crisis of the Modern World #KEYS
588:It can be expected that the orthodox Christian will at first reject the theories about the Christ which occultism presents; at the same time, this same orthodox Christian will find it increasingly difficult to induce the intelligent masses of people to accept the impossible Deity and the feeble Christ, which historical Christianity has endorsed. A Christ Who is present and living, Who is known to those who follow Him, Who is a strong and able executive, and not a sweet and sentimental sufferer, Who has never left us but Who has worked for two thousand years through the medium of His disciples, the inspired men and women of all faiths, all religions, and all religious persuasions; Who has no use for fanaticism or hysterical devotion, but Who loves all men persistently, intelligently and optimistically, Who sees divinity in them all, and Who comprehends the techniques of the evolutionary development of the human consciousness (mental, emotional and physical, producing civilizations and cultures appropriate to a particular point in evolution) - these ideas the intelligent public can and will accept. p. 589/90 ~ Alice Bailey, in The Externalization of the Hierarchy (1957) #KEYS
589:By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology; in the language of St. James, "faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." In other words, no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand, mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and the other not. If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious; if the other acts from the love or fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good. ~ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, #KEYS
590:I've never been lonely. I've been in a room ~ I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful ~ awful beyond all ~ but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, The strongest men are the most alone. I've never thought, Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good. No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there? Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine! ~ Charles Bukowski, #KEYS
591:To us poetry is a revel of intellect and fancy, imagination a plaything and caterer for our amusement, our entertainer, the nautch-girl of the mind. But to the men of old the poet was a seer, a revealer of hidden truths, imagination no dancing courtesan but a priestess in God's house commissioned not to spin fictions but to image difficult and hidden truths; even the metaphor or simile in the Vedic style is used with a serious purpose and expected to convey a reality, not to suggest a pleasing artifice of thought. The image was to these seers a revelative symbol of the unrevealed and it was used because it could hint luminously to the mind what the precise intellectual word, apt only for logical or practical thought or to express the physical and the superficial, could not at all hope to manifest. To them this symbol of the Creator's body was more than an image, it expressed a divine reality. Human society was for them an attempt to express in life the cosmic Purusha who has expressed himself otherwise in the material and the supraphysical universe. Man and the cosmos are both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden Reality.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Chapter 1, The Cycle of Society,#KEYS
592:Raise Your Standards
Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thing was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.
Think of the far-reaching consequences set in motion by men and women who raised their standards and acted in accordance with them, deciding they would tolerate no less. History chronicles the inspiring examples of people like Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Albeit Einstein, Cesar Chavez, Soichiro Honda, and many others who took the magnificently powerful step of raising their standards. The same power that was available to them is available to you, if you have the courage to claim it. Changing an organization, acompany, a country-or a world-begins with the simple step of changing yourself.
STEP TWO
Change Your Limiting Beliefs ~ Anthony Robbins, How to take Immediate Control of Your Mental Emotional Physical and Financial Destiny,#KEYS
593:I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
594:I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,#KEYS
595: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
596:The human being is at home and safe in the material body; the body is his protection. There are some who are full of contempt for their bodies and think that things will be much better and easier after death without them. But in fact the body is your fortress and your shelter. While you are lodged in it the forces of the hostile world find it difficult to have a direct hold upon you.... Directly you enter any realm of this [vital] world, its beings gather round you to get out of you all you have, to draw what they can and make it a food and a prey. If you have no strong light and force radiating from within you, you move there without your body as if you had no coat to protect you against a chill and bleak atmosphere, no house to shield you, even no skin covering you, your nerves exposed and bare. There are men who say, 'How unhappy I am in this body', and think of death as an escape! But after death you have the same vital surroundings and are in danger from the same forces that are the cause of your misery in this life....
"It is here upon earth, in the body itself, that you must acquire a complete knowledge and learn to use a full and complete power. Only when you have done that will you be free to move about with entire security in all the worlds." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, (12 May 1929),#KEYS
597:Many are God's forms by which he grows in man;
They stamp his thoughts and deeds with divinity,
Uplift the stature of the human clay
Or slowly transmute it into heavens gold.
He is the Good for which men fight and die,
He is the war of Right with Titan wrong;
He is Freedom rising deathless from her pyre;
He is Valour guarding still the desperate pass
Or lone and erect on the shattered barricade
Or a sentinel in the dangerous echoing Night.
He is the crown of the martyr burned in flame
And the glad resignation of the saint
And courage indifferent to the wounds of Time
And the heros might wrestling with death and fate.
He is Wisdom incarnate on a glorious throne
And the calm autocracy of the sages rule.
He is the high and solitary Thought
Aloof above the ignorant multitude:
He is the prophets voice, the sight of the seer.
He is Beauty, nectar of the passionate soul,
He is the Truth by which the spirit lives.
He is the riches of the spiritual Vast
Poured out in healing streams on indigent Life;
He is Eternity lured from hour to hour,
He is infinity in a little space:
He is immortality in the arms of death.
These powers I am and at my call they come.
Thus slowly I lift mans soul nearer the Light.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
598:I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.
From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be - what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing - I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.
We do not know - neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I- what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know. ~ Socrates,#KEYS
599:38 - Strange! The Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar. - Sri Aurobindo.
To what plane of consciousness did Christ belong?
In the Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo mentions the names of three Avatars, and Christ is one of them. An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.
I heard Sri Aurobindo himself say that Christ was an emanation of the Lord's aspect of love.
The death of Caesar marked a decisive change in the history of Rome and the countries dependent on her. It was therefore an important event in the history of Europe.
But the death of Christ was the starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. This is why Sri Aurobindo tells us that the death of Christ was of greater historical significance, that is to say, it has had greater historical consequences than the death of Caesar. The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.
16 June 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.61-62),#KEYS
600:Listen to Erwin Schroedinger,the Nobel Prize-winning cofounder of quantum mechanics,and how can I convince you that he means this literally?Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown.It is not possible that this unity of knowledge,feelings,and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago;rather,this knowledge,feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all people,nay in all sensitive beings.The conditions for your existence are almost as old as rocks.For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought in pain.A hundred years ago (there's the test),another man sat on this spot;like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman.He felt pain and brief joy as you do.Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself?WAS IT NOT YOU,YOURSELF? Are you not humanity itself? Do you not touch all things human,because you are it's only Witness? Do you not therefore love the world,and love all people,and love the Kosmos,because you are its only Self? Do you not weep when one person is hurt,do you not cry when one child goes hungry,do you not scream when one soul is tortured? You know you suffer when others suffer.You already know this! "Was it someone else? Was it not you yourself?" ~ Ken Wilber, One Taste, p. 342-343, #KEYS
601:When I was a child of about thirteen, for nearly a year every night as soon as I had gone to bed it seemed to me that I went out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the city, very high above. Then I used to see myself clad in a magnificent golden robe, much longer than myself; and as I rose higher, the robe would stretch, spreading out in a circle around me to form a kind of immense roof over the city. Then I would see men, women, children, old men, the sick, the unfortunate coming out from every side; they would gather under the outspread robe, begging for help, telling of their miseries, their suffering, their hardships. In reply, the robe, supple and alive, would extend towards each one of them individually, and as soon as they had touched it, they were comforted or healed, and went back into their bodies happier and stronger than they had come out of them. Nothing seemed more beautiful to me, nothing could make me happier; and all the activities of the day seemed dull and colourless and without any real life, beside this activity of the night which was the true life for me. Often while I was rising up in this way, I used to see at my left an old man, silent and still, who looked at me with kindly affection and encouraged me by his presence. This old man, dressed in a long dark purple robe, was the personification-as I came to know later-of him who is called the Man of Sorrows. ~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, #KEYS
602:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#KEYS
603:Here the formula of the supreme knowledge comes to our help; we have nothing to do in our essential standpoint with these distinctions, for there is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments, equal in the individual and the group, and to realise that, to express that, to serve that, to fulfil that is all that matters. Self-satisfaction and altruism, enjoyment and indifference are not the essential thing. If the realisation, fulfilment, service of the one Self demands from us an action that seems to others self-service or self-assertion in the egoistic sense or seems egoistic enjoyment and self-indulgence, that action we must do; we must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. The influence of the environment works often with great subtlety; we prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within; we are impelled to drape ourselves in the vow of poverty, or in the garb of service, or in outward proofs of indifference and renunciation and a spotless sainthood because that is what tradition and opinion demand of us and so we can make best an impression on our environment. But all this is vanity and delusion. We may be called upon to assume these things, for that may be the uniform of our service; but equally it may not. The eye of man outside matters nothing; the eye within is all.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
604:The scientists, all of them, have their duties no doubt, but they do not fully use their education if they do not try to broaden their sense of responsibility toward all mankind instead of closing themselves up in a narrow specialization where they find their pleasure. Neither engineers nor other scientific men have any right to prefer their own personal peace to the happiness of mankind; their place and their duty are in the front line of struggling humanity, not in the unperturbed ranks of those who keep themselves aloof from life. If they are indifferent, or discouraged because they feel or think that they know that the situation is hopeless, it may be proved that undue pessimism is as dangerous a "religion" as any other blind creed. Indeed there is very little difference in kind between the medieval fanaticism of the "holy inquisition," and modern intolerance toward new ideas. All kinds of intellect must get together, for as long as we presuppose the situation to be hopeless, the situation will indeed be hopeless. The spirit of Human Engineering does not know the word "hopeless"; for engineers know that wrong methods are alone responsible for disastrous results, and that every situation can be successfully handled by the use of proper means. The task of engineering science is not only to know but to know how. Most of the scientists and engineers do not yet realize that their united judgment would be invincible; no system or class would care to disregard it. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
605:The great men of the past have given us glimpses of what is possible in the way of personality, of intellectual understanding, of spiritual achievement, of artistic creation. But these are scarcely more than Pisgah glimpses. We need to explore and map the whole realm of human possibility, as the realm of physical geography has been explored and mapped. How to create new possibilities for ordinary living? What can be done to bring out the latent capacities of the ordinary man and woman for understanding and enjoyment; to teach people the techniques of achieving spiritual experience (after all, one can acquire the technique of dancing or tennis, so why not of mystical ecstasy or spiritual peace?)...
The zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities and of the techniques for realizing them will make our hopes rational, and will set our ideals within the framework of reality, by showing how much of them are indeed realizable. Already, we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted. We are already justified in the conviction that human life as we know it in history is a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance; and that it could be transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge and comprehension, just as our modern control of physical nature based on science transcends the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, that were rooted in superstition and professional secrecy. ~ Julian Huxley, Transhumanism,#KEYS
606:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother, - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother, Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214, #KEYS
607:[the value of sublimation:]
And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this wholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work against the whole-heartedness of our endeavour.
In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations, - an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations. What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of our past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man and to create a new centre of vision and a new universe of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, [71] [T1],#KEYS
608:Some young men who had come with an introduction from the Ramakrishna Mission at Madras asked Bhagavan, "Which is the proper path for us to follow?"
Bhagavan: When you speak of a path, where are you now? and where do you want to go? If these are known, then we can talk of the path. Know first where you are and what you are. There is nothing to be reached. You are always as you really are. But you don't realise it. That is all.
A little while after, one of the visitors asked Bhagavan, "I am now following the path of japa. Is that all right?"
Bhagavan: Yes. It is quite good. You can continue in that. The gentleman who asked about creation said, "I never thought I was going to have the good fortune of visiting Bhagavan. But circumstances have brought me here and I find in his presence, without any effort on my part, I am having santi. Apparently, getting peace does not depend on our effort.
It seems to come only as the result of grace!" Bhagavan was silent. Meanwhile, another visitor remarked, "No. Our effort is also necessary, though no one can do without grace." After some time, Bhagavan remarked, "Mantra japa, after a time, leads to a stage when you become Mantra maya i.e., you become that whose name you have been repeating or chanting.
First you repeat the mantra by mouth; later you do it mentally.
First, you do this dhyana with breaks. Later, you do it without any break. At that stage you realise you do dhyana without any effort on your part, that dhyana is your real nature. Till then, effort is necessary." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day By Day,#KEYS
609:Instruction about Sadhana to a disciple:
Disciple: What is the nature of realisation in this yoga?
Sri Aurobindo: In this yoga we want to bring down the Truth-consciousness into the whole being - no part being left out. This can be done by the Higher Power itself. What you have to do is to open yourself to it.
Disciple: As the Higher Power is there why does it not work in all men - consciously?
Sri Aurobindo: Because man, at present, is shut up in his mental being, his vital nature and physical consciousness and their limitations. You have to open yourself. By an opening I mean an aspiration in the heart for the coming down of the Power that is above, and a will in the Mind, or above the Mind, open to it.
The first thing this working of the Higher Power does is to establish Shanti - peace - in all the parts of the being and an opening above. This peace is not mere mental Shanti, it is full of power and, whatever action takes place in it, Samata, equality, is its basis and the Shanti and Samata are never disturbed. What comes from Above is peace, power and joy. It also brings about changes in various parts of our nature so that they can bear the pressure of the Higher Power.
Knowledge also progressively develops showing all in our being that is to be thrown out and what is to be retained. In fact, knowledge and guidance both come and you have constantly to consent to the guidance. The progress may be more in one direction than in another. But it is the Higher Power that works. The rest is a matter of experience and the movement of the Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, RECORDED BY A B PURANI (28-09-1923),#KEYS
610:35 - Men are still in love with grief; when they see one who is too high for grief or joy, they curse him and cry, "O thou insensible!" Therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem.
36 - Men are in love with sin; when they see one who is too high for vice or virtue, they curse him and cry, "O thou breaker of bonds, thou wicked and immoral one!" Therefore Sri Krishna does not live as yet in Brindavan.(5)
- Sri Aurobindo
I would like to have an explanation of these two aphorisms.
When Christ came upon earth, he brought a message of brotherhood, love and peace. But he had to die in pain, on the cross, so that his message might be heard. For men cherish suffering and hatred and want their God to suffer with them. They wanted this when Christ came and, in spite of his teaching and sacrifice, they still want it; and they are so attached to their pain that, symbolically, Christ is still bound to his cross, suffering perpetually for the salvation of men.
As for Krishna, he came upon earth to bring freedom and delight. He came to announce to men, enslaved to Nature, to their passions and errors, that if they took refuge in the Supreme Lord they would be free from all bondage and sin. But men are very attached to their vices and virtues (for without vice there would be no virtue); they are in love with their sins and cannot tolerate anyone being free and above all error.
That is why Krishna, although immortal, is not present at Brindavan in a body at this moment.
3 June 1960
(5 The village where Shri Krishna Spent His Childhood, and where He danced with Radha and other Gopis.) ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.59-60,#KEYS
611:Humanity is a peculiar class of life which, in some degree, determines its own destinies; therefore in practical life words and ideas become facts-facts, moreover, which bring about important practical consequences. For instance, many millions of human beings have defined a stroke of lightning as being the "punishment of God" of evil men; other millions have defined it as a "natural, casual, periodical phenomenon"; yet other millions have defined it as an "electric spark." What has been the result of these "non-important" definitions in practical life? In the case of the first definition, when lightning struck a house, the population naturally made no attempt to save the house or anything in it, because to do so would be against the "definition" which proclaims the phenomenon to be a "punishment for evil," any attempt to prevent or check the destruction would be an impious act; the sinner would be guilty of "resisting the supreme law" and would deserve to be punished by death.
Now in the second instance, a stricken building is treated just as any tree overturned by storm; the people save what they can and try to extinguish the fire. In both instances, the behavior of the populace is the same in one respect; if caught in the open by a storm they take refuge under a tree-a means of safety involving maximum danger but the people do not know it.
Now in the third instance, in which the population have a scientifically correct definition of lightning, they provide their houses with lightning rods; and if they are caught by a storm in the open they neither run nor hide under a tree; but when the storm is directly over their heads, they put themselves in a position of minimum exposure by lying flat on the ground until the storm has passed. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,#KEYS
612:Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. ~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
613:When a corner of Maya, the illusion of individual life, is lifted before the eyes of a man in such sort that he no longer makes any egoistic difference between his own person and other men, that he takes as much interest in the sufferings of others as in his own and that he becomes succourable to the point of devotion, ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of others, then that man is able to recognise himself in all beings, considers as his own the infinite sufferings of all that lives and must thus appropriate to himself the sorrow of the world. No distress is alien to him. All the torments which he sees and can so rarely soften, all the torments of which he hears, those even which it is impossible for him to conceive, strike his spirit as if he were himself the victim. Insensible to the alternations of weal and woe which succeed each other in his destiny, delivered from all egoism, he penetrates the veils of the individual illusion : all that lives, all that suffers is equally near to his heart. He conceives the totality of things, their essence, their eternal flux, the vain efforts, the internal struggles and sufferings without end ; he sees to whatever side he turns his gaze man who suffers, the animal who suffers and a world that is eternally passing away. He unites himself henceforth to the sorrows of the world as closely as the egoist to his own person. How can he having such a knowledge of the world affirm by incessant desires his will to live, attach himself more and more to life and clutch it to him always more closely ? The man seduced by the illusion of individual life, a slave of his egoism, sees only the things that touch him personally and draws from them incessantly renewed motives to desire and to will : on the contrary one who penetrates the essence of things and dominates their totality, elevates himself to a state of voluntary renunciation, resignation and true tranquillity. ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
614:Many men think and write through inspiration. From where does it come?
Many! That is indeed a wonderful thing. I did not think there have been so many.... So?
Poets, when they write poems...
Ah! Inspirations come from very many different places. There are inspirations that may be very material, there are inspirations that may be vital, there are inspirations that come from all kinds of mental planes, and there are very, very rare inspirations that come from the higher mind or from a still higher region. All inspirations do not come from the same place. Hence, to be inspired does not necessarily mean that one is a higher be- ing.... One may be inspired also to do and say many stupid things!
What does "inspired" mean?
It means receiving something which is beyond you, which was not within you; to open yourself to an influence which is outside your individual conscious being.
Indeed, one can have also an inspiration to commit a murder! In countries where they decapitate murderers, cut off their heads, this causes a very brutal death which throws out the vital being, not allowing it the time to decompose for coming out of the body; the vital being is violently thrown out of the body, with all its impulses; and generally it goes and lodges itself in one of those present there, men half horrified, half with a kind of unhealthy curiosity. That makes the opening and it enters within. Statistics have proved that most young murderers admit that the impulse came to them when they were present at the death of another murderer. It was an "inspiration", but of a detestable kind.
Fundamentally it is a moment of openness to something which was not within your personal consciousness, which comes from outside and rushes into you and makes you do something. This is the widest formula that can be given.
Now, generally, when people say: "Oh! he is an inspired poet", it means he has received something from high above and expressed it in a remarkable manneR But one should rather say that his inspiration is of a high quality. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS
615:How often there is a kind of emptiness in the course of life, an unoccupied moment, a few minutes, sometimes more. And what do you do? Immediately you try to distract yourself, and you invent some foolishness or other to pass your time. That is a common fact. All men, from the youngest to the oldest, spend most of their time in trying not to be bored. Their pet aversion is boredom and the way to escape from boredom is to act foolishly.
Well, there is a better way than that - to remember.
When you have a little time, whether it is one hour or a few minutes, tell yourself, "At last, I have some time to concentrate, to collect myself, to relive the purpose of my life, to offer myself to the True and the Eternal." If you took care to do this each time you are not harassed by outer circumstances, you would find out that you were advancing very quickly on the path. Instead of wasting your time in chattering, in doing useless things, reading things that lower the consciousness - to choose only the best cases, I am not speaking of other imbecilities which are much more serious - instead of trying to make yourself giddy, to make time, that is already so short, still shorter only to realise at the end of your life that you have lost three-quarters of your chance - then you want to put in double time, but that does not work - it is better to be moderate, balanced, patient, quiet, but never to lose an opportunity that is given to you, that is to say, to utilise for the true purpose the unoccupied moment before you.
When you have nothing to do, you become restless, you run about, you meet friends, you take a walk, to speak only of the best; I am not referring to things that are obviously not to be done. Instead of that, sit down quietly before the sky, before the sea or under trees, whatever is possible (here you have all of them) and try to realise one of these things - to understand why you live, to learn how you must live, to ponder over what you want to do and what should be done, what is the best way of escaping from the ignorance and falsehood and pain in which you live. 16 May 1958
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
616:So then let the Adept set this sigil upon all the Words he hath writ in the book of the Works of his Will. And let him then end all, saying: Such are the Words!2 For by this he maketh proclamation before all them that be about his Circle that these Words are true and puissant, binding what he would bind, and loosing what he would loose. Let the Adept perform this ritual right, perfect in every part thereof, once daily for one moon, then twice, at dawn and dusk, for two moons; next thrice, noon added, for three moons; afterwards, midnight making up his course, for four moons four times every day. Then let the Eleventh Moon be consecrated wholly to this Work; let him be instant in constant ardour, dismissing all but his sheer needs to eat and sleep.3 For know that the true Formula4 whose virtue sufficed the Beast in this Attainment, was thus:
INVOKE OFTEN
So may all men come at last to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel: thus sayeth The Beast, and prayeth his own Angel that this Book be as a burning Lamp, and as a living Spring, for Light and Life to them that read therein.
1. There is an alternative spelling, TzBA-F, where the Root, "an Host," has the value of 93. The Practicus should revise this Ritual throughout in the Light of his personal researches in the Qabalah, and make it his own peculiar property. The spelling here suggested implies that he who utters the Word affirms his allegiance to the symbols 93 and 6; that he is a warrior in the army of Will, and of the Sun. 93 is also the number of AIWAZ and 6 of The Beast.
2. The consonants of LOGOS, "Word," add (Hebrew values) to 93 [reading the Sigma as Samekh = 60; reading it as Shin = 300 gives 333], and ΕΠΗ, "Words" (whence "Epic") has also that value; ΕΙ∆Ε ΤΑ ΕΠΗ might be the phrase here intended; its number is 418. This would then assert the accomplishment of the Great Work; this is the natural conclusion of the Ritual. Cf. CCXX, III, 75.
3. These needs are modified during the process of Initiation both as to quantity and quality. One should not become anxious about one's phyiscal or mental health on à priori grounds, but pay attention only to indubitable symptoms of distress should such arise. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber Samekh,#KEYS
617:But now thou askest me how thou mayest destroy this naked knowing and feeling of thine own being. For peradventure thou thinkest that if it were destroyed, all other hindrances were destroyed ; and if thou thinkest thus, thou thinkest right truly. But to this I answer thee and I say, that without a full special grace full freely given by God, and also a full according ableness on thy part to receive this grace, this naked knowing and feeling of thy being may in nowise be destroyed. And this ableness is nought else but a strong and a deep ghostly sorrow. ... All men have matter of sorrow; but most specially he feeleth matter of sorrow that knoweth and feeleth that he is. All other sorrows in comparison to this be but as it were game to earnest. For he may make sorrow earnestly that knoweth and feeleth not only what he is, but that he is. And whoso felt never this sorrow, let him make sorrow; for he hath never yet felt perfect sorrow. This sorrow, when it is had, cleanseth the soul, not only of sin, but also of pain that it hath deserved for sin ; and also it maketh a soul able to receive that joy, the which reave th from a man all knowing and feeling of his being. This sorrow, if it be truly conceived, is full of holy desire; and else a man might never in this life abide it or bear it. For were it not that a soul were somewhat fed with a manner of comfort by his right working, he should not be able to bear that pain that he hath by the knowing and feeling of his being. For as oft as he would have a true knowing and a feeling of his God in purity of spirit (as it may be here), and then feeleth that he may not for he findeth evermore his knowing and his feeling as it were occupied and filled with a foul stinking lump of himself, the which must always be hated and despised and forsaken, if he shall be God's perfect disciple, taught by Himself in the mount of perfection so oft he goeth nigh mad for sorrow. . . . This sorrow and this desire must every soul have and feel in itself (either in this manner or in another), as God vouchsafed! to teach his ghostly disciples according to his good will and their according ableness in body and in soul, in degree and disposition, ere the time be that they may perfectly be oned unto God in perfect charity such as may be had here, if God vouchsafed!.
~ Anonymous, The Cloud Of Unknowing,#KEYS
618:Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother's eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient, unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads them according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet she has more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [39],#KEYS
619: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
620: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
621:reading :::
50 Spiritual Classics: List of Books Covered:
Muhammad Asad - The Road To Mecca (1954)
St Augustine - Confessions (400)
Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)
Black Elk Black - Elk Speaks (1932)
Richard Maurice Bucke - Cosmic Consciousness (1901)
Fritjof Capra - The Tao of Physics (1976)
Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan (1972)
GK Chesterton - St Francis of Assisi (1922)
Pema Chodron - The Places That Scare You (2001)
Chuang Tzu - The Book of Chuang Tzu (4th century BCE)
Ram Dass - Be Here Now (1971)
Epictetus - Enchiridion (1st century)
Mohandas Gandhi - An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1927)
Al-Ghazzali - The Alchemy of Happiness (1097)
Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet (1923)
GI Gurdjieff - Meetings With Remarkable Men (1960)
Dag Hammarskjold - Markings (1963)
Abraham Joshua Heschel - The Sabbath (1951)
Hermann Hesse - Siddartha (1922)
Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception (1954)
William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Carl Gustav Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1955)
Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe (1436)
J Krishnamurti - Think On These Things (1964)
CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters (1942)
Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964)
Daniel C Matt - The Essential Kabbalah (1994)
Dan Millman - The Way of the Peaceful Warrior (1989)
W Somerset Maugham - The Razor's Edge (1944)
Thich Nhat Hanh - The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975)
Michael Newton - Journey of Souls (1994)
John O'Donohue - Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (1998)
Robert M Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
James Redfield - The Celestine Prophecy (1994)
Miguel Ruiz - The Four Agreements (1997)
Helen Schucman & William Thetford - A Course in Miracles (1976)
Idries Shah - The Way of the Sufi (1968)
Starhawk - The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979)
Shunryu Suzuki - Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1970)
Emanuel Swedenborg - Heaven and Hell (1758)
Teresa of Avila - Interior Castle (1570)
Mother Teresa - A Simple Path (1994)
Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now (1998)
Chogyam Trungpa - Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (1973)
Neale Donald Walsch - Conversations With God (1998)
Rick Warren - The Purpose-Driven Life (2002)
Simone Weil - Waiting For God (1979)
Ken Wilber - A Theory of Everything (2000)
Paramahansa Yogananda - Autobiography of a Yogi (1974)
Gary Zukav - The Seat of the Soul (1990)
~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Spirital Classics (2017 Edition),#KEYS
622:The Song Of Food And Dwelling :::
I bow down at the feet of the wish-fulfilling Guru.
Pray vouchsafe me your grace in bestowing beneficial food,
Pray make me realize my own body as the house of Buddha,
Pray grant me this knowledge.
I built the house through fear,
The house of Sunyata, the void nature of being;
Now I have no fear of its collapsing.
I, the Yogi with the wish-fulfilling gem,
Feel happiness and joy where'er I stay.
Because of the fear of cold, I sought for clothes;
The clothing I found is the Ah Shea Vital Heat.
Now I have no fear of coldness.
Because of the fear of poverty, I sought for riches;
The riches I found are the inexhaustible Seven Holy Jewels.
Now I have no fear of poverty.
Because of the fear of hunger, I sought for food;
The food I found is the Samadhi of Suchness.
Now I have no fear of hunger.
Because of the fear of thirst, I sought for drink;
The heavenly drink I found is the wine of mindfulness.
Now I have no fear of thirst.
Because of the fear of loneliness, I searched for a friend;
The friend I found is the bliss of perpetual Sunyata.
Now I have no fear of loneliness.
Because of the fear of going astray,
I sought for the right path to follow.
The wide path I found is the Path of Two-in-One.
Now I do not fear to lose my way.
I am a yogi with all desirable possessions,
A man always happy where'er he stays.
Here at Yolmo Tagpu Senge Tson,
The tigress howling with a pathetic, trembling cry,
Reminds me that her helpless cubs are innocently playing.
I cannot help but feel a great compassion for them,
I cannot help but practice more diligently,
I cannot help but augment thus my Bodhi-Mind.
The touching cry of the monkey,
So impressive and so moving,
Cannot help but raise in me deep pity.
The little monkey's chattering is amusing and pathetic;
As I hear it, I cannot but think of it with compassion.
The voice of the cuckoo is so moving,
And so tuneful is the lark's sweet singing,
That when I hear them I cannot help but listen
When I listen to them,
I cannot help but shed tears.
The varied cries and cawings of the crow,
Are a good and helpful friend unto the yogi.
Even without a single friend,
To remain here is a pleasure.
With joy flowing from my heart, I sing this happy song;
May the dark shadow of all men's sorrows
Be dispelled by my joyful singing. ~ Jetsun Milarepa,#KEYS
623:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother. It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Human Aspiration, #KEYS
624:The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna. But the executive or mechanical prakriti is of the threefold Guna, Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas, and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these three gunas. And in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, caturvyuha , a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things. The ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold type of active human personality and nature, built out of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament, soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual shakti in which they find their culmination and unity beyond all modes. For the crude external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Sudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive shakti within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life. But they are more or less present in an men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 4:15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality, #KEYS
625:
When one is bored, Mother, does that mean one does not progress?
At that time, yes, certainly without a doubt; not only does one not progress, but one misses an opportunity for progressing. There was a concurrence of circumstances which seemed to you dull, boring, stupid and you were in their midst; well, if you get bored, it means that you yourself are as boring as the circumstances! And that is a clear proof that you are simply not in a state of progress. There is nothing more contrary to the very reason of existence than this passing wave of boredom. If you make a little effort within yourself at that time, if you tell yourself: "Wait a bit, what is it that I should learn? What does all that bring to me so that I may learn something? What progress should I make in overcoming myself? What is the weakness that I must overcome? What is the inertia that I must conquer?" If you say that to yourself, you will see the next minute you are no longer bored. You will immediately get interested and you will make progress! This is a commonplace of consciousness.
And then, you know, most people when they get bored, instead of trying to rise a step higher, descend a step lower, they become still worse than what they were, and they do all the stupid things that others do, go in for all the vulgarities, all the meannesses, everything, in order to amuse themselves. They get intoxicated, take poison, ruin their health, ruin their brain, they utter crudities. They do all that because they are bored. Well, if instead of going down, one had risen up, one would have profited by the circumstances. Instead of profiting, one falls a little lower yet than where one was. When people get a big blow in their life, some misfortune (what men call "misfortune", there are people who do have misfortunes), the first thing they try to do is to forget it - as though one did not forget quickly enough! And to forget, they do anything whatsoever. When there is something painful, they want to distract themselves - what they call distraction, that is, doing stupid things, that is to say, going down in their consciousness, going down a little instead of rising up.... Has something extremely painful happened to you, something very grievous? Do not become stupefied, do not seek forgetfulness, do not go down into the inconscience; you must go to the end and find the light that is behind, the truth, the force and the joy; and for that you must be strong and refuse to slide down. But that we shall see a little later, my children, when you will be a little older. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 50,#KEYS
626:30. Take the same position as heretofore and visualize a Battleship; see the grim monster floating on the surface of the water; there appears to be no life anywhere about; all is silence; you know that by far the largest part of the vessel is under water; out of sight; you know that the ship is as large and as heavy as a twenty-story skyscraper; you know that there are hundreds of men ready to spring to their appointed task instantly; you know that every department is in charge of able, trained, skilled officials who have proven themselves competent to take charge of this marvelous piece of mechanism; you know that although it lies apparently oblivious to everything else, it has eyes which see everything for miles around, and nothing is permitted to escape its watchful vision; you know that while it appears quiet, submissive and innocent, it is prepared to hurl a steel projectile weighing thousands of pounds at an enemy many miles away; this and much more you can bring to mind with comparatively no effort whateveR But how did the battleship come to be where it is; how did it come into existence in the first place? All of this you want to know if you are a careful observer.
31. Follow the great steel plates through the foundries, see the thousands of men employed in their production; go still further back, and see the ore as it comes from the mine, see it loaded on barges or cars, see it melted and properly treated; go back still further and see the architect and engineers who planned the vessel; let the thought carry you back still further in order to determine why they planned the vessel; you will see that you are now so far back that the vessel is something intangible, it no longer exists, it is now only a thought existing in the brain of the architect; but from where did the order come to plan the vessel? Probably from the Secretary of Defense; but probably this vessel was planned long before the war was thought of, and that Congress had to pass a bill appropriating the money; possibly there was opposition, and speeches for or against the bill. Whom do these Congressmen represent? They represent you and me, so that our line of thought begins with the Battleship and ends with ourselves, and we find in the last analysis that our own thought is responsible for this and many other things, of which we seldom think, and a little further reflection will develop the most important fact of all and that is, if someone had not discovered the law by which this tremendous mass of steel and iron could be made to float upon the water, instead of immediately going to the bottom, the battleship could not have come into existence at all. ~ Charles F Haanel, The Master Key System,#KEYS
627:What is the difference between meditation and concentration?
Meditation is a purely mental activity, it interests only the mental being. One can concentrate while meditating but this is a mental concentration; one can get a silence but it is a purely mental silence, and the other parts of the being are kept immobile and inactive so as not to disturb the meditation. You may pass twenty hours of the day in meditation and for the remaining four hours you will be an altogether ordinary man because only the mind has been occupied-the rest of the being, the vital and the physical, is kept under pressure so that it may not disturb. In meditation nothing is directly done for the other parts of the being.
Certainly this indirect action can have an effect, but... I have known in my life people whose capacity for meditation was remarkable but who, when not in meditation, were quite ordinary men, even at times ill-natured people, who would become furious if their meditation was disturbed. For they had learnt to master only their mind, not the rest of their being.
Concentration is a more active state. You may concentrate mentally, you may concentrate vitally, psychically, physically, and you may concentrate integrally. Concentration or the capacity to gather oneself at one point is more difficult than meditation. You may gather together one portion of your being or consciousness or you may gather together the whole of your consciousness or even fragments of it, that is, the concentration may be partial, total or integral, and in each case the result will be different.
If you have the capacity to concentrate, your meditation will be more interesting and easieR But one can meditate without concentrating. Many follow a chain of ideas in their meditation - it is meditation, not concentration.
Is it possible to distinguish the moment when one attains perfect concentration from the moment when, starting from this concentration, one opens oneself to the universal Energy?
Yes. You concentrate on something or simply you gather yourself together as much as is possible for you and when you attain a kind of perfection in concentration, if you can sustain this perfection for a sufficiently long time, then a door opens and you pass beyond the limit of your ordinary consciousness-you enter into a deeper and higher knowledge. Or you go within. Then you may experience a kind of dazzling light, an inner wonder, a beatitude, a complete knowledge, a total silence. There are, of course, many possibilities but the phenomenon is always the same.
To have this experience all depends upon your capacity to maintain your concentration sufficiently long at its highest point of perfection. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
628:Mother of Dreams :::
Goddess supreme, Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest,
Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting?
Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them;
Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens;
There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens.
What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine?
Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses,
Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal?
Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances?
Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances?
Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching,
Holdest the night in thy ancient right, Mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended.
Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest,
Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses.
Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses.
Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened.
High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him;
Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;
I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have healed the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master,
Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.
For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal;
There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.
From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us;
Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.
Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,#KEYS
629: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
630:What do we understand by the term "chance"? Chance can only be the opposite of order and harmony. There is only one true harmony and that is the supramental - the reign of Truth, the expression of the Divine Law. In the Supermind, therefore, chance has no place. But in the lower Nature the supreme Truth is obscured: hence there is an absence of that divine unity of purpose and action which alone can constitute order. Lacking this unity, the domain of lower Nature is governed by what we may call chance - that is to say, it is a field in which various conflicting forces intermix, having no single definite aim. Whatever arises out of such a rushing together of forces is a result of confusion, dissonance and falsehood - a product of chance. Chance is not merely a conception to cover our ignorance of the causes at work; it is a description of the uncertain mele ́e of the lower Nature which lacks the calm one-pointedness of the divine Truth. The world has forgotten its divine origin and become an arena of egoistic energies; but it is still possible for it to open to the Truth, call it down by its aspiration and bring about a change in the whirl of chance. What men regard as a mechanical sequence of events, owing to their own mental associations, experiences and generalisations, is really manipulated by subtle agencies each of which tries to get its own will done. The world has got so subjected to these undivine agencies that the victory of the Truth cannot be won except by fighting for it. It has no right to it: it has to gain it by disowning the falsehood and the perversion, an important part of which is the facile notion that, since all things owe their final origin to the Divine, all their immediate activities also proceed directly from it. The fact is that here in the lower Nature the Divine is veiled by a cosmic Ignorance and what takes place does not proceed directly from the divine knowledge. That everything is equally the will of God is a very convenient suggestion of the hostile influences which would have the creation stick as tightly as possible to the disorder and ugliness to which it has been reduced. So what is to be done, you ask? Well, call down the Light, open yourselves to the power of Transformation. Innumerable times the divine peace has been given to you and as often you have lost it - because something in you refuses to surrender its petty egoistic routine. If you are not always vigilant, your nature will return to its old unregenerate habits even after it has been filled with the descending Truth. It is the struggle between the old and the new that forms the crux of the Yoga; but if you are bent on being faithful to the supreme Law and Order revealed to you, the parts of your being belonging to the domain of chance will, however slowly, be converted and divinised. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #KEYS
631:- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expression, - all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its own works, to express that One Divine in ideal forms, the One Divine in principles and forces, the One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, - for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 142 [T4],#KEYS
632:The madman.-
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place. and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him-you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward. forward. in all directions? be there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too. decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us-for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then: "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars-and yet they have done it themselves... It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his reqttiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Kaufmann,#KEYS
633: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
634:Sweet Mother, there's a flower you have named "The Creative Word".
Yes.
What does that mean?
It is the word which creates.
There are all kinds of old traditions, old Hindu traditions, old Chaldean traditions in which the Divine, in the form of the Creator, that is, in His aspect as Creator, pronounces a word which has the power to create. So it is this... And it is the origin of the mantra. The mantra is the spoken word which has a creative power. An invocation is made and there is an answer to the invocation; or one makes a prayer and the prayer is granted. This is the Word, the Word which, in its sound... it is not only the idea, it is in the sound that there's a power of creation. It is the origin, you see, of the mantra.
In Indian mythology the creator God is Brahma, and I think that it was precisely his power which has been symbolised by this flower, "The Creative Word". And when one is in contact with it, the words spoken have a power of evocation or creation or formation or transformation; the words... sound always has a power; it has much more power than men think. It may be a good power and it may be a bad power. It creates vibrations which have an undeniable effect. It is not so much the idea as the sound; the idea too has its own power, but in its own domain - whereas the sound has a power in the material world.
I think I have explained this to you once; I told you, for example, that words spoken casually, usually without any re- flection and without attaching any importance to them, can be used to do something very good. I think I spoke to you about "Bonjour", "Good Day", didn't I? When people meet and say "Bonjour", they do so mechanically and without thinking. But if you put a will into it, an aspiration to indeed wish someone a good day, well, there is a way of saying "Good Day" which is very effective, much more effective than if simply meeting someone you thought: "Ah! I hope he has a good day", without saying anything. If with this hope in your thought you say to him in a certain way, "Good Day", you make it more concrete and more effective.
It's the same thing, by the way, with curses, or when one gets angry and says bad things to people. This can do them as much harm - more harm sometimes - than if you were to give them a slap. With very sensitive people it can put their stomach out of order or give them palpitation, because you put into it an evil force which has a power of destruction.
It is not at all ineffective to speak. Naturally it depends a great deal on each one's inner power. People who have no strength and no consciousness can't do very much - unless they employ material means. But to the extent that you are strong, especially when you have a powerful vital, you must have a great control on what you say, otherwise you can do much harm. Without wanting to, without knowing it; through ignorance.
Anything? No? Nothing?
Another question?... Everything's over? ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 347-349,#KEYS
635:Sweet Mother, here it is written: "It is part of the foundation of Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge." Are these forces different for each person?
Yes. The composition is completely different, otherwise everybody would be the same. There are not two beings with an identical combination; between the different parts of the being and the composition of these parts the proportion is different in each individual. There are people, primitive men, people like the yet undeveloped races or the degenerated ones whose combinations are fairly simple; they are still complicated, but comparatively simple. And there are people absolutely at the top of the human ladder, the e ́lite of humanity; their combinations become so complicated that a very special discernment is needed to find the relations between all these things.
There are beings who carry in themselves thousands of different personalities, and then each one has its own rhythm and alternation, and there is a kind of combination; sometimes there are inner conflicts, and there is a play of activities which are rhythmic and with alternations of certain parts which come to the front and then go back and again come to the front. But when one takes all that, it makes such complicated combinations that some people truly find it difficult to understand what is going on in themselves; and yet these are the ones most capable of a complete, coordinated, conscious, organised action; but their organisation is infinitely more complicated than that of primitive or undeveloped men who have two or three impulses and four or five ideas, and who can arrange all this very easily in themselves and seem to be very co-ordinated and logical because there is not very much to organise. But there are people truly like a multitude, and so that gives them a plasticity, a fluidity of action and an extraordinary complexity of perception, and these people are capable of understanding a considerable number of things, as though they had at their disposal a veritable army which they move according to circumstance and need; and all this is inside them. So when these people, with the help of yoga, the discipline of yoga, succeed in centralising all these beings around the central light of the divine Presence, they become powerful entities, precisely because of their complexity. So long as this is not organised they often give the impression of an incoherence, they are almost incomprehensible, one can't manage to understand why they are like that, they are so complex. But when they have organised all these beings, that is, put each one in its place around the divine centre, then truly they are terrific, for they have the capacity of understanding almost everything and doing almost everything because of the multitude of entities they contain, of which they are constituted. And the nearer one is to the top of the ladder, the more it is like that, and consequently the more difficult it is to organise one's being; because when you have about a dozen elements, you can quickly compass and organise them, but when you have thousands of them, it is difficult. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 215-216,#KEYS
636:(Novum Organum by Francis Bacon.)
34. "Four species of idols beset the human mind, to which (for distinction's sake) we have assigned names, calling the first Idols of the Tribe, the second Idols of the Den, the third Idols of the Market, the fourth Idols of the Theatre.
40. "The information of notions and axioms on the foundation of true induction is the only fitting remedy by which we can ward off and expel these idols. It is, however, of great service to point them out; for the doctrine of idols bears the same relation to the interpretation of nature as that of the confutation of sophisms does to common logic.
41. "The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man; for man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.
42. "The idols of the den are those of each individual; for everybody (in addition to the errors common to the race of man) has his own individual den or cavern, which intercepts and corrupts the light of nature, either from his own peculiar and singular disposition, or from his education and intercourse with others, or from his reading, and the authority acquired by those whom he reverences and admires, or from the different impressions produced on the mind, as it happens to be preoccupied and predisposed, or equable and tranquil, and the like; so that the spirit of man (according to its several dispositions), is variable, confused, and, as it were, actuated by chance; and Heraclitus said well that men search for knowledge in lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
43. "There are also idols formed by the reciprocal intercourse and society of man with man, which we call idols of the market, from the commerce and association of men with each other; for men converse by means of language, but words are formed at the will of the generality, and there arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind. Nor can the definitions and explanations with which learned men are wont to guard and protect themselves in some instances afford a complete remedy-words still manifestly force the understanding, throw everything into confusion, and lead mankind into vain and innumerable controversies and fallacies.
44. "Lastly, there are idols which have crept into men's minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy, and also from the perverted rules of demonstration, and these we denominate idols of the theatre: for we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds. Nor do we speak only of the present systems, or of the philosophy and sects of the ancients, since numerous other plays of a similar nature can be still composed and made to agree with each other, the causes of the most opposite errors being generally the same. Nor, again, do we allude merely to general systems, but also to many elements and axioms of sciences which have become inveterate by tradition, implicit credence, and neglect. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,#KEYS
637:There is no invariable rule of such suffering. It is not the soul that suffers; the Self is calm and equal to all things and the only sorrow of the psychic being is the sorrow of the resistance of Nature to the Divine Will or the resistance of things and people to the call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body. When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt - which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance, then obviously there may be much suffering of the mind and vital parts. The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability to respond to the higher consciousness, a habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is moreover the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence on the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses, desires, feelings, responses continue even after they are thrown out and rejected, and can return like an invading army from outside, until the whole nature, given to the Divine, refuses to admit them. This is the subjective form of the universal resistance, but it may also take an objective form - opposition, calumny, attacks, persecution, misfortunes of many kinds, adverse conditions and circumstances, pain, illness, assaults from men or forces. There too the possibility of suffering is evident. There are two ways to meet all that - first that of the Self, calm, equality, a spirit, a will, a mind, a vital, a physical consciousness that remain resolutely turned towards the Divine and unshaken by all suggestion of doubt, desire, attachment, depression, sorrow, pain, inertia. This is possible when the inner being awakens, when one becomes conscious of the Self, of the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner physical, for that can more easily attune itself to the divine Will, and then there is a division in the being as if there were two beings, one within, calm, strong, equal, unperturbed, a channel of the Divine Consciousness and Force, one without, still encroached on by the lower Nature; but then the disturbances of the latter become something superficial which are no more than an outer ripple, - until these under the inner pressure fade and sink away and the outer being too remains calm, concentrated, unattackable. There is also the way of the psychic, - when the psychic being comes out in its inherent power, its consecration, adoration, love of the Divine, self-giving, surrender and imposes these on the mind, vital and physical consciousness and compels them to turn all their movements Godward. If the psychic is strong and master...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Resistances, Sufferings and Falls, 669,#KEYS
638:Darkness
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went-and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought-and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails-men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died-
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge-
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the Universe.
~ George Gordon Byron,#KEYS
639:The true Mantra must come from within OR it must be given by a Guru
Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given; it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
I saw, in my case, that my mantra has the power of immortality; whatever happens, if it is uttered, it's the Supreme that has the upper hand, it's no longer the lower law. And the words are irrelevant, they may not have any meaning - to someone else, my mantra is meaningless, but to me it's full, packed with meaning. And effective, because it's my cry, the intense aspiration of my whole being.
A mantra given by a guru is only the power to realize the experience of the discoverer of the mantra. The power is automatically there, because the sound contains the experience. I saw that once in Paris, at a time when I knew nothing of India, absolutely nothing, only the usual nonsense. I didn't even know what a mantra was. I had gone to a lecture given by some fellow who was supposed to have practiced "yoga" for a year in the Himalayas and recounted his experience (none too interesting, either). All at once, in the course of his lecture, he uttered the sound OM. And I saw the entire room suddenly fill with light, a golden, vibrating light.... I was probably the only one to notice it. I said to myself, "Well!" Then I didn't give it any more thought, I forgot about the story. But as it happened, the experience recurred in two or three different countries, with different people, and every time there was the sound OM, I would suddenly see the place fill with that same light. So I understood. That sound contains the vibration of thousands and thousands of years of spiritual aspiration - there is in it the entire aspiration of men towards the Supreme. And the power is automatically there, because the experience is there.
It's the same with my mantra. When I wanted to translate the end of my mantra, "Glory to You, O Lord," into Sanskrit, I asked for Nolini's help. He brought his Sanskrit translation, and when he read it to me, I immediately saw that the power was there - not because Nolini put his power into it (!), God knows he had no intention of "giving" me a mantra! But the power was there because my experience was there. We made a few adjustments and modifications, and that's the japa I do now - I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.[[Mother later clarified: "'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't MY mantra, it's something I ADDED to it - my mantra is something else altogether, that's not it. When I say that my mantra has the power of immortality, I mean the other, the one I don't speak of! I have never given the words.... You see, at the end of my walk, a kind of enthusiasm rises, and with that enthusiasm, the 'Glory to You' came to me, but it's part of the prayer I had written in Prayers and Meditations: 'Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme' etc. (it's a long prayer). It came back suddenly, and as it came back spontaneously, I kept it. Moreover, when Sri Aurobindo read this prayer in Prayers and Meditations, he told me it was very strong. So I added this phrase as a kind of tail to my japa. But 'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't my spontaneous mantra - it came spontaneously, but it was something written very long ago. The two things are different."
And that's how a mantra has life: when it wells up all the time, spontaneously, like the cry of your being - there is no need of effort or concentration: it's your natural cry. Then it has full power, it is alive. It must well up from within.... No guru can give you that. ~ The Mother, Agenda, May 11 1963,#KEYS
640:All Yoga is a turning of the human mind and the human soul, not yet divine in realisation, but feeling the divine impulse and attraction in it, towards that by which it finds its greater being. Emotionally, the first form which this turning takes must be that of adoration. In ordinary religion this adoration wears the form of external worship and that again develops a most external form of ceremonial worship. This element is ordinarily necessary because the mass of men live in their physical minds, cannot realise anything except by the force of a physical symbol and cannot feel that they are living anything except by the force of a physical action. We might apply here the Tantric gradation of sadhana, which makes the way of the pasu, the herd, the animal or physical being, the lowest stage of its discipline, and say that the purely or predominantly ceremonial adoration is the first step of this lowest part of the way. It is evident that even real religion, - and Yoga is something more than religion, - only begins when this quite outward worship corresponds to something really felt within the mind, some genuine submission, awe or spiritual aspiration, to which it becomes an aid, an outward expression and also a sort of periodical or constant reminder helping to draw back the mind to it from the preoccupations of ordinary life. But so long as it is only an idea of the Godhead to which one renders reverence or homage, we have not yet got to the beginning of Yoga. The aim of Yoga being union, its beginning must always be a seeking after the Divine, a longing after some kind of touch, closeness or possession. When this comes on us, the adoration becomes always primarily an inner worship; we begin to make ourselves a temple of the Divine, our thoughts and feelings a constant prayer of aspiration and seeking, our whole life an external service and worship. It is as this change, this new soul-tendency grows, that the religion of the devotee becomes a Yoga, a growing contact and union. It does not follow that the outward worship will necessarily be dispensed with, but it will increasingly become only a physical expression or outflowing of the inner devotion and adoration, the wave of the soul throwing itself out in speech and symbolic act.
Adoration, before it turns into an element of the deeper Yoga of devotion, a petal of the flower of love, its homage and self-uplifting to its sun, must bring with it, if it is profound, an increasing consecration of the being to the Divine who is adored. And one element of this consecration must be a self-purifying so as to become fit for the divine contact, or for the entrance of the Divine into the temple of our inner being, or for his selfrevelation in the shrine of the heart. This purifying may be ethical in its character, but it will not be merely the moralist's seeking for the right and blameless action or even, when once we reach the stage of Yoga, an obedience to the law of God as revealed in formal religion; but it will be a throwing away, katharsis, of all that conflicts whether with the idea of the Divine in himself or of the Divine in ourselves. In the former case it becomes in habit of feeling and outer act an imitation of the Divine, in the latter a growing into his likeness in our nature. What inner adoration is to ceremonial worship, this growing into the divine likeness is to the outward ethical life. It culminates in a sort of liberation by likeness to the Divine,1 a liberation from our lower nature and a change into the divine nature.
Consecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our being to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works. Here the Yoga takes into itself the essential elements of the Yoga of works and the Yoga of knowledge, but in its own manner and with its own peculiar spirit. It is a sacrifice of life and works to the Divine, but a sacrifice of love more than a tuning of the will to the divine Will. The bhakta offers up his life and all that he is and all that he has and all that he does to the Divine. This surrender may take the ascetic form, as when he leaves the ordinary life of men and devotes his days solely to prayer ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion, 571 [T1],#KEYS
641: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
642:A God's Labour
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.
I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
The moods of infinity.
But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
The roots were not deep enough.
He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.
Coercing my godhead I have come down
Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
Twixt the gates of death and birth.
I have been digging deep and long
Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
A home for the deathless fire.
I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
Are my meed since the world began.
For man's mind is the dupe of his animal self;
Hoping its lusts to win,
He harbours within him a grisly Elf
Enamoured of sorrow and sin.
The grey Elf shudders from heaven's flame
And from all things glad and pure;
Only by pleasure and passion and pain
His drama can endure.
All around is darkness and strife;
For the lamps that men call suns
Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life
Cast by the Undying Ones.
Man lights his little torches of hope
That lead to a failing edge;
A fragment of Truth is his widest scope,
An inn his pilgrimage.
The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
Or a demon altar choose.
All that was found must again be sought,
Each enemy slain revives,
Each battle for ever is fought and refought
Through vistas of fruitless lives.
My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
And the Titan kings assail,
But I dare not rest till my task is done
And wrought the eternal will.
How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!
"Thy hope is Chimera's head
Painting the sky with its fiery stain;
Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.
"Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease
And joy and golden room
To us who are waifs on inconscient seas
And bound to life's iron doom?
"This earth is ours, a field of Night
For our petty flickering fires.
How shall it brook the sacred Light
Or suffer a god's desires?
"Come, let us slay him and end his course!
Then shall our hearts have release
From the burden and call of his glory and force
And the curb of his wide white peace."
But the god is there in my mortal breast
Who wrestles with error and fate
And tramples a road through mire and waste
For the nameless Immaculate.
A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!
Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
And knock at the keyless gate."
I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
On the Dragon's outspread wings.
I left the surface gauds of mind
And life's unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body's alleys blind
To the nether mysteries.
I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
And heard her black mass' bell.
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
And the inner reason of hell.
Above me the dragon murmurs moan
And the goblin voices flit;
I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,
I have walked in the bottomless pit.
On a desperate stair my feet have trod
Armoured with boundless peace,
Bringing the fires of the splendour of God
Into the human abyss.
He who I am was with me still;
All veils are breaking now.
I have heard His voice and borne His will
On my vast untroubled brow.
The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged
And the golden waters pour
Down the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged
And glimmer from shore to shore.
Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth
And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
The incarnate spirits yearn
Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
Down a gold-red stairway wend
The radiant children of Paradise
Clarioning darkness' end.
A little more and the new life's doors
Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
In a great world bare and bright.
I shall leave my dreams in their argent air,
For in a raiment of gold and blue
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
The living truth of you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour, 534,#KEYS
643:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, #KEYS
644:What are these operations? They are not mere psychological self-analysis and self-observation. Such analysis, such observation are, like the process of right thought, of immense value and practically indispensable. They may even, if rightly pursued, lead to a right thought of considerable power and effectivity. Like intellectual discrimination by the process of meditative thought they will have an effect of purification; they will lead to self-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of the disorders of the soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the understanding. Self-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the knowledge of the real Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis is a great and effective introduction.We can look into the inward of ourselves more easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because there, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form and secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other than their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may reflect or a powerful concentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even before it is realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult. (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its becoming and follow the process by which it draws back into self-being. Therefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the experience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in its pure being.
The status of knowledge, then, which Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception or clear discrimination of the truth, nor is it an enlightened psychological experience of the modes of our being. It is a "realisation", in the full sense of the word; it is the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self, the transcendent and universal Divine, and it is the subsequent impossibility of viewing the modes of being except in the light of that Self and in their true aspect as its flux of becoming under the psychical and physical conditions of our world-existence. This realisation consists of three successive movements, internal vision, complete internal experience and identity.
This internal vision, dr.s.t.i, the power so highly valued by the ancient sages, the power which made a man a Rishi or Kavi and no longer a mere thinker, is a sort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to it-to the soul and not merely to the intellect-as do things seen to the physical eye. In the physical world there are always two forms of knowledge, the direct and the indirect, pratyaks.a, of that which is present to the eyes, and paroks.a, of that which is remote from and beyond our vision. When the object is beyond our vision, we are necessarily obliged to arrive at an idea of it by inference, imagination, analogy, by hearing the descriptions of others who have seen it or by studying pictorial or other representations of it if these are available. By putting together all these aids we can indeed arrive at a more or less adequate idea or suggestive image of the object, but we do not realise the thing itself; it is not yet to us the grasped reality, but only our conceptual representation of a reality. But once we have seen it with the eyes,-for no other sense is adequate,-we possess, we realise; it is there secure in our satisfied being, part of ourselves in knowledge. Precisely the same rule holds good of psychical things and of he Self. We may hear clear and luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other available means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration;3 but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity.
(2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the 2 In one respect, however, it is easier, because in external things we are not so much hampered by the sense of the limited ego as in ourselves; one obstacle to the realisation of God is therefore removed.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,#KEYS
645:
Why do we forget our dreams?
Because you do not dream always at the same place. It is not always the same part of your being that dreams and it is not at the same place that you dream. If you were in conscious, direct, continuous communication with all the parts of your being, you would remember all your dreams. But very few parts of the being are in communication.
For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five o'clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentive - quietly attentive - and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is established - very rarely is there no communication.
Now, dreams are mostly forgotten because you have a dream while in a certain state and then pass into another. For instance, when you sleep, your body is asleep, your vital is asleep, but your mind is still active. So your mind begins to have dreams, that is, its activity is more or less coordinated, the imagination is very active and you see all kinds of things, take part in extraordinary happenings.... After some time, all that calms down and the mind also begins to doze. The vital that was resting wakes up; it comes out of the body, walks about, goes here and there, does all kinds of things, reacts, sometimes fights, and finally eats. It does all kinds of things. The vital is very adventurous. It watches. When it is heroic it rushes to save people who are in prison or to destroy enemies or it makes wonderful discoveries. But this pushes back the whole mental dream very far behind. It is rubbed off, forgotten: naturally you cannot remember it because the vital dream takes its place. But if you wake up suddenly at that moment, you remember it. There are people who have made the experiment, who have got up at certain fixed hours of the night and when they wake up suddenly, they do remember. You must not move brusquely, but awake in the natural course, then you remember.
After a time, the vital having taken a good stroll, needs to rest also, and so it goes into repose and quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of adventures. Then something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering, seeing the rooms and... why, this thing that was there, but it has come here and that other thing which was in that room is now in this one, and so on. If you wake up without stirring, you remembeR But this has pushed away far to the back of the consciousness all the stories of the vital. They are forgotten and so you cannot recollect your dreams. But if at the time of waking up you are not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long as you wish, you need not even open your eyes; you keep your head exactly where it was and you make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of the tail of your dream. You catch it and start pulling gently, without stirring in the least. You begin pulling quite gently, and then first one part comes, a little later another. You go backward; the last comes up first. Everything goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole dream reappears: "Ah, there! it was like that." Above all, do not jump up, do not stir; you repeat the dream to yourself several times - once, twice - until it becomes clear in all its details. Once that dream is settled, you continue not to stir, you try to go further in, and suddenly you catch the tail of something else. It is more distant, more vague, but you can still seize it. And here also you hang on, get hold of it and pull, and you see that everything changes and you enter another world; all of a sudden you have an extraordinary adventure - it is another dream. You follow the same process. You repeat the dream to yourself once, twice, until you are sure of it. You remain very quiet all the time. Then you begin to penetrate still more deeply into yourself, as though you were going in very far, very far; and again suddenly you see a vague form, you have a feeling, a sensation... like a current of air, a slight breeze, a little breath; and you say, "Well, well...." It takes a form, it becomes clear - and the third category comes. You must have a lot of time, a lot of patience, you must be very quiet in your mind and body, very quiet, and you can tell the story of your whole night from the end right up to the beginning.
Even without doing this exercise which is very long and difficult, in order to recollect a dream, whether it be the last one or the one in the middle that has made a violent impression on your being, you must do what I have said when you wake up: take particular care not even to move your head on the pillow, remain absolutely still and let the dream return.
Some people do not have a passage between one state and another, there is a little gap and so they leap from one to the other; there is no highway passing through all the states of being with no break of the consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not remember. It is like a precipice across which one has to extend the consciousness. To build a bridge takes a very long time; it takes much longer than building a physical bridge.... Very few people want to and know how to do it. They may have had magnificent activities, they do not remember them or sometimes only the last, the nearest, the most physical activity, with an uncoordinated movement - dreams having no sense.
But there are as many different kinds of nights and sleep as there are different days and activities. There are not many days that are alike, each day is different. The days are not the same, the nights are not the same. You and your friends are doing apparently the same thing, but for each one it is very different. And each one must have his own procedure.
Why are two dreams never alike?
Because all things are different. No two minutes are alike in the universe and it will be so till the end of the universe, no two minutes will ever be alike. And men obstinately want to make rules! One must do this and not that.... Well! we must let people please themselves.
You could have put to me a very interesting question: "Why am I fourteen years old today?" Intelligent people will say: "It is because it is the fourteenth year since you were born." That is the answer of someone who believes himself to be very intelligent. But there is another reason. I shall tell this to you alone.... I have drowned you all sufficiently well! Now you must begin to learn swimming!
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 36?,#KEYS
646:
Mother, when one imagines something, does it not exist?
When you imagine something, it means that you make a mental formation which may be close to the truth or far from the truth - it also depends upon the quality of your formation. You make a mental formation and there are people who have such a power of formation that they succeed in making what they imagine real. There are not many of these but there are some. They imagine something and their formation is so well made and so powerful that it succeeds in being realised. These are creators; there are not many of them but there are some.
If one thinks of someone who doesn't exist or who is dead?
Ah! What do you mean? What have you just said? Someone who doesn't exist or someone who is dead? These are two absolutely different things.
I mean someone who is dead.
Someone who is dead!
If this person has remained in the mental domain, you can find him immediately. Naturally if he is no longer in the mental domain, if he is in the psychic domain, to think of him is not enough. You must know how to go into the psychic domain to find him. But if he has remained in the mental domain and you think of him, you can find him immediately, and not only that, but you can have a mental contact with him and a kind of mental vision of his existence.
The mind has a capacity of vision of its own and it is not the same vision as with these eyes, but it is a vision, it is a perception in forms. But this is not imagination. It has nothing to do with imagination.
Imagination, for instance, is when you begin to picture to yourself an ideal being to whom you apply all your conceptions, and when you tell yourself, "Why, it should be like this, like that, its form should be like this, its thought like that, its character like that," when you see all the details and build up the being. Now, writers do this all the time because when they write a novel, they imagine. There are those who take things from life but there are those who are imaginative, creators; they create a character, a personage and then put him in their book later. This is to imagine. To imagine, for example, a whole concurrence of circumstances, a set of events, this is what I call telling a story to oneself. But it can be put down on paper, and then one becomes a novelist. There are very different kinds of writers. Some imagine everything, some gather all sorts of observations from life and construct their book with them. There are a hundred ways of writing a book. But indeed some writers imagine everything from beginning to end. It all comes out of their head and they construct even their whole story without any support in things physically observed. This truly is imagination. But as I say, if they are very powerful and have a considerable capacity for creation, it is possible that one day or other there will be a physical human being who realises their creation. This too is true.
What do you suppose imagination is, eh? Have you never imagined anything, you?
And what happens?
All that one imagines.
You mean that you imagine something and it happens like that, eh? Or it is in a dream...
What is the function, the use of the imagination?
If one knows how to use it, as I said, one can create for oneself his own inner and outer life; one can build his own existence with his imagination, if one knows how to use it and has a power. In fact it is an elementary way of creating, of forming things in the world. I have always felt that if one didn't have the capacity of imagination he would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you want to be, don't you, and this goes ahead, then you follow, then it continues to go ahead and you follow. Imagination opens for you the path of realisation. People who are not imaginative - it is very difficult to make them move; they see just what is there before their nose, they feel just what they are moment by moment and they cannot go forward because they are clamped by the immediate thing. It depends a good deal on what one calls imagination. However...
Men of science must be having imagination!
A lot. Otherwise they would never discover anything. In fact, what is called imagination is a capacity to project oneself outside realised things and towards things realisable, and then to draw them by the projection. One can obviously have progressive and regressive imaginations. There are people who always imagine all the catastrophes possible, and unfortunately they also have the power of making them come. It's like the antennae going into a world that's not yet realised, catching something there and drawing it here. Then naturally it is an addition to the earth atmosphere and these things tend towards manifestation. It is an instrument which can be disciplined, can be used at will; one can discipline it, direct it, orientate it. It is one of the faculties one can develop in himself and render serviceable, that is, use it for definite purposes.
Sweet Mother, can one imagine the Divine and have the contact?
Certainly if you succeed in imagining the Divine you have the contact, and you can have the contact with what you imagine, in any case. In fact it is absolutely impossible to imagine something which doesn't exist somewhere. You cannot imagine anything at all which doesn't exist somewhere. It is possible that it doesn't exist on the earth, it is possible that it's elsewhere, but it is impossible for you to imagine something which is not already contained in principle in the universe; otherwise it could not occur.
Then, Sweet Mother, this means that in the created universe nothing new is added?
In the created universe? Yes. The universe is progressive; we said that constantly things manifest, more and more. But for your imagination to be able to go and seek beyond the manifestation something which will be manifested, well, it may happen, in fact it does - I was going to tell you that it is in this way that some beings can cause considerable progress to be made in the world, because they have the capacity of imagining something that's not yet manifested. But there are not many. One must first be capable of going beyond the manifested universe to be able to imagine something which is not there. There are already many things which can be imagined.
What is our terrestrial world in the universe? A very small thing. Simply to have the capacity of imagining something which does not exist in the terrestrial manifestation is already very difficult, very difficult. For how many billions of years hasn't it existed, this little earth? And there have been no two identical things. That's much. It is very difficult to go out from the earth atmosphere with one's mind; one can, but it is very difficult. And then if one wants to go out, not only from the earth atmosphere but from the universal life!
To be able simply to enter into contact with the life of the earth in its totality from the formation of the earth until now, what can this mean? And then to go beyond this and enter into contact with universal life from its beginnings up to now... and then again to be able to bring something new into the universe, one must go still farther beyond.
Not easy!
That's all?
(To the child) Convinced?
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, [T1],#KEYS
647:
Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?
Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi.
But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.
If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder.
Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter.
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.
Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together.
When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?
The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 93?
,#KEYS
648:
The whole question.
The whole question? And now, do you understand?... Not quite? I told you that you did not understand because it was muddled up; in one question three different ideas were included. So naturally it created a confusion. But taken separately they are what I explained to you just now, most probably; that is to say, one has this altogether ignorant and obliterated consciousness and is convinced that he is the cause and effect, the origin and result of himself, separate from all others, separate with a limited power to act upon others and a little greater capacity to be set in movement by others or to react to others' influence. That is how people think usually, something like that, isn't that so? How do you feel, you? What effect do you have upon yourself? And you? And you?... You have never thought about it? You have never looked into yourself to see what effect you exercise upon yourself? Never thought over it? No? How do you feel? Nobody will tell me? Come, you tell me that. Never tried to understand how you feel? Yes? No? How strange! Never sought to understand how, for example, decisions take place in you? From where do they come? What makes you decide one thing rather than another? And what is the relation between a decision of yours and your action? And to what extent do you have the freedom of choice between one thing and another? And how far do you feel you are able to, you are free to do this or that or that other or nothing at all?... You have pondered over that? Yes? Is there any one among the students who has thought over it? No? Nobody put the question to himself? You? You?...
Even if one thinks over it, perhaps one is not able to answer!
One cannot explain?
No.
It is difficult to explain? Even this simple little thing, to see where in your consciousness the wills that come from outside meet your will (which you call yours, which comes from within), at what place the two join together and to what extent the one from outside acts upon that from within and the one from within acts upon that from outside? You have never tried to find this out? It has never seemed to you unbearable that a will from outside should have an action upon your will? No?
I do not know.
Oh! I am putting very difficult problems! But, my children, I was preoccupied with that when I was a child of five!... So I thought you must have been preoccupied with it since a long time. In oneself, there are contradictory wills. Yes, many. That is one of the very first discoveries. There is one part which wants things this way; and then at another moment, another way, and a third time, one wants still another thing! Besides, there is even this: something that wants and another which says no. So? But it is exactly that which has to be found if you wish in the least to organise yourself. Why not project yourself upon a screen, as in the cinema, and then look at yourself moving on it? How interesting it is!
This is the first step.
You project yourself on the screen and then observe and see all that is moving there and how it moves and what happens. You make a little diagram, it becomes so interesting then. And then, after a while, when you are quite accustomed to seeing, you can go one step further and take a decision. Or even a still greater step: you organise - arrange, take up all that, put each thing in its place, organise in such a way that you begin to have a straight movement with an inner meaning. And then you become conscious of your direction and are able to say: "Very well, it will be thus; my life will develop in that way, because that is the logic of my being. Now, I have arranged all that within me, each thing has been put in its place, and so naturally a central orientation is forming. I am following this orientation. One step more and I know what will happen to me for I myself am deciding it...." I do not know, I am telling you this; to me it seemed terribly interesting, the most interesting thing in the world. There was nothing, no other thing that interested me more than that.
This happened to me.... I was five or six or seven years old (at seven the thing became quite serious) and I had a father who loved the circus, and he came and told me: "Come with me, I am going to the circus on Sunday." I said: "No, I am doing something much more interesting than going to the circus!" Or again, young friends invited me to attend a meeting where we were to play together, enjoy together: "No, I enjoy here much more...." And it was quite sincere. It was not a pose: for me, it was like this, it was true. There was nothing in the world more enjoyable than that.
And I am so convinced that anybody who does it in that way, with the same freshness and sincerity, will obtain most interesting results.... To put all that on a screen in front of yourself and look at what is happening. And the first step is to know all that is happening and then you must not try to shut your eyes when something does not appear pleasant to you! You must keep them wide open and put each thing in that way before the screen. Then you make quite an interesting discovery. And then the next step is to start telling yourself: "Since all that is happening within me, why should I not put this thing in this way and then that thing in that way and then this other in this way and thus wouldn't I be doing something logical that has a meaning? Why should I not remove that thing which stands obstructing the way, these conflicting wills? Why? And what does that represent in the being? Why is it there? If it were put there, would it not help instead of harming me?" And so on.
And little by little, little by little, you see clearer and then you see why you are made like that, what is the thing you have got to do - that for which you are born. And then, quite naturally, since all is organised for this thing to happen, the path becomes straight and you can say beforehand: "It is in this way that it will happen." And when things come from outside to try and upset all that, you are able to say: "No, I accept this, for it helps; I reject that, for that harms." And then, after a few years, you curb yourself as you curb a horse: you do whatever you like, in the way you like and you go wherever you like.
It seems to me this is worth the trouble. I believe it is the most interesting thing.
...
You must have a great deal of sincerity, a little courage and perseverance and then a sort of mental curiosity, you understand, curious, seeking to know, interested, wanting to learn. To love to learn: that, one must have in one's nature. To find it impossible to stand before something grey, all hazy, in which nothing is seen clearly and which gives you quite an unpleasant feeling, for you do not know where you begin and where you end, what is yours and what is not yours and what is settled and what is not settled - what is this pulp-like thing you call yourself in which things get intermingled and act upon one another without even your being aware of it? You ask yourself: "But why have I done this?" You know nothing about it. "And why have I felt that?" You don't know that, either. And then, you are thrown into a world outside that is only fog and you are thrown into a world inside that is also for you another kind of fog, still more impenetrable, in which you live, like a cork thrown upon the waters and the waves carry it away or cast it into the air, and it drops and rolls on. That is quite an unpleasant state. I do not know, but to me it appears unpleasant.
To see clearly, to see one's way, where one is going, why one is going there, how one is to go there and what one is going to do and what is the kind of relation with others... But that is a problem so wonderfully interesting - it is interesting - and you can always discover things every minute! One's work is never finished.
There is a time, there is a certain state of consciousness when you have the feeling that you are in that condition with all the weight of the world lying heavy upon you and besides you are going in blinkers and do not know where you are going, but there is something which is pushing you. And that is truly a very unpleasant condition. And there is another moment when one draws oneself up and is able to see what is there above, and one becomes it; then one looks at the world as though from the top of a very very high mountain and one sees all that is happening below; then one can choose one's way and follow it. That is a more pleasant condition. This then is truly the truth, you are upon earth for that, surely. All individual beings and all the little concentrations of consciousness were created to do this work. It is the very reason for existence: to be able to become fully conscious of a certain sum of vibrations representing an individual being and put order there and find one's way and follow it.
And so, as men do not know it and do not do it, life comes and gives them a blow here: "Oh! that hurts", then a blow there: "Ah! that's hurting me." And the thing goes on like that and all the time it is like that. And all the time they are getting pain somewhere. They suffer, they cry, they groan. But it is simply due to that reason, there is no other: it is that they have not done that little work. If, when they were quite young, there had been someone to teach them to do the work and they had done it without losing time, they could have gone through life gloriously and instead of suffering they would have been all-powerful masters of their destiny.
This is not to say that necessarily all things would become pleasant. It is not at all that. But your reaction towards things becomes the true reaction and instead of suffering, you learn; instead of being miserable, you go forward and progress. After all, I believe it is for this that you are here - so that there is someone who can tell you: "There, well, try that. It is worth trying." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 199,#KEYS
649:[The Gods and Their Worlds]
[...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.
This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.
There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.
All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.
One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.
Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.
But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.
When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.
Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!
I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.
Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!
These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.
In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.
If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.
If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
,#KEYS
650:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
651:The Supreme Discovery
IF WE want to progress integrally, we must build within our conscious being a strong and pure mental synthesis which can serve us as a protection against temptations from outside, as a landmark to prevent us from going astray, as a beacon to light our way across the moving ocean of life.
Each individual should build up this mental synthesis according to his own tendencies and affinities and aspirations. But if we want it to be truly living and luminous, it must be centred on the idea that is the intellectual representation symbolising That which is at the centre of our being, That which is our life and our light.
This idea, expressed in sublime words, has been taught in various forms by all the great Instructors in all lands and all ages.
The Self of each one and the great universal Self are one. Since all that is exists from all eternity in its essence and principle, why make a distinction between the being and its origin, between ourselves and what we place at the beginning?
The ancient traditions rightly said:
"Our origin and ourselves, our God and ourselves are one."
And this oneness should not be understood merely as a more or less close and intimate relationship of union, but as a true identity.
Thus, when a man who seeks the Divine attempts to reascend by degrees towards the inaccessible, he forgets that all his knowledge and all his intuition cannot take him one step forward in this infinite; neither does he know that what he wants to attain, what he believes to be so far from him, is within him.
For how could he know anything of the origin until he becomes conscious of this origin in himself?
It is by understanding himself, by learning to know himself, that he can make the supreme discovery and cry out in wonder like the patriarch in the Bible, "The house of God is here and I knew it not."
That is why we must express that sublime thought, creatrix of the material worlds, and make known to all the word that fills the heavens and the earth, "I am in all things and all beings."When all shall know this, the promised day of great transfigurations will be at hand. When in each atom of Matter men shall recognise the indwelling thought of God, when in each living creature they shall perceive some hint of a gesture of God, when each man can see God in his brother, then dawn will break, dispelling the darkness, the falsehood, the ignorance, the error and suffering that weigh upon all Nature. For, "all Nature suffers and laments as she awaits the revelation of the Sons of God."
This indeed is the central thought epitomising all others, the thought which should be ever present to our remembrance as the sun that illumines all life.
That is why I remind you of it today. For if we follow our path bearing this thought in our hearts like the rarest jewel, the most precious treasure, if we allow it to do its work of illumination and transfiguration within us, we shall know that it lives in the centre of all beings and all things, and in it we shall feel the marvellous oneness of the universe.
Then we shall understand the vanity and childishness of our meagre satisfactions, our foolish quarrels, our petty passions, our blind indignations. We shall see the dissolution of our little faults, the crumbling of the last entrenchments of our limited personality and our obtuse egoism. We shall feel ourselves being swept along by this sublime current of true spirituality which will deliver us from our narrow limits and bounds.
The individual Self and the universal Self are one; in every world, in every being, in every thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
In order to do that, he must become conscious of this Divine Presence within him. Some individuals must undergo a real apprenticeship in order to achieve this: their egoistic being is too all-absorbing, too rigid, too conservative, and their struggles against it are long and painful. Others, on the contrary, who are more impersonal, more plastic, more spiritualised, come easily into contact with the inexhaustible divine source of their being.But let us not forget that they too should devote themselves daily, constantly, to a methodical effort of adaptation and transformation, so that nothing within them may ever again obscure the radiance of that pure light.
But how greatly the standpoint changes once we attain this deeper consciousness! How understanding widens, how compassion grows!
On this a sage has said:
"I would like each one of us to come to the point where he perceives the inner God who dwells even in the vilest of human beings; instead of condemning him we would say, 'Arise, O resplendent Being, thou who art ever pure, who knowest neither birth nor death; arise, Almighty One, and manifest thy nature.'"
Let us live by this beautiful utterance and we shall see everything around us transformed as if by miracle.
This is the attitude of true, conscious and discerning love, the love which knows how to see behind appearances, understand in spite of words, and which, amid all obstacles, is in constant communion with the depths.
What value have our impulses and our desires, our anguish and our violence, our sufferings and our struggles, all these inner vicissitudes unduly dramatised by our unruly imagination - what value do they have before this great, this sublime and divine love bending over us from the innermost depths of our being, bearing with our weaknesses, rectifying our errors, healing our wounds, bathing our whole being with its regenerating streams?
For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives herself, conceals and forgets herself in the heart of all beings and things; she never accuses, she neither judges nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to encourage without impatience, to enrich each one with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands everything, she can endure everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns nothing that does not belong to all, and because she reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all, great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among their brethren.
How beautiful is this humble role of servant, the role of all who have been revealers and heralds of the God who is within all, of the Divine Love that animates all things....
And until we can follow their example and become true servants even as they, let us allow ourselves to be penetrated and transformed by this Divine Love; let us offer Him, without reserve, this marvellous instrument, our physical organism. He shall make it yield its utmost on every plane of activity.
To achieve this total self-consecration, all means are good, all methods have their value. The one thing needful is to persevere in our will to attain this goal. For then everything we study, every action we perform, every human being we meet, all come to bring us an indication, a help, a light to guide us on the path.
Before I close, I shall add a few pages for those who have already made apparently fruitless efforts, for those who have encountered the pitfalls on the way and seen the measure of their weakness, for those who are in danger of losing their self-confidence and courage. These pages, intended to rekindle hope in the hearts of those who suffer, were written by a spiritual worker at a time when ordeals of every kind were sweeping down on him like purifying flames.
You who are weary, downcast and bruised, you who fall, who think perhaps that you are defeated, hear the voice of a friend. He knows your sorrows, he has shared them, he has suffered like you from the ills of the earth; like you he has crossed many deserts under the burden of the day, he has known thirst and hunger, solitude and abandonment, and the cruellest of all wants, the destitution of the heart. Alas! he has known too the hours of doubt, the errors, the faults, the failings, every weakness.
But he tells you: Courage! Hearken to the lesson that the rising sun brings to the earth with its first rays each morning. It is a lesson of hope, a message of solace.
You who weep, who suffer and tremble, who dare not expect an end to your ills, an issue to your pangs, behold: there is no night without dawn and the day is about to break when darkness is thickest; there is no mist that the sun does not dispel, no cloud that it does not gild, no tear that it will not dry one day, no storm that is not followed by its shining triumphant bow; there is no snow that it does not melt, nor winter that it does not change into radiant spring.
And for you too, there is no affliction which does not bring its measure of glory, no distress which cannot be transformed into joy, nor defeat into victory, nor downfall into higher ascension, nor solitude into radiating centre of life, nor discord into harmony - sometimes it is a misunderstanding between two minds that compels two hearts to open to mutual communion; lastly, there is no infinite weakness that cannot be changed into strength. And it is even in supreme weakness that almightiness chooses to reveal itself!
Listen, my little child, you who today feel so broken, so fallen perhaps, who have nothing left, nothing to cover your misery and foster your pride: never before have you been so great! How close to the summits is he who awakens in the depths, for the deeper the abyss, the more the heights reveal themselves!
Do you not know this, that the most sublime forces of the vasts seek to array themselves in the most opaque veils of Matter? Oh, the sublime nuptials of sovereign love with the obscurest plasticities, of the shadow's yearning with the most royal light!
If ordeal or fault has cast you down, if you have sunk into the nether depths of suffering, do not grieve - for there indeed the divine love and the supreme blessing can reach you! Because you have passed through the crucible of purifying sorrows, the glorious ascents are yours.
You are in the wilderness: then listen to the voices of the silence. The clamour of flattering words and outer applause has gladdened your ears, but the voices of the silence will gladden your soul and awaken within you the echo of the depths, the chant of divine harmonies!
You are walking in the depths of night: then gather the priceless treasures of the night. In bright sunshine, the ways of intelligence are lit, but in the white luminosities of the night lie the hidden paths of perfection, the secret of spiritual riches.
You are being stripped of everything: that is the way towards plenitude. When you have nothing left, everything will be given to you. Because for those who are sincere and true, from the worst always comes the best.
Every grain that is sown in the earth produces a thousand. Every wing-beat of sorrow can be a soaring towards glory.
And when the adversary pursues man relentlessly, everything he does to destroy him only makes him greater.
Hear the story of the worlds, look: the great enemy seems to triumph. He casts the beings of light into the night, and the night is filled with stars. He rages against the cosmic working, he assails the integrity of the empire of the sphere, shatters its harmony, divides and subdivides it, scatters its dust to the four winds of infinity, and lo! the dust is changed into a golden seed, fertilising the infinite and peopling it with worlds which now gravitate around their eternal centre in the larger orbit of space - so that even division creates a richer and deeper unity, and by multiplying the surfaces of the material universe, enlarges the empire that it set out to destroy.
Beautiful indeed was the song of the primordial sphere cradled in the bosom of immensity, but how much more beautiful and triumphant is the symphony of the constellations, the music of the spheres, the immense choir that fills the heavens with an eternal hymn of victory!
Hear again: no state was ever more precarious than that of man when he was separated on earth from his divine origin. Above him stretched the hostile borders of the usurper, and at his horizon's gates watched jailers armed with flaming swords. Then, since he could climb no more to the source of life, the source arose within him; since he could no more receive the light from above, the light shone forth at the very centre of his being; since he could commune no more with the transcendent love, that love offered itself in a holocaust and chose each terrestrial being, each human self as its dwelling-place and sanctuary.
That is how, in this despised and desolate but fruitful and blessed Matter, each atom contains a divine thought, each being carries within him the Divine Inhabitant. And if no being in all the universe is as frail as man, neither is any as divine as he!
In truth, in truth, in humiliation lies the cradle of glory! 28 April 1912 ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, The Supreme Discovery,#KEYS
652:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
653:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.
The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.
The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.
It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.
As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.
It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!
This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.
My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?
A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.
First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!
Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"
I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.
Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.
These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."
Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.
If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'
The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passage
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae.
Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?
And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?
And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.
I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!
"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'
Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,
Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vain
Upon the axis of its pain,
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."
Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.
But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!
'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:All men are born good. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 2:Great men can't be ruled. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 3:Dead men tell no tales. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 4:I teach that all men are mad. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 5:The life of men is painful. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 6:What are men? Mortal gods. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 7:And death what men call life? ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 8:Neglect of appearance becomes men. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 9:What are gods? Immortal men. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 10:All men are the same age. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 11:Men love newfangleness. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 12:Old men ought to be explorers. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 13:Men are ruled by toys. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 14:Men are led by trifles. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 15:You cannot make men good by law. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 16:Daring is not safe against daring men. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 17:I prefer men to cauliflowers ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 18:Men are lead by trifles. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 19:War among men defiles this world. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 20:Wine is only sweet to happy men. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 21:With words we govern men. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 22:A noble book! all men's book! ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 23:Sorrow makes men sincere. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 24:The deeds of men never escape the gods. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 25:All men by nature desire knowledge. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 26:Land of lost gods and godlike men. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 27:Not all men are worthy of love. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 28:Only men of character are trusted. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 29:Strong women only marry weak men. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 30:What men have seen they know. . . . ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 31:Wise men say nothing in dangerous times ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove 32:Base men who prosper are unenviable. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 33:Jewish men don't know anything. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 34:Lucky men are favorites of Heaven. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 35:All thinking men are atheists. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 36:Beer is made by men, wine by God. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 37:Greed has poisoned men's souls. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 38:Men are not realists - only women are. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 39:Men, Renaissance, Renaissance Man ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 40:Malicious men may die, but malice never. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 41:Observe all men, thyself most. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 42:Sufficiency's enough for men of sense. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 43:What are men to rocks and mountains? ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 44:You should not honour men more than truth. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 45:Hopes dance best on bald men's hair. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 46:I know how men in exile feed on dreams. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 47:Men are jerks. Women are psychotic. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 48:Men are my life, diamonds are my career. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 49:Produce great men, the rest follows. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 50:The old men know when an old man dies. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 51:We cannot learn men from books. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 52:Dawn: When men of reason go to bed. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 53:Men blaspheme what they do not know. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 54:Men get laid, but women get screwed. ~ quentin-crisp, @wisdomtrove 55:Too many men are afraid of being fools. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 56:Evil succeeds when good men do nothing ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 57:Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 58:I like honest men of all colors. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 59:Men are cruel, but Man is kind. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 60:Most men are unwilling to be taught. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 61:Wealth accumulates, and men decay. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 62:By nature, men love newfangledness. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 63:Men are but children of a larger growth. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 64:Men hate those to whom they have to lie. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 65:Presents, believe me, seduce both men and gods. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 66:Some of the wildest men make the best pets. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 67:The wisest men follow their own direction. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 68: Death is not the worst that can happen to men. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 69:Evil prevails when good men fail to act. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 70:God made the water but men made the wine. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 71:Great men have the nature of a child. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 72:Great men never require experience. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 73:Men can make an idol of the Bible. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 74:Men hate more steadily than they love. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 75:Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 76:Six feet of dirt make all men equal. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 77:Where wealth accumulates, men decay. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 78:Wrath brings mortal men their gravest hurt. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 79:All men seek one goal: success or happiness. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 80:Dogs have never hurt me. Only men have. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 81:God! How men of letters are stupid. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 82:Gods should not resemble men in their anger! ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 83:Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 84:I disbelieve all holy men and holy books. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 85:In the faces of men and women, I see God. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 86:It is always in season for old men to learn. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 87:Men are only as great as they are kind. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 88:Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 89:There are as many preferences as there are men. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 90:These are the times that try men's souls. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 91:We are either kings or pawns of men ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 92:When women go wrong, men go right after them. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 93:All religions have been made by men. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 94:As long as there are men the bulwark is safe. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 95:Drunken men give some of the best pep talks. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 96:Little things are great to little men. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 97:Men exist for the sake of one another. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 98:Men! The only animal in the world to fear. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 99:Other men's pains are easily borne. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 100:The bravest men are subject most to chance. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 101:The gifts of bad men bring no good with them. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 102:The mighty hopes that make us men. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 103:The worst men often give the best advice. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 104:Commitment to great causes makes great men. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 105:For most men friendship is a faithless harbor. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 106:Idle men tempt the devil to tempt them. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 107:I hate men who are afraid of women's strength. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 108:It's a fair wind that blew men to ale. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 109:Love doesn't die; the men and women do. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 110:Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 111:Men take more pains to mask than mend. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 112:There is the sky, which is all men's together. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 113:Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 114:Great men grow tired of contentedness. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 115:Honor is simply the morality of superior men. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 116:In a certain sense all men are historians. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 117:Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 118:Men are what their mothers made them. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 119:Men like women who know how to be subtle. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 120:Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 121:Men of cold passions have quick eyes. ~ nathaniel-hawthorne, @wisdomtrove 122:Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 123:There is music in all things, if men had ears. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 124:There is nothing so necessary for men as dancing. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 125:You men,' she says. & 126:All men know their children mean more than life. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 127:Force always attracts men of low morality. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 128:for whenever men are right they are not young ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 129:Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 130:Men often act knowingly against their interest. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 131:Men to be truly won must be won by truth. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 132:Who knows but life be that which men call death, ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 133:With emptie hands men may no haukes lure. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 134:All men are enemies. All animals are comrades ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 135:Books are men of higher stature. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 136:Evil men by their own nature cannot ever prosper. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 137:He was bolder in the daylight-most men are. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 138:In Greece wise men speak and fools decide. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 139:It is the success which makes great men. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 140:Men grow old quickly on the battlefield. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 141:Men, in general, are but great children. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 142:Men should strive to think much and know little. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove 143:Oaths are not the credit of men but men of oaths. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 144:Success! to thee, as to a God, men bend the knee. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 145:The day is for honest men, the night for thieves. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 146:The men of old breathed clear down to their heels. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 147:The more men you've had, the more I love you. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 148:Till taught by pain, men know not water's worth. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 149:When good men die their goodness does not perish. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 150:Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 151:A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 152:Do any men grow up or do they only come of age? ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 153:Men are never attached to you by favours. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 154:Men are punished by their sins, not for them. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 155:Men do not value a good deed unless it brings a reward. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 156:Men live by forgetting and woman live on memories. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 157:Men who have much to say use the fewest words. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 158:Money doesn't change men. It merely unmasks them. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 159:Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 160:The fault is in the system and not in the men. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 161:To please great men is not the last degree of praise. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 162:All men do not admire and delight in the same objects. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 163:Books are not men and yet they stay alive. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 164:Great men burn bridges before they come to them. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 165:Hope has often caused the love of gain to ruin men. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 166:I don't go to mythical places with strange men. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 167:I only like two kinds of men, domestic and imported. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 168:It would not be better if men got what they wanted. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 169:Kind words produce their images on men's souls. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 170:Measures, not men, have always been my mark. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 171:Men are not punished for their sins, but by them. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 172:Men are respectable only as they respect. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 173:Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing. ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove 174:Men who not religious or artists are fools. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 175:Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 176:Philosophers are only men in armor after all. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 177:The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 178:The gretteste clerkes been noght wisest men. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 179:We have guided missiles and misguided men. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 180:All men do not, in fine, admire or love the same thing. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 181:As long as men die, liberty will never parish. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 182:Brave deeds are the monuments of brave men. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 183:Clever men are good, but they are not the best. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 184:Even in killing men, observe the rules of propriety. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 185:God only acts and is, in existing beings or men. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 186:Live as brave men and face adversity with stout hearts. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 187:Men always fear things which move by themselves. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 188:Men become friends by a community of pleasures. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 189:Men dislike being awakened from their death in life. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 190:Men should not petition for rights, but take them ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 191:On their deathbed men will speak true, they say. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 192:Surely again, to heal men's wounds by music's spell. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 193:The gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 194:The natural desire of good men is knowledge. ~ leonardo-da-vinci, @wisdomtrove 195:The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 196:Where God works, He works with men that work. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 197:A committee is twelve men doing the work of one. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 198:Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 199:All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 200:As a rule it is circumstances that make men. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 201:Fair peace becomes men; ferocious anger belongs to beasts. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 202:Good fortune is a god among men, and more than a god. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 203:Great men are never cruel without necessity. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 204:History is a myth that men agree to believe. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 205:If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 206:If ever you feel like an animal among men be a lion. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 207:In a narrow sphere great men are blunderers. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 208:Old men are always young enough to learn with profit. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 209:The law, that is what makes men stay honest. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 210:Women have choices, and men have responsibilities. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 211:A bad reader soon puts to flight both wise men and fools. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 212:Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 213:All men have equal rights, but not to equal things. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 214:A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 215:Circumstances rule men and not men rule circumstances. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 216:Great things are done when men and mountains meet. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 217:In war it is not men, but the man who counts. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 218:Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 219:Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 220:May the good God pardon all good men. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 221:Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 222:Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 223:Where soil is, men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 224:Women's love is for their men, not for their children. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 225:Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 226:Few men have been admired of their familiars. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 227:God sends experience to paint men's portraits. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 228:I know so much about men because I went to night school. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 229:Men all do about the same thing when they wake up. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 230:Men do not stumble over mountains, but over mole hills. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 231:Men in rage strike those that wish them best. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 232:Men's minds are given to change in hate and friendship. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 233:Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 234:Public esteem is the recompense of honest men. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 235:Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 236:The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 237:The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 238:The world is God's workshop for making men in. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 239:We are all men, feeble, frail, and apt to faint. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 240:Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 241:Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 242:Congress, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 243:I know only one Church: it is the society of men. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 244:In war, men are nothing, one man is everything. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 245:It is not appropriate to act and speak like men asleep. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 246:Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 247:Men do not suspect faults which they do not commit. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 248:Men have never been individually self-sufficient. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 249:Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove 250:Think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 251:What are men? Mortal gods. What are gods? Immortal men. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 252:... you simply can't imagine what men will say! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 253:& 254:Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 255:Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 256:Fair peace is becoming to men; fierce anger belongs to beasts. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 257:I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 258:Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 259:Men will risk their lives, even die for ribbons. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 260:Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 261:We need men who can dream of things that never were. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 262:Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 263:Women who try to be equivalent with men need desire. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 264:Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 265:Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 266:Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 267:He must have killed a lot of men to have made so much money. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 268:I believe in the single standard - for men and women. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 269:If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 270:Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 271:Men work together, whether they work together or apart. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 272:Silvio, I gotta go, find out something only dead men know. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 273:The heights by great men reached and kept ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 274:The high strength of men knows no content with limitation. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 275:Trouble teaches men how much there is in manhood. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 276:Women are complex and subtle. Men are simple and direct. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 277:As stupid and vicious as men are, this is a lovely day. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 278:Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 279:Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 280:Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 281:Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 282:If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 283:Man, not men, is the most important consideration. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 284:Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 285:Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it. ~ george-carlin, @wisdomtrove 286:Men may come and men may go but I go on forever. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 287:Men who fight wars in winter don't live till spring. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 288:Nearly all men die of their medicines, not of their diseases. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 289:Often have brief words laid men low and then raise them up. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 290:Terrorism is the preferred weapon of weak and evil men. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 291:The swallow is not ensnared by men because of its gentle nature. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 292:The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 293:Thinking men cannot be ruled; ambitious men do not stagnate. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 294:When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 295:When men have killed joy, I do not believe they still live. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 296:When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 297:ye gods! what thick encircling darkness blinds the minds of men! ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 298:After crosses and losses men grow humbler and wiser. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 299:A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 300:And men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 301:Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 302:Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 303:Men have a thousand desires to a bushel of choices. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 304:Men should not care too much for good looks; neglect is becoming. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 305:Our age is one of guided missiles and unguided men. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 306:Real men despise battle, but will never run from it. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 307:Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 308:The end of the day is near when small men make long shadows. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 309:The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 310:The unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 311:What men value in this world is not rights but privileges. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 312:Wise men have but few confidants, and cunning ones none. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 313:Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 314:Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 315:Lawyers are men whom we hire to protect us from lawyers. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 316:Like all mad men, I thought everyone was mad except myself. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 317:Men are all alike - except the one you've met who's different. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 318:Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 319:Optimism is the content of small men in high places. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 320:Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 321:The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 322:The mystical bond of brotherhood makes all men brothers. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 323:There are as many characters in men As there are shapes in nature. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 324:There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 325:Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 326:All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 327:By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 328:If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 329:I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 330:Men are my hobby, if I ever got married I'd have to give it up. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 331:Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 332:Men must read for amusement as well as for knowledge. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 333:Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 334:The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 335:The only really happy folk are married women and single men. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 336:Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 337:A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 338:Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men having barbarian souls. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 339:Fashion: a barricade behind which men hide their nothingness. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 340:Fiction is to grown men what play is to the child. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 341:Great crisis produce great men and great deeds of courage. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 342:I never set out to make men a career; it just happened that way. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 343:In the long run men hit only what they aim at. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 344:I only have & 345:It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 346:Many men who transgress justice, honor appearance over reality. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 347:Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 348:Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 349:Men make their choice: one man honors one God, and one another. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 350:Men's best successes come after their disappointments. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 351:Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 352:Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 353:Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his Throne ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 354:The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 355:There are other men, and other lives, and time still to be. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 356:Time lost, as men may see, For nothing may recovered be. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 357:We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Learning together. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 358:A Christian is the gentlest of men; but then he is a man. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 359:Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 360:Great crises produce great men, and great deeds of courage. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 361:He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 362:I dislike wealth and prosperity, especially that of other men. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 363:Men tighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 364:Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 365:Parties weaken themselves by their fear of capable men. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 366:Pay less attention to what men say. Just watch what they do. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 367:The chief drawback with men is that they are too talkative. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 368:The greatest engineering is the engineering of men. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 369:The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 370:There is no greater evil for men than the constraint of fortune. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 371:thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 372:Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 373:Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 374:Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 375:For, to conceited men, all other men are admirers. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 376:God is looking for men in whose hands His glory is safe. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 377:I don't think women outlive men, Doctor. It only seems longer. ~ erma-bombeck, @wisdomtrove 378:I have come to realise that men are not born to be free. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 379:Men cannot act before the camera in the presence of death. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 380:Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 381:Some women pick men to marry& 382:There are two levers for moving men - interest and fear. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 383:There is no reward from God to those who seek it from men. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 384:We live in a world of guided missiles and misguided men. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 385:You cannot stop me; I spend thirty thousand men a month. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 386:Enjoy the fact that you're a woman and men will enjoy it too. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 387:Force is the law of animals, men are ruled by conviction. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 388:I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 389:It was not for societies or states, that Christ died, but for men. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 390:Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 391:Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 392:Men who do things without being told draw the most wages. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 393:More men come to doom through dirty profits than are kept by them. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 394:Most men are in a coma when they are at rest and mad when they act. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 395:Perhaps the early grave Which men weep over may be meant to save. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 396:Pun: A form of wit, to which wise men stoop and fools aspire. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 397:Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 398:There are some men who are masters of cities but slaves to women. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove 399:The same words conceal and declare the thoughts of men. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 400:The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 401:Those wanting wit affect gravity and go by the name of solid men ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 402:What is divine escapes men's notice because of their incredulity. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 403:What men fear is not that death is annihilation but that it is not. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 404:When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 405:Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day? ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 406:All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 407:All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 408:A man like me troubles himself little about a million men. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 409:Any danger spot is tenable if men, brave men, will make it so. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 410:Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 411:He had kept The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 412:How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men? ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 413:I speak not of men's creeds‚Äîthey rest between Man and his Maker. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 414:It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 415:I've found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 416:I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 417:Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 418:Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 419:Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 420:Men were put into the world to teach women the law of compromise. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 421:The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed. ~ fred-allen, @wisdomtrove 422:The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 423:The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 424:Think of me as a sex symbol for the men who don't give a damn. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 425:Those who do not study are only cattle dressed up in men's clothes. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 426:When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 427:With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 428:All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 429:Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 430:For & 431:He who shall hurt the little wren Shall never be beloved by men. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 432:It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 433:Malice delights to blacken the characters of prominent men. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 434:Men don't care what's on TV. They only care what else is on TV. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 435:Men fearing their innate power, pushed woman back into slavery. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 436:Nothing is real beyond imaginative patterns men make of reality. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 437:Ten men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home, I'm tired. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 438:The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 439:True goodness springs from a man's own heart. All men are born good. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 440:We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 441:A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 442:As many men as there are existing, so many are their different pursuits. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 443:Grieve not that men do not know you; grieve that you do not know men. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 444:If you don't know how to serve men, why worry about serving the gods? ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 445:I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 446:I'm looking for a perfume to overpower men - I'm sick of karate. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 447:It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 448:Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 449:Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 450:Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 451:The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions. ~ leonardo-da-vinci, @wisdomtrove 452:There is something good in men that really yearn for discipline. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 453:The word of God tends to make large-minded noble-minded men. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 454:When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 455:How poor is the wisdom of men, and how uncertain their forecast! ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 456:I go for two kinds of men. The kind with muscles, and the kind without. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 457:Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 458:Men hate the haughty of heart who will not be the friend of every man. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 459:Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 460:Men’s natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 461:Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 462:Men will let you abuse them if only you will make them laugh. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 463:Most men go through life unchallenged, except at the final moment. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 464:There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 465:To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 466:What you do to these men on California's Death Row, you do to God. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 467:Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 468:Women rescue men just as much as, if not more than, men rescue women. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 469:You don't govern men who don't have religion, you shoot them. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 470:All men are equal ‚Äî all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 471:By knowing Him who alone pervades the universe, men become immortal. ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove 472:Great men are meteors, consuming themselves to light the world ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 473:If men are God's gift to women, then God must really love gag gifts. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 474:I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 475:I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 476:I shudder at the thought of men... . I'm due to fall in love again ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 477:It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 478:It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 479:Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 480:On their side more men are standing, on ours more will fight! ~ alexander-the-great, @wisdomtrove 481:Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 482:The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 483:The world is changing. It is no longer a world just for boys and men ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 484:Besides reasoning about matters of fact, men also make moral judgements. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 485:By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 486:By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 487:God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 488:Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 489:Great men are but common men more fully developed and ripened. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 490:History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 491:In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 492:Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 493:Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 494:Men's virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 495:More men die of worry than of work, because more men worry than work. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 496:My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 497:On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 498:Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 499:Surely if men's hearts were right, short sermons would be enough. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 500:Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Bad pony-men! BOO! ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
2:Bloody men, eh? ~ Paul Pilkington, #NFDB
3:Men are such boys. ~ Gayle Forman, #NFDB
4:Men learn as they teach. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
5:We are the hollow men ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
6:All men are born good. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
7:All men love themselves. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
8:All men make mistakes. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
9:Men argue. Nature acts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
10:We men are wretched things ~ Homer, #NFDB
11:Who, of men, can tell ~ John Keats, #NFDB
12:All men are dogs, ~ Christina Stead, #NFDB
13:All men must die. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
14:Anger made men easy. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
15:I Like Gay Men, Right Ken? ~ Eminem, #NFDB
16:mead for my men! ~ Donald Barthelme, #NFDB
17:Men do not value a good deed ~ Ovid, #NFDB
18:men in close combat ~ Alex Berenson, #NFDB
19:Men who only live to eat. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
20:Thanks to men ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
21:We men are wretched things. ~ Homer, #NFDB
22:Evil draws men together. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
23:Evils draw men together. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
24:Great men can't be ruled. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
25:Men cannot live forever ~ Allen Tate, #NFDB
26:men did act weird. ~ Paul Pilkington, #NFDB
27:Men plan. Fate Laughs. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
28:Why do men go to zoos? ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
29:A god among men indeed. ~ C J Redwine, #NFDB
30:All men are difficult. ~ Sharon Gless, #NFDB
31:All middle men are bad. ~ Syd Barrett, #NFDB
32:are the crown of old men, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
33:Bad Men Do What Good Men ~ Ian Rankin, #NFDB
34:Dead men have no victory. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
35:Dead men tell no tales. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
36:Evil brings men together. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
37:Men are idol factories. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
38:Small country, small men. ~ Zane Grey, #NFDB
39:All men are brutes. ~ Beatriz Williams, #NFDB
40:All men hate the nagging. ~ Kevin Hart, #NFDB
41:All men have need of the gods. ~ Homer, #NFDB
42:I teach that all men are mad. ~ Horace, #NFDB
43:Men make their own history ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
44:Real men change diapers! ~ Nick Cannon, #NFDB
45:Sand camouflage army men ~ Lupe Fiasco, #NFDB
46:Trust is everything to men ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
47:But he died, as all men do. ~ G P Ching, #NFDB
48:Desperate men fight best. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
49:Hard to animals, hard to men. ~ Proverb, #NFDB
50:I’ve killed men for less. ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
51:Men are a strange breed. ~ Richard Ford, #NFDB
52:Men are brilliantly stupid. ~ C L Stone, #NFDB
53:Men. Idiot, idiot men. ~ Mariana Zapata, #NFDB
54:Money is better than men. ~ Helen Hoang, #NFDB
55:Old men need applause too. ~ Don Everly, #NFDB
56:The life of men is painful. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
57:the Poor Men of Lyons, ~ Mark Kurlansky, #NFDB
58:The race of men is divine. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
59:There are no real men. ~ Chrissie Hynde, #NFDB
60:Adversity makes men remember God. ~ Livy, #NFDB
61:Good men do the most harm. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
62:If men must beg to live, ~ Thiruvalluvar, #NFDB
63:Love is for real men. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
64:Men are the dreams of a shadow. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
65:Men lie, women lie, numbers dont ~ Jay Z, #NFDB
66:Men, they never think. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
67:No Country for Old Men ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
68:One should seek God among men. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
69:Several other men played ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
70:The game women play is men. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
71:The weakness of most men ~ Aime Cesaire, #NFDB
72:What are men? Mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
73:Adversity reminds men of religion. ~ Livy, #NFDB
74:Ah, tell them they are men! ~ Thomas Gray, #NFDB
75:awise men †from the East came ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
76:Dead men can't hold grudges. ~ V E Schwab, #NFDB
77:DeWarenne men love forever ~ Brenda Joyce, #NFDB
78:God laughs at men's plans. ~ Larry Gatlin, #NFDB
79:Gold makes monsters of men. ~ Erin Bowman, #NFDB
80:Good God. Men everywhere. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
81:Men and women are not equal. ~ Mel Gibson, #NFDB
82:Men are a luxury, not a necessity. ~ Cher, #NFDB
83:Men are like lions. We hunt. ~ Kevin Hart, #NFDB
84:Men are not potatoes! ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
85:Men die the way they lived. ~ Johnny Hunt, #NFDB
86:men i swear."
-jacky faber ~ L A Meyer,#NFDB
87:Men must sweat to attain virtue. ~ Hesiod, #NFDB
88:men spell relief S E X. ~ Michael Baisden, #NFDB
89:Men that hazard all ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
90:Neglect of appearance becomes men. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
91:Real men don’t moisturise. ~ Edmund White, #NFDB
92:The men ate seriously. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
93:…” The men left, turning ~ E L Konigsburg, #NFDB
94:The men who create power ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
95:There are no gods, only men. ~ David Vann, #NFDB
96:What are men? Mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
97:Wine gives strength to weary men. ~ Homer, #NFDB
98:All men are alike when asleep. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
99:all men are the same age. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
100:Boys Shack, MEN build homes ~ Steve Harvey, #NFDB
101:Difficulty shows what men are. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
102:Hard times made hard men. ~ Mitchell Hogan, #NFDB
103:Men are four; ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
104:Men are ruled by toys ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
105:Men cannot grieve as dogs do. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
106:Men love newfangleness. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
107:Old men ought to be explorers. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
108:Only poor men get hanged. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
109:O, what men dare do! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
110:Real men don't take Baths! ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
111:The King's lost all his men ~ Nora Sakavic, #NFDB
112:The men ate and hydrated, ~ Ryan W Aslesen, #NFDB
113:There are as many characters in men ~ Ovid, #NFDB
114:Times don't change. Men do. ~ Sam Levenson, #NFDB
115:a dream to capture men’s souls, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
116:All men of honor are alone. ~ F Paul Wilson, #NFDB
117:Bad men are full of repentance. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
118:Difficulty shows what men are. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
119:Great hopes make great men. ~ Thomas Fuller, #NFDB
120:I will make you a fisher of men ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
121:Men are ruled by toys. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
122:Men were fools, whole or not. ~ Alec Hutson, #NFDB
123:My! ain't men blinder'n moles? ~ Amy Lowell, #NFDB
124:So many men, so little parking. ~ Nell Zink, #NFDB
125:Study men, not historians. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
126:the world. When the men ~ Lauraine Snelling, #NFDB
127:Threatened men live long. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
128:three men visibly tensed when ~ M L Gardner, #NFDB
129:All men are potential rapists. ~ Nandita Das, #NFDB
130:All men will be sailors then ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
131:And man will go on. Man, not men. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
132:By nature, all men long to know. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
133:Career now....Men, whenever. ~ Susan Mallery, #NFDB
134:Dead men don't bite ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
135:exactly why men paid for sex. ~ Kenya Wright, #NFDB
136:Follow peace with all men. ~ Hebrews XII. 14, #NFDB
137:Great men are forged, not born. ~ Wesley Chu, #NFDB
138:Great men are not so selfless. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
139:Great men are sincere. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
140:Great men have big failures. ~ Rudy Giuliani, #NFDB
141:How blind men are to Heaven's gifts! ~ Lucan, #NFDB
142:I'm a big fan of 'Mad Men.' ~ Bryan Cranston, #NFDB
143:I wish all men were like dogs. ~ Halle Berry, #NFDB
144:Jesus Heals Ten Men With Leprosy ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
145:Men are fantastic - as a concept. ~ Jo Brand, #NFDB
146:Men are led by trifles. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
147:Men often marry their mothers. ~ Edna Ferber, #NFDB
148:Men Who Love Dragons Too Much. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
149:Most American men are repressors. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
150:Press on, press on, men. ~ Stonewall Jackson, #NFDB
151:Scottish men are . . . hardy? ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
152:Wine give strenght to weary men. and ~ Homer, #NFDB
153:You cannot make men good by law. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
154:All men are created equal. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
155:All men by nature desire to know. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
156:All men desire by nature to know. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
157:a mystery to make men mad. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
158:Beware of men bearing flowers. ~ Muriel Spark, #NFDB
159:Close your legs to married men. ~ NeNe Leakes, #NFDB
160:Daring is not safe against daring men. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
161:Eight or nine men were present ~ John Brunner, #NFDB
162:Even better men can be bested ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
163:Few men are wantonly wicked. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
164:God has made all men to be happy. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
165:Grown men do not need leaders. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
166:I prefer men to cauliflowers ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
167:Men are as the time is. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
168:Men are lead by trifles. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
169:Men are never brave, are they? ~ Cherie Blair, #NFDB
170:Men are swine.”“Not all of us ~ Joe Schreiber, #NFDB
171:Men fight wars. Women win them. ~ Elizabeth I, #NFDB
172:Nothing is worth anything to dead men. ~ Arya, #NFDB
173:Peace on earth, good will to men ~ Dobie Gray, #NFDB
174:She sighed. Men were a pain. ~ Larry McMurtry, #NFDB
175:this is how men treat one another. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
176:War among men defiles this world. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
177:War makes monsters out of men. ~ Patrick Ness, #NFDB
178:Wine is only sweet to happy men. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
179:With words we govern men. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
180:And no one gossips like men. ~ Justina Ireland, #NFDB
181:A noble book! all men's book! ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
182:Boys don't cry, but men do. ~ Malorie Blackman, #NFDB
183:Boys Shack, MEN build homes
~ Steve Harvey,#NFDB
184:By men's words we know them. ~ Marie de France, #NFDB
185:God created women only to tame men. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
186:Great men have great dogs. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
187:Great men have great faults. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
188:I like man, but not men. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
189:I like men-inspired outfits. ~ Elizabeth Olsen, #NFDB
190:In soft regions are born soft men. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
191:Love makes men into fools. ~ Danielle L Jensen, #NFDB
192:Men die and they are not happy. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
193:Men die:and they are not happy. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
194:Men die; and they are not happy ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
195:Men want to make women happy. ~ Jerry Seinfeld, #NFDB
196:Most men cannot write good sex. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
197:Only wise men look for new wisdom. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
198:Real men don’t need porn. ~ Drew Nellins Smith, #NFDB
199:Size 8 women’s, and a men’s 10. ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
200:Some of my best men are women! ~ William Booth, #NFDB
201:Sorrow makes men sincere. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
202:The deeds of men never escape the gods. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
203:Time is the king of men. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
204:Too much philosophy makes men mad. ~ Alan Judd, #NFDB
205:Virtuous men alone possess friends. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
206:Wars are begun by frightened men. ~ Tom Clancy, #NFDB
207:We ask to be recognized as men. ~ Chief Joseph, #NFDB
208:Who knows why men do anything? ~ Richard Adams, #NFDB
209:Women are less aesthetic than men. ~ Alice Eve, #NFDB
210:All men are born equally free. ~ Salmon P Chase, #NFDB
211:All men are equal before fish. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
212:All men by nature desire knowledge. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
213:All men die. Only a few ever live. ~ Mel Gibson, #NFDB
214:All the men on my staff can type. ~ Bella Abzug, #NFDB
215:All women are inferior to men. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
216:Always blame conditions, not men ~ Frank Norris, #NFDB
217:And men my prophet wail deride! ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
218:Beasts kill for hunger, men for pay. ~ John Gay, #NFDB
219:Books are dead men talking. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
220:D-Day: 150,000 Men -- and One Woman ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
221:Dead men would start and move ~ Hilda Doolittle, #NFDB
222:Even bad men love their mommas. ~ Russell Crowe, #NFDB
223:Fighting men are the city's fortress. ~ Alcaeus, #NFDB
224:Gay men needed lightbulbs too. ~ Philip Hensher, #NFDB
225:He who knows other men is discerning; ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
226:How could he be both of these men? ~ Idra Novey, #NFDB
227:I love to tease men with my legs. ~ Eartha Kitt, #NFDB
228:It's shame that eats men whole. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
229:I want to do a make-up line for men. ~ Adam Ant, #NFDB
230:Land of lost gods and godlike men. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
231:Love, yes. Word known to all men. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
232:Mad men work for their own destruction ~ Seneca, #NFDB
233:Meetings with Remarkable Men, ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
234:men are wretched things.’ When ~ Jake Remington, #NFDB
235:Men die but an idea does not. ~ Alan Jay Lerner, #NFDB
236:Men don't traipse. We... Swagger ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
237:Men go to their caves .. Women talk ~ John Gray, #NFDB
238:Men make the best friends. ~ Jean de la Bruyere, #NFDB
239:Men respect standards- get some! ~ Steve Harvey, #NFDB
240:Men suck, even imaginary ones ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
241:Men use the night to erase us. ~ Andrea Dworkin, #NFDB
242:Not all men are worthy of love. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
243:Purity and peace make men upright. ~ Lao-Tsu-Te, #NFDB
244:Reflection makes men cowards. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
245:Strong women only marry weak men. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
246:The hearts of great men can be changed. ~ Homer, #NFDB
247:Those who fear men like laws. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
248:Turtle makes all men equal. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
249:War is no place for good men. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
250:Whatever men say, women know; ~ Christina Stead, #NFDB
251:What men have seen they know. . . . ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
252:Wise men say nothing in dangerous times ~ Aesop, #NFDB
253:Young men preen. Old men scheme. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
254:All brave men are slightly stupid. ~ Mark Haddon, #NFDB
255:All men are brothers. Hence war. ~ Simon Munnery, #NFDB
256:All men are created unequal. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
257:All men live in suffering ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
258:All men, well interrogated, answer well. ~ Plato, #NFDB
259:All those men have their price. ~ Robert Walpole, #NFDB
260:Base men who prosper are unenviable. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
261:Cut Men's throats with whisperings. ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
262:Dead men’s gold belongs to no one. ~ Luke Taylor, #NFDB
263:Even great men can be corrupted ~ J Edgar Hoover, #NFDB
264:God, who oft descends to visit men ~ John Milton, #NFDB
265:Grieve not that men do not know you; ~ Confucius, #NFDB
266:He was one of those capital M Men. ~ Lauren Dane, #NFDB
267:I am not for women but against men. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
268:If men want sex they'll find it. ~ Cynthia Payne, #NFDB
269:I have always advised men to read ~ Mother Jones, #NFDB
270:I have known some wonderful men. ~ Gloria Allred, #NFDB
271:I keep six honest serving men. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
272:I love con-men characters in film. ~ Simon Baker, #NFDB
273:I love men who make me laugh. ~ Nastassja Kinski, #NFDB
274:In men whom men condemn as ill ~ Joaquin Miller, #NFDB
275:It is not right to exult over slain men. ~ Homer, #NFDB
276:Jesus wants men who will rule well. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
277:Jewish men don't know anything. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
278:Lucky men are favorites of Heaven. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
279:Men aren't necessities, they're luxuries. ~ Cher, #NFDB
280:Men are often made stupid by love. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
281:Men expect too much, do too little, ~ Allen Tate, #NFDB
282:Men expect too much, do too little. ~ Allen Tate, #NFDB
283:Men get the war they deserve. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
284:Men have periods; they're called wars. ~ Chuck D, #NFDB
285:men in high collars who might—this ~ Peter Carey, #NFDB
286:Men learn while they teach. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
287:More men go to church than want to. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
288:Nobody knows why men do things. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
289:Older is better with wine and men ~ Shelly Crane, #NFDB
290:Only poor men get hanged. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
291:stars are the spirits of good men, ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
292:The gods play games with men as balls. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
293:There are no good men in this game, ~ V E Schwab, #NFDB
294:There are no good men in this game. ~ V E Schwab, #NFDB
295:What is it about men and swords? ~ Julie Klassen, #NFDB
296:Women are more credulous than men. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
297:Words are women, deeds are men. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
298:A government of laws, and not of men ~ John Adams, #NFDB
299:All men are poets at heart. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
300:All thinking men are atheists. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
301:Beer is made by men, wine by God. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
302:Big Men and Big Women, ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
303:Chances rule men and not men chances. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
304:Dead men tell no tales, Mary. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
305:Good work is not done by 'humble' men ~ G H Hardy, #NFDB
306:Great men are almost always bad men. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
307:Greed has poisoned men's souls. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
308:I can make men follow me to hell. ~ Philip Kearny, #NFDB
309:Lord, what men don’t know is a lot. ~ Damon Suede, #NFDB
310:Men are men, but Man is a woman. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
311:Men can know the nature of things ~ Henry Kuttner, #NFDB
312:Men don’t fail; they give up trying. ~ Og Mandino, #NFDB
313:Men fear most what they cannot see. ~ Liam Neeson, #NFDB
314:Men must know their limitations. ~ Clint Eastwood, #NFDB
315:Men need to live and breathe women. ~ Adam Levine, #NFDB
316:Men of principle are sure to be bold, ~ Confucius, #NFDB
317:Men who fear demons see demons everywhere. ~ Brom, #NFDB
318:Most men are not that evolved. ~ Rosanna Arquette, #NFDB
319:Nine Men in Ten are Suicides. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
320:Nine men in ten are suicides. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
321:Real men have beards. Grow one, ~ Victoria Ashley, #NFDB
322:Science brings men nearer to God. ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
323:Some men cannot be reasoned with. ~ Oliver Bowden, #NFDB
324:We are a race of tit-men... ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
325:What are men? Children who doubt. ~ Derek Walcott, #NFDB
326:Wild men are so enormously attractive. ~ Jo Brand, #NFDB
327:Without gay men, I am nothing. ~ Janice Dickinson, #NFDB
328:Women lie and men do not?" "Yes, ~ T W Piperbrook, #NFDB
329:yet men die miserably every day ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
330:You should not honor men more than truth. ~ Plato, #NFDB
331:A government of laws, and not of men. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
332:All men are brothers in the night. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
333:Amongst good men two men suffice. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
334:Arguments, like men, are often pretenders. ~ Plato, #NFDB
335:Bad men cannot make good citizens. ~ Patrick Henry, #NFDB
336:Bad men do what good men only dream. ~ Gavin Ewart, #NFDB
337:Boys don't cry but real men do. ~ Malorie Blackman, #NFDB
338:Devil triumphs when good men do nowt ~ David Peace, #NFDB
339:Few great men could pass personnel. ~ Paul Goodman, #NFDB
340:For men to tell how human life began ~ John Milton, #NFDB
341:Great men look greater than yesterday. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
342:hopes dance best on bald men's hair ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
343:I didn't like men, but I liked women. ~ Carl Andre, #NFDB
344:I go to bed with men, not boys. ~ Linda Fiorentino, #NFDB
345:I have been all men known to history, ~ R S Thomas, #NFDB
346:I know how men in exile feed on dreams ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
347:I love my husband. I hate men. ~ Michelle McNamara, #NFDB
348:Jealousy is common among lesser men, ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
349:Know the great men of your age. ~ Baltasar Gracian, #NFDB
350:Lie faces God and shrikns from men ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
351:Malicious men may die, but malice never. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
352:Malicious men may die, but malice never. ~ Moli re, #NFDB
353:Men and women aren't too dissimilar. ~ Chris Evans, #NFDB
354:Men are as faithful as their options. ~ Chris Rock, #NFDB
355:Mencils?” “Pencils for men. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
356:Men consort in camp and town ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
357:Men exist for the sake of one another, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
358:Men get killed and nobody minds. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
359:…men never forgive like women. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
360:men were both brutes and blockheads. ~ Anna Sewell, #NFDB
361:Men would bless you or curse you; ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
362:Observe all men, thyself most. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
363:Only God is perfect. Men are not. ~ Sister Souljah, #NFDB
364:overestimate men’s ability to interpret. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
365:Shallow men believe in luck. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
366:Some men live with an invisible limp, ~ Robert Bly, #NFDB
367:Sufficiency's enough for men of sense. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
368:Valentine's Day's not for men. ~ Russell Westbrook, #NFDB
369:Victory passes back and forth between men. ~ Homer, #NFDB
370:What are men to rocks and mountains? ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
371:Without work men are utterly undone. ~ Nevil Shute, #NFDB
372:Women hate a debt as men a gift. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
373:All men are greater than dead men. ~ R Scott Bakker, #NFDB
374:between the two men, as if they ~ Lauraine Snelling, #NFDB
375:Conceit is God's gift to little men. ~ Bruce Barton, #NFDB
376:Cruel men cry easily at the cinema. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
377:feud and one of the most feared men ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
378:For whose sake are good women? For good men! ~ Rumi, #NFDB
379:Golden roofs break men's rest. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
380:Good men fall to monsters every day. ~ E K Johnston, #NFDB
381:I don't mind dating younger men now. ~ Jackee Harry, #NFDB
382:I know how men in exile feed on dreams. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
383:I own with reason: for, if men but knew ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
384:I preach as a dying man to dying men. ~ Greg Laurie, #NFDB
385:I think men who can cry are strong men ~ James Frey, #NFDB
386:I thought men like that shot themselves. ~ George V, #NFDB
387:I travelled among unknown men, ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
388:kill not only men, but ideas. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
389:Love makes saints or sinners out of men. ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
390:Men are so easily drawn to fake things. ~ Lisa Lutz, #NFDB
391:Men do not settle down. Men surrender. ~ Chris Rock, #NFDB
392:Men like you enjoy being flattered. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
393:Men of sense do not want silly wives. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
394:Men should be what they seem. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
395:Men usually grow base by degrees. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
396:Men want a tight cunt and a pretty face ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
397:Only weak men want women to be weak. ~ Anne Fortier, #NFDB
398:Pray, for all men need the aid of the gods. ~ Homer, #NFDB
399:Produce great men, the rest follows. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
400:The best laid schemes o’ mice and men, ~ M C Beaton, #NFDB
401:The old men know when an old man dies. ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB
402:The ruling of men was a dirty business— ~ Susan Kay, #NFDB
403:to fish someone out of the men’s loos. ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
404:We are all the President's men. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
405:We cannot learn men from books. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
406:We die alone, but we live among men. ~ John Marston, #NFDB
407:We must not look at goblin men ~ Christina Rossetti, #NFDB
408:What all men fear is indeed to be feared; ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
409:When I was young, I loved black men. ~ Jessica Alba, #NFDB
410:Why do beautiful women love ugly men? ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
411:Wise men change, fools stay the same. ~ Kevin Gates, #NFDB
412:Wise men think and speak alike. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
413:Be a man. Boys brag men don’t need to. ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
414:Books are the liberated spirits of men. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
415:Boys are very like men to be sure. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
416:by indignities men come to dignities ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
417:Cats like men are flatterers. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
418:Common sense among men of fortune is rare. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
419:Dawn: When men of reason go to bed. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
420:Don't be economic Girlie-Men ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
421:Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
422:Full of men, vacant of friends. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
423:Hell is a word men use in place of fear. ~ Myke Cole, #NFDB
424:Hopeful men do not die so easily. ~ Alexander Dolgun, #NFDB
425:How different men were to women! ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
426:However things hurt, men hurt worse. ~ John Berryman, #NFDB
427:I build only living stones--men. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
428:I collect men with interesting names. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
429:If boys don't learn, men won't know ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
430:In truth, men speak too much of danger. ~ Jose Marti, #NFDB
431:I think men are a beautiful creation. ~ Krista Allen, #NFDB
432:Love perseveres. It's men who change. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
433:Men always say I LOVE YOU as a QUESTION ~ S J Watson, #NFDB
434:Men and Melons are hard to know. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
435:Men are only as loyal as their options. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
436:Men are pigs. Too bad we own everything. ~ Tim Allen, #NFDB
437:Men blaspheme what they do not know. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
438:Men get laid, but women get screwed. ~ Quentin Crisp, #NFDB
439:Men have scars, women mysteries. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
440:Men lie the most. Men lie all the time. ~ Chris Rock, #NFDB
441:Men marry what they need. I marry you. ~ John Ciardi, #NFDB
442:Men see what they expect to see. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
443:Men who ape the saint and play the sinner. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
444:Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men, ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
445:Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
446:Other men's crosses are not my crosses. ~ John Donne, #NFDB
447:Success has made failures of many men. ~ Cindy Adams, #NFDB
448:The applause and the favour of our fellow-men ~ Ovid, #NFDB
449:The good that men do lives after them. ~ Ruth Gordon, #NFDB
450:The men in our world are terrible beasts ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
451:The strongest men are the most alone. ~ Henrik Ibsen, #NFDB
452:The worst men have the best jobs ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
453:Too many men are afraid of being fools. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
454:Two men looked out from prison bars, ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
455:weak men are afraid of a woman's strength. ~ R H Sin, #NFDB
456:We are the women men warned us about. ~ Robin Morgan, #NFDB
457:What is one man among so many men? ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
458:Wise men hear and see as little children do. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
459:Wise men mold their own character. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
460:Women and men(both little and small) ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
461:Women are fiercer by far than men. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
462:Women are more sensitive than men. ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
463:Ah, when shall all men's good ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
464:All men begin their learning with Homer. ~ Xenophanes, #NFDB
465:All men must marry much younger women ~ Saif Ali Khan, #NFDB
466:Beauty is the greatest seducer of men. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
467:By indignities men come to dignities. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
468:Dreaming men are haunted men. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet, #NFDB
469:Dreaming men are haunted men. ~ Stephen Vincent Ben t, #NFDB
470:Educated men are so impressive! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
471:Educated men are so impressive. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
472:Evil succeeds when good men do nothing ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
473:Gold diggers are the wife beaters of men! ~ Bill Burr, #NFDB
474:Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta. ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
475:his men will betray you in the end—you ~ Scott McEwen, #NFDB
476:I do think men fear female intuition. ~ Peter Buffett, #NFDB
477:If boys don't learn, men won't know. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
478:I like honest men of all colors. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
479:I’ve read Hamlet, I know men suffer. ~ Andrea Dworkin, #NFDB
480:Men are born, and then they're formed. ~ John Marston, #NFDB
481:Men are creatures with eight hands. ~ Jayne Mansfield, #NFDB
482:Men are cruel, but Man is kind. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
483:Men are good but women are magic. ~ Catherine Deneuve, #NFDB
484:Men are only so much use. Men are boys. ~ Garth Ennis, #NFDB
485:Men are unwise and curiously planned. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
486:Men are vile inconstant toads, ~ Jennifer Lee Carrell, #NFDB
487:Men," Chelsea muttered derisively... ~ Aprilynne Pike, #NFDB
488:Men date. Women have relationships. ~ Cathy Guisewite, #NFDB
489:Men Fra Erindringen, Det Svundne
~ Emil Aarestrup,#NFDB
490:Men practice war; beasts do not. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
491:Men's vows are women's traitors ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
492:Men willingly believe what they wish. ~ Julius Caesar, #NFDB
493:Monuments, like men, submit to fate. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
494:Most men are unwilling to be taught. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
495:Some men are born posthumously. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
496:THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
497:There are no good men in this game. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
498:There's daggers in men's smiles ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
499:The vices of some men are magnificent. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
500:The wisdom of men is worth little or nothing. ~ Plato, #NFDB
501:Time is the best preserver of righteous men. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
502:To little men, gods send little things. ~ Callimachus, #NFDB
503:Trees and men do not grow together, ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
504:Trees are swayed by winds, men by words. ~ Joan Aiken, #NFDB
505:War gives men good ignoring skills. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
506:Wealth accumulates, and men decay. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
507:Without game, men prey on each other. ~ Perry Farrell, #NFDB
508:You can't hate men if you know them. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
509:You men,' she says. 'You durn men. ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
510:All great virtues become great men. ~ Pierre Corneille, #NFDB
511:All men are brothered in Jesus Christ. ~ Pope Pius XII, #NFDB
512:All men die; few men ever really live. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
513:All men would be tyrants if they could. ~ Daniel Defoe, #NFDB
514:Away, away, from men and towns, ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
515:Boys must not have th' ambitious care of men, ~ Horace, #NFDB
516:By nature, men love newfangledness. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
517:Death is not the worst that can happen to men. ~ Plato, #NFDB
518:He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. ~ Solomon, #NFDB
519:He who loves men, loves their joy ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
520:I believe that woman are superior to men. ~ Carl Andre, #NFDB
521:I don't sleep with happily married men. ~ Britt Ekland, #NFDB
522:If Jupiter should hurl a bolt whenever men sin, ~ Ovid, #NFDB
523:I like men who are more in their heads. ~ Kelli Garner, #NFDB
524:I like simple men and complicated women. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
525:It is difficulties that show what men are. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
526:I trust men only because I trust God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
527:I've always liked men better than women. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
528:I've been watching Mad Men since day one. ~ Gayle King, #NFDB
529:Jacin had run.
Only guilty men run. ~ Marissa Meyer,#NFDB
530:Men always makes gods in their own image. ~ Xenophanes, #NFDB
531:Men are but children of a larger growth. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
532:Men are every bit as gendered as women. ~ Jackson Katz, #NFDB
533:Men grow old, but they do not ripen. ~ Alphonse Daudet, #NFDB
534:Men hate those to whom they have to lie. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
535:Men have learned the secret of unity. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
536:Men must not only know, they must act. ~ W E B Du Bois, #NFDB
537:Men must work, and women must weep. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
538:Men often fall in love at first sight ~ Jeffrey Archer, #NFDB
539:Men's language is as their lives. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
540:Men so sick they are dying of death. ~ Sebastian Barry, #NFDB
541:Men trust their ears less than their eyes. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
542:Men were beasts. Everyone knew that. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
543:Men will not always die quietly. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
544:Men with The Vibe appreciate and value life. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
545:Methinks love maketh men like Angels. ~ Catherine Parr, #NFDB
546:Necessity makes dastards valiant men. ~ Robert Herrick, #NFDB
547:Nobody does good to men with impunity. ~ Auguste Rodin, #NFDB
548:O momentary grace of mortal men, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
549:Only grown-up men are scared of women. ~ Ernest Lehman, #NFDB
550:Philip, whom men nicknamed ‘Beautiful’, ~ Paul Doherty, #NFDB
551:Presents, believe me, seduce both men and gods. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
552:Pride divides the men, humility joins them. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
553:Six thousand feet above men and time ... ~ John Zerzan, #NFDB
554:That power Which erring men call Chance. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
555:The future does not belong to men. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
556:The good men will come, when your whole ~ Kenya Wright, #NFDB
557:There are no good men, only good monsters. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
558:There is no justice among men. ~ Nicholas II of Russia, #NFDB
559:There's Dagger's in men's smiles ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
560:There's daggers in men's smiles. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
561:The wisest men follow their own direction. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
562:The world eats good men for breakfast. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
563:Though old himself, he disliked old men. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
564:Time perfects men as well as destroys them. ~ Chanakya, #NFDB
565:Time takes away the grief of men. ~ Desiderius Erasmus, #NFDB
566:What can books of men that wive ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
567:What men yearn for they often destroy. ~ Alice Hoffman, #NFDB
568:Why do men feel threatened by women? ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
569:Women and men are equal human beings. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
570:Women fake orgasms and men fake finances. ~ Suze Orman, #NFDB
571:Write me as one who loves his fellow men. ~ Leigh Hunt, #NFDB
572:You know men. We have delicate egos. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
573:Your drug of choice is the wrong men. ~ Paula Marinaro, #NFDB
574:About 97% of the media is created by men. ~ Jodie Evans, #NFDB
575:All men are mad in some way or the other; ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
576:All men have opinions, but few think. ~ George Berkeley, #NFDB
577:All men's gains are the fruit of venturing. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
578:Aristotle said: "Evil brings men together." ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
579:Clergy are men as well as other folks. ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
580:Come home to men's business and bosoms. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
581:Evil exists only in the hearts of men. ~ Brian Rathbone, #NFDB
582:Evil prevails when good men fail to act. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
583:Factions are blind men who aim correctly. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
584:Few men think; yet all have opinions. ~ George Berkeley, #NFDB
585:For oute of olde feldys, as men sey, ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
586:Free men have arms; slaves do not. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
587:Gay men are French women...with penises. ~ Simon Doonan, #NFDB
588:God is for men, and religion for women. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
589:God made the water but men made the wine. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
590:Great men have the nature of a child. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
591:Great men never require experience. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
592:Hawk and his band of not-so-merry men. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
593:He killed more men than the cholera. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
594:He who loves men, loves their joy. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
595:Homo is a common name to all men. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
596:How great in number are the little minded men ~ Plautus, #NFDB
597:I just think women are funnier than men. ~ Margaret Cho, #NFDB
598:In sports and journeys men are knowne. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
599:I really like clever men who challenge you. ~ E L James, #NFDB
600:I trust men even less than I trust gods. ~ Heidi Heilig, #NFDB
601:jealous men only tormented themselves. ~ Philip Freeman, #NFDB
602:Koii Us Shahar Men Kab Thaa Uskaa
~ Abdullah Kamaal,#NFDB
603:Legends simply don't live or die like men ~ Paul Levitz, #NFDB
604:Loneliness makes us men weak. - Wilhelm Barli ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
605:Makes of men date, like makes of car. ~ Elizabeth Bowen, #NFDB
606:Men are fools to invest in real estate. ~ Basil Bunting, #NFDB
607:Men aren't asked about their children. ~ Julianne Moore, #NFDB
608:Men build society and society builds men. ~ B F Skinner, #NFDB
609:Men can make an idol of the Bible. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
610:Men conceal the past scenes of their lives. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
611:Men create the gods after their own images. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
612:...Men fear what they themselves have imagined. ~ Lucan, #NFDB
613:Men from children nothing differ. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
614:Men hate more steadily than they love. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
615:Men should have rough hands and be strong. ~ Scott Caan, #NFDB
616:Men who love the Stones are fixated on cock. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
617:No battle was ever won by wholly sane men. ~ Lynn Viehl, #NFDB
618:Of men eternally dear! happy indeed ~ Giacomo Leopardi, #NFDB
619:Only stupid men would want stupid wives! ~ Robert Thier, #NFDB
620:Real men hold themselves accountable for stuff. ~ Ice T, #NFDB
621:Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. ~ Plato, #NFDB
622:Six feet of dirt make all men equal. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
623:Small things make base men proud. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
624:Still all the tulkus being born are men. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
625:The greatest men are the most alone. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
626:The Muse is mute when public men ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
627:The stars never lie, but Men and Beasts do. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
628:The truth is, men make terrible pigs. ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
629:To lead, you must touch men's hearts. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
630:Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
631:Valar Morghulis - All men must die. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
632:What are men compared to rocks and trees? ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
633:Where wealth accumulates, men decay. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
634:Why was there so much silence between men? ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
635:Wrath brings mortal men their gravest hurt. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
636:Yeah! I went to the set of Monuments Men. ~ Don Cheadle, #NFDB
637:Yes, anally retentive men are my forte! ~ Geoffrey Rush, #NFDB
638:You don’t reason with men like Hitler. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
639:Alcoholics are mostly disappointed men. ~ Burt Lancaster, #NFDB
640:All men are born free: just not for long. ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
641:All men are creative but few are artists. ~ Paul Goodman, #NFDB
642:All men hate the wretched. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
643:All men seek one goal: success or happiness. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
644:America is a country of young men. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
645:and men are, that they might have joy. ~ Joseph Smith Jr, #NFDB
646:At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose. ~ Alcuin, #NFDB
647:Boys seek attention, men demand respect. ~ Habeeb Akande, #NFDB
648:Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, ~ Wilfred Owen, #NFDB
649:Did people say things like this to men? ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
650:Dogs have never hurt me. Only men have. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
651:Doubt finds its way into all men's hearts. ~ Darren Shan, #NFDB
652:Few men think; yet all have opinions. ~ George Berkeley, #NFDB
653:Fools admire, but men of sense approve. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
654:For he that feeds men serveth few; ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
655:God! How men of letters are stupid. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
656:Gods should not resemble men in their anger! ~ Euripides, #NFDB
657:Great men have the nature of a child. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
658:Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
659:History is littered with dead good men ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
660:I disbelieve all holy men and holy books. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
661:I do not love men: I love what devours them. ~ Andr Gide, #NFDB
662:If men be good, government cannot be bad. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
663:I love men. They Taste like Chicken ~ Jill Conner Browne, #NFDB
664:I’m not like other men, Ash. I’m Man 2.0. ~ Sarina Bowen, #NFDB
665:In Gotham, the Monster Men are always coming. ~ Tom King, #NFDB
666:Insecure men make terrible warriors. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
667:In the faces of men and women, I see God. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
668:I only grow hair in places that men like. ~ Lea Thompson, #NFDB
669:It is always in season for old men to learn. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
670:It was man who first made men believe in gods. ~ Critias, #NFDB
671:I would not open windows into men's souls. ~ Elizabeth I, #NFDB
672:Young men, come and blow things up. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
673:Many much-learned men have no intelligence. ~ Democritus, #NFDB
674:Maybe I was just born to argue with men. ~ Johann Lamont, #NFDB
675:Men are as men are. Why should they change? ~ Mark Mills, #NFDB
676:Men are better than this theology. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
677:Men are only as great as they are kind. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
678:Men are slower to recognize blessings than evils. ~ Livy, #NFDB
679:Men become accustomed to poison by degrees ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
680:Men come and go but bills are forever. ~ Michael Baisden, #NFDB
681:Men come and go, but dust accumulates. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
682:Men destroy only what they fear. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, #NFDB
683:Men exist for the sake of one another. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
684:Men give advice; God gives guidance. ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
685:Men have periods too, they just don't bleed. ~ Tori Amos, #NFDB
686:Men of all lands and climes are brothers. ~ Joseph Hertz, #NFDB
687:Men willingly believe when they want to. ~ Julius Caesar, #NFDB
688:Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72 ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
689:Much Virtue in Herbs, little in Men. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
690:My men have become women, but the women men. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
691:Necessitous men are not free men. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
692:O mortal men, be wary of how ye judge. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
693:Poverty fled, she who gives birth to virile men. ~ Lucan, #NFDB
694:Some men fall from grace. Some are pushed. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
695:Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
696:The army teaches boys to think like men. ~ Elvis Presley, #NFDB
697:There are as many preferences as there are men. ~ Horace, #NFDB
698:There is a calm for you where men and women ~ Allen Tate, #NFDB
699:These are the times that try men's souls. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
700:The whole world is men's bloody fantasies. ~ Kathy Acker, #NFDB
701:They say, the tongues of dying men ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
702:Uncommon Experiences Create Uncommon Men. ~ Mike Murdock, #NFDB
703:We are anthill men upon an anthill world. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
704:We are either kings or pawns of men ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
705:What excellent fools religion makes of men. ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
706:When women go wrong, men go right after them. ~ Mae West, #NFDB
707:Wine hath drowned more men than the sea. ~ Thomas Fuller, #NFDB
708:Women are cursed, and men are the proof. ~ Roseanne Barr, #NFDB
709:Women hear rhythm differently than men. ~ Elvis Costello, #NFDB
710:You can only govern men by serving them. ~ Victor Cousin, #NFDB
711:You kiss better than most men fuck.” Her ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
712:You men are a bunch of god-damned women. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
713:Young men have visions, old men have dreams. ~ Red Smith, #NFDB
714:All men and women go through the same fog. ~ Yasmina Reza, #NFDB
715:All men are born free: just not for long. ~ John le Carre, #NFDB
716:All men want their whores to be unhappy. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
717:All religions have been made by men. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
718:As long as there are men the bulwark is safe. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
719:Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men; ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
720:Bodies of holy men and women exude ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
721:Deserts need trees; men need wisdom! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
722:Do not believe all that men say. ~ Ecclesiasticus XIX. 10, #NFDB
723:Drunken men give some of the best pep talks. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
724:Either war is obsolete or men are. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
725:Fools lie, clever men stick to the truth. ~ Michael Scott, #NFDB
726:Fools make news, and wise men carry it. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
727:Fools multiply when wise men are silent. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
728:For neither do men live nor die in vain. Here ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
729:Forward, men, and mix with them. ~ Nathan Bedford Forrest, #NFDB
730:From all wise men, O Lord, protect us. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
731:Good men but see death, the wicked taste it. ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
732:History is littered with dead good men. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
733:How success changes the opinion of men! ~ Maria Edgeworth, #NFDB
734:I am not in the roll of common men. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
735:I do not love men: I love what devours them. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
736:I don't like it when I outweigh my men. ~ Patricia Briggs, #NFDB
737:If all men were rich, all men would be poor. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
738:I had grown men cry. I mean, literally. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
739:I like jealous men. I love jealousy. I do. ~ Adriana Lima, #NFDB
740:In doing nothing men learn to do evil. ~ Cato the Younger, #NFDB
741:I never thought about doing men. Never. ~ Debbie Reynolds, #NFDB
742:It's better to build boys than mend men. ~ S Truett Cathy, #NFDB
743:It’s better to obey God rather than men. ~ Brother Andrew, #NFDB
744:It was war itself that was evil, not men. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
745:Life is too short to dance with ugly men ~ Christina Dodd, #NFDB
746:Little things are great to little men. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
747:Men are embarrassingly easy to seduce. ~ Marya Hornbacher, #NFDB
748:Men are good in but one way, but bad in many. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
749:Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal. ~ Walter Lippmann, #NFDB
750:Men are only as unfaithful as their options. ~ Chris Rock, #NFDB
751:Men become accustomed to poison by degrees. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
752:Men become old, but they never become good. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
753:Men feel the good less intensely than the bad ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
754:Men, in teaching others, learn themselves. ~ Thomas Lodge, #NFDB
755:Men never know when things are dirty or not ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
756:Men stop trying after a while and get lazy. ~ Leah Remini, #NFDB
757:Men! The only animal in the world to fear. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
758:Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest. ~ Laurence Sterne, #NFDB
759:Most men are essentially dead by thirty. ~ Romain Rolland, #NFDB
760:Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
761:Most men lead lives of aimless distraction. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
762:Neutral men are the devil's allies. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin, #NFDB
763:Now is the time for all good men to come to. ~ Walt Kelly, #NFDB
764:Other men's pains are easily borne. ~ Miguel de Cervantes, #NFDB
765:Soft men tend to be born from soft countries. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
766:The bravest men are subject most to chance. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
767:The gifts of bad men bring no good with them. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
768:The mighty hopes that make us men. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
769:The natural thing, my lord, men and women joined. ~ Homer, #NFDB
770:the only thing men are fast at is sex. ~ Cherise Sinclair, #NFDB
771:There is a strength in the even of very sorry men ~ Homer, #NFDB
772:There is no strong beer, just weak men ~ Dan Castellaneta, #NFDB
773:The worst men often give the best advice. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
774:We are men of action. Lies do not become us. ~ Cary Elwes, #NFDB
775:Well, I think mostly we're dressing for men. ~ Jerry Hall, #NFDB
776:Whoever heard of a revolution of fat men? ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
777:Wicked me obey from fear; good men,from love. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
778:Wise men are not wise at all times. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
779:Wise men speak because they have something to say ~ Plato, #NFDB
780:Woe unto you when all men speak well of you. ~ Joan Bauer, #NFDB
781:Women are much more honourable than men. ~ Martin Firrell, #NFDB
782:You name the TV psychic - they're con men. ~ Bruno Heller, #NFDB
783:A fence sets men together, not apart. ~ Robert Newton Peck, #NFDB
784:a group of White men from up north stationed ~ Jesmyn Ward, #NFDB
785:All men are born truthful and die liars. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
786:All men & women are created equal ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
787:All you've ever had are names from men. ~ Jennifer Pashley, #NFDB
788:Arrogance is the armor worn by hollow men, ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
789:A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
790:Betrayal is common for men with no conscience. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
791:Blue is the smoke of wrar, white the bones of men. ~ Du Fu, #NFDB
792:Boys do what they can; men do what they want ~ Project Pat, #NFDB
793:Brave men don’t learn from their home. ~ Quvenzhane Wallis, #NFDB
794:Commitment to great causes makes great men. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
795:Dead men never pick up their trophies. ~ Michael Weisskopf, #NFDB
796:Death calls ye to the crowd of common men. ~ James Shirley, #NFDB
797:Either war is obsolete or men are. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
798:Either war is obsolete, or men are. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
799:Evil men do what good men only dream of doing. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
800:Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
801:fools are made for wise men's profit. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
802:For by my glee might many men have laughed, ~ Wilfred Owen, #NFDB
803:For men were born to pray and save: ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
804:For most men friendship is a faithless harbor. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
805:History is rarely made by reasonable men. ~ Terry Goodkind, #NFDB
806:I cannot tell what you and other men ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
807:Idle men tempt the devil to tempt them. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
808:I dress for women and I undress for men. ~ Angie Dickinson, #NFDB
809:I find that many handsome young men are cads, ~ John Boyne, #NFDB
810:I hate men who are afraid of women's strength. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
811:I hate men who are afraid of women's strength. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
812:I know all about men, but nothing about man. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
813:I love the role that men play in our lives. ~ Shania Twain, #NFDB
814:I'm worried that God ain't as expected by men. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
815:In all superstition wise men follow fools. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
816:In Hong Kong, the directors are the idea men. ~ Andrew Lau, #NFDB
817:Isabelle and the men were approaching the ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
818:Italian foe in Sicily. From now on, the men ~ Alex Kershaw, #NFDB
819:It is the doom of men that they forget. ~ Nicol Williamson, #NFDB
820:It's a fair wind that blew men to ale. ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB
821:Law never made men a whit more just. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
822:Love doesn't die; the men and women do. ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
823:Love is the folly of men and the wit of God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
824:machines, not men. They will start after ~ William F Brown, #NFDB
825:Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
826:Mankind's suffering belongs to all men. ~ Bernard Kouchner, #NFDB
827:Meek young men grow up in libraries. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
828:Men are from Mars. Zombies are from Hell. ~ Jesse Petersen, #NFDB
829:Men are like that... They remain boys... ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
830:Men are more prone to cheating, definitely. ~ Blu Cantrell, #NFDB
831:Men are sponges, which, to pour out, receive; ~ John Donne, #NFDB
832:Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
833:Men come, men go, all things remain in God. ~ Van Morrison, #NFDB
834:Men freely believe that which they desire. ~ Julius Caesar, #NFDB
835:Men got all the comfortable clothing trends. ~ J A Konrath, #NFDB
836:Men have marble, women waxen, minds. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
837:Men of ideas vanish when freedom vanishes. ~ Carl Sandburg, #NFDB
838:Men take more pains to mask than mend. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
839:Men to whom God is dead worship one another. ~ Harry Crews, #NFDB
840:Men, we don't need you in shining armor. ~ Virginia Madsen, #NFDB
841:Men who think much want to speak often, ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
842:Most men lead lives of quiet aspiration. ~ Robert Sheckley, #NFDB
843:Nay, we must think men are not gods, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
844:Not all things that cast man shadows were men. ~ J V Jones, #NFDB
845:Old men need affection as they need the sun. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
846:Powerful men hold even more powerful secrets ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
847:real men cry, real men have feelings. ~ Benjamin Zephaniah, #NFDB
848:Render unto all men that which is their due. ~ Corinthians, #NFDB
849:Scott Wilson (Hershel) is a god among men ~ Andrew Lincoln, #NFDB
850:Selfless men wind up in neglected graves. ~ Jack L Chalker, #NFDB
851:Some men just want to watch the world burn ~ Michael Caine, #NFDB
852:Stupid men talked. Smart men listened. ~ Ashley Antoinette, #NFDB
853:Such and so various are the tastes of men. ~ Mark Akenside, #NFDB
854:Suppose men did not kill the things they love. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
855:The greatest Clerkes be not the wisest men. ~ John Heywood, #NFDB
856:There is the sky, which is all men's together. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
857:There's nothing I don't love about 'Mad Men.' ~ Andy Cohen, #NFDB
858:To the men and women who own men and women ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
859:What luck for rulers that men do not think. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
860:When it's dark enough men see stars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
861:Women blame men for their own singlehood. ~ Tracy McMillan, #NFDB
862:Young men are sadly degenerate nowadays. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
863:Your inner being is he who men call God. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
864:A few honest men are better than numbers. ~ Oliver Cromwell, #NFDB
865:All men are jerks, all women are psychotic. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
866:All men are Jews, though few men know it. ~ Bernard Malamud, #NFDB
867:All men die, but not all men really live. ~ William Wallace, #NFDB
868:Behind every good woman lies a trail of men. ~ Tracy Bonham, #NFDB
869:Brave men are brave from the very first. ~ Pierre Corneille, #NFDB
870:Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
871:Few great men would have got past personnel. ~ Paul Goodman, #NFDB
872:Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
873:From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
874:Get there first with the most men. ~ Nathan Bedford Forrest, #NFDB
875:God provides the food, men provide the cooks. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
876:Great men are not born great, they grow great. ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
877:great men are not born great, they grow great, ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
878:Great men grow tired of contentedness. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
879:… happiness makes even wicked men good, … ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
880:Happy are men who yet before they are killed ~ Wilfred Owen, #NFDB
881:He must be good to animals, yet better to men. ~ Baha Ullah, #NFDB
882:He who regards all men as equals is religious. ~ Guru Nanak, #NFDB
883:History is a myth men want to believe. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
884:Honor is simply the morality of superior men. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
885:Hope deceives more men than cunning does. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
886:How do ugly men make their way through life? ~ Sarah Dunant, #NFDB
887:I can paint pictures, but I cannot rule men. ~ Fra Angelico, #NFDB
888:I don’t, can’t bed men for whom I don’t care. ~ K J Charles, #NFDB
889:I don't like straight lines: men make them. ~ Richard Adams, #NFDB
890:I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
891:I like real people - salt-of-the-earth men. ~ Tanit Phoenix, #NFDB
892:I love men and I like to get their attention. ~ Eartha Kitt, #NFDB
893:In a certain sense all men are historians. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
894:In Holland vergeleek men hoeren met paarden. ~ Arthur Japin, #NFDB
895:In the battlefield men grapple each other and die; ~ Li Bai, #NFDB
896:In wondrous ways do the gods make sport with men. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
897:It is best for ordinary men to have only one wife ! ~ Akbar, #NFDB
898:It is men who make a city, not walls or ships. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
899:It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
900:It's hypocrisy of men makes these hills grim ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
901:Laws were made by men, and men made mistakes ~ Joan D Vinge, #NFDB
902:Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
903:Men are born to succeed, not to fail. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
904:Men are liars. We lie about lying if we have to. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
905:Men are not meant to be at war for long. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
906:Men are what their mothers made them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
907:Men can have friends, statesmen cannot. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
908:Men hear what they like and invent the rest. ~ Paula McLain, #NFDB
909:Men injure either from fear or hatred. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
910:Men lie the most, women tell the biggest lies. ~ Chris Rock, #NFDB
911:Men like women who know how to be subtle. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
912:Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
913:Men of cold passions have quick eyes. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
914:Men plan. Fate Laughs. Guis Alera, First Lord ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
915:Men scorn what they don't understand". ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
916:Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent. ~ Mother Jones, #NFDB
917:Men. There seemed to be no escape from them. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
918:Men truly were the most oblivious creatures. ~ Lauren Royal, #NFDB
919:Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
920:Men who find themselves late are never sure. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
921:Men would be angels, angels would be gods. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
922:More men die of jealousy than of cancer. ~ Joseph P Kennedy, #NFDB
923:My mother did what many men do. She left. ~ Henning Mankell, #NFDB
924:Nature has inclined us to love men. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
925:Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are. ~ Robert Jordan, #NFDB
926:Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
927:Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. ~ Brian Sewell, #NFDB
928:only the men and the wind are completely free ~ Jean Sasson, #NFDB
929:Strong Women intimidate boys... and excite men. ~ Elin Peer, #NFDB
930:That all men would be cowards if they dare, ~ George Crabbe, #NFDB
931:The God gives simpler problems to lesser men. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
932:there are as many opinions as there are men. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
933:There is a tide in the affairs of men ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
934:There is music in all things, if men had ears. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
935:There is no country that has the best men. ~ Alicia Machado, #NFDB
936:There is nothing so necessary for men as dancing. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
937:There 's music in all things, if men had ears: ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
938:The wisest men are wise to the full in death. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
939:Through pain I've learned to comfort suffering men ~ Virgil, #NFDB
940:Thus Gonzo, incendiarist and leader of men. ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
941:We are becoming the men we wanted to marry ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
942:We have become the men we wanted to marry. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
943:When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
944:When it’s darkest, men see the stars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
945:When men change, maybe Bond will change. ~ Barbara Broccoli, #NFDB
946:Where men can't live gods fare no better. ~ Cormac McCarthy, #NFDB
947:Wise men don't judge: they seek to understand. ~ Wei Wu Wei, #NFDB
948:Women are fickle, you know. And men are idiots. ~ Marc Levy, #NFDB
949:Women only strike men as being mysterious ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
950:Zeus does not bring all men's plans to fulfillment. ~ Homer, #NFDB
951:All men are liars. All women are liars, too. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
952:All men are rapists and that's all they are ~ Marilyn French, #NFDB
953:All men know their children mean more than life. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
954:All young men want to prove themselves. ~ Sylvester Stallone, #NFDB
955:As for time, all men have it in abundance. ~ George S Clason, #NFDB
956:At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose. ~ Anacharsis, #NFDB
957:attacked the men I had assigned to guard it. ~ Eric S Nylund, #NFDB
958:Brave men are a city's strongest tower of defence. ~ Alcaeus, #NFDB
959:But certain winds will make men's temper bad. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
960:Children (nay, and men too) do most by example. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
961:Do not blame God for what men have done. ~ Jill Eileen Smith, #NFDB
962:Even weak men when united are powerful. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
963:Few men are admired by their servants. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
964:Few men think, yet all will have opinions. ~ George Berkeley, #NFDB
965:Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
966:Fire proves gold, adversity proves men. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
967:Fools make feasts and wise men eat them. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
968:Fools make researches and wise men exploit them. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
969:Force always attracts men of low morality. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
970:for whenever men are right they are not young ~ E E Cummings, #NFDB
971:for whenever men are right they are not young ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
972:Gay men! And it's incest! With the same face! ~ Bisco Hatori, #NFDB
973:Good men are often more practical than pretty ~ Ruta Sepetys, #NFDB
974:Great men don't nessarily make good husbands. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
975:Horses are far worse than men for treachery. ~ James Clavell, #NFDB
976:Horses (thou say'st) and asses men may try, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
977:How could men who liked cats be bad? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
978:I like my men like I like my coffee. Silent. ~ Anna Kendrick, #NFDB
979:It is one soul which animates all men. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
980:Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger. ~ Horace, #NFDB
981:Life is too kind to men, whatever their color. ~ Maryse Cond, #NFDB
982:Love is not ful of pittie (as men say) ~ Christopher Marlowe, #NFDB
983:Mayonnaise,” Morgan said, “is a lot like men. ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
984:Men are all alike. Grown-up children. ~ Suzanne Woods Fisher, #NFDB
985:Men are often bad, but babies never are. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
986:Men employ speech only to conceal their thoughts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
987:Men get over things. Women remember forever. ~ Susan Mallery, #NFDB
988:Men gossip less than women, but mean it. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
989:Men love to put things in women, don't they? ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
990:Men make history, not the other way around. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
991:Men mock the gods until they need them, Kaz. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
992:Men often act knowingly against their interest. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
993:Men peak at age nineteen and go downhill. ~ Garrison Keillor, #NFDB
994:Men protesteert niet tegen een zelfgekozen lot. ~ Tom Lanoye, #NFDB
995:Men should be buff! Women should be vavoom! ~ Hiromu Arakawa, #NFDB
996:Men should come with instruction booklets. ~ Cathy Guisewite, #NFDB
997:Men to be truly won must be won by truth. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
998:men were perfect, we wouldn’t need to be saved. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
999:Most men's friendships are too inarticulate. ~ William James, #NFDB
1000:Not men who ran the world, but who made it run. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
1001:Oh good gray head which all men knew! ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
1002:plant trees that other men will sit under. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
1003:Robie slept soundly after killing five men. ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1004:Self-made men often worship their creator. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
1005:Ships are but boards, sailors but men. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1006:Someday, men will visit ideas instead of places. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
1007:Some women and men seem to need each other. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
1008:Tarzan-like men are my weakness, apparently. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
1009:The best plans of men and mice often go awry. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
1010:the folly of men makes me seriously angry. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB
1011:The man contains—not the boy—but earlier men ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1012:The maxims of men reveal their characters. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
1013:The more men see of the world, the bigger their hearts ~ Avi, #NFDB
1014:The only monsters I have ever known were men. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1015:There are a sort of men, whose visages ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1016:There are more men threatned then stricken. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1017:There is a history in all men's lives. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1018:The truth is like salt. Men want to taste ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
1019:The whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
1020:The wise men were all fools, what to do? ~ Bruce Springsteen, #NFDB
1021:They talk like angels but they live like men. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
1022:Those are brave men... lets go kill them ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1023:Threatned men eat bread, says the Spaniard. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1024:we made the noise of savage animals, of men. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1025:What is it men cannot be made to believe! ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1026:When the old men fight, the young people die. ~ Anne Fortier, #NFDB
1027:When you love, there is always more pain. “Men ~ Sabaa Tahir, #NFDB
1028:Who knows but life be that which men call death, ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1029:Wicked men obey for fear, but the good for love. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1030:With emptie hands men may no haukes lure. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
1031:with the group of Somali men who gathered ~ Elizabeth Strout, #NFDB
1032:Women are books, and men the readers be. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1033:Women wrap men with their second attention. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1034:Against ill chances men are ever merry, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1035:All great men are partially inspired. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1036:All men are brothers and each man is free. ~ Rose Wilder Lane, #NFDB
1037:All men are enemies. All animals are comrades ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
1038:ALL men keep ALL women in a state of fear ~ Susan Brownmiller, #NFDB
1039:A sparing tongue is the greatest treasure among men. ~ Hesiod, #NFDB
1040:Because big men do not laugh at big ideas. ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
1041:Best men oft are moulded out of faults. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1042:Be wary of men with something to prove. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid, #NFDB
1043:Books are men of higher stature. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, #NFDB
1044:Boys dream of war. But men can dream of peace. ~ David Talbot, #NFDB
1045:Daily, every moment, prayer is necessary to men. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
1046:Dissipated men need one trustworthy friend. ~ Thornton Wilder, #NFDB
1047:Evil men by their own nature cannot ever prosper. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1048:Evil prospers when good men do nothing. ~ John Philpot Curran, #NFDB
1049:Famous men have the whole earth as their memorial. ~ Pericles, #NFDB
1050:Fear drives men and women to do mad things. ~ Heather B Moore, #NFDB
1051:Fire tries gold, misery tries brave men. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
1052:for everything that was wrong with men. ~ J Courtney Sullivan, #NFDB
1053:For though men be ignorant, yet they are men ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
1054:Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom. ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
1055:God gives air to men; the law sells it to them. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1056:Good men are often more practical than pretty. ~ Ruta Sepetys, #NFDB
1057:He was bolder in the daylight-most men are. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1058:He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men. ~ Patrick S skind, #NFDB
1059:He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men. ~ Patrick Suskind, #NFDB
1060:He would have sex the way other men made war. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
1061:Ice cream was reliable. Young men were not. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB
1062:Idle young men, Kate, a breed unto themselves. ~ Cindy Anstey, #NFDB
1063:I don't want to give too much ink to foolish men. ~ Tori Amos, #NFDB
1064:If women were humbler, men would be honester. ~ John Vanbrugh, #NFDB
1065:I gotta go. The gingerbread men are on fire. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
1066:I'm probably taller than 90% of the men I meet. ~ Lisa Leslie, #NFDB
1067:In Greece wise men speak and fools decide. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
1068:Intimacy isn’t something men talk about. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
1069:It is the success which makes great men. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1070:I've always found women more interesting than men. ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
1071:Men act weird now and again – it’s genetic. ~ Paul Pilkington, #NFDB
1072:Men and times change-but principles-never. ~ Grover Cleveland, #NFDB
1073:Men are immortal till their work is done. ~ David Livingstone, #NFDB
1074:Men are nothing until they are excited. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1075:Men are sometimes hanged for telling the truth. ~ Joan of Arc, #NFDB
1076:Men close their minds
when see a naked truth. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
1077:Men don't have the benefits of equality either. ~ Emma Watson, #NFDB
1078:Men famed for wit, of dangerous talents vain, ~ George Crabbe, #NFDB
1079:Men fear to lose as much as they hope to gain. ~ Drayton Bird, #NFDB
1080:Men grow old quickly on the battlefield. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1081:Men have to be reminded that women exist. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
1082:Men, in general, are but great children. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1083:Men like us, we live to ride, and ride to live ~ Joanna Wylde, #NFDB
1084:Men of integrity and courage are rare these days. ~ Greg Iles, #NFDB
1085:Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad, ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
1086:Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
1087:Men reverence one another, not yet God. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1088:Men should strive to think much and know little. ~ Democritus, #NFDB
1089:Men's tongues in some things outrun women's. ~ Winston Graham, #NFDB
1090:Most men admire Virtue who follow not her lore. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1091:Mr. Right' is usually two or eight men. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
1092:Oaths are not the credit of men but men of oaths. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
1093:Old men make war, young men fight and die ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1094:Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1095:Some men are dogs; some dogs are women. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
1096:some men are just too interesting to die ~ Seth Grahame Smith, #NFDB
1097:some men never die and some men never live ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1098:Success! to thee, as to a God, men bend the knee. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
1099:Teach me to speak the language of men. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs, #NFDB
1100:The day is for honest men, the night for thieves. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1101:The literary man re-reads, other men simply read. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1102:The more men you've had, the more I love you. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
1103:the one who hates men who…” “…hate women. ~ David Lagercrantz, #NFDB
1104:There are men who can think no deeper than a fact. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1105:There are no men like me. There's only me ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1106:The sons of rich men are proverbially wild. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
1107:The woman's function is to fascinate men. ~ George Balanchine, #NFDB
1108:Till taught by pain, men know not water's worth. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
1109:Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1110:We try men through one another. —Quran 6:53 ~ G Willow Wilson, #NFDB
1111:We were men once, though we've become trees ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
1112:What governs men is the fear of truth. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
1113:What is impossible with men is possible with God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1114:When good men die their goodness does not perish. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1115:When men lack a sense of awe, there will be disaster. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
1116:Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
1117:Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1118:Wise men listen and laugh, while fools talk. ~ Curtis Jackson, #NFDB
1119:Women's fashion is more interesting than men's. ~ Nick Rhodes, #NFDB
1120:A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1121:ACT as men of thought; THINK as men of action. ~ Henri Bergson, #NFDB
1122:Ah, men understand friendship more than we woman. ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
1123:Ah, men understand friendship more than we women. ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
1124:All men are children, and of one family. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1125:All men are ignorant, just on different subjects. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1126:And drunk men take dares like they take breaths. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
1127:By flying, men often rush into the midst of calamities. ~ Livy, #NFDB
1128:Cherimoya, the most delicious fruit known to men. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1129:Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. It ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
1130:Deity indwelling men! That, I say is Christianity! ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1131:Do any men grow up or do they only come of age? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1132:Fat men take a cushion with them wherever they go, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1133:Fools do not understand men of intelligence. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
1134:Fools give you reasons and wise men never try. ~ Seymour Stein, #NFDB
1135:Free men do not ask permission to bear arms ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1136:great men burn bridges before they come to them ~ E E Cummings, #NFDB
1137:great men burn bridges before they come to them ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
1138:Great men, like nature, use simple language. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
1139:Heavens! what thick darkness pervades the minds of men. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
1140:He preferred women to men, and horses to both. ~ Ben Macintyre, #NFDB
1141:I arouse desire in men and envy in other women. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1142:If men have a smell it's usually an accident. ~ Jeff Foxworthy, #NFDB
1143:If you want to grow, find men who provoke you. ~ Joshua Harris, #NFDB
1144:I should NOT be trading on the blood of my men. ~ Robert E Lee, #NFDB
1145:It 's no fish ye 're buying, it 's men's lives. ~ Walter Scott, #NFDB
1146:Melancholy men, of all others, are the most witty. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1147:Men and women, women and men. It will never work. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
1148:Men are loyal when you lead from the front. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi, #NFDB
1149:Men are never attached to you by favours. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1150:Men are not angels, neither are they brutes. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
1151:Men are punished by their sins, not for them. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
1152:Men are slower to recognise blessings than misfortunes. ~ Livy, #NFDB
1153:Men are so easy to manipulate, poor things. ~ Elizabeth Peters, #NFDB
1154:Men are so simple. They will believe anything. ~ Lola Shoneyin, #NFDB
1155:Men be stronger, but it is women who endure. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1156:Men die in battle; women die in childbirth. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
1157:Men generally do not see women as competition. ~ Siri Hustvedt, #NFDB
1158:Men have not stacked the decks against women. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
1159:Men like that are rarer than rocking horse shit. ~ Lily Morton, #NFDB
1160:Men live by forgetting and woman live on memories. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
1161:Menopause. A pause while you reconsider men. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
1162:Men tire themselves in the pursuit of sleep. ~ Laurence Sterne, #NFDB
1163:Men watch. Women watch themselves being watched. ~ John Berger, #NFDB
1164:Men who come out here should have no entrails. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1165:Men. Who needs them when you can have dogs? ~ Laurien Berenson, #NFDB
1166:Men will judge your past deeds by your last. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
1167:Money doesn't change men. It merely unmasks them. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
1168:Mountains culminate in peaks, and nations in men. ~ Jose Marti, #NFDB
1169:Neither, do men put new wine into old bottles. ~ Matthew IX.17, #NFDB
1170:No worse a husband than the best of men. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1171:of white men they are branded with a red-hot ~ Adam Hochschild, #NFDB
1172:Old men dream dreams; young men see visions. ~ Melvin B Tolson, #NFDB
1173:Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
1174:Only wisdom and virtue can truly win men's devotion. ~ Liu Bei, #NFDB
1175:On the gallows tree, all men are brothers. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1176:Practising wisdom, men have respect one for another. ~ Lao Tee, #NFDB
1177:Ruth did not approve of young men. So noisy. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB
1178:Since we are men, we will play the part of Man. ~ Learned Hand, #NFDB
1179:Six feet of dirt make all men equal. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1180:Stern men with empires in their brains. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
1181:The affair made men feel larger than life. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
1182:The desire to know is natural to good men. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
1183:The eyes of mortal men, threaten you with doom ~ Tupac Shakur, #NFDB
1184:The fault is in the system and not in the men. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
1185:The less men think, the more they talk. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
1186:The love of wicked men converts to fear; ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1187:...the Men Who Knew came out of the woodwork. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1188:The most positive men are the most credulous. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
1189:There are still a few men who love desperately. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
1190:The reason men rule is because women let them. ~ Jessica Zafra, #NFDB
1191:There is a variety in tempers of good men. ~ Francis Atterbury, #NFDB
1192:The truth is that men are tired of liberty. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
1193:'They eat their kind,' he said, 'Like men.' ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1194:To please great men is not the last degree of praise. ~ Horace, #NFDB
1195:Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss. ~ Abba Eban, #NFDB
1196:Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1197:We are men of action. Lies do not become us. ~ William Goldman, #NFDB
1198:We're men, and men aren't born to stand alone. ~ Tamora Pierce, #NFDB
1199:What can we do to win these men to Christ? ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
1200:Which would your men rather be, tired, or dead? ~ Erwin Rommel, #NFDB
1201:Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
1202:Wicked men obey from fear;
good men, from love. ~ Aristotle,#NFDB
1203:Wicked men obey out of fear. good men, out of love ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1204:Wild men, screaming through the keyholes. ~ David Lloyd George, #NFDB
1205:Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them. ~ Samuel Palmer, #NFDB
1206:Without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
1207:Women are books, and men the readers be... ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1208:Women are smarter than men because they listen. ~ Phil Donahue, #NFDB
1209:You don't reason with men like Hitler. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
1210:A lawyer who does not know men is handicapped. ~ William Dunbar, #NFDB
1211:all he could about the men who had defiled her ~ Jeffery Deaver, #NFDB
1212:All men die, but that not all men die whining ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1213:All men do not admire and delight in the same objects. ~ Horace, #NFDB
1214:And still I look for the men who will dare to be ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1215:As Lord Acton said, great men are mostly bad men. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
1216:Bacchus has drowned more men than Neptune. ~ Giuseppe Garibaldi, #NFDB
1217:Be not children in understanding,be men. ~ I Corinthians XIV 20, #NFDB
1218:Books are not men and yet they stay alive. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
1219:But only men destroy and give back nothing. ~ Bharati Mukherjee, #NFDB
1220:Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1221:Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
1222:for when speech is restricted, all men suffer, ~ Anne McCaffrey, #NFDB
1223:God created men to test the souls of women. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1224:Great causes and little men go ill together. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
1225:Hope has often caused the love of gain to ruin men. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
1226:I am so mad with love that mad men say to me - be still! ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1227:I do not care to see men better off – but better! ~ Maxim Gorky, #NFDB
1228:I don't go to mythical places with strange men. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1229:...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1230:If men had all they wished, they would be often ruined. ~ Aesop, #NFDB
1231:I like the way men cry. They're efficient. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings, #NFDB
1232:I'm a woman. We mature faster than men, remember? ~ Sharon Sala, #NFDB
1233:I mean that gods do not limit men. Men limit men. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1234:In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1235:I only like two kinds of men, domestic and imported. ~ Mae West, #NFDB
1236:It is martyrdom for men like us to be here ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1237:It would not be better if men got what they wanted. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1238:I used it to save the lives of my men.” That ~ Kathryne Kennedy, #NFDB
1239:Kind words produce their images on men's souls. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
1240:learned men are lighter, but weightier ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1241:Let there be worse cotton and better men. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1242:Let us think less of men and more of God. ~ Philip James Bailey, #NFDB
1243:Matters change and morals change; men remain. ~ John Galsworthy, #NFDB
1244:Measures, not men, have always been my mark. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
1245:Men are more helped by sympathy than by service. ~ John Lubbock, #NFDB
1246:Men are much more agressive with their advances. ~ Dave Navarro, #NFDB
1247:Men are respectable only as they respect. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1248:Men have become the tools of their tools. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1249:Men have never understood the words of the wise. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1250:Men make more money but have lower net worths. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
1251:Men may the wise atrenne, and naught atrede. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
1252:Men of genius are not quick judges of character. ~ Max Beerbohm, #NFDB
1253:Men of polite learning and a liberal education. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
1254:Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing. ~ Aesop, #NFDB
1255:Men respect women who have standards - get some! ~ Steve Harvey, #NFDB
1256:Men say, kinde will creepe where it may not goe. ~ John Heywood, #NFDB
1257:men. She remembered her granny telling her, “Men ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
1258:Men should be like Kleenex, soft, strong and disposable. ~ Cher, #NFDB
1259:Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1260:Men's minds are too ready to excuse guilt in themselves. ~ Livy, #NFDB
1261:Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains. ~ H Emilie Cady, #NFDB
1262:Men want success and sex. Women want everything. ~ Gene Simmons, #NFDB
1263:Men who not religious or artists are fools. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1264:Men who served anyone could be trusted by no one. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
1265:Men will only be happy when they all love each other. ~ Tolstoi, #NFDB
1266:Military men are the scourges of the world. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
1267:mobilized, Vianne. Along with most men between ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
1268:Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad. ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
1269:Most men will not swim before they are able to. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1270:Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1271:Of course. Men always think war is about them. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
1272:Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
1273:Old men go to Death, Death comes to Young men. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1274:One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament. ~ Walter Bagehot, #NFDB
1275:One must open men's eyes, not tear them out. ~ Alexander Herzen, #NFDB
1276:Peace renders nations happier and men weaker. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
1277:Philosophers are only men in armor after all. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1278:Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. ~ Jodi Daynard, #NFDB
1279:sadly, all of my wounds had been inflicted by men ~ Jean Sasson, #NFDB
1280:So long as there are men, there will be wars. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1281:Some men grow mad by studying much to know, ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1282:Some men make gain a fountain, whence proceeds ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
1283:The beds of civilization shifted in favor of men. ~ Erin Bowman, #NFDB
1284:The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
1285:The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them. ~ Moli re, #NFDB
1286:The gretteste clerkes been noght wisest men. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
1287:The man who walks with wise men becomes wise himself. ~ Solomon, #NFDB
1288:The mid-life crisis hits men harder than women. ~ Sonia Johnson, #NFDB
1289:The more I know about men the more I like dogs. ~ Gloria Allred, #NFDB
1290:The pursuit of the difficult makes men strong ~ George W Romney, #NFDB
1291:There are unjust laws as there are unjust men. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1292:They will never count me among the broken men. ~ George Jackson, #NFDB
1293:To do nothing is within the power of all men. ~ Maria Konnikova, #NFDB
1294:To lead men, you have to lead them with affection. ~ J R D Tata, #NFDB
1295:Virtue's office never breaks men's troth. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1296:We are quick to flare up, we races of men on the earth. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1297:We may attack systems. We must not attack men. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1298:What do men want? Men want a mattress that cooks. ~ Judy Tenuta, #NFDB
1299:What men call accident is God's own part. ~ Philip James Bailey, #NFDB
1300:When it comes to women, men can be quite weak. ~ Soman Chainani, #NFDB
1301:When men think much, they can rarely decide. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
1302:Who waite for dead men shall goe long barefoote. ~ John Heywood, #NFDB
1303:Agression is a trait common to men and new gods. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
1304:All healthy men have thought of their own suicide ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1305:All men do not, in fine, admire or love the same thing. ~ Horace, #NFDB
1306:All men in the abstract are just and good. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1307:An agreement of rash men (a conspiracy). ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1308:As long as men die, liberty will never parish. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
1309:Behave like men, and not like witless sheep... ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
1310:Brave deeds are the monuments of brave men. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1311:But men are men; the best sometimes forget ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1312:By all measures men are the more violent gender. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
1313:By punishing men of talent we confirm their authority. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
1314:Clever men are good, but they are not the best. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
1315:Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1316:Don't rely on men but don't shun them either. ~ Jennifer Aniston, #NFDB
1317:Even in killing men, observe the rules of propriety. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
1318:Even the bravest men are frightened by sudden terrors. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
1319:Few men know all the ill they do. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
1320:Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
1321:Fishing keeps men boys longer than any other pursuit ~ Zane Grey, #NFDB
1322:from him doing the same, both men trading verbal ~ Ernie Lindsey, #NFDB
1323:God only acts and is, in existing beings or men. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
1324:Good men make good rhinoceroses, unfortunately. ~ Eugene Ionesco, #NFDB
1325:Great men are not born great, they grow great . . . ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
1326:He’ll hurt you again. Men fuck up all the time. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
1327:Heroes are often the most ordinary of men. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1328:History -- its what those bitter old men write. ~ Jackie Kennedy, #NFDB
1329:....honest men are few when it comes to themselves. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1330:Hoover never wanted his men to overshadow him. The ~ David Grann, #NFDB
1331:I do not like assassins, or men of low character. ~ Gene Hackman, #NFDB
1332:I feel like men don't hold the door open as much. ~ Karen Gillan, #NFDB
1333:I have a talent for dealing with difficult men. ~ Jane Rosenthal, #NFDB
1334:I have been despised by better men than you. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1335:I have no desire to make windows into men's souls. ~ Elizabeth I, #NFDB
1336:Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
1337:In destinies sad or merry, true men can but try. ~ Chris Dietzel, #NFDB
1338:I think basically most men are misogynistic. ~ Bret Easton Ellis, #NFDB
1339:I think we both know that I've never been most men. ~ L H Cosway, #NFDB
1340:Just death, kind umpire of men's miseries. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1341:Live as brave men and face adversity with stout hearts. ~ Horace, #NFDB
1342:Men always fear things which move by themselves. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1343:Men are allowed to get older and women are not. ~ Shirley Knight, #NFDB
1344:Men are always for hire who like dirty work. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1345:Men as righteous as we could not be judged harshly. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
1346:Men become friends by a community of pleasures. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1347:men cannot do without dogmatical belief; ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
1348:Men control the world, but women control the men. ~ Sherry Argov, #NFDB
1349:Men deal with life as children with their play, ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
1350:Men dislike being awakened from their death in life. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
1351:Men in all ways are better than they seem. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1352:Men in power are always interested in greater power. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
1353:Men kill you, but women eviscerate you first. ~ Aleksandr Voinov, #NFDB
1354:Men made decisions and pretended it was fate. ~ Margaret Mallory, #NFDB
1355:Men only need two things - grilled cheese and sex. ~ Emmy Rossum, #NFDB
1356:Men, right? Bastards, no matter the time or place. ~ Rin Chupeco, #NFDB
1357:men’s actions are the best guides to their thoughts ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1358:Men should be explorers no matter how old they are. ~ Don Ameche, #NFDB
1359:Men should not petition for rights, but take them ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1360:Men shout to avoid listening to one another. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
1361:More dangers have deceived men than forced them. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
1362:Most men admire
Virtue who follow not her lore. ~ John Milton,#NFDB
1363:natural reason can never guide men to Christ. Even ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1364:Only great men have great faults. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
1365:On their deathbed men will speak true, they say. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
1366:Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
1367:Real men didn’t trade in women; they protected them. ~ Setta Jay, #NFDB
1368:Show is not substance; realities govern wise men. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
1369:Surely again, to heal men's wounds by music's spell. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1370:Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them! ~ John Gay, #NFDB
1371:That men aren’t naturally good; but girls are. ~ Thornton Wilder, #NFDB
1372:The fewer men, the greater share of honor. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1373:The gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
1374:The greatest of the arts is the conquering of men. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1375:The law is what powerful men say it shall be. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
1376:The natural desire of good men is knowledge. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
1377:There are men and gods, and beings like Pythagoras. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
1378:The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1379:This barren verbiage, current among men, ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
1380:Though men may be deep, mentally they are slow. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
1381:Unless it was Cokie, gifts from men weren't free. ~ Ruta Sepetys, #NFDB
1382:We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
1383:What is it about men that make women so lonely? ~ Elliot Perlman, #NFDB
1384:What men do matters more than what they know. ~ John Christopher, #NFDB
1385:When it is dark enough, men see the stars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1386:When men succeed, even their neighbors think them wise. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
1387:Where evil men would seek to perpetuate ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1388:Where God works, He works with men that work. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1389:WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1390:Wicked men do not go away of their own accord. ~ James Lee Burke, #NFDB
1391:Women accept their destiny more readily than men. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
1392:Women artists are still treated differently from men. ~ Yoko Ono, #NFDB
1393:A committee is twelve men doing the work of one. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
1394:Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1395:A high percentage of vegan men look like lesbians. ~ Dov Davidoff, #NFDB
1396:All men are free and equal, in the grave, ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
1397:All men are ignorant, just in different fields. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1398:All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1399:All men beneath your position covet your station, ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1400:And only men could have invented the idea of a king. ~ David Vann, #NFDB
1401:Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor. ~ Elizabeth I, #NFDB
1402:As a rule it is circumstances that make men. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1403:As a rule it is circumstances that make men. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
1404:Books are not men and yet they are alive. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet, #NFDB
1405:breathing in the bushy nostrils of old men ~ Armando Lucas Correa, #NFDB
1406:But men are men; the best sometimes forget. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1407:But there is no such man; for, brother, men ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1408:Carmel. 1SA25.8 Ask thy young men, and they will shew ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1409:Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
1410:Each man knows himself, but only God knows all men ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
1411:Fair peace becomes men; ferocious anger belongs to beasts. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
1412:Fools talk, cowards silence , wise men listen ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
1413:For men are not equal: thus speaks justice. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1414:For new made honor doth forget men's names. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1415:For new-made honor doth forget men's names. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1416:For us military men, it is impossible to forget. ~ Andrei Grechko, #NFDB
1417:God creates men, but they choose each other. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
1418:Good fortune is a god among men, and more than a god. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
1419:Great men always pay deference to greater. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
1420:Great men are just ordinary men that didn't quit. ~ Tommy Barnett, #NFDB
1421:Great men are never cruel without necessity. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1422:Haven’t you heard that older men make better lovers? ~ Tara Brown, #NFDB
1423:He had a fine mustache. Men of wisdom so often do. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1424:He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1425:History is a myth that men agree to believe. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1426:I am Kai Allard-Liao. I am a killer of men. ~ Michael A Stackpole, #NFDB
1427:I am not quite sure whether clever men ever dance. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1428:I can tell when men are threatened by my height. ~ Allison Janney, #NFDB
1429:I don't see the point of watching men exercise. ~ Natasha Leggero, #NFDB
1430:If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
1431:I find that men are far more vain than women. ~ Patricia Arquette, #NFDB
1432:If you live for fame, men may turn against you. ~ Matthew Simpson, #NFDB
1433:Ignorant men differ from beasts only in their figure. ~ Cleanthes, #NFDB
1434:I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
1435:I like men who are intelligent and sensitive. ~ Kate del Castillo, #NFDB
1436:I love not to be choked with other men's thoughts. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1437:In a narrow sphere great men are blunderers. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1438:In compassionate men, severity is a virtue. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1439:In every man there is something of all men. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #NFDB
1440:I once took a city with five men and a lame goat. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
1441:it doesn’t take a thousand men to open a door, ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1442:It is pride that makes error and discord among men. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1443:It's the love of right lures men to wrong. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
1444:It’s the love of right lures men to wrong. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
1445:I wasn’t naïve when it came to the world of men. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
1446:Let men be good, and the Government cannot be bad. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
1447:Lovers, like dying men, may well ~ Sir Charles Sedley 5th Baronet, #NFDB
1448:Men and women are but children of a larger growth. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1449:Men and women are what they make of themselves. ~ Seth Adam Smith, #NFDB
1450:Men and women will retain their sex in heaven ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1451:Men look like pandas when they try and put make-up on. ~ Adam Ant, #NFDB
1452:Men make history. History does not make the man. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
1453:Men of culture are the true apostles of equality ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
1454:Men of thought and men of action, clear the Way! ~ Charles Mackay, #NFDB
1455:Men rattle their chains-to manifest their freedom. ~ Arthur Helps, #NFDB
1456:Men ruin themselves headlong for unworthy women. ~ Wilkie Collins, #NFDB
1457:Men shut their doors against a setting sun. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1458:Men still have to be governed by deception. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #NFDB
1459:Mossler was one of the SID’s latent-print men. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
1460:Most Hollywood men are too vain and shallow for me. ~ Alley Mills, #NFDB
1461:Most men are not scolded out of their opinion. ~ Martin Van Buren, #NFDB
1462:Most men live like raisins in a cake of custom. ~ Brand Blanshard, #NFDB
1463:Most men would rather die, than think. Many do. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
1464:My dad has more sparkly stuff than most men. ~ Georgia May Jagger, #NFDB
1465:Nancy pursed her lips. "Men are stupid." "Agreed! ~ Jenn McKinlay, #NFDB
1466:Not all men were meant to dance with dragons. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1467:Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1468:Old men are always young enough to learn with profit. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
1469:Only white men have the luxury of ignoring race. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
1470:Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1471:Power resides where men believe it to reside. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1472:She has an arse men should write sonnets to. . . . ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
1473:Sincerity is the eventual deception of all great men. ~ Rembrandt, #NFDB
1474:Some men don’t like female gendered credit cards. ~ Tarryn Fisher, #NFDB
1475:some men never die and some men never live but ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1476:States are as the men, they grow out of human characters. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1477:than men, that’s all I figured it was.’ ‘How’d you ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
1478:The assembled souls of all that men held wise. ~ William Davenant, #NFDB
1479:The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
1480:The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
1481:The booksellers are generous liberal-minded men. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1482:The earth doesn't need new continents, but new men! ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
1483:The Emerald City has been ruled by men long enough ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
1484:The Floating World wouldn’t exist without men’s urges. ~ J C Kang, #NFDB
1485:The gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
1486:The graveyards are full of indispensable men. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
1487:The Great Spirit is angry with all men that tell lies. ~ Tecumseh, #NFDB
1488:The law, that is what makes men stay honest. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1489:The only way to make men speak well of us is to do it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1490:There are men who are happy without knowing it. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
1491:The things impossible with men are possible with God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1492:The things men did or felt they had to do. ~ Erich Maria Remarque, #NFDB
1493:The thing that men and women need to do is stick together ~ Q Tip, #NFDB
1494:Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1495:Trading men among friends was not the way to go. ~ Karen Erickson, #NFDB
1496:Traffickers will stop when men stop buying women ~ Corban Addison, #NFDB
1497:War is when young men dream of being grandfathers. ~ Erri De Luca, #NFDB
1498:We ought to obey God rather than men. ~ Acts of the Apostles 5:29, #NFDB
1499:Why do men fight who were born to be brothers? ~ James Longstreet, #NFDB
1500:willing men, I’ll do it. Because I can. Like a boss. ~ Niecey Roy, #NFDB
2016 Integral Yoga
837 Poetry
252 Occultism
199 Philosophy
163 Fiction
156 Christianity
127 Yoga
124 Mysticism
83 Psychology
43 Philsophy
31 Science
30 Hinduism
19 Education
18 Mythology
14 Theosophy
13 Integral Theory
10 Kabbalah
9 Sufism
8 Buddhism
6 Cybernetics
6 Baha i Faith
5 Zen
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
1072 The Mother
1041 Sri Aurobindo
621 Satprem
347 Nolini Kanta Gupta
117 Walt Whitman
109 H P Lovecraft
105 William Butler Yeats
103 William Wordsworth
99 Aleister Crowley
83 Carl Jung
66 Percy Bysshe Shelley
64 James George Frazer
59 Friedrich Nietzsche
56 Sri Ramakrishna
55 Robert Browning
52 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
43 Ralph Waldo Emerson
43 Plotinus
42 John Keats
36 Swami Krishnananda
34 Saint Augustine of Hippo
30 Swami Vivekananda
30 Jorge Luis Borges
29 A B Purani
27 Lucretius
27 Aldous Huxley
26 Anonymous
25 Saint John of Climacus
25 Franz Bardon
23 Friedrich Schiller
19 Saint Teresa of Avila
19 Li Bai
18 Vyasa
17 Rabindranath Tagore
15 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
14 Rudolf Steiner
12 Plato
12 Ovid
12 Nirodbaran
11 George Van Vrekhem
11 Edgar Allan Poe
11 Aristotle
10 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
8 Peter J Carroll
7 Henry David Thoreau
7 Baha u llah
7 Alice Bailey
6 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
6 Norbert Wiener
6 Joseph Campbell
6 Jordan Peterson
6 Jalaluddin Rumi
6 Al-Ghazali
5 Thubten Chodron
5 Patanjali
5 Mechthild of Magdeburg
5 Kabir
5 Hafiz
5 Bokar Rinpoche
4 Taigu Ryokan
4 Paul Richard
4 Omar Khayyam
3 Rainer Maria Rilke
3 Ken Wilber
2 Thomas Merton
2 Symeon the New Theologian
2 Solomon ibn Gabirol
2 R Buckminster Fuller
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jetsun Milarepa
2 Jean Gebser
2 Italo Calvino
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Farid ud-Din Attar
347 Record of Yoga
142 The Synthesis Of Yoga
112 Whitman - Poems
109 Lovecraft - Poems
105 Yeats - Poems
103 Wordsworth - Poems
97 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
71 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
69 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
66 Shelley - Poems
66 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
64 The Golden Bough
58 Agenda Vol 10
57 Magick Without Tears
57 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
56 The Life Divine
56 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
55 Browning - Poems
54 Prayers And Meditations
54 Agenda Vol 01
53 Agenda Vol 08
51 Agenda Vol 04
50 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
49 Agenda Vol 03
48 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
48 Agenda Vol 02
47 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
45 Letters On Yoga IV
45 Agenda Vol 09
44 Letters On Yoga III
44 Letters On Yoga II
43 Emerson - Poems
43 Agenda Vol 06
42 Keats - Poems
42 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
41 Agenda Vol 07
39 Agenda Vol 05
38 Liber ABA
37 Questions And Answers 1956
37 Questions And Answers 1953
37 Agenda Vol 12
37 Agenda Vol 11
36 The Study and Practice of Yoga
36 Mysterium Coniunctionis
34 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
33 Questions And Answers 1955
32 Savitri
31 Questions And Answers 1954
31 Agenda Vol 13
30 Essays On The Gita
29 Words Of Long Ago
29 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
29 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
27 The Perennial Philosophy
27 Of The Nature Of Things
26 The Bible
26 Letters On Yoga I
26 Essays Divine And Human
25 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
24 Labyrinths
23 The Human Cycle
23 Schiller - Poems
22 City of God
21 The Practice of Psycho therapy
21 Letters On Poetry And Art
21 Collected Poems
20 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
19 On Education
19 Li Bai - Poems
18 Vishnu Purana
18 The Future of Man
18 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
17 On the Way to Supermanhood
16 The Divine Comedy
16 Tagore - Poems
14 The Secret Of The Veda
14 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
13 The Practice of Magical Evocation
13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
13 Some Answers From The Mother
13 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
13 Let Me Explain
13 Bhakti-Yoga
12 Words Of The Mother II
12 Twilight of the Idols
12 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
12 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
12 Talks
12 Raja-Yoga
12 Metamorphoses
12 Isha Upanishad
12 Initiation Into Hermetics
12 Aion
11 The Phenomenon of Man
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
11 Poetics
11 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
10 The Way of Perfection
10 Poe - Poems
10 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
10 Kena and Other Upanishads
10 Hymn of the Universe
10 General Principles of Kabbalah
10 Faust
10 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
9 Vedic and Philological Studies
9 The Problems of Philosophy
9 The Integral Yoga
9 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
9 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
8 Liber Null
8 Crowley - Poems
8 Anonymous - Poems
7 Walden
7 Theosophy
7 The Blue Cliff Records
7 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
6 Words Of The Mother III
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Red Book Liber Novus
6 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
6 The Alchemy of Happiness
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Cybernetics
6 Borges - Poems
5 Tara - The Feminine Divine
5 Song of Myself
5 Rumi - Poems
5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
5 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
5 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
5 Goethe - Poems
5 Amrita Gita
4 Words Of The Mother I
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Ryokan - Poems
4 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
3 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
3 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Songs of Kabir
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Rilke - Poems
3 Hafiz - Poems
2 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
2 Symposium
2 Selected Fictions
2 Milarepa - Poems
2 Dark Night of the Soul
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This AGENDA ... One day, another species among men will pore over this fabulous docu ment as over the tumultuous drama that must have surrounded the birth of the first man among the hostile hordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic. A first man is the dangerous contradiction of a certain simian logic, a threat to the established order that so genteelly ran about amid the high, indefeasible ferns - and to begin with, it does not even know that it is a man. It wonders, indeed, what it is. Even to itself it is strange, distressing. It does not even know how to climb trees any longer in its usual way
- 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, claws all around, a lot of claws 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.
--
'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a short time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far more radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, for after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily uncovered are the grandfa ther and the grandmo ther and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that form a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfa thers and grandmo thers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, which is still the best of an old mortal habit. All this is not uprooted nor entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out for man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had mo mentarily trapped with a few machines.
She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inexorably being a man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few improve ments in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to discover what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West for the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one nor the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must discover what Matter TRULY is, for it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The mystic forces are not only of im mense potency but of a definite moral disposition and character, that is to say, they are of im mense potency either for good or for evil. They are not mechanical and amoral forces like those that physical sciences deal with; they are forces of consciousness and they are conscious forces, they act with an aim and a purpose. The mystic forces are forces either of light or of darkness, either Divine or Titanic. And it is most often the powers of darkness that the naturally ignorant consciousness of man contacts when it seeks to cross the borderline without training or guidance, by the sheer arrogant self-sufficiency of mental scientific reason.
Ignorance, certainly, is not man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlighten ment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right forces. The search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart. "In the heart is established the Truth," says the Upanishad: it is there that is seated eternally the soul, the real being, who appears no bigger than the thumb. Even if the mind is utilised as an instru ment of knowledge, the heart must be there behind as the guide and inspiration. It is precisely because, as I have just mentioned, Gargi sought to shoot uplike "vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself" of which Shakespeare speaksthrough the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajnavalkya had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.
For true knowledge comes of, and means, identity of being. All other knowledge may be an apprehension of things but not comprehension. In the former, the knower stands apart from the object and so can envisage only the outskirts, the contour, the surface nature; the mind is capable of this alone. But comprehension means an embracing and penetration which is possible when the knower identifies himself with the object. And when we are so identified we not merely know the object, but becoming it in our consciousness, we love it and live it.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of im mense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every mo ment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man being an embodied soul, his external consciousness (what the Upanishad calls jgrat) is the milieu in which his soul-experiences naturally manifest and find their play. It is the forms and move ments of that consciousness which clo the and give a concrete habitation and name to perceptions on the subtler ranges of the inner existence. If the experiences on these planes are to be presented to the conscious memory and to the brain-mind and made communicable to others through speech, this is the inevitable and natural process. Symbols are a translation in mental and sensual (and vocal) terms of experiences that are beyond the mind and the sense and the speech and yet throw a kind of echoing vibrations upon these lesser levels.
***
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, before any explanation is attempted it is important to bear in mind that the Upanishads speak of things experiencednot merely thought, reasoned or argued and that these experiences belong to a world and consciousness other than that of the mind and the senses. One should naturally expect here a different language and mode of expression than that which is appropriate to mental and physical things. For example, the world of dreams was once supposed to be a sheer chaos, a mass of meaningless confusion; but now it is held to be quite otherwise. Psychological scientists have discovered a methodeven a very well-defined and strict methodin the madness of that domain. It is an ordered, organised, significant world; but its terminology has to be understood, its code deciphered. It is not a jargon, but a foreign language that must be learnt and mastered.
In the same way, the world of spiritual experiences is also something methodical, well-organized, significant. It may not be and is not the rational world of the mind and the sense; but it need not, for that reason, be devoid of meaning, mere fancifulness or a child's imagination running riot. Here also the right key has to be found, the grammar and vocabulary of that language mastered. And as the best way to have complete mastery of a language is to live among the people who speak it, so, in the matter of spiritual language, the best and the only way to learn it is to go and live in its native country.
--
The Sun is the first and the most immediate source of light that man has and needs. He is the presiding deity of our waking consciousness and has his seat in the eyecakusa ditya, ditya caku bhtvakii prviat. The eye is the representative of the senses; it is the sense par excellence. In truth, sense-perception is the initial light with which we have to guide us, it is the light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets for us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon. So when the Moon sets, the Fire is kindled. It is the light of the ardent and aspiring heart, the glow of an inner urge, the instincts and inspirations of our secret life-will. Here we come into touch with a source of knowledge and realization, a guidance more direct than the mind and much deeper than the sense-perception. Still this light partakes more of heat than of pure luminosity; it is, one may say, incandescent feeling, but not vision. We must probe deeper, mount higherreach heights and profundities that are serene and transparent. The Fire is to be quieted and silenced, says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth: an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth the Wordreaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is clothing, though a luminous clothinghiramayam ptram When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
II. The Four Oblations
The Word has four breasts. The Gods feed on two, SWAHAKAR and VASHATKAR, men upon the third, HANTAKAR,and the Ancestor upon the fourth, SWADHA 2
Ritualistically these four terms are the formulae for oblation to four Deities, Powers or Presences, whom the sacrificer wishes to please and propitiate in order to have their help and blessing and in order thereby to discharge his dharma or duty of life. Svh is the offering especially dedicated to Agni, the foremost of the Gods, for he is the divine messenger who carries men's offering to the Gods and brings their blessing to men. Vaatkr is the offering to the Gods generally. Hantakr is the offering to mankind, to our kin, an especial form of it being the worship of the guests,sarvadevamayo' tithi. Svadh is the offering to the departed Fathers (Pitris).
The duty of life consists, it is said, in the repaying of three debts which every man contracts as soon as he takes birth upon earth the debt to the Gods, to men and to the Ancestors. This threefold debt or duty has, in other terms, reference to the three fields or domains wherein an embodied being lives and moves and to which he must adjust and react rightly -if he is to secure for his life an integral fulfil ment. These are the family, society and the world and beyond-world. The Gods are the Powers that rule the world and beyond, they are the forms and forces of the One Spirit underlying the universe, the varied expressions of divine Truth and Reality: To worship the Gods, to do one's duty by them, means to come into contact and to be unitedin being, consciousness and activitywith the universal and spiritual existence, which is the supreme end and purpose of human life. The seconda more circumscribed fieldis the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a limb. The service to society or good citizenship entails the worship of humanity, of Man as a god. Lastly, man belongs to the family, which is the unit of society; and the backbone of the family is the continuous line of ancestors, who are its presiding deity and represent the norm of a living dharma, the ethic of an ideal life.
From the psychological standpoint, the four oblations are move ments or reactions of consciousness in its urge towards the utterance and expression of Divine Truth. Like some other ele ments in the cosmic play, these also form a quartetcaturvyha and work together for a common purpose in view of a perfect and all-round result.
--
This interchange, or mutual giving, the High Covenant between the Gods and men, to which the Gita too refers
With this sacrifice nourish the Gods, that the Gods may nourish you; thus mutually nourishing ye shall obtain the highest felicity3 is the very secret of the cosmic play, the basis of the spiritual evolution in the universal existence.
The Gods are the formations or particularisations of the Truth-consciousness, the multiple individualisations of the One spirit. The Pitris are the Divine Fathers, that is to say, souls that once laboured and realised here below, and now have passed beyond. They dwell in another world, not too far removed from the earth, and from there, with the force of their Realisation, lend a more concrete help and guidance to the destiny that is being worked out upon earth. They are forces and formations of consciousness in an intermediate region between Here and There (antarika), and serve to bring men and gods nearer to each other, inasmuch as they belong to both the categories, being a divinised humanity or a humanised divinity. Each fixation of the Truth-consciousness in an earthly mould is a thing of joy to the Pitris; it is the Svadh or food by which they live and grow, for it is the consolidation and also the resultant of their own realisation. The achieve ments of the sons are more easily and securely reared and grounded upon those of the forefa thers, whose formative powers we have to invoke, so that we may pass on to the realisation, the firm embodi ment of higher and greater destinies.
III. The Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods
One is an ideal in and of the world, the other is an ideal transcending the world. The Path of the Fathers (Pityna) enjoins the right accomplishing of the dharma of Lifeit is the path of works, of Karma; it is the line of progressive evolution that, man follows through the experience of life after life on earth. The Path of the Gods (Devayna) runs above life's evolutionary course; it lifts man out of the terrestrial cycle and places him in a superior consciousness it is the path of knowledge, of Vidya.4 The Path of the Fathers is the soul's southern or inferior orbit (dakiyana, aparrdha); the Path of the Gods is the northern or superior orbit (uttaryaa, parrdha)The former is also called the Lunar Path and the latter the Solar Path.5 For the moon represents the mind,6 and is therefore, an emblem that befits man so long as he is a mental being and pursues a dharma that is limited by the mind; the sun, on the other hand, is the knowledge and consciousness that is beyond the mindit is the eye of the Gods.7
Man has two aspects or natures; he dwells in two worlds. The first is the manifest world the world of the body, the life and the mind. The body has flowered into the mind through the life. The body gives the basis or the material, the life gives power and energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another world where man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the world where man's nature is transmuted into another triune realitySat, Chit and Ananda.
The one, however, is not completely divorced from the other. The apparent, the inferior nature is only a preparation for the real, the superior nature. The Path of the Fathers concerns itself with man as a mental being and seeks so to ordain and accomplish its duties and ideals as to lead him on to the Path of the Gods; the mind, the life, and the body consciousness should be so disciplined, educated, purified, they should develop along such a line and gradually rise to such a stage as to make them fit to receive the light which belongs to the higher level, so allowing the human soul imbedded in them to extricate itself and pass on to the Immortal Life.
And they who are thus lifted up into the Higher Orbit are freed from the bondage to the cycle of rebirth. They enjoy the supreme Liberation that is of the Spirit; and even when they descend into the Inferior Path, it is to work out as free agents, as vehicles of the Divine, a special purpose, to bring down something of the substance and nature of the Solar reality into the lower world, enlighten and elevate the lower, as far as it is allowed, into the higher.
--
Agni in the physical consciousness is calledghapati, for the body is the house in which the soul is lodged and he is its keeper, guardian and lord. The fire in the mental consciousness is called daki; for it is that which gives discern ment, the power to discriminate between the truth and the falsehood, it is that which by the pressure of its heat and light cleaves the wrong away from the right. And the fire in the life-force is called havanya; for pra is not only the plane of hunger and desire, but also of power and dynamism, it is that which calls forth forces, brings them into' play and it is that which is to be invoked for the progression of the Sacrifice, for an onward march on the spiritual path.
Of the three fires one is the upholderhe who gives the firm foundation, the stable house where the Sacrifice is performed and Truth realised; the second is the Knower, often called in the Veda jtaved, who guides and directs; and the third the Doer, the effective Power, the driving Energyvaivnara.
--
Apart from the question whether the biological pheno menon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global move ment, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
We have, in modern times, a move ment towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such ele ments, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double move ment of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his move mentsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, funda mental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic move ment, conformity to which brings to the thrice-bound human being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two ele ments or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering move ment of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the former and the fulfil ment of the latter. The Gita elaborates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the gods and the gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, for its own sake, for an egocentric satisfaction; all, even move ments relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.
VII. The Cosmic and the Transcendental
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Some Western and Westernised scholars have tried to show that the pheno menon described here is an exclusively natural pheno menon, actually visible in the polar region where the sun never sets for six months and moves in a circle whose plane is parallel to the plane of the horizon on the summer solstice and is gradually inclined as the sun regresses towards the equinox (on which day just half the solar disc is visible above the horizon). The sun may be said there to move in the direction East-South-West-North and again East. Indeed the Upanishad mentions the positions of the sun in that order and gives a character to each successive station. The Ray from the East is red, symbolising the Rik, the Southern Ray is white, symbolising the Yajur, the Western Ray is black symbolising the Atharva. The natural pheno menon, however, might have been or might not have been before the mind's eye of the Rishi, but the symbolism, the esotericism of it is clear enough in the way the Rishi speaks of it. Also, apart from the first four move ments (which it is already sufficiently difficult to identify completely with what is visible), the fifth move ment, as a separate descending move ment from above appears to be a foreign ele ment in the context. And although, with regard to the sixth move ment or status, the sun is visible as such exactly from the point of the North Pole for a while, the ring of the Rishi's utterance is unmistakably spiritual, it cannot but refer to a fact of inner consciousness that is at least what the physical fact conveys to the Rishi and what he seeks to convey and express primarily.
Now this is what is sought to be conveyed and expressed. The five move ments of the sun here also are nothing but the five smas and they refer to the cycle of the Cosmic or Universal Brahman. The sixth status where all move ments cease, where there is no rising and setting, no ebb and flow, no waxing and waning, where there is the immutable, the ever-same unity, is very evidently the Transcendental Brahman. It is That to which the Vedic Rishi refers when he prays for a constant and fixed vision of the eternal Sunjyok ca sryam drie.
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In Yajnavalkya's enumeration, however, it is to be noted, first of all, that he stresses on the number three. The principle of triplicity is of very wide application: it permeates all fields of consciousness and is evidently based upon a funda mental fact of reality. It seems to embody a truth of synthesis and comprehension, points to the order and harmony that reigns in the cosmos, the spheric music. The metaphysical, that is to say, the original principles that constitute existence are the well-known triplets: (i) the superior: Sat, Chit, Ananda; and (ii) the inferior: Body, Life and Mindthis being a reflection or translation or concretisation of the former. We can see also here how the dual principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 14 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so for a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the manifesting activity of the Reality. But what is this one and a half to which Yajnavalkya refers? It simply means that the other created out of the one is not a wholly separate, independent entity: it is not an integer by itself, as in the Manichean system, but that it is a portion, a fraction of the One. And in the end, in the ultimate analysis, or rather synthesis, there is but one single undivided and indivisible unity. The thousands and hundreds, very often mentioned also in the Rig Veda, are not simply multiplications of the One, a graphic description of its many-sidedness; it indicates also the absolute fullness, the complete completeness (prasya pram) of the Reality. It includes and comprehends all and is a rounded totality, a full circle. The hundred-gated and the thousand-pillared cities of which the ancient Rishis chanted are formations and embodi ments of consciousness human and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness.
Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult aspect in numerology of which Pythagoras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of emanation. The One has divided and subdivided itself, but not in a haphazard way: it is not like the chaotic pulverisation of a piece of stone by hammer-blows. The process of division and subdivision follows a pattern almost as neat and methodical as a genealogical tree. That is to say, the emanations form a hierarchy. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, stands the one supreme Godhead. That Godhead is biune in respect of manifestation the Divine and his creative Power. This two-in-one reality may be considered, according to one view of creation, as dividing into three forms or aspects the well-known Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra of Hindu mythology. These may be termed the first or primary emanations.
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The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical pheno menon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other ele ments of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instru ment for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the ele ments and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
But Yama did answer and unveil the mystery and impart the supreme secret knowledge the knowledge of the Transcendent Brahman: it is out of the transcendent reality that the immanent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the Lord of creation and the Inner Mastersarvabhtntartm, antarymis called brahmajam, born of the Brahman. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the individual and then of the cosmic Brahman, there is a definite line along which the human consciousness (or unconsciousness, as it is at present) is to ascend and evolve. The first step is to learn to distinguish between the Good and the Pleasurable (reya and preya). The line of pleasure leads to the external, the superficial, the false: while the other path leads towards the inner and the higher truth. So the second step is the gradual withdrawal of the consciousness from the physical and the sensual and even the mental preoccupation and focussing it upon what is certain and permanent. In the midst of the death-ridden consciousness in the heart of all that is unstable and fleetingone has to look for Agni, the eternal godhead, the Immortal in mortality, the Timeless in time through whom lies the passage to Immortality beyond Time.
Man has two souls corresponding to his double status. In the inferior, the soul looks downward and is involved in the current of Impermanence and Ignorance, it tastes of grief and sorrow and suffers death and dissolution: in the higher it looks upward and communes and joins with the Eternal (the cosmic) and then with the Absolute (the transcendent). The lower is a reflection of the higher, the higher comes down in a diminished and hence tarnished light. The message is that of deliverance, the deliverance and reintegration of the lower soul out of its bondage of worldly ignorant life into the freedom and immortality first of its higher and then of its highest status. It is true, however, that the Upanishad does not make a trenchant distinction between the cosmic and the transcendent and often it speaks of both in the same breath, as it were. For in fact they are realities involved in each other and interwoven. Indeed the triple status, including the Individual, forms one single totality and the three do not exclude or cancel each other; on the contrary, they combine and may be said to enhance each other's reality. The Transcendence expresses or deploys itself in the cosmoshe goes abroad,sa paryagt: and the cosmic individualises, concretises itself in the particular and the personal. The one single spiritual reality holds itself, aspects itself in a threefold manner.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And what else is the true character, the soul of beauty than light and delight? "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." And a thing of joy is a thing of light. Joy is the radiance rippling over a thing of beauty. Beauty is always radiant: the charm, the loveliness of an object is but the glow of light that it emanates. And it would not be a very incorrect mensuration to measure the degree of beauty by the degree of light radiated. The diamond is not only a thing of value, but a thing of beauty also, because of the concentrated and undimmed light that it enshrines within itself. A dark, dull and dismal thing, devoid of interest and attraction becomes aesthetically precious and significant as soon as the artist presents it in terms of the values of light. The entire art of painting is nothing but the expression of beauty, in and through the modalities of light.
And where there is light, there is cheer and joy. Rasamaya and jyotirmayaare thus the two conjoint characteristics funda mental to the nature of the ultimate reality. Sometimes these two are named as the 'solar and the lunar aspect. The solar aspect refers obviously to the Light, that is to say, to the Truth; the lunar aspect refers to the rasa (Soma), to Immortality, to Beauty proper,
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species.
In view of this situation it is doubly reassuring to know that, even in the midst of chaotic concepts and conditions there still remains a door through which man, individually, can enter into a vast store-house of knowledge, knowledge as dependable and immutable as the measured tread of Eternity.
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The importance of the book to me was and is five-fold. 1) It provided a yardstick by which to measure my personal progress in the understanding of the Qabalah. 2) Therefore it can have an equivalent value to the modern student. 3) It serves as a theoretical introduction to the Qabalistic foundation of the magical work of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. 4) It throws considerable light on the occasionally obscure writings of Aleister Crowley. 5) It is dedicated to Crowley, who was the Ankh-af-na-Khonsu mentioned in The Book of the Law -a dedication which served both as a token of personal loyalty and devotion to Crowley, but was also a gesture of my spiritual independence from him.
In his profound investigation into the origins and basic nature of man, Robert Ardrey in African Genesis recently made a shocking state ment. Although man has begun the conquest of outer space, the ignorance of his own nature, says Ardrey, "has become institutionalized, universalized and sanctified." He further states that were a brotherhood of man to be formed today, "its only possible common bond would be ignorance of what man is."
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
COMPANY OF HOLY men AND DEVOTEES
ISLAM
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SOME NOTED men
KRISTODAS PAL
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SRI RAMAKRISHNA, the God-man of modern India, was born at Kamarpukur. This village in the Hooghly District preserved during the last century the idyllic simplicity of the rural areas of Bengal. Situated far from the railway, it was untouched by the glamour of the city. It contained rice-fields, tall palms, royal banyans, a few lakes, and two cremation grounds. South of the village a stream took its leisurely course. A mango orchard dedicated by a neighbouring zemindar to the public use was frequented by the boys for their noonday sports. A highway passed through the village to the great temple of Jagannath at Puri, and the villagers, most of whom were farmers and crafts men, entertained many passing holy men and pilgrims. The dull round of the rural life was broken by lively festivals, the observance of sacred days, religious singing, and other innocent pleasures.
About his parents Sri Ramakrishna once said: "My mother was the personification of rectitude and gentleness. She did not know much about the ways of the world; innocent of the art of conceal ment, she would say what was in her mind. People loved her for her open-heartedness. My father, an orthodox brahmin, never accepted gifts from the sudras. He spent much of his time in worship and meditation, and in repeating God's name and chanting His glories. Whenever in his daily prayers he invoked the Goddess Gayatri, his chest flushed and tears rolled down his cheeks. He spent his leisure hours making garlands for the Family Deity, Raghuvir."
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Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his mother in the discharge of her household duties. He gave more attention to reading and hearing the religious stories recorded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of renunciation of the world and all-absorbing love of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and worship.
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In 1757 English traders laid the foundation of British rule in India. Gradually the Govern ment was systematized and lawlessness suppressed. The Hindus were much impressed by the military power and political acu men of the new rulers. In the wake of the merchants came the English educators, and social reformers, and Christian missionaries — all bearing a culture completely alien to the Hindu mind. In different parts of the country educational institutions were set up and Christian churches established. Hindu young men were offered the heady wine of the Western culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and they drank it to the very dregs.
The first effect of the draught on the educated Hindus was a complete efface ment 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.
But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited retort of the young Gadadhar: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
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One day the priest of the Radhakanta temple accidentally dropped the image of Krishna on the floor, breaking one of its legs. The pundits advised the Rani to install a new image, since the worship of an image with a broken limb was against the scriptural injunctions. But the Rani was fond of the image, and she asked Sri Ramakrishna's opinion. In an abstracted mood, he said: "This solution is ridiculous. If a son-in-law of the Rani broke his leg, would she discard him and put another in his place? Wouldn't she rather arrange for his treat ment? Why should she not do the same thing in this case too? Let the image be repaired and worshipped as before." It was a simple, straightforward solution and was accepted by the Rani. Sri Ramakrishna himself mended the break. The priest was dismissed for his carelessness, and at Mathur Babu's earnest request Sri Ramakrishna accepted the office of priest in the Radhakanta temple.
^No definite information is available as to the origin of this name. Most probably it was given by Mathur Babu, as Ramlal, Sri Ramakrishna's nephew, has said, quoting the authority of his uncle himself.
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Born in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the formalities of worship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite human mind. They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of pheno menal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfil ment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms. He must use human symbols. Therefore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless, the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. The gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with orna ments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense-organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodi ment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before That whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.
Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
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His visions became deeper and more intimate. He no longer had to meditate to behold the Divine Mother. Even while retaining consciousness of the outer world, he would see Her as tangibly as the temples, the trees, the river, and the men around him.
On a certain occasion Mathur Babu stealthily entered the temple to watch the worship. He was profoundly moved by the young priest's devotion and sincerity. He realized that Sri Ramakrishna had transformed the stone image into the living Goddess.
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Mathur and Rani Rasmani began to ascribe the mental ail ment 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 wo men of ill fame. But as soon as the wo men entered his room, Sri Ramakrishna beheld in them the manifestation of the Divine Mother of the Universe and went into samadhi uttering Her name.
--- HALADHARI
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There are three kinds of formal devotion: tamasic, rajasic, and sattvic. If a person, while showing devotion, to God, is actuated by malevolence, arrogance, jealousy, or anger, then his devotion is tamasic, since it is influenced by tamas, the quality of inertia. If he worships God from a desire for fame or wealth, or from any other worldly ambition, then his devotion is rajasic, since it is influenced by rajas, the quality of activity. But if a person loves God without any thought of material gain, if he performs his duties to please God alone and maintains toward all created beings the attitude of friendship, then his devotion is called sattvic, since it is influenced by sattva, the quality of harmony. But the highest devotion transcends the three gunas, or qualities, being a spontaneous, uninterrupted inclination of the mind toward God, the Inner Soul of all beings; and it wells up in the heart of a true devotee as soon as he hears the name of God or mention of God's attributes. A devotee possessed of this love would not accept the happiness of heaven if it were offered him. His one desire is to love God under all conditions — in pleasure and pain, life and death, honour and dishonour, prosperity and adversity.
There are two stages of bhakti. The first is known as vaidhi-bhakti, or love of God qualified by scriptural injunctions. For the devotees of this stage are prescribed regular and methodical worship, hymns, prayers, the repetition of God's name, and the chanting of His glories. This lower bhakti in course of time matures into para-bhakti, or supreme devotion, known also as prema, the most intense form of divine love. Divine love is an end in itself. It exists potentially in all human hearts, but in the case of bound creatures it is misdirected to earthly objects.
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On the appointed day, in the small hours of the morning, a fire was lighted in the Panchavati. Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna sat before it. The flame played on their faces. "Ramakrishna was a small brown man with a short beard and beautiful eyes, long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was open over his white teeth in a bewitching smile, at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. His tempera ment was high-strung, for he was supersensitive to all the winds of joy and sorrow, both moral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened before the mirror of his eyes, a two-sided mirror, turned both out and in." (Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 38-9.) Facing him, the other rose like a rock. He was very tall and robust, a sturdy and tough oak. His constitution and mind were of iron. He was the strong leader of men.
In the burning flame before him Sri Ramakrishna performed the rituals of destroying his attach ment to relatives, friends, body, mind, sense-organs, ego, and the world. The leaping flame swallowed it all, making the initiate free and pure. The sacred thread and the tuft of hair were consigned to the fire, completing his severance from caste, sex, and society. Last of all he burnt in that fire, with all that is holy as his witness, his desire for enjoy ment here and hereafter. He uttered the sacred mantras giving assurance of safety and fearlessness to all beings, who were only manifestations of his own Self. The rites completed, the disciple received from the guru the loin-cloth and ochre robe, the emblems of his new life.
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Totapuri had no idea of the struggles of ordinary men in the toils of passion and desire. Having maintained all through life the guilelessness of a child, he laughed at the idea of a man's being led astray by the senses. He was convinced that the world was maya and had only to be denounced to vanish for ever. A born non-dualist, he had no faith in a Personal God. He did not believe in the terrible aspect of Kali, much less in Her benign aspect. Music and the chanting of God's holy name were to him only so much nonsense. He ridiculed the spending of emotion on the worship of a Personal God.
--- KALI AND MAYA
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.
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After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained for six months in a state of absolute identity with Brahman. "For six months at a stretch", he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I was not conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils just as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust."
His body would not have survived but for the kindly attention of a monk who happened to be at Dakshineswar at that time and who somehow realized that for the good of humanity Sri Ramakrishna's body must be preserved. He tried various means, even physical violence, to recall the fleeing soul to the prison-house of the body, and during the resultant fleeting mo ments of consciousness he would push a few morsels of food down Sri Ramakrishna's throat. Presently Sri Ramakrishna received the command of the Divine Mother to remain on the threshold of relative consciousness. Soon there-after after he was afflicted with a serious attack of dysentery. Day and night the pain tortured him, and his mind gradually came down to the physical plane.
--- COMPANY OF HOLY men AND DEVOTEES
From now on Sri Ramakrishna began to seek the company of devotees and holy men. He had gone through the storm and stress of spiritual disciplines and visions. Now he realized an inner calmness and appeared to others as a normal person. But he could not bear the company of worldly people or listen to their talk. Fortunately the holy atmosphere of Dakshineswar and the liberality of Mathur attracted monks and holy men from all parts of the country. Sadhus of all denominations — monists and dualists, Vaishnavas and Vedantists, Saktas and worshippers of Rama — flocked there in ever increasing numbers. Ascetics and visionaries came to seek Sri Ramakrishna's advice. Vaishnavas had come during the period of his Vaishnava sadhana, and Tantriks when he practised the disciplines of Tantra. Vedantists began to arrive after the departure of Totapuri. In the room of Sri Ramakrishna, who was then in bed with dysentery, the Vedantists engaged in scriptural discussions, and, forgetting his own physical suffering, he solved their doubts by referring directly to his own experiences. Many of the visitors were genuine spiritual souls, the unseen pillars of Hinduism, and their spiritual lives were quickened in no small measure by the sage of Dakshineswar. Sri Ramakrishna in turn learnt from them anecdotes concerning the ways and the conduct of holy men, which he subsequently narrated to his devotees and disciples. At his request Mathur provided him with large stores of food-stuffs, clothes, and so forth, for distribution among the wandering monks.
"Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."
Sri Ramakrishna used to say that when the flower blooms the bees come to it for honey of their own accord. Now many souls began to visit Dakshineswar to satisfy their spiritual hunger. He, the devotee and aspirant, became the Master. Gauri, the great scholar who had been one of the first to proclaim Sri Ramakrishna an Incarnation of God, paid the Master a visit in 1870 and with the Master's blessings renounced the world. Narayan Shastri, another great pundit, who had mastered the six systems of Hindu philosophy and had been offered a lucrative post by the Maharaja of Jaipur, met the Master and recognized in him one who had realized in life those ideals which he himself had encountered merely in books. Sri Ramakrishna initiated Narayan Shastri, at his earnest request, into the life of sannyas. Pundit Padmalochan, the court pundit of the Maharaja of Burdwan, well known for his scholarship in both the Vedanta and the Nyaya systems of philosophy, accepted the Master as an Incarnation of God. Krishnakishore, a Vedantist scholar, became devoted to the Master. And there arrived Viswanath Upadhyaya, who was to become a favourite devotee; Sri Ramakrishna always addressed him as "Captain". He was a high officer of the King of Nepal and had received the title of Colonel in recognition of his merit. A scholar of the Gita, the Bhagavata, and the Vedanta philosophy, he daily performed the worship of his Chosen Deity with great devotion. "I have read the Vedas and the other scriptures", he said. "I have also met a good many monks and devotees in different places. But it is in Sri Ramakrishna's presence that my spiritual yearnings have been fulfilled. To me he seems to be the embodi ment of the truths of the scriptures."
--
Eight years later, some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings from the Bible, by Sambhu Charan Mallick, a gentleman of Calcutta and a devotee of the Master. Sri Ramakrishna became fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus. One day he was seated in the parlour of Jadu Mallick's garden house (This expression is used throughout to translate the Bengali word denoting a rich man's country house set in a garden.) at Dakshineswar, when his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered his soul. The effect of this experience was stronger than that of the vision of Mohammed. In dismay he cried out, "O Mother! What are You doing to me?" And, breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. For three days he did not set foot in the Kali temple. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the Panchavati, he saw coming toward him a person with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance, and fair skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna's soul: "Behold the Christ, who shed His heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love Incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna krishna realized his identity with Christ, as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama, Hanuman, Radha, Krishna, Brahman, and Mohammed. The Master went into samadhi and communed with the Brahman with attributes. Thus he experienced the truth that Christianity, too, was a path leading to God-Consciousness. Till the last mo ment of his life he believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But Christ, for him, was not the only Incarnation; there were others — Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.
--- ATTITUDE TOWARD DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
--
Without being formally initiated into their doctrines, Sri Ramakrishna thus realized the ideals of religions other than Hinduism. He did not need to follow any doctrine. All barriers were removed by his overwhelming love of God. So he became a Master who could speak with authority regarding the ideas and ideals of the various religions of the world. "I have practised", said he, "all religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity — and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it 'jal'; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it pani'. At a third the Christians call it 'water'. Can we imagine that it is not 'jal', but only 'pani' or 'water'? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, tempera ment, and name create differences. Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him."
In 1867 Sri Ramakrishna returned to Kamarpukur to recuperate from the effect of his austerities. The peaceful countryside, the simple and artless companions of his boyhood, and the pure air did him much good. The villagers were happy to get back their playful, frank, witty, kind-hearted, and truthful Gadadhar, though they did not fail to notice the great change that had come over him during his years in Calcutta. His wife, Sarada Devi, now fourteen years old, soon arrived at Kamarpukur. Her spiritual develop ment was much beyond her age and she was able to understand immediately her husband's state of mind. She became eager to learn from him about God and to live with him as his attendant. The Master accepted her cheerfully both as his disciple and as his spiritual companion. Referring to the experiences of these few days, she once said: "I used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
--
In 1878 a schism divided Keshab's Samaj. Some of his influential followers accused him of infringing the Brahmo principles by marrying his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. This group seceded and established the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Keshab remaining the leader of the Navavidhan. Keshab now began to be drawn more and more toward the Christ ideal, though under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna his devotion to the Divine Mother also deepened. His mental oscillation between Christ and the Divine Mother of Hinduism found no position of rest. In Bengal and some other parts of India the Brahmo move ment took the form of unitarian Christianity, scoffed at Hindu rituals, and preached a crusade against image worship. Influenced by Western culture, it declared the supremacy of reason, advocated the ideals of the French Revolution, abolished the caste-system among its own members, stood for the emancipation of wo men, agitated for the abolition of early marriage, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, and encouraged various educational and social-reform move ments. The immediate effect of the Brahmo move ment in Bengal was the checking of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries. It also raised Indian culture in the estimation of its English masters. But it was an intellectual and eclectic religious fer ment born of the necessity of the time. Unlike Hinduism, it was not founded on the deep inner experiences of sages and prophets. Its influence was confined to a comparatively few educated men and wo men of the country, and the vast masses of the Hindus remained outside it. It sounded monotonously only one of the notes in the rich gamut of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus.
--- ARYA SAMAJ
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Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
Keshab's sincerity was enough for Sri Ramakrishna. Henceforth the two saw each other frequently, either at Dakshineswar or at the temple of the Brahmo Samaj. Whenever the Master was in the temple at the time of divine service, Keshab would request him to speak to the congregation. And Keshab would visit the saint, in his turn, with offerings of flowers and fruits.
--
Shivanath, one day, was greatly impressed by the Master's utter simplicity and abhorrence of praise. He was seated with Sri Ramakrishna in the latter's room when several rich men of Calcutta arrived. The Master left the room for a few minutes. In the mean time Hriday, his nephew, began to describe his samadhi to the visitors. The last few words caught the Master's ear as he entered the room. He said to Hriday: "What a mean-spirited fellow you must be to extol me thus before these rich men! You have seen their costly apparel and their gold watches and chains, and your object is to get from them as much money as you can. What do I care about what they think of me? (Turning to the gentle men) No, my friends, what he has told you about me is not true. It was not love of God that made me absorbed in God and indifferent to external life. I became positively insane for some time. The sadhus who frequented this temple told me to practise many things. I tried to follow them, and the consequence was that my austerities drove me to insanity." This is a quotation from one of Shivanath's books. He took the Master's words literally and failed to see their real import.
Shivanath vehe mently criticized the Master for his other-worldly attitude toward his wife. He writes: "Ramakrishna was practically separated from his wife, who lived in her village home. One day when I was complaining to some friends about the virtual widowhood of his wife, he drew me to one side and whispered in my ear: 'Why do you complain? It is no longer possible; it is all dead and gone.' Another day as I was inveighing against this part of his teaching, and also declaring that our program of work in the Brahmo Samaj includes wo men, that ours is a social and domestic religion, and that we want to give education and social liberty to wo men, the saint became very much excited, as was his way when anything against his settled conviction was asserted — a trait we so much liked in him — and exclaimed, 'Go, thou fool, go and perish in the pit that your wo men will dig for you.' Then he glared at me and said: 'What does a gardener do with a young plant? Does he not surround it with a fence, to protect it from goats and cattle? And when the young plant has grown up into a tree and it can no longer be injured by cattle, does he not remove the fence and let the tree grow freely?' I replied, 'Yes, that is the custom with gardeners.' Then he remarked, 'Do the same in your spiritual life; become strong, be full-grown; then you may seek them.' To which I replied, 'I don't agree with you in thinking that wo men's work is like that of cattle, destructive; they are our associates and helpers in our spiritual struggles and social progress' — a view with which he could not agree, and he marked his dissent by shaking his head. Then referring to the lateness of the hour he jocularly remarked, 'It is time for you to depart; take care, do not be late; otherwise your woman will not admit you into her room.' This evoked hearty laughter."
--
This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. Born and brought up in a simple village, without any formal education, and taught by the orthodox holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opportunity to study the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western education on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, renunciation being to him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos he learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God and the world. Educated young men were influenced more by the Western philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not dismayed, for he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he expounded to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious disciplines, yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their tastes and tempera ments.
^The term "woman and gold", which has been used throughout in a collective sense, occurs again and again in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to designate the chief impedi ments to spiritual progress. This favourite expression of the Master, "kaminikanchan", has often been misconstrued. By it he meant only "lust and greed", the baneful influence of which retards the aspirant's spiritual growth. He used the word "kamini", or "woman", as a concrete term for the sex instinct when addressing his man devotees. He advised wo men, on the other hand, to shun "man". "Kanchan", or "gold", symbolizes greed, which is the other obstacle to spiritual life.
--
In the year 1879 occasional writings about Sri Ramakrishna by the Brahmos, in the Brahmo magazines, began to attract his future disciples from the educated middle-class Bengalis, and they continued to come till 1884. But others, too, came, feeling the subtle power of his attraction. They were an ever shifting crowd of people of all castes and creeds: Hindus and Brahmos, Vaishnavas and Saktas, the educated with university degrees and the illiterate, old and young, maharajas and beggars, journalists and artists, pundits and devotees, philosophers and the worldly-minded, jnanis and yogis, men of action and men of faith, virtuous wo men and prostitutes, office-holders and vagabonds, philanthropists and self-seekers, dramatists and drunkards, builders-up and pullers-down. He gave to them all, without stint, from his illimitable store of realization. No one went away empty-handed. He taught them the lofty .knowledge of the Vedanta and the soul
-melting love of the Purana. Twenty hours out of twenty-four he would speak without out rest or respite. He gave to all his sympathy and enlighten ment, and he touched them with that strange power of the soul which could not but melt even the most hardened. And people understood him according to their powers of comprehension.
--
His disciples were of two kinds: the householders, and the young men, some of whom were later to become monks. There was also a small group of wo men devotees.
--- HOUSEHOLDER DEVOTEES
For the householders Sri Ramakrishna did not prescribe the hard path of total renunciation. He wanted them to discharge their obligations to their families. Their renunciation was to be mental. Spiritual life could not be acquired by flying away from responsibilities. A married couple should live like brother and sister after the birth of one or two children, devoting their time to spiritual talk and contemplation. He encouraged the householders, saying that their life was, in a way, easier than that of the monk, since it was more advantageous to fight the enemy from inside a fortress than in an open field. He insisted, however, on their repairing into solitude every now and then to strengthen their devotion and faith in God through prayer, japa, and meditation. He prescribed for them the companionship of sadhus. He asked them to perform their worldly duties with one hand, while holding to God with the other, and to pray to God to make their duties fewer and fewer so that in the end they might cling to Him with both hands. He would discourage in both the householders and the celibate youths any lukewarmness in their spiritual struggles. He would not ask them to follow indiscriminately the ideal of non-resistance, which ultimately makes a coward of the unwary.
--- FUTURE MONKS
But to the young men destined to be monks he pointed out the steep path of renunciation, both external and internal. They must take the vow of absolute continence and eschew all thought of greed and lust. By the practice of continence, aspirants develop a subtle nerve through which they understand the deeper mysteries of God. For them self-control is final, imperative, and absolute. The sannyasis are teachers of men, and their lives should be totally free from blemish. They must not even look at a picture which may awaken their animal passions. The Master selected his future monks from young men untouched by "woman and gold" and plastic enough to be cast in his spiritual mould. When teaching them the path of renunciation and discrimination, he would not allow the householders to be anywhere near them.
--- RAM AND MANOMOHAN
The first two householder devotees to come to Dakshineswar were Ramchandra Dutta and Manomohan Mitra. A medical practitioner and chemist, Ram was sceptical about God and religion and never enjoyed peace of soul. He wanted tangible proof of God's existence. The Master said to him: "God really" exists. You don't see the stars in the day-time, but that doesn't mean that the stars do not exist. There is butter in milk. But can anybody see it by merely looking at the milk? To get butter you must churn milk in a quiet and cool place. You cannot realize God by a mere wish; you must go through some mental disciplines." By degrees the Master awakened Ram's spirituality and the latter became one of his foremost lay disciples. It was Ram who introduced Narendranath to Sri Ramakrishna. Narendra was a relative of Ram.
Manomohan at first met with considerable opposition from his wife and other relatives, who resented his visits to Dakshineswar. But in the end the unselfish love of the Master triumphed over worldly affection. It was Manomohan who brought Rakhal to the Master.
--
Suresh Mitra, a beloved disciple whom the Master often addressed as Surendra, had received an English education and held an important post in an English firm. Like many other educated young men of the time, he prided himself on his atheism and led a Bohemian life. He was addicted to drinking. He cherished an exaggerated notion about man's free will. A victim of mental depression, he was brought to Sri Ramakrishna by Ramchandra chandra Dutta. When he heard the Master asking a disciple to practise the virtue of self-surrender to God, he was impressed. But though he tried thenceforth to do so, he was unable to give up his old associates and his drinking. One day the Master said in his presence, "Well, when a man goes to an undesirable place, why doesn't he take the Divine Mother with him?" And to Surendra himself Sri Ramakrishna said: "Why should you drink wine as wine? Offer it to Kali, and then take it as Her prasad, as consecrated drink
. But see that you don't become intoxicated; you must not reel and your thoughts must not wander. At first you will feel ordinary excite ment, but soon you will experience spiritual exaltation." Gradually Surendra's entire life was changed. The Master designated him as one of those commissioned by the Divine Mother to defray a great part of his expenses. Surendra's purse was always open for the Master's comfort.
--
Harish, a young man in affluent circumstances, renounced his family and took shelter with the Master, who loved him for his sincerity, singleness of purpose, and quiet nature. He spent his leisure time in prayer and meditation, turning a deaf ear to the entreaties and threats of his relatives. Referring to his undisturbed peace of mind, the Master would say: "Real men are dead to the world though living. Look at Harish. He is an example." When one day the Master asked him to be a little kind to his wife, Harish said: "You must excuse me on this point. This is not the place to show kindness. If I try to be sympathetic to her, there is a possibility of my forgetting the ideal and becoming entangled in the world."
--- BHAVANATH
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Durgacharan Nag, also known as Nag Mahashay, was the ideal householder among the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was the embodi ment of the Master's ideal of life in the world, unstained by worldliness. In spite of his intense desire to become a sannyasi, Sri Ramakrishna asked him to live in the world in the spirit of a monk, and the disciple truly carried out this injunction. He was born of a poor family and even during his boyhood often sacrificed everything to lessen the sufferings of the needy. He had married at an early age and after his wife's death had married a second time to obey his father's command. But he once said to his wife: "Love on the physical level never lasts. He is indeed blessed who can give his love to God with his whole heart. Even a little attach ment to the body endures for several births. So do not be attached to this cage of bone and flesh. Take shelter at the feet of the Mother and think of Her alone. Thus your life here and hereafter will be ennobled." The Master spoke of him as a "blazing light". He received every word of Sri Ramakrishna in dead earnest. One day he heard the Master saying that it was difficult for doctors, lawyers, and brokers to make much progress in spirituality. Of doctors he said, "If the mind clings to the tiny drops of medicine, how can it conceive of the Infinite?" That was the end of Durgacharan's medical practice and he threw his chest of medicines into the Ganges. Sri Ramakrishna assured him that he would not lack simple food and clothing. He bade him serve holy men. On being asked where he would find real holy men, the Master said that the sadhus themselves would seek his company. No sannyasi could have lived a more austere life than Durgacharan.
--- GIRISH GHOSH
Girish Chandra Ghosh was a born rebel against God, a sceptic, a Bohemian, a drunkard. He was the greatest Bengali dramatist of his time, the father of the modem Bengali stage. Like other young men he had imbibed all the vices of the West. He had plunged into a life of dissipation and had become convinced that religion was only a fraud. Materialistic philosophy he justified as enabling one to get at least a little fun out of life. But a series of reverses shocked him and he became eager to solve the riddle of life. He had heard people say that in spiritual life the help of a guru was imperative and that the guru was to be regarded as God Himself. But Girish was too well acquainted with human nature to see perfection in a man. His first meeting with Sri Ramakrishna did not impress him at all. He returned home feeling as if he had seen a freak at a circus; for the Master, in a semi-conscious mood, had inquired whether it was evening, though the lamps were burning in the room. But their paths often crossed, and Girish could not avoid further encounters. The Master attended a performance in Girish's Star Theatre. On this occasion, too, Girish found nothing impressive about him. One day, however, Girish happened to see the Master dancing and singing with the devotees. He felt the contagion and wanted to join them, but restrained himself for fear of ridicule. Another day Sri Ramakrishna was about to give him spiritual instruction, when Girish said: "I don't want to listen to instructions. I have myself written many instructions. They are of no use to me. Please help me in a more tangible way If you can." This pleased the Master and he asked Girish to cultivate faith.
As time passed, Girish began to learn that the guru is the one who silently unfolds the disciple's inner life. He became a steadfast devotee of the Master. He often loaded the Master with insults, drank in his presence, and took liberties which astounded the other devotees. But the Master knew that at heart Girish was tender, faithful, and sincere. He would not allow Girish to give up the theatre. And when a devotee asked him to tell Girish to give up drinking, he sternly replied: "That is none of your business. He who has taken charge of him will look after him. Girish is a devotee of heroic type. I tell you, drinking will not affect him." The Master knew that mere words could not induce a man to break deep-rooted habits, but that the silent influence of love worked miracles. Therefore he never asked him to give up alcohol, with the result that Girish himself eventually broke the habit. Sri Ramakrishna had strengthened Girish's resolution by allowing him to feel that he was absolutely free.
--
But it was in the company of his younger devotees, pure souls yet unstained by the touch of worldliness, that Sri Ramakrishna took greatest joy. Among the young men who later embraced the householder's life were Narayan, Paitu, the younger Naren, Tejchandra, and Purna. These visited the Master sometimes against strong opposition from home.
--- PURNA
--
--- SOME NOTED men
Sri Ramakrishna also became acquainted with a number of people whose scholarship or wealth entitled them everywhere to respect. He had met, a few years before, Devendranath Tagore, famous all over Bengal for his wealth, scholarship, saintly character, and social position. But the Master found him disappointing; for, whereas Sri Ramakrishna expected of a saint complete renunciation of the world, Devendranath combined with his saintliness a life of enjoy ment. Sri Ramakrishna met the great poet Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity "for the sake of his stomach". To him the Master could not impart instruction, for the Divine Mother "pressed his tongue". In addition he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, the editor, social reformer, and patriot; Iswar Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educator; Pundit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, moralist, and leader of Indian Nationalism; and Bankim Chatterji, a deputy magistrate, novelist, and essayist, and one of the fashioners of modern Bengali prose. Sri Ramakrishna was not the man to be dazzled by outward show, glory, or eloquence. A pundit without discrimination he regarded as a mere straw. He would search people's hearts for the light of God, and if that was missing he would have nothing to do with them.
--
The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excite ment to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to man in a spirit of worship.
--- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
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The first of these young men to come to the Master was Latu. Born of obscure parents, in Behar, he came to Calcutta in search of work and was engaged by Ramchandra Dutta as house-boy. Learning of the saintly Sri Ramakrishna, he visited the Master at Dakshineswar and was deeply touched by his cordiality. When he was about to leave, the Master asked him to take some money and return home in a boat or carriage. But Latu declared he had a few pennies and jingled the coins in his pocket. Sri Ramakrishna later requested Ram to allow Latu to stay with him permanently. Under Sri Ramakrishna's guidance Latu made great progress in meditation and was blessed with ecstatic visions, but all the efforts of the Master to give him a smattering of education failed. Latu was very fond of kirtan and other devotional songs but remained all his life illiterate.
--- RAKHAL
--
In a state of mental conflict and torture of soul, Narendra came to Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. He was then eighteen years of age and had been in college two years. He entered the Master's room accompanied by some light-hearted friends. At Sri Ramakrishna's request he sang a few songs, pouring his whole soul into them, and the Master went into samadhi. A few minutes later Sri Ramakrishna suddenly left his seat, took Narendra by the hand, and led him to the screened verandah north of his room. They were alone. Addressing Narendra most tenderly, as if he were a friend of long acquaintance, the Master said: "Ah! You have come very late. Why have you been so unkind as to make me wait all these days? My ears are tired of hearing the futile words of worldly men. Oh, how I have longed to pour my spirit into the heart of someone fitted to receive my message!" He talked thus, sobbing all the time. Then, standing before Narendra with folded hands, he addressed him as Narayana, born on earth to remove the misery of humanity. Grasping Narendra's hand, he asked him to come again, alone, and very soon. Narendra was startled. "What is this I have come to see?" he said to himself. "He must be stark mad. Why, I am the son of Viswanath Dutta. How dare he speak this way to me?"
When they returned to the room and Narendra heard the Master speaking to others, he was surprised to find in his words an inner logic, a striking sincerity, and a convincing proof of his spiritual nature. In answer to Narendra's question, "Sir, have you seen God?" the Master said: "Yes, I have seen God. I have seen Him more tangibly than I see you. I have talked to Him more intimately than I am talking to you." Continuing, the Master said: "But, my child, who wants to see God? People shed jugs of tears for money, wife, and children. But if they would weep for God for only one day they would surely see Him." Narendra was amazed. These words he could not doubt. This was the first time he had ever heard a man saying that he had seen God. But he could not reconcile these words of the Master with the scene that had taken place on the verandah only a few minutes before. He concluded that Sri Ramakrishna was a monomaniac, and returned home rather puzzled in mind.
--
Two more young men, Sarada Prasanna and Tulasi, complete the small band of the Master's disciples later to embrace the life of the wandering monk. With the exception of the elder Gopal, all of them were in their teens or slightly over. They came from middle-class Bengali families, and most of them were students in school or college. Their parents and relatives had envisaged for them bright worldly careers. They came to Sri Ramakrishna with pure bodies, vigorous minds, and uncontaminated souls. All were born with unusual spiritual attributes. Sri Ramakrishna accepted them, even at first sight, as his children, relatives, friends, and companions. His magic touch unfolded them. And later each according to his measure reflected the life of the Master, becoming a torch-bearer of his message across land and sea.
--- WOMAN DEVOTEES
With his woman devotees Sri Ramakrishna established a very sweet relationship. He himself embodied the tender traits of a woman: he had dwelt on the highest plane of Truth, where there is not even the slightest trace of sex; and his innate purity evoked only the noblest emotion in men and wo men alike. His woman devotees often said: "We seldom looked on Sri Ramakrishna as a member of the male sex. We regarded him as one of us. We never felt any constraint before him. He was our best confidant." They loved him as their child, their friend, and their teacher. In spiritual discipline he advised them to renounce lust and greed and especially warned them not to fall into the snares of men.
--- GOPAL MA
--
The young disciples destined to be monks, Sri Ramakrishna invited on week-days, when the householders were not present. The training of the householders and of the future monks had to proceed along entirely different lines. Since M. generally visited the Master on week-ends, the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna does not contain much mention of the future monastic disciples.
Finally, there was a handful of fortunate disciples, householders as well as youngsters, who were privileged to spend nights with the Master in his room. They would see him get up early in the morning and walk up and down the room, singing in his sweet voice and tenderly communing with the Mother.
--
One day, in January 1884, the Master was going toward the pine-grove when he went into a trance. He was alone. There was no one to support him or guide his footsteps. He fell to the ground and dislocated a bone in his left arm. This accident had a significant influence on his mind, the natural inclination of which was to soar above the consciousness of the body. The acute pain in the arm forced his mind to dwell on the body and on the world outside. But he saw even in this a divine purpose; for, with his mind compelled to dwell on the physical plane, he realized more than ever that he was an instru ment in the hand of the Divine Mother, who had a mission to fulfil through his human body and mind. He also distinctly found that in the pheno menal world God manifests Himself, in an inscrutable way, through diverse human beings, both good and evil. Thus he would speak of God in the guise of the wicked, God in the guise of the pious. God in the guise of the hypocrite, God in the guise of the lewd. He began to take a special delight in watching the divine play in the relative world. Sometimes the sweet human relationship with God would appear to him more appealing than the all-effacing Knowledge of Brahman. Many a time he would pray: "Mother, don't make me unconscious through the Knowledge of Brahman. Don't give me Brahmajnana, Mother. Am I not Your child, and naturally timid? I must have my Mother. A million salutations to the Knowledge of Brahman! Give it to those who want it." Again he prayed: "O Mother let me remain in contact with men! Don't make me a dried-up ascetic. I want to enjoy Your sport in the world." He was able to taste this very rich divine experience and enjoy the love of God and the company of His devotees because his mind, on account of the injury to his arm, was forced to come down to the consciousness of the body. Again, he would make fun of people who proclaimed him as a Divine Incarnation, by pointing to his broken arm. He would say, "Have you ever heard of God breaking His arm?" It took the arm about five months to heal.
--- BEGINNING OF HIS ILLNESS
--
In the beginning of September 1885 Sri Ramakrishna was moved to Syampukur. Here Narendra organized the young disciples to attend the Master day and night. At first they concealed the Master's illness from their guardians; but when it became more serious they remained with him almost constantly, sweeping aside the objections of their relatives and devoting themselves whole-heartedly to the nursing of their beloved guru. These young men, under the watchful eyes of the Master and the leadership of Narendra, became the antaranga bhaktas, the devotees of Sri Ramakrishna's inner circle. They were privileged to witness many manifestations of the Master's divine powers. Narendra received instructions regarding the propagation of his message after his death.
The Holy Mother — so Sarada Devi had come to be affectionately known by Sri Ramakrishna's devotees — was brought from Dakshineswar to look after the general cooking and to prepare the special diet of the patient. The dwelling space being extremely limited, she had to adapt herself to cramped conditions. At three o'clock in the morning she would finish her bath in the Ganges and then enter a small covered place on the roof, where she spent the whole day cooking and praying. After eleven at night, when the visitors went away, she would come down to her small bedroom on the first floor to enjoy a few hours' sleep. Thus she spent three months, working hard, sleeping little, and praying constantly for the Master's recovery.
--
It was noticed at this time that some of the devotees were making an unbridled display of their emotions. A number of them, particularly among the householders, began to cultivate, though at first unconsciously, the art of shedding tears, shaking the body, contorting the face, and going into trances, attempting thereby to imitate the Master. They began openly to declare Sri Ramakrishna a Divine Incarnation and to regard themselves as his chosen people, who could neglect religious disciplines with impunity. Narendra's penetrating eye soon sized up the situation. He found out that some of these external manifestations were being carefully practised at home, while some were the outcome of malnutrition, mental weakness, or nervous debility. He mercilessly exposed the devotees who were pretending to have visions, and asked all to develop a healthy religious spirit. Narendra sang inspiring songs for the younger devotees, read with them the Imitation of Christ and the Gita, and held before them the positive ideals of spirituality.
--- LAST DAYS AT COSSIPORE
--
The Master did not hide the fact that he wished to make Narendra his spiritual heir. Narendra was to continue the work after Sri Ramakrishna's passing. Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "I leave these young men in your charge. See that they develop their spirituality and do not return home." One day he asked the boys, in preparation for a monastic life, to beg their food from door to door without thought of caste. They hailed the Master's order and went out with begging-bowls. A few days later he gave the ochre cloth of the sannyasi to each of them, including Girish, who was now second to none in his spirit of renunciation. Thus the Master himself laid the foundation of the future Ramakrishna Order of monks.
Sri Ramakrishna was sinking day by day. His diet was reduced to a minimum and he found it almost impossible to swallow. He whispered to M.: "I am bearing all this cheerfully, for otherwise you would be weeping. If you all say that it is better that the body should go rather than suffer this torture, I am willing." The next morning he said to his depressed disciples seated near the bed: "Do you know what I see? I see that God alone has become everything. men and animals are only frameworks covered with skin, and it is He who is moving through their heads and limbs. I see that it is God Himself who has become the block, the executioner, and the victim for the sacrifice.' He fainted with emotion. Regaining partial consciousness, he said: "Now I have no pain. I am very well." Looking at Latu he said: "There sits Latu resting his head on the palm of his hand. To me it is the Lord who is seated in that posture."
The words were tender and touching. Like a mother he caressed Narendra and Rakhal, gently stroking their faces. He said in a half whisper to M., "Had this body been allowed to last a little longer, many more souls would have been illumined." He paused a mo ment and then said: "But Mother has ordained otherwise. She will take me away lest, finding me guileless and foolish, people should take advantage of me and persuade me to bestow on them the rare gifts of spirituality." A few minutes later he touched his chest and said: "Here are two beings. One is She and the other is Her devotee. It is the latter who broke his arm, and it is he again who is now ill. Do you understand me?" After a pause he added: "Alas! To whom shall I tell all this? Who will understand me?" "Pain", he consoled them again, 'is unavoidable as long as there is a body. The Lord takes on the body for the sake of His devotees."
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
mentary on Nox, see Liber VII, Chapter I.
Nox adds to 210, which symbolises the reduction of
--
to A.'.A.'. are men.
[16]
--
(4) They cause all men to worship it.
[17]
--
But the Seventh men called PERDURABO; for
enduring unto The End, at The End was Naught
--
All these were men; their Godhead is the result of
mythopoeia.
--
There is no silence in that Abyss: for all that men
call Silence is Its Speech.
--
among men.
But THAT which neither is silent, nor speaks, re-
--
poured forth blood. men smote me; then, per-
ceiving that I was but a Pure Fool, they let me
--
Language was made for men to eat and drink, make
love, do barter, die. The wealth of a language con-
--
all nations of men call The First, is a lie grafted
upon a lie, a lie multiplied by a lie.
--
All-Father, adored by all men and by me
abhorred, be thou accursed, be thou abolished, be
--
Also, since below the Abyss Reason is Lord, let men
seek by experi ment, and not by Questionings.
--
ment which has been associated with the publication of
THE EQUINOX; and His utterance is enshrined in
--
mended is scepticism, but a scepticism under control.
Doubt inhibits action, as much as faith binds it. All
--
woman is superior to man, and that all men are born
equal.
--
Then at last came certain men unto me, saying:
O Master! Expound thou THE GREAT WORK
--
title are those mentioned in paragraph 5.
555 is HADIT, HAD spelt in full. 156 is
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Haggard am I, an hyaena; I hunger and howl. men
think it laughter-ha! ha! ha!
--
Sabbath, say men; He is the Old Goat himself,
say wo men.
--
Sanhedrim, a body of 70 men. An Eye. Eye in
Hebrew is Oin, 70.
--
the world of sorrowing men.
The name with full-stops: L.A.Y.L.A.H. represents an
--
Five wheels are mentioned in this chapter; all but
the third refer to the universe as it is; but the wheel of
--
Some men look into their minds into their memories,
and find naught but pain and shame.
--
men of courage. The plea that "love is sorrow", because
its ecstasies are only transitory, is contemptible.
--
men into Slaves, obliged to report their move ments to
the govern ment like so many ticket-of-leave men.
The only solution of the Social Problem is the
--
The title refers to the mental attitude of the Master;
the avalanche does not fall because it is tired of staying
--
of men express no thoughts at all? They eat, drink,
sleep, and copulate in silence.
--
ment.
[181]
--
mentioned in the Com mentary
The Soldier and the Hunchback ! and ? The Eqx.
--
mentary.
Liber VII (Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli). Out of
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The reader will find mentioned in this work many visions and experiences that fall outside the ken of physical science and even psychology. With the develop ment of modern knowledge the border line between the natural and the supernatural is ever shifting its position. Genuine mystical experiences are not as suspect now as they were half a century ago. The words of Sri Ramakrishna have already exerted a tre mendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his words the ring of universal truth.
But these words were not the product of intellectual cogitation; they were rooted in direct experience. Hence, to students of religion, psychology, and physical science, these experiences of the Master are of im mense value for the understanding of religious pheno mena in general. No doubt Sri Ramakrishna was a Hindu of the Hindus; yet his experiences transcended the limits of the dogmas and creeds of Hinduism. Mystics of religions other than Hinduism will find in Sri Ramakrishna's experiences a corroboration of the experiences of their own prophets and seers. And this is very important today for the resuscitation of religious values. The sceptical reader may pass by the supernatural experiences; he will yet find in the book enough material to provoke his serious thought and solve many of his spiritual problems.
--
The book contains many songs sung either by the Master or by the devotees. These form an important feature of the spiritual tradition of Bengal and were for the most part written by men of mystical experience. For giving the songs their present form I am grateful to Mr. John Moffitt, Jr.
In the preparation of this manuscript I have received ungrudging help from several friends. Miss Margaret Woodrow Wilson and Mr.Joseph Campbell have worked hard in editing my translation. Mrs.Elizabeth Davidson has typed, more than once, the entire manuscript and rendered other valuable help. Mr.Aldous Huxley has laid me under a debt of gratitude by writing the Foreword. I sincerely thank them all.
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He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the manage ments on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
--
From the mental depression of the modem Vysa, the world has obtained the Kathmrita (Bengali Edition) the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in English.
Sri Ramakrishna was a teacher for both the Orders of mankind, Sannysins and householders. His own life offered an ideal example for both, and he left behind disciples who followed the highest traditions he had set in respect of both these ways of life. M., along with Nag Mahashay, exemplified how a householder can rise to the highest level of sagehood. M. was married to Nikunja Devi, a distant relative of Keshab Chander Sen, even when he was reading at College, and he had four children, two sons and two daughters. The responsibility of the family, no doubt, made him dependent on his professional income, but the great devotee that he was, he never compromised with ideals and principles for this reason. Once when he was working as the headmaster in a school managed by the great Vidysgar, the results of the school at the public examination happened to be rather poor, and Vidysgar attri buted it to M's preoccupation with the Master and his consequent failure to attend adequately to the school work. M. at once resigned his post without any thought of the morrow. Within a fortnight the family was in poverty, and M. was one day pacing up and down the verandah of his house, musing how he would feed his children the next day. Just then a man came with a letter addressed to 'Mahendra Babu', and on opening it, M. found that it was a letter from his friend Sri Surendra Nath Banerjee, asking whether he would like to take up a professorship in the Ripon College. In this way three or four times he gave up the job that gave him the wherewithal to support the family, either for upholding principles or for practising spiritual Sadhanas in holy places, without any consideration of the possible dire worldly consequences; but he was always able to get over these difficulties somehow, and the interests of his family never suffered. In spite of his disregard for worldly goods, he was, towards the latter part of his life, in a fairly flourishing condition as the proprietor of the Morton School which he developed into a noted educational institution in the city. The Lord has said in the Bhagavad Git that in the case of those who think of nothing except Him, He Himself would take up all their material and spiritual responsibilities. M. was an example of the truth of the Lord's promise.
--
He was one of the earliest of the disciples to visit Kamarpukur, the birthplace of the Master, in the latter's lifetime itself; for he wished to practise contemplation on the Master's early life in its true original setting. His experience there is described as follows by Swami Nityatmananda: "By the grace of the Master, he saw the entire Kamarpukur as a holy place bathed in an effulgent Light. Trees and creepers, beasts and birds and men all were made of effulgence. So he prostrated to all on the road. He saw a torn cat, which appeared to him luminous with the Light of Consciousness. Immediately he fell to the ground and saluted it" (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda vol. I. P. 40.) He had similar experience in Dakshineswar also. At the instance of the Master he also visited Puri, and in the words of Swami Nityatmananda, "with indomitable courage, M. embraced the image of Jagannath out of season."
The life of Sdhan and holy association that he started on at the feet of the Master, he continued all through his life. He has for this reason been most appropriately described as a Grihastha-Sannysi (householder-Sannysin). Though he was forbidden by the Master to become a Sannysin, his reverence for the Sannysa ideal was whole-hearted and was without any reservation. So after Sri Ramakrishna's passing away, while several of the Master's householder devotees considered the young Sannysin disciples of the Master as inexperienced and inconsequential, M. stood by them with the firm faith that the Master's life and message were going to be perpetuated only through them. Swami Vivekananda wrote from America in a letter to the inmates of the Math: "When Sri Thkur (Master) left the body, every one gave us up as a few unripe urchins. But M. and a few others did not leave us in the lurch. We cannot repay our debt to them." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXX P. 442.)
--
Besides the prompting of his inherent instinct, the main induce ment for M. to keep this diary of his experiences at Dakshineswar was his desire to provide himself with a means for living in holy company at all times. Being a school teacher, he could be with the Master only on Sundays and other holidays, and it was on his diary that he depended for 'holy company' on other days. The devotional scriptures like the Bhagavata say that holy company is the first and most important means for the generation and growth of devotion. For, in such company man could hear talks on spiritual matters and listen to the glorification of Divine attri butes, charged with the fervour and conviction emanating from the hearts of great lovers of God. Such company is therefore the one certain means through which Sraddha (Faith), Rati (attach ment to God) and Bhakti (loving devotion) are generated. The diary of his visits to Dakshineswar provided M. with material for re-living, through reading and contemplation, the holy company he had had earlier, even on days when he was not able to visit Dakshineswar. The wealth of details and the vivid description of men and things in the midst of which the sublime conversations are set, provide excellent material to re-live those experiences for any one with imaginative powers. It was observed by M.'s disciples and admirers that in later life also whenever he was free or alone, he would be pouring over his diary, transporting himself on the wings of imagination to the glorious days he spent at the feet of the Master.
During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; for the Great Master was so full of the spirit of renunciation and humility that he disliked being lionised. It must be for this reason that no one knew about this precious diary of M. for a decade until he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in 1897 with the Holy Mother's blessings and permission. The Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: "When I heard the Kathmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he, the Master, who was saying all that." ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
--
It looks as if M. was brought to the world by the Great Master to record his words and transmit them to posterity. Swami Sivananda, a direct disciple of the Master and the second President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, says on this topic: "Whenever there was an interesting talk, the Master would call Master Mahashay if he was not in the room, and then draw his attention to the holy words spoken. We did not know then why the Master did so. Now we can realise that this action of the Master had an important significance, for it was reserved for Master Mahashay to give to the world at large the sayings of the Master." ( Vednta Kesari Vol. XIX P 141.) Thanks to M., we get, unlike in the case of the great teachers of the past, a faithful record with date, time, exact report of conversations, description of concerned men and places, references to contemporary events and personalities and a hundred other details for the last four years of the Master's life (1882-'86), so that no one can doubt the historicity of the Master and his teachings at any time in the future.
M. was, in every respect, a true missionary of Sri Ramakrishna right from his first acquaintance with him in 1882. As a school teacher, it was a practice with him to direct to the Master such of his students as had a true spiritual disposition. Though himself prohibited by the Master to take to monastic life, he encouraged all spiritually inclined young men he came across in his later life to join the monastic Order. Swami Vijnanananda, a direct Sannysin disciple of the Master and a President of the Ramakrishna Order, once remarked to M.: "By enquiry, I have come to the conclusion that eighty percent and more of the Sannysins have embraced the monastic life after reading the Kathmrita (Bengali name of the book) and coming in contact with you." ( M
The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I, P 37.)
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
There could be produced a synergetic understanding of humanity's cosmic functioning, which, until now, had been both undiscovered and unpredictable due to our deliberate and exclusive preoccupation only with the separate statistics of separate events. As a typical consequence of the latter, we observe our society's persistent increase of educational and employ ment specialization despite the already mentioned, well-docu mented scientific disclosure that the extinctions of biological species are always occasioned by overspecialization. Specialization's preoccupation with parts deliberately forfeits the opportunity to apprehend and comprehend what is provided exclusively by synergy.
Today's news consists of aggregates of frag ments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the reported events. The insistence by reporters upon having advance "releases" of what, for instance, convocation speakers are supposedly going to say but in fact have not yet said, automatically discredits the value of the largely prefabricated news. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated events of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for purposes either of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity's tactical information resources. All history becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which humanity spontaneously reflexes.
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The question which Arjuna asks Sri Krishna in the Gita (second chapter) occurs pertinently to many about all spiritual personalities: "What is the language of one whose understanding is poised? How does he speak, how sit, how walk?" men want to know the outer signs of the inner attain ment, the way in which a spiritual person differs outwardly from other men. But all the tests which the Gita enumerates are inner and therefore invisible to the outer view. It is true also that the inner or the spiritual is the essential and the outer derives its value and form from the inner. But the transformation about which Sri Aurobindo writes in his books has to take place in nature, because according to him the divine Reality has to manifest itself in nature. So, all the parts of nature including the physical and the external are to be transformed. In his own case the very physical became the transparent mould of the Spirit as a result of his intense Sadhana. This is borne out by the impression created on the minds of sensitive outsiders like Sj. K. M. Munshi who was deeply impressed by his radiating presence when he met him after nearly forty years.
The Evening Talks collected here may afford to the outside world a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also form some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extraordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his works. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the human side of his personality, is unknown to the outside world because from 1910 to 1950 a span of forty years he led a life of outer retire ment. No doubt, many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retire ment as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by many as lack of love for humanity.
But those who knew him during the days of the national awakening from 1900 to 1910 could not have these doubts. And even these initial misunderstandings and false notions of others began to evaporate with the growth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1927 onwards. The large number of books published by the Ashram also tended to remove the idea of the other-worldliness of his Yoga and the absence of any good by it to mankind.
--
Over and above Sadhana, writing work and rendering spiritual help to the world during his apparent retire ment there were plenty of other activities of which the outside world has no knowledge. Many prominent as well as less known persons sought and obtained interviews with him during these years. Thus, among well-known persons may be mentioned C.R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai, Sarala Devi, Dr. Munje, Khasirao Jadhav, Tagore, Sylvain Levy. The great national poet of Tamil Nadu, S. Subramanya Bharati, was in contact with Sri Aurobindo for some years during his stay at Pondicherry; so was V.V.S. Aiyar. The famous V. Ramaswamy Aiyangar Va Ra of Tamil literature[3] stayed with Sri Aurobindo for nearly three years and was influenced by him. Some of these facts have been already mentioned in The Life of Sri Aurobindo.
Jung has admitted that there is an ele ment of mystery, something that baffles the reason, in human personality. One finds that the greater the personality the greater is the complexity. And this is especially so with regard to spiritual personalities whom the Gita calls Vibhutis and Avatars.
--
The Gita in its chapters on the Vibhuti and the Avatar takes in general the same position. It shows that the present formula of our nature, and therefore the mental personality of man, is not final. A Vibhuti embodies in a human manifestation a certain divine quality and thus demonstrates the possibility of overcoming the limits of ordinary human personality. The Vibhuti the embodi ment of a divine quality or power, and the Avatar the divine incarnation, are not to be looked upon as supraphysical miracles thrown at humanity without regard to the process of evolution; they are, in fact, indications of human possibility, a sign that points to the goal of evolution.
In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo says about the Avatar: "He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a permanent power for the inner living and the spiritual rebirth."[5]
"He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine."[6]
"The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality."[7]
--
This transformation of the human personality into the Divine perhaps even the mere connection of the human with the Divine is probably regarded as a chimera by the modern mind. To the modern mind it would appear as the apotheosis of a human personality which is against its idea of equality of men. Its difficulty is partly due to the notion that the Divine is unlimited and illimitable while a 'personality', however high and grand, seems to demand imposition, or assumption, of limitation. In this connection Sri Aurobindo said during an evening talk that no human manifestation can be illimitable and unlimited, but the manifestation in the limited should reflect the unlimited, the Transcendent Beyond.
This possibility of the human touching and manifesting the Divine has been realised during the course of human history whenever a great spiritual Light has appeared on earth. One of the purposes of this book is to show how Sri Aurobindo himself reflected the unlimited Beyond in his own self.
Greatness is magnetic and in a sense contagious. Wherever manifested, greatness is claimed by humanity as something that reveals the possibility of the race. The highest utility of greatness is not merely to attract us but to inspire us to follow it and rise to our own highest spiritual stature. To the majority of men Truth remains abstract, impersonal and far unless it is seen and felt concretely in a human personality. A man never knows a truth actively except through a person and by embodying it in his own personality. Some glimpse of the Truth-Consciousness which Sri Aurobindo embodied may be caught in these Evening Talks.
***
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
whole being, mental, psychic, vital and physical, enters into a
complete state of rest made of perfect peace, absolute silence
--
these two men seem to be the only ones who represent Indian
genius. This is very far from the truth, and if they are so well
--
will surely never suffer from a dearth of men.
28 September 1931
--
state of affairs you mention in your letter of October 9th; and
it is certainly not confined to the small states of central Europe.
--
which is certainly not unfounded. In their ignorant unconsciousness men set moving forces they are not even aware of and soon
these forces get more and more out of their control and bring
0.02 - II - The Home of the Guru, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Guru-griha-vsa staying in the home of the Guru is a very old Indian ideal maintained by seekers through the ages. The Aranyakas the ancient teachings in the forest-groves are perhaps the oldest records of the institution. It was not for education in the modern sense of the term that men went to live with the Guru; for the Guru is not a 'teacher'. The Guru is one who is 'enlightened', who is a seer, a Rishi, one who has the vision of and has lived the Truth. He has, thus, the knowledge of the goal of human life and has learnt true values in life by living the Truth. He can impart both these to the willing seeker. In ancient times seekers went to the Guru with many questions, difficulties and doubts but also with earnestness. Their questions were preliminary to the quest.
The Master, the Guru, set at rest the puzzled human mind by his illuminating answers, perhaps even more by his silent consciousness, so that it might be able to pursue unhampered the path of realisation of the Truth. Those ancient discourses answer the mind of man today even across the ages. They have rightly acquired as everything of the past does a certain sanctity. But sometimes that very reverence prevents men from properly evaluating, and living in, the present. This happens when the mind instead of seeking the Spirit looks at the form. For instance, it is not necessary for such discourses that they take place in forest-groves in order to be highly spiritual. Wherever the Master is, there is Light. And guru-griha the house of the Master can be his private dwelling place. So much was this feeling a part of Sri Aurobindo's nature and so particular was he to maintain the personal character of his work that during the first few years after 1923 he did not like his house to be called an 'Ashram', as the word had acquired the sense of a public institution to the modern mind. But there was no doubt that the flower of Divinity had blossomed in him; and disciples, like bees seeking honey, came to him. It is no exaggeration to say that these Evening Talks were to the small company of disciples what the Aranyakas were to the ancient seekers. Seeking the Light, they came to the dwelling place of their Guru, the greatest seer of the age, and found it their spiritual home the home of their parents, for the Mother, his companion in the great mission, had come. And these spiritual parents bestowed upon the disciples freely of their Light, their Consciousness, their Power and their Grace. The modern reader may find that the form of these discourses differs from those of the past but it was bound to be so for the simple reason that the times have changed and the problems that puzzle the modern mind are so different. Even though the disciples may be very imperfect representations of what he aimed at in them, still they are his creations. It is in order to repay, in however infinitesimal a degree, the debt which we owe to him that the effort is made to partake of the joy of his company the Evening Talks with a larger public.
***
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
avoided. Your mental formation may be strong, but the contrary
formation is at least as strong as yours - and we must never
--
not to mention them rather than to be disillusioned.
Yes, so long as there are desires, no true intimacy can be
--
peace.... Why do men flee from these boons as though
they fear them?"3
--
Is it because there is no mental control in the dream state
and hence the vital being is free to act as it likes?
--
The concentration can be kept constantly but not by mental
decision.
--
It is a mental formation prompted by a desire of the vital,
which protests and rebels because it cannot be fulfilled. These
--
not to mention. Either the person you are speaking to does
not understand at all and takes you for a fool suffering from
--
and reservations. You already know, and I mention it only to
remind you, that an experi ment made in a spirit of reserve and
--
are so obvious that it would be utterly pointless to mention them.
It is here that on your side a freedom of move ment and speech
--
method easier and more certain than the mental process
of reasoning which is based on acquired experience?
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Matter, which, however the too ethereally spiritual may despise it, is our foundation and the first condition of all our energies and realisations, and the Life-Energy which is our means of existence in a material body and the basis there even of our mental and spiritual activities. She has successfully achieved a certain stability of her constant material move ment which is at once sufficiently steady and durable and sufficiently pliable and mutable to provide a fit dwelling-place and instru ment for the progressively manifesting god in humanity. This is what is meant by the fable in the Aitareya Upanishad which tells us that the gods rejected the animal forms successively offered to them by the Divine Self and only when man was produced, cried out, "This indeed is perfectly made," and consented to enter in. She has effected also a working compromise between the inertia of matter and the active Life that lives in and feeds on it, by which not only is vital existence sustained, but the fullest develop ments of mentality are rendered possible. This equilibrium constitutes the basic status of Nature in man and is termed in the language of Yoga his gross body composed
The Three Steps of Nature
--
If the bodily life is what Nature has firmly evolved for us as her base and first instru ment, it is our mental life that she is evolving as her immediate next aim and superior instru ment. This in her ordinary exaltations is the lofty preoccupying thought in her; this, except in her periods of exhaustion and recoil into a reposeful and recuperating obscurity, is her constant pursuit wherever she can get free from the trammels of her first vital and physical realisations. For here in man we have a distinction which is of the utmost importance. He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason. Mind in man is first emmeshed in the life of the body, where in the plant it is entirely involved and in animals always imprisoned. It accepts this life as not only the first but the whole condition of its activities and serves its needs as if they were the entire aim of existence. But the bodily life in man is a base, not the aim, his first condition and not his last determinant. In the just idea of the ancients man is essentially the thinker, the Manu, the mental being who leads the life and the body,3 not the animal who is led by them. The true human existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin more and more to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession and in the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and rightly to use the life of the body. For freedom and not a skilful subjection is the true means of mastery. A free, not a compulsory acceptance of the conditions, the enlarged and sublimated conditions of our physical being, is the high human ideal. But beyond this intellectual mentality is the divine.
The mental life thus evolving in man is not, indeed, a
manomayah. pran.asarraneta. Mundaka Upanishad II. 2. 8.
--
Certainly, the mental life is not a finished evolution of Nature; it is not yet firmly founded in the human animal. The sign is that the fine and full equilibrium of vitality and matter, the sane, robust, long-lived human body is ordinarily found only in races or classes of men who reject the effort of thought, its disturbances, its tensions, or think only with the material mind.
Civilised man has yet to establish an equilibrium between the fully active mind and the body; he does not normally possess it.
Indeed, the increasing effort towards a more intense mental life seems to create, frequently, an increasing disequilibrium of the human ele ments, so that it is possible for eminent scientists to describe genius as a form of insanity, a result of degeneration, a pathological morbidity of Nature. The pheno mena which are used to justify this exaggeration, when taken not separately, but in connection with all other relevant data, point to a different truth. Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to so quicken and intensify our intellectual powers that they shall be prepared for those more puissant, direct and rapid faculties which constitute the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. It is not, then, a freak, an inexplicable pheno menon, but a perfectly natural next step in the right line of her evolution.
She has harmonised the bodily life with the material mind, she is harmonising it with the play of the intellectual mentality; for that, although it tends to a depression of the full animal and vital vigour, need not produce active disturbances. And she is shooting yet beyond in the attempt to reach a still higher level.
Nor are the disturbances created by her process as great as is often represented. Some of them are the crude beginnings of new manifestations; others are an easily corrected move ment of disintegration, often fruitful of fresh activities and always a small price to pay for the far-reaching results that she has in view.
--
to this conclusion that mental life, far from being a recent appearance in man, is the swift repetition in him of a previous achieve ment 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 achieve ment 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 accomplish ment 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.
Moreover the whole trend of modern thought and modern endeavour reveals itself to the observant eye as a large conscious effort of Nature in man to effect a general level of intellectual equip ment, capacity and farther possibility by universalising the opportunities which modern civilisation affords for the mental life. Even the preoccupation of the European intellect, the protagonist of this tendency, with material Nature and the externalities of existence is a necessary part of the effort. It seeks to prepare a sufficient basis in man's physical being and vital energies and in his material environ ment for his full mental possibilities. By the spread of education, by the advance of the backward races, by the elevation of depressed classes, by the multiplication of labour-saving appliances, by the move ment
The Three Steps of Nature
--
And when the preliminary conditions are satisfied, when the great endeavour has found its base, what will be the nature of that farther possibility which the activities of the intellectual life must serve? If Mind is indeed Nature's highest term, then the entire develop ment of the rational and imaginative intellect and the harmonious satisfaction of the emotions and sensibilities must be to themselves sufficient. But if, on the contrary, man is more than a reasoning and emotional animal, if beyond that which is being evolved, there is something that has to be evolved, then it may well be that the fullness of the mental life, the suppleness, flexibility and wide capacity of the intellect, the ordered richness of emotion and sensibility may be only a passage towards the develop ment of a higher life and of more powerful faculties which are yet to manifest and to take possession of the lower instru ment, just as mind itself has so taken possession of the body that the physical being no longer lives only for its own satisfaction but provides the foundation and the materials for a superior activity.
The assertion of a higher than the mental life is the whole foundation of Indian philosophy and its acquisition and organisation is the veritable object served by the methods of Yoga.
Mind is not the last term of evolution, not an ultimate aim, but, like body, an instru ment. It is even so termed in the language of
--
The only approximate terms in the English language have other associations and their use may lead to many and even serious inaccuracies. The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle,5 a third, supreme and divine status of supra- mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle6 which are described as those of knowledge and bliss. But this knowledge is not a systematised result of mental questionings and reasonings, not a temporary arrange ment of conclusions and opinions in the terms of the highest probability, but rather a pure self-existent and self-luminous Truth. And this bliss is not a supreme pleasure of the heart and sensations with the experience of pain and sorrow as its background, but a delight also selfexistent and independent of objects and particular experiences, a self-delight which is the very nature, the very stuff, as it were, of a transcendent and infinite existence.
antah.karan.a.
--
For, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instru ments (karan.a), this crowning manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a deformation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital forces and actions to the aspect of Will or Force assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and
Consciousness. The evolution which we observe and of which
--
So dazzling is even a glimpse of this supreme existence and so absorbing its attraction that, once seen, we feel readily justified in neglecting all else for its pursuit. Even, by an opposite exaggeration to that which sees all things in Mind and the mental life as an exclusive ideal, Mind comes to be regarded as an unworthy deformation and a supreme obstacle, the source of an illusory universe, a negation of the Truth and itself to be denied and all its works and results annulled if we desire the final liberation. But this is a half-truth which errs by regarding only the actual limitations of Mind and ignores its divine intention.
The ultimate knowledge is that which perceives and accepts God in the universe as well as beyond the universe; the integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend
--
We perceive, then, these three steps in Nature, a bodily life which is the basis of our existence here in the material world, a mental life into which we emerge and by which we raise the bodily to higher uses and enlarge it into a greater completeness, and a divine existence which is at once the goal of the other two and returns upon them to liberate them into their highest possibilities. Regarding none of them as either beyond our reach or below our nature and the destruction of none of them as essential to the ultimate attain ment, we accept this liberation and fulfil ment as part at least and a large and important part of the aim of Yoga.
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo was never a social man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a man of the crowd. This was due to his grave tempera ment, not to any feeling of superiority or to repulsion for men. At Baroda there was an Officers' Club which was patronised by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled himself as a member he hardly went to the Club even on special occasions. He rather liked a small congenial circle of friends and spent most of his evenings with them whenever he was free and not occupied with his studies or other works. After Baroda when he went to Calcutta there was hardly any time in the storm and stress of revolutionary politics to permit him to lead a 'social life'. What little time he could spare from his incessant activities was spent in the house of Raja Subodh Mallick or at the Grey Street house. In the Karmayogin office he used to sit after the office hours till late chatting with a few persons or trying automatic writing. Strange dictations used to be received sometimes: one of them was the following: "Moni [Suresh Chakravarty] will bomb Sir Edward Grey when he will come as the Viceroy of India." In later years at Pondicherry there used to be a joke that Sir Edward took such a fright at the prospect of Moni's bombing him that he never came to India!
After Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry from Chandernagore, he entered upon an intense period of Sadhana and for a few months he refused to receive anyone. After a time he used to sit down to talk in the evening and on some days tried automatic writing. Yogic Sadhan, a small book, was the result. In 1913 Sri Aurobindo moved to Rue Franois Martin No. 41 where he used to receive visitors at fixed times. This was generally in the morning between 9 and 10.30.
--
These sittings, in fact, furnished Sri Aurobindo with an occasion to admit and feel the outer atmosphere and that of the group living with him. It brought to him the much-needed direct contact of the mental and vital make-up of the disciples, enabling him to act on the atmosphere in general and on the individual in particular. He could thus help to remould their mental make-up by removing the limitations of their minds and opinions, and correct tempera mental tendencies and formations. Thus, these sittings contributed at least partly to the creation of an atmosphere a menable to the working of the Higher Consciousness. Far more important than the actual talk and its content was the personal contact, the influence of the Master, and the divine atmosphere he emanated; for through his outer personality it was the Divine Consciousness that he allowed to act. All along behind the outer manifestation that appeared human, there was the influence and presence of the Divine.
What was talked in the small group informally was not intended by Sri Aurobindo to be the independent expression of his views on the subjects, events or the persons discussed. Very often what he said was in answer to the spiritual need of the individual or of the collective atmosphere. It was like a spiritual remedy meant to produce certain spiritual results, not a philosophical or metaphysical pronounce ment on questions, events or move ments. The net result of some talks very often was to point out to the disciple the inherent incapacity of the human intellect and its secondary place in the search for the ultimate Reality.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
changes and progresses. But the state of mental peace you have
known is nothing compared to the one - much deeper and
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
NATURE, then, is an evolution or progressive self-manifestation of an eternal and secret existence, with three successive forms as her three steps of ascent. And we have consequently as the condition of all our activities these three mutually interdependent possibilities, the bodily life, the mental existence and the veiled spiritual being which is in the involution the cause of the others and in the evolution their result. Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature's aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily existence, so too the spiritual should not abrogate but transfigure our intellectual, emotional, aesthetic and vital activities.
For man, the head of terrestrial Nature, the sole earthly frame in which her full evolution is possible, is a triple birth. He has been given a living frame in which the body is the vessel and life the dynamic means of a divine manifestation. His activity is centred in a progressive mind which aims at perfecting itself as well as the house in which it dwells and the means of life that it uses, and is capable of awaking by a progressive self-realisation to its own true nature as a form of the Spirit. He culminates in what he always really was, the illumined and beatific spirit which is intended at last to irradiate life and mind with its now concealed splendours.
Since this is the plan of the divine Energy in humanity, the whole method and aim of our existence must work by the interaction of these three ele ments in the being. As a result of their separate formulation in Nature, man has open to him a choice between three kinds of life, the ordinary material existence, a life of mental activity and progress and the unchanging spiritual beatitude. But he can, as he progresses, combine these three forms, resolve their discords into a harmonious rhythm and so create in himself the whole godhead, the perfect Man.
In ordinary Nature they have each their own characteristic and governing impulse.
--
The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change, and the more our mentality acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual enlarge ment, improve ment and better arrange ment of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a larger and more complex perfection. For Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable in its formations. Change, then, self-enlarge ment and selfimprove ment are its proper instincts. Mind too moves in cycles, but these are ever-enlarging spirals. Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress.
The characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the immortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attain ment of the eternal and the realisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by the imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in which it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life.
In each of these forms Nature acts both individually and collectively; for the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence, whether family, clan and nation or groupings dependent on less physical principles or the supreme group of all, our collective humanity. Man also may seek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity, or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live for it, or, rising to a truer perception of this complex universe, harmonise the individual realisation with the collective aim. For as it is the right relation of the soul with the Supreme, while it is in the universe, neither to assert egoistically its separate being nor to blot itself out in the Indefinable, but to realise its unity with the Divine and the world and unite them in the individual, so the right relation of the individual with the collectivity is neither to pursue egoistically his own material or mental progress or spiritual salvation without regard to his fellows, nor for the sake of the community to suppress or maim his proper develop ment, but to sum up in himself all its best and completest possibilities and pour them out by thought, action and all other means on his surroundings so that the whole race may approach nearer to the attain ment of its supreme personalities.
It follows that the object of the material life must be to fulfil, above all things, the vital aim of Nature. The whole aim of the material man is to live, to pass from birth to death with as much comfort or enjoy ment as may be on the way, but anyhow to live.
--
But by that very utility such men and the life they lead are condemned to be limited, irrationally conservative and earthbound. The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual forms of thought, - these things are the life-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but combat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present. For to the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and adored their memories when dead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. In the ancient Indian distinction between the once born and the twice born, it is to this material man that the former description can be applied. He does Nature's inferior works; he assures the basis for her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the glories of her second birth.
Yet he admits so much of spirituality as has been enforced on his customary ideas by the great religious outbursts of the past and he makes in his scheme of society a place, venerable though not often effective, for the priest or the learned theologian who can be trusted to provide him with a safe and ordinary spiritual pabulum. But to the man who would assert for himself the liberty of spiritual experience and the spiritual life, he assigns, if he admits him at all, not the vest ment of the priest but the robe of the Sannyasin. Outside society let him exercise his dangerous freedom. So he may even serve as a human lightning-rod receiving the electricity of the Spirit and turning it away from the social edifice.
--
Its higher manifestations, even the most splendid and puissant, either merely increase the number of souls drawn out of social life and so impoverish it or disturb the society for a while by a mo mentary elevation. The truth is that neither the mental effort nor the spiritual impulse can suffice, divorced from each other, to overcome the im mense resistance of material Nature.
She demands their alliance in a complete effort before she will suffer a complete change in humanity. But, usually, these two great agents are unwilling to make to each other the necessary concessions.
The mental life concentrates on the aesthetic, the ethical and the intellectual activities. Essential mentality is idealistic and a seeker after perfection. The subtle self, the brilliant Atman,1 is ever a dreamer. A dream of perfect beauty, perfect conduct, perfect Truth, whether seeking new forms of the Eternal or revitalising the old, is the very soul of pure mentality. But it knows not how to deal with the resistance of Matter. There it is hampered and inefficient, works by bungling experi ments and has either to withdraw from the struggle or submit to the grey actuality. Or else, by studying the material life and accepting the conditions of the contest, it may succeed, but only in imposing temporarily some artificial system which infinite Nature either rends and casts aside or disfigures out of recognition or by withdrawing her assent leaves as the corpse of a dead ideal. Few and far between have been those realisations of the dreamer in Man which the world has gladly accepted, looks back to with a fond memory and seeks, in its ele ments, to cherish.
1 Who dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of abstractions, the Brilliant.
--
But if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more difficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness and sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance and the eternal and divine either in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no world and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from the world's impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, sordid cares and egoistic self-content.
But the work in the world of so supreme a power as spiritual force cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can return upon the material and use it as a means of its own greater fullness. Refusing to be blinded by the dualities, the appearances, it can seek in all appearances whatsoever the vision of the same Lord, the same eternal Truth, Beauty, Love, Delight. The
--
But the spiritual life, like the mental, may thus make use of this outward existence for the benefit of the individual with a perfect indifference to any collective uplifting of the merely symbolic world which it uses. Since the Eternal is for ever the same in all things and all things the same to the Eternal, since the exact mode of action and the result are of no importance compared with the working out in oneself of the one great realisation, this spiritual indifference accepts no matter what environ ment, no matter what action, dispassionately, prepared to retire as soon as its own supreme end is realised. It is so that many have understood the ideal of the Gita. Or else the inner love and bliss may pour itself out on the world in good deeds, in service, in compassion, the inner Truth in the giving of knowledge, without therefore attempting the transformation of a world which must by its inalienable nature remain a battlefield of the dualities, of sin and virtue, of truth and error, of joy and suffering.
But if Progress also is one of the chief terms of worldexistence and a progressive manifestation of the Divine the true sense of Nature, this limitation also is invalid. It is possible for the spiritual life in the world, and it is its real mission, to change the material life into its own image, the image of the Divine. Therefore, besides the great solitaries who have sought and attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all, the great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the forces of the material life banded together, have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration. Ordinarily, the effort is concentrated on a mental and moral change in humanity, but it may extend itself also to the alteration of the forms of our life and its institutions so that they too may be a better mould for the inpourings of the Spirit. These attempts have been the supreme landmarks in the progressive develop ment of human ideals and the divine preparation of the race. Every one of them, whatever its outward results, has left Earth more capable of Heaven and quickened in its tardy move ments the evolutionary Yoga of Nature.
In India, for the last thousand years and more, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion of the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms for itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It has obtained from society the right of free spiritual develop ment for all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb of the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as man's goal and those who live it as worthy of an absolute reverence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the formal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving ele ment of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
--
But their aim is one in the end. The generalisation of Yoga in humanity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays and conceal ments. Even as now by the progressive mind in Science she seeks to make all mankind fit for the full develop ment of the mental life, so by Yoga must she inevitably seek to make all mankind fit for the higher evolution, the second birth, the spiritual existence. And as the mental life uses and perfects the material, so will the spiritual use and perfect the material and the mental existence as the instru ments of a divine self-expression.
The ages when that is accomplished, are the legendary Satya or Krita3 Yugas, the ages of the Truth manifested in the symbol, of the great work done when Nature in mankind, illumined, satisfied and blissful, rests in the culmination of her endeavour.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yet it is always through something which she has formed in her evolution that Nature thus overpasses her evolution. It is the individual heart that by sublimating its highest and purest emotions attains to the transcendent Bliss or the ineffable Nirvana, the individual mind that by converting its ordinary functionings into a knowledge beyond mentality knows its oneness with the
Ineffable and merges its separate existence in that transcendent unity. And always it is the individual, the Self conditioned in its experience by Nature and working through her formations, that attains to the Self unconditioned, free and transcendent.
--
those functionings which determine the state and the experiences of our nervous being; through the mentality, whether by means of the emotional heart, the active will or the understanding mind, or more largely by a general conversion of the mental consciousness in all its activities. It may equally be accomplished through a direct awakening to the universal or transcendent Truth and
Bliss by the conversion of the central ego in the mind. And according to the point of contact that we choose will be the type of the Yoga that we practise.
--
Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instru ments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth,
Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life.
--
The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoy ment of physical living have been carried out on an abnormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and difficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. If in return for this loss we gain another life in another world within, the mental, the dynamic, these results could have been acquired through other systems, through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less laborious methods and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the common life, for their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the world's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose.
Rajayoga takes a higher flight. It aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the citta, that stuff of mental consciousness in which all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise. The normal state of man is a condition of trouble and disorder, a kingdom either at war with itself or badly governed; for the lord, the Purusha, is subjected to his ministers, the faculties, subjected even to his subjects, the instru ments of sensation, emotion, action, enjoy ment. Swarajya, self-rule, must be substituted for this subjection.
First, therefore, the powers of order must be helped to overcome
--
Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established.
This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery.
But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pran.ayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kun.d.alin, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra- mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on
The Systems of Yoga
--
We perceive that as Hathayoga, dealing with the life and body, aims at the supernormal perfection of the physical life and its capacities and goes beyond it into the domain of the mental life, so Rajayoga, operating with the mind, aims at a supernormal perfection and enlarge ment of the capacities of the mental life and goes beyond it into the domain of the spiritual existence.
But the weakness of the system lies in its excessive reliance on abnormal states of trance. This limitation leads first to a certain aloofness from the physical life which is our foundation and the sphere into which we have to bring our mental and spiritual gains. Especially is the spiritual life, in this system, too much associated with the state of Samadhi. Our object is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions.
But in Rajayoga it tends to withdraw into a subliminal plane at the back of our normal experiences instead of descending and possessing our whole existence.
--
Rajayoga in that it does not occupy itself with the elaborate training of the whole mental system as the condition of perfection, but seizes on certain central principles, the intellect, the heart, the will, and seeks to convert their normal operations by turning them away from their ordinary and external preoccupations and activities and concentrating them on the Divine. It
38
--
differs also in this, - and here from the point of view of an integral Yoga there seems to be a defect, - that it is indifferent to mental and bodily perfection and aims only at purity as a condition of the divine realisation. A second defect is that as actually practised it chooses one of the three parallel paths exclusively and almost in antagonism to the others instead of effecting a synthetic harmony of the intellect, the heart and the will in an integral divine realisation.
The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different ele ments of our apparent or pheno menal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of pheno menal Nature, creations of
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of it, you should repeat, as often as possible, mentally turning
to me: "You have put Peace in my heart; make me aware of its
--
becomes more and more mental and you lose contact with the
Series Five - To a Child
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Perfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the highest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by mankind. At any rate a full develop ment of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by humanity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral method. Nor would these have any raison d'etre unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has evolved or is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base, and the mental life, our intermediate instru ment.
Nor would the integrality to which we aspire be real or even possible, if it were confined to the individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of such an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind.
The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect
50
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
any great change after them, because they leave men as false, as
ignorant, as egoistic as before.
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a mental decision.
Certainly the Divine Grace is always at work, it is the material
world and the men living there that do not want it!
What does the Divine want of me?
--
or of mental imagination, it is a fact, absolutely concrete and
as real and tangible to the consciousness as the most material
--
all these difficulties, I would not even have mentioned them. It
is no good telling someone, "You have such and such a fault",
--
doing what men call "great things" in a spirit of vanity and
pride.
--
higher part of the mental being, aspires for the Divine and suffers
when far from Him.
--
Intellectual culture is indispensable for preparing a good mental
instru ment, large, supple and rich, but its action stops there.
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the western sense), a war on all fronts, the mental, the
vital and the physical. But I am deeply sensible of your
--
The best way to get to it is to refuse all mental agitation when
it comes, also all vital desires and turmoils, and to keep the mind
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
may classify them generally into vital energies, mental energies, spiritual energies. Modern science tells us that Matter is
ultimately nothing but energy condensed.
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of the superficial form of the mental envelope"?
It means that the ghost one sees and wrongly takes for the
--
a photographic imprint) left in the subtle physical by the superficial mental form, an image that can become visible under
certain conditions. These images can move about (like cinema
--
There is nothing that can truly be called luck. What men call
luck are the effects of causes they do not know.
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carry in ourselves in all our states of being, mentally, vitally and
physically, is that which constitutes our life objectified in what
--
passive as possible. And if, in the mental silence, a part of the
being can take the attitude of the witness who observes without
--
I spoke of when I mentioned the mastery of the overmind.
It goes without saying that all this is not done in a day,
--
vital, mental, over mental, demands assiduous effort and a great
Series Eight - To a Young Captain
--
is a vital nature, a mental nature, and so on. It is this that, for
the ordinary consciousness, is Supernature.
--
be expressed by a quaternary: the physical, the vital, the mental
and the psychic or soul.
--
mental activities, and no mental activity is fit to manifest the
Divine.
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo means that one should not mistake a mental
ambition or a vital caprice for the spiritual call - for that alone
01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If one were to be busy about reforming the world and when that was done then alone to turn to other-worldly things, in that case, one would never take the turn, for the world will never be reformed totally or even considerably in that way. It is not that reformers have for the first time appeared on the earth in the present age. men have attempted social, political, economic and moral reforms from times immemorial. But that has not barred the spiritual attempt or minimised its importance. To say that because an ideal is apparently too high or too great for the present age, it must be kept in cold storage is to set a premium on the present nature of humanity arid eternise it: that would bind the world to its old moorings and never give it the opportunity to be free and go out into the high seas of larger and greater realisations.
The ideal or perhaps one should say the policy of Real-politick is the thing needed in this world. To achieve something actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something, is worth much more than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to be achieved in the material world? It is always an ideal. Even procuring food for each and every person, clothing and housing all is not less an ideal for all its concern about actuality. Only there are ideals and ideals; some are nearer to the earth, some seem to be in the background. But the mystery is that it is not always the ideal nearest to the earth which is the easiest to achieve or the first thing to be done first. Do we not see before our very eye show some very simple innocent social and economic changes are difficult to carry outthey bring in their train quite disproportionately gestures and move ments of violence and revolution? That is because we seek to cure the symptoms and not touch the root of the disease. For even the most innocent-looking social, economic or political abuse has at its base far-reaching attitudes and life-urgeseven a spiritual outlook that have to be sought out and tackled first, if the attempt at reform is to be permanently and wholly successful. Even in mundane matters we do not dig deep enough, or rise high enough.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The New Humanity will be something in the mould that we give to the gods. It will supply the link that we see missing between gods and men; it will be the race of embodied gods. Man will attain that thing which has been his first desire and earliest dream, for which he coveted the gods Immortality, amritatwam. The mortalities that cut and divide, limit and bind man make him the sorrowful being he is. These are due to his ignorance and weakness and egoism. These are due to his soul itself. It is the soul that requires change, a new birth, as Christ demanded. Ours is a little soul that has severed itself from the larger and mightier self that it is. And therefore does it die every mo ment and even while living is afraid to live and so lives poorly and miserably. But the age is now upon us when the god-like soul anointed with its immortal royalties is ready to emerge and claim our salutation.
The breath and the surge of the new creation cannot be mistaken. The question that confronts us today is no longer whether the New Man, the Super-humanity, will come or if at all, when; but the question we have to answer is who among us are ready to be its receptacle, its instru ment and embodi ment.
01.01 - The One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the resit is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him, - that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instru ment in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is a mental mistranslation of the Truth - these things cannot be the first true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the Divine demands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or a means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. As we grow in inner consciousness, or as the spiritual Truth of the Divine grows in us, our life and action must indeed more and more flow from that, be one with that. But to decide beforeh and by our limited mental conceptions what they must be is to hamper the growth of the spiritual Truth within. As that grows we shall feel the Divine Light and Truth, the Divine Power and Force, the Divine Purity and Peace working within us, dealing with our actions as well as our consciousness, making use of them to reshape us into the Divine Image, removing the dross, substituting the pure Gold of the Spirit. Only when the Divine Presence is there in us always and the consciousness transformed, can we have the right to say that we are ready to manifest the Divine on the material plane. To hold up a mental ideal or principle and impose that on the inner working brings the danger of limiting ourselves to a mental realisation or of impeding or even falsifying by a halfway formation the truth growth into the full communion and union with the Divine and the free and intimate outflowing of His will in our life. This is a mistake of orientation to which the mind of today is especially prone. It is far better to approach the Divine for the Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an ourflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outwards, not by the working out of a mental principle.
The realisation of the Divine is the one thing needful and the rest is desirable only in so far as it helps or leads towards that or when it is realised, extends and manifests the realisation. Manifestation and organisation of the whole life for the divine work, - first, the sadhana personal and collective necessary for the realisation and a common life of God-realised men, secondly, for help to the world to move towards that, and to live in the Light - is the whole meaning and purpose of my Yoga. But the realisation is the first need and it is that round which all the rest moves, for apart from it all the rest would have no meaning.
Yoga is directed towards God, not towards man. If a divine supra mental consciousness and power can be brought down and established in the material world, that obviously would mean an im mense change for the earth including humanity and its life. But the effect on humanity would only be one result of the change; it cannot be the object of the sadhana. The object of the sadhana can only be to live in the divine consciousness and to manifest it in life.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Her self and all she was she had lent to men,
Hoping her greater being to implant
--
A fire has come and touched men's hearts and gone;
A few have caught flame and risen to greater life.
--
As one who watching over men left blind
Takes up the load of an unwitting race,
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The course of evolution has not come to a stop with man and the next stage, Sri Aurobindo says, which Nature envisages and is labouring to bring out and establish is the life now superconscious to us, embodied in a still higher type of created being, that of the superman or god-man. The principle of consciousness which will determine the nature and build of this new, being is a spiritual principle beyond the mental principle which man now incarnates: it may be called the Supermind or Gnosis.
For, till now Mind has been the last term of the evolutionary consciousness Mind as developed in man is the highest instru ment built up and organised by Nature through which the self-conscious being can express itself. That is why the Buddha said: Mind is the first of all principles, Mind is the highest of all principles: indeed Mind is the constituent of all principlesmana puvvangam dhamm1. The consciousness beyond mind has not yet been made a patent and dynamic ele ment in the life upon earth; it has been glimpsed or entered into in varying degrees and modes by saints and seers; it has cast its derivative illuminations in the creative activities of poets and artists, in the finer and nobler urges of heroes and great men of action. But the utmost that has been achieved, the summit reached in that direction, as exampled in spiritual disciplines, involves a withdrawal from the evolutionary cycle, a merging and an absorption into the static status that is altogether beyond it, that lies, as it were, at the other extreme the Spirit in itself, Atman, Brahman, Sachchidananda, Nirvana, the One without a second, the Zero without a first.
The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer communion is established through a plane which is just above the mind the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
--
But the initial illusory consciousness of the Overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever manifested and embodied in funda mental truth-powers and truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
SRI AUROBINDO
--
In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its, spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all together forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something moreOneness gathering into itself all diversity, not destroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the move ment of Ignorance comes in when the supra mental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The move ment of Supermind is the move ment of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the Overmind com mences the play of divergent possibilities the simple, direct, united and absolute certainties of the supra mental consciousness retire, as it were, a step behind and begin to work themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradictory forces. In the Overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it for its own enhance ment until in the denser and darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation or manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in Matter it enters into more and more obscure forms and forces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a move ment backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakeningsMatter awakening into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of conscious Spirit.
The apparent or actual result of the move ment of Nescienceof Involutionhas been an increasing negation of the Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed, mortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of mortality, in order that in this very frame and field of mortality, Immortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather, possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the play itself and in the multiple mode of the terrestrial existence.
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The heart and its urges, the vital and its surges, the physical impulsesit is these of which the poets sang in their infinite variations. But the mind proper, that is to say, the higher reflective ideative mind, was not given the right of citizenship in the domain of poetry. I am not forgetting the so-called Metaphysicals. The ele ment of metaphysics among the Metaphysicals has already been called into question. There is here, no doubt, some theology, a good dose of mental cleverness or conceit, but a modern intellectual or rather rational intelligence is something other, something more than that. Even the metaphysics that was commandeered here had more or less a decorative value, it could not be taken into the pith and substance of poetic truth and beauty. It was a decoration, but not unoften a drag. I referred to the Upanishads, but these strike quite a different, almost an opposite line in this connection. They are in a sense truly metaphysical: they bypass the mind and the mental powers, get hold of a higher mode of consciousness, make a direct contact with truth and beauty and reality. It was Buddha's credit to have forged this missing link in man's spiritual consciousness, to have brought into play the power of the rational intellect and used it in support of the spiritual experience. That is not to say that he was the very first person, the originator who initiated the move ment; but at least this seems to be true that in him and his au thentic followers the move ment came to the forefront of human consciousness and attained the proportions of a major member of man's psychological constitution. We may remember here that Socrates, who started a similar move ment of rationalisation in his own way in Europe, was almost a contemporary of the Buddha.
Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a priori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be more scientific, let us use the word, more matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its ivory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things human and terrestrial; made immanent in the mundane and the ephemeral, as they are commonly called. This is not an impossibility. Sri Aurobindo seems to have done the thing. In him we find the three terms of human consciousness arriving at an absolute fusion and his poetry is a wonderful example of that fusion. The three terms are the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical and the physical or sensational. The intellectual, or more generally, the mental, is the intermediary, the Paraclete, as he himself will call it later on in a poem9 magnificently exemplifying the point we are trying to make out the agent who negotiates, bridges and harmonises the two other firma ments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
Indeed it would be wrong to associate any cold ascetic nudity to the spiritual body of Sri Aurobindo. His poetry is philosophic, abstract, no doubt, but every philosophy has its practice, every abstract thing its concrete application,even as the soul has its body; and the fusion, not mere union, of the two is very characteristic in him. The deepest and unseizable flights of thought he knows how to clo the with a Kalidasian richness of imagery, or a Keatsean gusto of sensuousness:
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the centre of this energy, the matrix of creativity is the soul itself, one's own soul. If you want to createlive, grow and be real-find yourself, be yourself. The simple old wisdom still remains the eternal wisdom. It is because we fall off from our soul that we wander into side-paths, paths that do not belong to our real nature and hence that lead to imitation and repetition, decay and death. This is what happens to what we call common souls. The force of circumstances, the pressure of environ ment or simply the mo mentum of custom or habit compel them to choose the easiest and the readiest way that may lie before them. They do not consult the demand of the inner being but the require ment of the mo ment. Our bodily needs, our vital hungers and our mental prejudices obsess and obscure the impulsions that thrill the hidden spirit. We hasten to gratify the immediate and forget the eternal, we clutch at the shadow and let go the substance. We are carried away in the flux and tumult of life. It is a mixed and collective whirla Weltgeist that moves and governs us. We are helpless straws drifting in the current. But manhood demands that we stop and pause, pull ourselves out of the Maelstrom and be what we are. We must shape things as we want and not allow things to shape us as they want.
Let each take cognisance of the godhead that is within him for self is Godand in the strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he- creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourselfma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad. The fountain-head of creative genius lies there, in the free choice and the particular delight the self-determination of the spirit within you and not in the desire for your neighbours riches. The world has become dull and uniform and mechanical, since everybody endeavours to become not himself, but always somebody else. Imitation is servitude and servitude brings in grief.
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.
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01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
You must go inside yourself and enter into a complete dedication to the spiritual life. All clinging to mental preferences must fall away from you, all insistence on vital aims and interests and attach ments must be put away, all egoistic clinging to family, friends, country must disappear if you want to succeed in Yoga. Whatever has to come as outgoing energy or action, must proceed from the Truth once discovered and not from the lower mental or vital motives, from the Divine Will and not from personal choice or the preferences of the ego.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable pheno menon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourish ment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the pheno menal but also into the labyrinths of the nou menal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this move ment the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern manner. Wordsworth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
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The growth of a philosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. For man's consciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which includes and presupposes a develop ment along that line. The mot d'ordre in old-world poetry was "fancy", imaginationremember the famous lines of Shakespeare characterising a poet; in modern times it is Thought, even or perhaps particularly abstract metaphysical thought. Perceptions, experiences, realisationsof whatever order or world they may beexpressed in sensitive and aesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. But a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistencea definite time has been given to that, since the Renaissance, it is said: it is the growing importance of Thought or brain-power as a medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear articulation, a definite and strong formulation. Rationalisation of all experiences and realisations is the keynote of the modern mentality. Even when it is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant realities, that the irrational or the sub mental plays a greater role in our consciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the expression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and through a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which cannot be found in the old-world frankly non-intellectual creations.
The religious, the mystic or the spiritual man was, in the past, more or Jess methodically and absolutely non-intellectual and anti-intellectual: but the modern age, the age of scientific culture, is tending to make him as strongly intellectual: he has to explain, not only present the object but show up its mechanism alsoexplain to himself so that he may have a total understanding and a firmer grasp of the thing which he presents and explains to others as well who demand a similar approach. He feels the necessity of explaining, giving the rationality the rationale the science, of his art; for without that, it appears to him, a solid ground is not given to the structure of his experience: analytic power, preoccupation with methodology seems inherent in the modern creative consciousness.
The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting history with a significant role: it has acted as a force of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar move ment is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major role in man's creative activity.
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over- mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instru ment, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the move ment of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising ele ment instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
The earliest preoccupation of man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the world and worldly things, he referred all that to the other world, thought of gods and goddesses, of after-death and other where. That also will be his last and ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way, when he has passed through a process of purification and growth, a "sea-change". For although religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or behind the world, it is married too much to man's actual worldly nature and carries always with it the shadow of profanity.
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This is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought ele ment or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. Normally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still the human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attribute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the coruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential linea ments of revelatory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of the Reality. In the former there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind).
To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The move ment has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:
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Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a profane and mundane affair: for it expresses the normal man's perceptions and feelings and experiences, human loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. And yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in such a way as can bring calm and puritykatharsisnot trouble and confusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient days. Besides, there has been a growth and develop ment in the historic process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of his bodily and vital instincts and impulses., man is gradually growing into the mental, moral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic expression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of transformation. The first and original transformation happened with religious poetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say, the religious man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and passions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and develop ment of human speech, in taking the name of God human tongue acquires a new plasticity and flavour that transform or give a new modulation even to things profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring of mental and moral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in another class of poetic creation, viz., the allegory. Allegory or parable is the stage when the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and manner, in the form and character of the normal and external, when moral, religious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the profane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose clothing upon the ordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, however, the first step is taken for a mingling and fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable ascension of the lower into the higher. The philosopher poet follows another line for the same katharsisinstead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he proceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all move ments and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either type, the religious mystic or the philosopher mystic, although often the two are welded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little:
The spacious firma ment on high,
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The fact is that Reason is a lower manifestation of knowledge, it is an attempt to express on the mental level a power that exceeds it. It is the section of a vast and unitarian Consciousness-Power; the section may be necessary under certain conditions and circumstances, but unless it is viewed in its relation to the ensemble, unless it gives up its exclusive absolutism, it will be perforce arbitrary and misleading. It would still remain helpful and useful, but its help and use would be always limited in scope and temporary in effectivity.
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01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The motives which from their own sight men hide.
He felt the beating life in other men
Invade him with their happiness and their grief;
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Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men
And subtler bodies than these passing frames,
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She brought immortal words to mortal men.
Above the reason's brilliant slender curve,
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Lest men should find them and be even as Gods.
A vision lightened on the viewless heights,
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A demigod shaping the lives of men:
One soul's ambition lifted up the race;
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I may say briefly that there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously called the Self, the Spirit or the Divine. The other is the normal consciousness in which men live; it is something quite superficial, an instru ment of the Spirit for the play of life. Those who live and act in the normal consciousness are governed entirely by the common move ments of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life.
mental quiet and happiness they can get, but it can never be permanent or secure. But the spiritual consciousness is all light, peace, power and bliss. If one can live entirely in it, there is no question; these things become naturally and securely his.
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Morality is a part of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; it enters into the deeper consciousness of the Spirit and acts out of the truth of the Spirit.
The principle of life which I seek to establish is spiritual.
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Divine will bring Ananda, therefore it must be for the Ananda that we seek the union, is not true and has no force. One who loves a queen may know that if she returns his love it will bring him power, position, riches and yet it need not be for the power, position, riches that he seeks her love. He may love her for herself and could love her equally if she were not a queen; he might have no hope of any return whatever and yet love her, adore her, live for her, die for her simply because she is she. That has happened and men have loved wo men without any hope of enjoy ment or result, loved steadily, passionately after age has come and beauty has gone. Patriots do not love their country only when she is rich, powerful, great and has much to give them; their love for country has been most ardent, passionate, absolute when the country was poor, degraded, miserable, having nothing to give but loss, wounds, torture, imprison ment, death as the wages of her service; yet even knowing that they would never see her free, men have lived, served and died for her - for her own sake, not for what she could give. men have loved Truth for her own sake and for what they could seek or find of her, accepted poverty, persecution, death itself; they have been content even to seek for her always, not finding, and yet never given up the search.
That means what? That men, country, Truth and other things besides can be loved for their own sake and not for anything else, not for any circumstance or attendant quality or resulting enjoy ment, but for something absolute that is either in them or behind their appearance and circumstance. The Divine is more than a man or woman, a stretch of land or a creed, opinion, discovery or principle. He is the Person beyond all persons, the
Home and Country of all souls, the Truth of which truths are only imperfect figures. And can He then not be loved and sought for his own sake, as and more than these have been by men even in their lesser selves and nature?
What your reasoning ignores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute in man and his seeking as well as in the Divine - something not to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive, but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking that is the soul's inherent aspiration, not a vital longing. That is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when "I seek you for this, I seek you for that" changes to a sheer "I seek you for you." It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna."
The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and
01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo has raised action completely out of the mental and moral plane and has given it an absolute spiritual life. Action has been spiritualised by being carried back to its very source and origin, for it is the expression in life of God's own Consciousness-Energy (Chit-Shakti).
The Supreme Spirit, Purushottama, who holds in himself the dual reality of Brahman and the world, is the master of action who acts but in actionlessness, the Lord in whom and through whom the universes and their creatures live and move and have their being. Karmayoga is union in mind and soul and body with the Lord of action in the execution of his cosmic purpose. And this union is effected through a transformation of the human nature, through the revelation of the Divine Prakriti and its descent upon and possession of the inferior human vehicle.
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The worship of man as something essentially and exclusively human necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, viz the deification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that is passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche says, "All our modern world is captured in the net of the Alexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical man, armed with the most powerful instru ments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original ancestor is Socrates." Indeed, it may be generally asserted that the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and logical intellect, that was the very embodi ment of rationality and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far, wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic ele ment in man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent ele ment; there has been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind the spirit, the Gods and the Beyonds.
However, we are concerned more with the immediate past, the mentality that laid its supreme stress upon the human rationality. What that epoch did not understand was that Reason could be overstepped, that there was something higher, something greater than Reason; Reason being the sovereign faculty, it was thought there could be nothing beyond, unless it were draison. The human attribute par excellence is Reason. Exactly so. But the fact is that man is not bound by his humanity and that reason can be transformed and sublimated into other more powerful faculties.
Now, the question is, what is the insufficiency of Reason? How does it limit man? And what is the Superman into which man is asked or is being impelled to grow?
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Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.
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01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When we say one is conscious, we usually mean that one is conscious with the mental consciousness, with the rational intelligence, with the light of the brain. But this need not be always so. For one can be conscious with other forms of consciousness or in other planes of consciousness. In the average or normal man the consciousness is linked to or identified with the brain function, the rational intelligence and so we conclude that without this wakeful brain activity there can be no consciousness. But the fact is otherwise. The experiences of the mystic prove the point. The mystic is conscious on a level which we describe as higher than the mind and reason, he has what may be called the overhead consciousness. (Apart from the normal consciousness, which is named jagrat, waking, the Upanishad speaks of three other increasingly subtler states of consciousness, swapna, sushupti and turiya.)And then one can be quite unconscious, as in samadhi that can be sushupti or turiyaorpartially consciousin swapna, for example, the external behaviour may be like that of a child or a lunatic or even a goblin. One can also remain normally conscious and still be in the superconscience. Not only so, the mystic the Yogican be conscious on infraconscious levels also; that is to say, he can enter into and identify with the consciousness involved in life and even in Matter; he can feel and realise his oneness with the animal world, the plant world and finally the world of dead earth, of "stocks and stones" too. For all these strands of existence have each its own type of consciousness and all different from the mode of mind which is normally known as consciousness. When St. Francis addresses himself to the brother Sun or the sister Moon, or when the Upanishad speaks of the tree silhouetted against the sky, as if stilled in trance, we feel there is something of this fusion and identification of consciousness with an infra-conscient existence.
I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his consciousness withdraws from the normal mental consciousness and becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that superior consciousness the artist's mentalityhis ideas and dispositions, his judg ments and valuations and acquisitions, in other words, his normal psychological make-upserves as a channel, an instru ment, a medium for transcription. Now, there are two stages, or rather two lines of activity in the processus, for they may be overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret or subtle worldWords-worth's "recollected in tranquillity"and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of words and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives and records and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune with what it has to receive and record; otherwise the transcription becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or confused echo, a poor show. The supreme creators are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the instru mental faculties offer the least resistance and record with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to come down and waited for an opportunity.
Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their inspiration: they look upon themselves more or less as mere instru ments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond their normal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are, however, for them not a mere metaphor but concrete realities. To what extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost inanimate, instru mentnothing more than a mirror or a sensitive photographic plateis illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge. His Kubla Khan, as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the rest having gone completely out of his memory; in other words, the poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or recording instru ment was faulty and failed him. Indeed, it is a common experience to hear in sleep verses or musical tunes and what seem then to be very beautiful things, but which leave no trace on the brain and are not recalled in memory.
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But the Yogi is a wholly conscious being; a perfect Yogi is he who possesses a conscious and willed control over his instru ments, he silences them, as and when he likes, and makes them convey and express with as little deviation as possible truths and realities from the Beyond. Now the question is, is it possible for the poet also to do something like that, to consciously create and not to be a mere unconscious or helpless channel? Conscious artistry, as we have said, means to be conscious on two levels of consciousness at the same time, to be at home in both equally and simultaneously. The general experience, however, is that of "one at a time": if the artist dwells more in the one, the other retires into the background to the same measure. If he is in the over-consciousness, he is only half-conscious in his brain consciousness, or even not conscious at allhe does not know how he has created, the sources or process of his creative activity, he is quite oblivious of them" gone through them all as if per saltum. Such seems to have been the case with the primitives, as they are called, the ele mental poetsShakespeare and Homer and Valmiki. In some others, who come very near to them in poetic genius, yet not quite on a par, the instru mental intelligence is strong and active, it helps in its own way but in helping circumscribes and limits the original impulsion. The art here becomes consciously artistic, but loses something of the initial freshness and spontaneity: it gains in correctness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somewhere in between. Lower in the rung where the mental medium occupies a still more preponderant place we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose representatives are Pope and Dryden. We can go farther down and land in the domain of versificationalthough here, too, there can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry.
The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an ele ment of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instru ments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working of the instru ment, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
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The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist originated with the Romantics. The very essence of Romanticism is curiosity the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experi menting, changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or senti mental or even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unforeseen or unexpected modes of "psychoses" or psychological states. Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a move ment which led logically to the age of Hardy, Housman and Bridges and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of the classicists married to the very quintessence of Romanticism. A hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a cold scalpel-like gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm and constitutes almost the whole of Valry's. The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry, conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.
The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and move ments of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the ele ments in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instru ment, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and imple ments. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and funda mental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refine ments, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhance ment or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instru ment for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In an age when Reason was considered as the highest light given to man, Tagore pointed to the Vision of the mystics as always the still greater light; when man was elated with undreamt-of worldly success, puffed up with incomparable material possessions and powers, Tagore's voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am not made immortal by that?" When men, in their individual as well as collective egoism, were scrambling for earthly gains and hoards, he held before them vaster and cleaner horizons, higher and deeper ways of being and living, maintained the sacred sense of human solidarity, the living consciousness of the Divine, one and indivisible. When the Gospel of Power had all but hypnotised men's minds, and Superman or God-man came to be equated with the Titan, Tagore saw through the falsehood and placed in front and above all the old-world eternal verities of love and self-giving, harmony and mutuality, sweetness and light. When pessimism, cynicism, agnosticism struck the major chord of human tempera ment, and grief and frustration and death and decay were taken as a matter of course to be the inevitable order of earthlylifebhasmantam idam shariramhe continued to sing the song of the Rishis that Ananda and Immortality are the breath of things, the birth right of human beings. When Modernism declared with a certitude never tobe contested that Matter is Brahman, Tagore said with the voice of one who knows that Spirit is Brahman.
Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equip ment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes from an unknown country, as a sort of irruption or on the peak of the poetic afflatus or enthousiasmos.
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Socrates is said to have brought down Philosophy from Heaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can be ascribed to Tagore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental Reality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been brought nearer to our planet, close to human consciousness in Tagore's vision, being clothed in earth and flesh and blood, made vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily asceticism and monasticism. So Tagore boldly declared in those famous lines of his:
Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere renunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself in a thousand associations.1
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A modern idealist of the type of a reformer would not be satisfied with that role. If he is merely a moralist reformer, he will revolt against the "witness business", calling it a laissez-faire mentality of bygone days. A spiritual reformer would ask for morea dynamic union with the Divine Will and Consciousness, not merely a passive enjoy ment in the Bliss, so that he may be a luminous power or agent for the expression of divine values in things mundane.
Not the acceptance of the world as it is, not even a joyous acceptance, viewing it as an inexplicable and mysterious and magic play of, God, but the asp ration and endeavour to change it, mould it in the pattern of its inner divine realities for there are such realities which seek expression and embodi ment in earthly life that is the great mission and labour of humanity and that is all the meaning of man's existence here below. And Tagore is one of the great prophets and labourers who had the vision of the shape of things to come and worked for it. Only it must be noted, as I have already said, that unlike mere moral reformists or scientific planners, Tagore grounded himself upon the eternal ancient truths that "age cannot wither nor custom stale"the divine truths of the Spirit.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This knowledge first he had of time-born men.
Admitted through a curtain of bright mind
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Communism is the synthesis of collectivism and individualism. The past ages of society were characterised more or less by a severe collectivism. In ancient Greece, more so in Sparta and in Rome, the individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State or Nation. The individual was considered only as a limb of the collective being, had to live and labour for the common weal. The value attached to each person was strictly in reference to the output that the group to which he belonged received from him. Apart from this service for the general unit the body politicany personal endeavour and achieve ment, if not absolutely discouraged and repressed, was given a very secondary place of merit. The summum bonum of the individual was to sacrifice at the altar of the res publica, the bonum publicum. In India, the position and function of the State or Nation was taken up by the society. Here too social institutions were so constituted and men were so bred and brought up that individuality had neither the occasion nor the incentive to express itself, it was a thing that remained, in the Kalidasian phrase, an object for the ear onlysrutau sthita. Those who sought at all an individual aim and purpose, as perhaps the Sannyasins, were put outside the gate of law and society. Within the society, in actual life and action, it was a sin and a crime or at least a gross imperfection to have any self-regarding motive or impulse; personal preference was the last thing to be considered, virtue consisted precisely in sacrificing one's own taste and inclination for the sake of that which the society exacts and sanctions.
Against this tyranny of the group, this absolute rule of the collective will, the human mind rose in revolt and the result was Individualism. For whatever may be the truth and necessity of the Collective, the Individual is no less true and necessary. The individual has his own law and urge of being and his own secret godhead. The collective godhead derides the individual godhead at its peril. The first move ment of the reaction, however, was a run to the other extremity; a stern collectivism gave birth to an intransigent individualism. The individual is sacred and inviolable, cost what it may. It does not matter what sort of individuality one seeks, it is enough if the thing is there. So the doctrine of individualism has come to set a premium on egoism and on forces that are disruptive of all social bonds. Each and every individual has the inherent right, which is also a duty, to follow his own impetus and impulse. Society is nothing but the battle ground for competing individualities the strongest survive and the weakest go to the wall. Association and co-operation are instru ments that the individual may use and utilise for his own growth and develop ment but in the main they act as deterrents rather than as aids to the expression and expansion of his characteristic being. In reality, however, if we probe sufficiently deep into the matter we find that there is no such thing as corporate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage for rigorous competition; at the best, there maybe only an offensive and defensive alliancehumanity fights against nature, and within humanity itself group fights against group and in the last analysis, within the group, the individual fights against the individual. This is the ultimate Law-the Dharma of creation.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The consciousness that breathed out these mighty words, these heavenly sounds was in itself mighty and heavenly and it is that that touches you, penetrates you, vibrates in you a kindred chord, "awakening in you someone dead" till thenmrtam kcana bodhayant. More than the matter, the thing that was said, was the personality, the being who embodied the truth expressed, the living consciousness behind the words and the speech that set fire to your soul. Indeed it was the soul that Vivekananda could awaken and stir in you. Any orator, any speaker with some kind of belief, even if it is for the mo ment, in what he says, by the sheer force of assertion, can convince your mind and draw your acquiescence and adhesion. A leader of men, self-confident and bold and fiery, can carry you off your feet and make you do brave things. But that is a lower degree of character and nature, ephemeral and superficial, that is touched in you thereby. The spiritual leader, the Guide, goes straight to the spirit in youit is the call of the deep unto the deep. That was what Vivekananda meant when he said that Brahman is asleep in you, awaken it, you are the Brahman, awaken it, you are free and almighty. It is the spirit consciousness Sachchidananda that is the real man in you and that is supremely mighty and invincible and free absolutely. The courage and fearlessness that Vivekananda gave you was the natural attribute of the lordship of your spiritual reality. Vivekananda spoke and roused the Atman in man.
Vivekananda spoke to the Atman in man, he spoke to the Atman of the world, and he spoke specially to the Atman of India. India had a large place in Vivekananda's consciousness: for the future of humanity and the world is wedded to India's future. India has a great mission, it has a spiritual, rather the spiritual work to do. Here is India's work as Vivekananda conceived it in a nutshell:
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"Man is higher than all animals, than all angels: none is greater than man. Even the Devas will have to come down again and attain to salvation though a human body. Man alone attains to perfection, not even the Devas." Indeed, men are gods upon earth, come down here below to perfect themselves and perfect the worldonly, they have to be conscious of themselves. They do not know what they are, they have to be actually and sovereignly what they are really and potentially. This then is the life-work of everyone:
"First, let us be Gods, and then help others to be Gods.
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Pascal's place in the evolution of European culture and consciousness is of considerable significance and importance. He came at a critical time, on the mounting tide of rationalism and scepticism, in an age when the tone and temper of human mentality were influenced and fashioned by Montaigne and Rochefoucauld, by Bacon and Hobbes. Pascal himself, born in such an atmosphere of doubt and disbelief and disillusion ment, had sucked in a full dose of that poison; yet he survived and found the Rock of Ages, became the clarion of Faith against Denial. What a spectacle it was! This is what one wrote just a quarter of a century after the death of Pascal:
"They can no longer tell us that it is only small minds that have piety. They are shown how it has grown best in one of the the greatest geometricians, one of the subtlest metaphysicians, one of the most penetrating minds that ever existed on earth. The piety of such a philosopher should make the unbeliever and the libertine declare what a certain Diocles said one day on seeing Epicurus in a temple: 'What a feast, what a spectacle for me to see Epicurus in a temple! All my doubts vainsh, piety takes its place again. I never saw Jupiter's greatness so well as now when I behold Epicurus kneeling down!"1
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"What will men do in such a state? Will he doubt everything?... Will he doubt whether he doubts ? Will he doubt whether he exists?. . . In fact there has never been a perfectly effective Pyrrhonian."6
The process of conversion of the doubting mind, of the dry intellectual reason as propounded and perhaps practised by Pascal is also a characteristic mark of his nature and genius. It is explained in his famous letter on "bet" or "game of chance" (Le Pari). Here is how he puts the issue to the doubting mind (I am giving the substance, not his words): let us say then that in the world we are playing a game of chance. How do the chances stand? What are the gains and losses if God does not exist? What 'are the gains and losses if God does exist? If God exists, by accepting and reaching him what do we gain? All that man cares forhappiness, felicity. And what do we lose? We lose the world of misery. If, on the other 'hand, God does not exist, by believing him to exist, we lose nothing, we are not more miserable than what we are. If, however, God exists and we do not believe him, we gain this world of misery but we lose all that is worth having. Thus Pascal concludes that even from the standpoint of mere gain and loss, belief in God is more advantageous than unbelief. This is how he applied to metaphysics the mathematics of probability.
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 senti ment 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.
What then is required is a complete spiritual regeneration in man, a new structure of his soul and substancenot merely the realisation of the highest and supreme Truth in mental and emotional consciousness, but the translation and application of the law of that truth in the power of the vital. It is here that failed all the great spiritual or rather religious move ments of the past. They were content with evoking the divine in the mental being, but left the vital becoming to be governed by the habitual un-divine or at the most to be just illumined by a distant and faint glow which served, however, more to distort than express the Divine.
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.
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01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is the real meaning and sense of the moral struggle in man, the continuous endeavour towards a transvaluation of the primary and aboriginal instincts and impulses. Looked at from one end, from below up the ascending line, man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a dissimulation and sublimation of the animal impulsions. But this is becauseas we see, if we look from the other end, from above down the descending lineman is not all instinct, he is not a mere blind instru ment in the hands of Nature forces. He has in him another source, an opposite pole of being from which other impulsions flow and continually modify the structure of the lower levels. If the animal is the foundation of his nature, the divine is its summit. If the bodily demands form his manifest reality, the demands of the spirit enshrine his higher reality. And if as regards the former he is a slave, as regards the latter he is the Master. It is by the interaction of these double forces that his whole nature has been and is being fashioned. Man does not and cannot give carte blanche to his vital, inclinations, since there is a pressure upon them of higher forces coming down from his mental and spiritual levels. It is these latter which have deviated him from the direct line of the pure animal life.
Thus then we may distinguish three types of control on three levels. First, the natural control, secondly the conscious, i.e. to say the mental the ethical and religious control, and thirdly the spiritual or divine control. Now the spirit is the ultimate truth and reality, behind the forces that act in the mind and in the body, so that the natural control and the ethical control are mere attempts to establish and realise the spiritual control. The animal impulses feel the hidden stress of the divine urges that are their real essence and thus there rises first an unconscious conflict in the natural life and then a conscious conflict in the higher ethical life. But when both of these are transcended and the conflict is carried on to a still higher level, then do we find their real significance and arrive at the consummation to which they move. Yoga is the ultimate transvaluation of physical (and of moral) values, it is the trans-substantiation of life-power into its spiritual substance.
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01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From the twentieth century back to the fourteenth is a far cry: a far cry indeed from the modern scientific illumination to mediaeval superstition, from logical positivists and mathematical rationalists to visionary mystics, from Russell and Huxley to Ruysbroeck and Hilton. The mystic lore, the Holy Writ, the mediaeval sage says, echoing almost the very words of the Eastern Masters, "may not be got by study nor through man's travail only, but principally by the grace of the Holy Ghost." As for the men living and moving in the worldly way, there are "so mickle din and crying in their heart and vain thoughts and fleshly desires" that it is impossible for them to listen or understand the still small voice. It is the pure soul touched by the Grace that alone "seeth soothfastness of Holy Writ wonderly shewed and opened, above study and travail and reason of man's kindly (i.e. natural) wit."
What is day to us is night to the mystics and what is day to the mystics is night for us. The first thing the mystic asks is to close precisely those doors and windows which we, on the contrary, feel obliged to keep always open in order to know and to live and move. The Gita says: "The sage is wakeful when it is night for all creatures and when all creatures are wakeful, that is night for the sage." Even so this sage from the West says: "The more I sleep from outward things, the more wakeful am I in knowing of Jhesu and of inward things. I may not wake to Jhesu, but if I sleep to the world."
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It is never possible for man, weak and bound as he is, to reject the thraldom of his flesh, he can never purify himself wholly by his own unaided strength. God in his infinite mercy sent his own son, an emanation created out of his substancehis embodied loveas a human being to suffer along with men and take upon himself the burden of their sins. God the Son lived upon earth as man and died as man. Sin therefore has no longer its final or definitive hold upon mankind. Man has been made potentially free, pure and worthy of salvation. This is the mystery of Christ, of God the Son. But there is a further mystery. Christ not only lived for all men for all time, whether they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, there is a conscious acceptance on either side. This is the function of the Holy Ghost, the redeeming power of Love active in him who accepts it and who is accepted by it, the dynamic Christ-Consciousness in the true Christian.
Indeed, the kernel of the mystic discipline and its whole bearingconsists in one and only one principle: to love Jhesu. All roads lead to Rome: all preparations, all trials lead to one realisation, love of God, God as a living person close to us, our friend and lover and master. The Christian mystic speaks almost in the terms of the Gita: Rise above your senses, give up your ego-hood, be meek and humble, it is Jesus within you, who embraces your soul: it is he who does everything for you and in you, give yourself up wholly into his hands. He will deliver you.
--
Indeed, there are one or two points, notes for the guidance of the aspirant, which I would like to mention here for their striking appositeness and simple "soothfastness." First of all with regard to the restless enthusiasm and eagerness of a novice, here is the advice given: "The fervour is so mickle in outward showing, is not only for mickleness of love that they have; but it is for littleness and weakness of their souls, that they may not bear a little touching of God.. afterward when love hath boiled out all the uncleanliness, then is the love clear and standeth still, and then is both the body and the soul mickle more in peace, and yet hath the self soul mickle more love than it had before, though it shew less outward." And again: "without any fervour outward shewed, and the less it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth" ('it' naturally refers to the soul). The state ment is beautifully self-luminous, no explanation is required. Another hurdle that an aspirant has to face often in the passage through the Dark Night is that you are left all alone, that you are deserted by your God, that the Grace no longer favours you. Here is however the truth of the matter; "when I fall down to my frailty, then Grace withdraweth: for my falling is cause there-of, and not his fleeing." In fact, the Grace never withdraws, it is we who withdraw and think otherwise. One more difficulty that troubles the beginner especially is with regard to the false light. The being of darkness comes in the form of the angel of light, imitates the tone of the still small voice; how to recognise, how to distinguish the two? The false light, the "feigned sun" is always found "atwixt two black rainy clouds" : they are "highing" of oneself and "lowing" of others. When you feel flattered and elated, beware it is the siren voice tempting you. The true light brings you soothing peace and meekness: the other light brings always a trail of darknessf you are soothfast and sincere you will discover it if not near you, somewhere at a distance lurking.
The ultimate truth is that God is the sole doer and the best we can do is to let him do freely without let or hindrance. "He that through Grace may see Jhesu, how that He doth all and himself doth right nought but suffereth Jhesu work in him what him liketh, he is meek." And yet one does not arrive at that condition from the beginning or all at once. "The work is not of the hour nor of a day, but of many days and years." And for a long time one has to take up one's burden and work, co-operate with the Divine working. In the process there is this double move ment necessary for the full achieve ment. "Neither Grace only without full working of a soul that in it is nor working done without grace bringeth a soul to reforming but that one joined to that other." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the higher mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teacher say: "It is no mastery to me for to say it, but for to do it there is mastery." A men.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So, in man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable ele ment in human life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the human reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
This passage from the self-conscient to the super-conscient does not imply merely a shifting of the focus of consciousness. The transmutation of consciousness involves a purer illumination, a surer power and a wider compass; it involves also a funda mental change in the very mode of being and living. It gives quite a different life-intuition and a different life-power. The change in the motif brings about a new form altogether, a re-casting and re-shaping and re-energising of the external materials as well. As the lift from mere consciousness to self-consciousness meant all the difference between an animal and a man, so the lift again from self-consciousness to super-consciousness will mean the difference of a whole world between man and the divine creature that is to be.
Indeed it is a divine creature that should be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation, the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of the gods. The vision of angels and Siddhas, which man is having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the future actuality.
This then, it seems to us, is the immediate problem that Nature has set before herself. She is now at the parting of the ways. She has done with man as an essentially human being, she has brought out the funda mental possibilities of humanity and perfected it, so far as perfection may be attained within the cadre by which she chose to limit herself; she is now looking forward to another kind of experi ment the evolving of another life, another being out of her entrails, that will be greater than the humanity we know today, that will be superior even to the supreme that has yet been actualised.
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 fulfil ment 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 mo mentous 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 ele ments, 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
tamas in your mind, and the mental acrobatics of the author
shakes up this tamas a little and awakens the mind. But this
--
impels you and His will that supports you - not just a mental
knowledge, but the sincerity of a state of consciousness and the
--
I call that mental fer mentation. As soon as your waking consciousness falls asleep or leaves your body, the brain-cells you
have not taken the trouble to quiet down begin to fidget restlessly
--
But if one rises above the individual mentality and enters
into the consciousness of Unity, then one can understand.
--
purely mental. But if one makes a sincere and repeated effort, one
day the experience comes and one feels that the offering made is
--
you exceed, little by little, your present mental limits.
The Supreme Lord can give his Ananda to whomever He
--
practises it. There are desireless men who are not pursuing any
yoga.
--
I was not speaking of external things and mental faculties! True
love is in the soul (all the rest is vital attraction or mental and
physical attach ment, nothing else) and the soul (the psychic being) knows instinctively what the other needs to receive and is
--
To obtain mental silence, one must learn to relax, to let
oneself float on the waves of the universal force as a plank floats
--
Divine better by serving men and the world!"
Nobody comes here for his own salvation because Sri Aurobindo
--
and men so that the new creation may take place, and if we
On the evening of February 11, many Ashram buildings were stoned, burned or
--
to establish mental and moral and social Truth and justice on
human and egoistic lines. I have never promised to do anything
--
to the Divine and that as for men what is required is an attitude
of goodwill, understanding and mutual help.
--
The real landmarks on the way are the spontaneous experiences, not those that come from a mental formation and are
always unreliable.
--
for mental and physical education, isn't there a similar
method to progress towards Sri Aurobindo's yoga? It
--
for physical, mental and vital develop ment; but this mechanical
"Experience in thy soul the truth of the Scripture; afterwards, if thou wilt, reason
--
The Divine always informs, but it is rare indeed for men to listen
to Him. Either they do not hear Him or do not believe Him.
--
the best means of dominating living beings, animals and men.
Those who are pure - that is to say, exclusively under the
--
am pleased. But it is true that I find you mentally a bit lazy and
indifferent to the opportunity I give you each week to ask me
--
Are mental indifference and lack of curiosity a sort
of mental inertia?
Usually they are due to mental inertia, unless one has obtained
this calm and indifference through a very intense sadhana resulting in a perfect equality for which good and bad, pleasant
and unpleasant no longer exist. But in that case, mental activity
is replaced by an intuitive activity of a much higher kind.
--
How can one get out of this mental laziness and
inertia?
By wanting to do so, with persistence and obstinacy. By doing every day a mental exercise of reading, organisation and
develop ment.
--
of mental silence in concentration.
1 June 1966
--
which ordinary men flourish to protect themselves from the
Truth.
--
is justifiable, and it is That which men travesty and deform in
all their actions.
--
Communist ideal have the opposite opinion, not to mention
all the many and varied opinions on social and political subjects. All these are only OPINIONS and have no value at all
--
Everything mental is necessarily an opinion and expresses
only an infinitesimal fraction of the Truth.
--
because it is a mental function of a rather inferior order.
Moreover, there is a very simple way of knowing. One has
--
in establishing mental silence. But how can one fix this as
a constant experience? Because the mo ment one throws
oneself into activity, the mental disturbance begins again!
One can have a quiet mind without being in a complete state
--
The ideal is to be able to act without coming out of the mental
quietude.
--
What is usually called "conscience" is a mental formation based
on the idea of good and evil, a moral entity or rather an ele ment of goodwill which tries to keep the individual on what is
--
But all this is a mental approximation of the Truth. It is not
the Truth itself.
--
and mental, the physical relation seems more real and tangible.
(2) For those who have seriously begun the yoga in the body,
--
of it) but also a mental and vital relation, which makes the outer
relation less indispensable.
--
memory; it is rarely the events that mentally are considered
as the most memorable or most important in a lifetime, but
--
It is because men still imagine that to do something useful, they
have to form groups.
--
The Divine does not see things as men do and has no need
to punish or reward.
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns for responsive love. There are divine as well as human passions and therefore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.
Eastern spirituality does not view sorrow and sufferingevilas an integral part of the Divine Consciousness. It is born out of the Divine, no doubt, as nothing can be outside the Divine, but it is a local and temporal formation; it is a disposition consequent upon certain conditions and with the absence or elimination of those conditions, this disposition too disappears. God and the Divine Consciousness can only be purity, light, immortality and delight. The compassion that a Buddha feels for the suffering humanity is not at all a feeling of suffering; pain or any such normal human reaction does not enter into its composition; it is the move ment of a transcendent consciousness which is beyond and purified of the normal reactions, yet overarching them and entering into them as a soothing and illumining and vivifying presence. The healer knows and understands the pain and suffering of his patient but is not touched by them; he need not contract the illness of his patient in order to be in sympathy with him. The Divine the Soulcan be in flesh and yet not smirched with its mire; the flesh is not essentially or irrevocably the ooze it is under certain given conditions. The divine physical body is composed of radiant matter and one can speak of it even as of the soul that weapons cannot pierce it nor can fire burn it.
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Love and admiration for a mahapurusha is not enough, even faith in his gospel is of little avail, nor can actual participation, consecrated work and labour in his cause save the situation; it is only when the principles, the bare realities for which the mahapurusha stands are in the open forum and men have the full and free opportunity of testing and assimilating them, it is only when individuals thus become living embodi ments of those principles and realities that we do create a thing universal and permanent, as universal and permanent as earthly things may be. Principles only can embrace and unify the whole of humanity; a particular personality shall always create division and limitation. By placing the man in front, we erect a wall between the Principle and men at large. It is the principles, on the contrary, that should be given the place of honour: our attempt should be to keep back personalities and make as little use of them as possible. Let the principles work and create in their freedom and power, untrammelled by the limitations of any mere human vessel.
We are quite familiar with this cry so rampant in our democratic ageprinciples and no personalities! And although we admit the justice of it, yet we cannot ignore the trenchant one-sidedness which it involves. It is perhaps only a reaction, a swing to the opposite extreme of a mentality given too much to personalities, as the case generally has been in the past. It may be necessary, as a corrective, but it belongs only to a temporary stage. Since, however, we are after a universal ideal, we must also have an integral method. We shall have to curb many of our susceptibilities, diminish many of our apprehensions and soberly strike a balance between opposite extremes.
We do not speak like politicians or banias; but the very truth of the matter demands such a policy or line of action. It is very well to talk of principles and principles alone, but what are principles unless they take life and form in a particular individual? They are airy nothings, notions in the brain of logicians and metaphysicians, fit subjects for discussion in the academy, but they are devoid of that vital urge which makes them creative agencies. We have long lines of philosophers, especially European, who most scrupulously avoided all touch of personalities, whose utmost care was to keep principles pure and unsullied; and the upshot was that those principles remained principles only, barren and infructuous, some thing like, in the strong and puissant phrase of BaudelaireLa froide majest de la femme strile. And on the contrary, we have had other peoples, much addicted to personalitiesespecially in Asiawho did not care so much for abstract principles as for concrete embodi ments; and what has been the result here? None can say that they did not produce anything or produced only still-born things. They produced living creaturesephemeral, some might say, but creatures that lived and moved and had their days.
--
The thing, however, is that what you call principles do not drop from heaven in their virgin purity and all at once lay hold of mankind en masse. It is always through a particular individual that a great principle manifests itself. Principles do not live in the general mind of man and even if they live, they live secreted and unconscious; it is only a puissant personality, who has lived the principle, that can bring it forward into life and action, can awaken, like the Vedic Dawn, what was dead in allmritam kanchana bodhayanti. men in general are by themselves 'inert and indifferent; they have little leisure or inclination to seek, from any inner urge of their own, for principles and primal truths; they become conscious of these only when expressed and embodied in some great and rare soul. An Avatar, a Messiah or a Prophet is the centre, the focus through which a Truth and Law first dawns and then radiates and spreads abroad. The little lamps are all lighted by the sparks that the great torch scatters.
And yet we yield to none in our demand for holding forth the principles always and ever before the wide open gaze of all. The principle is there to make people self-knowing and self-guiding; and the man is also there to illustrate that principle, to serve as the hope and prophecy of achieve ment. The living soul is there to touch your soul, if you require the touch; and the principle is there by which to test and testify. For, we do not ask anybody to be a mere automaton, a blind devotee, a soul without individual choice and initiative. On the contrary, we insist on each and every individual to find his own soul and stand on his own Truththis is the funda mental principle we declare, the only creedif creed it be that we ask people to note and freely follow. We ask all people to be fully self-dependent and self-illumined, for only thus can a real and solid reconstruction of human nature and society be possible; we do not wish that they should bow down ungrudgingly to anything, be it a principle or a personality. In this respect we claim the very first rank of iconoclasts and anarchists. And along with that, if we still choose to remain an idol-lover and a hero-worshipper, it is because we recognise that our mind, human as it is, being not a simple equation but a complex paradox, the idol or the hero symbolises for us and for those who so will, the very iconoclasm and anarchism and perhaps other more positive things as wellwhich we behold within and seek to manifest.
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A similar compilation was published in the Arya, called The Eternal Wisdom (Les Paroles ternelles, in French) a portion of which appeared later on in book-form: that was more elaborate, the contents were arranged in such a way that no com ments were needed, they were self-explanatory, divided as they were in chapters and sections and subsections with proper headings, the whole thing put in a logical and organised sequence. Huxley's compilation begins under the title of the Upanishadic text "That art Thou" with this saying of Eckhart: "The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without". It will be interesting to note that the Arya compilation too starts with the same idea under the title "The God of All; the God who is in All", the first quotation being from Philolaus, "The Universe is a Unity".The Eternal Wisdom has an introduction called "The Song of Wisdom" which begins with this saying from the Book of Wisdom: "We fight to win sublime Wisdom; therefore men call us warriors".
Huxley gives only one quotation from Sri Aurobindo under the heading "God in the World". Here it is:
--
We fear Mr. Huxley has completely missed the point of the cryptic sentence. He seems to take it as meaning that human kindness and morality are a means to the recovery of the Lost Way-although codes of ethics and deliberate choices are not sufficient in themselves, they are only a second best, yet they mark the rise of self-consciousness and have to be utilised to pass on into the unitive knowledge that is Tao. This explanation or amplification seems to us somewhat confused and irrelevant to the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in man with his human mental knowledge: it is man's humanity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the human values, all the moralities, sarva dharmn, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the dualities, good and evil, the Great Way is beyond them and cannot be limited or measured by the relative standards. Especially in the modern age we see the decline and almost the disappearance of the Greater Light and instead a thousand smaller lights are lighted which vainly strive to dispel the gathering darkness. These do not help, they are false lights and men are apt to cling to them, shutting their eyes to the true one which is not that that one worships here and now, nedam yadidam upsate.
There is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written Scriptures:
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The truth behind a credal religion is the aspiration towards the realization of the Divine, some ultimate reality that gives a permanent meaning and value to the human life, to the existence lodged in this 'sphere of sorrow' here below. Credal paraphernalia were necessary to express or buttress this core of spiritual truth when mankind, in the mass, had not attained a certain level of enlighten ment in the mind and a certain degree of develop ment in its life-relations. The modern age is modern precisely because it had attained to a necessary extent this mental enlighten ment and this life develop ment. So the scheme or scaffolding that was required in the past is no longer unavoidable and can have either no reality at all or only a modified utility.
A modern people is a composite entity, especially with regard to its religious affiliation. Not religion, but culture is the basis of modern collective life, national or social. Culture includes in its grain that fineness of tempera ment which appreciates all truths behind all forms, even when there is a personal allegiance to one particular form.
--
Nature, on the whole, has solved the problem of blood fusion and mental fusion of different peoples, although on a smaller scale. India today presents the problem on a larger scale and on a higher or deeper level. The demand is for a spiritual fusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unitysince, at bottom, it means identityit is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem.
Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and vital formation com mensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering the physical world for the Lord, a tempera ment which Indian spirituality had not, or had lost long before, if she had anything of it. This was, perhaps, what Vivekananda meant when he spoke graphically of a Hindu soul with a Muslim body. The Islamic dispensation, however, brings with it not only something comple mentary, but also something contradictory, if not for anything else, at least for the strong individuality which does not easily yield to assimilation. Still, in spite of great odds, the process of assimilation was going on slowly and surely. But of late it appears to have come to a dead halt; difficulties have been presented which seem insuperable.
If religious toleration were enough, if that made up man's highest and largest achieve ment, then Nature need not have attempted to go beyond cultural fusion; a liberal culture is the surest basis for a catholic religious spirit. But such a spirit of toleration and catholicity, although it bespeaks a widened consciousness, does not always enshrine a profundity of being. Nobody is more tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different.
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A complete strength when men were maimed and weak,
German obscured the spirit of a Greek.
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is required is not therefore an external delimitation of frontiers between unit and unit, but an inner outlook of nature and a poise of character. And this can be cultivated and brought into action by learning to live by the sense of duty. Even then, even the sense of duty, we have to admit, is not enough. For if it leads or is capable of leading into an aberration, we must have something else to check and control it, some other higher and more potent principle. Indeed, both the conceptions of Duty and Right belong to the domain of mental ideal, although one is usually more aggressive and militant (Rajasic) and the other tends to be more tolerant and considerate (sattwic): neither can give an absolute certainty of poise, a clear guarantee of perfect harmony.
Indian wisdom has found this other, a fairer terma tertium quid,the mystic factor, sought for by so many philosophers on so many counts. That is the very well- known, the very familiar termDharma. What is Dharma then? How does it accomplish the miracle which to others seems to have proved an impossibility? Dharma is self-law, that is to say, the law of the Self; it is the rhythm and move ment of our inner or inmost being, the spontaneous working out of our truth-conscious nature.
--
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 fulfil ment. 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.
Still, the conception of duty cannot finally and definitively solve the problem. It cannot arrive at a perfect harmonisation of the conflicting claims of individual units; for, duty, as I have already said, is a child of mental idealism, and although the mind can exercise some kind of control over life-forces, it cannot altogether eliminate the seeds of conflict that lie imbedded in the very nature of life. It is for this reason that there is an ele ment of constraint in duty; it is, as the poet says, the "stern daughter of the Voice of God". One has to compel oneself, one has to use force on oneself to carry out one's dutythere is a feeling somehow of its being a bitter pill. The cult of duty means rajas controlled and coerced by Sattwa, not the transcendence of rajas. This leads us to the high and supreme conception of Dharma, which is a transcendence of the gunas. Dharma is not an ideal, a standard or a rule that one has to obey: it is the law of self-nature that one inevitably follows, it is easy, spontaneous, delightful. The path of duty is heroic, the path of Dharma is of the gods, godly (cf. Virabhava and Divyabhava of the Tantras).
The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all move ments, inner and outerspontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In these latest poems of his, Eliot has become outright a poet of the Dark Night of the Soul. The beginnings of the new avatar were already there certainly at the very beginning. The Waste Land is a good preparation and passage into the Night. Only, the negative ele ment in it was stronger the cynicism, the bleakness, the sereness of it all was almost overwhelming. The next stage was "The Hollow men": it took us right up to the threshold, into the very entrance. It was gloomy and fore-boding enough, grim and seriousno glint or hint of the silver lining yet within reach. Now as we find ourselves into the very heart of the Night, things appear somewhat changed: we look at the past indeed, but can often turn to the future, feel the pressure of the Night yet sense the Light beyond overarching and embracing us. This is how the poet begins:
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
--
But Thompson was not an intellectual, his doubts and despondencies were not of the mental order, he was a boiling, swelling life-surge, a geyser, a volcano. He, too, crossed the Night and saw the light of Day, but in a different way. Well, I he did not march into the day, it was the Day that marched I into him! Yes, the Divine Grace came and seized him from behind with violence. A modern, a modernist consciousness cannot expect that indulgence. God meets him only halfway, he has to work up himself the other half. He has laid so many demands and conditions: the knots in his case are not cut asunder but slowly disengaged.
The modern temper is especially partial to harmony: it cannot assert and reject unilaterally and categorically, it wishes to go round an object and view all its sides; it asks for a synthesis and reconciliation of differences and contraries. Two major chords of life-experience that demand accord are Life and Death, Time and Eternity. Indeed, the problem of Time hangs heavy on the human consciousness. It has touched to the quick philosophers and sages in all ages and climes; it is the great question that confronts the spiritual seeker, the riddle that the Sphinx of life puts to the journeying soul for solution.
--
And the gear of foreign dead men. . . .10
or even these local names and habitations:
--
The Hollow men
***
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalele ment in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital ele ment in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehe ment, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instru ments of a higher illumination.
All ele mental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are ele mental and funda mental, although apparently simple and commonplace.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The radical method is to cut off all mental and vital connection
with these people; but until you know how to do this, you
--
physical Purusha, the vital Purusha, the mental Purusha
and the secret Purusha in the heart are projections of it.
--
This is one way of putting it. mental definitions are never more
than approximations, ways of speaking.
--
Shadow is the symbol of the inconscient. This is where men
rest at night from the effort of the day to become conscious.
--
Two extremely rich men who claim to be very religious
and virtuous, are not paying what they owe according
--
If the Mother could make these two men honest
(even temporarily, long enough for them to settle this
--
vital and mental).
4 December 1967
--
are mentioned in nearly all the old legends of the saints?
Tears and anguish indicate the presence of a weak and paltry
--
Many virtues lead away from the Divine by making men
satisfied with what they are.
--
When one is living among men with all their miseries, it is only
the Grace that can bestow this state - even in those who by
--
a mental mind.
9 November 1968
--
Memory is a mental faculty and helps the mental consciousness.
But feeling and sensation must also participate.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
is much slower than the vital desire for progress and the mental
will for progress. And if the vital and the mind are left in charge
--
gives an exceptional control over all activities, mental, vital and
physical.
--
correctly, or are men still unable to do that?
Human incapacity is necessarily behind all that men do. Only
he who has become conscious of the Divine and become His
--
Knowledge and intelligence are precisely the higher mental qualities in man, those that differentiate him from the animal.
Series Twelve - To a Student
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
in the subtle physical or the mental. There are any number of
different possibilities in dreams.
--
These are all mental and vital, senti mental or sexual activities, and nothing more.
Blessings.
--
Sri Aurobindo spent his whole life working to free men from
the bondage of religions. Do you want to contradict his work
--
"There are mo ments when the Spirit moves among men
and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters
of our being; there are others when it retires and men
are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their
--
It so happens that we are not in an age when men have been left
to their own means. The Divine has sent down His Consciousness to give them light. All who are able to do so should profit
--
And why were primitive men left to their own means?
Primitive men were still too close to the animal to be able to
enter into relation with the Inner Divine; it is only gradually,
through thousands of years of ascending evolution, that men
have learned to be conscious. Now they are ready to manifest
--
If you watch mentally, the interest is no longer the same;
instead of being moved or troubled, you can calmly judge the
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Difficult hours come to the earth to compel men to overcome
their small personal egoism and turn exclusively to the Divine
for help and light. The wisdom of men is ignorant. Only the
Divine knows.
--
Infinite. But generally men keep these windows carefully closed.
We have to open them wide and allow the Infinite to enter us
--
Communications from the psychic do not come in a mental
form. They are not ideas or reasonings. They have their own
--
depths of your consciousness, beyond all mental activity.
16 December 1971
--
If men knew that this transformation, the abolition of egoism, is the only way to gain constant peace and delight, they
would consent to make the necessary effort. This, then, is the
--
of men are like this.
Series Fourteen - To a Sadhak
--
come from the fact that men are nearly always convinced that
they know better than the Divine what they need and what
--
Sri Aurobindo told me one day that if men knew this and
were convinced of it, they would all want to do yoga.
--
Human consciousness is so corrupted that men prefer the miseries of the ego and its ignorance to the luminous joy that comes
from a sincere surrender to the Divine. So great is their blindness
0 1952-08-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Only when it is no longer necessary for my body to resemble the bodies of men in order to make them progress will it be free to be supra mentalized.1
***
Only when men shall depend exclusively upon the Divine and upon nothing else will the incarnate god no longer need to die for them.2
Note written by Mother in French.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Thus far, She has not found what is needed. men remain obstinately men and do not want to or are unable to become super men. All they can receive and express is a love at their own di mension: a human lovewhereas the supreme bliss of divine Ananda eludes their perception.
At times, finding the world unready to receive Her, She contemplates withdrawing. But how cruel a loss this would be!
--
I dont know to whom I was mentioning this today (I think it was for a Birthday3 No, I dont know now. It was to someone who told me he was 18 years old. I said that between the ages of 18 and 20, I had attained a constant and conscious union with the Divine Presence and that I had done this ALL ALONE, without ANYONES help, not even books. When a little later I chanced upon Vivekanandas Raja Yoga, it really seemed so wonderful to me that someone could explain something to me! And it helped me realize in only a few months what would have otherwise taken years.
I met a man (I was perhaps 20 or 21 at the time), an Indian who had come to Europe and who told me of the Gita. There was a French translation of it (a rather poor one, I must say) which he advised me to read, and then he gave me the key (HIS key, it was his key). He said, Read the Gita (this translation of the Gita which really wasnt worth much but it was the only one available at the timein those days I wouldnt have understood anything in other languages; and besides, the English translations were just as bad and well, Sri Aurobindo hadnt done his yet!). He said, Read the Gita knowing that Krishna is the symbol of the immanent God, the God within. That was all. Read it with THAT knowledgewith the knowledge that Krishna represents the immanent God, the God within you. Well, within a month, the whole thing was done!
--
Yes, certainly had there been any receptivity when She came down and had She been able to manifest with the power with which She came But I can tell you one thing: even before Her coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time I didnt seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month of this yoga, I looked exactly like an 18 year old! And someone who knew me and had stayed with me in Japan5 came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, But my god, is it you? I said, Of course!
Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went awaybecause on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change.
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For a long time, Satprem took care of the correspondence with the outside, along with Pavitra, not to mention editing the Ashram Bulletin as well as Mother's writings and talks, translating Sri Aurobindo's works into French, and conducting classes at the Ashram's 'International Centre of Education.'
Every evening at the Playground, the disciples passed before Mother one by one to receive symbolically some food.
0 1956-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, two months ago I had a clear mental perception of what was asked of me: to spend the rest of my life here. This is the source of my difficulties and of the inner hell I have been living through ever since. Each time I try to emerge, there is this image that rises up in me: your-whole-life and this casts me into a violent conflict. When I came here, I thought of staying for two or three years; for me the Ashram was a means of realization, not an end.
I understand now that as long as my whole being has not ACCEPTED that it must finish its life here, there is no way out nor any recovery possible. Through my mental force alone, this acceptance is impossible; I have been turning infernally in circles these past two months, and the mind is in league with the vital. Therefore, a force greater than mine must help me accept that my way is here. I need you, Mother, for without you I am lost. I need you to tell me that the Truth of my being is indeed here and that I am truly ready to follow this path. Mother, I beseech you, help me to see the truth of my being, give me some sign that my way is here and not elsewhere. I beg of you, Mother, help me to know.
I also had a very clear sensation that you were abandoning me, that you had no further interest in me and I could just as well do as I pleased. Perhaps you cannot forgive some of my inner rebellions which have been so very violent? Am I totally guilty? Is it true that you are abandoning me?
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Well, in any event, that was the case for those who had a little inner contact; they recognized it, they felt it, and they said, Ah, there it is! It has come! But how is it that so many hundreds of peoplenot to mention the handful of those who really wanted only that, thought only of that, had staked their whole lives on thathow is it that they felt nothing? What can this mean?
It is well known that only like knows like. It is an obvious fact.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an im mense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apart ments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the im mense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to another plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet there was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life.
It went something like this: somewhere, in the center of this enormous edifice, there was a room reservedas it seemed in the story for a mother and her daughter. The mother was a lady, an elderly lady, a very influential matron who had a great deal of authority and her own views concerning the entire organization. Her daughter seemed to have a power of move ment and activity enabling her to be everywhere at once while at the same time remaining in her room, which was well, a bit more than a roomit was a kind of apart ment which, above all, had the characteristic of being very central. But she was constantly arguing with her mother. The mother wanted to keep things just as they were, with their usual rhythm, which precisely meant the habit of tearing down one thing to rebuild another, then again tearing down that to build still another, thus giving the building an appearance of frightful confusion. But the daughter did not like this, and she had another plan. Most of all, she wanted to bring something completely new into the organization: a kind of super-organization that would render all this confusion unnecessary. Finally, as it was impossible for them to reach an understanding, the daughter left the room to go on a kind of general inspection She went out, looked everything over, and then wanted to return to her room to decide upon some final measures. But this is where something rather peculiar began happening.
--
So to help you understand this enigma, let me tell you that the mother is physical Nature as she is, and the daughter is the new creation. The manageress is the worlds organizing mental consciousness as Nature has developed it thus far, that is, the most advanced organizing sense to have manifested in the present state of material Nature. This is the key to the vision.
Naturally, when I awoke, I immediately knew what could resolve this problem which appeared so absolutely insoluble. The vanishing of the manageress and her key was an obvious sign that she was altogether incapable of leading what could be called the creative consciousness of the new world to its true place.
--
It is certainly not an arbitrary construction of the type built by men, where everything is put pell-mell, without any order, without reality, and which is held together by only illusory ties. Here, these ties were symbolized by the hotels walls, while actually in ordinary human constructions (if we take a religious community, for example), they are symbolized by the building of a monastery, an identity of clothing, an identity of activities, an identity even of move mentor to put it more precisely: everyone wears the same uniform, everyone gets up at the same time, everyone eats the same thing, everyone says his prayers together, etc.; there is an overall identity. But naturally, on the inside there remains the chaos of many disparate consciousnesses, each one following its own mode, for this kind of group identification, which extends right up to an identity of beliefs and dogma, is absolutely illusory.
Yet it is one of the most common types of human collectivityto group together, band together, unite around a common ideal, a common action, a common realization but in an absolutely artificial way. In contrast to this, Sri Aurobindo tells us that a true communitywhat he terms a gnostic or supra mental communitycan be based only upon the INNER REALIZATION of each one of its members, each realizing his real, concrete oneness and identity with all the other members of the community; that is, each one should not feel himself a member connected to all the others in an arbitrary way, but that all are one within himself. For each one, the others should be as much himself as his own bodynot in a mental and artificial way, but through a fact of consciousness, by an inner realization.
(silence)
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
We live perennially with a burden on our shoulders, something that bows our heads down, and we feel pulled, led by all kinds of external forces, we dont know by whom or what, nor where tothis is what men call Fate, Destiny. When you do yoga, one of the first experiences the experience of the kundalini, as it is called here in Indiais precisely one in which the consciousness rises, breaks through this hard lid, here, at the crown of the head, and at last you emerge into the Light. Then you see, you know, you decide and you realizedifficulties may still remain, but truly speaking one is above them. Well, as a result of the supra mental manifestation, it is THIS experience that came into the body. The body straightened its head up and felt its freedom, its independence.
During the flu epidemic, for example, I spent every day in the midst of people who were germ carriers. And one day, I clearly felt that the body had decided not to catch this flu. It asserted its autonomy. You see, it was not a question of the higher Will deciding, no. It didnt take place in the highest consciousness: the body itself decided. When you are way above in your consciousness, you see things, you know things; but in actual fact, once you descend again into matter, it is like water running through sand. In this respect, things have changed, the body has a DIRECT power, independent of any outer intervention. Even though it is barely visible, I consider this to be a very important result.
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I mention this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy tales are going to be realized upon earth. The time has not yet come.
(silence)
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Between the beings of the supra mental world and men, there exists approximately the same gap as between men and animals. Sometime ago, I had the experience of identification with animal life, and it is a fact that animals do not understand us; their consciousness is so constituted that we elude them almost entirely. And yet I have known domestic animalscats and dogs, but especially catswho made an almost yogic effort of consciousness to understand us. But generally, when they watch us living and acting, they dont understand, they dont SEE US as we are and they suffer because of us. We are a constant enigma to them Only a very tiny part of their consciousness is linked to us. And it is the same for us when we try to look at the supra mental world. Only when the link of consciousness has been built shall we see itand even then, only that part of our being which has undergone the transformation will be capable of seeing it as it isotherwise the two worlds would remain as separate as the animal world and the human world.
The experience I had on February 3 proves this. Before, I had had an individual, subjective contact with the supra mental world, whereas on February 3, I went strolling there in a concrete wayas concretely as I used to go strolling in Paris in times pastin a world that EXISTS IN ITSELF, beyond all subjectivity.
--
I found myself upon an im mense ship, which is the symbolic representation of the place where this work is being carried out. This ship, as big as a city, is thoroughly organized, and it had certainly already been functioning for quite some time, for its organization was fully developed. It is the place where people destined for the supra mental life are being trained. These people (or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supra mental transformation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither material nor subtle-physical, neither vital nor mental: it was a supra mental substance. This substance itself was of the most material supra mental, the supra mental substance nearest the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a blend of red and gold, forming a uniform substance of luminous orange. Everything was like that the light was like that, the people were like thateverything had this color, in varying shades, however, which enabled things to be distinguished from one another. The overall impression was of a shadowless world: there were shades, but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything worked smoothly and silently. At the same time, I could see all the details of the education, the training in all domains by which the people on board were being prepared.
This im mense ship had just arrived at the shore of the supra mental world, and a first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the supra mental world were about to disembark. Everything was arranged for this first landing. A certain number of very tall beings were posted on the wharf. They were not human beings and never before had they been men. Nor were they permanent inhabitants of the supra mental world. They had been delegated from above and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge of all this since the beginning and throughout. I myself had prepared all the groups. I was standing on the bridge of the ship, calling the groups forward one by one and having them disembark on the shore. The tall beings posted there seemed to be reviewing those who were disembarking, allowing those who were ready to go ashore and sending back those who were not and who had to continue their training aboard the ship. While standing there watching everyone, that part of my consciousness coming from here became extremely interested: it wanted to see, to identify all the people, to see how they had changed and to find out who had been taken immediately as well as those who had to remain and continue their training. After awhile, as I was observing, I began to feel pulled backwards and that my body was being awakened by a consciousness or a person from here1and in my consciousness, I protested: No, no, not yet! Not yet! I want to see whos there! I was watching all this and noting it with intense interest It went on like that until, suddenly, the clock here began striking three, which violently jerked me back. There was the sensation of a sudden fall into my body. I came back with a shock, but since I had been called back very suddenly, all my memory was still intact. I remained quiet and still until I could bring back the whole experience and preserve it.
The nature of objects on this ship was not that which we know upon earth; for example, the clothes were not made of cloth, and this thing that resembled cloth was not manufacturedit was a part of the body, made of the same substance that took on different forms. It had a kind of plasticity. When a change had to be made, it was done not by artificial and outer means but by an inner working, by a working of the consciousness that gave the substance its form or appearance. Life created its own forms. There was ONE SINGLE substance in all things; it changed the nature of its vibration according to the needs or uses.
--
When I came back, along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the supra mental world was permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a missing link is needed to allow the consciousness and the substance to connectand it is this link that is being built. At that time, my impression (an impression which remained rather long, almost the whole day) was of an extreme relativityno, not exactly that, but an impression that the relationship between this world and the other completely changes the criterion by which things are to be evaluated or judged. This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ability to express the supra mental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things! I recall one little thing that we usually consider bad actually how funny it was to see that it is something excellent! And other things that we consider important were really quite unimportant there! Whether it was like this or like that made no difference. What is very obvious is that our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is incorrect. I even laughed at certain things Our usual feeling about what is anti-divine seems artificial, based upon something untrue, unliving (besides, what we call life here appeared lifeless in comparison with that world); in any event, this feeling should be based upon our relationship between the two worlds and according to whether things make this relationship easier or more difficult. This would thus completely change our evaluation of what brings us nearer to the Divine or what takes us away from Him. With people, too, I saw that what helps them or prevents them from becoming supra mental is very different from what our ordinary moral notions imagine. I felt just how ridiculous we are.
(Then Mother speaks to the children)
0 1958-02-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Last night, I had the vision of what this supra mental world could become if men were not sufficiently prepared. The confusion existing at present upon earth is nothing in comparison to what could take place. Imagine that every powerful will has the power to transform matter as it likes! If the sense of collective oneness did not grow in proportion to the develop ment of power, the resulting conflict would be yet more acute and chaotic than our material conflicts.
***
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 supra mental vision and truth. A thing cannot be seen as it is, in its truth, except in the supra mental consciousness, and if you try to explain, it immediately begins to escape you because you are obliged to give it a mental formulation.
As for me, I saw the thing only at the time of this experience,4 and as a result of this experience. But it is impossible to formulate even the experience itself, and as soon as I endeavored to formulate it and the more I was able to formulate it, the more the thing faded, escaped.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In the first experience [of 1910], the consciousness was established in the psychic depths of the being, and from that poise issued the feeling of no longer doing anything but what the Divine wantedit was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that there was no longer any personal will, although there was still some mental activity and everything had to be made silent. In 1914, it was silenced, and the consciousness was established above the head. Here (the heart) and here (above the head), the connection is constant.
Does one exclude the other?
--
It is likely that the greatest resistance will be in the most conscious beings due to a lack of mental receptivity, due to the mind itself which wants things to continue (as Sri Aurobindo has written) according to its own mode of ignorance. So-called inert matter is much more easily responsive, much moreit does not resist. And I am convinced that among plants, for example, or among animals, the response will be much quicker than among men. It will be more difficult to act upon a very organized mind; beings who live in an entirely crystallized, organized mental consciousness are as hard as stone! It resists. According to my experience, what is unconscious will certainly follow more easily. It was a delight to see the water from the tap, the mouthwash in the bottle, the glass, the spongeit all had such an air of joy and consent! There is much less ego, you see, it is not a conscious ego.
The ego becomes more and more conscious and resistant as the being develops. Very primitive, very simple beings, little children will respond first, because they dont have an organized ego. But these big people! People who have worked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult for them.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For the last, for money, he told me, I still dont know exactly what it depends on. Then one day I entered into trance with this idea in mind, and after a certain journey I came to a place like a subterranean grotto (which means that it is in the subconscient, or perhaps even in the inconscient) which was the source, the place and the power over money. I was about to enter into this grotto (a kind of inner cave) when I saw, coiled and upright, an im mense serpent, like an all black python, formidable, as big as a seven-story house, who said, You cannot pass!Why not? Let me pass!Myself, I would let you pass, but if I did, they would immediately destroy me.Who, then, is this they?They are the asuric4 powers who rule over money. They have put me here to guard the entrance, precisely so that you may not enter.And what is it that would give one the power to enter? Then he told me something like this: I heard (that is, he himself had no special knowledge, but it was something he had heard from his masters, those who ruled over him), I heard that he who will have a total power over the human sexual impulses (not merely in himself, but a universal power that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter. In other words, these forces would not be able to prevent him from entering.
A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men that is, to control or master such move ments at will, everywhereis quite another. I dont believe that this condition has been fulfilled. If what the serpent said is true and if this is really what will vanquish these hostile forces that rule over money, well then, it has not been fulfilled.
It has been fulfilled to a certain extent but its negligible. It is conditional, limited: in one case, it works; in another, it doesnt. It is quite problematic. And naturally, where terrestrial things are involved (I dont say universal, but in any case terrestrial), when it is something involving the earth, it must be complete; there cannot be any approximations.
--
I am speaking of terrestrial Nature. Through their mental power, men had the choice and the freedom to make pacts with these extraterrestrial vital forces. There is a whole vital world that has nothing to do with the earth, it is entirely independent or prior to earths existence, it is self-existentwell, they have brought that down here! They have made what we see! And such being the case This is what terrestrial Nature told me: It is beyond my control.
So considering all that, Sri Aurobindo came to the conclusion that only the supra mental power (Mother brings down her hands) as he said, will be able to rule over everything. And when that happens, it will be all overincluding Nature. For a long time, Nature rebelled (I have written about it often). She used to say, Why are you in such a hurry? It will be done one day. But then last year, there was that extraordinary experience.5 And it was because of that experience that I told her, Well, now that we agree, give me some proof; I am asking you for some proofdo it for me. She didnt budge, absolutely nothing.
--
Perhaps it would not be necessary to have this power over all men, but in any event, it should be great enough to act upon the mass. It is likely that once a certain move ment has been mastered to some degree, what the mass does or doesnt do (this whole human mass that has barely, barely emerged into even the mental consciousness) will become quite irrelevant. You see, the mass is still under the great rule of Nature. I am referring to mental humanity, predominantly mental, which developed the mind but misused it and immediately set out on the wrong pathfirst thing.
There is nothing to say since the first thing done by the divine forces which emanated for the Creation was to take the wrong path!6 That is the origin, the seed of this marvelous spirit of independence the negation of surrender, in other words. Man said, I have the power to think; I will do with it what I want, and no one has the right to intervene. I am free, I am an independent being, IN-DE-PEN-DENT! So thats how things stand: we are all independent beings!
--
Asuras: the demons or dark forces of the mental plane.
The experience of Nature's collaboration (November 8, 1957).
0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It is mans mental consciousness that has filled all Nature with the idea of sin and all the misery it brings. Animals are not at all unhappy in the way we are. Not at all, not at all, exceptas Sri Aurobindo saysthose that are corrupted. Those that are corrupted are those that live with men. Dogs have the sense of sin and guilt, for their whole aspiration is to resemble man. Man is the god. Hence there is dissimulation, hypocrisy: dogs lie. But men admire that. They say, Oh! How intelligent they are!
They have lost their divinity.
--
The Divine is everywhere, in everything. We should never forget itnot for a second should we forget it. He is everywhere, in everything; and in an unconscious but spontaneous, therefore sincere, way, all that exists below the mental manifestation is divine, without mixture; in other words, it exists spontaneously and in harmony with its nature. It is man with his mind who has introduced the idea of guilt. Naturally, he is much more conscious! Theres no question about it, its a fact, although what we call consciousness (what we call it, that is, what man calls consciousness) is the power to objectify and mentalize things. It is not the true consciousness, but its what men call consciousness. So according to the human mode, it is obvious that man is much more conscious than the animal, but the human brings in sin and perversion which do not exist outside of this state we call consciouswhich in fact is not conscious but merely consists in mentalizing things and in having the ability to objectify them.
It is an ascending curve, but a curve that swerves away from the Divine. So naturally, one has to climb much higher to find a higher Divine, since it is a conscious Divine, whereas the others are divine spontaneously and instinctively, without being conscious of it. All our moral notions of good and evil, all of that, are what we have thrown over the creation with our distorted and perverted consciousness. It is we who have invented it.
0 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The gods are faultless, for they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint; it is their godly way. But if one looks at it from a higher point of view, if one has a higher vision, a vision of the whole, they have fewer qualities than man. In this film, it was proved that through their capacity for love and self-giving, men can have as much power as the gods, and even morewhen they are not egoists, when they can overcome their egoism.
Certainly man is nearer the Supreme than the gods. Provided he fulfills the necessary conditions, he can be nearerhe isnt so automatically, but he can be, he has the power, the potentiality to be.
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So each one must find something that acts on himself, individually. I am only speaking of the action on the physical plane, because mentally, vitally, in all the inner parts of the being, the aspiration is always, always spontaneous. I am referring only to the physical plane.
The physical seems to be more open to something that is repetitious for example, the music we play on Sundays, which has three series of combined mantras. The first is that of Chandi, addressed to the universal Mother:
--
Yes, they are long. And he2 has not given me any mantra of the Mother, so They exist, but he has not given me any I dont know, they dont have much effect on me. It is something very mental.
Thats why it should spring forth from you.
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
As soon as I am alone, I enter into a very deep concentration,a state of consciousness, a kind of universal activity. Is it deep? What is it? It is far beyond all the mental regions, far, far beyond, and it is constant. As soon as I am alone or resting somewhere, thats how it is.
The other day when I was in this state of concentration, I had the vision that I mentioned to you. I felt I was being pulled, that something was pulling me and trying to draw my attention. I felt it very strongly. So I opened my eyes, my mental eyes (the physical eyes may remain opened or closed, it makes no difference either way; when I am concentrated, things on the physical plane no longer exist), I deliberately opened the minds eyes, for that is where I felt myself being pulled, and then I had this vision I told you of. Someone was trying to draw my attention, to tell me something. It takes someone really quite powerful, with a very great power of concentration, to do thatthere are certainly a great many people here and elsewhere who try to do this, yet I dont feel a thing.3
In the outer, practical domain, I might suddenly think of someone, so I know that this person is calling or thinking of me. When you left on your trip, I created a special link-up so that if ever, at any mo ment, you called me for anything, I would know it instantly, and I remained attentive and alert. But I do that only in exceptional cases. Generally speaking, when I havent made this special link-up, things keep coming in and coming in and coming in and coming in, and the answer goes out automatically, here or there or there or therehundreds and hundreds of things that I dont keep in my memory because then it would really be frightful. I dont keep these things in my consciousness; it is rather a work that is done automatically.
--
Before, I always had the negative experience of the disappearance of the ego, of the oneness of Creation, where everything implying separation disappearedan experience that, personally, I would call negative. Last Wednesday, while I was speaking (and thats why at the end I could no longer find my words), I seemed suddenly to have left this negative pheno menon and entered into the positive experience: the experience of BEING the Supreme Lord, the experience that nothing exists but the Supreme Lordall is the Supreme Lord, there is nothing else. And at that mo ment, the feeling of this infinite power that has no limit, that nothing can limit, was so overwhelming that all the functions of the body, of this mental machine that summons up words, all this was I could no longer speak French. Perhaps the words could have come to me in Englishprobably, because it was easier for Sri Aurobindo to express himself in English, and thats how it must have happened: it was the part embodied in Sri Aurobindo (the part of the Supreme that was embodied in Sri Aurobindo for its manifestation) that had the experience. This is what joined back with the Origin and caused the experience I was well aware of it. And that is probably why its transcription through English words would have been easier than through French words (for at these mo ments, such activities are purely mechanical, rather like automatic machines). And naturally the experience left something behind. It left the sense of a power that can no longer be qualified,5 really. And it was there yesterday evening.
The difficultyits not even a difficulty, its just a kind of precaution that is taken (automatically, in fact) in order to For example, the volume of Force that was to be expressed in the voice was too great for the speech organ. So I had to be a little attentive that is, there had to be a kind of filtering in the outermost expression, otherwise the voice would have cracked. But this isnt done through the will and reason, its automatic. Yet I feel that the capacity of Matter to contain and express is increasing with pheno menal speed. But its progressive, it cant be done instantly. There have often been people whose outer form broke because the Force was too strong; well, I clearly see that it is being dosed out. After all, this is exclusively the concern of the Supreme Lord, I dont bother about itits not my concern and I dont bother about itHe makes the necessary adjust ments. Thus it comes progressively, little by little, so that no funda mental disequilibrium occurs. It gives the impression that ones head is swelling so tre mendously it will burst! But then if there is a mo ment of stillness, it adapts; gradually, it adapts.
--
In the universe there is an inexhaustible source of energy that asks only to be replenished; if you know how to go about it, it is replenished. Instead of draining life and the energies of our earth and making of it something parched and inert, we must know the practical exercise for replenishing the energy constantly. And these are not just words; I know how its to be done, and science is in the process of thoroughly finding outit has found out most admirably. But instead of using it to satisfy human passions, instead of using what science has found so that men may destroy each other more effectively than they are presently doing, it must be used to enrich the earth: to enrich the earth, to make the earth richer and richer, more active, generous, productive and to make all life grow towards its maximum efficiency. This is the true use of money. And if its not used like that, its a vicea short circuit and a vice.
But how many people know how to use it in this way? Very few, which is why they have to be taught. What I call teach is to show, to give the example. We want to be the example of true living in the world. Its a challenge I am placing before the whole financial world: I am telling them that they are in the process of withering and ruining the earth with their idiotic system; and with even less than they are now spending for useless thingsmerely for inflating something that has no inherent life, that should be only an instru ment at the service of life, that has no reality in itself, that is only a means and not an end (they make an end of something that is only a means)well then, instead of making of it an end, they should make it the means. With what they have at their disposal they could oh, transform the earth so quickly! Transform it, put it into contact, truly into contact, with the supra mental forces that would make life bountiful and, indeed, constantly renewedinstead of becoming withered, stagnant, shrivelled up: a future moon. A dead moon.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
object:0_1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams
author class:The Mother
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To understand the workings of universal life, and even those of terrestrial life, one must know that in their own realms these are all living beings, each with his own independent reality. They would exist even if men did not exist! Most of these gods existed before man.
They are beings who belong to the progressive creation of the universe and who have themselves presided over its formation from the most etheric or subtle regions to the most material regions. They are a descent of the divine creative Spirit that came to repair the mischief in short, to repair what the Asuras had done. The first makers created disorder and darkness, an unconsciousness, and then it is said that there was a second lineage of makers to repair that evil, and the gods gradually descended through realities that were ever moreone cant say dense because it isnt really dense, nor can one even say material, since matter as we know it does not exist on these planesthrough more and more concrete substances.
--
However, you must have at least a little experience of these things to understand them. Otherwise, if you are convinced that all this is just human fancy or mental formations, if you believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have imagined them to be like that, or that they have such and such defects or qualities because men have envisioned it that wayas with all those who say God is created in the image of man and exists only in human thoughtall such people wont understand, it will seem absolutely ridiculous to them, a kind of madness. You must live a little, touch the subject a little to know how concrete it is.
Naturally, children know a great dealif they have not been spoiled. There are many children who return to the same place night after night and continue living a life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoiled with age, they can be preserved within one. There was a time when I was especially interested in dreams, and I could return exactly to the same place and continue some work I had begun there, visit something, for example, or see to something, some work of organization or some discovery or exploration; you go to a certain place, just as you go somewhere in life, then you rest a while, then you go back and begin againyou take up your work just where you left it, and you continue. You also notice that there are things entirely independent of you, certain variations which were not at all created by you and which occurred automatically during your absence.
But then, you must LIVE these experiences yourself; you yourself must see, you must live them with enough sincerity to see (by being sincere and spontaneous) that they are independent of any mental formations. Because one can take the opposite line and make an intensive study of the way mental formations act upon eventswhich is very interesting. But thats another field. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you start noticing to what extent you can delude yourself. Therefore, both one and the other, the mental formation and the occult reality, must be studied to see what the ESSENTIAL difference is between them. The one exists in itself, entirely independent of what we think about it, and the other
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.
--
(Later, the disciple asks Mother for some clarification on the essential difference between the occult reality and mental formations)
Once you have worked in this field, you realize that when you have studied a subject, when you have mentally understood something, it gives a special tonality to the experience. The experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact of having known this subject and of having studied it gives a particular tonality; on the other hand, if you have learned nothing of the subject, if you know nothing at all, well, when the experience comes, the notation of it is entirely spontaneous and sincere. It can be more or less adequate, but it is not the result of a former mental formation.
What happened in my life is that I never studied or knew things until AFTER having the experienceonly BECAUSE OF the experience and because I wanted to understand it would I study things related to it.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I found my message for the 1st of January It was quite unforeseen. Yesterday morning, I thought, All the same, I have to find my message, but what? I was absolutely like that, neutral, nothing. Then yesterday evening at the class (of Friday, November 7) I noticed that these children who had had a whole week to prepare their questions on the text had not found a single one! A terrible lethargy! A total lack of interest. And when I had finished speaking, I thought to myself, But what IS there in these people who are interested in nothing but their personal little affairs? So I began descending into their mental atmosphere, in search of the little light, of that which responds And it literally pulled me downwards as into a hole, but in such a material way; my hand, which was on the arm of the chair, began slipping down, my other hand went like this (to the ground), my head, too! I thought it was going to touch my knees!
And I had the impression It was not an impression I saw it. I was descending into a crevasse between two steep rocks, rocks that appeared to be made of something harder than basalt, BLACK, but metallic at the same time, with such sharp edgesit seemed that a mere touch would lacerate you. It appeared endless and bottomless, and it kept getting narrower, narrower and narrower, narrower and narrower, like a funnel, so narrow that there was almost no more roomnot even for the consciousness to pass through. And the bottom was invisible, a black hole. And it went down, down, down, like that, without air, without light, except for a sort of glimmer that enabled me to make out the rock edges. They seemed to be cut so steeply, so sharply Finally, when my head began touching my knees, I asked myself, But what is there at the bottom of this this hole?
--
At the time, I wondered what it meant. Later, of course, I found out, and finally this morning, I said to myself, Ah, so thats it! It came to give me my message for the new year! Then I transcribed the experienceit cant be described, of course, for it was indescribable; it was a psychological pheno menon and the form it took was only a way of describing the psychological state to oneself. Here is what I wrote down, obviously in a mental way, and I am thinking of using it as my message.
There was a hesitation in the expression, so I brought the paper and I want us to decide upon the final text together.
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There is no preliminary thought, preliminary knowledge, preliminary will: all those things do not exist. I am only like a mirror receiving the experience, the simplicity of a little child learning life. It is like that. And it is the gift of the Grace, truly the Grace: in the face of the experience, the simplicity of a little child just born. And it is spontaneously so, but deliberately too; in other words, during the experience I am very careful not to watch myself having the experience so that no previous knowledge intervenes. Only afterwards do I see. It is not a mental construction, nor does it come from something higher than the mind (it is not even a knowledge by identity that makes me see things); no, the body (when the experience is in the body) is like that, what in English is called blank. As if it had just been born, as if just then it were being born with the experience.
And only little by little, little by little, is this experience put in the presence of any previous knowledge. Thus, its explanation and its evaluation come about progressively.
--
But as soon as you want to express it, it escapes like water running through your fingers; all the fluidity is lost, it evaporates. A rather vague, poetic or artistic expression is much truer, much nearer to the truth something hazy, nebulous, undefined. Something not concretized like a rigid mental expressionthis rigidity that the mind has introduced right down into the Inconscient.
This vision of the Inconscient (Mother remains gazing for a mo ment) it was the menTAL Inconscient. Because the starting point was mental. A special Inconscientrigid, hard, resistantwith all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far worse, far worse than a purely material Inconscient! A mentalized Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixitya FIXITYcomes from the presence of the mind in creation. When the mind was not manifested, the Inconscient was not like that! It was formless and had the plasticity of something that is formless the plasticity has gone.
It is a terrible image of the Minds action in the Inconscient.
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Yes, thats it. It was not an original Inconscient. It was a mentalized Inconscient. With all that the mind has brought in in the way of OPPOSITIONof resistance, hardness, rigidity.
It would be interesting to mention this.
Because the starting point, precisely, was to look into the mental unconsciousness of these people. It was the mental Inconscient. Well, the mental Inconscient REFUSES to changewhich is not true of the other one; the other is nothing, it doesnt exist, it is not organized in any way, it has no way of being, whereas this one is an ORGANIZED Inconscientorganized by a beginning mental influence. A hundred times worse!
This is a very interesting point to note.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But I always had a presenti ment of the true thing: that only a VERY COURAGEOUS act of self-giving could efface the thingnot courageous or difficult from the material point of view, not that There is a certain zone of the vital in you, a mentalized vital but still very material, which is very much under the influence of circumstances and which very much believes in the effectiveness of outer measuresthis is what is resisting.
That is all I know.
0 1958-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Basically, the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate (which is quite natural), but they have with them the key that opens the doors and the windows, and they dont use it Certainly, there is a period when they dont know that they have the key, but even long after they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and doubt that it has the power to open the doors and windows, or even that it may be advisable to open them. And even once they feel that After all, it might be a good thing, a fear pursues them: What is going to happen once all these doors and these windows open? They become afraidafraid of losing themselves in this light and in this freedom. They want to remain what they call themselves. They love their falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist.
That is why the journey is so long, so difficult. For if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyousthough perhaps not in the way men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity: Without shadow, there would be no painting. Without struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering, there would be no joy. That is what they think, and as long as they think like that, they are not yet born to the spirit.
***
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
One day I had mentioned this to X1 when he was showing me or describing to me the different move ments of the pujas, the procedure, the process of the puja. I said to him, Oh, I see! For the action to be immediate, for the result to be immediate, one must acknowledge, for example, the role or the participation of certain spirits or certain forces and enter into a friendly relationship or collaboration with these forces in order to obtain an immediate result, is it not so? Then he told me, Yes, otherwise it leaves an indefinite time to the play of the forces, and you dont know when you will get the result of your puja.
That interested me very much. Because one of the obstacles I had felt was that although the Force was acting well, there was a time lag that appeared inevitable, a time ele ment in the work which seemed unavoidablea play left to the forces of Nature. But with their knowledge of the processes, the tantrics can dispense with all that. So I understood why those who have studied, who are initiated and follow the prescribed methods are apparently more powerfulmore powerful even than those who are conscious in the highest consciousness.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain mo ments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these mo ments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these im mense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuman, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the sanctuary to say my mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
I clearly see that the hour has come: either I will perish right here, or else I will emerge from this COMPLETELY changed. But something has to change. Mother, you are with me, I know, and you are protecting me, you love me I have only you, only you, you are my Mother. If these mo ments of utter darkness return and they are bound to return for everything to be exorcised and conqueredprotect me in spite of myself. Mother, may your Grace not abandon me. I want to be done with all these old phantoms, I want to be born anew in your Light; it has to beotherwise I can no longer go on.
0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Sweet Mother, I indeed suspect that you want to endure, to bear this struggle all alone. Oh, I think I understand a number of things about the mechanism of these attacks and their connection with me, about the Divine Love that embraces all and takes into itself the suffering and the evil of menall this overwhelms me with a sudden understanding. It seems to me that I am seeing and feeling all that you are facing, all that you are taking upon yourself for us. The suffering of the Divine in Matter has been an overwhelming revelation to meAh! I see, I want to fight, I want to be totally on your side; I am now and forever determined.
But you have enough to do with the higher beasts of prey without still having to fight the little scorpions. I beg of you, Sweet Mother, accept the help that is being offered to you, preserve your strength for the higher struggle. I quite understand that your Love can even go to the scorpions that are attacking you, but it is not forbidden to protect yourself from their venom. You have enough to do on other planes.
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I was waiting to answer your letter of the 21st until the Friday and Saturday you mentioned had gone by. And then I felt that you were returning the Aphorisms, so I waited a bit more. I have just received them along with your letter of the 23rd, but I have not yet looked at them. Besides, if you intend returning for the February darshan, I think it would be preferable for us to revise the whole book together. There will not be very much work on my side since the Wednesday and Friday classes were discontinued in the beginning of December, and I still do not know when they will resume.3 Right now, I am translating the Aphorisms all alone and it seems to go quickly and well. This could also be revised and the book on the Dhammapada prepared for publication.
For the time being, I am going downstairs only in the mornings at 6 for the balcony darshan and I immediately come back up without seeing anyone then in the afternoons, I go down once more at about 3 to take my bath and at 4:30 I come back up again. I do not yet know what will happen next month. I shall have to find some way to meet you so that we can work together I am going to think it over.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
By a special grace, X gave me both stages of the tantric initiation at the same time, although they are normally separated by several years; then if all goes well, he will give me the full initiation in 6 months. I have thus received a mantra, along with the power of realizing it. X told me that a realization should come at the beginning of the fifth month if I repeat the mantra strictly according to his instructions, but he again told me that the hostile forces would do all they could to prevent me from saying my mantra: mental suggestions and even illness. X has understood that I have work at the Ashram, and he has exempted me from the outer forms (pujas and other rituals), but nevertheless I must repeat my mantra very accurately every day (3,333 times, that is, a little more than 3 hours uninterrupted in the mornings, and more than 2 hours in the evening). I must therefore organize myself in such a way as to get up very early in the morning in Pondicherry, for in no case will your work suffer.
Apart from this, he has not yet entirely finished the work of purging that he has been doing on me for over a month, but I believe that everything will be completed in a short time from now.
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I do not want to mention this to Swami, as X is not very happy about the way Swami seizes upon every occasion to appropriate things, and particularly mantras (I will explain this to you when we meet again). It is especially the way he says I. Nothing very seriousit is Swamis bad side, though he has good ones too. You know that, however.
So I would like to speak to X knowledgeably, in a very precise way, and I am waiting only for you to tell me what I should say. The thing is too important to be approached lightly and vaguely.
--
As for your arrival here, the day you mentioned is the Saraswati Puja I will go downstairs to give blessings. If you arrive on the previous day, the 11th I will arrange to see you at 10 oclock, and then you can begin your mantra on the 12th.
Simply send me word to let me know if this is all right. Tell me also if you need money for your return, and how much, in time for me to send it.
0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
1) The fact that I am plagued by a lack of time and, occasionally, a certain repugnance for mental work. Then the ensuing suggestion: to have a hut in Rameswaram and devote myself exclusively to inner develop ment.
2) I am very pullednot constantly, but periodicallyby the need to write (not mental things) and exasperated by the fact that this Orpailleur is not published because I have not taken the time to carry out certain corrections. When I am in a good mood, I offer all this to you (is it perhaps a hidden ambition? But I am not so sure; it is rather a need, I believe) and when I am not in a good mood, I fume about not having the time to write something else.
Please, enlighten me, Sweet Mother.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender1). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forwardoh, not even a real step, just a little step!everything starts grating; its like stepping on an anthill And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for themthey have only to let it be done.
The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. Its like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You! It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. Give me the time!
0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
A love for you might have held me here. And indeed, for you I have devotion, veneration, respect, an attach ment, but there has never been this marvelous thing, warm and full, that links one to a being in the same beating of a heart. Through love, I could do all, accept all, endure all, sacrifice all but I do not feel this love. You cannot give yourself with your head, through a mental decision, yet that is what I have been doing for five years. I have tried to serve you as best I could. But I am at the end of my rope. I am suffocating.
I have no illusions, and I do not at all suppose that elsewhere my life may at last be fulfilled. No, I know that this whole life is cursed, but it may as well be truly cursed. If the Divine does not want to give me his Love, may he give me his curse. But not this life between two worlds. Or if I am too hardened, may he break me. But not this tepidness, this approximation.
0 1959-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Regarding Xs predictions which I mentioned in yesterdays letter, X said something untranslatable which meant, Let us see Mothers reactions for I told him that I had written it all to you. Then he said, There are several other secret matters which I shall tell you. And he added, by way of example, I shall tell WHERE the atomic bombs will be cropped. So if these things interest you, or if you see or feel anything, perhaps it would be good to express your interest in a letter to me which I would translate for X. Spontaneously, I emphasized to X that it would undoubtedly facilitate your work to have details. But it is better that these things come from you, should you see any use in it.
As for me, X said, Something will happen.
0 1959-06-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The earthquake he mentioned promises to be a kind of pralaya (as X put it), for not only Bombay will be touched. This is what he said: America supports Pakistan, but the gods do not support Pakistan, and Pakistan will be punished by the gods. HALF of western Pakistan, including Karachi, will go into the sea. The sea will enter into Rajasthan and touch India also
X then said that India would side with America against the Communist bloc (in spite of Americas support to Pakistan), and furthermore, that the day India sides with America, America will cease supporting Pakistan. In any case, it will be the end of Pakistan.
0 1959-06-13a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Lele: the tantric guru whom Sri Aurobindo met in 1908 and who gave him mental silence and Nirvana.
***
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Words cannot express it. No translation, none, not even the most subtle mental translation can express this. It was Even now the memory I have of it is inexpressible. You have to be in it to feel it, otherwise
However, to the consciousness it was very, very clear. It was neither mysterious nor incomprehensible, it was absolutely obviousthough untranslatable to our mental consciousness. For they were contradictory, yet they existed simultaneously, indistinguishable: they were not stacked one upon anotherit was all simultaneous. How can you explain that?! Its too difficult. It must be experienced.
You see, when something goes beyond thought, a sort of conception of it, or superconception rather, remains behind. But in this case, in my experience, there was no question of thoughtit was a question of physical sensation. It was not beyond thought, it was beyond sensation. I was LIVING this thing. And there was no more I. There was nothing but this thing, and yet there was a sensation. I cant explain it!
0 1960-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There are two things to avoid: falling into a stupor of unconsciousness, with all those things coming up from the subconscious and the unconscious that invade and penetrate you, and a vital and mental hyperactivity in which you pass your time literally fightingterrible battles. People come out of that black and blue, as if they had been beaten and they have been, it is not as if! And I see only one way outto change the nature of sleep.
Mother added:
0 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It gives me the impression of something like Yes, thats it, like a cavemanOh (Mother speaks mockingly), surely one of the cave artists or poets or writers! The intellectual life of the caves, I mean! But the cave happens to be low and when youre in it, you are like this (Mother stoops over), but the whole time you want to stand up straight. That makes you furious. Thats exactly the feeling it gives menot a cave meant for a man standing on his two feet; its a cave for a lion or for for any four-legged animal.
Its symbolic. Im speaking symbolically.
0 1960-06-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But when a question is put to me, it comes coated with all the mental atmosphere of whoever is asking the question. And this coating is often a mere reflectionmuch of the life has been removed.
The same thing occurs, there is the same difference, when I say something and when I see it (for example, when I look at one of those essential problems that will be solved only when the world changes). When I look at that in silence, there is a power of life and truthwhich evaporates when its put into words. It becomes diminished, impoverished and of course distorted. When you write or speak, the experience disintegrates, its inevitable.
0 1960-06-Undated, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Isnt this reason enough to be discouraged? In any case, these questions are stirring in meand the vital is not happy [nor the mental, nor the physical].
Excuse me if I speak too frankly.
0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Coming at the end of the night as it did, it means that its an exploration in some part or another of a subconscious mental activity. And you can make so many discoveries there it is unbelievable! But its lovely. And rarely unpleasant. There was a time when it was very unpleasant, oppressive, full of effort and resistance. I would want to go somewhere, but it would be impossible; I toiled and struggled, but everything would go wrong the straight paths would suddenly plunge into an abyss, and Id have to cross the abyss. For years it was like that. Just recently, I looked back over this whole period But now it is over. Now its something its lovely, its enjoyable, its a little it has a childlike simplicity.
However, its not a personal subconscient, but a its more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individualityexcept in that vision the other day,1 which is what surprised me. Its hardly that. Rather, it is still this Move ment of everything, of everything that is included. So its like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth, and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny! It took a mo ment to see that vainquons is spelled q-u-o-n-s. And I wasnt sure! I meant to ask Pavitra for a dictionary which gives verb conjugations, for then if Im stuck on something while writing, I can look it up.
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I SEE this state of mind, this mental attitude Oh! Its its so repugnant. People are so afraid of taking sides, so afraid of appearing biased; they are so afraid of appearing to have faith, so afraid Oh, its disgraceful.
And I will keep hammering that into your heads till I enter right into them.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Actually, it was very different at that time because I was not even aware of any resistance or any difficulty in the outer being; it was automatic, the work was done automatically. Later on, when I had to do both thingswhat he had been doing as well as what I was doingit became rather complicated and I realized there were many what we could call gapsthings which had to be worked out, transformed, set right before the total work could be done without hindrance. So then I began. And several times I thought how unfortunate it was that I had never studied or pursued certain ancient Indian disciplines. Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supra mental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we meditated together, when we worked)all my move ments, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactionswas absolutely tantric, as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed.
Later on, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, I said to myself, If only I knew what he had known, it would be easier! So when Swami and later X came, I thought, I am going to take advantage of this opportunity. I had written to Swami that I was working on transforming the cells of the body and that I had noticed the work was going faster with Xs influence. So it was understood that X would help when he came thats how things began, and this idea has remained with X. But I have raced on I dont wait. Ive raced on, Ive gone like wildfire. And now the situation is reversed. What I wanted to find out, I found out. I experienced what I wanted to experience, but he is still He is very kind, actually, he wants really to help me. So, when I identified with him the other day during our meditation, I realized that he wanted to give silence, control and perfect peace to the physical mind. My own trick, if you will, is to have as little relationship with the physical mind as possible, to go up above and stay therethis (Mother indicates her forehead), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That (gesture above the head) sees, acts, knows, decidesall is done from there. Only there can you feel at ease.
--
Oh, I had tried for years I had tried to catch silence in my head I never succeeded. I could detach myself from it, but it would keep on turning But at that mo ment, all the mental constructions, all the mental, speculative structures none of it remaineda big hole.
And such a peaceful, such a luminous hole!
--
This lasted about half an hour. I quietly remained there I heard the noise of their conversation, but I wasnt listening. And then when I got up, I no longer knew anything, I no longer thought anything, I no longer had any mental constructioneverything was gone, absolutely gone, blank!as if I had just been born.
***
--
I didnt speak of it to anyone, but it caused me some concern. And just the next day the machine broke down! When I was informed, immediately I thought It was then repaired, and again it broke downthree times. Then the following night, just before ten oclock I should mention that during the day I had thought, But why not attract these forces to our side, take them and satisfy them, give them some peace and joy and use them? I thought about it, concentrated a little, but then I didnt bother any further. At ten oclock that evening, they came upon mein a flood! They kept coming and coming. And I was busy with them the whole time. They were not ugly (not so luminous either! ), they were wholesome, straightforwardhonest forces. So I worked on them. This began exactly at 9:30, and for one hour I was busy working. After an hour, Id had enough: Listen, this is quite fine, youre very nice, but I cant spend all my time like this! We shall see what to do later for it absorbed my whole consciousness. They kept coming and coming (you understand what that means to a body?!). So at 10:30 I told them, Listen, my little ones, be quiet now, thats enough for today At 10:30, the machine broke down!
I found out, of course, because they log everything at the factory, so when they came to inform me of the breakdown the next morning, I asked them what time it had happenedexactly 10:30.
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Im just now finishing the Yoga of Self-Perfection When we see what human life is and, even in the best of cases, what it represents in the way of imbecility, stupidity, narrowness, meanness (not to mention ignorance because that is too flagrant) and even those who believe themselves to have generous heart, for example, or liberal ideas, a desire to do good! Each time the consciousness orients itself in one direction to attain some result, everything that was in existence (not just ones personal existence, but this sort of collectivity of existences that each being represents), everything that is contrary to this effort immediately presents itself in its crudest light.
It happened this morning while I was walking back and forth in my room. I had finished my japa I had to stop and hold my head in my hands to keep from bursting into tears. No, it is too dreadful, I said to myself; and to think that we want Perfection!
--
The mental silence Sri Aurobindo gave you in 1914, about which you were speaking the other day
It has never left. I have always kept it. Like a smooth white surface turned upwards. And at any mo ment at all You see, we speak like a machine, but there nothing moves; at any mo ment at all it can turn towards the heights. Its ALWAYS turned like that, but we can become aware of it being like that. Then, if we listen, we can hear what comes from above. My active consciousness, which was here (Mother points to her forehead), has settled above, and it has never again moved from there.
--
I am just finishing The Synthesis of Yoga, and what Sri Aurobindo says is exactly what has happened to me throughout my life. And he explains how you can still make mistakes as long as you are not supra mentalized. Sri Aurobindo describes all the ways by which images are sent to youand they are not always images or reflections of the truth of things past, present or future; there are also all the images that come from human mental formations and all the various things that want to be considered. It is very, very interesting. And interestingly enough, in these few pages I have found a description of the work I have spent my whole life doing, trying to SIFT out all we see.
I can only be sure of something once a certain type of picture comes, and then the whole world could tell me, But things didnt happen like that; I would reply, Sorry, but I see it. And that type of picture is certain, for I have studied it, I have studied their differences in quality and the texture of the pictures. It is very interesting.
--
mentally we say, Oh, that cant go. And even I am often inclined to say, Dont publish this, dont speak of something or other. Then I realize how silly it is! There is something that uses everything. Even what may seem useless to usor perhaps worse than useless, harmfulmight be just the thing to give someone the right shock.
Original English.
0 1960-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Each thing carries within itself its own truthits absolute truth, so luminous and so clear. And if you are in contact with THAT, then everything falls into place so wonderfully; but men are NOT in contact with that, they are always in contact through their thought: what they think of something, what they feel about something, the meaning they attach to it (or sometimes its worse)but the highest they go is always the thought they have of it. Thats what creates all this mixture and all this disorderthings in themselves are very good, and then they get confused.
Z's work involved seeing Mother everyday to watch over her health and her food.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
All this took place in a realm which is constantly active, everywhere; it is like a permanent mental transcription of everything that physically takes place They arent actually thoughts; when I see this, I dont really get the impression of thinking, but its a transcription its the result of thoughts on a certain mental atmosphere which records things.
And I see it all the time now. If someone is speaking or if Im doing something, I see the two things at the same time I see the physical thing, his words or my action, and then this colored, luminous transcription at the same time. The two things are superimposed. For example, when someone speaks to me, it gets translated into some kind of picture, a play of light or color (which is not always so luminous!)this is why most of the time, in fact, I dont even know what has been said to me. I recall the first time this pheno menon happened, I said to myself, Ah, so thats what these modern artists see! Only, as they themselves arent very coherent, what they see is not very coherent either!
--
I didnt notice you being bothered by these things of the physical mind you had mentioned. However, I had first done this (gesture of cleansing the atmosphere), right at the beginning, so that nothing would come to disturb us Did you feel anything?
I felt that you were there. I felt your Force.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
He woke up in a railway station somewhere between Bombay and Poona, and he began telling them that he was hungry (he was with those same two persons). They punched him in the stomach and put a handkerchief over his nosehe again passed out! At Poona, he woke up again (hed lost his appetite by then!), and again they put the handkerchief over his nose. And it went on like thatthey kept on punching him a lot. When he woke up in the country on the outskirts of Poona, four men were around him arguing in a language he didnt know (his language is Gujarati). They were probably speaking in some other language, I dont know which oneit seems they were very dark. He didnt understand, but from various signs they made he could see that they were arguing about whether to kill him or not. Finally, they told him (probably in a language he could understand), Either you join our gang, or well kill you. He grunted in reply so as not to commit himself. The others decided to wait for their chief (thus the chief wasnt there): Well decide after he comes. Then just to make sure, they punched him a few more times in the belly and put the handkerchief over his noseout!
Sometime later (he doesnt know how long, for until he returned he had no sense of time), he woke up in a rather dark, low-roofed house way out in the country; there were five persons now, not four. They were busy eating, so he was careful not to budge. Mainly they were drinking (they have prohibition there). Four of them were already dead drunk. So he got up to have a look. The fifth one, whom he hadnt seen before (he must have been the chief), was not yet totally drunk; when he saw the boy stirring, he let out a fearful growlso the poor boy threw himself flat in the corner and lay stillhe waited. After awhile, the fifth one (after downing another bottle) was also dead drunk. So now that he saw them all fast asleep, he got up very cautiously and he said he ran for an hour and a half! A boy pummelled as he had been, who hadnt eaten for four days! I think thats a miracle.
--
It was just before Durga Puja,3 or just after I cant remember (dates and I dont go together)no, it was after Durga Puja. So I went into a deep concentration and, as a matter of fact, I saw that a very powerful and dangerous rakshasic4 power was involved. And then, when I started walking for my japa upstairs in my room (I had given some thought to this story and tried asking for something to be done), I suddenly saw Durga before me raising high a lance of white light the lance of light that destroys the hostile forcesand She struck into a black swarming mass of men.
But then there came a frightful reaction. For one day I was nearly as sicknot quiteas two years ago5 (they must have used the same mantra). And, you see, I who never vomit terrible vomitingeverything inside came out! Only now Im a bit more experienced than two years ago (!), so I set it right It happened here, downstairs, in the afternoon. I went right back up to my room (I didnt see anyone that afternoon), and I remained concentrated to try to find out what had happened. I saw that it came from therea backlash of those people trying to defend themselves.
--
But I was mainly interested by the fact that I felt the danger these people representednot because they were brigands, but because they had some powerbrigands with a power and from what I saw, it was not merely an hypnotic power. There must have been a tantric force in it, otherwise they would not have been so powerful, and especially so powerful from a distance. I had said to myself, They MUST be caught. Which was why (the Force kept on working, you see). And yesterday, the newspaper said that a gang of five men, eight wo men and half a dozen children had been arrested by the police in Allahabad for using what the newspaper called mesmeric means to rob people, attack them, etc. (They were operating in Poona, Bombay and Ahmedabad, but they were caught in Allahabad). Probably when they realized that the boy was gone, they got frightened and fled to the North. And they were arrested in Allahabad I had made a very strong formation and had said, They MUST be caught.
As of now, I have no other news Theyve been caught, so they cant do any wrong OUTWARDLY, but still their power is there. Were going to have to be And everyone here says the same thinglike a black veil of unconsciousness that has fallen upon us. Even those who arent accustomed to such things have felt it. Im presently cleaning the whole placeits not easy. Everything is upside down.
--
Even tiny, the tiniest mental or vital reactionsso tiny that to our ordinary consciousness they dont appear to have the LEAST importanceact upon the bodys cells and can create disorders You see, when you observe carefully, you suddenly become aware of a very slight uneasiness, a mere nothing (when youre busy, you dont even notice it), and then if you follow this uneasiness to see what it is, you perceive that it comes from something quite imperceptible and insignificant to our active consciousness but its enough to create an uneasy feeling in the body.
Which is whyunless you are intentionally and constantly in what here is called the Brahmic consciousness it is practically impossible to control. And this is what gives the impression of certain things happening in the body independently of not only of our will but of our consciousness BUT IT IS NOT TRUE.
--
For with that idea, the earth and men will NEVER be able to change. This is why I have often said that this idea is the work of the Asuras,10 and with it they have ruled the earth.
Whereas whatever the effort, whatever the difficulty, whatever time it takes, whatever number of lives, you must know that all this doesnt matter: you KNOW you ARE the Master, that the Master and you are the same. All thats necessary is to know it INTEGRALLY, and nothing must belie it. Thats the way out.
--
Asuras: demons of the mental plane.
***
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Then suddenly I went into a little trance. And in it I saw you, but you were physically, you were on one plane, and then I saw another man on a different plane (I saw him quite concretely; he was rather tall, broad-shoulderednot so tall as broad, with a dark, European suit). And he took your hands and started shaking them enthusiastically!but you were quite indifferent, just as you are now, dressed in Indian fashion and sitting cross-legged. He took both your hands and started shaking them! And then I distinctly heard the words: Congratulations, its a great success!it had to do with your book.3 And at the same time, I saw all sorts of people and things who were touched by your bookall kinds of people, obviously French, or Westerners in any case wo men, men. There was even one woman (she must have been an actress or a singer or anyway, someone whose life was she was even dressed for the stage, with some kind of tightsa beautiful girl!) and she said to someone, Ah, it has even given me a taste for the spiritual life! It was extremely interesting All kinds of things of this nature. And then once again I came out of this trance and In the end, I tried to do some certain thing for you and it turned out well. It turned out quite well.
But then, just before that, there was this powdering of golden light coming down. And as it descended, it was white with a touch of gold (but it was white) and it came down in a column, with such POWER! And then, just at the end, this powdering of gold came and settled into this white light which had remained there the whole timeoh, it was so abundant. A great power of realization. I had a hard time coming out of it! At the start, I had decided to come out of it at half past, so I came out, but still not completely
--
According to tradition, Anubis, the jackal-headed god, helped Isis to rebuild the body of her spouse, Osiris, who had been killed and dismembered by his brother Set. Osiris was the first god to rule over men. Owing to certain special rites, Isis, helped by Anubis, succeeded in bringing him back to life. So we are not very far from the legend of Savitri and Satyavan.
L'Orpailleur, which had just been published. The man's description, as a matter of fact, bears a striking resemblance to the publisher.
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
He lives in a region which is largely a kind of vital vibration which penetrates the mind and makes use of the imagination (essentially its the same region most so-called cultured men live in). I dont mean to be severe or critical, but its a world that likes to play to itself. Its not really what we could call histrionics, not thatits rather a need to dramatize to oneself. So it can be an heroic drama, it can be a musical drama, it can be a tragic drama, or quite simply a poetic drama and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, its a romantic drama. And then, these soul states (!) come replete with certain spoken expressions (laughing) Im holding myself back from saying certain things!You know, its like a theatricals store where you rent scenery and costumes. Its all ready and waitinga little call, and there it comes, ready-made. For a particular occasion, they say, Youre the woman of my life (to be repeated as often as necessary), and for another they say Its a whole world, a whole mode of human life which I suddenly felt I was holding in my arms. Yes, like a decoration, an orna ment, a nicetyan orna ment of existence, to keep it from being flat and dull and the best means the human mind has found to get out of its tamas. Its a kind of artifice.
So for persons who are severe and grave (there are two such examples here, but its not necessary to name them) There are beings who are grave, so serious, so sincere, who find it hypocritical; and when it borders on certain (how shall I put it?) vital excesses, they call it vice. There are others who have lived their entire lives in a yogic or religious discipline, and they see this as an obstacle, illusion, dirtyness (Mother makes a gesture of rejecting with disgust), but above all, its this terrible illusion that prevents you from nearing the Divine. And when I saw the way these two people here reacted, in fact, I said to myself, but you see, I FELT So strongly that this too is the Divine, it too is a way of getting out of something that has had its place in evolution, and still has a place, individually, for certain individuals. Naturally, if you remain there, you keep turning in circles; it will always be (not eternally, but indefinitely) the woman of my life, to take that as a symbol. But once youre out of it, you see that this had its place, its utilityit made you emerge from a kind of very animal-like wisdom and quietude that of the herd or of the being who sees no further than his daily round. It was necessary. We mustnt condemn it, we mustnt use harsh words.
--
All this came to me yesterday. I kept Z with me for more than half an hour, nearly 45 minutes. He told me some very interesting things. What he said was quite good and I encouraged him a great dealsome action on the right lines which will be quite useful, and then a book unfortunately mixed with an influence from that artificial world (but actually, even that can be used as a link to attract people). He must have spoken to you about this. He wants to write a kind of dialogue to introduce Sri Aurobindos ideasits a good idealike the conversations in Les Hommes de Bonne Volont by Jules Romain. He wants to do it, and I told him it was an excellent idea. And not only one typehe should take all types of people who for the mo ment are closed to this vision of life, from the Catholic, the fervent believer, right to the utmost materialist, men of science, etc. It could be very interesting.
This is what you see in life, its all like thateach thing has its place and its necessity. This has made me see a whole current of life I was very, very involved with people from this milieu during a whole period of my existence and in fact, its the first approach to Beauty. But it gets mixed.
--
Its an approach which is not at all mental nor intellectual nor (God knows!) moral in the leastno notion of Good or Evil nor any of those things, absolutely none of that. Theres a mo ment in life when you begin thinking a little and you see all this from an overall or universal point of view in which all moral notions completely disappearFOR ANOTHER REASON. This experience with Z reminded me of a certain way of approaching Beauty that enables you even to find it in what appears dirty and ugly to the common vision. It is She trying to express herself in this something which to the common vision is ugly, dirty, hypocritical. But of course, if you yourself have striven assiduously and have greatly held yourself in, then you look at it reprovingly.
From my earliest childhood, instinctively, I have never felt the slightest contempt or how should I say (well, well! I was thinking in English) shrinking or disapproval, severe criticism or disgust for the things people call vice.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Certainly, we CAN be heard. So far I never said anything. It even surprised me, for I had never paid it any attention, I was quite away from all that: its raining?so what, its raining, it happens. Its not raining?so what, its not raining, its the same thing. And then gradually people started mentioning that should it continue, they wouldnt be able to do their exercises, and they wouldnt be ready for December 2.1 Then I started receiving desperate lettersone person even told me he was doing his puja underwater! So I answered by saying, Take it as the Lords blessing but Im not sure he appreciated it! And then I learned that 200 houses [in the Ashram]200!are leaking. Naturally, each one is in a great hurryits terribly urgent! So perhaps I shall file a complaint and ask them what they mean by this!
Actually, if communications are interrupted, it can be troublesome Let us see.
--
But generally and this is something Theon had told me (Theon was very qualified on the subject of hostile forces and the workings of all that resists the divine influence, and he was a great fighteras you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory. Its a very good trick. And I have observed, in practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday life, its trueif you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the world as it is today, but its not what we want; we want it to change, really change.
He wrote this in a letter, I believe, and he spoke of this system of compensation for example, those who take an illness on themselves in order to have the power to cure; and then theres the symbolic story of Christ dying on the cross to set men free. And Sri Aurobindo said, Thats fine for a certain age, but we must now go beyond that. As he told me (its even one of the first things he told me), We are no longer at the time of Christ when, to be victorious, it was necessary to die.
I have always remembered this.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Not last night but the night before, I touched at least one of the causes (at that time it felt like THE cause) of a certain powerlessness to act directly on Matter You see, when the Will and the Power come, they are extremely effective everywhere UP TO A CERTAIN REGION (in other words, whether people are receptive or not, open or not, makes no differencewhen the Will is applied it is all-powerful UP TO a certain region) but once it arrives here, at the most material material, its efficacy depends on many thingsand a power which depends on something is no power! For a long, long time I have been searching for the reasons behind this powerlessness. Ive located a few, one after another, and upon these points there was an immediate effect. But some things resisted (oh, quite a number, in a number of ways), for example it had difficulty acting on illnesses, on the cells, on doubt (not mental doubt, but rather the doubt of the physical consciousness which cant accept certain things that seem impossible to itwhat Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief,1 not a mental doubt, but the disbelief of the physical consciousness which cant accept what is contrary to its own nature and its own working). And as for illnesses, sometimes it has an immediate effect, but sometimes it drags on and has to follow its so-called normal course. On all these three points, I clearly felt that something was hampering it. These are the Enemys strongholds; all that doesnt want the Divine seizes upon it and even the working of the Power coming from above is obstructed, for when it must work here in the body, it is stopped or deformed or altered or diminished.
All this goes on in the subconscient; these are things that were pushed out of the physical consciousness down into the subconscient, so theyre there and they come back up whenever they please.
0 1960-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This disbelief is the bedrock of the consciousness. And it comes with a (thought is too big a word for such an ordinary thing) a mental-physical activity which makes you (I am forced to use the word) think things and which always foresees, imagines or draws conclusions (depending on the case) in a way which I myself call DEFEATIST. In other words, it automatically leads you to imagine all the bad things that can happen. And this occurs in a realm which is absolutely run-of-the-mill, in the most ordinary, restricted, banal activities of lifesuch as eating, moving in short, the coarsest of things.
Its fairly easy to manage and control this in the realm of thought, but when it comes to those reactions that rise up from the very bottom theyre so petty that you can barely express them to yourself. For example, if someone mentions that so-and-so ate such-and-such a thing, immediately something somewhere starts stealing in: Ah, hes going to get a stomach-ache! Or you hear that someone is going somewhereOh, hes going to have an accident! And it applies to everything; its swarming down below. Nothing to do with thought as such!
Its quite a nasty habit, for it keeps the most material state in a condition of disharmony, disorder, ugliness and difficulty.
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Even stones are beautiful; they are always beautiful in one way or another. When life appeared, there were some forms that were a little difficult, but not to that extent, not like certain human mental creations. Of course, there may have been some animal species which were rather but they were more monstrous than actually ugly. And most probably, it only seems like that to our consciousness. But the mind And its the same for all these ideas of sin, of wrong, of all thatits a falsehood. But it was man who invented falsehood, wasnt it? The mind invented falsehood: to deceive! to deceive! And its a curious fact that animals domesticated by man have also learned to lie!
The curve
--
And particularly, this sense of whats important and not important is something which vanishes, leaving no trace at all. You are left like that, with nothing. There is no SCALE in importance that is entirely our mental imbecility. Either nothing is important or EVERYTHING is EQUALLY important.
The speck of dust, there, which you sweep away, or ecstatic contemplationits ALL THE SAME.
0 1960-12-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And now, all these different attitudes which individuals, groups and categories of men hold are coming from every direction (while Im walking upstairs) to assert their own points of view as the true thing. And I see that for myself, Im being forced to deal with a whole mass of things, most of which are quite futile from an ordinary point of viewnot to mention the things of which these moral or religious types disapprove. Quite interestingly, all kinds of mental formations come like arrows while Im walking for my japa upstairs (Mother makes a gesture of little arrows in the air coming into her mental atmosphere from every direction); and yet, Im entirely in what I could call the joy and happiness of my japa, full of the energy of walking (the purpose of walking is to give a material energy to the experience, in all the bodys cells). Yet in spite of this, one thing after another comes, like this, like that (Mother draws little arrows in the air): what I must do, what I must answer to this person, what I must say to that one, what has to be done All kinds of things, most of which might be considered most futile! And I see that all this is SITUATED in a totality, and this totality I could say that its nothing but the body of the Divine. I FEEL it, actually, I feel it as if I were touching it everywhere (Mother touches her arms, her hands, her body). And all these things neither veil nor destroy nor divert this feeling of being entirely this a move ment, an action in the body of the Divine. And its increasing from day to day, for it seems that He is plunging me more and more into entirely material things with the will that THERE TOO it must be done that all these things must be consciously full of Him; they are full of Him, in actual fact, but it must become conscious, with the perception that it is all the very substance of His being which is moving in everything
It was quite beautiful on the balcony this morning
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
As I approached the house, but still from some distance, I suddenly saw some men busy at work. Then instantly instantly this road which was so vast, sunlit and smoothso smooth to the feet oh, it became the top level of a scaffolding. And what is more, this scaffolding was not very well made, and the closer I came the more complicated it gotthere were planks jutting out, beams off balance. In short, you had to watch every single step to keep from breaking your neck. I began getting annoyed. Moreover, my packages were heavy. They were heavy and they so saddled my arms that I was unable to hold onto anything and had constantly to do a balancing act. Then I began thinking, My God, how complicated this world is! And just at that mo ment, I saw a young person coming along, like a young girl dressed in European clothes, with a hat on her head all black! This young person had white skin, but her clothes were black, and she wore black shoes on her small white feet. She was dressed all in blackblack, all in black. Like complete unconsciousness. She also came carrying packages (many more than me), and she came hopping along the whole length of the scaffolding, putting her feet just anywhere! My God, I said to myself, shes going to break her neck!But not at all! She was totally unconscious; she wasnt even aware that it was dangerous or complicateda total unconsciousness. But her unconsciousness is what allowed her to go on like that! I watched it all. Well, sometimes its good to be unconscious! Then she disappeared; she had only come to give me a demonstration (she neither saw me nor looked at me). And looking down at the workers, I saw that everything was getting more and more complicated, more and more, more and more and there wasnt even any ladder by which to get down. In other words, it was getting unbearable. Then something in me rebelled: Ah, no! Ive had enough of all thisits too stupid!
And IMMEDIATELY, I found myself down below, relieved of my packages. And everything was perfectly simple. (I had even brought the packages along without realizing it.) All, all was in order, very neat, very luminous, very simplesimply because I had said, Ah, no! Ive had enough of this business! Why all these stupid complications!5
--
I have had hundreds of such examples Its not always the same scene. The scenes are different, but the story is always the same the thing, in its truth, is absolutely luminous, pleasant, charming; then as soon as men get involved, it becomes an abominable complication. And once you say, No! Ive had enough of all thisits NOT TRUE! it goes away.
There have been similar stories in dreams with X. I saw him when he was very young (his education, the ideas he had, how he was trained). And the same thing happened. I was with him but Ill tell you that another time6 And then at the end, Id had enough and I said, Oh, no! Its too ridiculous! and with that I left the house. At the door was a little squirrel sitting on his haunches making friendly little gestures towards me. Oh! I said, heres someone who understands better!
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is quite ele mentary: never take notice of evil, never speak of the evil present in others, never perpetuate the vibrations of evil by observation, criticism or giving undue attention to the evil deed. This is what Buddha taught: each time you mention an evil you help spread it.
This skirts the issue.
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When asked later about the meaning of this somewhat elliptical state ment, Mother said: 'There are two stages. The first involves a mental (and possibly intuitive) vision of what will be (perhaps in an immediate future), and this is what we call seeing things "as they should be." The other is an identification with the supreme Will and the perception that at each second everything is exactly as the Supreme wants it to be, that it is the precise expression of the Supreme. The first is a vision of what is coming and says, "That's how things should be." But we overlook the distance between what presently exists and what is coming. While if we go high above and become one with the Consciousness of the supreme Will, we see that at every instant, at every mo ment in the universe, all is exactly as it should beexactly as the Supreme wants it to be. That is Omnipotence.'
Saraswati represents the universal Mother's aspect of Knowledge and artistic creativity. On this occasion, Mother would go down to the Meditation Hall and the disciples would silently pass in front of her to receive a message. This year they would receive a folder containing five photographs of Mother.
0 1961-01-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This mental habit of always cloaking everything with a favorable appearance, of giving all move ments a favorable explanation, is at times so flagrant that it can fool nobody but oneself (although it may occasionally be subtle enough to create an illusion). It is a sort of habitual self-exoneration, the habit of giving a favorable mental excuse, a favorable mental explanation for all one does, all one says, all one feels. For example, someone with no self-control who strikes another in great indignation and is ready to call it divine wrath! Righteous2 is perfect, because righteous immediately introduces this ele ment of puritanical moralitywonderful!
This power of self-deception, the minds craft in devising splendid justifications for any ignorance or folly whatsoever, is tre mendous.
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I saw it last night oof! It was a kind of artificial hurricane created by semi-human beings (that is, they have human forms but they arent men). They created the storm to cut me off from my home. But everything and everyone was disruptedit must have been going on for a rather long time. Finally last night it became quite amusing: I kept attempting to get to my home which was up above, but each time I tried to find a way everything was blocked by try to imagine, artificial, mechanical and electric thunderstorms, and then things made to cave in. All of it was artificial, nothing real, and yet terribly dangerous.
At last I found myself in a big place down below where there was a row of houses, all kinds of things, and it was absolutely essential that I go back upwhen suddenly a somewhat indistinct form (rather dark, unluminous) came to me and said, Oh, dont go there, its very bad, very dangerous! Theyve set it all up in a terrifying way: none can withstand it! You mustnt go there, wait a bit. And if you need something, do come, you know I have everything you need! (Mother laughs) its a little old and dusty but youll manage! Then she led me into a huge room filled with objects piled one on top of another, and in one corner she showed me a bathtubmy child, it was a marvel! A splendid pink marble bathtub! But it was unused, dusty and old. Well just wipe it off, she said, and youll be able to use it! She showed me other areas for washing and dressing, there was everything one could possibly need. You can use it all. Dont go up there! I looked at her closely. She struck me as having a tiny face, it was oddit wasnt a form, it was it was a form and yet it wasnt! As imprecise as that. Then I clasped her in my arms and cried out, Mother, you are nice! (Mother laughs) I knew then that she was material Mother Nature.
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I must say that after this, when I read The Secret of the Veda as I do each evening. In fact, I am in very close contact with the entire Vedic world since Ive been reading that book: I see beings, hear phrases. It comes up in a sort of subliminal consciousness, a lot of things are from the ancient Vedic tradition. (By the way, I have even come to see that the pink marble bathtub I told you about last time, which Nature had offered me, belongs to the Vedic world, to a civilization of that epoch.3) There werethere are alwaysSanskrit words coming up, sentences, bits of dialogue. This is of interest, because I realized that what I had seen the other day (I told you about it) and then what I saw yesterday that whole domainwas connected to what the Vedas call the dasyus the panis and the dasyus4the enemies of the Light. And this Force that came was very clearly a power like Indras5 (though something far, far greater), and at war with darkness everywhere, like this (Mother sketches in space a whirling force touching points here and there throughout the world), this Force attacked all darkness: ideas, people, move ments, events, whatever made stains, patches of shadow. And it kept on going, a formidable power, so great that my hands were like this (Mother clenches her fists). Later when I read (I happened to be reading just the chapter concerning the fight against the dasyus), this proximity to my own experience became interesting, for it was not at all intellectual or mental there was no idea, no thought involved.
The remainder of the evening passed as usual. I went to bed, and at exactly a quarter to twelve I got up with the feeling that this presence in me had increased even further and really become rather formidable. I had to instill a great deal of peace and confidence into my body, which felt as though it wasnt so easy to bear. So I concentrated, I told my body to be calm and to let itself go completely.
--
Then, with the same precision, the same calm, the same deliberate, clear and concentrated consciousness (absolutely NOTHING menTAL), I began to come back down. And as I was descending, I realized that all the difficulty I had been fighting the other day and which had created this illness was absolutely ended, ANNULLEDmastered. Actually, it was not even mastery but the non-existence of anything to be mastered: Simply THE vibration from top to bottom; yet there was neither high nor low nor any direction.
And it went on like that. After this, Slowly, Still WITHOUT MOVING, everything went back into each of the different centers of the being. (Ah, let me say parenthetically that it wasnt AT ALL the ascent of a force like the ascent of the Kundalini! It had absolutely nothing to do with the Kundalini move ment and the centers, it wasnt that at all.) But while re-descending, it was as though WITHOUT LEAVING THIS STATE, without leaving this state which remained conscious ALL the time, this supreme Consciousness began to reactivate the different centers: first here (Mother points to the center above the head and then touches the crown of the head, the forehead, throat, chest, etc.) then there, there, there. At each there was a pause while this new realization organized everything. It organized and made the necessary decisions, sometimes down to the most minute details: what had to be done in this case or said in that case; and all of that TOGETHER, at once, not one by one but seen entirely as a whole. It kept on descending I noted many things, it was extremely interestingdown and down, farther and farther, right to the depths. Everything went on at the same time,7 simultaneously, and at the same time this supreme Consciousness was organizing everything separately.8
--
Indra represents the king of the gods, the master of mental power freed from the limitations and obscurities of the physical consciousness.
The body-consciousness.
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I neglected to mention something very important.
At the mo ment of my coming out of the trance, I had a very concrete, positive perception (not a mental understanding, it didnt come from the beings intellectual part, the part that understands and explains everything and Is symbolized, I think, by Indra; it wasnt in any way conveyed through that higher intelligence, it wasnt mental). A kind of perception (not really a sensation, it was more than a sensation) of the almost total unimportance of the external, material expression of the bodys condition: the consciousness OF THE BODY was absolutely indifferent to external, physical signs, whether they were like this or like that (the BODYS consciousness was what had experienced the identity). And this body-consciousness had the perception of the EXTREME RELATIVITY of the most material expression.
I am translating it to make myself understoodit wasnt like that at the time of the experience. Suppose, for example, that there was a disorder here or there in the body, not actually an illness (because illness implies some important inner factor such as an attack or the necessity for some transformation, many different things), but the outer expression of a disorder, such as swollen legs or a malfunctioning liver not an illness, a disorder, a functional disorder. Well, it was all utterly unimportant: IT IN NO WAY CHANGES THE BODYS TRUE CONSCIOUSNESS. Although we are in the habit of thinking that the body is very disturbed when its ill, when something is going wrong, its not so. It isnt disturbed in the way we understand it.
--
It was the very mo ment I was coming out of the trance, at 3 a.m.I came out of it with that1; it was the first contact. I had forgotten to mention this to you because it took on importance only very recently.
***
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theon always told me that the true interpretation of the Biblical story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden is that humanity wanted to pass from a state of animal-like divinity to the state of conscious divinity by means of mental develop ment, symbolized by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And this serpent, which Theon always said was iridescent, reflecting all the colors of the prism, was not at all the spirit of evil, but the power of evolution the force, the power of evolution. And it was natural that this power of evolution would make them taste the fruit of knowledge.
Now, according to Theon, Jehovah was the chief of the Asuras,6 the supreme Asura, the egoistic God who wanted to dominate everything and keep everything under his control. And of course this act made him furious, for it enabled mankind to become gods through the power of an evolution of consciousness. And thats why he banished them from Paradise.
--
One day I will find his photo and show it to you; he is there with a big dog he called Little Boy, a dog that could exteriorizehe would dream and go out of his body! This dog had a kind of adoration for me. (I should mention that at a fixed time in the afternoons I used to meditate and go into trance. When it was finished I would go out walking with Theon, and the dog always came with us, usually coming to fetch me in my room.) One day I was lying on a divan in trance when I felt his cold muzzle nudging my hand to wake me. I opened my eyes no dog. Yet I had positively, clearly felt his cold muzzle. So I got ready, went downstairs, and who did I find fast asleep on the landing but Little Boyhe was in trance as well! He had come to wake me in his sleep. When I reached the landing he woke up, shook himself and trotted off.
It was an interesting life.
--
Asura: demon of the mental plane embodying the forces of division and darkness.
Tlemcen: a town in northern Algeria.
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I have no doubts about that! It just came to menot because I was consciously concerned about Your physical future: this dream simply came so unexpectedly and vividly.
No, no I know that! I tell you, it can only be one of two things: either a good kick from the Enemy who is still trying to find a support in someones mentality, or else premonitory.
I certainly hope not!
--
For example, each time I have been able to master something, I mean find the true solution for an illness or a malfunctioning (the TRUE solution, not a mental one, not some ordinary knowledge, but the spiritual solution: the vibration that will UNDO the wrong working or set you on your feet again), it has always been very easy for me to cure the same thing in others, through the emission of this vibration.
Thats how it works. Because all substance is ONE. All is onewe constantly forget that! We always have a sense of separation, and that is total, total falsehood; its because we rely on what our eyes see, on (Mother touches her hands and arms, as if to indicate a separate body, cut off from other bodies). That is truly Falsehood. As soon as your consciousness changes a little, you realize that what we see is like an image plastered over something. But its not true, NOT TRUE AT ALL. Even in the most material Matter, even a stoneeven in a stoneas soon as ones consciousness changes, all this separation, all this division, completely vanishes. These are (how to put it?) modes of concentration (something akin to yet not quite that), vibratory modes WITHIN THE SAME THING.8
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats really not the difficulty the difficulty is that the world is not ready! The very substance one is made of (Mother touches her body) shares in the worlds lack of preparationnaturally! Its the same thing, the very same thing. Perhaps there is a tiny bit more light in this body, but so little that its not worth mentioning-its all the same thing. Oh, a sordid slavery!
(silence)
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In my reply I mentioned this first, though I didnt give him all these explanations. I put it in a few words as a kind of test of his intelligence, and in a somewhat cryptic form to see if he would understand.
The second sign is a sense of ABSOLUTENESS in knowledge. As I have already told you, I had this with my experience of January 24. This state CANNOT be obtained through any region of the mind, even the most illumined and exalted. Its not a certainty, its (Mother lowers both hands like an irresistible block descending), a kind of absoluteness, without even any possibility of hesitation (theres no question of doubt), or anything like that. Without (how to say it ?). All mental knowledge, even the highest, is a conclusive knowledge, as it were: it comes as a conclusion of something elsean intuition, for instance (an intuition gives you a particular knowledge, and this knowledge is like the conclusion of the intuition). Even revelations are conclusions. Theyre all conclusions the word conclusion comes to me, but I dont know how to express it. This isnt the case, however, with the supra mental experiencea kind of absolute. The feeling it gives is altogether uniquefar beyond certainty, it is (Mother again makes the same irresistible gesture) it is a FACT, things are FACTS. It is very, very difficult to explain. But with that one naturally has a complete power the two things always go together. (In my reply to this man I didnt speak of power because the power is almost a consequence and I didnt want to speak of consequences.) But the fact remains: a kind of absoluteness in knowledge springing from identityone is the thing one knows and experiences: one is it. One knows it because one is it.
When these two signs are present (both are necessary, one is incomplete without the other), when a person possesses both, then you can be sure he has been in contact with the Supermind. So people who speak about receiving the Light well, (laughing) its a lot of hot air! But when both signs are present, you can be sure of your perception.12
--
Almost (I say almost because the body hasnt had every experience), but almost all pains can be reduced to something absolutely negligible. (Of course, some pains it hasnt had, but it has had a sufficient number!) Its this anxiety resulting from a semi- mental vibration (the first stirrings of Mind) that complicates everything, everything! For example, take this difficulty I mentioned of climbing the stairs: in the doctors consciousness or anyone elses, pain causes it. According to their ordinary reasoning, pain is what tenses the nerves and muscles so one can no longer walk but this is absolutely FALSE. Pain does not prevent my body from doing anything at all. Pain isnt a factor, or rather its a factor that can be easily dealt with. Its not that: it is Matter; Matter (probably cellular matter, or) losing its capacity to respond to the will, to will-power. But why? I dont know! It depends upon the particular disorganization; but why is it like that? I dont know. Now each time I climb the stairs, I am trying to find the means of infusing Will in such a way that this lack of response doesnt last but I still havent found it. Although theres all this accumulated force and power and will (a tre mendous accumulation, I am BATHED in it, the whole body is bathed in it!), yet for some reason it doesnt respond. Here and there, groups of cells fail to respond, and the Force cannot act. So what must be found is.
(silence)
0 1961-02-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know this mental habit (which people take for mental superiority!) of lumping everything together on the same level: all the teachings, all the prophets, all the sects, all the religions. You know the habit: We are not prejudiced, we have no preferencesits all the SAME THING. A dreadful muddle!
Its one of the biggest mental difficulties of this age.
Anyway, in reply to this nonsense, I have said: Your error, to be precise, is that you go to the Theosophical Society, for example, with the same opening as to the Christian religion or to the Buddhist doctrine or with which you read one of Sri Aurobindos booksand as a result, you are plunged into a confusion and a muddle and you dont understand anything about anything.
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is the text of Mother's reply to J.: 'I have read Z's account and your own letter on this subject. in the faith of his devotion, he must have been quite offended. The truth in what he says is that any idea, WHATEVER its degree of truth, is ineffective if it does not also carry the power acquired through realization, by a real change of consciousness. And if the proponent of this idea does not himself have the realization, he must seek the backing of those who have the power. On the other hand, what you say is true: an idea ought to be accepted on the basis of its inherent truth and not because of the personality expounding it, however great this personality may be. These two truths or aspects of the question are equally true but also equally incomplete: they are not the whole truth. Both of them must be accepted and combined with many other aspects of the question if you want to even begin to approach the dynamic power of the realization. Don't you see how ridiculous this situation is? Three people of goodwill meet in the hope of teaching men the necessity for a "World Union" and they are not even able to keep a tolerant or tolerable union among themselves, because each sees a different angle of the procedure to be followed for imple menting their plan.'
Although it began as a fund-raising organization for the needs of the Ashram and Auroville, this 'strictly external thing,' which had 'nothing to do with working for an ideal,' would, after Mother's departure, coolly declare itself the 'owner' and guide of Auroville.
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was certainly with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop for and in itself, that ALL the complications, all the deformations began. Indeed, this story of Genesis that seems so childish does contain a truth. The old traditions like Genesis resembled the Vedas in that each letter6 was the symbol of a knowledge; it was the pictorial rsum of a traditional knowledge, just as the Veda contains a pictoral rsum of the knowledge of its time. But whats more, even the symbol had a reality in the sense that there was truly a period when life upon earth (the first manifestation of mentalized Matter in human forms) was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later that.
The tree of knowledge symbolizes this kind of knowledge a material knowledge, no longer divine because its origin was the sense of division and this is what began to spoil everything. How long did this period last? I am unable to say. (Because my recollection is of an almost immortal life; it seems that it was through some sort of evolutionary accident that the destruction of forms became necessary for progress.) And where did it take place? From certain impressions (but these are only impressions), it would seem that it was in the vicinity of either this side of Ceylon and India or the other, I dont know exactly (Mother indicates the Indian Ocean either west of Ceylon and India or to the east between Ceylon and Java), although certainly the place no longer exists; it must have been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of the place and a consciousness of that life and its forms, but I cant give precise material details. Did it last for centuries, was it ? I dont know. To tell the truth, when I was reliving those mo ments I wasnt curious about such details (for one is in another mental state where there is no curiosity about material details: all things turn into psychological facts). It was something so simple, luminous, harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupationsthose very preoccupations with time and space. It was a spontaneous life, extremely beautiful, and so close to Naturea natural flowering of animal life. There were no oppositions or contradictions, nothing of the kindeverything happened in the best way possible.
(silence)
A similar memory has recurred several times under different circumstancesnot exactly the same scene and the same images, because it wasnt something I was seeing but A LIFE I was living. During a certain period, at any time, night or day, I would experience a particular state of trance in which I was rediscovering a life I had lived. I was fully conscious that this life had to do with the first flowering of the human form upon earth, the first human forms able to incarnate the divine being from above. This was the first time I could manifest in a particular terrestrial form (not a general life but an individual form); that is, for the first time, through the mentalization of this material substance, the junction between the higher Being and the lower being was made. I have lived that several times, and always in a similar setting and with quite a similar feeling of such joyous simplicity, without complexity, without problems, without all these questions. It was the blossoming of a joy of lifenothing but that; love and harmony prevailed: flowers, minerals, animals all got along together perfectly.
Things began to go wrong only a LONG time afterwards, long after (but this is a personal impression), probably because certain mental crystallizations were necessary, inevitable, for the general evolution, so that the mind might prepare itself to move on to something else. That was when oh, it seems like a fall into a pitinto ugliness, darkness! Everything became so dark, so ugly, so difficult, so painful. Really really the sense of a fall.
(silence)
--
Of course, these things can always be explained symbolically. Theon explained mans exile like this: when the Being the hostile Beingassumed the position of the Lord Supreme in relation to the terrestrial realization, he didnt want humanity to progress mentally and gain a knowledge permitting it to stop obeying him! That is Theons occult explanation.
According to Theon, the serpent wasnt the spirit of evil at all: it was the evolutionary Force. And Sri Aurobindo fully agreed; he used to tell me the same thing: the evolutionary power the mental evolutionary poweris what drove man to gain knowledge, a knowledge of division. And its a fact that along with the sense of Good and Evil, man became conscious of himself. Naturally, this ruined everything and he couldnt stay: it was his own consciousness that drove him out of Paradisehe could no longer stay.
Then was man banished by Jehovah or by his own consciousness?
--
This enigmatic experience was actually very important, as Mother will later explain (on March 17): Mother was leaving behind the subjection to mental functioning, symbolized by this place where Pavitra was working.
Salmon-colored hibiscus.
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Man on earth1 is a transitional being and as a consequence, in the course of his evolution, he has had several successive natures following an ascending curve which they will continue to follow until he touches the threshold of the supra mental nature and is transformed into a superman. This curve is the spiral of mental develop ment.
We tend to apply the word natural to all spontaneous manifestation not resulting from a choice or a preconceived decision that is, with no intrusion of mental activity. Thats why a man with an only slightly mentalized vital spontaneity seems more natural to us in his simplicity. But this naturalness bears a close resemblance to the animals and is quite low on the human evolutionary scale. Man will not recapture this spontaneity free of mental intrusion until he attains the supra mental level, until he goes beyond the mind and emerges into the higher Truth.
Up to that point, all his modes of being are naturally natural! But with the minds intrusion, evolution was, if not falsified, then deformed, because by its very nature the mind was open to perversion and it became perverted almost from the start (or to be more exact, it was perverted by the asuric forces). And what appears unnatural to us now is this state of perversion. At any rate, its a deformation.
--
Along with the mind came individualization, an acute sense of separation and a more or less precise feeling of a freedom of choiceall of that, all these psychological states, are the natural consequences of mental life and open the door to everything we see now, from the worst aberrations to the most rigorous principles. Mans impression of being free to choose between one thing and another is the deformation of a true principle that will be totally realizable only when the soul or psychic being becomes conscious in him; were the soul to govern the being, mans life would truly be a conscious expression of the supreme Will translated individually. But in the normal human state, such a case is still extremely rare and doesnt seem at all natural to ordinary human consciousness it seems almost supernatural!
Man questions himself because the mental instru ment is made for seeing all possibilities and because the human being feels he has freedom of choice and the immediate consequences are the notions of good and evil, right and wrong, and all the ensuing miseries. This cant be called a bad thing: its an intermediate stagenot a very pleasant stage, but nevertheless it was certainly inevitable for a total develop ment.
***
--
It was so sad to see how good-for-nothing we were that it woke me up, or rather I heard the clock strike (like the other day, I didnt count and leapt out of bed; but I quickly noticed that it was only 3 oclock and lay back down). Then I began looking and told myself, If we really have to emerge from all this infirmity before anything can truly be well done, then we have quite a long road to travel! It was pitiful, pitiful (first on the mental, then on the material plane), absolutely pitiful. And I was depending on these people! (Sri Aurobindo was depending on me and therefore on them.) Good god, I said, if I only knew where things were kept! If they had just let me handle things, it could have been done quickly. But no! All those people had to be involved Oust as we always depend on intermediaries in real life).
It made me wonder.
--
When I told you last time about that experience [of March 11, with Pavitra] the night I met you and was saying good-bye, I neglected to mention one very important point, the most important, in fact: I was leaving the subjection to mental functioning permanently behind That was the meaning of my departure.
For a very long time now I have been watching all the phases of the subjection to mental functioning come undone, one after another for a very long time. That night was the end of it, the last phase: I was leaving this subjection behind and rising up into a realm of freedom. You had been very, very helpful, as I told you. Well, this latest experience was something else! It came to make me look squarely at the fact of our incapacity!
Can you imagine!
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, on the mental plane (the physical-mind, the material mind) I saw an individual. I am not entirely certain of his identity (when I saw him last night I didnt associate him with anyone in particular) but from his outer appearance he is evidently a sannyasi. He was pursuing me, blocking my way and trying to stop me from doing my work (it was a long, long affair). But I was very conscious and could foresee everything he was about to do, so it had no effect. After a long while I emerged from this I had something else to do and I leftand on my way home he was everywhere, hiding and trying to catch me; but he didnt succeed in doing anything. And I knew he had been acting in this manner for a long time.
Then I woke up (I always wake up three or four times during the night) and when I went back to bed I had an attack of what the doctor and I have taken to be filariasis but a strange type of filariasis, for as soon as I master it in one spot it appears in another, and when I master it there it reappears somewhere else. Last night it was in the arms (it lasted quite a while, between 2:30 and 4 a.m.); but I was fully conscious, and each time the attack came, I went like this (gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material subtle physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in my room there (an im mense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didnt pay attention, presuming it was one of the people usually around me. Then suddenly I had such an unpleasant sensation in my body that I raised my head and looked, and I saw someone there. Do you know how the magicians in Europe dress, in short satin breeches and a shirt? He was wearing something like that. He was Indian, tall and rather dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young man. He seemed to have been drawn1 there becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the mo ment I saw him, there was the same sensation in all my cells as I have with what Ive been calling filariasis (its a special, minute kind of pain) and simultaneously all the cells felt disgusta tre mendous will of rejection. Then I sat up straight (I didnt stand up) and said to him as forcefully as possible, How do you dare to come in here! I said it so loudly that the noise woke me up! I dont know what happened then, but things went much better afterwards.
0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seemed made of transparent alabasterhard, harder than stone. It was the result of an individualization that was my impressionan individualization that has become very hardened. It has tried to become entirely transparent but has no tangible contact with thingsthings enter only through the higher regions, through intellectual perceptions (not intellectual, a sort of mental vision). And I began to bang on it!
It was mainly on your right side I banged on it. But strangely enough, it didnt break it became supple, but then it lost its beauty. (It was so beautiful, as though sculptured!) I tried to pass through it, but to do so (this is what I found interesting), instead of passing through at this level (the chest), the psychic plane the level of the souls vibration I had to climb up above and then descend; and finally, without even realizing it, I found myself inside I had entered through sheer force of concentration. There, at the vital level, the emotional vital (solar plexus), I put two flowers: one very large Endurance in the Most Material Vital [zinnia] and another flower like the one X just gave me [cosmos] but bigger and pure white (it concerns sexual move ments, light in sexual move ments). But curiously enough, I passed inside through a trance; I was quite busy trying to make it more fluid when all at once, poof! I found myself inside. But since I entered through a trance it became completely objective: no more thought, nothing. And I saw I had put these two flowers there (at the levels of the abdo men and chest), one more active, a very large, dark purple Endurance flower, and another much smaller, pure white, slightly lower down. While I was watching this I think the clock must have struck something pulled me and it all faded away.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On other occasions (as I have told you) I had difficulties with X on the mental plane; now all that has cleared up, cleared up very well. But this present situation is on another plane, so lets wait. Perhaps probably it will clear up.
(silence)
--
Yes, its as if I were living, as if the BODY were living (despite all the illnesses and attacks, all the ill will besetting it), living in a bath of the divine vibrationbathing in something im menseim mense, im mense limitless, and so stable! The body lives in it like this (gesture as if Mother were floating). So even when there is what we call physical pain, even when there are blows to morale (like having a cashier ask you for money and you have none to give him5), well, despite it all, despite all the possible complications (coming all at the same time), EVERYTHING, everything that happens now, even things which seem extremely unpleasant to our mental conceptions or our mental reactions, everything is a bath, a bath of the vibration of divine Love. So much so that if I didnt control my body, I would be smiling at everything all the time like an idiot. A beatific smile for everything (I dont show it because I control myself).
(silence, the clock strikes the hour)
--
X is sensitive mentally, but to what degree? And to what degree do things crystallize differently for him because of all his ideas?
Well see.
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have never written or spoken to X about this, but through mental contact I have told him I dont know how many times: Satprem has a work to accomplish that is INFINITELY more important than reciting mantras. If it can help him to discipline himself, fine, but its nothing more; he will not accomplish his work by reciting mantras. He has something to do and he will do it. I have hammered that into his head (Mother laughs).
So, petit, see you tomorrow.
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had this experience, and I remember it even went on for several days; I saw all material circumstances as an absolutean absolute that we perceive as an unfolding, but which is an eternally existing absolute. I had this experience, and at the same time I had a very clear perception of what falsehood is the lie; what, from the psychological, the mental point of view, Sri Aurobindo, translating from the Sanskrit, called crookedness.3 We attribute the course of circumstances to our psychological reactionsand indeed, they are used mo mentarily because everything collaborates either consciously or unconsciously to make things be what they have to be but things could be what they have to be without the intervention of this falsehood. I lived in that consciousness for several days, and it became apparent that this was what separated falsehood from truth. In this state of knowledge-consciousness, the distinction can be made between falsehood and truth; and when seen in that truth-consciousness, material circumstances change character.
Now I no longer have the experience of that state except as a memory, so I cant formulate it accurately. But what was very clear and comes very oftenvery oftenis the perception of a superimposition of falsehood over a real fact. This brings us back to what I was telling you some time ago,4 that everything is very simple in its truth, that human consciousness is what complicates everything. But the former was an even more total experience of it.
--
I have had this particular consciousness in flashes. The difficulty is that in expressing it, we use all our mental faculties, and they themselves are falseso we are cornered. Because when you follow through. Whatever you say,If this, if that, if the otheris all part of our general stupidity. Going right to the end of it, you are suddenly like this: Ah! (Mother remains suspended midway in her sentence) There is nothing more to do, not a move to make.
Only, as I have told you, practically speaking this experience can be dangerous. When it came, you see, one part of me was having the experience, and one part wasnt yet ready for it. Well, I was awake enough to tell myself, The part experiencing this prevails and keeps the rest calm, yet if the preparation had not been adequate, it could have produced an imbalance. And if by mischance someone without sufficient strength had the possibility of picking up something of that, well, he would lose his head.
--
Once during the night, I went exploring inside this head; some cells still had fresh imprints of things registered during the day for whatever reason they hadnt had time to be combined into the whole, so they showed up as tiny, very clear images, minuscule things utterly devoid of any mental or psychological move mentsimply like tiny photographic images. There were three or four images like that, and it was so shocking to see them in this Presence that all at once I said to myself, Am I going mad?! It was that shocking. And I had to bring in a peace, a peacenot to make the move ment of possession stop, but to accompany it simultaneously with a mighty peace so I wouldnt tell myself, Youre losing your head. Thats how shocking it was.
A tiny, very tiny image, just like a little photograph, clear! Everything else was in a vibration of transformationsplendid!
--
But for those who are here, we can say, It is what the Supreme Lord is preparing for the earth. He sent Sri Aurobindo to prepare it; Sri Aurobindo called it the supra mental realization, and to facilitate communication we can use the same words. Well, this move ment (gesture of a rising flame) towards That must be constantconstant, total. All the rest is none of our business, and the less we meddle with it mentally, the better. But THAT, that Flame, is indispensable. And when it goes out, light it again; when it falters, rekindle itall the time, all the time, ALL THE TIMEwhen sleeping, walking, reading, moving around, speaking all the time.
The rest doesnt matter, one can do anything (it depends on people and their ways of thinking). You can just ask people like X, they will tell you: You can do anything at allit doesnt matter in the least. Only you mustnt feel its you doing it, thats all. You have to feel that Nature does it. But I dont much approve of this system.
0 1961-04-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a vision last night which lasted for a long timeit was rather interestingabout your work concerning Sri Aurobindo: the plane where its situated, what place Sri Aurobindo gives it and the HELP he is giving you. It was very, very interesting. I no longer recall all the details, but broad bands of a bluish-white light seemed to be spreading out in special forms (Mother sketches spirals in the air), showing how it would touch the earths mental atmosphere. It was truly interesting.
And Sri Aurobindo spoke of it as my work with you. I told him that I myself was doing nothing! But he told me it was my work with you.
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its especially this mental paucity everywhere they say, Oh, they have the same ideas as we do! Oh, they teach the same thing! Oh!Deplorable.
(silence)
--
This paucity, this narrowness. Its relatively easy to get out of mental paucity, mental narrowness: one has only to pierce a hole, go beyond, and view things from above; and yes, immediately, it all widens. Thats relatively easy. But this vital and PHYSICAL paucity, material narrowness ohh!
For mental narrowness, we know the meansone has only to go beyond itwe know the means. But this (Mother touches her body), however much one keeps bringing in, bringing in, bringing in the Light and the Force. Yes, for a few mo ments one can live a universal life, even in the sensations but in the body.
(silence)
--
Its a question of contagion. Spiritual vibrations are quite clearly contagious. mental vibrations are contagious, and to a certain extent even vital vibrations are contagious (not often in their finer effects, but anyway, its cleara mans anger, for instance, spreads very easily). Well then, the quality of cellular vibrations should also be contagious.
But the difficulty. You see, so far as Mind is concerned, the whole yoga has been donelike a path blazed through the virgin forest. And since it has been done, its relatively simple: the landmarks are there and one follows them. But here, nothing has been done! One doesnt know which end to take hold ofno one has ever done it! [186] You meet all the same obstacles before which others have simply said, Its impossible. Sri Aurobindo explains that its not impossible, but nothing more. And he himself hadnt done it.
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Those who say that are simpletons and dont even know what theyre talking about! It is enough to read everything Sri Aurobindo has written to know that it is IMPOSSIBLE (underlined) to found a religion upon his writings, since for each problem, for each question, he presents all aspects and, while demonstrating the truth contained in each approach, he explains that to attain the Truth a synthesis must be effected, overpassing all mental notions and emerging in a transcendence beyond thought.
Your second question, therefore, makes no sense! Furthermore, if you had read what appeared in the last Bulletin,1 you could never have asked it.
--
men are such fools (laughing: it doesnt get any better!) that they can change anything at all into a religion, so great is their need for a fixed framework for their narrow thought and limited action. They dont feel secure unless they can affirm: This is true and that is not but such an affirmation becomes impossible for anyone who has read and understood what Sri Aurobindo has written. Religion and yoga are not situated on the same plane of the being, and the spiritual life can exist in its purity only if it is free from all mental dogma.
People must really be made to understand this.
--
At the age of eighteen, I remember having such an intense need in me to KNOW. Because I was having experiences I had all kinds of experiences but my surroundings offered me no chance to receive an intellectual knowledge which would have given me the meaning of it all: I couldnt even speak of them. I was having experience after experience. For years, I had experiences during the night (but I was very careful never to speak about them!)memories from past lives, all sorts of things, but without any base of intellectual knowledge. (Of course, the advantage of this was that my experiences were not mentally contrived; they were entirely spontaneous.) But I had such a NEED in me to know! I remember living in a house (one of these houses with a lot of apart ments), and in the apart ment next door were some young Catholics whose faith was very they were very convinced. And seeing all that, I remember saying to myself one day while brushing my hair, These people are lucky to be born into a religion and believe unquestioningly! Its so easy! You have nothing to do but believehow simple that makes it. I was feeling like this, and then when I realized what I was thinking (laughing), well, I gave myself a good scolding: Lazybones!
To know, know, KNOW! You see, I knew nothing, really, nothing but the things of ordinary life: external knowledge. I had learned everything I had been given to learn. I not only learned what I was taught but also what my brother was taughthigher mathematics and all that! I learned and I learned and I learned and it was NOTHING. None of it explained anything to menothing. I couldnt understand a thing!
To know!
--
Rakshasa: demon of the vital plane, as opposed to an asura, a demon of the mental world.
Math: monastery.
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this body is still much too open to peoples mental formations, so it has to struggle against oh!
Thats my reproach to itwhy does it struggle? Why, suddenly, do I have a terrible fatigue falling over me and have to brace myself? The body, naturally, does only one thingit automatically repeats the mantra; then all becomes quiet, all is set in order. But why is this effort necessary? It should be done automatically [the sweeping away of bad vibrations]. Why is there a need to remember or to put up a struggle? Oh, a battle!
--
Not to mention the letters people write.
They say I have become deaf. I believe its the Lords grace, because when I make an effort to hear what is being said to me, nine times out of ten its completely useless and its absolutely stupid. Its better not to hear!
0 1961-05-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I try to be as tranquil as I can (Mother makes a gesture of mental immobility), but when you do so, you become aware of oh, its like a swarm of flies comingfrom here, from there, from above, from below, oh coming and coming and coming!
Its probably worse for me than for others because of all these people around me, clinging like leeches. But even for an ordinary being it is a swarm; it keeps on coming and comingyou would need to spend all your time fanning it away!
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Funda mentally, I have noticed one thing: if you yourself are in the right state, the right atmosphere is immediately created. And in addition, I am always in a sort of not even a convictionan ABSOLUTE perception that all that happens is the Lords doing. When He makes me late going upstairs its because He wants me to be late, and consequently, if I take it wellif instead of closing myself and getting annoyed I say, Good, thats fineimmediately a very interesting atmosphere is created, because at the same time I see all the advantages of this change. But this move ment must not be mentalit has to be spontaneous.
Therefore, I have told her (to put it simply): provided you are sincere in your attitude, all is well.
--
Here is something interesting. I am translating the Yoga of Self-Perfection. My first look at it stiffened menow its a delight! And I have done nothing in between but simply let it work within; its so easy!
My translation is poorly written, hardly French at all, but to me it is limpid.
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
More and more I have the impression ofwhat? How can it be explained? A question of vibrations in Matter. Its incomprehensible, completely eluding all mental law, all psychological law: a self-existent something.
So many question marks!
--
There is such a strong impression of facing something which completely escapes comprehension, reason, intelligence, everything mental or intellectual (even the most elevated); its not that, its. And then truly, if you stand back from it and employ big words, you would say, All this (Mother tilts her hand to one side) is Truth, and all that (she tilts her hand to the other side) is Falsehood but its the SAME thing! In one case, you have the sense of being carriednot only the body but the entire world, all circumstancescarried, floating in a beatific light towards an eternal Realization; and in the other case, its like this (Mother makes a gesture of being burdened), deadening, heavy, sorrowfulexactly the same thing! Almost the same material vibrations.
And its so subtle, so incomprehensible theres a distinct impression of it TOTALLY eluding even the highest conscious will. What is it? What is it?
--
You see, all the things that have been told, even all the things Sri Aurobindo has said (he has said the most in Savitri), all that is necessarily (what can it be called?) mental, the super-intellectual spiritualized mind. But it is not THAT! Its a form, its an image, its not the concrete fact.
(silence)
0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The tantric guru Sri Aurobindo met in 1907 and from whom he received mental silence.
***
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I will give you a concrete example, then youll understand. When I.B. was killed, I had to gather up all his states of being and activities, which had been dispersed by the violence of the accident2it was terrible, he was in a dreadful state of dispersion. For two or two and a half days the doctors fought in the hope of reviving him, but it was impossible. During those two days I gathered up all his consciousness, all of it; I collected it over his body, to the point where, when it had come and formed itself there, such vitality, such life was coming back into his body that after some hours the doctors believed he would be saved. But it couldnt last (it wasnt possiblea part of the brain had come out). Well, when not only his soul but his mental being, his vital being, and all the rest had been properly collected and organized over his body and had realized that the body had become quite unusable, it was overthey gave up the body and it was over.
I was keeping I.B. near me because I already had the idea of putting him immediately back into another bodyhis soul was not satisfied, it had not finished its experience (there was a whole combination of circumstances) and it wanted to continue to live on earth. Then, that night, his inner being went to find V., la menting, saying he was dead and hadnt wanted to die, that he had lost his body and wanted to continue to live. V. was very perplexed. He let me know about it in the morning: Heres what has happened. I sent word to him of what I was doing, that I was keeping I.B. in my atmosphere and that he should stay very calm and not get excited, for I was going to put him back into a body as soon as possible I already had something in view. The same evening I.B. again went to find V., with the same complaint. V. told him very clearly, Here is what Mother says, here is what she is going to do; come now, be calm and dont tor ment yourself. And he saw in I.B.s face that he had understood (the inner being was taking on I.B.s physical appearance, naturally); his face relaxed, he became content.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had an oft repeated experience of reliving the past1 (its a pheno menon of consciousness, possible because everything is preserved and continues to exist somewhere), with a kind of willwhich would be the sign of a powerto change it. I dont know, but at the mo ment of reliving it, instead of reliving the past just as it had been preserved, a power to make it different was introduced. I am not speaking of the power to change the consequences of the past (that is obvious and functions all the time)it wasnt that; it was the power to change the circumstances themselves (circumstances not quite material but of the subtle physical, with a predominantly psychological content). And since the will was there, from the standpoint of consciousness it actually happened that is, instead of circumstances developing in one direction, they developed in another. So it must correspond to something real, otherwise I would not have had the experience. It wasnt a product of the imagination; it wasnt something one thinks of and would really like to be differentit wasnt that; it was a pheno menon of consciousness: my consciousness was reliving certain circumstances (which are still quite living and obviously continue to exist within their own domain), but reliving them with the power and the knowledge acquired between that past mo ment and the present, and with a power to change the past mo ment. A new power entered the scene and turned the circumstance being relived in a new direction. I have had this experience many times and it has always surprised meits not a pheno menon of mental imagination, which is something else entirely.
It opens the door to everything.
--- Overview of noun men
The noun men has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (35) work force, workforce, manpower, hands, men ::: (the force of workers available)
--- Overview of noun man
The noun man has 11 senses (first 6 from tagged texts)
1. (749) man, adult male ::: (an adult person who is male (as opposed to a woman); "there were two women and six men on the bus")
2. (346) serviceman, military man, man, military personnel ::: (someone who serves in the armed forces; a member of a military force; "two men stood sentry duty")
3. (87) man ::: (the generic use of the word to refer to any human being; "it was every man for himself")
4. (29) homo, man, human being, human ::: (any living or extinct member of the family Hominidae characterized by superior intelligence, articulate speech, and erect carriage)
5. (4) man ::: (a male subordinate; "the chief stationed two men outside the building"; "he awaited word from his man in Havana")
6. (3) man ::: (an adult male person who has a manly character (virile and courageous competent); "the army will make a man of you")
7. valet, valet de chambre, gentleman, gentleman's gentleman, man ::: (a manservant who acts as a personal attendant to his employer; "Jeeves was Bertie Wooster's man")
8. man ::: (a male person who plays a significant role (husband or lover or boyfriend) in the life of a particular woman; "she takes good care of her man")
9. Man, Isle of Man ::: (one of the British Isles in the Irish Sea)
10. man, piece ::: (game equipment consisting of an object used in playing certain board games; "he taught me to set up the men on the chess board"; "he sacrificed a piece to get a strategic advantage")
11. world, human race, humanity, humankind, human beings, humans, mankind, man ::: (all of the living human inhabitants of the earth; "all the world loves a lover"; "she always used `humankind' because `mankind' seemed to slight the women")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun men
1 sense of men
Sense 1
work force, workforce, manpower, hands, men
=> force, personnel
=> organization, organisation
=> social group
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun man
11 senses of man
Sense 1
man, adult male
=> male, male person
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> adult, grownup
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 2
serviceman, military man, man, military personnel
=> skilled worker, trained worker, skilled workman
=> worker
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 3
man
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 4
homo, man, human being, human
=> hominid
=> primate
=> placental, placental mammal, eutherian, eutherian mammal
=> mammal, mammalian
=> vertebrate, craniate
=> chordate
=> animal, animate being, beast, brute, creature, fauna
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 5
man
=> subordinate, subsidiary, underling, foot soldier
=> assistant, helper, help, supporter
=> worker
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 6
man
=> male, male person
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 7
valet, valet de chambre, gentleman, gentleman's gentleman, man
=> manservant
=> servant, retainer
=> worker
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> body servant
=> servant, retainer
=> worker
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 8
man
=> male, male person
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> lover
=> domestic partner, significant other, spousal equivalent, spouse equivalent
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 9
Man, Isle of Man
INSTANCE OF=> island
=> land, dry land, earth, ground, solid ground, terra firma
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 10
man, piece
=> game equipment
=> equipment
=> instrumentality, instrumentation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 11
world, human race, humanity, humankind, human beings, humans, mankind, man
=> homo, man, human being, human
=> hominid
=> primate
=> placental, placental mammal, eutherian, eutherian mammal
=> mammal, mammalian
=> vertebrate, craniate
=> chordate
=> animal, animate being, beast, brute, creature, fauna
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun men
1 sense of men
Sense 1
work force, workforce, manpower, hands, men
=> complement, full complement
Hyponyms of noun man
4 of 11 senses of man
Sense 1
man, adult male
HAS INSTANCE=> Adam
HAS INSTANCE=> Cain
HAS INSTANCE=> Abel
HAS INSTANCE=> Seth
=> Black man
=> white man
=> yellow man
=> babu, baboo
=> bachelor, unmarried man
=> bey
=> boy
=> boyfriend, fellow, beau, swain, young man
=> ex-boyfriend
=> bull, bruiser, strapper, Samson
=> dandy, dude, fop, gallant, sheik, beau, swell, fashion plate, clotheshorse
=> ejaculator
=> Esquire, Esq
=> eunuch, castrate
=> father figure, father surrogate
=> father-figure
=> fellow, dude, buster
=> galoot
=> geezer
=> gentleman
=> grass widower, divorced man
=> guy, cat, hombre, bozo
HAS INSTANCE=> Ham
=> Herr
=> Hooray Henry
=> housefather
=> hunk
=> ex-husband, ex
=> inamorato
=> iron man, ironman
=> ironside
HAS INSTANCE=> Japheth
=> adonis
=> middle-aged man
=> Monsieur
=> old boy, old man
=> old man, greybeard, graybeard, Methuselah
=> patriarch, paterfamilias
=> Peter Pan
=> ponce
=> posseman
=> Senhor
=> shaver
HAS INSTANCE=> Shem
=> signor, signior
=> signore
=> sir
=> stiff
=> stud, he-man, macho-man
=> Tarzan
=> widower, widowman
=> womanizer, womaniser, philanderer
=> wonder boy, golden boy
=> young buck, young man
Sense 2
serviceman, military man, man, military personnel
=> air force officer, commander
=> artilleryman, cannoneer, gunner, machine gunner
=> bluejacket, navy man, sailor, sailor boy
=> commando, ranger
=> draftee, conscript, inductee
=> enlisted person
=> Marine, devil dog, leatherneck, shipboard soldier
=> military officer, officer
=> noncombatant
=> occupier
=> striper
=> veteran, vet, ex-serviceman
=> veteran, veteran soldier
=> volunteer, military volunteer, voluntary
Sense 4
homo, man, human being, human
=> world, human race, humanity, humankind, human beings, humans, mankind, man
=> Homo erectus
=> Homo soloensis
=> Homo habilis
=> Homo sapiens
=> Neandertal man, Neanderthal man, Neandertal, Neanderthal, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
=> Rhodesian man, Homo rhodesiensis
Sense 10
man, piece
=> black
=> checker, chequer
=> chessman, chess piece
=> tile
=> white
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun men
1 sense of men
Sense 1
work force, workforce, manpower, hands, men
=> force, personnel
Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun man
11 senses of man
Sense 1
man, adult male
=> male, male person
=> adult, grownup
Sense 2
serviceman, military man, man, military personnel
=> skilled worker, trained worker, skilled workman
Sense 3
man
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
Sense 4
homo, man, human being, human
=> hominid
Sense 5
man
=> subordinate, subsidiary, underling, foot soldier
Sense 6
man
=> male, male person
Sense 7
valet, valet de chambre, gentleman, gentleman's gentleman, man
=> manservant
=> body servant
Sense 8
man
=> male, male person
=> lover
Sense 9
Man, Isle of Man
INSTANCE OF=> island
Sense 10
man, piece
=> game equipment
Sense 11
world, human race, humanity, humankind, human beings, humans, mankind, man
=> homo, man, human being, human
=> group, grouping
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun men
1 sense of men
Sense 1
work force, workforce, manpower, hands, men
-> 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
Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun man
11 senses of man
Sense 1
man, adult male
-> male, male person
=> boy wonder
=> chap, fellow, feller, fella, lad, gent, blighter, cuss, bloke
=> foster-brother, foster brother
=> macho
=> male child, boy
=> male offspring, man-child
=> man, adult male
=> man
=> man
=> mother's son
=> sirrah
-> adult, grownup
=> brachycephalic
=> caregiver
=> catch, match
=> centrist, middle of the roader, moderate, moderationist
=> character, eccentric, type, case
=> conservative, conservativist
=> dolichocephalic
=> elder, senior
=> ex-spouse
=> host
=> important person, influential person, personage
=> Jack of all trades
=> liberal, liberalist, progressive
=> liberal
=> man, adult male
=> militarist, warmonger
=> oldster, old person, senior citizen, golden ager
=> pacifist, pacificist, disarmer
=> patrician
=> pledgee
=> pledger
=> professional, professional person
=> sobersides
=> sophisticate, man of the world
=> stay-at-home, homebody
=> stoic, unemotional person
=> thoroughbred
=> woman, adult female
Sense 2
serviceman, military man, man, military personnel
-> skilled worker, trained worker, skilled workman
=> aquanaut, oceanaut
=> armorer, armourer
=> aviator, aeronaut, airman, flier, flyer
=> baker, bread maker
=> balloonist
=> butcher, slaughterer
=> calligrapher, calligraphist
=> coiner, minter, moneyer
=> cook
=> craftsman, artisan, journeyman, artificer
=> crewman, crew member
=> cutter
=> dental hygienist
=> draftsman, draughtsman, draftsperson
=> dyer
=> editor, editor in chief
=> electrician, lineman, linesman
=> engraver
=> esthetician, aesthetician
=> fisherman, fisher
=> founder
=> framer
=> fumigator
=> galvanizer, galvaniser
=> gilder
=> grip
=> harpooner, harpooneer
=> hunter, huntsman
=> indexer
=> laminator
=> lobsterman
=> lockmaster, lockman, lockkeeper
=> mender, repairer, fixer
=> mortician, undertaker, funeral undertaker, funeral director
=> mounter
=> official, functionary
=> oilman
=> optician, lens maker
=> painter
=> perfecter
=> phlebotomist
=> plaiter
=> plasterer
=> plater
=> power worker, power-station worker
=> printer, pressman
=> projectionist
=> refiner
=> refinisher, renovator, restorer, preserver
=> riveter, rivetter
=> router
=> sailor, crewman
=> serviceman, military man, man, military personnel
=> shearer
=> skinner
=> smith, metalworker
=> smith
=> technician
=> tuner, piano tuner
=> turner
=> turtler
=> voicer
=> vulcanizer, vulcaniser
=> wallpaperer, wall-paperer
=> wireman, wirer
Sense 3
man
-> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> self
=> adult, grownup
=> adventurer, venturer
=> anomaly, unusual person
=> applicant, applier
=> appointee, appointment
=> capitalist
=> captor, capturer
=> changer, modifier
=> color-blind person
=> commoner, common man, common person
=> communicator
=> contestant
=> coward
=> creator
=> disputant, controversialist, eristic
=> engineer, applied scientist, technologist
=> entertainer
=> experimenter
=> expert
=> face
=> female, female person
=> individualist
=> inhabitant, habitant, dweller, denizen, indweller
=> native, indigen, indigene, aborigine, aboriginal
=> native
=> innocent, inexperienced person
=> intellectual, intellect
=> juvenile, juvenile person
=> lover
=> loved one
=> leader
=> male, male person
=> money handler, money dealer
=> national, subject
=> nonreligious person
=> nonworker
=> peer, equal, match, compeer
=> perceiver, percipient, observer, beholder
=> percher
=> precursor, forerunner
=> primitive, primitive person
=> religious person
=> sensualist
=> traveler, traveller
=> unfortunate, unfortunate person
=> unwelcome person, persona non grata
=> unskilled person
=> worker
=> African
=> person of color, person of colour
=> Black, Black person, blackamoor, Negro, Negroid
=> White, White person, Caucasian
=> Amerindian, Native American
=> Slav
=> gentile
=> Jew, Hebrew, Israelite
=> Aries, Ram
=> Taurus, Bull
=> Gemini, Twin
=> Cancer, Crab
=> Leo, Lion
=> Virgo, Virgin
=> Libra, Balance
=> Scorpio, Scorpion
=> Sagittarius, Archer
=> Capricorn, Goat
=> Aquarius, Water Bearer
=> Pisces, Fish
=> abator
=> abjurer
=> abomination
=> abstainer, abstinent, nondrinker
=> achiever, winner, success, succeeder
=> acquaintance, friend
=> acquirer
=> active
=> actor, doer, worker
=> adjudicator
=> admirer
=> adoptee
=> adversary, antagonist, opponent, opposer, resister
=> advisee
=> advocate, advocator, proponent, exponent
=> affiant
=> agnostic, doubter
=> amateur
=> ancient
=> anti
=> anti-American
=> apprehender
=> appreciator
=> archaist
=> arrogator
=> assessee
=> asthmatic
=> authority
=> autodidact
=> baby boomer, boomer
=> baby buster, buster
=> bad guy
=> bad person
=> baldhead, baldpate, baldy
=> balker, baulker, noncompliant
=> bullfighter, toreador
=> bather
=> beard
=> bedfellow
=> bereaved, bereaved person
=> best, topper
=> birth
=> biter
=> blogger
=> blond, blonde
=> bluecoat
=> bodybuilder, muscle builder, muscle-builder, musclebuilder, muscleman
=> bomber
=> brunet, brunette
=> buster
=> candidate, prospect
=> case
=> cashier
=> celebrant, celebrator, celebrater
=> censor
=> chameleon
=> charmer, beguiler
=> child, baby
=> chutzpanik
=> closer
=> clumsy person
=> collector, aggregator
=> combatant, battler, belligerent, fighter, scrapper
=> complexifier
=> compulsive
=> computer user
=> contemplative
=> convert
=> copycat, imitator, emulator, ape, aper
=> counter
=> counterterrorist
=> crawler, creeper
=> creature, wight
=> creditor
=> cripple
=> dancer, social dancer
=> dead person, dead soul, deceased person, deceased, decedent, departed
=> deaf person
=> debaser, degrader
=> debtor, debitor
=> defecator, voider, shitter
=> delayer
=> deliverer
=> demander
=> dieter
=> differentiator, discriminator
=> disentangler, unraveler, unraveller
=> dissenter, dissident, protester, objector, contestant
=> divider
=> domestic partner, significant other, spousal equivalent, spouse equivalent
=> double, image, look-alike
=> dresser
=> dribbler, driveller, slobberer, drooler
=> drug user, substance abuser, user
=> dyslectic
=> ectomorph
=> effecter, effector
=> Elizabethan
=> emotional person
=> endomorph
=> enjoyer
=> enrollee
=> ethnic
=> explorer, adventurer
=> extrovert, extravert
=> faddist
=> faller
=> fastener
=> fiduciary
=> first-rater
=> follower
=> free agent, free spirit, freewheeler
=> friend
=> fugitive, runaway, fleer
=> gainer
=> gainer, weight gainer
=> gambler
=> gatekeeper
=> gatherer
=> good guy
=> good person
=> granter
=> greeter, saluter, welcomer
=> grinner
=> groaner
=> grunter
=> guesser
=> handicapped person
=> hater
=> heterosexual, heterosexual person, straight person, straight
=> homosexual, homophile, homo, gay
=> homunculus
=> hope
=> hoper
=> huddler
=> hugger
=> immune
=> insured, insured person
=> interpreter
=> introvert
=> Jat
=> jewel, gem
=> jumper
=> junior
=> killer, slayer
=> relative, relation
=> kink
=> kneeler
=> knocker
=> knower, apprehender
=> large person
=> Latin
=> laugher
=> learner, scholar, assimilator
=> left-hander, lefty, southpaw
=> life
=> lightning rod
=> linguist, polyglot
=> literate, literate person
=> liver
=> longer, thirster, yearner
=> loose cannon
=> machine
=> mailer
=> malcontent
=> man
=> manipulator
=> man jack
=> married
=> masturbator, onanist
=> measurer
=> nonmember
=> mesomorph
=> mestizo, ladino
=> middlebrow
=> miracle man, miracle worker
=> misogamist
=> mixed-blood
=> modern
=> monolingual
=> mother hen
=> mouse
=> mutilator, maimer, mangler
=> namer
=> namesake
=> neglecter
=> neighbor, neighbour
=> neutral
=> nondescript
=> nonparticipant
=> nonpartisan, nonpartizan
=> nonperson, unperson
=> nonresident
=> nonsmoker
=> nude, nude person
=> nurser
=> occultist
=> optimist
=> orphan
=> ostrich
=> ouster, ejector
=> outcaste
=> outdoorsman
=> owner, possessor
=> pamperer, spoiler, coddler, mollycoddler
=> pansexual
=> pardoner, forgiver, excuser
=> partner
=> party
=> passer
=> personage
=> personification
=> perspirer, sweater
=> philosopher
=> picker, chooser, selector
=> pisser, urinator
=> planner, contriver, deviser
=> player
=> posturer
=> powderer
=> preserver
=> propositus
=> public relations person
=> pursuer
=> pussycat
=> quarter
=> quitter
=> radical
=> realist
=> rectifier
=> redhead, redheader, red-header, carrottop
=> registrant
=> reliever, allayer, comforter
=> repeater
=> rescuer, recoverer, saver
=> rester
=> restrainer, controller
=> revenant
=> rich person, wealthy person, have
=> right-hander, right hander, righthander
=> riser
=> romper
=> roundhead
=> ruler, swayer
=> rusher
=> scientist
=> scratcher
=> second-rater, mediocrity
=> seeder, cloud seeder
=> seeker, searcher, quester
=> segregate
=> sentimentalist, romanticist
=> sex object
=> sex symbol
=> shaker, mover and shaker
=> showman
=> signer, signatory
=> simpleton, simple
=> six-footer
=> skidder, slider, slipper
=> slave
=> slave
=> sleepyhead
=> sloucher
=> small person
=> smasher
=> smiler
=> sneezer
=> sniffer
=> sniffler, sniveler
=> snuffer
=> snuffler
=> socializer, socialiser
=> sort
=> sounding board
=> sphinx
=> spitter, expectorator
=> sport
=> sprawler
=> spurner
=> squinter, squint-eye
=> stifler, smotherer
=> stigmatic, stigmatist
=> stooper
=> stranger
=> struggler
=> subject, case, guinea pig
=> supernumerary
=> surrenderer, yielder
=> survivalist
=> survivor
=> suspect
=> tagger
=> tagger
=> tapper
=> tempter
=> termer
=> terror, scourge, threat
=> testator, testate
=> thin person, skin and bones, scrag
=> third-rater
=> thrower
=> tiger
=> totemist
=> toucher
=> transfer, transferee
=> transsexual, transexual
=> transvestite, cross-dresser
=> trier, attempter, essayer
=> turner
=> tyrant
=> undoer, opener, unfastener, untier
=> user
=> vanisher
=> victim, dupe
=> Victorian
=> visionary
=> visually impaired person
=> waiter
=> waker
=> walk-in
=> wanter, needer
=> ward
=> warrior
=> watcher
=> weakling, doormat, wuss
=> weasel
=> wiggler, wriggler, squirmer
=> winker
=> withholder
=> witness
=> worldling
=> yawner
Sense 4
homo, man, human being, human
-> hominid
=> homo, man, human being, human
=> Pithecanthropus, Pithecanthropus erectus, genus Pithecanthropus
=> Sinanthropus, genus Sinanthropus
=> Javanthropus, genus Javanthropus
=> australopithecine
=> Sivapithecus
=> dryopithecine
Sense 5
man
-> subordinate, subsidiary, underling, foot soldier
=> associate
=> bottom dog
=> cog
=> man
=> second fiddle, second banana
Sense 6
man
-> male, male person
=> boy wonder
=> chap, fellow, feller, fella, lad, gent, blighter, cuss, bloke
=> foster-brother, foster brother
=> macho
=> male child, boy
=> male offspring, man-child
=> man, adult male
=> man
=> man
=> mother's son
=> sirrah
Sense 7
valet, valet de chambre, gentleman, gentleman's gentleman, man
-> manservant
=> butler, pantryman
=> footman
=> valet, valet de chambre, gentleman, gentleman's gentleman, man
-> body servant
=> valet, valet de chambre, gentleman, gentleman's gentleman, man
Sense 8
man
-> male, male person
=> boy wonder
=> chap, fellow, feller, fella, lad, gent, blighter, cuss, bloke
=> foster-brother, foster brother
=> macho
=> male child, boy
=> male offspring, man-child
=> man, adult male
=> man
=> man
=> mother's son
=> sirrah
-> lover
=> fancy man, paramour
=> man
=> mistress, kept woman, fancy woman
Sense 9
Man, Isle of Man
-> island
HAS INSTANCE=> Anguilla
HAS INSTANCE=> Aran Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Antigua
HAS INSTANCE=> Barbuda
HAS INSTANCE=> Redonda
HAS INSTANCE=> Bermuda, Bermudas
HAS INSTANCE=> Bouvet Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Montserrat
HAS INSTANCE=> Sao Tiago Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Falkland Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Ceylon
HAS INSTANCE=> Chiloe
HAS INSTANCE=> Taiwan, Formosa
HAS INSTANCE=> Taiwan, China, Nationalist China, Republic of China
HAS INSTANCE=> Guadalupe Island
=> Caribbean Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Netherlands Antilles
HAS INSTANCE=> Aruba
HAS INSTANCE=> Bonaire
HAS INSTANCE=> Curacao
HAS INSTANCE=> Saba
HAS INSTANCE=> Saint Eustatius, St. Eustatius
HAS INSTANCE=> Saint Martin, St. Martin, Saint Maarten, St. Maarten
HAS INSTANCE=> Cuba
HAS INSTANCE=> Guadeloupe
HAS INSTANCE=> Hispaniola, Haiti, Hayti
HAS INSTANCE=> Puerto Rico, Porto Rico
HAS INSTANCE=> Culebra
HAS INSTANCE=> Vieques
HAS INSTANCE=> Jamaica
HAS INSTANCE=> Virgin Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Barbados
HAS INSTANCE=> Trinidad
HAS INSTANCE=> Tobago
HAS INSTANCE=> Cyprus
HAS INSTANCE=> Zealand, Seeland, Sjaelland
HAS INSTANCE=> Dominica
HAS INSTANCE=> Bioko
HAS INSTANCE=> Spitsbergen, Spitzbergen
HAS INSTANCE=> Galapagos Islands, Galapagos
HAS INSTANCE=> Fiji Islands, Fijis
HAS INSTANCE=> Viti Levu
HAS INSTANCE=> Vanua Levu
=> Aegean island
HAS INSTANCE=> Crete, Kriti
HAS INSTANCE=> Ithaca, Ithaki
HAS INSTANCE=> Egadi Islands, Aegadean Isles, Aegadean Islands, Isole Egadi, Aegates
HAS INSTANCE=> Lemnos, Limnos
HAS INSTANCE=> Capri
HAS INSTANCE=> Ischia
HAS INSTANCE=> Sardinia, Sardegna
HAS INSTANCE=> Sicily, Sicilia
HAS INSTANCE=> Greenland, Gronland, Kalaallit Nunaat
HAS INSTANCE=> Baffin Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Vancouver Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Newfoundland
HAS INSTANCE=> Cape Breton Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Tasmania
HAS INSTANCE=> Norfolk Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Saipan
HAS INSTANCE=> Guam, GU
HAS INSTANCE=> Wake Island, Wake
HAS INSTANCE=> Nauru, Nauru Island, Pleasant Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Borneo, Kalimantan
HAS INSTANCE=> Bougainville
HAS INSTANCE=> Guadalcanal
HAS INSTANCE=> New Britain
HAS INSTANCE=> New Caledonia
HAS INSTANCE=> New Guinea
HAS INSTANCE=> New Ireland
HAS INSTANCE=> Bahrain, Bahrain Island, Bahrein, Bahrein Island
HAS INSTANCE=> British Isles
HAS INSTANCE=> Great Britain, GB
HAS INSTANCE=> Ireland, Hibernia, Emerald Isle
HAS INSTANCE=> Channel Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Man, Isle of Man
HAS INSTANCE=> Isle of Skye
HAS INSTANCE=> Islay
HAS INSTANCE=> Mull
HAS INSTANCE=> Staffa
HAS INSTANCE=> Anglesey, Anglesey Island, Anglesea, Anglesea Island, Mona
HAS INSTANCE=> Java
HAS INSTANCE=> Bali
HAS INSTANCE=> Timor
HAS INSTANCE=> Sumatra
HAS INSTANCE=> Celebes, Sulawesi
HAS INSTANCE=> Moluccas, Spice Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Hokkaido, Ezo, Yezo
HAS INSTANCE=> Honshu, Hondo
HAS INSTANCE=> Kyushu
HAS INSTANCE=> Shikoku
HAS INSTANCE=> Okinawa
HAS INSTANCE=> Iwo Jima
HAS INSTANCE=> Ile-St-Louis
HAS INSTANCE=> Corse, Corsica
HAS INSTANCE=> Martinique
HAS INSTANCE=> Faroe Islands, Faeroe Islands, Faroes, Faeroes
HAS INSTANCE=> Iceland
HAS INSTANCE=> Madagascar
HAS INSTANCE=> Maldives, Maldive Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Malta
HAS INSTANCE=> Mauritius
HAS INSTANCE=> New Zealand, New Zealand Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> North Island
HAS INSTANCE=> South Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Cebu
HAS INSTANCE=> Luzon
HAS INSTANCE=> Mindanao
HAS INSTANCE=> Mindoro
HAS INSTANCE=> Visayan Islands, Bisayas
HAS INSTANCE=> Azores, Acores
HAS INSTANCE=> Madeira
HAS INSTANCE=> Saint Christopher, St. Christopher, Saint Kitts, St. Kitts
HAS INSTANCE=> Nevis
HAS INSTANCE=> Sombrero
HAS INSTANCE=> Saint Lucia, St. Lucia
HAS INSTANCE=> Saint Vincent, St. Vincent
HAS INSTANCE=> Tahiti
HAS INSTANCE=> Samoa, Samoan Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Principe
HAS INSTANCE=> Seychelles, Seychelles islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Singapore, Singapore Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Novaya Zemlya, Nova Zembla
HAS INSTANCE=> Majorca
HAS INSTANCE=> Canary Islands, Canaries
HAS INSTANCE=> Tenerife
HAS INSTANCE=> Zanzibar
HAS INSTANCE=> Admiralty Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Santa Catalina, Catalina Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Hawaii, Hawaii Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Kahoolawe, Kahoolawe Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Kauai, Kauai Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Lanai, Lanai Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Maui, Maui Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Molokai, Molokai Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Nihau, Nihau Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Oahu, Oahu Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Martha's Vineyard
HAS INSTANCE=> Nantucket
HAS INSTANCE=> Liberty Island, Bedloe's Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Manhattan Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Ellis Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Long Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Galveston Island
HAS INSTANCE=> Krakatau, Krakatao, Krakatoa
HAS INSTANCE=> New Siberian Islands
=> barrier island
HAS INSTANCE=> isle, islet
HAS INSTANCE=> Kodiak, Kodiak Island
=> South Sea Islands
Sense 10
man, piece
-> game equipment
=> backboard, basketball backboard
=> ball
=> bowling equipment
=> counter
=> crossbar
=> game
=> goal
=> horseshoe
=> jack, jackstones
=> man, piece
=> net
=> paintball gun
=> pinball machine, pin table
=> pool table, billiard table, snooker table
=> quoit
=> roulette wheel, wheel
=> spinner
Sense 11
world, human race, humanity, humankind, human beings, humans, mankind, man
-> homo, man, human being, human
=> world, human race, humanity, humankind, human beings, humans, mankind, man
=> Homo erectus
=> Homo soloensis
=> Homo habilis
=> Homo sapiens
=> Neandertal man, Neanderthal man, Neandertal, Neanderthal, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
=> Rhodesian man, Homo rhodesiensis
-> group, grouping
=> world, human race, humanity, humankind, human beings, humans, mankind, man
=> arrangement
=> straggle
=> kingdom
=> biological group
=> community, biotic community
=> people
=> social group
=> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
=> edition
=> electron shell
=> ethnic group, ethnos
=> race
=> association
=> swarm, cloud
=> subgroup
=> sainthood
=> citizenry, people
=> population
=> multitude, masses, mass, hoi polloi, people, the great unwashed
=> varna
=> circuit
=> system, scheme
=> series
HAS INSTANCE=> Great Lakes
=> actinoid, actinide, actinon
=> rare earth, rare-earth element, lanthanoid, lanthanide, lanthanon
=> halogen
--- Grep of noun men
abdomen
acumen
agnomen
albumen
amen
association of orangemen
behmen
bitumen
board of selectmen
bremen
businessmen
catechumen
cerumen
cognomen
commission on the status of women
cyclamen
cytologic specimen
difference limen
differential limen
dolmen
duramen
ehadhamen
examen
flamen
foramen
four horsemen
genus cyclamen
hymen
ilmen
imperforate hymen
interventricular foramen
jakob behmen
lake ilmen
limen
linemen
lumen
meclomen
men
men's
men's furnishings
men's room
menace
menachem begin
menadione
menage
menage a trois
menagerie
menai strait
menander
menarche
mencken
mend
mendacity
mendel
mendel's law
mendeleev
mendeleev's law
mendelevium
mendeleyev
mendelian
mendelianism
mendelism
mendelsohn
mendelssohn
mendenhall glacier
mender
mendicancy
mendicant
mendicity
mending
menelaus
menhaden
menhaden oil
menhir
menial
meniere
meniere's disease
meningeal artery
meningeal veins
meninges
meningioma
meningism
meningitis
meningocele
meningoencephalitis
meninx
menippe
menippe mercenaria
meniscectomy
meniscium
meniscus
menispermaceae
menispermum
menispermum canadense
menninger
mennonite
mennonite church
mennonitism
meno mosso
menominee
menominee whitefish
menomini
menopause
menopon
menopon gallinae
menopon palladum
menorah
menorrhagia
menorrhea
menotti
menotyphla
mens rea
mens store
mensa
mensal line
mensch
menses
mensh
menshevik
menstrual blood
menstrual cycle
menstrual flow
menstrual phase
menstruation
menstruum
mensuration
mental ability
mental abnormality
mental age
mental anguish
mental attitude
mental balance
mental block
mental capacity
mental case
mental condition
mental confusion
mental defectiveness
mental deficiency
mental dexterity
mental disease
mental disorder
mental disturbance
mental energy
mental exhaustion
mental faculty
mental health
mental home
mental hospital
mental hygiene
mental illness
mental image
mental imagery
mental institution
mental lexicon
mental measurement
mental note
mental object
mental picture
mental process
mental quickness
mental rejection
mental representation
mental reservation
mental retardation
mental soundness
mental state
mental strain
mental synthesis
mental telepathist
mental test
mental testing
mental unsoundness
mentalism
mentality
mentally retarded
mentation
mentha
mentha aquatica
mentha arvensis
mentha citrata
mentha longifolia
mentha piperita
mentha pulegium
mentha rotundifolia
mentha spicata
mentha suaveolens
menthol
mentholated salve
menticirrhus
menticirrhus americanus
menticirrhus littoralis
menticirrhus saxatilis
menticirrhus undulatus
mention
mentioner
mentor
mentum
mentzelia
mentzelia laevicaulis
mentzelia lindleyi
mentzelia livicaulis
menu
menuhin
menura
menurae
menuridae
menyanthaceae
menyanthes
menyanthes trifoliata
menziesia
menziesia ferruginea
menziesia pilosa
midsummer-men
monro's foramen
numen
omen
praenomen
putamen
regimen
republic of yemen
rumen
semen
specimen
stamen
transverse muscle of abdomen
turkmen
turkomen
tutankhamen
type specimen
wise men
yemen
Grep of noun man
a'man
a. e. housman
abel janszoon tasman
abel tasman
able-bodied seaman
able seaman
abominable snowman
adman
age of man
ahriman
aircraftman
aircraftsman
aircrewman
airman
airwoman
alabaman
albizia saman
alderman
alfred edward housman
amman
anchorman
anglo-norman
ape-man
artilleryman
assemblyman
assemblywoman
assistant foreman
averell harriman
backup man
backwoodsman
baggageman
bagman
bandsman
barbara tuchman
barbara wertheim tuchman
bargeman
barman
barrow-man
batman
batsman
battle of omdurman
beadsman
bedesman
beef man
beggarman
beggarwoman
belle miriam silverman
bellman
benjamin david goodman
benny goodman
bergman
best man
big businessman
bionic man
bionic woman
black man
black woman
boatman
bogeyman
bondman
bondsman
bondswoman
bondwoman
boogeyman
bookman
border patrolman
boskop man
bowman
bozeman
brahman
brakeman
broth of a man
bushman
businessman
businesswoman
busman
cabman
caiman
cameraman
capital of oman
cardinal newman
career man
cattleman
cavalryman
cave man
caveman
cayman
ceriman
chairman
chairwoman
chapman
chargeman
charlotte anna perkins gilman
charwoman
chessman
chinaman
christiaan eijkman
churchman
city man
clansman
clanswoman
cleaning woman
clergyman
coachman
coalman
coastguardsman
college man
comfort woman
committeeman
committeewoman
common man
company man
con man
confidence man
congressman
congresswoman
conjure man
corner man
cornishman
cornishwoman
councilman
councilwoman
counterman
counterwoman
countryman
countrywoman
cousin-german
cow man
cowman
cracksman
craftsman
cragsman
crewman
customer's man
dairyman
dalesman
david barnard steinman
david riesman
deliveryman
deskman
dirty old man
disagreeable woman
divorced man
doberman
dolman
domingo de guzman
doorman
draftsman
dragoman
draughtsman
dustin hoffman
dustman
dutchman
e. h. harriman
earthman
east german
eastman
edward henry harriman
eijkman
ekman
elder statesman
elevator man
elizabeth cochrane seaman
elizabeth seaman
emma goldman
end man
englishman
englishwoman
enlisted man
enlisted woman
ent man
ethel merman
everyman
ex-serviceman
exciseman
fall of man
family man
fancy man
fancy woman
feral man
ferryman
feynman
fieldsman
fingerprint man
fireman
first baseman
fisherman
flying dutchman
foeman
foolish woman
footman
foreman
forewoman
four-minute man
freedman
freedwoman
freeman
freewoman
frenchman
frenchwoman
freshman
friedman
frogman
front man
frontiersman
frontierswoman
fugleman
g-man
gagman
garbage man
garbageman
gasman
gay man
gay woman
gentleman
gentleman's gentleman
gentlewoman
genus caiman
george eastman
george s. kaufman
george simon kaufman
german
gilman
gingerbread man
goldman
goodman
government man
greg norman
gregory john norman
groomsman
groundsman
guardsman
gulf of oman
gunman
hachiman
haman
handyman
hangman
hanuman
hardwareman
harriet tubman
harriman
harry s truman
harry truman
harvestman
hatchet man
he-man
head linesman
headman
headsman
heidelberg man
hellman
helmsman
henchman
herdsman
herman
high german
highwayman
hired man
hit man
hitman
hodman
hoffman
holdup man
holy man
honest woman
horseman
horsewoman
hotelman
houseman
housman
human
huntsman
husbandman
iceman
indiaman
infantryman
ingerman
ingmar bergman
ingrid bergman
irishman
irishwoman
iron man
ironman
isle of man
java man
jazzman
jessye norman
john chapman
john henry newman
journeyman
julius ullman
juryman
jurywoman
kaufman
kept woman
kinsman
kinswoman
klansman
ladies' man
lake leman
landman
landsman
laundryman
laundrywoman
lawman
layman
leading man
ledgeman
lensman
letterman
liegeman
life-of-man
liftman
lighterman
lillian hellman
liman
lineman
linesman
linkman
linksman
liveryman
lobsterman
lockman
lollipop woman
longbowman
longshoreman
lookout man
loose woman
louis the german
low german
lowerclassman
lumberman
macho-man
madman
madwoman
mailman
maintenance man
maltman
malvina hoffman
man
man's body
man's clothing
man-about-town
man-at-arms
man-child
man-eater
man-eating shark
man-made fiber
man-made lake
man-of-the-earth
man-of-war
man-of-war bird
man-on-a-horse
man and wife
man friday
man hour
man in the street
man jack
man of action
man of affairs
man of deeds
man of letters
man of means
man of the cloth
man of the world
manacle
manageability
manageableness
managed economy
management
management consultant
management consulting
management control
management personnel
manager
manageress
managership
managing director
managing editor
managua
manakin
manama
manana
manannan
manassa mauler
manat
manatee
manawydan
manawyddan
manchester
manchester terrier
manchu
manchu dynasty
manchuria
mancunian
manda
mandaean
mandaeanism
mandala
mandalay
mandamus
mandara
mandarin
mandarin chinese
mandarin dialect
mandarin duck
mandarin orange
mandarin orange tree
mandatary
mandate
mandator
mandatory
mandatory injunction
mande
mandean
mandeanism
mandela
mandelamine
mandelbrot
mandelbrot set
mandelshtam
mandelstam
mandevilla
mandevilla boliviensis
mandevilla laxa
mandible
mandibula
mandibular bone
mandibular condyle
mandibular fossa
mandibular gland
mandibular joint
mandibular notch
mandioc
mandioca
mandola
mandolin
mandragora
mandragora officinarum
mandrake
mandrake root
mandrel
mandril
mandrill
mandrillus
mandrillus leucophaeus
mandrillus sphinx
manduca
manduca quinquemaculata
manduca sexta
manduction
mane
maned sheep
maned wolf
manes
manet
maneuver
maneuverability
maneuverer
manfred eigen
manfulness
mangabey
manganate
manganese
manganese bronze
manganese steel
manganese tetroxide
manganic acid
manganite
mange
mangel-wurzel
manger
mangifera
mangifera indica
manginess
mangle
mangler
manglietia
mango
mango tree
mangold
mangold-wurzel
mangonel
mangosteen
mangosteen tree
mangrove
mangrove family
mangrove snapper
manhattan
manhattan clam chowder
manhattan island
manhattan project
manhole
manhole cover
manhood
manhunt
mania
maniac
manic-depressive
manic-depressive psychosis
manic depression
manic depressive illness
manic disorder
manichaean
manichaeanism
manichaeism
manichean
manichee
manicotti
manicure
manicure set
manicurist
manidae
manifest
manifest destiny
manifestation
manifesto
manifold
manifold paper
manihot
manihot dulcis
manihot esculenta
manihot utilissima
manikin
manila
manila bay
manila bean
manila grass
manila hemp
manila maguey
manila paper
manila tamarind
manilkara
manilkara bidentata
manilkara zapota
manilla
manilla hemp
manilla paper
manioc
manioca
manipulability
manipulation
manipulative electronic deception
manipulator
manipur
maniraptor
maniraptora
manis
manitoba
mankato
mankind
manliness
mann
manna
manna ash
manna from heaven
manna grass
manna gum
manna lichen
mannequin
manner
manner name
manner of speaking
manner of walking
mannerism
manners
mannheim
mannikin
mannitol
manoeuvrability
manoeuvre
manoeuvrer
manometer
manor
manor hall
manor house
manpad
manpower
manroot
mansard
mansard roof
mansart
manse
manservant
mansfield
mansi
mansion
mansion house
manslaughter
manslayer
manson
manta
manta birostris
manta ray
mantegna
manteidae
mantel
mantelet
mantell
mantelpiece
manteodea
mantichora
manticora
manticore
mantid
mantidae
mantiger
mantilla
mantinea
mantineia
mantis
mantis crab
mantis prawn
mantis religioso
mantis shrimp
mantispid
mantispidae
mantissa
mantle
mantled ground squirrel
mantlepiece
mantlet
mantophasmatodea
mantoux test
mantra
mantrap
mantua
manual
manual alphabet
manual dexterity
manual labor
manual laborer
manual labour
manual of arms
manubrium
manuel de falla
manuel rodriquez patriotic front
manufactory
manufacture
manufactured home
manufacturer
manufacturing
manufacturing business
manufacturing plant
manul
manumission
manumitter
manure
manus
manuscript
manx
manx cat
manx shearwater
manzanilla
manzanita
manzoni
marcus whitman
marksman
married man
married woman
matman
meatman
mechanical man
medical man
medicine man
medieval schoolman
merchantman
merman
middle-aged man
middle high german
middle low german
middleman
midshipman
military man
military policeman
militiaman
milkman
milton friedman
minuteman
miracle man
modern man
moneyman
motorcycle policeman
motorman
mount sherman
mountain man
muffin man
muscat and oman
muscleman
navy man
neandertal man
neanderthal man
needlewoman
newman
newsman
newspaperman
newspaperwoman
newswoman
night watchman
nobleman
noblewoman
norman
norseman
northman
nurseryman
oarsman
oarswoman
odd-job man
odd man out
oilman
oklahoman
old-man-of-the-woods
old high german
old man
old man of the mountain
old woman
oman
ombudsman
omdurman
one-man rule
orangeman
organization man
ottoman
outdoor man
outdoorsman
outdoorswoman
pac-man strategy
packman
pantryman
party man
patrolman
paul leonard newman
paul newman
peking man
penman
pieter zeeman
pigman
piltdown man
pinchas zukerman
pitchman
pitman
pivot man
placeman
plainclothesman
plainsman
plantsman
ploughman
plowman
point man
point woman
pointsman
policeman
policewoman
portuguese man-of-war
posseman
postman
potman
poultryman
pr man
preacher man
president truman
pressman
privateersman
property man
propman
public relations man
publicity man
pullman
quarryman
raftman
raftsman
railroad man
railway man
railwayman
ramman
red man
remittance man
renaissance man
repairman
rewrite man
rhodesian man
rich man
richard feynman
richard phillips feynman
riesman
rifleman
right-hand man
roadman
roger sherman
roman
roundsman
running postman
salesman
saleswoman
saman
sandman
sandwichman
schoolman
scotchman
scotchwoman
scotsman
scotswoman
seaman
second baseman
section man
seedman
seedsman
selectman
selectwoman
service man
serviceman
shaman
sheepman
sherman
showman
sidesman
signalman
sir isaac pitman
skilled workman
slovenly woman
small businessman
snowman
solo man
soman
soundman
spaceman
spectacled caiman
spokesman
spokeswoman
sporting man
sportsman
sportswoman
squaw man
stableman
stan the man
statesman
stateswoman
stayman
steelman
steersman
steinman
stickup man
stockman
straight man
straw man
strawman
strongman
stunt man
stunt woman
sultanate of oman
superman
swagman
switchman
swordsman
t-man
takilman
talisman
tallyman
tasman
taximan
taxman
third baseman
tibeto-burman
timberman
tollman
townsman
tradesman
trainbandsman
trainman
traveling salesman
travelling salesman
trencherman
tribesman
triggerman
trinil man
truman
tubman
tuchman
turcoman
turkoman
tv newsman
two-man saw
two-man tent
underclassman
unmarried man
unmarried woman
unpleasant woman
utility man
vagn walfrid ekman
vestryman
vestrywoman
vice chairman
vigilance man
visiting fireman
walkman
walt whitman
warehouseman
washerman
washerwoman
washwoman
watchman
water boatman
waterman
wealthy man
weatherman
welshman
white man
white woman
whitman
widow woman
widowman
wild man
william averell harriman
william tecumseh sherman
wingman
wireman
wise man
wolfman
woman
wonder woman
woodman
woodrow charles herman
woodsman
woody herman
working man
workingman
workman
worship of man
yachtsman
yachtswoman
yardman
yellow man
yellow woman
yeoman
yes-man
young man
young woman
yuman
zaman
zeeman
zukerman