1. Causing irreversible ruin, destruction or death; disastrous. 2. Decisively important; fateful. 3. Proceeding from or decreed by fate; inevitable. 4. Influencing or concerned with fate; fatalistic.
1. Not failing; not giving way; not falling short of expectation; completely dependable. 2. Never giving out or coming to an end; unceasing, constant, continual, endless.
1. Not wearied, tired, or tired out; also, never becoming weary; indefatigable. 2. Of qualities, actions, conditions, etc.; Marked by absence of abatement; unremitting.
(2) Flirtations with realism, neutral monism, positivism or behaviorism have never seriously interfered with Russell's attempt to establish philosophy as a science. The emptical data being supplied by the experimental scientist, the specifically philosophical task becomes the analysis of such deliverances (with the full resources of modern logistic). Unlike certain of his followers, Russell has never been strenuously anti-metaphysical. He has never held pragmatic, still less conventional, views with regard to the nature of logic itself. And his general empirical approach has been constantly modified by rationalistic views concerning the subsistence of universals. -- M.B.
32-bit application "architecture, operating system" {IBM PC} software that runs in a 32-bit {flat address space}. The term {32-bit application} came about because {MS-DOS} and {Microsoft Windows} were originally written for the {Intel 8088} and {80286} {microprocessors}. These are {16 bit} microprocessors with a {segmented address space}. Programs with more than 64 kilobytes of code and/or data therefore had to switch between {segments} quite frequently. As this operation is quite time consuming in comparison to other machine operations, the application's performance may suffer. Furthermore, programming with segments is more involved than programming in a flat address space, giving rise to some complications in programming languages like "{memory models}" in {C} and {C++}. The shift from 16-bit software to 32-bit software on {IBM PC} {clones} became possible with the introduction of the {Intel 80386} microprocessor. This microprocessor and its successors support a segmented address space with 16-bit and 32 bit segments (more precisely: segments with 16- or 32-bit address offset) or a linear 32-bit address space. For compatibility reasons, however, much of the software is nevertheless written in 16-bit models. {Operating systems} like {Microsoft Windows} or {OS/2} provide the possibility to run 16-bit (segmented) programs as well as 32-bit programs. The former possibility exists for {backward compatibility} and the latter is usually meant to be used for new software development. See also {Win32s}. (1995-12-11)
Abailard, Peter: (1079-1142) Was born at Pallet in France; distinguished himself as a brilliant student of the trivium and quadrivium; studied logic with Roscelin and Wm. of Champeaux. He taught philosophy, with much emphasis on dialectic, at Melun, Corbeil, and the schools of St. Genevieve and Notre Dame in Paris. He was lecturing on theology in Paris c. 1113 when he was involved in the romantic and unfortunate interlude with Heloise. First condemned for heresy in 1121, he became Abbot of St. Gildas in 1125, and after returning to teach theology in Paris, his religious views were censured by the Council of Sens (1141). He died at Cluny after making his peace with God and his Church. Tactless, but very intelligent, Abailard set the course of mediaeval philosophy for two centuries with his interest in the problem of universals. He appears to have adopted a nominalistic solution, rather than the semi-realistic position attributed to him by the older historians. Chief works: Sic et Non (c. 1122), Theologia Christiana (c. 1124), Scito Teipsum (1125-1138) and several Logical Glosses (ed. B. Geyer, Abaelard's Philos. Schrift. BGPM, XXI, 1-3).
abjuration ::: n. --> The act of abjuring or forswearing; a renunciation upon oath; as, abjuration of the realm, a sworn banishment, an oath taken to leave the country and never to return.
A solemn recantation or renunciation; as, an abjuration of heresy.
acatalepsy ::: n. --> Incomprehensibility of things; the doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.
accumulator "processor" In a {central processing unit}, a {register} in which intermediate results are stored. Without an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation (addition, multiplication, {shift}, etc.) to {main memory} and read them back. Access to main memory is slower than access to the accumulator which usually has direct paths to and from the {arithmetic and logic unit} (ALU). The {canonical} example is summing a list of numbers. The accumulator is set to zero initially, each number in turn is added to the value in the accumulator and only when all numbers have been added is the result written to main memory. Modern CPUs usually have many registers, all or many of which can be used as accumulators. For this reason, the term "accumulator" is somewhat archaic. Use of it as a synonym for "register" is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in "A" derive from historical use of the term "accumulator" (and not, actually, from "arithmetic"). Confusingly, though, an "A" register name prefix may also stand for "address", as for example on the {Motorola} {680x0} family. 2. "programming" A register, memory location or variable being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to accumulate a sum or count of many items. This use is in context of a particular routine or stretch of code. "The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an accumulator." [{Jargon File}] (1999-04-20)
adequate ::: (vak) having the qualities of the lowest level of style, which "has the power to make us . . . see the object or idea in a certain temperate lucidity of vision"; most often combined with a higher level, as in the effective-adequate style or the inevitable form of the adequate.
Advanced RISC Machine "processor" (ARM, Originally {Acorn} RISC Machine). A series of low-cost, power-efficient 32-bit {RISC} {microprocessors} for embedded control, computing, {digital signal processing}, {games}, consumer {multimedia} and portable applications. It was the first commercial RISC microprocessor (or was the {MIPS R2000}?) and was licensed for production by {Asahi Kasei Microsystems}, {Cirrus Logic}, {GEC Plessey Semiconductors}, {Samsung}, {Sharp}, {Texas Instruments} and {VLSI Technology}. The ARM has a small and highly {orthogonal instruction set}, as do most RISC processors. Every instruction includes a four-bit code which specifies a condition (of the {processor status register}) which must be satisfied for the instruction to be executed. Unconditional execution is specified with a condition "true". Instructions are split into load and store which access memory and arithmetic and logic instructions which work on {registers} (two source and one destination). The ARM has 27 registers of which 16 are accessible in any particular processor mode. R15 combines the {program counter} and processor status byte, the other registers are general purpose except that R14 holds the {return address} after a {subroutine} call and R13 is conventionally used as a {stack pointer}. There are four processor modes: user, {interrupt} (with a private copy of R13 and R14), fast interrupt (private copies of R8 to R14) and {supervisor} (private copies of R13 and R14). The {ALU} includes a 32-bit {barrel-shifter} allowing, e.g., a single-{cycle} shift and add. The first ARM processor, the ARM1 was a prototype which was never released. The ARM2 was originally called the Acorn RISC Machine. It was designed by {Acorn Computers Ltd.} and used in the original {Archimedes}, their successor to the {BBC Micro} and {BBC Master} series which were based on the eight-bit {6502} {microprocessor}. It was clocked at 8 MHz giving an average performance of 4 - 4.7 {MIPS}. Development of the ARM family was then continued by a new company, {Advanced RISC Machines Ltd.} The {ARM3} added a {fully-associative} on-chip {cache} and some support for {multiprocessing}. This was followed by the {ARM600} chip which was an {ARM6} processor {core} with a 4-kilobyte 64-way {set-associative} {cache}, an {MMU} based on the MEMC2 chip, a {write buffer} (8 words?) and a {coprocessor} interface. The {ARM7} processor core uses half the power of the {ARM6} and takes around half the {die} size. In a full processor design ({ARM700} chip) it should provide 50% to 100% more performance. In July 1994 {VLSI Technology, Inc.} released the {ARM710} processor chip. {Thumb} is an implementation with reduced code size requirements, intended for {embedded} applications. An {ARM800} chip is also planned. {AT&T}, {IBM}, {Panasonic}, {Apple Coputer}, {Matsushita} and {Sanyo} either rely on, or manufacture, ARM 32-bit processor chips. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.sys.arm}. (1997-08-05)
A dyadic relation R is irreflexive if xRx never holds (e.g., the relation less than among whole numbers). -- A.C.
Aeviternity: (Lat. aevum, never-ending time) Eternity conceived as a whole, apart from the flux of time; an endless temporal medium in which objects and events are relatively fixed. -- R.B.W.
affection ::: n. --> The act of affecting or acting upon; the state of being affected.
An attribute; a quality or property; a condition; a bodily state; as, figure, weight, etc. , are affections of bodies.
Bent of mind; a feeling or natural impulse or natural impulse acting upon and swaying the mind; any emotion; as, the benevolent affections, esteem, gratitude, etc.; the malevolent affections, hatred, envy, etc.; inclination; disposition; propensity;
Aftermath of descent: Whenever there .is a descent of the higher consciousness in the adhara: (1) Part of it is stored up in the frontal consdousness and remains there. (2) Part of it goes behind and remains as a support to the active part of the being. (3) Part flows out into the universal Nature. (4) Part is" absorbed by the inconsdent and lost to the individual cons- dousness and its action.
Al-Ghafur ::: The One who’s Mercy should never be doubted or given up on. The One who enables necessary cleansing and triggers the name Rahim to bestow blessings.
Al-Jabbar ::: The One whose will is compelling. The corporeal worlds (engendered existence) are compelled to comply with His demands! There is no room for refusal. This ‘jabr’ (compelling) quality will inevitably express itself and apply its laws through the essence of beings.
All Indian doctrines orient themselves by the Vedas, accepting or rejecting their authority. In ranging from materialism to acosmism and nihilism, from physiologism to spiritualism, realism to idealism, monism to pluralism, atheism and pantheism, Hindus believe they have exhausted all possible philosophic attitudes (cf. darsana), which they feel supplement rather than exclude each other. A unnersal feature is the fusion of religion, metaphysics, ethics and psychology, due to the universal acceptance of a psycho-physicalism, further exemplified in the typical doctrines of karma and samsara (q.v.). Rigorous logic is nevertheless applied in theology where metaphvsics passes into eschatology (cf., e.g., is) and the generally accepted belief in the cyclic nature of the cosmos oscillating between srsti ("throwing out") and pralaya (dissolution) of the absolute reality (cf. abhasa), and in psychology, where epistemology seeks practical outlets in Yoga (q.v.). With a genius for abstraction, thinkers were and are almost invariably hedonistically motivated by the desire to overcome the evils of existence in the hope of attaining liberation (cf. moksa) and everlasting bliss (cf. ananda, nirvana). -- K.F.L.
"All Nature is simply . . . the Seer-Will, the Knowledge-Force of the Conscious-Being at work to evolve in force and form all the inevitable truth of the Idea into which it has originally thrown itself.” The Life Divine
“All Nature is simply . . . the Seer-Will, the Knowledge-Force of the Conscious-Being at work to evolve in force and form all the inevitable truth of the Idea into which it has originally thrown itself.” The Life Divine
Al-Majid ::: The magnificent and glorious One with unrestricted, infinite generosity and endowment (benevolence).
Al-Muta’ali ::: The limitless, boundless Supreme One, whose supremacy encompasses everything! The One whose reality can never be duly reflected by any engendered, conceptualized existence. The One who is beyond being limited by any mind or intellect.
alt "character" /awlt/ 1. The alt {modifier key} on many {keyboards}, including the {IBM PC}. On some keyboards and {operating systems}, (but not the IBM PC) the alt key sets bit 7 of the character generated. See {bucky bits}. 2. The "{clover}" or "Command" key on a {Macintosh}; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see also {feature key}). Some Mac hackers, confusingly, reserve "alt" for the Option key (and it is so labelled on some Mac II keyboards). 3. (Obsolete {PDP-10}; often "ALT") An alternate name for the {ASCII} ESC character (Escape, ASCII 27), after the keycap labelling on some older {terminals}; also "altmode" (/awlt'mohd/). This character was almost never pronounced "escape" on an {ITS} system, in {TECO} or under {TOPS-10}, always alt, as in "Type alt alt to end a TECO command" or "alt-U onto the system" (for "log onto the [ITS] system"). This usage probably arose because alt is easier to say. 4. "messaging" One of the {Usenet} {newsgroup} {hierarchies}. It was founded by {John Gilmore} and {Brian Reid}. The alt hierarchy is special in that anyone can create new groups here without going though the normal voting proceduers, hence the regular appearence of new groups with names such as "alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork". [{Jargon File}] (1997-04-12)
Altruism: (Alter: other) In general, the cult of benevolence; the opposite of Egoism (q.v.). Term coined by Comte and adopted in Britain by H. Spencer.
Amal: “The line occurs in a passage describing a region of illusive realities. In this region everything strives towards form but never quite achieves it.
A manifestation of the Supermiod and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable ; it must happen in this world sooner or later.
amaranth ::: n. --> An imaginary flower supposed never to fade.
A genus of ornamental annual plants (Amaranthus) of many species, with green, purplish, or crimson flowers.
A color inclining to purple.
amber room ::: --> A room formerly in the Czar&
America's Multimedia Online "company, web" (AMO) An {Internet} technologies company which invented {Never Offline} in 1995 and was officially started in 1996. {(http://amo.net/)}. E-mail: AMO "amo@amo.net". Address: Albuquerque, NM, USA. (1999-11-03)
Amitabha Buddha ::: [in Buddhist legend "the Buddha of measureless splendour"] who turned away when his spirit was on the threshold of nirvana and took the vow never to cross its while a single being remained in the sorrow and the Ignorance.
Analogy: (in Scholasticism) Predication common to several inferiors of a name, which is accepted in different senses, in such a manner, nevertheless, that some principle warrants its common applicability. Accordingly as this principle is sought in the relations of cause and effect, proportion or proportionality there are distinguished various types of analogy.
Analytical Engine "history" A design for a general-purpose digital computer proposed by {Charles Babbage} in 1837 as a successor to his earlier special-purpose {Difference Engine}. The Analytical Engine was to be built from brass gears powered by steam with input given on {punched cards}. Babbage could never secure enough funding to build it, and so it was, and never has been, constructed. {(http://fourmilab.ch/babbage/)}. (1998-10-19)
". . . an Avatar is not at all bound to be a spiritual prophet — he is never in fact merely a prophet, he is a realiser, an establisher — not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but, as I have said, of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
“… an Avatar is not at all bound to be a spiritual prophet—he is never in fact merely a prophet, he is a realiser, an establisher—not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but, as I have said, of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.” Letters on Yoga*
“… an Avatar is not at all bound to be a spiritual prophet—he is never in fact merely a prophet, he is a realiser, an establisher—not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but, as I have said, of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
And still we can recognise at once in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. For if each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line and carry out its complete consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence; this is Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source. There has already been a similar separation of Overmind from its supramental source, but with a transparency in the veil which allows a conscious transmission and maintains a certain luminous kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Mind separated acts as if it were an independent principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force stands similarly on its separate self; if it communicates with or combines or contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of the overmind movement, on a basis of underlying oneness, but as independent units joining to form a separate constructed whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level, no doubt, comprehends its own unity, but it is not aware of its own source and foundation in the Spirit or can only comprehend it by the intelligence, not in any enduring experience; it acts in itself as if by its own right and works out what it receives as material without direct communication with the source from which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of each other and of the cosmic whole except for the knowledge that they can get by contact and communication,—the basic sense of identity and the mutual penetration and understanding that comes from it are no longer there. All the actions of this Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance and its divisions and, although they are the results of a certain conscious knowledge, it is a partial knowledge, not a true and integral self-knowledge, nor a true and integral world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter and reappears in the gross material universe which arises from the final lapse into the Inconscience. …
— and this is inevitable in some degree until this lower mortal has learned something of the way of that greater immortal nature,
"An evolution of innate and latent but as yet unevolved powers of consciousness is not considered admissible by the modern mind, because these exceed our present formulation of Nature and, to our ignorant preconceptions founded on a limited experience, they seem to belong to the supernatural, to the miraculous and occult; for they surpass the known action of material Energy which is now ordinarily accepted as the sole cause and mode of things and the sole instrumentation of the World-Force.” The Life Divine
“An evolution of innate and latent but as yet unevolved powers of consciousness is not considered admissible by the modern mind, because these exceed our present formulation of Nature and, to our ignorant preconceptions founded on a limited experience, they seem to belong to the supernatural, to the miraculous and occult; for they surpass the known action of material Energy which is now ordinarily accepted as the sole cause and mode of things and the sole instrumentation of the World-Force.” The Life Divine
"A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle. This advance like others in the evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound, but from the very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the eventual outcome.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle. This advance like others in the evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound, but from the very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the eventual outcome.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Anticipations of experience: In Kant's Crit. of pure Reason Antizipationen der Wahrnehmung) the second of two synthetic principles of the understanding (the other being "Axioms of Intuition") by which the mind is able to determine something a priori in regard to what is in itself empirical. While the mind cannot anticipate the specific qualities which are to be experienced, we can, nevertheless, Kant holds, predetermine or anticipate any sense experience that "in all appearances the real, which is an object of sensation, has intensive magnitude or degree." -- O.F.K.
AOS 1. "programming" /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) A {PDP-10} instruction that took any memory location and added 1 to it. AOS meant "Add One and do not Skip". Why, you may ask, does the "S" stand for "do not Skip" rather than for "Skip"? Ah, here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always; and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never skipped. For similar reasons, AOJ meant "Add One and do not Jump". Even more bizarre, SKIP meant "do not SKIP"! If you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say "SKIPA". Likewise, JUMP meant "do not JUMP"; the unconditional form was JUMPA. However, hackers never did this. By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST} (Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of assembler programming. 2. "operating system" /A-O-S/ or /A-os/ A {Multics}-derived {operating system} supported at one time by {Data General}. A spoof of the standard AOS system administrator's manual ("How to Load and Generate your AOS System") was created, issued a part number, and circulated as photocopy folklore; it was called "How to Goad and Levitate your CHAOS System". 3. "operating system" Algebraic Operating System, in reference to those calculators which use {infix} {operators} instead of {postfix notation}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-11-26)
appurtenance ::: n. --> That which belongs to something else; an adjunct; an appendage; an accessory; something annexed to another thing more worthy; in common parlance and legal acceptation, something belonging to another thing as principal, and which passes as incident to it, as a right of way, or other easement to land; a right of common to pasture, an outhouse, barn, garden, or orchard, to a house or messuage. In a strict legal sense, land can never pass as an appurtenance to land.
ARRESTS IN SADHANA. ::: A difficulty comes or an arrest in some movement which you have begun or have been carrying on for some time. Such arrests are inevitably frequent enough; one might almost say that every step forward is followed by an arrest. It is to be dealt with by becoming always more quiet, more firm in the will to go through, by opening oneself more and more so that any obstructing non-receptivity in the nature may diminish or disappear, by an affirmation of faith even in the midst of obscurity, faith in the presence of a Power that is working behind the cloud and the veil, in the guidance of the Guru, by an observation of oneself to find any cause of the arrest, not in a spirit of depression or discouragement but with the will to find out and remove it. This is the only right attitude and, if one is persistent in taking it, the periods of arrest are not abolished, - for that cannot be at this stage, - but greatly shortened and lightened in their incidence. Sometimes these arrests are periods, long or short, of assimilation or unseen preparation, their appearance of sterile immobility is deceptive ::: in that case, with the right attitude, one can after a time, by opening, by observation, by accumulated experience, begin to feel, to get some inkling of what is being prepared or done. Sometimes it is a period of true obstruction in which the Power at work has to deal with the obstacles in the way, obstacles in oneself, obstacles of the opposing cosmic forces or any other or of all together, and this kind of arrest may be long or short according to the magnitude or obstinacy or complexity of the impediments that are met. But here, too, the right attitude can alleviate or shorten and, if persistently taken, help to a more radical removal of the difficulties and greatly diminish the necessity of complete arrests hereafter.
On the contrary, an attitude of depression or unfaith in the help or the guidance or in the certitude of the victory of the guiding Power, a shutting up of yourself in the sense of the difficulties, helps the obstructions to recur with force instead of progressively diminishing in their incidence.
Ars Combinatoria: (Leibniz) An art or technique of deriving or inventing complex concepts by a combination of a relatively few simple ones taken as primitive. This technique was proposed as a valuable subject for study by Leibniz in De Arte Combinatoria (1666) but was never greatly developed by him. Leibniz's program for logic consisted of two main projects: (1) the development of a universal characteristic (characteristica universalis), and (2) the development of a universal mathematics (mathesis universalis (q.v.). The universal characteristic was to be a universal language for scientists and philosophers. With a relatively few basic symbols for the ultimately simple ideas, and a suitable technique for constructing compound ideas out of the simple ones, Leibniz thought that a language could be constructed which would be much more efficient for reasoning and for communication than the vague, complicated, and more or less parochial languages then available. This language would be completely universal in the sense that all scientific and philosophical concepts could be expressed in it, and also in that it would enable scholars m all countries to communicate over the barriers of their vernacular tongues. Leibniz's proposals in this matter, and what work he did on it, are the grand predecessors of a vast amount of research which has been done in the last hundred years on the techniques of language construction, and specifically on the invention of formal rules and procedures for introducing new terms into a language on the basis of terms already present, the general project of constructing a unified language for science and philosophy. L. Couturat, La Logique de Leibniz, Paris, 1901; C. I. Lewis, A Survey of Symbolic Logic, Berkeley, 1918. -- F.L.W.
artificial neural network "artificial intelligence" (ANN, commonly just "neural network" or "neural net") A network of many very simple processors ("units" or "neurons"), each possibly having a (small amount of) local memory. The units are connected by unidirectional communication channels ("connections"), which carry numeric (as opposed to symbolic) data. The units operate only on their local data and on the inputs they receive via the connections. A neural network is a processing device, either an {algorithm}, or actual hardware, whose design was inspired by the design and functioning of animal brains and components thereof. Most neural networks have some sort of "training" rule whereby the weights of connections are adjusted on the basis of presented patterns. In other words, neural networks "learn" from examples, just like children learn to recognise dogs from examples of dogs, and exhibit some structural capability for generalisation. Neurons are often elementary non-linear signal processors (in the limit they are simple threshold discriminators). Another feature of NNs which distinguishes them from other computing devices is a high degree of interconnection which allows a high degree of parallelism. Further, there is no idle memory containing data and programs, but rather each neuron is pre-programmed and continuously active. The term "neural net" should logically, but in common usage never does, also include biological neural networks, whose elementary structures are far more complicated than the mathematical models used for ANNs. See {Aspirin}, {Hopfield network}, {McCulloch-Pitts neuron}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.ai.neural-nets}. (1997-10-13)
ASCIIbonics "chat" (From {ASCII} and Ebonics) A style of text communication in English which is most common on {talk} systems such as {irc}. Its notable characteristics are: Typing all in lowercase (and occasionally all in uppercase). Copious use of abbreviations of the sort "u" for "you" "1" for "one" (and therefore "some1" for "someone", "ne1" for "anyone"), "2" for "to", "r" for "are", etc. A general lack of punctuation, except for strings of question marks and exclamation marks. Common use of the idiom "m or f?", meant to elicit a statement of the listener's gender. Typical extended discourse in ASCIIbonics: "hey wasup ne1 want 2 {cyber}?" "m or f?" ASCIIbonics is similar to the way {B1FF} talked, although B1FF used more punctuation (lots more), and used all uppercase, rather than all lowercase. What's more, B1FF was only interested in {warez}, and so never asked "m or f?". It has been widely observed that some of the purest examples of ASCIIbonics come from non-native speakers of English. The phenomenon of ASCIIbonics predates by several years the use of the word "ASCIIbonics", as the word could only have been coined in or after late 1996, when "Ebonics" was first used in the US media to denote the US English dialects known in the linguistic literature as "Black Vernacular English". (1997-06-21)
::: "As for prophecy, I have never met or known of a prophet, however reputed, who was infallible. Some of their predictions come true to the letter, others do not, — they half-fulfil or misfire entirely. It does not follow that the power of prophecy is unreal or the accurate predictions can be all explained by probability, chance, coincidence. The nature and number of those that cannot is too great. The variability of fulfilment may be explained either by an imperfect power in the prophet sometimes active, sometimes failing or by the fact that things are predictable in part only, they are determined in part only or else by different factors or lines of power, different series of potentials and actuals. So long as one is in touch with one line, one predicts accurately, otherwise not — or if the lines of power change, one"s prophecy also goes off the rails. All the same, one may say, there must be, if things are predictable at all, some power or plane through which or on which all is foreseeable; if there is a divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, it must be so. Even then what is foreseen has to be worked out, actually is worked out by a play of forces, — spiritual, mental, vital and physical forces — and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces.” Letters on Yoga
“As for prophecy, I have never met or known of a prophet, however reputed, who was infallible. Some of their predictions come true to the letter, others do not,—they half-fulfil or misfire entirely. It does not follow that the power of prophecy is unreal or the accurate predictions can be all explained by probability, chance, coincidence. The nature and number of those that cannot is too great. The variability of fulfilment may be explained either by an imperfect power in the prophet sometimes active, sometimes failing or by the fact that things are predictable in part only, they are determined in part only or else by different factors or lines of power, different series of potentials and actuals. So long as one is in touch with one line, one predicts accurately, otherwise not—or if the lines of power change, one’s prophecy also goes off the rails. All the same, one may say, there must be, if things are predictable at all, some power or plane through which or on which all is foreseeable; if there is a divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, it must be so. Even then what is foreseen has to be worked out, actually is worked out by a play of forces,—spiritual, mental, vital and physical forces—and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces.” Letters on Yoga
(A situation often arising in practice is that a word -- or symbol or notation -- which already has a vague meaning is to be given a new exact meaning, which is vaguely, or as nearly as possible, the same as the old. This is done by a nominal or semantical definition rather than a real definition; nevertheless it is usual in such a case to speak either of defining the word or of defining the associated notion.)
asperate ::: v. t. --> To make rough or uneven.
asperity ::: n. --> Roughness of surface; unevenness; -- opposed to smoothness.
Roughness or harshness of sound; that quality which grates upon the ear; raucity.
Roughness to the taste; sourness; tartness.
Moral roughness; roughness of manner; severity; crabbedness; harshness; -- opposed to mildness.
Sharpness; disagreeableness; difficulty.
asperous ::: a. --> Rough; uneven.
As regards exclusive disjunction in the propositional calculus, the caution should be noted that, although p + q is the exclusive disjunction of p and q, and although + obeys an associative law, nevertheless [p + q] + r is not the exclusive disjunction of the three propositions p, q, r -- but is rather, "Either all three or one and one only of p, q, r." -- A.C.
association ::: n. --> The act of associating, or state of being associated; union; connection, whether of persons of things.
Mental connection, or that which is mentally linked or associated with a thing.
Union of persons in a company or society for some particular purpose; as, the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a benevolent association. Specifically, as among the Congregationalists, a society, consisting of a number of ministers,
As Sri Aurobindo once wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy, (I paraphrase) ‘ The earth is a conscious being and the world is only the form it takes to manifest.’ This statement of the Avatar, predating the GAIA theory by many years and far surpassing it in its infinite scope, promises an earth returned to beauty to manifest, unknown to man, an inconceivable perfection. I once wrote to Mother with a question about what would happen to plants and flowers in the New Creation. Her reply filled me with joy and gratitude for She said that the flowers would be among the first to change (be transformed) because their entire life is an aspiration for light. Imagine the beauty to come with flowers brilliant with the Divine Light, colours such as never seen before, fragrances that can transofrm suffering and sorrow into a life free of pain and filled with joy.
Astral "language" A programming language based on {Pascal}, never implemented. ["ASTRAL: A Structured and Unified Approach to Database Design and Manipulation", T. Amble et al, in Proc of the Database Architecture Conf, Venice, June 1979]. (2000-01-27)
ASTROLOGY. ::: Many astrological predictions come true, quite a mass of them, if one takes all together. But it does not follow that the stars rule our destiny; the stars merely record a destiny that has been already formed, they are a hieroglyph, not a Force, - or if their action constitutes a force, it is a transmitting energy, not an originating Power. Someone is there who has determined or something is there which is Fate, let us say; the stars are only indications. The astrologers themselves say that there are two forces, daiva and puruṣakāra, fate and individual energy, and the individual energy can modify and even frustrate fate. Moreover, the stars often indicate several fatepossibilities; for example, that one may die in mid-age, but that if that determination can be overcome, one can live to a predictable old age. Finally, cases are seen in which the predictions of the horoscope fulfil themselves with great accuracy up to a certain age, then apply no more. This often happens when the subject turns away from the ordinary to the spiritual life. If the turn is very radical, the cessation of predictability may be immediate; otherwise certain results may still last on for a time ; but there is no longer the sure inevitability.
asymptote ::: n. --> A line which approaches nearer to some curve than assignable distance, but, though infinitely extended, would never meet it. Asymptotes may be straight lines or curves. A rectilinear asymptote may be conceived as a tangent to the curve at an infinite distance.
Atanasoff-Berry Computer "computer" (ABC) An early design for a binary calculator, one of the predecessors of the {digital computer}. The ABC was partially constructed between 1937 and 1942 by Dr. {John Vincent Atanasoff} and Clifford Berry at {Iowa State College}. As well as {binary} arithmetic, it incorporated {regenerative memory}, {parallel processing}, and separation of memory and computing functions. The electronic parts were mounted on a rotating drum, making it hybrid electronic/electromechanical. It was designed to handle only a single type of mathematical problem and was not automated. The results of a single calculation cycle had to be retrieved by a human operator, and fed back into the machine with all new instructions, to perform complex operations. It lacked any serious form of logical control or {conditional} statements. Atanasoff's patent application was denied because he never have a completed, working product. Ideas from the ABC were used in the design of {ENIAC} (1943-1946). {(http://cs.iastate.edu/jva/jva-archive.shtml)}. (2003-09-28)
At-Tawwab ::: The One who guides individuals to their essence by enabling them to perceive and comprehend the reality. The One who allows individuals to repent, that is, to abandon their misdoings and to compensate for any harm that may have been caused. The activation of this Name triggers the name Rahim, and thus benevolence and beauty is experienced.
attorney-general ::: n. --> The chief law officer of the state, empowered to act in all litigation in which the law-executing power is a party, and to advise this supreme executive whenever required.
Attribute: Commonly, what is proper to a thing (Latm, ad-tribuere, to assign, to ascribe, to bestow). Loosely assimilated to a quality, a property, a characteristic, a peculiarity, a circumstance, a state, a category, a mode or an accident, though there are differences among all these terms. For example, a quality is an inherent property (the qualities of matter), while an attribute refers to the actual properties of a thing only indirectly known (the attributes of God). Another difference between attribute and quality is that the former refers to the characteristics of an infinite being, while the latter is used for the characteristics of a finite being. In metaphysics, an attribute is what is indispensable to a spiritual or material substance; or that which expresses the nature of a thing; or that without which a thing is unthinkable. As such, it implies necessarily a relation to some substance of which it is an aspect or conception. But it cannot be a substance, as it does not exist by itself. The transcendental attributes are those which belong to a being because it is a being: there are three of them, the one, the true and the good, each adding something positive to the idea of being. The word attribute has been and still is used more readily, with various implications, by substantialist systems. In the 17th century, for example, it denoted the actual manifestations of substance. [Thus, Descartes regarded extension and thought as the two ultimate, simple and original attributes of reality, all else being modifications of them. With Spinoza, extension and thought became the only known attributes of Deity, each expressing in a definite manner, though not exclusively, the infinite essence of God as the only substance. The change in the meaning of substance after Hume and Kant is best illustrated by this quotation from Whitehead: "We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies, are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions and within actual occasions" (Process and Reality, p. 471).] The use of the notion of attribute, however, is still favoured by contemporary thinkers. Thus, John Boodin speaks of the five attributes of reality, namely: Energy (source of activity), Space (extension), Time (change), Consciousness (active awareness), and Form (organization, structure). In theodicy, the term attribute is used for the essential characteristics of God. The divine attributes are the various aspects under which God is viewed, each being treated as a separate perfection. As God is free from composition, we know him only in a mediate and synthetic way thrgugh his attributes. In logic, an attribute is that which is predicated or anything, that which Is affirmed or denied of the subject of a proposition. More specifically, an attribute may be either a category or a predicable; but it cannot be an individual materially. Attributes may be essential or accidental, necessary or contingent. In grammar, an attribute is an adjective, or an adjectival clause, or an equivalent adjunct expressing a characteristic referred to a subject through a verb. Because of this reference, an attribute may also be a substantive, as a class-name, but not a proper name as a rule. An attribute is never a verb, thus differing from a predicate which may consist of a verb often having some object or qualifying words. In natural history, what is permanent and essential in a species, an individual or in its parts. In psychology, it denotes the way (such as intensity, duration or quality) in which sensations, feelings or images can differ from one another. In art, an attribute is a material or a conventional symbol, distinction or decoration.
avoidless ::: a. --> Unavoidable; inevitable.
Axiom of Choice "logic" (AC, or "Choice") An {axiom} of {set theory}: If X is a set of sets, and S is the union of all the elements of X, then there exists a function f:X -" S such that for all non-empty x in X, f(x) is an element of x. In other words, we can always choose an element from each set in a set of sets, simultaneously. Function f is a "choice function" for X - for each x in X, it chooses an element of x. Most people's reaction to AC is: "But of course that's true! From each set, just take the element that's biggest, stupidest, closest to the North Pole, or whatever". Indeed, for any {finite} set of sets, we can simply consider each set in turn and pick an arbitrary element in some such way. We can also construct a choice function for most simple {infinite sets} of sets if they are generated in some regular way. However, there are some infinite sets for which the construction or specification of such a choice function would never end because we would have to consider an infinite number of separate cases. For example, if we express the {real number} line R as the union of many "copies" of the {rational numbers}, Q, namely Q, Q+a, Q+b, and infinitely (in fact uncountably) many more, where a, b, etc. are {irrational numbers} no two of which differ by a rational, and Q+a == {q+a : q in Q} we cannot pick an element of each of these "copies" without AC. An example of the use of AC is the theorem which states that the {countable} union of countable sets is countable. I.e. if X is countable and every element of X is countable (including the possibility that they're finite), then the sumset of X is countable. AC is required for this to be true in general. Even if one accepts the axiom, it doesn't tell you how to construct a choice function, only that one exists. Most mathematicians are quite happy to use AC if they need it, but those who are careful will, at least, draw attention to the fact that they have used it. There is something a little odd about Choice, and it has some alarming consequences, so results which actually "need" it are somehow a bit suspicious, e.g. the {Banach-Tarski paradox}. On the other side, consider {Russell's Attic}. AC is not a {theorem} of {Zermelo Fränkel set theory} (ZF). Gödel and Paul Cohen proved that AC is independent of ZF, i.e. if ZF is consistent, then so are ZFC (ZF with AC) and ZF(~C) (ZF with the negation of AC). This means that we cannot use ZF to prove or disprove AC. (2003-07-11)
aya ::: (c. 1931, in the diagram on page 1360) overmind in its fundamental power of measuring and limiting consciousness (maya), regarded as the essential form of overmind proper (see overmind system); "the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable".
babel ::: “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
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
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 1. "operating system" A task running in the background (a background task) is detached from the terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower priority); opposite of {foreground}. This means that the task's input and output must be from/to files (or other processes). Nowadays this term is primarily associated with {Unix}, but it appears to have been first used in this sense on {OS/360}. Compare {amp off}, {batch}, {slopsucker}. 2. "jargon" For a human to do a task "in the background" is to do it whenever {foreground} matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and "to background" something means to relegate it to a lower priority. "For now, we'll just print a list of nodes and links; I'm working on the graph-printing problem in the background." Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream "back burner" (which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity). Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they have queued up for their unconscious minds (often a fruitful tack to take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work). (1996-05-28)
balabhava ::: the state of being (like) a child; childhood; childlikeness; the childlikeness of the free physical mind, "a state of pure happy and free irresponsibility of action"; "the royal and eternal childhood whose toys are the worlds and all universal Nature is the miraculous garden of the play that tires never". bala b ala bh bhava
balkish ::: a. --> Uneven; ridgy.
beatitude ::: Madhav: “Beatitude is different from bliss. In bliss there is a constant vibration, there is a movement, but beatitude is something tranquil and joyous, I would not call it a vibration; it is a state of happiness oozing out benevolence.” Sat-Sang Vol. VIII
benevolence ::: n. --> The disposition to do good; good will; charitableness; love of mankind, accompanied with a desire to promote their happiness.
An act of kindness; good done; charity given.
A species of compulsory contribution or tax, which has sometimes been illegally exacted by arbitrary kings of England, and falsely represented as a gratuity.
benevolent ::: a. --> Having a disposition to do good; possessing or manifesting love to mankind, and a desire to promote their prosperity and happiness; disposed to give to good objects; kind; charitable.
benevolous ::: a. --> Kind; benevolent.
"Behind this petty instrumental action of the human will there is something vast and powerful and eternal that oversees the trend of the inclination and presses on the turn of the will. There is a total Truth in Nature greater than our individual choice. And in this total Truth, or even beyond and behind it, there is something that determines all results; its presence and secret knowledge keep up steadily in the process of Nature a dynamic, almost automatic perception of the right relations, the varying or persistent necessities, the inevitable steps of the movement. There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“Behind this petty instrumental action of the human will there is something vast and powerful and eternal that oversees the trend of the inclination and presses on the turn of the will. There is a total Truth in Nature greater than our individual choice. And in this total Truth, or even beyond and behind it, there is something that determines all results; its presence and secret knowledge keep up steadily in the process of Nature a dynamic, almost automatic perception of the right relations, the varying or persistent necessities, the inevitable steps of the movement. There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Being: In early Greek philosophy is opposed either to change, or Becoming, or to Non-Being. According to Parmenides and his disciples of the Eleatic School, everything real belongs to the category of Being, as the only possible object of thought. Essentially the same reasoning applies also to material reality in which there is nothing but Being, one and continuous, all-inclusive and eternal. Consequently, he concluded, the coming into being and passing away constituting change are illusory, for that which is-not cannot be, and that which is cannot cease to be. In rejecting Eleitic monism, the materialists (Leukippus, Democritus) asserted that the very existence of things, their corporeal nature, insofar as it is subject to change and motion, necessarily presupposes the other than Being, that is, Non-Being, or Void. Thus, instead of regarding space as a continuum, they saw in it the very source of discontinuity and the foundation of the atomic structure of substance. Plato accepted the first part of Parmenides' argument. namely, that referring to thought as distinct from matter, and maintained that, though Becoming is indeed an apparent characteristic of everything sensory, the true and ultimate reality, that of Ideas, is changeless and of the nature of Being. Aristotle achieved a compromise among all these notions and contended that, though Being, as the essence of things, is eternal in itself, nevertheless it manifests itself only in change, insofar as "ideas" or "forms" have no existence independent of, or transcendent to, the reality of things and minds. The medieval thinkers never revived the controversy as a whole, though at times they emphasized Being, as in Neo-Platonism, at times Becoming, as in Aristotelianism. With the rise of new interest in nature, beginning with F. Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, the problem grew once more in importance, especially to the rationalists, opponents of empiricism. Spinoza regarded change as a characteristic of modal existence and assumed in this connection a position distantly similar to that of Pinto. Hegel formed a new answer to the problem in declaring that nature, striving to exclude contradictions, has to "negate" them: Being and Non-Being are "moments" of the same cosmic process which, at its foundation, arises out of Being containing Non-Being within itself and leading, factually and logically, to their synthetic union in Becoming. -- R.B.W.
believed in ::: was persuaded of the truth or existence of; had faith in the reliability, honesty, benevolence, etc. of.
benignancies ::: qualities of kindness, gentleness and benevolence.
Berdyayev, Nikolai Alexandrovitch: (1874-1948) Is a contemporary Russian teacher and writer on the philosophy of religion. He was born in Kiev, exiled to Vologda when twenty-five; threatened with expulsion from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917, he became professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow. In 1922, he was expelled from the Soviet Union and he went to Berlin, where he established his Academy of Religious Philosophy. He moved his school to Paris and established a Russian review called Putj (The Way). His thought resembles that of the Christian Gnostics (see Gnosticism), and it owes a good deal to German idealism and mysticism (Boehme). He is a trenchant critic of systems as diverse as Communism and Thomistic Scholasticism. His most noted works are: Smyisl Istorii (The Meaning of History), Berlin, 1923; Novoye Srednevyekovye (transl. as The End of Our Time, N.Y., 1933), Berlin, 1924; Freedom and the Spirit, N. Y., 1935. V. J. Bourke, "The Gnosticism of N. Berdyaev", Thought, XI (1936), 409-22. -- VJ.B.
biff /bif/ To notify someone of incoming mail. From the {BSD} utility "biff(1)", which was in turn named after a friendly golden Labrador who used to chase frisbees in the halls at UCB while {4.2BSD} was in development (it had a well-known habit of barking whenever the mailman came). No relation to {BIFF}. [{Jargon File}]
Binary file /home/jpc/Documents/Code/KEYS/DICTIONARIES/DICTIONARIES.tar.gz matches
bit-paired keyboard "hardware" (Obsolete, or "bit-shift keyboard") A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the {Teletype} {ASR-33} and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see {EOU}), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg {kluge} than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic {bit pattern} on one key. Looking at the {ASCII} chart, we find: high low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 ! "
blight ::: v. t. --> To affect with blight; to blast; to prevent the growth and fertility of.
Hence: To destroy the happiness of; to ruin; to mar essentially; to frustrate; as, to blight one&
nevadite ::: n. --> A grantitoid variety of rhyolite, common in Nevada.
neve ::: n. --> The upper part of a glacier, above the limit or perpetual snow. See Galcier.
neven ::: v. t. --> To name; to mention; to utter.
never ::: adv. --> Not ever; not at any time; at no time, whether past, present, or future.
In no degree; not in the least; not.
nevermore ::: adv. --> Never again; at no time hereafter.
neverthelater ::: adv. / conj. --> Nevertheless.
nevertheless ::: adv. / conj. --> Not the less; notwithstanding; in spite of that; yet.
nevew ::: n. --> Nephew.
Bobo the Webmonkey "web" What {B1FF} was to {BITNET} users, Bobo the Webmonkey is to {webmonkeys} - the mythical prototype of incompetent web designers everywhere. In fact, Bobo may be what B1FF became when he grew up. Bobo knows about {HTML} only what he has learned from viewing the source of other people's Web pages. Bobo doesn't know what a {MIME type} is, even though someone gave him a hardcopy of the {FOLDOC} entry for it. Bobo may have used an HTML code validator {(http://validator.w3.org/)} before, but isn't sure. Bobo doesn't know what the difference between {GIF} and {JPEG} is. He thinks {PNG} is a foreign country. All the pages Bobo has designed say "Welcome to [organisation] online!" at the top, and say "click here!" at least three times per page. Bobo has used {Photoshop} before; he doesn't understand why people keep asking if he's ever been tested for color-blindness. Bobo never got that "its" / "it's" distinction real clear, as you can tell from his pages. Bobo likes "BLINK". (1998-04-04)
branch to Fishkill (IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities) Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See {jump off into never-never land}, {hyperspace}. [{Jargon File}]
Brazil An {operating system} from {Acorn Computers} used on an {ARM} card which could be fitted to an {IBM PC}. There was also an {ARM} second processor for the {BBC Microcomputer} which used Brazil. Never used on the {Archimedes}(?). (1994-12-05)
brittle "jargon" Said of {software} that is functional but easily broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to abnormal but expected external stimuli; e.g. a {file system} that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often used to describe the results of a research effort that were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercially developed software, which displays the quality far more often than it ought to. Opposite of {robust}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-05-09)
brokenness ::: n. --> The state or quality of being broken; unevenness.
Contrition; as, brokenness of heart.
broken ::: p. p. --> of Break ::: v. t. --> Separated into parts or pieces by violence; divided into fragments; as, a broken chain or rope; a broken dish.
Disconnected; not continuous; also, rough; uneven; as, a broken surface.
Brooks's Law "programming" "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" - a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting work among N programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional to N), but the complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the square of N). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of {IBM}'s {OS/360} project and author of "{The Mythical Man-Month}". The myth in question has been most tersely expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice; too often, {management} still does. See also {creationism}, {second-system effect}, {optimism}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-09-17)
brute force and ignorance "jargon" (BFI) A popular design technique at many software houses - {brute force} coding unrelieved by any knowledge of how problems have been previously solved in elegant ways. Dogmatic adherence to design methods tends to encourage this sort of thing. Characteristic of early {larval stage} programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Also encountered in the variants BFMI - brute force and massive ignorance, and BFBI - brute force and bloody ignorance. "Gak, they used a {bubble sort}! That's strictly BFI." Compare {bogosity}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-06-12)
B-tree "algorithm" A multi-way {balanced tree}. The "B" in B-tree has never been officially defined. It could stand for "balanced" or "Bayer", after one of the original designers of the algorithms and structure. A B-tree is _not_ (necessarily?) a "{binary tree}". A B+-tree (as used by {IBM}'s {VSAM}) is a B-tree where the leaves are also linked sequentially, thus allowing both fast {random access} and sequential access to data. [Knuth's Art of Computer Programming]. [Example algorithm?] (2000-01-10)
bug "programming" An unwanted and unintended property of a {program} or piece of {hardware}, especially one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of {feature}. E.g. "There's a bug in the editor: it writes things out backward." The identification and removal of bugs in a program is called "{debugging}". Admiral {Grace Hopper} (an early computing pioneer better known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a technician solved a {glitch} in the {Harvard Mark II machine} by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to admit, she was not there when it happened). For many years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC). The entire story, with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is recorded in the "Annals of the History of Computing", Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286. The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads "1545 Relay
Bush, Vannevar {Vannevar Bush}
"But it is not a mental Intelligence that informs and governs all things; it is a self-aware Truth of being in which self-knowledge is inseparable from self-existence: it is this Truth-Consciousness which has not to think out things but works them out with knowledge according to the impeccable self-vision and the inevitable force of a sole and self-fulfilling Existence.” The Life Divine
“But it is not a mental Intelligence that informs and governs all things; it is a self-aware Truth of being in which self-knowledge is inseparable from self-existence: it is this Truth-Consciousness which has not to think out things but works them out with knowledge according to the impeccable self-vision and the inevitable force of a sole and self-fulfilling Existence.” The Life Divine
But reason is not limited to its theoretical use. Besides objects of cognition and thought, there are also those of will and feeling. Kant's "practical philosophy", the real foundation of his system of transcendental idealism, centers in a striking doctrine of freedom. Even in its theoretical use. reason is a law-giver to Nature, in that the data of sense must conform to the forms of the sensibility and understanding if Nature is to be known at all. But in moral experience, as Kant shows in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the will of a rational being is directly autonomous -- a law unto itself. But the unconditional moral law, "duty" or "categorical imperative", the validity of which Kant does not question, is possible only on the supposition that the will is really free. As phenomenal beings we are subject to the laws of nature and reason, but as pure rational wills we move in the free, noumenal or intelligible realm, bound only by the self-imposed rational law "to treat humanity in every case as an end, never as a means only."
"But the gnosis is not only light, it is force; it is creative knowledge, it is the self-effective truth of the divine Idea. This idea is not creative imagination, not something that constructs in a void, but light and power of eternal substance, truth-light full of truth-force; and it brings out what is latent in being, it does not create a fiction that never was in being.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“But the gnosis is not only light, it is force; it is creative knowledge, it is the self-effective truth of the divine Idea. This idea is not creative imagination, not something that constructs in a void, but light and power of eternal substance, truth-light full of truth-force; and it brings out what is latent in being, it does not create a fiction that never was in being.” The Synthesis of Yoga
But this exclusive consummation t$ not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one’s own being but in all beings, and, finally, the realisation of even the pheno- menal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the pTay of its fonns and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the dirine level, to its spiritualisation
buzz 1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; especially said of programs thought to be executing a {tight loop} of code. A program that is buzzing appears to be {catatonic}, but never gets out of catatonia, while a buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. "The program buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names into order." See {spin}; see also {grovel}. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for continuity by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire faults will pass DC tests but fail a buzz test. 3. To process an {array} or list in sequence, doing the same thing to each element. "This loop buzzes through the tz array looking for a terminator type." [{Jargon File}]
"By studying the principles of success and failure, preservation and destruction, calamity and prosperity from ancient to recent times, they learn how to hold what is essential and to grasp the fundamental. They guard themselves with purity and emptiness, in humility and weakness they maintain themselves . . . Afterwards those who act without restraint desired to reject learning and the rules of propriety, and at the same time, discard benevolence and righteousness. They said that the world could be governed simply by purity and emptiness."
By way of connoting different types of society, many contemporary Marxists, especially in the U.S.S.R., building upon Marx's analysis of the two phases of "communist society" ("Gotha Program") designate the first or lower phase by the term socialism, the second or higher by the term communism (q.v.). The general features of socialist society (identified by Soviet thinkers with the present phase of development of the U.S.S.R.) are conceived as follows: Economic collective ownership of the means of production, such as factories, industrial equipment, the land, and of the basic apparatus of distribution and exchange, including the banking system; the consequent abolition of classes, private profit, exploitation, surplus value, (q.v.) private hiring and firing and involuntary unemployment; an integrated economy based on long time planning in terms of needs and use. It is held that only under these economic conditions is it possible to apply the formula, "from each according to ability, to each according to work performed", the first part of which implies continuous employment, and the second part, the absence of private profit. Political: a state based upon the dictatorship of the proletariat (q.v.) Cultural the extension of all educational and cultural facilities through state planning; the emancipation of women through unrestricted economic opportunities, the abolition of race discrimination through state enforcement, a struggle against all cultural and social institutions which oppose the socialist society and attempt to obstruct its realization. Marx and Engels held that socialism becomes the inevitable outgrowth of capitalism because the evolution of the latter type of society generates problems which can only be solved by a transition to socialism. These problems are traced primarily to the fact that the economic relations under capitalism, such as individual ownership of productive technics, private hiring and firing in the light of profits and production for a money market, all of which originally released powerful new productive potentialities, come to operate, in the course of time, to prevent full utilization of productive technics, and to cause periodic crises, unemployment, economic insecurity and consequent suffering for masses of people. Marx and Engels regarded their doctrine of the transformation of capitalist into socialist society as based upon a scientific examination of the laws of development of capitalism and a realistic appreciation of the role of the proletariat. (q.v.) Unlike the Utopian socialism (q.v.) of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen (q.v.) and others, their socialism asserted the necessity of mass political organization of the working classes for the purpose of gaining political power in order to effect the transition from capitalism, and also foresaw the probability of a contest of force in which, they held, the working class majority would ultimately be victorious. The view taken is that Marx was the first to explain scientifically the nature of capitalist exploitation as based upon surplus value and to predict its necessary consequences. "These two great discoveries, the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalist production by means of surplus value we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science . . ." (Engels: Anti-Dühring, pp. 33-34.) See Historical materialism. -- J.M.S.
call-by-name "reduction" (CBN) (Normal order reduction, leftmost, outermost reduction). An {argument} passing convention (first provided by {ALGOL 60}?) where argument expressions are passed unevaluated. This is usually implemented by passing a pointer to a {thunk} - some code which will return the value of the argument and an environment giving the values of its {free variables}. This {evaluation strategy} is guaranteed to reach a {normal form} if one exists. When used to implement {functional programming} languages, call-by-name is usually combined with {graph reduction} to avoid repeated evaluation of the same expression. This is then known as {call-by-need}. The opposite of call-by-name is {call-by-value} where arguments are evaluated before they are passed to a function. This is more efficient but is less likely to terminate in the presence of infinite data structures and {recursive} functions. Arguments to {macros} are usually passed using call-by-name. (2006-05-27)
calorimeter ::: n. --> An apparatus for measuring the amount of heat contained in bodies or developed by some mechanical or chemical process, as friction, chemical combination, combustion, etc.
An apparatus for measuring the proportion of unevaporated water contained in steam.
can't happen "programming" The traditional program comment for code executed under a condition that should never be true, for example a file size computed as negative. Often, such a condition being true indicates data corruption or a faulty {algorithm}; it is almost always handled by emitting a fatal error message and terminating or crashing, since there is little else that can be done. Some case variant of "can't happen" is also often the text emitted if the "impossible" error actually happens. Although "can't happen" events are genuinely infrequent in production code, programmers wise enough to check for them habitually are often surprised at how frequently they are triggered during development and how many headaches checking for them turns out to head off. See also {firewall code}, {professional programming}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-05-10)
Capitalism: A mode of economic production which is characterized by the fact that the instruments of production (land, factories, raw materials, etc.) are controlled to a greater or lesser extent by private individuals or groups. Since the control an individual can exercise over means of production is never absolute and as a matter of fact fluctuates widely with the ever-changing natural and social environment, "capitalism" is a very loose term which covers a host of actually different economic systems. An implication of this basic notion of individual control is that the individual will control production in his own interests. The ideological counterpart to this fact is the concept of "profit," just as the ideological counterpart to the control itself is the myth of "private property" and "free enterprise." -- M.B.M.
Cartesianism: The philosophy of the French thinker, Rene Descartes (Cartesius) 1596-1650. After completing his formal education at the Jesuit College at La Fleche, he spent the years 1612-1621 in travel and military service. The reminder of his life was devoted to study and writing. He died in Sweden, where he had gone in 1649 to tutor Queen Christina. His principal works are: Discours de la methode, (preface to his Geometric, Meteores, Dieptrique) Meditationes de prima philosophia, Principia philosophiae, Passions de l'ame, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Le monde. Descartes is justly regarded as one of the founders of modern epistemology. Dissatisfied with the lack of agreement among philosophers, he decided that philosophy needed a new method, that of mathematics. He began by resolving to doubt everything which could not pass the test of his criterion of truth, viz. the clearness and distinctness of ideas. Anything which could pass this test was to be readmitted as self-evident. From self-evident truths, he deduced other truths which logically follow from them. Three kinds of ideas were distinguished: innate, by which he seems to mean little more than the mental power to think things or thoughts; adventitious, which come to him from without; factitious, produced within his own mind. He found most difficulty with the second type of ideas. The first reality discovered through his method is the thinking self. Though he might doubt nearly all else, Descartes could not reasonably doubt that he, who was thinking, existed as a res cogitans. This is the intuition enunciated in the famous aphorism: I think, therefore I am, Cogito ergo sum. This is not offered by Descartes as a compressed syllogism, but as an immediate intuition of his own thinking mind. Another reality, whose existence was obvious to Descartes, was God, the Supreme Being. Though he offered several proofs of the Divine Existence, he was convinced that he knew this also by an innate idea, and so, clearly and distinctly. But he did not find any clear ideas of an extra-mental, bodily world. He suspected its existence, but logical demonstration was needed to establish this truth. His adventitious ideas carry the vague suggestion that they are caused by bodies in an external world. By arguing that God would be a deceiver, in allowing him to think that bodies exist if they do not, he eventually convinced himself of the reality of bodies, his own and others. There are, then, three kinds of substance according to Descartes: Created spirits, i.e. the finite soul-substance of each man: these are immaterial agencies capable of performing spiritual operations, loosely united with bodies, but not extended since thought is their very essence. Uncreated Spirit, i.e. God, confined neither to space nor time, All-Good and All-Powerful, though his Existence can be known clearly, his Nature cannot be known adequately by men on earth, He is the God of Christianity, Creator, Providence and Final Cause of the universe. Bodies, i.e. created, physical substances existing independently of human thought and having as their chief attribute, extension. Cartesian physics regards bodies as the result of the introduction of "vortices", i.e. whorls of motion, into extension. Divisibility, figurability and mobility, are the notes of extension, which appears to be little more thin what Descartes' Scholastic teachers called geometrical space. God is the First Cause of all motion in the physical universe, which is conceived as a mechanical system operated by its Maker. Even the bodies of animals are automata. Sensation is the critical problem in Cartesian psychology; it is viewed by Descartes as a function of the soul, but he was never able to find a satisfactory explanation of the apparent fact that the soul is moved by the body when sensation occurs. The theory of animal spirits provided Descartes with a sort of bridge between mind and matter, since these spirits are supposed to be very subtle matter, halfway, as it were, between thought and extension in their nature. However, this theory of sensation is the weakest link in the Cartesian explanation of cognition. Intellectual error is accounted for by Descartes in his theory of assent, which makes judgment an act of free will. Where the will over-reaches the intellect, judgment may be false. That the will is absolutely free in man, capable even of choosing what is presented by the intellect as the less desirable of two alternatives, is probably a vestige of Scotism retained from his college course in Scholasticism. Common-sense and moderation are the keynotes of Descartes' famous rules for the regulation of his own conduct during his nine years of methodic doubt, and this ethical attitude continued throughout his life. He believed that man is responsible ultimately to God for the courses of action that he may choose. He admitted that conflicts may occur between human passions and human reason. A virtuous life is made possible by the knowledge of what is right and the consequent control of the lower tendencies of human nature. Six primary passions are described by Descartes wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sorrow. These are passive states of consciousness, partly caused by the body, acting through the animal spirits, and partly caused by the soul. Under rational control, they enable the soul to will what is good for the body. Descartes' terminology suggests that there are psychological faculties, but he insists that these powers are not really distinct from the soul itself, which is man's sole psychic agency. Descartes was a practical Catholic all his life and he tried to develop proofs of the existence of God, an explanation of the Eucharist, of the nature of religious faith, and of the operation of Divine Providence, using his philosophy as the basis for a new theology. This attempted theology has not found favor with Catholic theologians in general.
casting the runes "jargon" What a {guru} does when you ask him or her to run a particular program because it never works for anyone else; especially used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare {incantation}, {runes}, {examining the entrails}; also see the {AI koan} about Tom Knight. (1997-12-26)
CENT, There is no connection between the Christian concep- tion (of the Kingdom of Heaven) and the idea of the Supra- mental descent. The Christian conception supposes a state of things brought about by religious emotion' and d'mdral'purifica- tion but ' these things are no more"capable of changing the world, 'whatever value they may base for the individual, than mental idealism or any bther power yet called upon for the pur- pose] The Christian proposes to substitute the sattsic religious ego for the rajasic and tamasic cgo| but although this can be donc-as an individual achievement, it has never succeeded and win never succeed in • accomplishing itself in the mass. It has no higher spiritual or psjchological knowledge behind it and ignores the' foundation -of htimao character and the source of the difBculty — the duality 6f mind, ‘life and body. Unless there is a descent of a new Power of Consdousness, not subject to the dualities but still dynamic which will preside a new foundation and a lifting of the centre of consciousness above the mind, the
certain ::: a. --> Assured in mind; having no doubts; free from suspicions concerning.
Determined; resolved; -- used with an infinitive.
Not to be doubted or denied; established as a fact.
Actually existing; sure to happen; inevitable.
Unfailing; infallible.
Fixed or stated; regular; determinate.
Not specifically named; indeterminate; indefinite; one or
chance ::: “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
chancroid ::: n. --> A venereal sore, resembling a chancre in its seat and some external characters, but differing from it in being the starting point of a purely local process and never of a systemic disease; -- called also soft chancre.
channel op "messaging" /chan'l op/ (Or "{op}", "chan op", "chop") Someone who is endowed with privileges on a particular {IRC} {channel}. These privileges include the right to {kick} users, to change various status bits and to make others into CHOPs. The full form, "channel operator", is almost never used. [{Jargon File}] (1998-01-08)
charitable ::: a. --> Full of love and good will; benevolent; kind.
Liberal in judging of others; disposed to look on the best side, and to avoid harsh judgment.
Liberal in benefactions to the poor; giving freely; generous; beneficent.
Of or pertaining to charity; springing from, or intended for, charity; relating to almsgiving; eleemosynary; as, a charitable institution.
charity ::: benevolence or generosity toward others or toward humanity.
charity ::: n. --> Love; universal benevolence; good will.
Liberality in judging of men and their actions; a disposition which inclines men to put the best construction on the words and actions of others.
Liberality to the poor and the suffering, to benevolent institutions, or to worthy causes; generosity.
Whatever is bestowed gratuitously on the needy or suffering for their relief; alms; any act of kindness.
Charles Babbage "person" The British inventor known to some as the "Father of Computing" for his contributions to the basic design of the computer through his {Analytical Engine}. His previous {Difference Engine} was a special purpose device intended for the production of mathematical tables. Babbage was born on December 26, 1791 in Teignmouth, Devonshire UK. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1814 and graduated from Peterhouse. In 1817 he received an MA from Cambridge and in 1823 started work on the Difference Engine through funding from the British Government. In 1827 he published a table of {logarithms} from 1 to 108000. In 1828 he was appointed to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (though he never presented a lecture). In 1831 he founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science and in 1832 he published "Economy of Manufactures and Machinery". In 1833 he began work on the Analytical Engine. In 1834 he founded the Statistical Society of London. He died in 1871 in London. Babbage also invented the cowcatcher, the dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, and the heliograph opthalmoscope. He also had an interest in cyphers and lock-picking. [Adapted from the text by J. A. N. Lee, Copyright September 1994]. Babbage, as (necessarily) the first person to work with machines that can attack problems at arbitrary levels of {abstraction}, fell into a trap familiar to {toolsmiths} since, as described here by the English ethicist, Lord Moulton: "One of the sad memories of my life is a visit to the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage. He was far advanced in age, but his mind was still as vigorous as ever. He took me through his work-rooms. In the first room I saw parts of the original Calculating Machine, which had been shown in an incomplete state many years before and had even been put to some use. I asked him about its present form. 'I have not finished it because in working at it I came on the idea of my {Analytical Machine}, which would do all that it was capable of doing and much more. Indeed, the idea was so much simpler that it would have taken more work to complete the Calculating Machine than to design and construct the other in its entirety, so I turned my attention to the Analytical Machine.'" "After a few minutes' talk, we went into the next work-room, where he showed and explained to me the working of the elements of the Analytical Machine. I asked if I could see it. 'I have never completed it,' he said, 'because I hit upon an idea of doing the same thing by a different and far more effective method, and this rendered it useless to proceed on the old lines.' Then we went into the third room. There lay scattered bits of mechanism, but I saw no trace of any working machine. Very cautiously I approached the subject, and received the dreaded answer, 'It is not constructed yet, but I am working on it, and it will take less time to construct it altogether than it would have token to complete the Analytical Machine from the stage in which I left it.' I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart." "When he died a few years later, not only had he constructed no machine, but the verdict of a jury of kind and sympathetic scientific men who were deputed to pronounce upon what he had left behind him, either in papers or in mechanism, was that everything was too incomplete of be capable of being put to any useful purpose." [Lord Moulton, "The invention of algorithms, its genesis, and growth", in G. C. Knott, ed., "Napier tercentenary memorial volume" (London, 1915), p. 1-24; quoted in Charles Babbage "Passage from the Life of a Philosopher", Martin Campbell-Kelly, ed. (Rutgers U. Press and IEEE Press, 1994), p. 34]. Compare: {uninteresting}, {Ninety-Ninety Rule}. (1996-02-22)
Ch'i: Breath; the vital fluid. Force; spirit. The vital force, as expressed in the operation and succession of the active principle (yang) and the passive principle (yin) and the Five Agents or Elements (wu hsing). To Chou Lien-hsi (1017-1073), this material principle is identical with yin yang and the Five Elements. To Chang Heng-ch'u (1020-1077) it is the reality of the Ultimate Vacuity, having the two aspects of yin and yang. It is to the Ultimate Vacuity (Tai Hsu) as ice is to water. Ch'eng I-ch'uan (1033-1107) and Ch'eng Ming-tao (1032-1086) considered all that has physical form to be identical with the vital force. It is the principle of differentiation and individuation. When a thing disintegrates, the vital force is at an end, not to appear again in the creative process. A new entity is constituted of new vital force. Thus it is also the principle of novelty in creation. It is produced by Reason (li). But to the Neo-Confucians, especially Chi Hsi (1130-1200), Reason has no control over it. The two can never be separated; without it, Reason would having nothing to be embodied in. In aesthetics: Rhythmic vitality; vitalizing spirit; strength of expression or brush stioke.
child process "operating system" A {process} created by another process (the {parent process}). Each process may create many child processes but will have only one parent process, except for the very first process which has no parent. The first process, called {init} in {Unix}, is started by the {kernel} at {boot time} and never terminates. A child process inherits most of its attributes, such as open files, from its parent. In fact in Unix, a child process is created (using {fork}) as a copy of the parent. The chid process can then overlay itself with a different program (using {exec}) as required. (1997-11-22)
Chun tu: The superior man, the perfect man, the moral man, the noble man. "There may have been a superior man who is not a true man (jen), but there has never been an inferior man (hsiao jen) who is a true man." The superior man "makes upward progress," "understands profit," and "despises the ordinances of Heaven, great men, and the words of the sages." (Confucius.) "The superior man's moral order is on the increase, while the inferior man's moral order is on the decrease." "The superior man abides by what is internal, whereas the inferior man abides by what is external." (Ancient Confucianism ) "The superior man makes advance in the moral law, whereas the inferior man makes advance in profit." "The superior man enjoys in the fulfillment of the moral law, whereas the inferior man enjoys in the fulfillment of his desires." (Medieval Confucianism.) The superior man "sees what is great and far" and is interested in "helping things to perfection," whereas the inferior man "sees what is small and near" and is interested in destroying things." (Neo-Confucianism.) A ruler. Husband (as in the Odes).
Church of the SubGenius "body, humour" A mutant offshoot of {Discordianism} launched in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the "Reverend" Ivan Stang, a brilliant satirist with a gift for promotion. Popular among hackers as a rich source of bizarre imagery and references such as "Bob" the divine drilling-equipment salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists, and the Stark Fist of Removal. Much SubGenius theory is concerned with the acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of {slack}. {(http://sunsite.unc.edu/subgenius/slack.html)}. (1996-01-02)
Cinderella Book "publication" "Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation", by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, (Addison-Wesley, 1979). So called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and holding a rope coming out of it. On the back cover, the device is in shambles after she has (inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also {book titles}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-12-03)
closure 1. "programming" In a {reduction system}, a closure is a data structure that holds an expression and an environment of variable bindings in which that expression is to be evaluated. The variables may be local or global. Closures are used to represent unevaluated expressions when implementing {functional programming languages} with {lazy evaluation}. In a real implementation, both expression and environment are represented by pointers. A {suspension} is a closure which includes a flag to say whether or not it has been evaluated. The term "{thunk}" has come to be synonymous with "closure" but originated outside {functional programming}. 2. "theory" In {domain theory}, given a {partially ordered set}, D and a subset, X of D, the upward closure of X in D is the union over all x in X of the sets of all d in D such that x "= d. Thus the upward closure of X in D contains the elements of X and any greater element of D. A set is "upward closed" if it is the same as its upward closure, i.e. any d greater than an element is also an element. The downward closure (or "left closure") is similar but with d "= x. A downward closed set is one for which any d less than an element is also an element. (""=" is written in {LaTeX} as {\subseteq} and the upward closure of X in D is written \uparrow_\{D} X). (1994-12-16)
colewort ::: n. --> A variety of cabbage in which the leaves never form a compact head.
Any white cabbage before the head has become firm.
colleague ::: n. --> A partner or associate in some civil or ecclesiastical office or employment. It is never used of partners in trade or manufactures. ::: v.t & i. --> To unite or associate with another or with others.
COME FROM "programming, humour" A semi-mythical language construct dual to the "go to"; "COME FROM" "label" would cause the referenced label to act as a sort of {trapdoor}, so that if the program ever reached it, control would quietly and {automagically} be transferred to the statement following the "COME FROM". "COME FROM" was first proposed in R.L. Clark's "A Linguistic Contribution to GOTO-less programming", which appeared in a 1973 {Datamation} issue (and was reprinted in the April 1984 issue of "{Communications of the ACM}"). This parodied the then-raging "{structured programming}" {holy wars} (see {considered harmful}). Mythically, some variants are the "assigned COME FROM" and the "computed COME FROM" (parodying some nasty control constructs in {Fortran} and some extended {BASICs}). Of course, {multitasking} (or {nondeterminism}) could be implemented by having more than one "COME FROM" statement coming from the same label. In some ways the {Fortran} "DO" looks like a "COME FROM" statement. After the terminating statement number/"CONTINUE" is reached, control continues at the statement following the DO. Some generous Fortrans would allow arbitrary statements (other than "CONTINUE") for the statement, leading to examples like: DO 10 I=1,LIMIT C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the C original DO statement lost in the spaghetti... WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I) 10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4) in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labelled 10. (This is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear to have anything to do with the flow of control at all!) While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form of "COME FROM" statement isn't completely general. After all, control will eventually pass to the following statement. The implementation of the general form was left to {Univac Fortran}, ca. 1975 (though a roughly similar feature existed on the {IBM 7040} ten years earlier). The statement "AT 100" would perform a "COME FROM 100". It was intended strictly as a debugging aid, with dire consequences promised to anyone so deranged as to use it in production code. More horrible things had already been perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only contemplate the "{ALTER}" verb in {COBOL}. {SCL} on {VME} {mainframes} has a similar language construct called "whenever", used like this: whenever x=123345 then S; Meaning whenever variable x reached the value 123345 then execute statement S. "COME FROM" was supported under its own name for the first time 15 years later, in {C-INTERCAL} (see {INTERCAL}, {retrocomputing}); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from the shock. [{Jargon File}] (1998-04-19)
Commodore Business Machines "company" (CBM) Makers of the {PET}, {Commodore 64}, {Commodore 16}, {Commodore 128}, and {Amiga} {personal computers}. Their logo is a {chicken head}. The Commodore name is controlled by Commodore Licensing BV, now a subsidiary of Asiarim. Commodore USA signed an agreement with Commodore Licensing BV. On 1994-04-29, Commodore International announced that it had been unable to renegotiate terms of outstanding loans and was closing down the business. Commodore US was expected to go into liquidation. Commodore US, France, Spain, and Belgium were liquidated for various reasons. The names Commodore and Amiga were maintained after the liquidation. After 1994, the rights to the Commodore name bounced across several European companies. On 1995-04-21, German retailer {Escom AG} bought Commodore International for $14m and production of the Amiga resumed. Netherlands-based {Tulip Computers} took over the brand. Production of the 8-bit range alledgedly never stopped during the time in liquidation because a Chinese company were producing the {C64} in large numbers for the local market there. In 2004, Tulip sold the Commodore name to another Dutch firm, Yeahronimo, that eventually changed its name to Commodore International. In April 2008 three creditors took the company to court demanding a bankruptcy ruling. On 2010-03-17, Commodore USA announced that it was to release a new PC in June 2010 which looks very similar to the old Commodore 64 but comes with a {Core 2 Duo}, {Core 2 Quad}, {Pentium D} or {Celeron D} processor and with {Ubuntu} {Linux} or {Windows 7} installed. {PC World article (http://pcworld.com/article/192415)}. (2010-09-14)
compactness preserving "theory" In {domain theory}, a {function} f is compactness preserving if f c is {compact} whenever c is. (1995-01-13)
condignity ::: n. --> Merit, acquired by works, which can claim reward on the score of general benevolence.
confragose ::: a. --> Broken; uneven.
Confucianism (ju chia), on the other hand, advocated true manhood (jen) as the highest good, the superior man (chun tzu) as the ideal being, and cultivation of life (hsiu shen) as the supreme duty of man. It was toward this moralism and humanism that Confucius (551-479 B.C.) taught the doctrines of "chung," or being true to the principles of one's nature, and "shu," or the application of those principles in relation to others, as well as the doctrine of the Golden Mean (chung yung), i.e., "to find the central clue of our moral being and to be harmonious with the universe." Humanism was further strengthened by Mencius (371-289 B.C.) who insisted that man must develop his nature fully because benevolence (jen) and righteousness (i) are natural to his nature which is originally good, and again reinforced by Hsun Tzu (c. 335-286 BC) who, contending that human nature is evil, advocated the control of nature. Amid this antagonism between naturalism and humanism, however, both schools conceived reality as unceasing change (i) and incessant transformation, perpetually in progress due to the interaction of the active (yang) and passive (yin) cosmic principles.
Confucius taught that "it is man that can make truth great, and not truth that can make man great." Consequently he emphasized moral perfection, true manhood (jen), moral order (li) the Golden Mean (Chung Yung) and the superior man (chun tzu). To this end, knowledge must be directed, names must be rectified (cheng ming), and social relationships harmonized (wu lun). The whole program involved the investigation of things, the extension of knowledge, sincerity of the will, rectification of the heart, cultivation of the personal life, regulation of family life, national order, and finally, world peace. Mencius (371-289 B.C.) carried this further, holding that we not only should be good, but must be good, as human nature is originally good. True manhood (jen) and righteousness (i) are considered man's mind and path, respectively. Government must be established on the basis of benevolence (jen cheng) as against profit and force. Hsun Tzu (c 335-c 288 B.C.) believing human nature to be evil, stressed moral accumulation and education, especially through the rectification of names, music, and the rule of propriety (li). In the book of Chung Yung (Central Harmony, the Golden Mean, third or fourth century B.C.), the doctrine of central harmony is set forth. Our central self or moral being is conceived to be the great basis of existence and harmony or moral order is the universal law in the world. From then on, the relationship between man and the universe became one of direct correspondence. The idea of macrocosmos-rnicrocosmos relationship largely characterized the Confucianism of medieval China. The most glorious development of Confucianism is found in Neo-Confucianism, from the eleventh century to this day. For a summary of medieval Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism, see Chinese philosophy. -- W.T.C.
Consciousness for true action ::: If you want the consciousness for true action very much and aspire for it, it may come in one of several ways ::: (1) You may gel the habit or faculty of watch- ing your movements in such a way that you see the impulse to action coming and can see too Its nature. (2) A consciousness may come which feels uneasy whenever a wrong thought or impulse to action or feeling is there, (3) Something within you may warn and stop you when you are going to do the wrong action.
continuation passing style "programming" (CPS) A style of programming in which every user function f takes an extra argument c known as a "continuation". Whenever f would normally return a result r to its caller, it instead returns the result of applying the continuation to r. The continuation thus represents the whole of the rest of the computation. Some examples: normal (direct style) continuation passing style square x = x * x square x k = k (x * x) g (square 23) square 23 g (square 3) + 1 square 3 ( \ s . s + 1 ) (1995-04-04)
Continuity: A class is said to be compactly (or densely) ordered by a relation R if it is ordered by R (see Order) and, whenever xRz and x≠z, there is a y, not the same as either x or z, such that xRy and yRz. (Compact order may thus be described by saying that between any two distinct members of the class there is always a third, or by saying that no member has a next following member in the order.)
Co-ordination and harmonisation of parts is absent in many ; it is a thing that has to be attained to or built up. Moreover at a certain stage in sSdhana there is almost always a disparity or opposition between the parts that are already turned towards the Truth and are capable of experience and others that are not and pull one down to a lower level. The opposition is not equally acute in all cases, but in one degree or another it is almost uni- versal. Co-ordinadon and univeisaUsation can be satisfactorily done only when this is overcome. Till then oscillations are inevitable.
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*
Credo quia absurdum est: Literally, I believe because it is absurd. Although these particular words are often wrongly attributed to Tertullian (born middle of the 2nd century) they nevertheless convey the thought of this Latin church father who maintained the rule of faith on the basis of one's trust in the commands and authority of Christ rather than upon the compulsion of reason or truth. To believe in the absurd, in other words, is to reveal a greater faith than to believe in the reasonable. -- V.F.
cripple ::: n. --> One who creeps, halts, or limps; one who has lost, or never had, the use of a limb or limbs; a lame person; hence, one who is partially disabled. ::: a. --> Lame; halting.
critical mass In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable material required to sustain a chain reaction. Of a software product, describes a condition of the software such that fixing one bug introduces one plus {epsilon} bugs. (This malady has many causes: {creeping featurism}, ports to too many disparate environments, poor initial design, etc.) When software achieves critical mass, it can never be fixed; it can only be discarded and rewritten. [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-23)
cryptogamia ::: n. --> The series or division of flowerless plants, or those never having true stamens and pistils, but propagated by spores of various kinds.
(c) The relation between psychology and epistemology is particularly intimate since the cognitive processes of perception, memory, imagination, conception and reasoning, investigated by empirical psychology are the very processes which, in quite a different context, are the special subject matter of epistemology. Nevertheless the psychological and epistemological treatments of the cognitive processes of mind are radically different: scientific psychology is concerned solely with the description and explanation of conscious processes, e.g. particular acts of perception, in the context of other conscious events; epistemology is interested in the cognitive pretentions of the perceptions, i.e. their apparent reference to external objects. In short, whereas psychology is the investigation of all states of mind including the cognitive in the context of the mental life, epistemology investigates only cognitive states and these solely with respect to their cognitive import. Psychology and epistemology are by virtue of the partial identity of their subject matter interdependent sciences. The psychology of perception, memory, imagination, conception, etc. affords indispensable data for epistemological interpretation and on the other hand epistemological analysis of the cognitive processes may sometimea prove psychologically suggestive. The epistemologist must, however, guard against a particularly insidious form of the genetic fallacy: viz. the supposition that the psychological origin of an item of knowledge prejudices either favorably or unfavorably its cognitive validity -- a fallacy which is psychologism at its worst.
cycle crunch "jargon" A situation wherein the number of people trying to use a computer simultaneously has reached the point where no one can get enough {cycles} because they are spread too thin and the system has probably begun to {thrash}. This scenario is an inevitable result of Parkinson's Law applied to {time-sharing}. Usually the only solution is to buy more computer. Happily, this has rapidly become easier since the mid-1980s, so much so that the very term "cycle crunch" now has a faintly archaic flavour; most hackers now use {workstations} or {personal computers} as opposed to traditional {time-sharing} systems. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-29)
dancing frog "programming, humour" A {bug} or {glitch} that only occurs for a particular user; never when the user tries to show it to anyone else. The term is derived from a Warner Brothers cartoon in which a man discovers a frog which can sing and dance; he believes this will make his fortune but the frog never performs in front of anyone else. (2004-10-16)
dBASE "tool, product, language" An interactive {DBMS}, originally from {Ashton-Tate Corporation}, and the language used by it. dBASE evolved from {Vulcan} by Wayne Ratliffe, which came out in around 1980 and ran on CP/M. It was called dBaseII when sold to {Ashton-Tate Corporation}. The first release was dBASE II, ca 1980. There never was a "dBASE I". Later versions included: {dBASE III}, dBASE III+, and dBASE IV. Ashton-Tate was taken over in the early 1990s by what became {Borland Software Corporation} who sold dBase in March(?) 1999 to the newly formed dBase Inc. dBase Inc's first release was {Visual dBASE} 5.7, a Y2K upgrade to Visual dBASE 5.x. Current version, as of 2003-11-24: dBASE PLUS 2.0x build 1703. {dBase Home (http://dbase.com/)}. (2003-11-24)
dead code elimination "programming" (DCE) A {compiler} {optimisation} that detects {dead code} (code that will never be executed) and ignores it rather than blindly compiling it. DCE reduces the size of the resulting {executable}, saving space and load time. (2018-06-26)
dead code "programming" (Or "infeasible path") Any part of a {program} that can never be executed because no {control flow} path leads to it. This may be because it is guarded by a {control structure} that will always {transfer control} somewhere else, e.g. if (false) {
deadlock "parallel, programming" A situation where two or more {processes} are unable to proceed because each is waiting for one of the others to do something. A common example is a program waiting for output from a server while the server is waiting for more input from the controlling program before outputting anything. It is reported that this particular flavour of deadlock is sometimes called a "starvation deadlock", though the term "starvation" is more properly used for situations where a program can never run simply because it never gets high enough priority. Another common flavour is "constipation", in which each process is trying to send stuff to the other but all buffers are full because nobody is reading anything). See {deadly embrace}. Another example, common in {database} programming, is two processes that are sharing some resource (e.g. read access to a {table}) but then both decide to wait for exclusive (e.g. write) access. The term "deadly embrace" is mostly synonymous, though usually used only when exactly two processes are involved. This is the more popular term in Europe, while {deadlock} predominates in the United States. Compare: {livelock}. See also {safety property}, {liveness property}. [{Jargon File}] (2000-07-26)
Death has no separate existence by itself, it is only a result of the principle of decay in the body and that principle is there already — it is part of the physical nature. At the same time it is not inevitable ; if one could have the ’necessary consciousness and force, decay and death is not inevitable. But to bring that consciousness and force into the whole of the material nature is the most diflicult thing of all — at any rate, in such a way as to annul the decay principle.
decyl ::: n. --> A hydrocarbon radical, C10H21, never existing alone, but regarded as the characteristic constituent of a number of compounds of the paraffin series.
Delusion: (Lat. de + ludere, to play) Erroneous or non-veridical cognition. The term is properly restricted to perception, memory and other non-inferential forms of knowledge but is at times extended to include inferential beliefs and theories. See Veridical. The two principal types of delusion are (a) illusion or partially delusive cognition, e.g. the ordinary distortions of sense and memory which nevertheless have a basis in fact, and (b) hallucination or totally delusive cognition such as dreams, pseudo-memories, etc. to which nothing corresponds in fact. See Illusion; Hallucination. -- L.W.
destiny ::: 1. Something that is to happen or has happened to a particular person or thing; lot or fortune. 2. The predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events. 3. The power or agency that determines the course of events. 4. *(Cap.) This power personified or represented as a goddess. *Destiny, destinies, world-destiny.
determinism ::: n. --> The doctrine that the will is not free, but is inevitably and invincibly determined by motives.
deuce ::: n. --> Two; a card or a die with two spots; as, the deuce of hearts.
A condition of the score beginning whenever each side has won three strokes in the same game (also reckoned "40 all"), and reverted to as often as a tie is made until one of the sides secures two successive strokes following a tie or deuce, which decides the game.
The devil; a demon.
dichogamy ::: n. --> The condition of certain species of plants, in which the stamens and pistil do not mature simultaneously, so that these plants can never fertilize themselves.
Diderot, Denis: (1713-1784) He was editor-in-chiet ot trie French Encyclopaedia and as such had a far reaching influence in the Enlightenment. His own views changed from an initial deism to a form of materialism and ended in a pantheistic naturalism. He displayed a keen interest in science and may be viewed as a forerunner of positivism. He issued severe polemics against the Christian religion. De la suffisance de la religion naturelle, 1747 (publ. 1770); Lettre sur les aveugles . . . (1749); Le Reve d'Alembert, 1769 (publ. 1830); La religieuse, 1760; Le neveu de Rameau, 1761, Jacques le fataliste, 1773.
Difficulties and perplexities can never be got rid of by the mind brooding over them and trying in that way to get out of them*; this habit of the mind only makes them recur without a solu- tion and keeps up by brooding the persistent tangfe. I( is from something above and outside the perplexities that the solution , must come. It is a subtle law of the action of consciousness that if you stress difficulties — you have to observe them, of course, but not stress them, they will quite sufficiently do that for themselves — the difficulties tend to slick or even increase ; on the contrary, if you put your whole stress on faith and aspira-
discovert ::: a. --> Not covert; not within the bonds of matrimony; unmarried; -- applied either to a woman who has never married or to a widow. ::: n. --> An uncovered place or part.
dissipate ::: v. t. --> To scatter completely; to disperse and cause to disappear; -- used esp. of the dispersion of things that can never again be collected or restored.
To destroy by wasteful extravagance or lavish use; to squander. ::: v. i.
Divine Force, as it descends, increases the personal poirer and equates the strength that receives with the Force that enters from above to work in the nature. This is only possible if there is on our part a progressive surrender of the being into the hands of the Divine ; there must be a complete and never-failing'assent, a willingness to let the Divine Power do with us whatew is needed for the work that has to be done.
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.
druid ::: n. --> One of an order of priests which in ancient times existed among certain branches of the Celtic race, especially among the Gauls and Britons.
A member of a social and benevolent order, founded in London in 1781, and professedly based on the traditions of the ancient Druids. Lodges or groves of the society are established in other countries.
dumb ::: Amal: “Sri Aurobindo uses the word ‘dumb’ in the sense of mute but never of stupid or lacking in intelligence. I think the latter usage is more slang than literature.”
Egocentriclty ::: The main idea in it is always one’s own sadhana, one’s own endeavour, one’s own development, perfec- tion, siddhi. It is inevitable for most, for without that personal endeavour there would not be sufficient will or push to bring about the first necessary changes. But none of these things — development, perfection or siddhi — can really come in any degree of completeness or unmixed finality until this egocentric attitude changes into the God-centric, until it becomes the deve- lopment, perfection, siddhi of the Divine Consciousness, its will and its instrumentarion in this body — and that can only be when these things become secondary, and bhakti for the Divine,
Ends: (in Kant's ethics) (1) Humanity and every rational creature is an end in itself (never merely a means). (2) "The natural end which all men have is their own happiness." (Kant.)
epidermis ::: v. t. --> The outer, nonsensitive layer of the skin; cuticle; scarfskin. See Dermis.
The outermost layer of the cells, which covers both surfaces of leaves, and also the surface of stems, when they are first formed. As stems grow old this layer is lost, and never replaced.
erased ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Erase ::: p. pr. & a. --> Rubbed or scraped out; effaced; obliterated.
Represented with jagged and uneven edges, as is torn off; -- used esp. of the head or limb of a beast. Cf. Couped.
erose ::: a. --> Irregular or uneven as if eaten or worn away.
Jagged or irregularly toothed, as if nibbled out or gnawed.
Eros: (Gr.) 1. Possessive desire or love, commonly erotic. 2. In Platonic thought, the driving force of life aspiring to the absolute Good; hence the motive underlying education, fine art, and philosophy. The connotation of aesthetic fascination, impersonality, and intense desire is retained in Plato's use of the term. Hence Eros is to be distinguished from the Indian Bhakti (selfless devotion), the Buddhist Metta (disinterested benevolence), the Confucian Jen (humanity, charity), and Ai (personal love), and the Christian Agapao (sacrificial, protective brotherly love), and Phileo (personal affection or fondness). -- W.L.
essence ::: “Essence can never be defined—it simply is.” Letters on Yoga
eventless ::: a. --> Without events; tame; monotomous; marked by nothing unusual; uneventful.
expand ::: v. t. --> To lay open by extending; to open wide; to spread out; to diffuse; as, a flower expands its leaves.
To cause the particles or parts of to spread themselves or stand apart, thus increasing bulk without addition of substance; to make to occupy more space; to dilate; to distend; to extend every way; to enlarge; -- opposed to contract; as, to expand the chest; heat expands all bodies; to expand the sphere of benevolence.
To state in enlarged form; to develop; as, to expand an
extensive ::: a. --> Having wide extent; of much superficial extent; expanded; large; broad; wide; comprehensive; as, an extensive farm; an extensive lake; an extensive sphere of operations; extensive benevolence; extensive greatness.
Capable of being extended.
falsehood ::: “It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, …” Letters on Yoga
Falsehood ::: not Ignorance (Avidya), but an extreme result of it. Falsehood is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power puts forth its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its willful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. Whenever these perversions created out of the stuff of ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense.
Fang hsin: The lost heart, i.e., the originally good mind which has turned away from the principles of benevolence and righteousness. (Mencius.) -- W.T.C.
fatal ::: a. --> Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny; necessary; inevitable.
Foreboding death or great disaster.
Causing death or destruction; deadly; mortal; destructive; calamitous; as, a fatal wound; a fatal disease; a fatal day; a fatal error.
fatalism ::: n. --> The doctrine that all things are subject to fate, or that they take place by inevitable necessity.
fatalist ::: n. --> One who maintains that all things happen by inevitable necessity.
fate ::: 1. That which is inevitably predetermined or preordained; destiny. 2. Something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; lot. **fate"s, fates, fated, fate-bound, fate-driven, fate-hedged, fate-led, fate-turned, world-fate.
fate ::: n. --> A fixed decree by which the order of things is prescribed; the immutable law of the universe; inevitable necessity; the force by which all existence is determined and conditioned.
Appointed lot; allotted life; arranged or predetermined event; destiny; especially, the final lot; doom; ruin; death.
The element of chance in the affairs of life; the unforeseen and unestimated conitions considered as a force shaping events; fortune; esp., opposing circumstances against which it is useless to
favor ::: n. --> Kind regard; propitious aspect; countenance; friendly disposition; kindness; good will.
The act of countenancing, or the condition of being countenanced, or regarded propitiously; support; promotion; befriending.
A kind act or office; kindness done or granted; benevolence shown by word or deed; an act of grace or good will, as distinct from justice or remuneration.
feroher ::: n. --> A symbol of the solar deity, found on monuments exhumed in Babylon, Nineveh, etc.
Fiction: Whenever a symbol, as part of an utterance, occurs in such a context that the truth of any utterance of the same form would normally guarantee the existence of an individual denoted by that symbol, whereas in the case considered no such implication holds, the symbol may be said to occur fictitiously in that context. Thus in the utterance "The average man is six feet tall" the phrase "the average man" occurs fictitiously. For "X is less thin six feet tall" normally implies that there is an individual denoted by "X". But there is no individual denoted by "the average man".
Fiske, John: (1842-1901) Harvard librarian and philosopher. He is best known as an historian of the colonial period. He was a voluminous writer in many fields. His Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy is his best known work as a pioneer in America of the evolutionary theories. He claimed an original contribution to these speculations in his studies of the period of infancy. His works on God and on immortality were widely read in his day although he later expressed doubts about them. Nevertheless his constant emphasis on the theistic as opposed to the positivistic implications of evolution served to influence the current theories of creative and emergent evolution. See Evolutionism. -- L.E.D.
Flux: The characteristic of time, by virtue of which all things change inevitably. In Heracleitus' view, who brought the problem into prominence, "all things flow; nothing abides". -- R.B.W.
forest ::: n. --> An extensive wood; a large tract of land covered with trees; in the United States, a wood of native growth, or a tract of woodland which has never been cultivated.
A large extent or precinct of country, generally waste and woody, belonging to the sovereign, set apart for the keeping of game for his use, not inclosed, but distinguished by certain limits, and protected by certain laws, courts, and officers of its own.
For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Sup- reme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
For the sadhaka of the integral yoga it is necessary to remem- ber that no written Sastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture.
From day to day with never-ceasing joy,
“From our ascending point of view we may say that the Real is behind all that exists; it expresses itself intermediately in an Ideal which is a harmonised truth of itself; the Ideal throws out a phenomenal reality of variable conscious-being which, inevitably drawn towards its own essential Reality, tries at last to recover it entirely whether by a violent leap or normally through the Ideal which put it forth. It is this that explains the imperfect reality of human existence as seen by the Mind, the instinctive aspiration in the mental being towards a perfectibility ever beyond itself, towards the concealed harmony of the Ideal, and the supreme surge of the spirit beyond the ideal to the transcendental.” The Life Divine
from ::: prep. --> Out of the neighborhood of; lessening or losing proximity to; leaving behind; by reason of; out of; by aid of; -- used whenever departure, setting out, commencement of action, being, state, occurrence, etc., or procedure, emanation, absence, separation, etc., are to be expressed. It is construed with, and indicates, the point of space or time at which the action, state, etc., are regarded as setting out or beginning; also, less frequently, the source, the cause, the occasion, out of which anything proceeds; -- the aritithesis and
genevan ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Geneva, in Switzerland; Genevese. ::: n. --> A native or inhabitant of Geneva.
A supported of Genevanism.
genevanism ::: n. --> Strict Calvinism.
geneva ::: n. --> The chief city of Switzerland.
A strongly alcoholic liquor, flavored with juniper berries; -- made in Holland; Holland gin; Hollands.
genevese ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Geneva, in Switzerland; Genevan. ::: n. sing. & pl. --> A native or inhabitant of Geneva; collectively, the inhabitants of Geneva; people of Geneva.
gentleness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being gentle, well-born, mild, benevolent, docile, etc.; gentility; softness of manners, disposition, etc.; mildness.
glabrous ::: a. --> Smooth; having a surface without hairs or any unevenness.
glucinum ::: n. --> A rare metallic element, of a silver white color, and low specific gravity (2.1), resembling magnesium. It never occurs naturally in the free state, but is always combined, usually with silica or alumina, or both; as in the minerals phenacite, chrysoberyl, beryl or emerald, euclase, and danalite. It was named from its oxide glucina, which was known long before the element was isolated. Symbol Gl. Atomic weight 9.1. Called also beryllium.
goodness ::: n. --> The quality of being good in any of its various senses; excellence; virtue; kindness; benevolence; as, the goodness of timber, of a soil, of food; goodness of character, of disposition, of conduct, etc.
good ::: superl. --> Possessing desirable qualities; adapted to answer the end designed; promoting success, welfare, or happiness; serviceable; useful; fit; excellent; admirable; commendable; not bad, corrupt, evil, noxious, offensive, or troublesome, etc.
Possessing moral excellence or virtue; virtuous; pious; religious; -- said of persons or actions.
Kind; benevolent; humane; merciful; gracious; polite; propitious; friendly; well-disposed; -- often followed by to or toward,
gracious ::: 1. Characterized by kindness and warm courtesy. 2. Pleasantly kind, benevolent, and courteous; charming and elegant. 3. Tender, mild, gentle. 4. Of a merciful or compassionate nature.
Guru ::: The relation of Guru and disciple is only one of many relations which one can have with the Divine, and in this Yoga which aims at a supramental realisation, it is not usual to give it this name; rather, the Divine is regarded as the Source, the living Sun of Light and Knowledge and Consciousness and spiritual realisation and all that one receives is felt as coming from there and the whole being remoulded by the Divine Hand. This is a greater and more intimate relation than that of the human Guru and disciple, which is more of a limited mental ideal. Nevertheless, if the mind still needs the more familiar mental conception, it can be kept so long as it is needed; only do not let the soul be bound by it and do not let it limit the inflow of other relations with the Divine and larger forms of experience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 395
hardly ::: “Your ‘barely enough’, instead of the finer and more suggestive ‘hardly’, falls flat upon my ear; one cannot substitute one word for another in this kind of poetry merely because it means intellectually the same thing; ‘hardly’ is the mot juste in this context and, repetition or not, it must remain unless a word not only juste but inevitable comes to replace it… . On this point I may add that in certain contexts ‘barely’ would be the right word, as for instance, ‘There is barely enough food left for two or three meals’, where ‘hardly’ would be adequate but much less forceful. It is the other way about in this line. Letters on Savitri
Hedonistic Paradox: A paradox or apparent inconsistency in hedonistic theory arising from (1) the doctrine that since pleasure is the only good, one ought always to seek pleasure, and (2) the fact that whenever pleasure itself is the object sought it cannot be found. Human nature is such that pleasure normally arises as an accompaniment of satisfaction of desire for any end except when that end is pleasure itself. The way to attain pleasure is not to seek for it, but for something else which when found will have yielded pleasure through the finding. Likewise, one should not seek to avoid pain, but only actions which produce pain. -- A.J.B.
Heterogeneity: (Lat. Heterogeneitas) The condition of having different parts; diversity of composition; distinction of kind. Hamilton's law: "that every concept contains other concepts under it; and therefore, when divided proximately, we descend always to other concepts, but never to individuals; in other words, things the most homogeneous -- similar -- must in certain respects be heterogeneous -- dissimilar." Employed by H. Spencer (1820-1903) to denote the presence of differentiation in the cosmic material. Opposite of: homogeneity (q- v.). -- J.K.F.
hilly ::: a. --> Abounding with hills; uneven in surface; as, a hilly country.
Lofty; as, hilly empire.
hobbly ::: a. --> Rough; uneven; causing one to hobble; as a hobbly road.
horn ::: n. --> A hard, projecting, and usually pointed organ, growing upon the heads of certain animals, esp. of the ruminants, as cattle, goats, and the like. The hollow horns of the Ox family consist externally of true horn, and are never shed.
The antler of a deer, which is of bone throughout, and annually shed and renewed.
Any natural projection or excrescence from an animal, resembling or thought to resemble a horn in substance or form; esp.:
howbeit ::: conj. --> Be it as it may; nevertheless; notwithstanding; although; albeit; yet; but; however.
however ::: adv. --> In whetever manner, way, or degree.
At all events; at least; in any case. ::: conj. --> Nevertheless; notwithstanding; yet; still; though; as, I shall not oppose your design; I can not, however, approve of it.
Hsiao: Filial piety; love of parents; serving and supporting one's parents in the best way. It is "the standard of Heaven, the principle of Earth, and the basis for the conduct of Man," "the basis of morality and the root of culture." "It begins with serving one's parents, extends to the duties towards one's sovereign, and ends in the establishment of one's personal character." "It is the beginning of morality, as respect for elders (ti) is the order of morality;" it is "the actuality of benevolence (jen)" as respect for elders is "the actuality of righteousness (i)." As such "it involves loving kindness to relatives, respect to associates, benevolence to friends, and good faith to acquaintances." "True manhood, (jen) means to make filial piety the basis of manhood; righteousness (i) means to give it proper application; being true to the nature of the self (chung) means to make it the central moral ideal; moral order (li) is to put it to actual practice, and truthfulness (hsin) means to make it strong." -- W.T.C.
humane ::: a. --> Pertaining to man; human.
Having the feelings and inclinations creditable to man; having a disposition to treat other human beings or animals with kindness; kind; benevolent.
Humanizing; exalting; tending to refine.
humanitarian ::: a. --> Pertaining to humanitarians, or to humanitarianism; as, a humanitarian view of Christ&
Hu ::: Whether via revelation or through consciousness, HU is the inner essence of the reality of everything that is perceived... To such extent that, as the reflection of Akbariyyah, first awe then nothingness is experienced and, as such, the Reality of Hu can never be attained! Sight cannot reach HU! HU denotes absolute obscurity and incomprehension! As a matter of fact, all names, including Allah are mentioned in connection with HU in the Quran!
hydrophobia ::: n. --> An abnormal dread of water, said to be a symptom of canine madness; hence:
The disease caused by a bite form, or inoculation with the saliva of, a rabid creature, of which the chief symptoms are, a sense of dryness and construction in the throat, causing difficulty in deglutition, and a marked heightening of reflex excitability, producing convulsions whenever the patient attempts to swallow, or is disturbed in any way, as by the sight or sound of water; rabies; canine madness.
inevasible ::: a. --> Incapable of being evaded; inevitable; unavoidable.
inevidence ::: n. --> Want of evidence; obscurity.
inevident ::: a. --> Not evident; not clear or obvious; obscure.
inevitability ::: n. --> Impossibility to be avoided or shunned; inevitableness.
inevitable ::: 1. Unable to be avoided, evaded, or escaped; certain; necessary. 2. Sure to occur, happen, or come. inevitably.
inevitable ::: a. --> Not evitable; incapable of being shunned; unavoidable; certain.
Irresistible.
inevitableness ::: n. --> The state of being unavoidable; certainty to happen.
inevitable ::: (vak) having the qualities of the highest level of style, which brings the "absolute and revealing word", either in the pure inevitable form or as a "magical transformation" of a lesser style 72"raised to inevitability" in its own line.
inevitably ::: adv. --> Without possibility of escape or evasion; unavoidably; certainly.
Idealists regard such an equalization of physical laws and psychological, historical laws as untenable. The "tvpical case" with which physics or chemistry analyzes is a result of logical abstraction; the object of history, however, is not a unit with universal traits but something individual, in a singular space and at a particular time, never repeatable under the same circumstances. Therefore no physical laws can be formed about it. What makes it a fact worthy of historical interest, is iust the fullness of live activity in it; it is a "value", not a "thing". Granted that historical events are exposed to influences from biological, geological, racial and traditional sources, they aie always carried by a human being whose singularity of character has assimilated the forces of his environment and surmounted them There is a reciprocal action between man and society, but it is always personal initiative and free productivity of the individual which account for history. Denying, therefore, the logical primacy of physical laws in history, does not mean lawlessness, and that is the standpoint of the logic of history in more recent times. Windelband and H. Rickert established another kind of historical order of laws. On their view, to understand history one must see the facts in their relation to a universally applicable and transcendental system of values. Values "are" not, they "hold"; they are not facts but realities of our reason, they are not developed but discovered. According to Max Weber historical facts form an ideally typical, transcendental whole which, although seen, can never be fully explained. G, Simmel went further into metaphysics: "life" is declared an historical category, it is the indefinable, last reality ascending to central values which shaped cultural epochs, such as the medieval idea of God, or the Renaissance-idea of Nature, only to be tragically disappointed, whereupon other values rise up, as humanity, liberty, technique, evolution and others.
::: "If there is an evolution in material Nature and if it is an evolution of being with consciousness and life as its two key-terms and powers, this fullness of being, fullness of consciousness, fullness of life must be the goal of development towards which we are tending and which will manifest at an early or later stage of our destiny. The Self, the Spirit, the Reality that is disclosing itself out of the first inconscience of life and matter, would evolve its complete truth of being and consciousness in that life and matter. It would return to itself, — or, if its end as an individual is to return into its Absolute, it could make that return also, — not through a frustration of life but through a spiritual completeness of itself in life. Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half-fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature.” The Life Divine
“If there is an evolution in material Nature and if it is an evolution of being with consciousness and life as its two key-terms and powers, this fullness of being, fullness of consciousness, fullness of life must be the goal of development towards which we are tending and which will manifest at an early or later stage of our destiny. The Self, the Spirit, the Reality that is disclosing itself out of the first inconscience of life and matter, would evolve its complete truth of being and consciousness in that life and matter. It would return to itself,—or, if its end as an individual is to return into its Absolute, it could make that return also,—not through a frustration of life but through a spiritual completeness of itself in life. Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half-fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature.” The Life Divine
I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, keep not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.”
I kuan: The "one thread" or central principle that runs through the teachings of Confucius. See Chung yung. This is interpreted as The Confucian doctrine of being true to the principles of one's nature (chung) and the benevolent exercise of them in relation to others (shu), by Confucius' pupil, Tseng Tzu. The central principle of centrality and harmony (chung yung) by which all human affairs and natural phenomena may be understood. (Earlv Confucianism.) "Man and things forming one organic unity," there being no discrimination between the self and the non-self. (Ch'eng I-ch'uan, 1033-1107.) Sincerity (ch'eng), which is the way of Heaven, indestructible, by which all things are in their proper places. Sincerity is the thread that runs through all affairs and things, and being true to the principles of one's nature and the benevolent exercise of them in relation to others is the way to try to be sincere. (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200.) The "one" is the Great Ultimate in general and the "thread" is the Great Ultimate in each thing. (Chu Hsi.)
I. Logic of History The historical objects under observation (man, life, society, biological and geological conditions) are so diverse that even slight mistakes in evaluation of items and of the historical whole may lead to false results. This can be seen from the modern logic of history. In the 18th century, G. B. Vico contended, under the deep impression of the lawfulness prevailing in natural sciences, that historical events also follow each other according to unswerving natural laws. He assumed three stages of development, that of fantasy, of will, and of science. The encyclopedists and Saint-Simon shared his view. The individual is immersed, and driven on, by the current of social tendencies, so that Comte used to speak of an "histoire sans noms". His three stages of development were the theological, metaphysical, and scientific stage. H. Spencer and A. Fouillee regard social life as an organism unfolding itself according to immanent laws, either of racial individuality (Gobineau, Vocher de Lapauge) or of a combination of social, physical, and personal forces (Taine). The spirit of a people and of an age outweigh completely the power of an individual personality which can work only along socially conditioned tendencies. The development of a nation always follows the same laws, it may vary as to time and whereabouts but never as to the form (Burkhardt, Lamprecht). To this group of historians belong also O. Spengler and K. Marx; "Fate" rules the civilization of peoples and pushes them on to their final destination.
In America we have among Theistic Personalists in addition to Bowne, G. T. Ladd (1842-1921); J. W. Buckham (1864-), Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930), Personal Idealism, Absolutistic Personalism; G. A. Wilson (1864-1941); H. A. Youtz (1867-); R. T. Flewelling (1871-), Personal Realism; A. C. Knudson (1873-); E. S. Brightman (1884-), "The Given." Though probably rejecting the term personalism, a view of American Personalism would be incomplete without mention of W. T. Harris (1835-1909); C. W. Howison (1834-1916); Josiah Royce (1855-1916); G. T. W. Patrick (1857-); W. E. Boodin (1869-); J. A. Leighton (1870); W. E. Hocking (1873-); J. B. Pratt (1875-), Personal Realism. Among contemporary Personalists abroad mention should be made of Ph. Kohnstamm, Holland, Critical Personalism; N. Losski (1870-), Prague, Organismic Personalism; N. Berdyaev (1874-), Paris;, Maurice Blondel (1861-1939), Paris, Activism; Ch. Baudouin (1893-), Geneva; Radelescu-Motru, Bucharest. In France also should be noted the leader of the Personalistic movement which might be denominated Political Personalism, E. Mounier. -- R.T.F.
Inconscience ::: Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness, they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience…
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 27
inconscience ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity.” *The Life Divine
"All aspects of the omnipresent Reality have their fundamental truth in the Supreme Existence. Thus even the aspect or power of Inconscience, which seems to be an opposite, a negation of the eternal Reality, yet corresponds to a Truth held in itself by the self-aware and all-conscious Infinite. It is, when we look closely at it, the Infinite"s power of plunging the consciousness into a trance of self-involution, a self-oblivion of the Spirit veiled in its own abysses where nothing is manifest but all inconceivably is and can emerge from that ineffable latency. In the heights of Spirit this state of cosmic or infinite trance-sleep appears to our cognition as a luminous uttermost Superconscience: at the other end of being it offers itself to cognition as the Spirit"s potency of presenting to itself the opposites of its own truths of being, — an abyss of non-existence, a profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and delight of existence can manifest themselves, — but they appear in limited terms, in slowly emerging and increasing self-formulations, even in contrary terms of themselves; it is the play of a secret all-being, all-delight, all-knowledge, but it observes the rules of its own self-oblivion, self-opposition, self-limitation until it is ready to surpass it. This is the Inconscience and Ignorance that we see at work in the material universe. It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the infinite and eternal Existence.” *The Life Divine
"Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness, they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience.” Letters on Yoga
*inconscience.
indented ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Indent ::: a. --> Cut in the edge into points or inequalities, like teeth; jagged; notched; stamped in; dented on the surface.
Having an uneven, irregular border; sinuous; undulating.
Notched like the part of a saw consisting of the teeth;
In discussions of religion, syn. for the belief in a personal God. God is here usually conceived of as Creator, as having brought into existence realities other than himself which, though he is not completely (although for certain purposes, partly) dependent upon them, nevertheless are dependent upon him. Theism has characteristically held to a combination of both the transcendence and immanence of God. -- V.F.
indispensable ::: a. --> Not dispensable; impossible to be omitted, remitted, or spared; absolutely necessary or requisite.
Not admitting dispensation; not subject to release or exemption.
Unavoidable; inevitable.
Induction: (Lat. in and ducere, to lead in) i.e., to lead into the field of attention a number of observed particular facts as ground for a general assertion. "Perfect" induction is assertion concerning all the entities of a collection on the basis of elimination of each and every one of them. The conclusion sums up but does not go beyond the facts observed. Ordinarily, however, "induction" is used to mean ampliative inference as distinguished from explicative, i.e , it is the sort of inference which attempts to reach a conclusion concerning all the members of a class from observation of only some of them. Conclusions inductive in this sense are only probable, in greater or less degree according to the precautions taken in selecting the evidence for them. Induction is conceived by J. S. Mill, and generally, as essentially an evidencing process; but Whewell conceives it as essentially discovery, viz., discovery of some conception, not extracted from the set of particular facts observed, but nevertheless capable of "colligating" them, i.e., of expressing them all at once, (or, better stated, of making it possible to deduce them). For example, Kepler's statement that the orbit of Mars is an ellipse represented the discovery by him that the conception of the ellipse "colligated" all the observed positions of Mars. Mill's view of induction directly fits the process of empirical generalization; that of Whewell, rather the theoretical, explanatory part of the task of science. Charles Peirce, viewing induction as generalization, contrasts it not only with inference from antecedent to consequent ("deduction") but also with inference from consequent to antecedent, called by him "hypothesis" (also called by him "abduction" (q.v.), but better termed "diagnosis). -- C.J.D.
ineluctable ::: a. --> Not to be overcome by struggling; irresistible; inevitable.
inequal ::: a. --> Unequal; uneven; various.
inequality ::: n. --> The quality of being unequal; difference, or want of equality, in any respect; lack of uniformity; disproportion; unevenness; disparity; diversity; as, an inequality in size, stature, numbers, power, distances, motions, rank, property, etc.
Unevenness; want of levelness; the alternate rising and falling of a surface; as, the inequalities of the surface of the earth, or of a marble slab, etc.
Variableness; changeableness; inconstancy; lack of
inescapable ::: impossible to escape or avoid; inevitable. inescapably.
inextricable ::: a. --> Incapable of being extricated, untied, or disentangled; hopelessly intricate, confused, or obscure; as, an inextricable knot or difficulty; inextricable confusion.
Inevitable.
Infinitesimal: In a phraseology which is logically inexact but nevertheless common, an infinitesimal is a quantity, or a variable, whose limit is 0. Thus in considering the limit of f(x) as x approaches c, if this limit is 0 the "quantity" f(x) may be said to be an infinitesimal; or in considering the limit of f(x) as x approaches 0, the "quantity" x may be said to be an infinitesimal. (See the article limit.) -- A.C.
…in Nature each of us has a principle and will of our own becoming; each soul is a force of self-consciousness that formulates an idea of the Divine in it and guides by that its action and evolution, its progressive self-finding, its constant varying self-expression, its apparently uncertain but secretly inevitable growth to fullness. That is our Swabhava.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 519
In order to appreciate fully the meaning of the universe, man must comprehend Reason. This can be done by "investigating things to the utmost" (ko wu), that is, by "investigating the Reason of things to the utmost (ch'iung li)." When sufficient effort is made, and understanding naturally comes, one's nature will be realized and his destiny will be fulfilled, since "the exhaustive investigation of Reason, the full realization of one's nature, and the fulfillment of destiny are simultaneous." When one understands Reason, he will find that "All people are brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions," because all men have the same Reason in them. Consequently one should not entertain any distinction between things and the ego. This is the foundation of the Neo-Confucian ethics of jen, true manhood, benevolence or love. Both the understanding of Reason and the practice of jen require sincerity (ch'eng) and seriousness (ching) which to the Neo-Confucians almost assumed religious significance. As a matter of fact these have a certain correspondence with the Buddhist dhyana and prajna or meditation and insight. Gradually the Neo-Confucian movement became an inward movement, the mind assuming more and more importance.
In Principia Mathematica descriptions (or notations serving the same purpose in context) are introduced is incomplete symbols (q. v.). Russell maintains that descriptions not only may but must be thus construed as incomplete symbols -- briefly, for the following reasons. The alternative is to construe a description as a proper name, so that, e.g., the description the author of Waverley denotes the man Scott and is therefore synonymous with the name Scott. But then the sentences "Scott is the author of Waverley" and "Scott is Scott" ought to be synonymous -- which they clearly are not (although both are true). Moreover, such a desription as the King of France cannot be a proper name, since there is no King of France whom it may denote; nevertheless, a sentence such as "The King of France is bald" should be construed to have a meaning, since it may be falsely asserted or believed by one who falsely asserts or believes that there is a King of France.
insatiate ::: never satisfied or appeased; ever craving for more. insatiably.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
Involution and .Evolution ::: Before there could be any evolution, there must needs be an involution of the Divine All that is to emerge. Otherwise there would be not an evolution, but a successive creation of things new, not contained in their antecedents, not their inevitable consequences or followers in a sequence but arbitrarily willed or miraculously conceived by an inexplicable Chance, a stumblingly fortunate Force or an external Creator.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 225-26
I: Righteousness, justice; one of the four Confucian Fundamentals of the Moral Life (ssu tuan) and the Five Constant Virtues (wu ch'ang). It is the virtue "by which things are made proper," "by which the world is regulated." It means the proper application of filial piety. It means, as in Han Yu (767-824), "the proper application of the principle of true manhood (jen)." It also means the removal of evil in the world. Mencius (371-289 B.C.) said that "righteousness is man's path, whereas true manhood is man's mind." Tung Chung-shu (177-104 B.C.) regarded it as the cardinal virtue by which one's self is rectified, whereas benevolence (jen) is the virtue by which others are pacified. To the Nco-Confucians, "seriousness (ching) is to straighten one's internal life and righteousness is to square one's external life." It is to regulate things and affairs by Reason (li). -- W.T.C.
Isolation by Varying Concomitants: In the logic of scientific method, the fourth of the five experimental methods of J. S. Mill (1806-1873), whereby cause can be determined in an actual case. Known also as the Method of Concomitant Variation. Stated by Mill as follows: "Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that phenomenon, or is connected with it through some fact of causation". -- J.K.F.
“It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy—the material aspect being only its outermost movement—that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” The Life Divine
"It [death] has no separate existence by itself, it is only a result of the principle of decay in the body and that principle is there already — it is part of the physical nature. At the same time it is not inevitable; if one could have the necessary consciousness and force, decay and death is not inevitable. But to bring that consciousness and force into the whole of the material nature is the most difficult thing of all — at any rate, in such a way as to annul the decay principle.” Letters on Yoga
“It [death] has no separate existence by itself, it is only a result of the principle of decay in the body and that principle is there already—it is part of the physical nature. At the same time it is not inevitable; if one could have the necessary consciousness and force, decay and death is not inevitable. But to bring that consciousness and force into the whole of the material nature is the most difficult thing of all—at any rate, in such a way as to annul the decay principle.” Letters on Yoga
It is only if you keep quiet and steady within that the lines of experience can go on with some steadiness — though they are never without periods of interruption and fluctuation ; but these if properly treated, can then become periods of assimilation and exhaustion of difficulty rather than denials of sadhana.
It is the cryptic verses of the Veda that help us here; for they contain, though concealed, the gospel of the divine and immortal Supermind and through the veil some illumining flashes come to us. We can see through these utterances the conception of this Supermind as a vastness beyond the ordinary firmaments of our consciousness in which truth of being is luminously one with all that expresses it and assures inevitably truth of vision, formulation, arrangement, word, act and movement and therefore truth also of result of movement, result of action and expression, infallible ordinance or law. Vast all-comprehensiveness; luminous truth and harmony of being in that vastness and not a vague chaos or self-lost obscurity; truth of law and act and knowledge expressive of that harmonious truth of being: these seem to be the essential terms of the Vedic description.” *The Life Divine
It is the cryptic verses of the Veda that help us here; for they contain, though concealed, the gospel of the divine and immortal Supermind and through the veil some illumining flashes come to us. We can see through these utterances the conception of this Supermind as a vastness beyond the ordinary firmaments of our consciousness in which truth of being is luminously one with all that expresses it and assures inevitably truth of vision, formulation, arrangement, word, act and movement and therefore truth also of result of movement, result of action and expression, infallible ordinance or law. Vast all-comprehensiveness; luminous truth and harmony of being in that vastness and not a vague chaos or self-lost obscurity; truth of law and act and knowledge expressive of that harmonious truth of being: these seem to be the essential terms of the Vedic description.” The Life Divine
"It is true that metaphors, symbols, images are constant auxiliaries summoned by the mystic for the expression of his experiences: that is inevitable because he has to express, in a language made or at least developed and manipulated by the mind, the phenomena of a consciousness other than the mental and at once more complex and more subtly concrete.” Letters on Yoga*
“It is true that metaphors, symbols, images are constant auxiliaries summoned by the mystic for the expression of his experiences: that is inevitable because he has to express, in a language made or at least developed and manipulated by the mind, the phenomena of a consciousness other than the mental and at once more complex and more subtly concrete.” Letters on Yoga
jagged ::: 1. Having ragged notches, points, or teeth; zigzag. 2. Having a harsh, rough, or uneven quality.
jaggy ::: a. --> Having jags; set with teeth; notched; uneven; as, jaggy teeth.
Jaspers, Karl: (1883-) Inspired by Nietzsche's and Kierkegaard's psychology, but aiming at a strictly scientific method, the "existentialist" Jaspers analyzes the possible attitudes of man towards the world; the decisions which the individual must make in inescapable situations like death, struggle, change, guilt; and the various ways in which man meets these situations. Motivated by the boundless desire for clarity and precision, Jaspers earnestly presents as his main objective to awaken the desire for a fuller, more genuine philosophy, these three methods of philosophizing which have existed from te earliest times to the present: Philosophical world orientation consisting in an analysis of the limitations, incompleteness and relativity of the researches, methods, world pictures of all the sciences; elucidation of existence consisting of a cognitive penetration into reality on the basis of the deepest inner decisions experienced by the individual, and striving to satisfy the deepest demands of human nature; the way of metaphysics, the never-satisfied and unending search for truth in the world of knowledge, conduct of life and in the seeking for the one being, dimly seen through antithetic thoughts, deep existential conflicts and differently conceived metaphysical symbols of the past. Realizing the decisive problematic relation between philosophy and religion in the Middle Ages, Jaspers elevates psychology and history to a more important place in the future of philosophy.
Jen: Man. Goodness; virtue in general; the moral principle; the moral ideal of the superior man (chun. tzu); the fundamental as well as the sum total of virtues, just as the Prime (yuan) is the origin and the vital force of all things --jen consisting of "man" and "two" and yuan consisting of "two" and "man". (Confucianism.) True manhood; man's character; human-heartedness; moral character; being man-like; "that by which a man is to be a man;" "realization of one's true self and the restoration of the moral order." (Confucius and Mencius.) "The active (yang) and passive (yin) principles are the way of Heaven; the principles of strength and weakness are the way of Earth; and true manhood and righteousness (i) are the way of Man." "True manhood is man's mind and righteousness is man's path." It is one of the three Universally Recognized Moral Qualities of man (ta te), the four Fundamentals of the Moral Life (ssu tuan), and the five Constant Virtues (wu ch'ang). True manhood and righteousness are the basic principles of Confucian ethics and politics. (Confucianism.) The golden rule; "Being true to the principles of one's nature (chung) and the benevolent exercise of them in relation to others (shu)." "The true man, having established his own character, seeks to establish the character of others; and having succeeded, seeks to make others succeed." (Confucius.) Love; benevolence; kindness; charity; compassion; "the character of the heart and the principle of love;" "love towards all men and benefit towards things." (Confucianism.) "Universal love without the element of self," (Chuang Tzu, between 399 and 295 B.C.) "Universal Love." (Han Yu, 767-824.) The moral principle with regard to others. "True manhood is the cardinal virtue by which others are pacified, whereas righteousness is the cardinal principle by which the self is rectified." It means "to love others and not the self." (Tung Chung-shu, 177-104 B.C.) Love of all men and things and impartiality and justice towards all men and things, this virtue being the cardinal virtue not only of man but also of the universe. "Love means to devote oneself to the benefit of other people and things." "Love implies justice, that is, as a man, treating others as men." "The true man regards the universe and all things as a unity. They are all essential to himself. As he realizes the true self, there is no limit to his love." (Ch'eng Ming-tao, 1032-1068.) "Love is the source of all laws, the foundation of all phenomena." "What is received from Heaven at the beginning is simply love, and is therefore the complete substance of the mind." "Love is the love of creating in the mind of Heaven and Earth, and men and other creatures receive it as their mind." (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200.)
Jivatman, soul, the Psychic Being ::: The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation to support its evolution in the material world. It is at first an undifferentiated power of the divine consciousness, containing all possibilities, but at first unevolved possibilities, which have not yet taken form, but to which it is the function of evolution to give form. This spark is there in all living beings, from the lowest to the highest. The psychic being is formed by the soul in its evolution. It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their experiences, carries the nature from life to life. It is the psychic or caitya purusa. The Self or Atman being free and superior to birth and death, the experience of the Jivatman and its unity with the supreme or universal Self brings the sense of liberation; but for the transformation of the life and nature the awakening of the psychic being is indispensable. The psychic being realises its oneness with the true being, the Jivatman, but it does not change into it.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 148-149
Jnana Yoga ::: 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 elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one’s own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 38-39
Ju: Confucianists. Scholars who were versed in the six arts, namely, the rules of propriety, music, archery, charioteering, writing, and mathematics. Priest-teachers in the Chou period (1122-249 B.C.) who clung to the dying culture of Shang (1765-1122 B.C.), observed Shang rules of conduct, became specialists on social decorum and religious rites. --W.T.C. Ju chia: The Confucian School, which "delighted in the study of the six Classics and paid attention to matters concerning benevolence and righteousness. They regarded Yao and Shun (mythological emperors) as founders whose example is to be followed, King Wen (1184-1135 B.C.?) and King Wu (1121-1116 B.C.?) as illustrious examples, and honored Confucius (551-479 B.C.) as the exalted teacher to give authority to their teaching." "As to the forms of proper conduct which they set up for prince and minister, for father and son, or the distinctions they make between husband and wife and between old and young, in these not even the opposition of all other philosophers can make any change."
Kalibhava (Kalibhava; Kali-bhava; Kali bhava) ::: the forceful temKalibhava perament of Kali, sometimes equivalent to Can.d.ibhava or Mahakali bhava; oneness with Kali as the universal prakr.ti or sakti, a state dependent on liberation from the ego (ahaṅkara-mukti-siddhi) in which "the form of the egoistic consciousness with a name attached to it is repelled whenever it throws its shadow on the central consciousness", leading to "entire possession of the world in subjective unity" by the jiva-prakr.ti.
karma ::: n. --> One&
Karma Yoga ::: Aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the Divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 39-40
KARMA YOGA. ::: It alms at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Wilt. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an inter- ested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renuncia- tion it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre^ of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To that our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoislic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the
kedge ::: n. --> To move (a vessel) by carrying out a kedge in a boat, dropping it overboard, and hauling the vessel up to it. ::: v. t. --> A small anchor used whenever a large one can be dispensed witch. See Kedge, v. t., and Anchor, n.
Kierkegaard, Sören: (1813-1855) Danish religious thinker whose influence was largely limited to Scandinavian and German circles until recently. His works are now translated into English and his thought revived by contemporary social pessimists. Eternity, he held, is more important than time; sin is worse than suffering ; man is an egotist and must experience despair; God is beyond reason and man; Christianity stands opposed to this world and time and to man's reason; paradoxes are the inevitable result of man's reflections; Christian ethics realizable only in eternity. Kierkegaard was raised in a stern Christian environment; he reacted against orthodox religion and official philosophies (especially Hegelianism). An individualist, a sensitive, melancholic personality suffering intense frustrations. Cf. German ed. of K's writings: Sämmtliche Werke (1909-), and Eng. translations of Swenson (Post-Scientific Philosophy, etc.). -- V.F.
kind-heartedness ::: n. --> The state or quality of being kind-hearted; benevolence.
kindliness ::: n. --> Natural inclination; natural course.
The quality or state of being kindly; benignity; benevolence; gentleness; tenderness; as, kindliness of disposition, of treatment, or of words.
Softness; mildness; propitiousness; as, kindliness of weather, or of a season.
kindly ::: n. --> According to the kind or nature; natural.
Humane; congenial; sympathetic; hence, disposed to do good to; benevolent; gracious; kind; helpful; as, kindly affections, words, acts, etc.
Favorable; mild; gentle; auspicious; beneficent. ::: adv.
kindly ::: of a sympathetic, helpful, or benevolent nature..
kind ::: of a good, benevolent nature.
kind ::: superl. --> Characteristic of the species; belonging to one&
Ku: Cause, "that with the obtaining of which a thing becomes." "A minor cause is that the obtaining of which a thing may not necessarily be so but without the obtaining of which a thing will never be so." "A major cause is that with the obtaining of which a thing is necessarily so but without the obtaining of which a thing is necessarily not so." (Neo-Mohism.) -- W.T.C.
kurvanneva ::: doing works indeed. [Isa 2]
lines, that is by the Divine Will and the Divine Force, as an instrument, but never as an instrumentation of the forces and beings of the vital plane. To seek their aid for such powers is a great error.
Madhav: “Pronunciamento is a proclamation issued by the revolutionaries; whenever there is a revolution, they declare their objectives and these are called pronunciamentos. They then fill the sky with their noise.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Word here is expression, manifestation. Inevitable in the sense that it has to precede the manifestation.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Main works: Recherche de la verite, 1674-5; Conversations Chretiennes, 1676; Traits de la Nature et de la Grace, 1680; Traite de Morale, 1683; Entretiens sur la metaphysique et la religion, 1688; Traite de l'Amour de Dieu, 1697; Reflexions sur la premotion physique, 1714. Malevolence: Ill or evil will or disposition -- the will or disposition to do wrong or to harm others. The vice opposed to the virtue of benevolence or good will. -- W.K.F.
Man alive, your proposed emendations are an admirable exposition of the art of bringing a line down the steps till my poor "slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete portrayal of an act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor thrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative poetic intelligence. First of all, you shift my "dimly” out of the way and transfer it to something to which it does not inwardly belongs make it an epithet of the gesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies the atmosphere in which the act of the Godhead takes place. That is a preliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its atmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture, but forcing its way through the black quietude it comes dimly. Then again the bald phrase "a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply something that "happened”, "came” being a poetic equivalent for "happened”, instead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture. The words "slow” and "dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word"s sense here. Remove one or both whether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the vision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly in your penultimate version and as for the last its "came” gets another meaning and one feels that somebody very slowly decided to let out the gesture from himself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all! "Dimly miraculous” means what precisely or what "miraculously dim” — it was miraculous that it managed to be so dim or there was something vaguely miraculous about it after all? No doubt they try to mean something else — but these interpretations come in their way and trip them over. The only thing that can stand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is that it does not give the effect I wanted to give, the effect which is necessary for the dawn"s inner significance. Moreover, what becomes of the slow lingering rhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable? Letters on Savitri
Man alive, your proposed emendations are an admirable exposition of the art of bringing a line down the steps till my poor”slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete portrayal of an act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor thrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative poetic intelligence. First of all, you shift my”dimly” out of the way and transfer it to something to which it does not inwardly belongs make it an epithet of the gesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies the atmosphere in which the act of the Godhead takes place. That is a preliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its atmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture, but forcing its way through the black quietude it comes dimly. Then again the bald phrase”a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply something that”happened”,”came” being a poetic equivalent for”happened”, instead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture. The words”slow” and”dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word’s sense here. Remove one or both whether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the vision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly in your penultimate version and as for the last its”came” gets another meaning and one feels that somebody very slowly decided to let out the gesture from himself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all!”Dimly miraculous” means what precisely or what”miraculously dim”—it was miraculous that it managed to be so dim or there was something vaguely miraculous about it after all? No doubt they try to mean something else—but these interpretations come in their way and trip them over. The only thing that can stand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is that it does not give the effect I wanted to give, the effect which is necessary for the dawn’s inner significance. Moreover, what becomes of the slow lingering rhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable? Letters on Savitri
manes ::: n. pl. --> The benevolent spirits of the dead, especially of dead ancestors, regarded as family deities and protectors.
Matter, and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind Is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power ; if it acts it is through these Werior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arri- val of the descendiag Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal Itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being ::: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved In Matter have realised themselves here ; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. ■■
"Matter, — substance itself, subtle or dense, mental or material, — is form and body of Spirit and would never have been created if it could not be made a basis for the self-expression of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
“Matter,—substance itself, subtle or dense, mental or material,—is form and body of Spirit and would never have been created if it could not be made a basis for the self-expression of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
megrim ::: n. --> A kind of sick or nevrous headache, usually periodical and confined to one side of the head.
A fancy; a whim; a freak; a humor; esp., in the plural, lowness of spirits.
A sudden vertigo in a horse, succeeded sometimes by unconsciousness, produced by an excess of blood in the brain; a mild form of apoplexy.
The British smooth sole, or scaldfish (Psetta arnoglossa).
Meinong, Alexius: (1853-1921) Was originally a disciple of Brentano, who however emphatically rejected many of Meinong's later contentions. He claimed to have discovered a new a priori science, the "theory of objects" (to be distinguished from metaphysics which is an empirical science concerning reality, but was never worked out by Meinong). Anything "intended" by thought is an "object". Objects may either "exist" (such as physical objects) or "subsist" (such as facts which Meinong unfortunately termed "objectives", or mathematical entities), they may either be possible or impossible and they may belong either to a lower or to a higher level (such as "relations" and "complexions", "founded" on their simple terms or elements). In the "theory of objects," the existence of objects is abstracted from (or as Husserl later said it may be "bracketed") and their essence alone has to be considered. Objects are apprehended either by self-evident judgments or by "assumptions", that is, by "imaginary judgments". In the field of emotions there is an analogous division since there are also "imaginary" emotions (such as those of the spectator in a tragedy). Much of Meinong's work was of a psychological rather than of a metaphysical or epistemological character. -- H.G.
memory ::: n. --> The faculty of the mind by which it retains the knowledge of previous thoughts, impressions, or events.
The reach and positiveness with which a person can remember; the strength and trustworthiness of one&
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.
mercy ::: compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one"s power; compassion, pity, or benevolence.
minever ::: n. --> Same as Miniver.
Mill's methods: Inductive methods formulated by John Stuart Mill for the discovery of causal relations between phenomena. Method of Agreement: If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree, is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon. Method of Difference: If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance in common save one, that one occurring in the former; the circumstance in which alone the two instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon. Joint Method of Agreement and Difference: If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurs have only one circumstance in common, while two or more instances in which it does not occur have nothing in common save the absence of that circumstances the circumstance in which alone the two sets of instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon. Method of Concomitant Variations: Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that phenomenon, or is connected with it through some fact of causation. Method of Residues: Subduct from any phenomenon such part as is known by previous inductions to be the effect of certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of the remaining antecedents. See Mill's System of Logic, bk. Ill, ch. VIII. -- A.C.B.
Mo chia: The School of Mo Tzu (Moh Tzu, Mo Ti, between 500 and 396 B.C.) and his followers. This utilitarian and scientific minded philosopher, whose doctrines are embodied in Mo Tzu, advocated: "benefit" (li), or the promotion of general welfare and removal of evil, through the increase of population and of benevolence and righteousness toward this practical objective, the elimination of war, and the suppression of wasteful musical events and elaborate funerals; "universal love" (chien ai), or treating others, their families, and their countries as one's own, to the end that the greatest amount of benefit will be realized; agreement with the superiors (shang t'ung); a method of reasoning which involves a foundation, a survey, and application (san piao); the belief in Heaven and the spirits both as a religious sanction of governmental measures and as an effective way of promotion of peace and welfare. For the development of his teachings by his followers, see Mo che. -- W.T.C.
Mortality ::: Subject drop-out in a research study. Mortality becomes a problem when a disproportionate drop out rate occurs between two or more groups (Example: 30% of males drop out of group one while only 2% of males drop out in group two, resulting in uneven groups).
n.**1. Not subject to death. Immortal, immortal"s, Immortal"s, immortals, Immortals, immortals", Immortals". adj. 2. Everlasting; perpetual; constant. 3. Not subject to death or decay; having perpetual life. 4. Of or relating to immortal or divine beings or concepts. 5. Never to be forgotten; everlasting. adv. immortally.**
nathless ::: conj. --> Nevertheless.
nathmore ::: adv. --> Not the more; never the more.
natica ::: n. --> Any one of numerous species of marine gastropods belonging to Natica, Lunatia, Neverita, and other allied genera (family Naticidae.) They burrow beneath the sand, or mud, and drill other shells.
ne ::: adv. --> Not; never.
Nor.
necessary ::: a. --> Such as must be; impossible to be otherwise; not to be avoided; inevitable.
Impossible to be otherwise, or to be dispensed with, without preventing the attainment of a desired result; indispensable; requiste; essential.
Acting from necessity or compulsion; involuntary; -- opposed to free; as, whether man is a necessary or a free agent is a question much discussed.
necessitarianism ::: n. --> The doctrine of philosophical necessity; the doctrine that results follow by invariable sequence from causes, and esp. that the will is not free, but that human actions and choices result inevitably from motives; deteminism.
necessity ::: n. --> The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite; inevitableness; indispensableness.
The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want.
That which is necessary; a necessary; a requisite; something indispensable; -- often in the plural.
That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral;
Nestorians: A Christian sect dating from the 5th century. Nestorius, a patriarch of Constantinople 428-431) opposed the designation "Mother of God" (a declaration of Origen's) applied to Mary, the mother of Jesus. He said that Christ had two distinct natures and that Mary, a human being, could not have delivered anyone but a human. The emphasis is upon the genuine human nature and the exemplary value of Christ. Nestorianism was not only a Christo-logical viewpoint and the only cause for much theological dispute; it was also a part of a political and ecclesiastical feud between bishops east and west. The council of Ephesus in 431 declared the view heretical. Nevertheless the Nestorian churches spread widely and continues until our present time in Asiatic Turkey and Persia. -- V.F.
“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
No doubt, the Supermind has also acted in the history of the world but always through the Overmind. It is the direct descent of the Supramental Consciousness and Power that alone can utterly re-create life in terms of the Spirit. For, in the Overmind there is already the play of possibilities which marks the beginning of this lower triple world of Mind, Life and Matter in which we have our existence. And whenever there is this play and not the spontaneous and infallible working of the innate Truth of the Spirit, there is the seed of distortion and ignorance. Not that the Overmind is a field of ignorance; but it is the border-line between the Higher and the Lower, for, the play of possibilities, of separate even if not yet divided choice, is likely to lead to deviation from the Truth of things.
nonresistant ::: a. --> Making no resistance. ::: n. --> One who maintains that no resistance should be made to constituted authority, even when unjustly or oppressively exercised; one who advocates or practices absolute submission; also, one who holds that violence should never be resisted by force.
notwithstanding ::: prep. --> Without prevention, or obstruction from or by; in spite of. ::: adv. / conj. --> Nevertheless; however; although; as, I shall go, notwithstanding it rains.
“ Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Obligation: This may be said to be present whenever a necessity of any kind is laid upon any one to do a certain thing. Here the term "obligation" may refer either to the necessity of his doing the act or to the act which it is necessary for him to do. Always, in any case of obligation, there is a kind of necessity for someone to do something. This is true in all cases in which one says, "I was obliged to do that", "I have an obligation to him", "You ought to do so and so", "It is our duty to do such and such". It follows that obligation involves a relational structure. One never has an obligation simply, one always has an obligation to do a certain thing. An act is never simply obligatory, it is always obligatory for someone to do.
oddly ::: adv. --> In an odd manner; unevently.
In a peculiar manner; strangely; queerly; curiously.
In a manner measured by an odd number.
OLD NATURE. ::: The lower forces seldom yield the ground without a protracted and often repeated struggle. What is gained can be covered over, but it is never lost.
once ::: adv. --> By limitation to the number one; for one time; not twice nor any number of times more than one.
At some one period of time; -- used indefinitely.
At any one time; -- often nearly equivalent to ever, if ever, or whenever; as, once kindled, it may not be quenched.
“Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness, they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience.” Letters on Yoga
Once out of nature I shall never take
One may assert that the human brain, capable of forming ideas, does so not prior to or independently of the rest of the natural world, but in relation to it, moved and stimulated by its manifold content. Ideas reflect things, but the reflection, like everything else, is dialectical, not inert, but active. Ideas grow out of and lead back to things, sometimes very circuitously; things may be reflected fancifully, by abstraction or in new combinations as well as directly. While there is a perfectly objective reality to reflect, the reflection is never perfect: truth is absolute, but knowledge relative.
“One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
Ontologically, its materialism means that matter, nature, the observable world is taken "without reservations," as real in its own right, neither deriving its reality from any supernatural or transcendental source, nor dependent for its existence on the mind of man. It is considered scientifically evident that matter is prior to mind both temporally and logically in the sense that mind never appears except as an outgrowth of matter, and must be explained accordingly. Space and time are \iewed as forms of the existence of matter.
Overlapping among all the above-mentioned fields is inevitable, as well as great differences in approach among individual writers. Some of these stress the nature and varieties of form in art, with attention to historic types and styles such as romanticism, the Baroque, etc., and in studying their evolution adopt the historian's viewpoint to some extent. Some stress the psychology of creation, appreciation, imagination, aesthetic experience, emotion, evaluation, and preference. Their work may be classed as "aesthetics", "aesthetic psychology", or "psychology of art". Within this psychological group, some can be further distinguished as laboratory or statistical psychologists, attempting more or less exact calculation and measurement. This approach (sometimes called "experimental aesthetics") follows the lead of Fechner, whose studies of aesthetic preference in 1876 helped to inaugurate modern experimental psychology as well as the empirical approach to aesthetics. It has dealt less with works of art than with preference for various arbitrary, simplified linear shapes, color-combinations and tone-combinations.
Overmind ::: Above the mind there are several levels of conscious of the Truth. But in between is what he has distinguished as the Overmind, the world of the cosmic Gods. Now it is this Overmind that has up to the present governed our world: it is the highest that man has been able to attain in illumined consciousness. It has been taken for the Supreme Divine and all those who have reached it have never for a moment doubted that they have touched the true Spirit. For, its splendours are so great to the ordinary human consciousness that it is absolutely dazzled into believing that here at last is the crowning reality. And yet the fact is that the Overmind is far below the true Divine. It is not the authentic home of the Truth. It is only the domain of the formateurs , all those creative powers and deities to whom men have bowed down since the beginning of history. And the reason why the true Divine has not manifested and transformed the earth-nature is precisely that the Overmind has been mistaken for the Supermind.being, among which the really divine world is what Sri Aurobindo has called the Supermind, the world. The cosmic Gods do not wholly live in the Truth-Consciousness: they are only in touch with it and represent, each of them, an aspect of its glories.
Parallel lines – Two or more lines which are always the same distance apart. They never meet.
paranirvana. ::: the Supreme; Final Nirvana; when the perfectly enlightened individual is released from physical embodiment, never to return to birth in any world, high or low
particle ::: n. --> A minute part or portion of matter; a morsel; a little bit; an atom; a jot; as, a particle of sand, of wood, of dust.
Any very small portion or part; the smallest portion; as, he has not a particle of patriotism or virtue.
A crumb or little piece of concecrated host.
The smaller hosts distributed in the communion of the laity.
A subordinate word that is never inflected (a
Peano, Giuseppe, 1858-1932, Italian mathematician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Turin, 1890-1932. His work in mathematical logic marks a transition stage between the old algebra of logic and the newer methods. It is inferior to Frege's by present standards of rigor, but nevertheless contains important advances, among which may be mentioned the distinction between class inclusion (⊂) and class membership (∈) -- which had previously been confused -- and the introduction of a notation for formation of a class by abstraction (q. v.). His logical notations are more convenient than Frege's, and many of them are still in common use.
perennial ::: a. --> ing or continuing through the year; as, perennial fountains.
Continuing without cessation or intermission; perpetual; unceasing; never failing.
Continuing more than two years; as, a perennial steam, or root, or plant. ::: n.
perpetual ::: a. --> Neverceasing; continuing forever or for an unlimited time; unfailing; everlasting; continuous.
Pessimism: (Lat. pessimus, the worst) The attitude gained by reflection on life, man, and the world (psychiatrically explained as due to neurotic or other physiological conditions, economically to over-population, mechanization, rampant utilitarianism; religiously to lack of faith; etc.) which makes a person gloomy, despondent, magnifying evil and sorrow, or holding the world in contempt. Rationalizations of this attitude have been attempted before Schopenhauer (as in Hesiod, Job, among the Hindus, in Byron, Giacomo Leopardi, Heine, Musset, and others), but never with such vigor, consistency, and acumen, so that since his Welt als Wille und Vorstellung we speak of a 19th century philosophic literature of pessimism which considers this world the worst possible, holds man to be born to sorrow, and thinks it best if neither existed. Buddhism (q.v.) blames the universal existence of pain, sorrow, and death; Schopenhauer the blind, impetuous will as the very stuff life and the world are made of; E. v. Hartmann the alogical or irrational side of the ill-powerful subconscious; Oswald Spengler the Occidental tendency toward civilization and hence the impossibility of extricating ourselves from decay as the natural terminus of all organic existence. All pessimists, however, suggest compensations or remedies; thus, Buddhism looks hopefully to nirvana (q.v.), Schopenhauer to the Idea, v. Hartmann to the rational, Spengler to a rebirth through culture. See Optimism. -- K.F.L.
philanthropy ::: n. --> Love to mankind; benevolence toward the whole human family; universal good will; desire and readiness to do good to all men; -- opposed to misanthropy.
Pity: A more or less condescending feeling for other living beings in their suffering or lowly condition, condoned by those who hold to the inevitability of class differences, but condemned by those who believe in melioration or the establishment of more equitable relations and therefore substitute sympathy (q.v.). Synonymous with "having mercy" or "to spare" in the Old Testament (the Lord is "of many bowels"), Christians also are exhorted to be pitiful (e.g., 1. Pet. 3.8). Spinoza yet equates it with commiseration, but since this involves pain in addition to some good if alleviating action follows, it is to be overcome in a life dictated by reason. Except for moral theories which do not recognize feeling for other creatures as a fundamental urge pushing into action, such as utilitarianism in some of its aspects and Hinduism which adheres to the doctrine of karma (q.v.), however far apart the two are, pity may be regarded a prime ethical impulse but, due to its coldness and the possibility of calculation entering, is no longer countenanced as an essentially ethical principle in modern moral thinking. -- K.F.L.
Plato's theory of knowledge can hardly be discussed apart from his theory of reality. Through sense perception man comes to know the changeable world of bodies. This is the realm of opinion (doxa), such cognition may be more or less clear but it never rises to the level of true knowledge, for its objects are impermanent and do not provide a stable foundation for science. It is through intellectual, or rational, cognition that man discovers another world, that of immutable essences, intelligible realities, Forms or Ideas. This is the level of scientific knowledge (episteme); it is reached in mathematics and especially in philosophy (Repub. VI, 510). The world of intelligible Ideas contains the ultimate realities from which the world of sensible things has been patterned. Plato experienced much difficulty in regard to the sort of existence to be attributed to his Ideas. Obviously it is not the crude existence of physical things, nor can it be merely the mental existence of logical constructs. Interpretations have varied from the theory of the Christian Fathers (which was certainly not that of Plato himself) viz , that the Ideas are exemplary Causes in God's Mind, to the suggestion of Aristotle (Metaphysics, I) that they are realized, in a sense, in the world of individual things, but are apprehended only by the intellect The Ideas appear, however, particularly in the dialogues of the middle period, to be objective essences, independent of human minds, providing not only the foundation for the truth of human knowledge but afso the ontological bases for the shadowy things of the sense world. Within the world of Forms, there is a certain hierarchy. At the top, the most noble of all, is the Idea of the Good (Repub. VII), it dominates the other Ideas and they participate in it. Beauty, symmetry and truth are high-ranking Ideas; at times they are placed almost on a par with the Good (Philebus 65; also Sympos. and Phaedrus passim). There are, below, these, other Ideas, such as those of the major virtues (wisdom, temperance, courage, justice and piety) and mathematical terms and relations, such as equality, likeness, unlikeness and proportion. Each type or class of being is represented by its perfect Form in the sphere of Ideas, there is an ideal Form of man, dog, willow tree, of every kind of natural object and even of artificial things like beds (Repub. 596). The relationship of the "many" objects, belonging to a certain class of things in the sense world, to the "One", i.e. the single Idea which is their archetype, is another great source of difficulty to Plato. Three solutions, which are not mutually exclusive, are suggested in the dialogues (1) that the many participate imperfectly in the perfect nature of their Idea, (2) that the many are made in imitation of the One, and (3) that the many are composed of a mixture of the Limit (Idea) with the Unlimited (matter).
Plurality of causes: The doctrine according to which identical events can have two or more different causes. "It is not true that the same phenomenon is always produced by the same causes," declared J. S. Mill, author of the doctrine. Quite the contrary, "many causes may produce some kind of sensation, many causes may produce death." Mill's position was not taken in support of the doctrine of free will or of that of chance, but rather in opposition to an old contention of the physicists, among whom Newton stated that "to the same natural effect we must, as far as pssible, ascribe the same cause." The subsequent controversy has shown that Mill's position was based on the confusion between "the same phenomenon" and "the same kind of phenomena". It is doubtless true that the same kind of phenomena, say death, can be produced by many causes, but only because we take the phenomenon broadly, nevertheless, it may remain true that each particular phenomenon can be caused only by a very definite cause or by a very definite combination of causes. In other words, the broader we conceive the phenomenon, the more causes are likely to apply to it. -- R.B.W.
Power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense,—although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of awareness. This self-absorption, this trance of infinity is again, no longer luminously but darkly, the state which we call the Inconscient; for the being of the Infinite is there though by its appearance of inconscience it seems to us rather to be an infinite non-being: a self-oblivious intrinsic consciousness and force are there in that apparent non-being, for by the energy of the Inconscient an ordered world is created; it is created in a trance of self-absorption, the force acting automatically and with an apparent blindness as in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the Infinite.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 358-359
Practical Imperative: (in Kant's ethics) Kant's famous dictum: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only." -- P.A.S.
pradhana ::: (in the Sankhya philosophy) the original, unevolved state of Matter.
Pragmatism is first and always a doctrine of meaning, and often a definition of truth as well, but as to the latter, not all pragmatists are in complete agreement. Neither Peirce nor Dewey, for example, would accept James' view that if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily for the individual, it is true. Pragmatism is also a method of interpreting ideas in terms of their consequences. James, however, apparently does not believe that this method entails his specific philosophical doctrines -- his pluralism, individualism, neutralism, indeterminism, meliorism, pragmatic theism, "crass" supernaturalism, etc. In fact, he states that pragmatism is independent of his new philosophy of "radical empiricism" and agrees with the anti-intellectualist bent of the Italian pragmatist, Papini, who sees the pragmatic method available to the atheist, the praying penitent, the investigating chemist, the metaphysician and the anti-metaphysician ("What Pragmatism Means".) On the other hand, insofar as pragmatism is practically identified with the scientific method (as is allegedly the case with Dewey) it appears that the pragmatic method might be expected to yield much the same conclusions for one philosopher as for another. In general, pragmatism as a method, does not seem to imply any final philosophical conclusions. It may imply a general direction of thought, such as empiricism. Although pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey) frequently attack older forms of empiricism, or crude empiricism, and necessarily reject truth as a simple or static correspondence of propositions with sense data, they nevertheless continue to describe themselves as empiricists, so that today pragmatism (especially in Dewey's case) is often regarded as synonymous with empiricism. See Empiricism.
Primitivism: A modern term for a complex of ideas running back in classical thought to Hesiod. Two species of primitivism are found, (1) chronological primitivism, a belief that the best period of history was the earliest; (2) cultural primitivism, a belief that the acquisitions of civilization are evil. Each of these species is found in two forms, hard and soft. The hard primitivist believes the best state of mankind to approach the ascetic life; man's power of endurance is eulogized. The soft primitivist, while frequently emphasizing the simplicity of what he imagines to be primitive life, nevertheless accentuates its gentleness. The Noble Savage is a fair example of a hard primitive; the Golden Race of Hesiod of a soft. -- G.B.
pure inevitable ::: (vak) having the inevitable quality of style in its most absolute form, "a speech overwhelmingly sheer, pure and true, a quintessential essence of convincingly perfect utterance". pure trik trikaladrsti
ragged ::: having an irregular surface or edge; uneven or jagged in outline; rough and sharp.
ragged ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Rag ::: n. --> Rent or worn into tatters, or till the texture is broken; as, a ragged coat; a ragged sail.
Broken with rough edges; having jags; uneven; rough; jagged; as, ragged rocks.
real, the ::: Sri Aurobindo: " From our ascending point of view we may say that the Real is behind all that exists; it expresses itself intermediately in an Ideal which is a harmonised truth of itself; the Ideal throws out a phenomenal reality of variable conscious-being which, inevitably drawn towards its own essential Reality, tries at last to recover it entirely whether by a violent leap or normally through the Ideal which put it forth. It is this that explains the imperfect reality of human existence as seen by the Mind, the instinctive aspiration in the mental being towards a perfectibility ever beyond itself, towards the concealed harmony of the Ideal, and the supreme surge of the spirit beyond the ideal to the transcendental.” *The Life Divine
Reason is a clarified, ordered and organised Ignorance. It is a half-enlightened Ignorance seeking for truth, but a truth which it insists on founding upon the data and postulates of the Ignorance. Reason is not in possession of the Truth, it is a seeker. It is [unable to] discover the Truth or embody it; it leaves Truth covered but rendered into mental representations, a verbal and ideative scheme, an abstract algebra of concepts, a theory of the Ignorance. Sense-evidence is its starting point and it never really gets away from that insecure beginning. Its concepts start from sense-data and though like a kite it can fly high into an air of abstractions, it is held to the earth of sense by a string of great strength; if that string is broken it drifts lazily [in] the clouds and always it falls back by natural gravitation to its original earth basis—only so can it receive strength to go farther. Its field is the air and sky of the finite, it cannot ascend into the stratosphere of the spiritual vision, still less can it move at ease in the Infinite.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 256
reneved ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Renew
redan ::: n. --> A work having two parapets whose faces unite so as to form a salient angle toward the enemy.
A step or vertical offset in a wall on uneven ground, to keep the parts level.
Reformation: The Protestant Reformation may be dated from 1517, the year Martin Luther (1483-1546), Augustinian monk and University professor in Wittenberg, publicly attacked the sale of indulgences by the itinerant Tetzel, Dominican ambassador of the Roman Church. The break came first in the personality of the monk who could not find in his own religious and moral endeavors to win divine favor the peace demanded by a sensitive conscience; and when it came he found to his surprise that he had already parted company with a whole tradition. The ideology which found a response in his inner experience was set forth by Augustine, a troubled soul who had surrendered himself completely to divine grace and mercy. The philosophers who legitimized man's endeavor to get on in the world, the church which demanded unquestioned loyalty to its codes and commands, he eschewed as thoroughly inconsonant with his own inner life. Man is wholly dependent upon the merits of Christ, the miracle of faith alone justifies before God. Man's conscience, his reason, and the Scriptures together became his only norm and authority. He could have added a fourth: patriotism, since Luther became the spokesman of a rising tide of German nationalism already suspect of the powers of distant Rome. The humanist Erasmus (see Renaissance) supported Luther by his silence, then broke with him upon the reformer's extreme utterances concerning man's predestination. This break with the humanists shows clearly the direction which the Protestant Reformation was taking: it was an enfranchised religion only to a degree. For while Erasmus pleaded for tolerance and enlightenment the new religious movement called for decision and faith binding men's consciences to a new loyalty. At first the Scriptures were taken as conscience permitted, then conscience became bound by the Scuptures. Luther lacked a systematic theology for the simple reason that he himself was full of inconsistencies. A reformer is often not a systematic thinker. Lutheran princes promoted the reconstruction of institutions and forms suggested by the reformer and his learned ally, Melanchthon, and by one stroke whole provinces became Protestant. The original reformers were reformed by new reformers. Two of such early reformers were Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) in Switzerland and John Calvin (1509-1564) who set up a rigid system and rule of God in Geneva. Calvinism crossed the channel under the leadership of John Knox in Scotland. The English (Anglican) Reformation rested on political rather than strictly religious considerations. The Reformation brought about a Counter-Reformation within the Roman Church in which abuses were set right and lines against the Protestants more tightly drawn (Council of Trent, 1545-1563). -- V.F.
restless ::: 1. Never still or motionless. 2. Of things or conditions: Never at rest; perpetually agitated or in motion. restlessness.
restless ::: a. --> Never resting; unquiet; uneasy; continually moving; as, a restless child.
Not satisfied to be at rest or in peace; averse to repose or quiet; eager for change; discontented; as, restless schemers; restless ambition; restless subjects.
Deprived of rest or sleep.
Passed in unquietness; as, the patient has had a restless night.
ritualism ::: n. --> A system founded upon a ritual or prescribed form of religious worship; adherence to, or observance of, a ritual.
Specifically :(a) The principles and practices of those in the Church of England, who in the development of the Oxford movement, so-called, have insisted upon a return to the use in church services of the symbolic ornaments (altar cloths, encharistic vestments, candles, etc.) that were sanctioned in the second year of Edward VI., and never, as they maintain, forbidden by competennt
roughly ::: adv. --> In a rough manner; unevenly; harshly; rudely; severely; austerely.
rough ::: n. --> Having inequalities, small ridges, or points, on the surface; not smooth or plain; as, a rough board; a rough stone; rough cloth.
Not level; having a broken surface; uneven; -- said of a piece of land, or of a road.
Not polished; uncut; -- said of a gem; as, a rough diamond.
Tossed in waves; boisterous; high; -- said of a sea or other piece of water.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques: (1712-1778), a native of Geneva, Switzerland, whose influence in France and throughout Europe was enormous for many a decade, thanks to his timely ideas and colorful and lucid style of writing. Particularly influential were his Emile, a book on education, and Social Contract, a work reviving an old political doctrine concerning the origin of human society, into which he introduced novel democratic ideas. His thought was characterized by skepticism and criticism of the Western civilization regarded by him as a sad deviation from natural conditions of existence, described imaginatively in his New Heloise. -- R.B.W.
rudiment ::: n. --> That which is unformed or undeveloped; the principle which lies at the bottom of any development; an unfinished beginning.
Hence, an element or first principle of any art or science; a beginning of any knowledge; a first step.
An imperfect organ or part, or one which is never developed. ::: v. t.
ruffle ::: v. t. --> To make into a ruff; to draw or contract into puckers, plaits, or folds; to wrinkle.
To furnish with ruffles; as, to ruffle a shirt.
To oughen or disturb the surface of; to make uneven by agitation or commotion.
To erect in a ruff, as feathers.
To beat with the ruff or ruffle, as a drum.
To discompose; to agitate; to disturb.
rugged ::: 1. Having an uneven or jagged surface; rocky or steep. 2. Of a rough, severe, stern, or strong character.
rugged ::: n. --> Full of asperities on the surface; broken into sharp or irregular points, or otherwise uneven; not smooth; rough; as, a rugged mountain; a rugged road.
Not neat or regular; uneven.
Rough with bristles or hair; shaggy.
Harsh; hard; crabbed; austere; -- said of temper, character, and the like, or of persons.
Stormy; turbulent; tempestuous; rude.
rumple ::: v. t. & i. --> To make uneven; to form into irregular inequalities; to wrinkle; to crumple; as, to rumple an apron or a cravat. ::: n. --> A fold or plait; a wrinkle.
sea serpent ::: --> Any marine snake. See Sea snake.
A large marine animal of unknown nature, often reported to have been seen at sea, but never yet captured.
Seeking for occulf powers is looked on with disfavour for the most part by spiritual teachers in India, because it belongs to the inferior planes and usually pushes the seeker on a path which may lead him very far from the Divine. Especially, a contact mth the forces and beings of the astral (or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers. The beings of this plane are often bosiQc to the true aim of spiritual life and establish contact with the seeker and offer him powers and occult experiences only in order that they may lead him away from the spiritual path or else that they may establish their own control over him or take possession of him for their owm pur- pose. Often, representing themselves as Divine powers they mis- lead, give erring suggestions and impulsions and pervert the inner life. Many are those who, attracted by these powers and beings of the vital plane, bave ended in a definitive spiritual fall or in mental and physical perversion and disorder. One comes ineritably into contact with the vital plane and enters into it in the expansion of consriousness which results from an inner opening, but one ought never to put oneself into the hands of these beings and forces or allow oneself to be led by their sug- gestions and impulsions. This is one of the chief dangers of the spiritual life and to be on one’s guard against it is a necessity for the seeTer if he wishes to arrive at his goal. It is true that many supraphysical or supernonnal powers come with the expansion of the consciousness in the yoga ; to rise out of the body consciousness, to act by subtle means on the supraphysical planes, etc. are natural activities for the yogi- But these powers are not sought after, they come naturally, and they have not the astral character. Also, Aey have to be used on purely spiritual
seiches ::: n. pl. --> Local oscillations in level observed in the case of some lakes, as Lake Geneva.
Self-love: The term may be used to denote self-complacency or self-admiration (see Spinoza, Ethics, Book III, Prop. 55, note), but in ethical discussion it usually designates concern for one's own individual interest, advantage, or happiness. Taking the term in this latter sense philosophers have debated the question whether or not all of our actions, approvals, etc., are motivated entirely by self-love. Hobbes holds that they are. Spinoza, similarity, holds that the endeavor to conserve oneself is the basis of all of one's actions and virtues. Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, and Hume, in opposition to Hobbes, argued that benevolence or sympathy and the moral sense or conscience are springs of action which are not reducible to self-love. Butler also pointed out that self-love itself presupposes the existence of certain primary desires, such as hunger, with whose satisfaction it is concerned, and which therefore cannot be subsumed under it. See Egoism. -- W.K.F.
semester ::: n. --> A period of six months; especially, a term in a college or uneversity which divides the year into two terms.
sempiternal ::: a. --> Of neverending duration; everlasting; endless; having beginning, but no end.
Without beginning or end; eternal.
sessile ::: a. --> Attached without any sensible projecting support.
Resting directly upon the main stem or branch, without a petiole or footstalk; as, a sessile leaf or blossom.
Permanently attached; -- said of the gonophores of certain hydroids which never became detached.
Sex-suggestions ::: The suggestions must never be accepted ; for acceptance gives them the right to return or continue. ^ If there is no sex response in the mind or vital and the sensation
shunless ::: a. --> Not to be shunned; inevitable; unavoidable.
Shu: "The benevolent exercise of the principle of human nature in relation to others;" "the extension of the principle of the self to other people and things;" "the application of the principle of true manhood (jen);" "the application of the principle of the central self (chung);" "putting oneself in the position of others;" "measuring others by oneself;" consideration; altruism; reciprocity; the Confucian "central thread" (i kuan) with respect to social relationship, as being true to the principles of one's nature (chung) is with respect to the self. -- W.T.C.
sierra ::: n. --> A ridge of mountain and craggy rocks, with a serrated or irregular outline; as, the Sierra Nevada.
Simply ultimate: That to which all things are actually or virtually referred, -- and which itself is ordered to nothing further, as God. A relatively ultimate end (finis secundum quid ultimus): That which terminates some seiies of acts, in which it is intended ultimately and in itself, but nevertheless can be referrcd to another end, as health is the end of the art of medicine, but nevertheless it can be ordered to another end, e.g. to working. -- H.G.
Social Contract: The original covenant by which, according to certain philosophers of modern times -- Hooker, Hohbes, Althusius, Spinoza, Locke, Pufendorf, etc. -- individuals have united and formed the state. This theory was combined with the older idea of the governmental contract by which the people conferred the power of government upon a single person or a group of persons. This theory goes back to ancient philosophy and was upheld by medieval thinkers, suth as Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padova. Though most of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century realized that no such original compact as the idea of the Social Contract called for, had actually occurred, the idea, nevertheless, served as a criterion to determine whether any act of the government was just or not, i.e., whether the consent of the governed might be assumed (especially Rousseau, Kant). The theory of the Social Contract had a remarkable influence upon the political philosophy of the American colonies. See Political Philosophy. -- W.E.
sorehon ::: n. --> Formerly, in Ireland, a kind of servile tenure which subjected the tenant to maintain his chieftain gratuitously whenever he wished to indulge in a revel.
Spencer, Herbert: (1820-1903) was the great English philosopher who devoted a life time to the formulation and execution of a plan to follow the idea of development as a first principle through all the avenues of human thought. A precursor of Darwin with his famous notion of all organic evolution as a change "from homogeneity to heterogenity," from the simple to the complex, he nevertheless was greatly influenced by the Darwinian hypothesis and employed its arguments in his monumental works in biology, psychology, sociology and ethics. He aimed to interpret life, mind and society in terms of matter, motion and force. In politics, he evidenced from his earliest writings a strong bias for individualism. See Evolutionism, Charles Darwin. -- L.E.D.
spirit of Delight ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
squally ::: a. --> Abounding with squalls; disturbed often with sudden and violent gusts of wind; gusty; as, squally weather.
Interrupted by unproductive spots; -- said of a flied of turnips or grain.
Not equally good throughout; not uniform; uneven; faulty; -- said of cloth.
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: "Essence can never be defined — it simply is.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy — the material aspect being only its outermost movement — that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “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. Babel-builders’.
*Sri Aurobindo: "There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly — that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world — but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone — . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "‘Violet" is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace. . . .” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Your ‘barely enough", instead of the finer and more suggestive ‘hardly", falls flat upon my ear; one cannot substitute one word for another in this kind of poetry merely because it means intellectually the same thing; ‘hardly" is the mot juste in this context and, repetition or not, it must remain unless a word not only juste but inevitable comes to replace it… . On this point I may add that in certain contexts ‘barely" would be the right word, as for instance, ‘There is barely enough food left for two or three meals", where ‘hardly" would be adequate but much less forceful. It is the other way about in this line. Letters on Savitri
Ssu tuan: All men possess the 'four beginnings' of benevolence (jen), righteousness (i), propriety (li), and wisdom (chih). (Mencius). -- H.H.
Statement: See Meaning, Kinds of, 1. Statistics: The systematic study of quantitative facts, numerical data, comparative materials, obtained through description and interpretation of group phenomena. The method of using and interpreting processes of classification, enumeration, measurement and evaluation of group phenomena. In a restricted sense, the materials, facts or data referring to group phenomena and forming the subject of systematic computation and interpretation. The Ground of Statistics. Statistics have developed from a specialized application of the inductive principle which concludes from the characteristics of a large number of parts to those of the whole. When we make generalizations from empirical data, we are never certain of having expressed adequately the laws connecting all the relevant and efficient factors in the case under investigation. Not only have we to take into account the personal equation involved and the imperfection of our instru ments of observation and measurement, but also the complex character of physical, biological, psychological and social phenomena which cannot be subjected to an exhaustive analysis. Statistics reveals precisely definite trends and frequencies subject to approximate laws, in these various fields in which phenomena result from many independently varying factors and involve a multitude of numerical units of variable character. Statistics differs fiom probability insofar as it makes a more consistent use of empirical data objectively considered, and of methods directly inspired by the treatment of these data.
style ::: a quality of vak, the inward speech expressing a higher knowledge, which "may frame itself in the language now employed to express the ideas and perceptions and impulses of the intellect and the sense mind, but it uses it in a different way and with an intense bringing out of the intuitive or revelatory significances of which speech is capable"; this "seeing speech" has "different grades of its power of vision and expression of vision", the main levels of which are the adequate, effective, illuminative, inspired and inevitable styles.
subconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "In our yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. No, subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.” *The Synthesis of Yoga.
"The subconscient is a concealed and unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body-consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there.
Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature.” Letters on Yoga
"That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action. It can be held to include the dumb occult consciousness, dynamic but not sensed by us, which operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life process and automatic responses. It covers also those lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind which are more operative in the animal and in plant life.” *The Life Divine
"The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses. It must be trained by a still more persistent insistence of the higher parts of the being to give up its old responses and take on the new and true ones.” Letters on Yoga
"About the subconscient — it is the sub-mental base of the being and is made up of impressions, instincts, habitual movements that are stored there. Whatever movement is impressed in it, it keeps. If one impresses the right movement in it, it will keep and send up that. That is why it has to be cleared of old movements before there can be a permanent and total change in the nature. When the higher consciousness is once established in the waking parts, it goes down into the subconscient and changes that also, makes a bedrock of itself there also.” Letters on Yoga
"The sub-conscious is the evolutionary basis in us, it is not the whole of our hidden nature, nor is it the whole origin of what we are. But things can rise from the subconscient and take shape in the conscious parts and much of our smaller vital and physical instincts, movements, habits, character-forms has this source.” Letters on Yoga
"The subconscient is the support of habitual action — it can support good habits as well as bad.” Letters on Yoga
"For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements.” The Life Divine *subconscient"s.
" Suffering is not inflicted as a punishment for sin or for hostility — that is a wrong idea. Suffering comes like pleasure and good fortune as an inevitable part of life in the ignorance. The dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, good fortune and ill-fortune are the inevitable results of the ignorance which separates us from our true consciousness and from the Divine. Only by coming back to it can we get rid of suffering. Karma from the past lives exists, much of what happens is due to it, but not all. For we can mend our karma by our own consciousness and efforts. But the suffering is simply a natural consequence of past errors, not a punishment, just as a burn is the natural consequence of playing with fire. It is part of the experience by which the soul through its instruments learns and grows until it is ready to turn to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
“ Suffering is not inflicted as a punishment for sin or for hostility—that is a wrong idea. Suffering comes like pleasure and good fortune as an inevitable part of life in the ignorance. The dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, good fortune and ill-fortune are the inevitable results of the ignorance which separates us from our true consciousness and from the Divine. Only by coming back to it can we get rid of suffering. Karma from the past lives exists, much of what happens is due to it, but not all. For we can mend our karma by our own consciousness and efforts. But the suffering is simply a natural consequence of past errors, not a punishment, just as a burn is the natural consequence of playing with fire. It is part of the experience by which the soul through its instruments learns and grows until it is ready to turn to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
SUFFERING. ::: Life here is an evolution and the soul grows by experience, working out by it this or that in the nature, and if there is suffering, it is for the purpose of that working out, not as a judgment inflicted by God or Cosmic Law on the errors or stumblings which are inevitable in the Ignorance.
Supermind is an eternal reality o£ the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential Jaw of being ; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting ^vbaf has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its 'manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable ; its own life on its oum plane is divine and, if
"Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Supermind ::: The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and th
refore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is th
refore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or later. But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 558-62
Suppositio: In medieval logic, the kind of meaning in use which belongs to nouns or substantives; opposed to copulatio, belonging to adjectives and verbs A given noun having a fixed signification might nevertheless have different suppositiones (stand for different things). Various kinds of suppositio, i.e., various ways in which a noun may stand for something, were distinguished. -- A.C.
Surrender and vital *. The ordinary vital is never willing to surrender. The true inmost vital is different — surrender to the
Sympathy: On psychological levels, a participation in and feeling for other living beings in adversity or other emotional phases, not always painful, which may or may not lead to participating or alleviating action, explained naturalistically as a general instinct inherent in all creatures, ethically sometimes as an original altruism, sociologically as acquired in the civilisatory process through needs of co-operation, mutual aid, and fellow-feeling in family and group action. Stressed particularly in Hinduism, fostered along with pity (q.v.) in Christianity, discussed and recommended as a shrewd social expedient by such men as Hobbes, Bentham, and Adam Smith, Schopenhauer raised sympathy Mitleid), as an equivalent to love, into an ethical principle which Nietzsche repudiated because to him it increases suffering and through weakness hinders development. Sympathy, as a cultural force, becomes progressively more evident in the increasing establishment of benevolent institutions, such as hospitals, asylums, etc., a more general altruism and ejection (Clifford), an extension of kindness even to animals (first taught by Buddhism, see Ahimsa), reform and relief movements of all kinds, etc. Still regarded highly as a praiseworthy virtue, it has been gradually rid of its dependence on individual ethical culture by scientific conditioning in social planning on a huge scale. See v. Orelli, Die philosophischen Auffassungen des Mttleids (1912); Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (1926). -- K.F.L.
tantalus ::: n. --> A Phrygian king who was punished in the lower world by being placed in the midst of a lake whose waters reached to his chin but receded whenever he attempted to allay his thirst, while over his head hung branches laden with choice fruit which likewise receded whenever he stretched out his hand to grasp them.
A genus of wading birds comprising the wood ibises.
Tantric: Adjective to Tantra (q.v.) Tao: The Way, principle, cosmic order, nature. "The Tao that can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao." It is "vague and eluding," "deep and obscure," but "there is in it the form" and "the essence." "In it is reality." It "produced the One, the One produced the two, the two produced the three, and the three produced all things." Its "standard is the Natural." (Lao Tzu). "Tao has reality and evidence but no action nor form. It may be transmitted, but cannot be received. It may be attained, but cannot be seen. It is its own essence, and its own root." "Tao operates, and results follow." "Tao has no limit." "It is in the ant," "a tare," "a potsherd," "ordure." (Chuang Tzu, between 399 and 295 B.C.). The Confucian "Way;" the teachings of the sage; the moral order, the moral life, truth, the moral law; the moral principle. This means "the fulfillment of the law of our human nature." It is the path of man's moral life. "True manhood (jen) is that by which a man is to be a man. Generally speaking, it is the moral law" (Mencius, 371-289 B.C.). "To proceed according to benevolence and righteousness is called the Way." (Han Yu, 767-824). The Way, which means following the Reason of things, and also the Reason which is in everything and which everything obeys. (Neo-Confucianism). The Way or Moral Law in the cosmic sense, signifying "what is above the realm of corporeality," and the "successive movement of the active (yang) and the passive principles (yin)." In the latter sense as understood both in ancient Confucianism and in Neo-Confucianism, it is interchangeable with the Great Ultimate (T'ai Chi). Shao K'ang-chieh (1011-1077) said that "The Moral Law is the Great Ultimate." Chang Heng-ch'u (1022-1077) identified it with the Grand Harmony (Ta Ho) and said that "from the operation of the vital force (ch'i) there is the Way." This means that the Way is the principle of being as well as the sum total of the substance and functions of things. To Ch'eng I-ch'uan (1033-1107) "There is no Way independent of the active (yang) principle and the passive (yin) principle. Yet it is precisely the Way that determines the active and passive principles. These principles are the constituents of the vital force (ch'i), which is corporeal. On the other hand, the Way transcends corporeality." To Chu Hsi (1130-1200), the Way is "the Reason why things are as they are." Tai Tung-yuan (1723-1777) understood it to mean "the incessant transformation of the universe," and "the operation of things in the world, involving the constant flow of the vital force (ch'i) and change, and unceasing production and reproduction."
Tehmi: “This is a reference to the story of Hercules who married Deianeira, the daughter of King Oeneus. One day he and his wife had to cross a stream swollen by rains. As his wife could not swim Hercules asked the centaur boatman to ferry her across. Midway across the centaur began to molest Deianeira. Hercules then shot him with a poison arrow that had been dipped in the Hydra’s blood. As the centaur was dying he told the naïve Deianeira to dip a shirt in his blood and whenever she felt Hercules was betraying her to send him the shirt and he would remain faithful to her. Long afterward Hercules went on a journey and Deianeira suspected him of being unfaithful and sent him the blood-glued shirt. Hercules put on the shirt which burned his flesh to the bone, killing him.”**
Te: Virtue; power, character; efficacy --The Individual Principle, Tao particularized or inherent in a thing, the "abode of Tao," through "the obtaining of which" a thing becomes what it is. Virtue, moral character, "that which obtains in a person;" "that which is sufficient in the self without depending on any external help," referring particularly to benevolence and righteousness which are natural to man (Hin Yu, 767-824 A.D.). Kindness. Techne: (Gr. techne) The set of principles, or rational method, involved in the production of an object or the accomplishment of an end; the knowledge of such principles or method; art. Techne resembles episteme in implying knowledge of principles, but differs in that its aim is making or doing, not disinterested understanding. -- G.R.M.
thallogen ::: n. --> One of a large class or division of the vegetable kingdom, which includes those flowerless plants, such as fungi, algae, and lichens, that consist of a thallus only, composed of cellular tissue, or of a congeries of cells, or even of separate cells, and never show a distinction into root, stem, and leaf.
That paradoxes of this kind could be relevant to mathematics first became clear in connection with the paradox of the greatest ordinal number, published by Burali-Forti in 1897, and the paradox of the greatest cardinal number, published by Russell in 1903. The first of these had been discovered by Cantor in 1895, and communicated to Hilbert in 1896, and both are mentioned in Cantor's correspondence with Dedekind of 1899, but were never published by Cantor.
The change then only will be that the inner self will watch all that without getting disturbed or bewildered, with a perfect equality, taVdng it as an inevitable part of Nature, inevitable at least so long as one does not withdraw to the Self out of Nature.
. . . the inevitable Word
The ideal sadhaka in this kind is one who if required to live poorly can so live and no sense of want will affect him or inter- fere with the full inner play of the divine consciousaess, and If he is required to live richly, can so live and never for a moment fall into desire or attachment to his wealth or to the tbmss that he uses or servitude to self-indulgence or a weak bondage to the habits that the possession of ricBes creates.
The limit of an infinite sequence of real numbers a1, a2, a3, . . . is said to be (the real number) b if for every positive real number ε there is a positive integer N such that the difference between b and an is less than ε whenever n is greater than N. (By the difference between b and an is here meant the non-negative difference, i.e., b−an if b is greater than an, an−b if b is less than an, and 0 if b is equal to an.)
The more complete y-our faith, sincerity and surrender, the more will grace and protection be with you. And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother arc with you, what is there lliat can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all diiliculties, obstacles and dangers ; surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible. Its touch can turn difficulties into oppor- tunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaltering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its ciTect is sure, a thing decreed. Inevitable and irresistible.
The Mother: "To be humble means for the mind, the vital and the body never to forget that without the Divine they know nothing, are noting and can do nothing; with the Divine they are nothing but ignorance, chaos and impotence. The Divine alone is Truth, Life, Power, Love, Felicity.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
Theocracy: (Gr. theos, god, kratos, government, power) A view of political organization in which God is sole ruler. All political laws come under what is held to be the Divine Will. Church and State become one. Examples the development of the Hebrew ideal and Judaism, Mohammedan politics, Calvinism in Geneva, Puritan New England. -- V.F.
The philosophical aspect of Marxism is known as dialectical materialism (q.v.); in epistemology it adopts empiricism; in axiology, an interest theory of value strongly tinged, in places, with humanitarianism. The social theory of Marxism centers around the concepts of basic (but not complete) economic determinism (q.v.), and the class character of society. In economics it maintains a labor theory of value (q.v.) which involves the concept of surplus value (q.v.) in the capitalistic mode of production. Upon the basis of its analysis of capitalism, Marxism erects the ethical conclusion that capitalism is unjust and ought to be supplanted by socialism. It predicts for the more or less immediate future the decay of capitalism, an inevitable and victorious revolution of the workers, and the establishing of socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It looks forward to the ultimate goal of the "withering away of the state" leading to a classless society, communistic in economy and self-regulatory in politics. -- M.B.M.
The prohibition against impredicative definition was incorporated by Russell into his ramified theory of types (1908) and is now usually identified with the restriction to the ramified theorv of types without the axiom of reducibility. (Poincare, however, never made his principle exact and may have intended, vaguely, a less severe restriction than this -- as indeed some passages in later writings would indicate.) -- A. C.
There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it ; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle- physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly — that is also a kind of miian. The
“There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly—that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world—but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone—….” Letters on Yoga
"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
“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 seeds of the old relations, their impressions, their memories remain suppressed in the subconscient and rise up whenever they can. It is only when these seeds arc pulled out and disappear
::: "The silent mind is a result of yoga; the ordinary mind is never silent. . . . The thinkers and philosophers do not have the silent mind. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.” Letters on Yoga
“The silent mind is a result of yoga; the ordinary mind is never silent. . . . The thinkers and philosophers do not have the silent mind. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.” Letters on Yoga
"The spiritual destiny always stands — it may be delayed or seem to be lost for a time, but it is never abolished.” Letters on Yoga
“The spiritual destiny always stands—it may be delayed or seem to be lost for a time, but it is never abolished.” Letters on Yoga
The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeals persistently or whenever it can old repressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses. It must be trained by a still more persistent insistence of the higher parts of the being to give up its old responses and take on the new. and true ones.
“The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses. It must be trained by a still more persistent insistence of the higher parts of the being to give up its old responses and take on the new and true ones.” Letters on Yoga
"The Supermind then is Being moving out into a determinative self-knowledge which perceives certain truths of itself and wills to realise them in a temporal and spatial extension of its own timeless and spaceless existence. Whatever is in its own being, takes form as self-knowledge, as Truth-Consciousness, as Real-Idea, and, that self-knowledge being also self-force, fulfils or realises itself inevitably in Time and Space.” The Life Divine
“The Supermind then is Being moving out into a determinative self-knowledge which perceives certain truths of itself and wills to realise them in a temporal and spatial extension of its own timeless and spaceless existence. Whatever is in its own being, takes form as self-knowledge, as Truth-Consciousness, as Real-Idea, and, that self-knowledge being also self-force, fulfils or realises itself inevitably in Time and Space.” The Life Divine
they ::: obj. --> The plural of he, she, or it. They is never used adjectively, but always as a pronoun proper, and sometimes refers to persons without an antecedent expressed.
thinolite ::: n. --> A calcareous tufa, in part crystalline, occurring on a large scale as a shore deposit about the Quaternary lake basins of Nevada.
.. this being we are is or can be whatever it has the faith and will to be – for faith is only will aiming at a higher truth – and cease to set limits to our possibility… - Sri Aurobindo ::: .Falsehood ::: Falsehood, on the other hand, is not this Avidya, but an extreme result of it. It is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and th
refore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the Yogic sense, mithya, moha.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 103
This process is facilitated by the choice of prerogative, or, if possible, of solitary instances in which the investigated data are comparatively isolated and unadulterated. But under the most favorable conditions inquiry must be a cautious, laborious, plodding, step by step affair, and results can never be more than provisional because of the possibility of undiscovered negative instances.
though ::: conj. --> Granting, admitting, or supposing that; notwithstanding that; if. ::: adv. --> However; nevertheless; notwithstanding; -- used in familiar language, and in the middle or at the end of a sentence.
Though fragments of the absolute experience, our minds somehow remain separate selves and persons. Though infinite and all-comprehensive in extent, and reviewing ad infinitum its own infinity in knowing that it knows that it knows, the Absolute is nevertheless a finished and closed whole. Though shot through and through with error and evil and sin and suffering, the Absolute is nevertheless perfect, and perfect because of them, since struggle with them and triumph over them is of the essence of its perfection. Though a temporal process, it is nevertheless overarches that process in a single act of comprehension in which past, present, and future are grasped, even as the successive notes of a musical phrase are grasped, as an eternally present completed fact.
Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist. Bibliography: B. Geyer, Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano, Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle, Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter, Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922). --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B. In logic, see Operationism. In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations. 1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events. 2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance. Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning). Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class. The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined. In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations. For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.) For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation. Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes. Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion. For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R. The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .). The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C. G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M. In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established. Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset: Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914; El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935; El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921; España Invertebrada, 1922; Kant, 1924; La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925; Espiritu de la Letra, 1927; La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929; Goethe desde Adentio, 1934; Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939; Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939; El Libro de las Misiones, 1940; Ideas y Creencias, 1940; and others. Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P
T'ien li: Heaven-endowed nature. The Reason of Heaven; the Divine Law; the moral principle of Heaven which is embodied in benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom (ssu tuan) (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200) the Law of Nature, which is the Reason (li) m all things and is impartial. (Tai Tung-yuan, 1723-1777). --W.T.C. T'ien ti: Heaven and Earth: as the universe; as the origin of life; as the consolation of the pure and impure vital forces (ch'i) respectively; as the active or male (yang) and the passive or female (yin) phases of the universe, respectively. --W.T.C. Timarchy: (Gr.) A type of government characterized by voluntary or acclamatory rule of worthv and competent men, not aristocrats. -- K.F.L.
tions; but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own possibilities. The natural possibilities of a world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which they live, an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error, an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to enjoy, parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark Infinite. …
To Kao Tzu, contemporary of Mencius, human nature is capable of being good or evil; to Mencius (371-289 B.C.), good; to Hsi'm Tzu (c 355-c 238 B.C.), evil; to Tung Cchung-shu (177-104 B.C.), potentially good; to Yang Hsiung (d. 18 B.C.), both good and evil; to Han Yu (676-82+ A.D.), good in some people, mixed in some, and evil in others; to Li Ao (d. c 844), capable of being "reverted" to its original goodness. To the whole Neo-Confucian movement, what is inborn is good, but due to external influence, there is both goodness and evil. Chang Heng-ch'u (1020-1077) said that human nature is good in all men. The difference between them lies in their skill or lack of skill in returning to accord with their original nature. To Ch'eng I-ch'uan (1033-1107) and Ch'eng Ming-tao (1032-1193), man's nature is the same as his vital force (ch'i). They arc both the principle of life. In principle there are both good and evil in the vital force with which man is involved. Man is not born with these opposing elements in his nature. Due to the vital force man may become good or evil. Chu Hsi (1130-1200) regarded the nature as identical with Reason (li). Subjectively it is the nature; objectively it is Reason. It is the framework of the moral order (tao), with benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom (ssu tuan) inherent in it. Evil is due to man's failure to preserve a harmonious relation between his nature-principles. Wang Yang-ming (1473-1529) identified the nature with the mind, which is Reason and originally good. -- W.T.C.
to reverse the doing of; cause to be as if never done. undoing.
to the psychic. The psychic never feels a sadness from disap- pointed desire, because that is not in its nature ; the sorrow it sometimes feels is when it sees the Divine rejected or the mental, vital, physical in man or in nature turning away from the Truth to follow perversion, darkness or ignorance.
Traditionalism: In French philosophy of the early nineteenth century, the doctrine that the truth -- particularly religious truth -- is never discovered by an individual but is only to be found in "tradition". It was revealed in potentia at a single moment by God and has been developing steadily through history. Since truth is an attribute of ideas, the traditionalist holds that ideas are super-individual. They are the property of society and are found embedded in language which was revealed to primitive man bv God at the creation. The main traditionalists were Joseph de Maistre, the Vicomte de Bonald, and Bonetty. -- G.B.
transformation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body — and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended — they can only be mended by transformation.” *Letters on Yoga
"‘Transformation" is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind") to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change — the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” *Letters on Yoga
"It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
The Mother: "Transformation. The change by which all the elements and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth.”
"One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
Transitivity: A dyadic relation R is transitive if, whenever xRy and yRz both hold, xRz also holds. Important examples of transitive relations are the relation of identity or equality; the relation less than among whole numbers, or among rational numbers, or among real numbers, the relation precedes among instants of time (as usually taken); the relation of class inclusion, ⊂ (see logic, formal, §7); the relations of material implication and material equivalence among propositions, the relations of formal implication and formal equivalence among monadic propositional functions. In the propositional calculus, the laws of transitivity of material implication and material equivalence (the conditional and biconditional) are: [p ⊃ q][q ⊃ r] ⊃ [p ⊃ r] [p ≡ q][q ≡ r] ⊃ [p ≡ r] Similar laws of transitivity may be formulated for equality (e.g., in the functional calculus of first order with equality), class inclusion (e.g., in the Zermelo set theory), formal implication (e.g., in the pure functional calculus of first order), etc. -- A.C.
Transpathy: (Lat. trans, across + pathos, feeling) As distinct from sympathy is feeling engendered by 'contigion'. In sympathy the function of 'after-experiencing' is so interwoven with true sympathy that in experienced separation of the two never occurs. In the case of transpathy, the two functions are distinctly separated from eich other in experience. Transpathy takes place between emotional states, presupposes no knowledge of the other's joy or sorrow. One detects afterwards that an emotion which one finds in oneself derives from 'contagion', which took place in an earlier gathering. See Sympathy. -- H.H.
True love seeks for union and self-giving and that is the love one must bring to the Divine. Vital (so-called) love brings only suffering and disappointment ; it does not bring happiness ; it never gets satisfied and, even if it is granted something that it asks for, it is never satisfied with it.
Ts'un hsin: Preserving one's native mind, that is, preserving in one's heart benevolence and propriety which are natural to man. (Mencius). -- W.T.C.
Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself,—Intuition especially with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up local points and stretches of country in our consciousness,—which can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner being and then as a result in the outer surface self also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material, vital, mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as the Creator Power in the universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy we can see the stamp of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above. …
uneven ::: a. --> Not even; not level; not uniform; rough; as, an uneven road or way; uneven ground.
Not equal; not of equal length.
Not divisible by two without a remainder; odd; -- said of numbers; as, 3, 7, and 11 are uneven numbers.
uneven :::
unevitable ::: a. --> Inevitable.
unevolved :::
unavoidable ::: a. --> Not avoidable; incapable of being shunned or prevented; inevitable; necessary; as, unavoidable troubles.
Not voidable; incapable of being made null or void.
unavoided ::: a. --> Not avoided or shunned.
Unavoidable; inevitable.
unbacked ::: a. --> Never mounted by a rider; unbroken.
Not supported or encouraged; not countenanced; unaided.
unbenevolence ::: n. --> Absence or want of benevolence; ill will.
unbegotten ::: a. --> Not begot; not yet generated; also, having never been generated; self-existent; eternal.
unceasing ::: never ceasing, incessant, continuous.
undispensable ::: a. --> Indispensable.
Unavoidable; inevitable.
Not to be freed by dispensation.
unequal ::: a. --> Not equal; not matched; not of the same size, length, breadth, quantity, strength, talents, acquirements, age, station, or the like; as, the fingers are of unequal length; peers and commoners are unequal in rank.
Ill balanced or matched; disproportioned; hence, not equitable; partial; unjust; unfair.
Not uniform; not equable; irregular; uneven; as, unequal pulsations; an unequal poem.
unequalness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being unequal; inequality; unevenness.
unfrequented ::: a. --> Rarely visited; seldom or never resorted to by human beings; as, an unfrequented place or forest.
unfriendly ::: a. --> Not friendly; not kind or benevolent; hostile; as, an unfriendly neighbor.
Not favorable; not adapted to promote or support any object; as, weather unfriendly to health.
uniate ::: n. --> A member of the Greek Church, who nevertheless acknowledges the supremacy of the Pope of Rome; one of the United Greeks. Also used adjectively.
universal ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the universe; extending to, including, or affecting, the whole number, quantity, or space; unlimited; general; all-reaching; all-pervading; as, universal ruin; universal good; universal benevolence or benefice.
Constituting or considered as a whole; total; entire; whole; as, the universal world.
Adapted or adaptable to all or to various uses, shapes, sizes, etc.; as, a universal milling machine.
unkind ::: a. --> Having no race or kindred; childless.
Not kind; contrary to nature, or the law of kind or kindred; unnatural.
Wanting in kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude, or the like; cruel; harsh; unjust; ungrateful.
unscapable ::: a. --> Not be escaped; inevitable.
untraveled ::: a. --> Not traveled; not trodden by passengers; as, an untraveled forest.
Having never visited foreign countries; not having gained knowledge or experience by travel; as, an untraveled Englishman.
varix ::: n. --> A uneven, permanent dilatation of a vein.
One of the prominent ridges or ribs extending across each of the whorls of certain univalve shells.
Verite de fait (Verite de raison): There are two kinds of truth, according to Leibniz, truths of fact and truths of reason (or reasoning).These two classes of truths are exhaustive, and also, with the single exception of the existence of God, which has a logically anomalous position of being a necessary truth about existence, completely exclusive. Truths of reason are completely certain and necessary, for their denial involves a contradiction and is hence impossible. Truths of fact, on the other hand, are not completely certain and necessary. Their denial involves no contradiction, they rest upon experience and they have, hence, only a limited inductive certainty. The truth of inductive inferences which go beyond the evidence of immediate experience depends upon the Law of Sufficient Reason, which is the expression in logic of the choice of the best on the part of God. Since God conceivably could have chosen another world for realization, rathcr than this best of all possible worlds, these truths can never equal in certainty the truths of reason, which depend not on God's will, but on the Principle of Contradiction, which not even God himself can make to be false. -- F.L.W.
violet ::: “‘Violet’ is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace….” Letters on Yoga
Vital plane ::: On the vital plane ( 1 ) never allow any fear to etilcc into you. Face all you meet and see in this world with detachment and courage. (2) Ask for protection before you sleep or meditate. Use our names when you are attacked or templed. (3) Do not indulge in this world in any kind of sym- pathy. (4) Do not allow any foreign personality to enter into you .
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de: (1694-1778) French dramatist and historian. He was one of the leading Encyclopaedists. He preached a natural religion of the deist variety. Though characterized as an atheist because of his fervent antagonism to the bigotry he found in the organized religions, he nevertheless believed in a righteous God. He was opposed to all intolerance and fought passionately to right the evils he discerned in religion and in society in general. In ethics, he based his views on the universal character of morals in which he firmly believed. His famous Candide is illustrative of his keen satire in its blasting of the Leibnizean best of all possible worlds. -- L.E.D.
wabble ::: v. i. --> To move staggeringly or unsteadily from one side to the other; to vacillate; to move the manner of a rotating disk when the axis of rotation is inclined to that of the disk; -- said of a turning or whirling body; as, a top wabbles; a buzz saw wabbles. ::: n. --> A hobbling, unequal motion, as of a wheel unevenly hung; a
waney ::: n. --> A sharp or uneven edge on a board that is cut from a log not perfectly squared, or that is made in the process of squaring. See Wany, a.
wany ::: v. i. --> To wane. ::: a. --> Waning or diminished in some parts; not of uniform size throughout; -- said especially of sawed boards or timber when tapering or uneven, from being cut too near the outside of the log.
Spoiled by wet; -- said of timber.
warrantable ::: a. --> Authorized by commission, precept, or right; justifiable; defensible; as, the seizure of a thief is always warrantable by law and justice; falsehood is never warrantable.
wellwisher ::: n. --> One who wishes another well; one who is benevolently or friendlily inclined.
welwitschia ::: n. --> An African plant (Welwitschia mirabilis) belonging to the order Gnetaceae. It consists of a short, woody, topshaped stem, and never more than two leaves, which are the cotyledons enormously developed, and at length split into diverging segments.
whenever ::: adv. & conj. --> At whatever time.
whensoever ::: adv. & conj. --> At what time soever; at whatever time; whenever.
Work and consciousness ; The rememberance and conscious- ness in work have to come by degrees, you must not expect to have it all at once ; nobody can get it all at once. It comes in two ways ::: first, if one practises remembering the Mother and oUcring the work to her each time one docs something (not all the time one is doing, but at the beginning or whenever one can remember), then that slowly becomes easy and habitual to the nature. Secondly, by the meditation an inner consciousness begins to develop which, after a time, not at once or suddenly, becomes more and more auloraatically permanent. One feels this as a separate consciousness from that outer which works. At first this separate consciousness is not felt when one is not work- ing, but as soon as the work stops one feels it was there all the time watching from behind ; afterwards it begins to be felt during the work itself, as if there tverc'two parts of oneself ■— one watching and supporting from behind and remembering the
wrinkle ::: n. --> A winkle.
A small ridge, prominence, or furrow formed by the shrinking or contraction of any smooth substance; a corrugation; a crease; a slight fold; as, wrinkle in the skin; a wrinkle in cloth.
hence, any roughness; unevenness.
A notion or fancy; a whim; as, to have a new wrinkle. ::: v. t.
Wu ch'ang: The Five Constant Virtues of ancient Confucianism: righteousness on the part of the mother, brotherliness on the part of the elder brother, respect on the part of the young brother, and filial piety on the part of the son. Also called wu chiao and wu tien. The Five Constant Virtues of Confucianism from the Han dynasty (206 B.C. -220 A.D.) on benevolence (jen), righteousness (i), proprietv (li), wisdom (chih), and good faith (hsin). Also called wu hsing and wu te. The Five Human Relationships of Confucianism (wu lun).
yakshas. ::: a broad class of nature-spirits, usually benevolent, who are caretakers of the natural treasures hidden in the earth and tree roots; beings controlled by Kubera, the God of wealth
Yang ch'i: (a) Nourishing one's vital force, the basis of the human body, by the practice of benevolence, righteousness, and uprightness, and the obedience of the moral law (tao) so that the vital force may be most great and most strong "to the extent of filling up all between Heaven and Earth" See: hao jan chih ch'i. (Confucianism).
Yogacara: A Mahayana (q.v.) Buddhist school which puts emphasis on Yoga (q.v.) as well is acara, ethical conduct. Believing in subjective idealism, it is also designated as Vijnana-vada (q.v.). Since we know the world never apart from the form it has in consciousness, the latter is an essential to it. All things exist in consciousness, they cannot be proven to exist otherwise. -- K.F.L.
YOGIC POWERS. ::: The idea that yogins do not or ought not to use these powers I regard as an ascetic superstition. I believe that all yogins who have these powers do use them whenever they find that that they are called from within to do so. They may refrain if they think the use in a particular case is contrary to the Divine Will or see that prevcofing one evil may-be open- ing the door to worse or for any other veiled reason, but not
You must always try to keep the quietude, never allow dep- ressing or dbturbing thoughts or feelings to enter you or take hold of your mind or your speech. And if the mind keeps its quietude and receptivity to higher forces only, it can then easily pass on that quietude and receptivity to the body consciousness and even to the material cells of the body.
KEYS (10k)
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:September 11 2020. “Never Forget the Light” ~ #poetry #prayer #people #Remember911 //>> #SpiritChat enjoia.wordpress.com/2020/09/11/nev…, #NFDB
2:Cath called all the shots. She seemed more comfortable that way, so Nev had decided not to press. Much. Instead, he looked for the loopholes and exploited them. ~ Ruthie Knox, #NFDB
3:Is he actually good?” Judith asked. “He’s incredible.” “Sorry, are we talking about the painting or the shagging?” Nev asked. “The painting!” He grinned. “Right. ~ Ruthie Knox, #NFDB
4:You can tell people the truth, but they’ll never believe you until the event. Until it’s too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
5:We were all so worried about our worst fears, squeezing frogs, eating worms, poisons, asbestos, we never considered how boring life would be even if we succeeded and got a good job. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
6:Hang on .... Do you smell that?"
"Yeah ... shit," Nev snarled, glancing at the thick jungle that surrounded us.
"You smell shit?" Ethan asked. "Thanks for sharing."
"No," Nev said. "We smell cats. ~ Andrea Cremer,#NFDB
7:I can tell the time, though, by speak-ing, and as I nev-er sleep I can wak-en you at an-y hour you wish to get up in the morn-ing.'
'That's nice,' said the little girl; 'only I never wish to get up in the morning. ~ L Frank Baum,#NFDB
8:With all the little facts we learned, we never had the time to think. None of us ever considered what life would be like cleaning up after a stranger every day. Washing dishes all day. Feeding a stranger’s children. Mowing a lawn. All day. Painting houses. Year after year. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
9:What's your name?" she asked.
He laughed. "Nev."
She sat up suddenly, bracing her elbows on the bed. "Short for Neville?"
It was the world's dorkiest name. Nearly as bad as Rupert. "I never thought I'd be penetrated by a Neville." she said wonderingly. "Maybe a Colin, or a Simon but -"
"Shut up. ~ Ruthie Knox,#NFDB
10:But what Nev does is he takes these kids’ anger and channels it. He gives them someone to hate. He gives their rage some structure and provides them with real targets rather than nebulous ones. So they end up believing they’re committing theft, assault and vandalism for a good cause. Isn’t that what terrorism is basically all about, anyway? Add a few olde worlde patriotic values, a lot of guff about the ‘true English homeland’ and a bit of green to the mix and it makes them feel like downright responsible and virtuous citizens, the only ones who really care about their country. ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
11:Nev tossed his pen down. “Fine. Here goes:
Ren and Cals lives may be torrid
for the young ones in Vail are quite horrid
Bine and Cos aren’t too frail
Dax and Fey never pale
while Ansel and Bryn might get sordid
Bryn spit Diet Coke all over the table. Mason and Ansel clapped. I was too dumbfounded to react.
This is qhat quiet Nev does in his spare time?
“‘Bine’?” Sabine frowned while Cosette mopped up the soda that flowed to their end of the table. “Since when am I ‘Bine’? And we never call Cosette ‘Cos.’”
“It’s about cadence,” Nev said. “Sorry. I said it wasn’t very good.”
“Why aren’t you and Mason in it?” Ansel asked.
“Oh, he has another one about us.” Mason wiggled his eyebrows. ~ Andrea Cremer,#NFDB
12:Sabine stood up, satisfied that her friends were safe and content. When she moved, Calla lifted her head. Her eyes focused in Sabine's direction. Despite the distance between them, Sabine Could have sworn Calla was looking right at her.
The white wolf's ears flicked back and forth. She lifted her muzzle and howled. The sound filled Sabine with a mixture of sweetness and sorrow. The other wolves joined the song, their familiar voices blending in the winter air. Sabine watched them from another minute, then she turned and walked back to Ethan.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
She handed him the binoculars.
"They're happy. So I'm happy." ... She turned, listening to the song carried on the stiff winter breeze. Nev's voice rose about the other wolves' as the chorus of howls wove through the air. Sabine wondered if somehow they knew she was here, and if they might be saying good-bye or if they were asking her to stay. ~ Andrea Cremer,#NFDB
13:Parisian War Song
Spring is evidently here;
for the ascent of Thiers
and Picard from the green Estates lays
its splendours wide open! O May!
What delirious bare bums!
O Sevres Meudon, Bagneux, Asnieres,
listen now to the welcome arrivals
scattering springtime joys!
They have shakos, and sabers, and tom-toms,
and none of the old candleboxes;
and skiffs which have nev… nev..
are cutting the lake of bloodstained waters.
More than ever before, we roister,
as on to our ant-heaps come tumbling the yellow heads,
on these extraordinary dawns:
Theirs and Picards are Cupids;
and beheaders of sunflowers too;
they paint peaceful landscapes
(Corots) with insecticide (paraffin):
look how their tropes de-cockchafer the trees…
'They're familiars of the Great What's-his-name!...' And Favre, lying among the irisis,
blinks and weeps crocodile tears,
and sniffs his peppery sniff!
The Big City has hot cobblestones,
in spite of your showers of paraffin;
and decidedly we shall have to liven you up in your parts..
And the Rustics who take their ease in long squattings
will hear boughs breaking among the red rustlings.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,#NFDB
14:shifts signal a slowing in momentum for the bill among Democrats, who have faced a full-court press from a number of top administration officials, including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Obama vowed to veto the bill if it landed on his desk and urged Congress to let international talks play out. It’s already clear that Congress is reluctant to proceed on the issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has signaled an unwillingness to bring the sanctions bill to a vote, and in the House, party leaders have been meeting privately for weeks to figure out how to proceed. Talk in that chamber has centered on the possibility of voting on a non-binding resolution that would allow lawmakers to lay out their preferred endgame in Iran negotiations. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) already said earlier this month that a vote on the bill was not needed during the interim agreement. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) punted the matter to Reid. "Senator Cardin wants to see negotiations with Iran succeed. As for timing of the bill, it is and has always been up to the Majority Leader," Cardin spokeswoman Sue Walitsky said. Both of the bill’s main sponsors, Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), held their ground when asked for their reactions to Obama’s veto threat. “While the president promises to veto any new Iran sanctions legislation, the Iranians have already vetoed any dismantlement of their nuclear infrastructure,” Kirk said in a statement. On Tuesday night, just after the State of the Union had ended, Menendez said, "I’m not frustrated." He walked quickly into an elevator as he spoke, pushing the buttons and looking ready to be done with the conversation. "The president has every right to do what he wants." A spokesman for Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said Wednesday that merely introducing the bill -- but not voting on it -- was helpful to negotiations. "Senator Bennet supports the President’s diplomatic efforts and would like them to succeed. The pertinent question isn't about when we vote on the bill, but whether its introduction is helpful to the negotiations. He believes it is," spokesman Adam Bozzi said. Not all senators agreed that a vote should be delayed. Offices for Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) confirmed that the senators wanted to hold ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1404 Integral Yoga
894 Poetry
217 Philosophy
207 Occultism
174 Fiction
149 Christianity
116 Mysticism
100 Yoga
71 Psychology
36 Philsophy
24 Hinduism
22 Science
17 Sufism
17 Mythology
16 Education
14 Integral Theory
12 Theosophy
9 Kabbalah
8 Cybernetics
7 Zen
6 Buddhism
6 Baha i Faith
1 Thelema
1 Taoism
1 Alchemy
917 The Mother
597 Satprem
477 Sri Aurobindo
214 Nolini Kanta Gupta
106 H P Lovecraft
105 William Wordsworth
95 Aleister Crowley
89 Walt Whitman
83 Percy Bysshe Shelley
71 Carl Jung
63 William Butler Yeats
63 John Keats
56 Robert Browning
54 Plotinus
51 Friedrich Schiller
49 Friedrich Nietzsche
48 Sri Ramakrishna
46 Rabindranath Tagore
46 James George Frazer
42 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
36 Ralph Waldo Emerson
32 Saint Augustine of Hippo
29 Swami Vivekananda
28 Saint Teresa of Avila
27 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
26 Jorge Luis Borges
26 A B Purani
25 Aldous Huxley
21 Rudolf Steiner
20 Swami Krishnananda
20 Lucretius
19 Saint John of Climacus
18 Anonymous
17 Li Bai
16 Franz Bardon
16 Edgar Allan Poe
13 Vyasa
12 Plato
11 Rainer Maria Rilke
11 Ovid
11 Nirodbaran
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 Kabir
10 Jalaluddin Rumi
9 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
8 Norbert Wiener
7 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 Paul Richard
7 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
7 Henry David Thoreau
6 Taigu Ryokan
6 Lewis Carroll
6 Joseph Campbell
6 Jordan Peterson
6 Hafiz
6 Baha u llah
6 Al-Ghazali
5 Patanjali
4 Thubten Chodron
4 Thomas Merton
4 Ibn Arabi
3 Vidyapati
3 Saint John of the Cross
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Omar Khayyam
3 Ken Wilber
3 Farid ud-Din Attar
3 Aristotle
3 Alice Bailey
2 Ramprasad
2 Peter J Carroll
2 Muso Soseki
2 Mechthild of Magdeburg
2 Lalla
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jetsun Milarepa
2 Jean Gebser
2 Italo Calvino
2 H. P. Lovecraft
2 Hakim Sanai
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Bokar Rinpoche
2 Alfred Tennyson
106 Lovecraft - Poems
105 Wordsworth - Poems
94 Record of Yoga
85 Whitman - Poems
83 Shelley - Poems
66 Agenda Vol 01
63 Yeats - Poems
63 The Synthesis Of Yoga
63 Keats - Poems
61 Magick Without Tears
56 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
56 Browning - Poems
52 Agenda Vol 10
51 Schiller - Poems
51 Agenda Vol 08
48 Agenda Vol 05
47 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
47 Agenda Vol 04
47 Agenda Vol 03
47 Agenda Vol 02
46 The Golden Bough
46 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
45 Tagore - Poems
43 Agenda Vol 06
41 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
40 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
40 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
39 Agenda Vol 09
38 Savitri
38 Agenda Vol 13
37 Questions And Answers 1956
36 Emerson - Poems
36 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
34 Agenda Vol 07
33 Letters On Yoga IV
33 Agenda Vol 11
32 The Life Divine
32 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
31 Questions And Answers 1953
31 Prayers And Meditations
31 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
30 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
28 Liber ABA
28 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
27 Questions And Answers 1954
27 Letters On Yoga II
26 Words Of Long Ago
26 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
25 The Perennial Philosophy
25 Questions And Answers 1955
25 Mysterium Coniunctionis
25 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
22 City of God
20 The Study and Practice of Yoga
20 The Divine Comedy
20 The Bible
20 Of The Nature Of Things
20 Labyrinths
20 Agenda Vol 12
19 The Practice of Psycho therapy
19 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
19 Essays On The Gita
18 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
18 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
17 The Way of Perfection
17 Li Bai - Poems
17 Faust
16 Collected Poems
15 The Human Cycle
15 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
15 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
15 Poe - Poems
15 On Education
14 Words Of The Mother II
14 The Future of Man
14 On the Way to Supermanhood
13 Vishnu Purana
13 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
12 The Phenomenon of Man
12 Some Answers From The Mother
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
12 Letters On Poetry And Art
12 Bhakti-Yoga
12 Aion
11 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
11 The Practice of Magical Evocation
11 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
11 Talks
11 Rilke - Poems
11 Raja-Yoga
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
11 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
11 Metamorphoses
10 The Problems of Philosophy
10 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
10 Letters On Yoga I
10 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
10 Goethe - Poems
10 Essays Divine And Human
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
9 Twilight of the Idols
9 Theosophy
9 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
9 General Principles of Kabbalah
9 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
8 Vedic and Philological Studies
8 Songs of Kabir
8 Let Me Explain
8 Hymn of the Universe
8 Cybernetics
8 Crowley - Poems
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
7 Words Of The Mother III
7 Walden
7 The Blue Cliff Records
7 5.1.01 - Ilion
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
6 The Alchemy of Happiness
6 Ryokan - Poems
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Letters On Yoga III
6 Isha Upanishad
6 Dark Night of the Soul
6 Anonymous - Poems
6 Alice in Wonderland
5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
5 Initiation Into Hermetics
5 Borges - Poems
5 Amrita Gita
4 The Secret Of The Veda
4 The Integral Yoga
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Song of Myself
4 Kena and Other Upanishads
4 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
4 Hafiz - Poems
3 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
3 The Red Book Liber Novus
3 The Lotus Sutra
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Poetics
3 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
3 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
3 Arabi - Poems
2 Words Of The Mother I
2 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Tara - The Feminine Divine
2 Symposium
2 Selected Fictions
2 Rumi - Poems
2 Milarepa - Poems
2 Liber Null
2 God Exists
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 Agenda Vol 1
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To be a man after rediscovering a million years was mysteriously like being something still other than man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. It was not in the dictionary, it was fluid and boundless - it had become a man through habit, but in truth, it was formidably virgin, as if all the old laws belonged to laggard barbarians. Then other moons began whirring through the skies to the cry of macaws at sunset, another rhythm was born that was strangely in tune with the rhythm of all, making one single flow of the world, and there we went, lightly, as if the body had never had any weight other than that of our human thought; and the stars were so near, even the giant airplanes roaring overhead seemed vain artifices beneath smiling galaxies. A man was the overwhelming Possible. He was even the great discoverer of the Possible.
never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to discover that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After rediscovering a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done.
--
Mother, for She never ceased being a mystery right to her ninety-fifth year, and to this day still, challenges us from the other side of a wall of invisibility and keeps us floundering fully in the mystery - with a smile. She always smiles. But the mystery is not solved.
Perhaps this AGENDA is really an endeavor to solve the mystery in the company of a certain
--
This AGENDA is not even a path: it is a light little vibration that seizes you at any turning - and then, there it is, you are IN IT. 'Another world in the world,' She said. One has to catch the light little vibration, one has to flow with it, in a nothing that is like the only something in the midst of this great debacle. At the beginning of things, when still nothing was FIXED, when there was not yet this habit of the pelican or the kangaroo or the chimpanzee or the XXth century biologist, there was a little pulsation that beat and beat - a delightful dizziness, a joy in the world's great adventure; a little never-imprisoned spark that has kept on beating from species to species, but as if it were always eluding us, as if it were always over there, over there - as if it were something to become,
something to be played forever as the one great game of the world; a who-knows-what that left this sprig of a pensive man in the middle of a clearing; a little 'something' that beats, beats, that keeps on breathing beneath every skin that has ever been put on it - like our deepest breath, our lightest air, our air of nothing - and it keeps on going, it keeps on going. We must catch the light little breath, the little pulsation of nothing. Then suddenly, on the threshold of our clearing of concrete, our head starts spinning incurably, our eyes blink into something else, and all is different, and all seems surcharged with meaning and with life, as though we had never lived until that very minute.
Then we have caught the tail of the Great Possible, we are upon the wayless way, radically in the new, and we flow with the little lizard, the pelican, the big man, we flow everywhere in a world that has lost its old separating skin and its little baggage of habits. We begin seeing otherwise, feeling otherwise. We have opened the gate into an inconceivable clearing. Just a light little vibration that carries you away. Then we begin to understand how it CAN CHANGE, what the mechanism is - a light little mechanism and so miraculous that it looks like nothing. We begin feeling the wonder of a pure little cell, and that a sparkling of joy would be enough to turn the world inside out. We were living in a little thinking fishbowl, we were dying in an old, bottled habit. And then suddenly, all is different. The Earth is free! Who wants freedom?
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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.
--
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 brea the 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.
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother would be seated in this rather medieval-looking chair with its high, carved back, her feet on a little tabouret, while we sat on the floor, on a slightly faded carpet, conquered and seduced, revolted and never satisfied - but nevertheless, very interested. Treasures, never noted down, were lost until, with the cunning of the Sioux, we succeeded in making Mother consent to the presence of a tape recorder. But even then, and for a long time thereafter, She carefully made us erase or delete in our notes all that concerned Her rather too personally - sometimes we disobeyed Her.
But finally we were able to convince Her of the value inherent in keeping a chronicle of the route.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Some Western and Westernised scholars have tried to show that the phenomenon described here is an exclusively natural phenomenon, 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 phenomenon, 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 movements (which it is already sufficiently difficult to identify completely with what is visible), the fifth movement, as a separate descending movement from above appears to be a foreign element in the context. And although, with regard to the sixth movement 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 movements 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 movements 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.
--
The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
VIII. How Many Gods?
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
For this reason I am especially pleased to be writing an introduction to a new edition of A Garden of Pomegranates. I feel that never, perhaps, was the need more urgent for just such a roadmap as the Qabalistic system provides. It should be equally useful to any who chooses to follow it, whether he be Jew, Christian or Buddhist, Deist, Theosophist, agnostic or atheist.
The Qabalah is a trustworthy guide, leading to a comprehension both of the Universe and one's own Self. Sages have long taught that Man is a miniature of the Universe, containing within himself the diverse elements of that macrocosm of which he is the microcosm. Within the Qabalah is a glyph called the Tree of Life which is at once a symbolic map of the Universe in its major aspects, and also of its smaller counterpart, Man.
--
I felt this a long time ago, as I still do, but even more so. The only way to explain the partisan Jewish attitude demonstrated in some small sections of the book can readily be explained. I had been reading some writings of Arthur Edward Waite, and some of his pomposity and turgidity stuck to my mantle. I disliked his patronising Christian attitude, and so swung all the way over to the other side of the pendulum. Actually, neither faith is particularly important in this day and age. I must be careful never to read Waite again before embarking upon literary work of my own.
Much knowledge obtained by the ancients through the use of the Qabalah has been supported by discoveries of modern scientists- anthropologists, astronomers, psychiatrists, et al. Learned Qabalists for hundreds of years have been aware of what the psychiatrist has only discovered in the last few decades-that man's concept of himself, his deities and the Universe is a constantly evolving process, changing as man himself evolves on a higher spiral. But the roots of his concepts are buried in a race-consciousness that antedated Neanderthal man by uncounted aeons of time.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
first in history of which it could be said that the Sun never set.
000.107 As professor of economics at the East India Company College in 1810
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
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 concealment, 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. Whe never 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."
Khudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandra Devi, the parents of Sri Ramakrishna, were married in 1799. At that time Khudiram was living in his ancestral village of Dereypore, not far from Kamarpukur. Their first son, Ramkumar, was born in 1805, and their first daughter, Katyayani, in 1810. In 1814 Khudiram was ordered by his landlord to bear false witness in court against a neighbour. When he refused to do so, the landlord brought a false case against him and deprived him of his ancestral property. Thus dispossessed, he arrived, at the invitation of another landlord, in the quiet village of Kamarpukur, where he was given a dwelling and about an acre of fertile land. The crops from this little property were enough to meet his family's simple needs. Here he lived in simplicity, dignity, and contentment.
--
At the age of nine Gadadhar was invested with the sacred thread. This ceremony conferred upon him the privileges of his brahmin lineage, including the worship of the Family Deity, Raghuvir, and imposed upon him the many strict disciplines of a brahmin's life. During the ceremony of investiture he shocked his relatives by accepting a meal cooked by his nurse, a sudra woman. His father would never have dreamt of doing such a thing But in a playful mood Gadadhar had once promised this woman that he would eat her food, and now he fulfilled his plighted word. The woman had piety and religious sincerity, and these were more important to the boy than the conventions of society.
Gadadhar was now permitted to worship Raghuvir. Thus began his first training in meditation. He so gave his heart and soul to the worship that the stone image very soon appeared to him as the living Lord of the Universe. His tendency to lose himself in contemplation was first noticed at this time. Behind his boyish light-heartedness was seen a deepening of his spiritual nature.
--
The anguish of the inner soul of India found expression through these passionate words of the young Gadadhar. For what did his unsophisticated eyes see around him in Calcutta, at that time the metropolis of India and the centre of modem culture and learning? Greed and lust held sway in the higher levels of society, and the occasional religious practices were merely outer forms from which the soul had long ago departed. Gadadhar had never seen anything like this at Kamarpukur among the simple and pious villagers. The sadhus and wandering monks whom he had served in his boyhood had revealed to him an altogether different India. He had been impressed by their devotion and purity, their self-control and renunciation. He had learnt from them and from his own intuition that the ideal of life as taught by the ancient sages of India was the realization of God.
When Ramkumar reprimanded Gadadhar for neglecting a "bread-winning education", the inner voice of the boy reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors — the legacy of Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya — was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God. And these noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life current of India is spirituality. This truth was revealed to Gadadhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the history of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous one hundred years.
--
Naturally the temple officials took him for an insane person. His worldly well-wishers brought him to skilled physicians; but no-medicine could cure his malady. Many a time he doubted his sanity himself. For he had been sailing across an uncharted sea, with no earthly guide to direct him. His only haven of security was the Divine Mother Herself. To Her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ignorant of mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mother, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mother never failed him in his distress or doubt. Even those who criticized his conduct were greatly impressed with his purity, guilelessness, truthfulness, integrity, and holiness. They felt an uplifting influence in his presence.
It is said that samadhi, or trance, no more than opens the portal of the spiritual realm. Sri Ramakrishna felt an unquenchable desire to enjoy God in various ways. For his meditation he built a place in the northern wooded section of the temple garden. With Hriday's help he planted there five sacred trees. The spot, known as the Panchavati, became the scene of many of his visions.
--
Mathur had faith in the sincerity of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual zeal, but began now to doubt his sanity. He had watched him jumping about like a monkey. One day, when Rani Rasmani was listening to Sri Ramakrishna's singing in the temple, the young priest abruptly turned and slapped her. Apparently listening to his song, she had actually been thinking of a law-suit. She accepted the punishment as though the Divine Mother Herself had imposed it; but Mathur was distressed. He begged Sri Ramakrishna to keep his feelings under control and to heed the conventions of society. God Himself, he argued, follows laws. God never permitted, for instance, flowers of two colours to grow on the same stalk. The following day Sri Ramakrishna presented Mathur Babu with two hibiscus flowers growing on the same stalk, one red and one white.
Mathur and Rani Rasmani began to ascribe the mental ailment of Sri Ramakrishna in part, at least, to his observance of rigid continence. Thinking that a natural life would relax the tension of his nerves, they engineered a plan with two women of ill fame. But as soon as the women entered his room, Sri Ramakrishna beheld in them the manifestation of the Divine Mother of the Universe and went into samadhi uttering Her name.
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Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kali temple when he found himself again in the whirlwind. His madness reappeared tenfold. The same meditation and prayer, the same ecstatic moods, the same burning sensation, the same weeping, the same sleeplessness, the same indifference to the body and the outside world, the same divine delirium. He subjected himself to fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great impediments to spiritual progress. With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two for the realization of God, and finding them equally worthless he would toss them, with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the manifestations of the Divine Mother. never even in a dream did he feel the impulses of lust. And to root out of his mind the idea of caste superiority, he cleaned a pariahs house with his long and neglected hair. When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and peck in his hair for grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and neither would be aware of the other. Sleep left him altogether. Day and night, visions flitted before him. He saw the sannyasi who had previously killed the "sinner" in him again coming out of his body, threatening him with the trident, and ordering him to concentrate on God. Or the same sannyasi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring him reports of what was happening there. Sri Ramakrishna used to say later that in the case of an advanced devotee the mind itself becomes the guru, living and moving like an embodied being.
Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861. After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comfort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five "suppliers of stores" appointed by the Divine Mother. Whe never a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.
--
Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never more than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him. The word "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole world and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sport, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
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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 temperament 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 attachment 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 enjoyment 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.
--
. What is shallow is worthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?"
Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative world, including the gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even for Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the Atman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the world. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of Pure Consciousness, appeared before me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
--
Totapuri, a monk of the most orthodox type, never stayed at a place more than three days. But he remained at Dakshineswar eleven months. He too had something to learn.
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.
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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 moments 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.
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The Knowledge of Brahman in nirvikalpa samadhi had convinced Sri Ramakrishna that the gods of the different religions are but so many readings of the Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed by human tongue. He understood that all religions lead their devotees by differing paths to one and the same goal. Now he became eager to explore some of the alien religions; for with him understanding meant actual experience.
--- ISLAM
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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, temperament, 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 development 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."
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Sri Ramakrishna never taught his disciples to hate any woman, or womankind in general. This can be seen clearly by going through all his teachings under this head and judging them collectively. The Master looked on all women as so many images of the Divine Mother of the Universe. He paid the highest homage to womankind by accepting a woman as his guide while practising the very profound spiritual disciplines of Tantra. His wife, known and revered as the Holy Mother, was his constant companion and first disciple. At the end of his spiritual practice he literally worshipped his wife as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Divine Mother. After his passing away the Holy Mother became the spiritual guide not only of a large number of householders, but also of many monastic members of the Ramakrishna Order.
--- THE MASTER'S YEARNING FOR HIS OWN DEVOTEES
Contact with the Brahmos increased Sri Ramakrishna's longing to encounter aspirants who would be able to follow his teachings in their purest form. "There was no limit", he once declared, "to the longing I felt at that time. During the day-time I somehow managed to control it. The secular talk of the worldly-minded was galling to me, and I would look wistfully to the day when my own beloved companions would come. I hoped to find solace in conversing with them and relating to them my own realizations. Every little incident would remind me of them, and thoughts of them wholly engrossed me. I was already arranging in my mind what I should say to one and give to another, and so on. But when the day would come to a close I would not be able to curb my feelings. The thought that another day had gone by, and they had not come, oppressed me. When, during the evening service, the temples rang with the sound of bells and conch-shells, I would climb to the roof of the kuthi in the garden and, writhing in anguish of heart, cry at the top of my voice: 'Come, my children! Oh, where are you? I cannot bear to live without you.' A mother never longed so intensely for the sight of her child, nor a friend for his companions, nor a lover for his sweetheart, as I longed for them. Oh, it was indescribable! Shortly after this period of yearning the devotees1 began to come."
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 women 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
--
But he remained as ever the willing instrument in the hand of God, the child of the Divine Mother, totally untouched by the idea of being a teacher. He used to say that three ideas — that he was a guru, a father, and a master — pricked his flesh like thorns. Yet he was an extraordinary teacher. He stirred his disciples' hearts more by a subtle influence than by actions or words. He never claimed to be the founder of a religion or the organizer of a sect. Yet he was a religious dynamo. He was the verifier of all religions and creeds. He was like an expert gardener, who prepares the soil and removes the weeds, knowing that the plants will grow because of the inherent power of the seeds, producing each its appropriate flowers and fruits. He never thrust his ideas on anybody. He understood people's limitations and worked on the principle that what is good for one may be bad for another. He had the unusual power of knowing the devotees' minds, even their inmost souls, at the first sight. He accepted disciples with the full knowledge of their past tendencies and future possibilities. The life of evil did not frighten him, nor did religious squeamishness raise anybody in his estimation. He saw in everything the unerring finger of the Divine Mother. Even the light that leads astray was to him the light from God.
To those who became his intimate disciples the Master was a friend, companion, and playmate. Even the chores of religious discipline would be lightened in his presence. The devotees would be so inebriated with pure joy in his company that they would have no time to ask themselves whether he was an Incarnation, a perfect soul, or a yogi. His very presence was a great teaching; words were superfluous. In later years his disciples remarked that while they were with him they would regard him as a comrade, but afterwards would tremble to think of their frivolities in the presence of such a great person. They had convincing proof that the Master could, by his mere wish, kindle in their hearts the love of God and give them His vision.
--
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.
--
Balaram Bose came of a wealthy Vaishnava family. From his youth he had shown a deep religious temperament and had devoted his time to meditation, prayer, and the study of the Vaishnava scriptures. He was very much impressed by Sri Ramakrishna even at their first meeting. He asked Sri Ramakrishna whether God really existed and, if so, whether a man could realize Him. The Master said: "God reveals Himself to the devotee who thinks of Him as his nearest and dearest. Because you do not draw response by praying to Him once, you must not conclude that He does not exist. Pray to God, thinking of Him as dearer than your very self. He is much attached to His devotees. He comes to a man even before He is sought. There is none more intimate and affectionate than God." Balaram had never before heard God spoken of in such forceful words; every one of the words seemed true to him. Under the Master's influence he outgrew the conventions of the Vaishnava worship and became one of the most beloved of the disciples. It was at his home that the Master slept whe never he spent a night in Calcutta.
--- MAHENDRA OR M.
--
Durgacharan Nag, also known as Nag Mahashay, was the ideal householder among the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was the embodiment 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 attachment 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
--
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.
One day Girish felt depressed because he was unable to submit to any routine of spiritual discipline. In an exalted mood the Master said to him: "All right, give me your power of attorney. Henceforth I assume responsibility for you. You need not do anything." Girish heaved a sigh of relief. He felt happy to think that Sri Ramakrishna had assumed his spiritual responsibilities. But poor Girish could not then realize that He also, on his part, had to give up his freedom and make of himself a puppet in Sri Ramakrishna's hands. The Master began to discipline him according to this new attitude. One day Girish said about a trifling matter, "Yes, I shall do this." "No, no!" the Master corrected him. "You must not speak in that egotistic manner. You should say, 'God willing, I shall do it.'" Girish understood. Thenceforth he tried to give up all idea of personal responsibility and surrender himself to the Divine Will. His mind began to dwell constantly on Sri Ramakrishna. This unconscious meditation in time chastened his turbulent spirit.
--
Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
--
Narendra began to talk of his doubt of the very existence of God. His friends thought he had become an atheist, and piously circulated gossip adducing unmentionable motives for his unbelief. His moral character was maligned. Even some of the Master's disciples partly believed the gossip, and Narendra told these to their faces that only a coward believed in God through fear of suffering or hell. But he was distressed to think that Sri Ramakrishna, too, might believe these false reports. His pride revolted. He said to himself: "What does it matter? If a man's good name rests on such slender foundations, I don't care." But later on he was amazed to learn that the Master had never lost faith in him. To a disciple who complained about Narendra's degradation, Sri Ramakrishna replied: "Hush, you fool! The Mother has told me it can never be so. I won't look at you if you speak that way again."
The moment came when Narendra's distress reached its climax. He had gone the whole day without food. As he was returning home in the evening he could hardly lift his tired limbs. He sat down in front of a house in sheer exhaustion, too weak even to think. His mind began to wander. Then, suddenly, a divine power lifted the veil over his soul. He found the solution of the problem of the coexistence of divine justice and misery, the presence of suffering in the creation of a blissful Providence. He felt bodily refreshed, his soul was bathed in peace, and he slept serenely.
--
Harinath had led the austere life of a brahmachari even from his early boyhood — bathing in the Ganges every day, cooking his own meals, waking before sunrise, and reciting the Gita from memory before leaving bed. He found in the Master the embodiment of the Vedanta scriptures. Aspiring to be a follower of the ascetic Sankara, he cherished a great hatred for women. One day he said to the Master that he could not allow even small girls to come near him. The Master scolded him and said: "You are talking like a fool. Why should you hate women? They are the manifestations of the Divine Mother. Regard them as your own mother and you will never feel their evil influence. The more you hate them, the more you will fall into their snares." Hari said later that these words completely changed his attitude toward women.
The Master knew Hari's passion for Vedanta. But he did not wish any of his disciples to become a dry ascetic or a mere bookworm. So he asked Hari to practise Vedanta in life by giving up the unreal and following the Real. "But it is not so easy", Sri Ramakrishna said, "to realize the illusoriness of the world. Study alone does not help one very much. The grace of God is required. Mere personal effort is futile. A man is a tiny creature after all, with very limited powers. But he can achieve the impossible if he prays to God for His grace." Whereupon the Master sang a song in praise of grace. Hari was profoundly moved and shed tears. Later in life Hari achieved a wonderful synthesis of the ideals of the Personal God and the Impersonal Truth.
--
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 women 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
--
She spent about two months in uninterrupted communion with God, the Baby Gopala never leaving her for a moment. Then the intensity of her vision was lessened; had it not been, her body would have perished. The Master spoke highly of her exalted spiritual condition and said that such vision of God was a rare thing for ordinary mortals. The fun-loving Master one day confronted the critical Narendranath with this simple-minded woman. No two could have presented a more striking contrast. The Master knew of Narendra's lofty contempt for all visions, and he asked the old lady to narrate her experiences to Narendra. With great hesitation she told him her story. Now and then she interrupted her maternal chatter to ask Narendra: "My son, I am a poor ignorant woman. I don't understand anything. You are so learned. Now tell me if these visions of Gopala are true." As Narendra listened to the story he was profoundly moved. He said, "Yes, mother, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of love and tenderness.
--- THE MARCH OF EVENTS
In 1881 Hriday was dismissed from service in the Kali temple, for an act of indiscretion, and was ordered by the authorities never again to enter the garden. In a way the hand of the Divine Mother may be seen even in this. Having taken care of Sri Ramakrishna during the stormy days of his spiritual discipline, Hriday had come naturally to consider himself the sole guardian of his uncle. None could approach the Master without his knowledge. And he would be extremely jealous if Sri Ramakrishna paid attention to anyone else. Hriday's removal made it possible for the real devotees of the Master to approach him freely and live with him in the temple garden.
During the week-ends the householders, enjoying a respite from their office duties, visited the Master. The meetings on Sunday afternoons were of the nature of little festivals. Refreshments were often served. Professional musicians now and then sang devotional songs. The Master and the devotees sang and danced, Sri Ramakrishna frequently going into ecstatic moods. The happy memory of such a Sunday would linger long in the minds of the devotees. Those whom the Master wanted for special instruction he would ask to visit him on Tuesdays and Saturdays. These days were particularly auspicious for the worship of Kali.
--
But his large heart never turned anyone away. He said, "Let me be condemned to be born over and over again, even in the form of a dog, if I can be of help to a single soul." And he bore the pain, singing cheerfully, "Let the body be preoccupied with illness, but, O mind, dwell for ever in God's Bliss!"
One night he had a hemorrhage of the throat. The doctor now diagnosed the illness as cancer. Narendra was the first to break this heart-rending news to the disciples. Within three days the Master was removed to Calcutta for better treatment. At Balaram's house he remained a week until a suitable place could be found at Syampukur, in the northern section of Calcutta. During this week he dedicated himself practically without respite to the instruction of those beloved devotees who had been unable to visit him oftener at Dakshineswar. Discourses incessantly flowed from his tongue, and he often went into samadhi. Dr. Mahendra Sarkar, the celebrated homeopath of Calcutta, was invited to undertake his treatment.
--
Yet one is not sure whether the Master's soul actually was tortured by this agonizing disease. At least during his moments of spiritual exaltation — which became almost constant during the closing days of his life on earth — he lost all consciousness of the body, of illness and suffering. One of his attendants (Latu, later known as Swami Adbhutananda.) said later on: "While Sri Ramakrishna lay sick he never actually suffered pain. He would often say: 'O mind! Forget the body, forget the sickness, and remain merged in Bliss.' No, he did not really suffer. At times he would be in a state when the thrill of joy was clearly manifested in his body. Even when he could not speak he would let us know in some way that there was no suffering, and this fact was clearly evident to all who watched him. People who did not understand him thought that his suffering was very great. What spiritual joy he transmitted to us at that time! Could such a thing have been possible if he had 'been suffering physically? It was during this period that he taught us again these truths: 'Brahman is always unattached. The three gunas are in It, but It is unaffected by them, just as the wind carries odour yet remains odourless.' 'Brahman is Infinite Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Bliss. In It there exist no delusion, no misery, no disease, no death, no growth, no decay.' 'The Transcendental Being and the being within are one and the same. There is one indivisible Absolute Existence.'"
The Holy Mother secretly went to a Siva temple across the Ganges to intercede with the Deity for the Master's recovery. In a revelation she was told to prepare herself for the i nevitable end.
--
Sunday, August 15, 1886. The Master's pulse became irregular. The devotees stood by the bedside. Toward dusk Sri Ramakrishna had difficulty in breathing. A short time afterwards he complained of hunger. A little liquid food was put into his mouth; some of it he swallowed, and the rest ran over his chin. Two attendants began to fan him. All at once he went into samadhi of a rather unusual type. The body became stiff. Sashi burst into tears. But after midnight the Master revived. He was now very hungry and helped himself to a bowl of porridge. He said he was strong again. He sat up against five or six pillows, which were supported by the body of Sashi, who was fanning him. Narendra took his feet on his lap and began to rub them. Again and again the Master repeated to him, "Take care of these boys." Then he asked to lie down. Three times in ringing tone's he cried the name of Kali, his life's Beloved, and lay back. At two minutes past one there was a low sound in his throat and he fell a little to one side. A thrill passed over his body. His hair stood on end. His eyes became fixed on the tip of his nose. His face was lighted with a smile. The final ecstasy began. It was mahasamadhi, total absorption, from which his mind never returned. Narendra, unable to bear it, ran downstairs.
Dr. Sarkar arrived the following noon and pronounced that life had departed not more than half an hour before. At five o'clock the Masters body was brought downstairs, laid on a cot, dressed in ochre clothes, and decorated with sandal-paste and flowers. A procession was formed. The passers-by wept as the body was taken to the cremation ground at the Baranagore Ghat on the Ganges.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But mind, never at ease, creaketh "I".
This I persisteth not, posteth not through genera-
--
nevertheless, One True God crieth hriliu!
And the laughter of the Death-rattle is akin.
--
and faileth never.
The wings of love droop not with time, nor slacken
--
fection is impossible never cease to attract.
The lesson of the chapter is thus always to rise
--
But I have never tasted anything to match the
(?)
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"M", as the author modestly styles himself, was peculiarly qualified for his task. To a reverent love for his master, to a deep and experiential knowledge of that master's teaching, he added a prodigious memory for the small happenings of each day and a happy gift for recording them in an interesting and realistic way. Making good use of his natural gifts and of the circumstances in which he found himself, "M" produced a book unique, so far as my knowledge goes, in the literature of hagiography. No other saint has had so able and indefatigable a Boswell. never have the small events of a contemplative's daily life been described with such a wealth of intimate detail. never have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher been set down with so minute a fidelity. To Western readers, it is true, this fidelity and this wealth of detail are sometimes a trifle disconcerting; for the social, religious and intellectual frames of reference within which Sri Ramakrishna did his thinking and expressed his feelings were entirely Indian. But after the first few surprises and bewilderments, we begin to find something peculiarly stimulating and instructive about the very strangeness and, to our eyes, the eccentricity of the man revealed to us in "M's" narrative. What a scholastic philosopher would call the "accidents" of Ramakrishna's life were intensely Hindu and therefore, so far as we in the West are concerned, unfamiliar and hard to understand; its "essence", however, was intensely mystical and therefore universal. To read through these conversations in which mystical doctrine alternates with an unfamiliar kind of humour, and where discussions of the oddest aspects of Hindu mythology give place to the most profound and subtle utterances about the nature of Ultimate Reality, is in itself a liberal, education in humility, tolerance and suspense of judgment. We must be grateful to the translator for his excellent version of a book so curious and delightful as a biographical document, so precious, at the same time, for what it teaches us of the life of the spirit.
--------------------
--
I have made a literal translation, omitting only a few pages of no particular interest to English-speaking readers. Often literary grace has been sacrificed for the sake of literal translation. No translation can do full justice to the original. This difficulty is all the more felt in the present work, whose contents are of a deep mystical nature and describe the inner experiences of a great seer. Human language is an altogether inadequate vehicle to express supersensuous perception. Sri Ramakrishna was almost illiterate. He never clothed his thoughts in formal language. His words sought to convey his direct realization of Truth. His conversation was in a village patois. Therein lies its charm. In order to explain to his listeners an abstruse philosophy, he, like Christ before him, used with telling effect homely parables and illustrations, culled from his observation of the daily life around him.
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 development 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 tremendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his words the ring of universal truth.
--
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.
Though his children received proper attention from him, his real family, both during the Master's lifetime and after, consisted of saints, devotees, Sannysins and spiritual aspirants. His life exemplifies the Master's teaching that an ideal householder must be like a good maidservant of a family, loving and caring properly for the children of the house, but knowing always that her real home and children are elsewhere. During the Master's lifetime he spent all his Sundays and other holidays with him and his devotees, and besides listening to the holy talks and devotional music, practised meditation both on the Personal and the Impersonal aspects of God under the direct guidance of the Master. In the pages of the Gospel the reader gets a picture of M.'s spiritual relationship with the Master how from a hazy belief in the Impersonal God of the Brahmos, he was step by step brought to accept both Personality and Impersonality as the two aspects of the same Non-dual Being, how he was convinced of the manifestation of that Being as Gods, Goddesses and as Incarnations, and how he was established in a life that was both of a Jnni and of a Bhakta. This Jnni-Bhakta outlook and way of living became so dominant a feature of his life that Swami Raghavananda, who was very closely associated with him during his last six years, remarks: "Among those who lived with M. in latter days, some felt that he always lived in this constant and conscious union with God even with open eyes (i.e., even in waking consciousness)." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXXVII. P. 442.)
--
The two pamphlets in English entitled the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna appeared in October and November 1897. They drew the spontaneous acclamation of Swami Vivekananda, who wrote on 24th November of that year from Dehra Dun to M.:"Many many thanks for your second leaflet. It is indeed wonderful. The move is quite original, and never was the life of a Great Teacher brought before the public untarnished by the writer's mind, as you are doing. The language also is beyond all praise, so fresh, so pointed, and withal so plain and easy. I cannot express in adequate terms how I have enjoyed them. I am really in a transport when I read them. Strange, isn't it? Our Teacher and Lord was so original, and each one of us will have to be original or nothing.
I now understand why none of us attempted His life before. It has been reserved for you, this great work. He is with you evidently." ( Vednta Kesari Vol. XIX P. 141. Also given in the first edition of the Gospel published from Ramakrishna Math, Madras in 1911.)
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
It follows that the more specialized society becomes, the less attention does it pay to the discoveries of the mind, which are intuitively beamed toward the brain, there to be received only if the switches are "on." Specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery of the all-powerful generalized principles. Again we see how society's perverse fixation on specialization leads to its extinction. We are so specialized that one man discovers empirically how to release the energy of the atom, while another, unbeknownst to him, is ordered by his political factotum to make an atomic bomb by use of the secretly and anonymously published data. That gives much expedient employment, which solves the politician's momentary problem, but requires that the politicians keep on preparing for further warring with other political states to keep their respective peoples employed. It is also mistakenly assumed that employment is the only means by which humans can earn the right to live, for politicians have yet to discover how much wealth is available for distribution. All this is rationalized on the now scientifically discredited premise that there can never be enough life support for all. Thus humanity's specialization leads only toward warring and such devastating tools, both, visible and invisible, as ultimately to destroy all Earthians.
Only a comprehensive switch from the narrowing specialization and toward an evermore inclusive and refining comprehension by all humanity-regarding all the factors governing omnicontinuing life aboard our spaceship Earth-can bring about reorientation from the self-extinction-bound human trending, and do so within the critical time remaining before we have passed the point of chemical process irretrievability.
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, #Integral Yoga
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
say, in all truth, that I never lose consciousness throughout the
twenty-four hours, which thus form an unbroken sequence, and
--
way to perpetuate the human race. I have never denied this, but
I wish to add that there is nothing to fear in this respect; if it is
--
will surely never suffer from a dearth of men.
28 September 1931
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
God. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little or else very imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost i nevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular effort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious
Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: "All life is Yoga."
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
formation is at least as strong as yours - and we must never
tempt the adverse forces.
--
all. Each one has his faults and must never forget it when he
deals with others.
--
help from an invisible and silent Mother (who never contradicts
you openly) if he likes.
--
keep it: nevER LOSE YOUR TEMPER.
I told you already that far from diminishing, your hold upon
--
You must be calm and concentrated, never utter an unnecessary
sentence and have faith in the divine help.
--
quenched, for the waters of love never run dry.
3 July 1934
--
I sing Your praises. I will never forget how You respond when one calls You with intensity, nor the marvel
of Your presence which changes the attitude of others
--
Yes, I am always with you, but you must never forget to call me,
for it is by calling me that the presence becomes effective.
--
I never said that you should be the judge. I agree to be the judge
in all cases, because I recognise that it is very difficult to know
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for mankind. It can be, therefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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 temperament, 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 whe never 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.
--
Very often some news-item in the daily newspaper, town-gossip, or some interesting letter received either by him or by a disciple, or a question from one of the gathering, occasionally some remark or query from himself would set the ball rolling for the talk. The whole thing was so informal that one could never predict the turn the conversation would take. The whole house therefore was in a mood to enjoy the freshness and the delight of meeting the unexpected. There were peals of laughter and light talk, jokes and criticism which might be called personal, there was seriousness and earnestness in abundance.
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 temperamental tendencies and formations. Thus, these sittings contributed at least partly to the creation of an atmosphere amenable 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.
--
But there were occasions when he did give his independent, personal views on some problems, on events or other subjects. Even then it was never an authoritarian pronouncement. Most often it appeared to be a logically worked out and almost i nevitable conclusion expressed quite impersonally though with firm and sincere conviction. This impersonality was such a prominent trait of his personality! Even in such matters as dispatching a letter or a telegram it would not be a command from him to a disciple to carry out the task. Most often during his usual passage to the dining room he would stop on the way, drop in on the company of four or five disciples and, holding out the letter or the telegram, would say in the most amiable and yet the most impersonal way: "I suppose this has to be sent." And it would be for someone in the group instantly to volunteer and take it. The expression he very often used was "It was done" or "It happened", not "I did."
From 1918 to 1922, we gathered at No. 41, Rue Franois Martin, called the Guest House, upstairs, on a broad verandah into which four rooms opened and whose main piece of furniture was a small table 3' x 1' covered with a blue cotton cloth. That is where Sri Aurobindo used to sit in a hard wooden chair behind the table with a few chairs in front for the visitors or for the disciples.
--
The long period of the Second World War with all its vicissitudes passed through these years. It was a priceless experience to see how he devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how He comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at one time in his own words "not merely a non-co-operator but an enemy of British Imperialism" bestowed such anxious care on the health of Churchill, listening carefully to the health-bulletins! It was the work of the Divine, it was the Divine's work for the world.
There were no formal evening sittings during these years, but what appeared to me important in our informal talks was recorded and has been incorporated in this book.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
right. One should never talk about others - it is always useless
- and least of all about their difficulties; it is uncharitable because it does not help them to overcome the difficulties. As
--
You must not accept depression, never, and still less these
suggestions, so stupid and false, that I could ask you to go away!
--
I am never satisfied, even though You have given me
Series Three - To "My little smile"
--
and more; it is never satisfied with what You give it.
My child, I am going to reveal something that you will try to
--
should never have wished to come here. Mother, I wish
You would not tell me that I am rebelling, I do not like
--
And never doubt my affection, which is always with you to
help you make this indispensable progress.
--
The trouble one takes like this for someone is never in vain. The
result may not appear immediately, but one day or another a
--
peace and silence will be established in you some day never to
leave you again.
--
always keep that silence and peace one never feels poor
for any reason.
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances; its dream of perfect Truth in the supreme, self-existent, self-apparent and eternal Verity which never varies, but explains and is the secret of all variations and the goal of all progress; its dream of perfect action in the omnipotent and self-guiding Law that is inherent for ever in all things and translates itself here in the rhythm of the worlds. What is fugitive vision or constant effort of creation in the brilliant Self is an eternally existing Reality in the Self that knows2 and is the Lord.
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.
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
intend that it should never be renewed.
10 March 1934
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
confidence in my love which never leaves you.
Your mother.
--
important point which should never be forgotten. All that leads
you away from me in thought and feeling is bad. All that brings
--
you. never for a moment do I leave you and I am sure that if
you are a little attentive you will very clearly feel the warmth of
--
who loved us very much - my brother and myself - never allowed us to be ill tempered or discontented or lazy. If we went
to complain to her about one thing or another, to tell her that
--
you go and work, and never mind whether you are in a good or
a bad mood! That is of no interest at all."
--
its own, the vital will never accept it.
So you must open yourself to the spiritual force and allow it
--
You must never lose confidence in my unvarying love.
30 August 1934
--
by my love which never leaves you.
7 September 1934
--
that you must never do what you would not dare to do in my
physical presence, for I am always with you.
--
is never happy. When one allows oneself to be ruled by every
passing impulse, one is never peaceful.
It is through work and self-mastery that one can find happiness and peace.
--
But you know that I never advise anyone to marry; it is a
terrible bondage.
--
I have never thought that you really wanted to marry, but
now and then it is good that I remind you that you are free and
--
Love from your mother who never leaves you.
15 May 1938
--
I am always with you, my dear child, and my love never
leaves you.
--
know that I shall never be able to leave this life. This is
my situation right now. The struggle is getting more and
--
grace will always be with you and never fail you. Moreover, there
is no reason to believe that you will not succeed in this life; on the
--
for violent sensations can never be a remedy; on the contrary,
they increase the confusion and obscurity.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This system is the way of the Tantra. Owing to certain of its developments Tantra has fallen into discredit with those who are not Tantrics; and especially owing to the developments of its left-hand path, the Vama Marga, which not content with exceeding the duality of virtue and sin and instead of replacing them by spontaneous rightness of action seemed, sometimes, to make a method of self-indulgence, a method of unrestrained social immorality. nevertheless, in its origin, Tantra was a great and puissant system founded upon ideas which were at least partially true. Even its twofold division into the right-hand and left-hand paths, Dakshina Marga and Vama Marga, started from a certain profound perception. In the ancient symbolic sense of the words Dakshina and Vama, it was the distinction between the way of Knowledge and the way of Ananda, - Nature in man liberating itself by right discrimination in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities and Nature in man
The Synthesis of the Systems
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
which have preceded it. This, nevertheless, is the Dark Night par excellence, of
which the Saint speaks in these words: 'The night which we have called that of
--
As far as we know, this commentary was never written. We have only the briefest
outline of what was to have been covered in the third, in which, following the same
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have never said anything of the kind. But you must prepare
yourself, purify yourself within, so that this approach may be
--
the Divine and never loses this contact.
The Divine is constantly present in the psychic being and the
--
I shall never be able to realise fully this relationship
which exists eternally, if You don't help me to do it.
--
and never refuses what is offered to Him whole-heartedly; thus
you may live in the peace of the certitude that you are accepted
--
union an accomplished fact, but it never complains, and knows
how to wait for the hour of realisations to come.
It is the vital which asks and asks and is never satisfied... The
psychic, the true deep feelings are always satisfied and never ask
for anything. The psychic feels my constant presence, is aware
--
Yesterday you were surprised that she had never broken anything, - naturally today she has broken something; this is how
mental formations work. That is why one must state only what
--
Without perseverance one never attains anything.
Because a thing is difficult it does not mean that one should give
--
rest assured it is always with you, and one never calls in vain.
If you resolve to do it, my force will be there to back up your
--
To be pessimistic has never been of any use except to attract
towards oneself just the things one fears. One must, on the
--
One must never be afraid, and if the adverse forces try to lodge
themselves in your lower nature, you have only to dislodge them,
--
One must never be afraid. Even in your sleep you must be able
to remember me and call me to your help if there is some danger.
--
more and will never be satisfied.
Y told me that very often he becomes an instrument of
--
In keeping quiet one never risks doing anything wrong, while
one has nine chances out of ten of saying something stupid when
--
It is never good to tell a lie, but here its results cannot but be
disastrous, for falsehood is the very symbol of that which wants
--
One must never lose hope or faith - there is nothing incurable,
and no limit can be set to the power of the Divine.
--
first control yourself and never use brute force to impose your
will.
--
The most important is to master yourself and never lose your
temper. If you don't have control over yourself, how can you
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
that was never there before. It seems to me that soon you will
discover, behind the apparent dryness of the surface, the always
--
I know that it is only the weak who complain. The strong never
do because they can't be hurt. So I never attach much importance
to complaints.
--
blessings never leave you.
31 October 1938
--
mother never.
But what a joy and love it is when both mother and son are
--
will come and go. But may I never lose sight of your
luminous smiling face through all these passing clouds!
--
are solved and you will get rid of your difficulties. I never feel
that I am forgiving. Love does not forgive, it understands and
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
them the appearance of a power or an action they do not possess in themselves. Hence the necessity of never being afraid and
of recognising them for what they are - a deceptive appearance.
--
For you must never forget that the outer person is only the
form and symbol of an eternal Reality, and through the physical
--
based on the experience of its founder. nevertheless, despite
these divergences, there is a sort of tradition which, behind the
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
being, we can never lose it. Isn't that so? But can we
come into contact with it from time to time when we are
--
we adore. We must learn to live with respect and never forget
His constant and immutable Presence.
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 movements 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.
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
But the initial illusory consciousness of the Overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
--
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
The Dhammapada, I. 1
The Supermind is not merely synthetic. The Supermind is synthetic only on the lowest spaces of itself, where it has to prepare the principles of Overmind,synthesis is necessary only where analysis has taken place, one has dissected everything, put in pieces (analysis), so one has to piece together. But Supermind is unitarian, has never divided up, so it does not need to add and piece together the parts and fragments. It has always held the conscious Many together in the conscious One.
***
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We do not say that poets have never sung of God and Soul and things transcendent. Poets have always done that. But what I say is this that presentation of spiritual truths, as they are in their own home, in other words, treated philosophically and yet in a supreme poetic manner, has always been a rarity. We have, indeed, in India the Gita and the Upanishads, great philosophical poems, if there were any. But for one thing they are on dizzy heights out of the reach of common man and for another they are idolised more as philosophy than as poetry. Doubtless, our Vaishnava poets sang of God and Love Divine; and Rabindranath, in one sense, a typical modern Vaishnava, did the same. And their songs are masterpieces. But are they not all human, too human, as the mad prophet would say? In them it is the human significance, the human manner that touches and moves us the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not clothed them in human symbols and allegories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular life: he presents them in their nakedness, just as they are seen and realised. He has not sought to tone down the rigour of truth with contrivances that easily charm and captivate the common human mind and heart. Nor has he indulged like so many poet philosophers in vague generalisations and colourless or too colourful truisms that do not embody a clear thought or rounded idea, a radiant judgment. Sri Aurobindo has given us in his poetry thoughts that are clear-cut, ideas beautifully chiselledhe is always luminously forceful.
Take these Vedantic lines that in their limpidity and harmonious flow beat anything found in the fine French poet Lamartine:
--
Where murmurs never sound of harp or lute
And no voice sings,
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
one can explain that it is the Christ calling the Church or God appealing to the human soul or one can simply find in it nothing more than a man pining for his woman. Anyhow I would not call it spiritual poetry or even mystic poetry. For in itself it does not carry any double or oblique meaning, there is no suggestion that it is applicable to other fields or domains of consciousness: it is, as it were, monovalent. An allegory is never mysticism. There is more mysticism in Wordsworth, even in Shelley and Keats, than in Spenser, for example, who stands in this respect on the same ground as Bunyan in his The Pilgrim's Progress. Take Wordsworth as a Nature-worshipper,
Breaking the silence of the seas
--
O never then from me depart !11
I am anticipating however, I shall come to the point presently again. I was speaking of spiritual poetry. Listen once more to these simple, transparent, yet vibrant lines:
--
This is spiritual matter and spiritual manner that can never be improved upon. This is spiritual poetry in its quintessence. I am referring naturally here to the original and not to the translation which can never do full justice, even at its very best, to the poetic value in question. For apart from the individual genius of the poet, the greatness of the language, the instrument used by the poet, is also involved. It may well be what is comparatively easy and natural in the language of the gods (devabhasha) would mean a tour de force, if not altogether an impossibility, in a human language. The Sanskrit language was moulded and fashioned in the hands of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosphere. The later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants, have gone still farther from the source, they are much nearer to the earth and are suffused with the smell and effluvia of this vale of tears.
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the question is, does Reason never fail? Is it such a perfect instrument as intellectualists think it to be? There is ground for serious misgivings. Reason says, for example, that the earth revolves round the sun: and reason, it is argued, is right, for we see that all the facts are conformableto it, even facts that were hitherto unknown and are now coming into our ken. But the difficulty is that Reason did not say that always in the past and may not say that always in the future. The old astronomers could explain the universe by holding quite a contrary theory and could fit into it all their astronomical data. A future scientist may come and explain the matter in quite a different way from either. It is only a choice of workable theories that Reason seems to offer; we do not know the fact itself, apart perhaps from exactly the amount that immediate sense-perception gives to each of us. Or again, if we take an example of another category, we may ask, does God exist? A candid Rationalist would say that he does not know although he has his own opinion about the matter. Evidently, Reason cannot solve all the problems that it meets; it can judge only truths that are of a certain type.
It may be answered that Reason is a faculty which gives us progressive knowledge of the reality, but as a knowing instrument it is perfect, at least it is the only instrument at our disposal; even if it gives a false, incomplete or blurred image of the reality, it has the means and capacity of correcting and completing itself. It offers theories, no doubt; but what are theories? They are simply the gradually increasing adaptation of the knowing subject to the object to be known, the evolving revelation of reality to our perception of it. Reason is the power which carries on that process of adaptation and revelation; we can safely rely upon Reason and trust It to carry on its work with increasing success.
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is the present nature of man, with its threefold nexus of mind and life and body, that stands there to be fought and conquered. This is the inferior nature, of which the ancients spoke, that holds man down inexorably to a lower dharma, imperfect mode of life the life that is and has been the human order till today. No amount of ceaseless action, however selflessly done, can move this wheel of Nature even by a hair's breadth away from the path that it has carved out from of old. Human nature and human society have been built up and are run by the forces of this inferior nature, and whatever shuffling and reshuffling we may make in its apparent factors and elements, the general scheme and fundamental form of life will never change. To displace earth (and to conquer nature means nothing less than that) and give it another orbit, one must find a fulcrum outside earth.
Sri Aurobindo does not preach flight from life and a retreat into the silent and passive Infinite; the goal of life is not, in his view, the extinction of life. Neither is he satisfied on that account to hold that life is best lived in the ordinary round of its unregenerate dharma. If the first is a blind alley, the second is a vicious circle,both lead nowhere.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A search for something or someone never found,
Cult of an ideal never made real here,
An endless spiral of ascent and fall
--
And joys that never flowed through mortal limbs,
And lovelier scenes than earth's and happier lives.
--
And all the beauty that will never be.
Inaudible to our deaf mortal ears
--
Illumined That which never yet was made.
Thought lay down in a mighty voicelessness;
--
Peered out; he saw the hope that never sleeps,
The feet that run behind a fleeting fate,
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
But even if he can live partly in it or keep himself constantly open to it, he receives enough of this spiritual light and peace and strength and happiness to carry him securely through all the shocks of life. What one gains by opening to this spiritual consciousness, depends on what one seeks from it; if it is peace, one gets peace; if it is light or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than any the normal mind of man can acquire; if it [is] strength or power, one gets a spiritual strength for the inner life or Yogic power to govern the outer work and action; if it is happiness, one enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary human life can give.
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 women without any hope of enjoyment 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, imprisonment, 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 enjoyment, 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
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age. Not matter but that which forms the substance of matter, not intellect but a vaster consciousness that informs the intellect, not man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he may and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that orderthis is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged, nevertheless secretly inspires all the human activities of today. Only, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms of vital life. The intellectual and physical man gave us one aspect of the reality, but neither is the vital and psychical man the complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the viewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural and deeper movement of humanity and not as before merely with its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of humanity, in Nietzsche's phrase, was a sort of divagation from nature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of natural evolution. And the new Renaissance of today has precisely corrected this aberration of humanity and brought it again in a line with the natural cosmic order.
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.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 movements 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 elements 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 instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. 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 fundamental 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 refinements, 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 enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We hear what mortal ears have never heard,
We feel what earthly sense has never felt,
We love what common hearts repel and dread;
--
And stretches arms to what was never hers.
Outstretching arms to the unconscious Void,
--
A river that can never find its sea,
It runs through life and death on an edge of Time;
--
Remote in sovereign spheres that never meet
Or fronting like far poles of Night and Day.
--
A limit, a farness never wholly reached,
An unattained perfection calls to him
--
And never can the mighty Traveller rest
And never can the mystic voyage cease
Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man's soul
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 temperament, and grief and frustration and death and decay were taken as a matter of course to be the i nevitable 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 equipment, 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.
--
Thus, on the one hand, the Eternity, the Infinity, the Spirit is brought nearer home to us in its embodied symbols and living vehicles and vivid formulations, it becomes easily available to mortals, even like the father to his son, to use a Vedic phrase; on the other hand, earthly things, mere humanities are uplifted and suffused with a "light that never was, on sea or land."
Another great poet of the spirit says also, almost like Tagore:
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nietzsche as the apostle of force is a name now familiar to all the world. The hero, the warrior who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquersuch is the ideal man, according to Nietzsche,the champion of strength, of greatness, of mightiness. The dominating personality infused with the supreme "will to power"he is Ubermensch, the Superman. Sentiment does not move the mountains, emotion diffuses itself only in vague aspiration. The motive power, the creative fiat does not dwell in the heart but somewhere higher. The way of the Cross, the path of love and charity and pity does not lead to the kingdom of Heaven. The world has tried it for the last twenty centuries of its Christian civilisation and the result is that we are still living in a luxuriant abundance of misery and sordidness and littleness. This is how Nietzsche thinks and feels. He finds no virtue in the old rgimes and he revolts from them. He wants a speedy and radical remedy and teaches that by violence only the Kingdom of Heaven can be seized. For, to Nietzsche the world is only a clash of forces and the Superman therefore is one who is the embodiment of the greatest force. Nietzsche does not care for the good, it is the great that moves him. The good, the moral is of man, conventional and has only a fictitious value. The great, the non-moral is, on the other hand, divine. That only has a value of its own. The good is nothing but a sort of makeshift arrangement which man makes for himself in order to live commodiously and which changes according to his temperament. But the great is one with the Supreme Wisdom and is absolute and imperative. The good cannot create the great; it is the great that makes for the good. This is what he really means when he says, "They say that a good cause sanctifies war but I tell thee it is a good war that sanctifies all cause." For the goodness of your cause you judge by your personal predilections, by your false conventionalities, by a standard that you set up in your ignoranceBut a good war, the output of strength in any cause is in itself a cause of salvation. For thereby you are the champion of that ultimate verity which conduces to the ultimate good. Do not shrink, he would say, to be even like the cyclone and the avalanche, destructive, indeed, but grand and puissant and therefore truer emblems of the BeyondJenseitsthan the weak, the little, the pitiful that do not dare to destroy and by that very fact cannot hope to create.
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One among many thousands never touched,
Engrossed in the external world's design,
--
Surprises of creation never achieved
Even by Matter's strange unconscious skill.
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"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
What characterises Pascal is the way in which he has bent his brainnot rejected it but truly bent and forced even the dry "geometrical brain" to the service of Faith.
--
"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.
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The method of unconscious or subconscious nature is fundamentally that of repression. Apart from Defence Reaction which is a thing of pure coercion, even in Substitution and Sublimation there always remains in the background a large amount of repressed complexes in all their primitive strength. The system is never entirely purified but remains secretly pregnant with those urges; a part only is deflected and camouflaged, the surface only assumes a transformed appearance. And there is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether forces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, sovereignly above the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
In conscious control, the mind is for the first time aware of the presence of the repressed impulses, it seeks to release them from the pressure to which they are habitually and normally subjected. It knows and recognises them, however ugly and revolting they might appear to be when they present themselves in their natural nakedness. Then it becomes easy for the conscious determination to eliminate or regulate or transform them and thus to establish a healthy harmony in the human vehicle. The very recognition itself, as implied in conscious control, means purification.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
--
If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not worthy to follow the path, that you must go and work out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, for it is false, for thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift for that that is passed, hold forth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the Love of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this love, your sins will fade away of themselves. "Though thou be thrust in an house with thy body, nevertheless in thine heart, where the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
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 statement 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 movement necessary for the full achievement. "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." Amen.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
desire, for desire is insatiable and can never be satisfied.
What he writes ought not to be taken separately; it is always
--
should never criticise someone unless one has proved beyond
dispute that in the same circumstances one can do better than he.
--
I have never made this statement.
Things are not so cut and dried as the mind thinks and even
--
(2) The very nature of energy is to be inexhaustible, unfailing, tireless. Are you never tired? Yes, very often - therefore:
indolent energy.
--
watch all one's emotional movements and vital reactions, never
close one's eyes with indulgence to one's own weaknesses, and
--
In any case, you should never pretend to be more perfect
than you are, and still less should you be satisfied with false
--
"The greatest egoist is the Supreme Lord because He never
bothers about anything but Himself!"
--
Effort is never silent.
23 December 1964
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human and egoistic lines. I have never promised to do anything
of the kind. Human nature is made up of imperfections, even
--
The experience must come first and the explanation afterwards. That is why Sri Aurobindo has said: never distrust your
experience; but you may distrust your explanation, which is a
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nicholas Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a more limited, conditional and even doubtful nature. His conception of the value of human person, the dignity and the high reality he gives to it, can never be too welcome in a world where the individual seems to have gone the way of vanished empires and kings and princes. But even more important and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that man normally is"not this that one worships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being man, the individual, is not simply a portion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete whole, a creative focus; the true individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look for the true spiritual reality behind the flux of forces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious Being. The personality in Nature is a formulation and emanation of the transcendent impersonality.
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.
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"To its heights we can always come. For those of us who are still splashing about in the lower ooze, the phrase has a rather ironical ring. nevertheless, in the light of even the most distant acquaintance with the heights and the fullness, it is possible to understand what its author means. To discover the Kingdom of God exclusively within oneself is easier than to discover it, not only there, but also in the outer worlds of minds and things and living creatures. It is easier because the heights within reveal themselves to those who are ready to exclude from their purview all that lies without. And though this exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fullness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusivelyto realise the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental."
The neatness of the commentary cannot be improved upon. Only with regard to the "ironical ring" of which Huxley speaks, it has just to be pointed out, as he himself seems to understand, that the "we" referred to in the phrase does not mean humanity in general that 'splashes about in the lower ooze' but those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life.
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Christian too accepts the dual principle, but does not give equal status to the two. Satan is there, an eternal reality: it is anti-God, it seeks to oppose God, frustrate his work. It is the great tempter whose task it is to persuade, to inspire man to remain always an earthly creature and never turn to know or live in God. Now the crucial question that arises is, what is the necessity of this Antagonist in God's scheme of creation? What is the meaning of this struggle and battle? God could have created, if he had chosen, a world without Evil. The orthodox Christi an answer is that in that case one could not have fully appreciated the true value and glory of God's presence. It is to manifest and proclaim the great victory that the strife and combat has been arranged in which Man triumphs in the end and God's work stands vindicated. The place of Satan is always Hell, but he cannot drag down a soul into his pit to hold it there eternally (although according to one doctrine there are or may be certain eternally damned souls).
Goe the carries the process of convergence and even harmony of the two powers a little further and shows that although they are contrary apparently, they are not contradictory principles in essence. For, Satan is, after all, God's servant, even a very obedient servant; he is an instrument in the hand of the Almighty to work out His purpose. The purpose is to help and lead man, although in a devious way, towards a greater understanding, a nearer approach to Himself.
--
Thus, as sanctioned by God, there is a competition, a wager between man and Satan. The pact between the parties is this that, on the one hand, Satan will serve man here in life upon earth, and on the other hand, in return, man will have to serve Satan there, on the other side of life. That is to say, Satan will give the whole world to man to enjoy, man will have to give Satan only his soul. Man in his ignorance says he does not care for his soul, does not know of a there or elsewhere: he will be satisfied if he gets what he wants upon earth. That, evidently, is the demand of what is familiarly known as life-force (lan vital): the utmost fulfilment of the life-force is what man stands for, although the full significance of the movement may not be clear to him or even to Satan at the moment. For life-force does not necessarily drag man down, as its grand finale as it were, into hellhowever much Satan might wish it to be so. In what way, we shall see presently. Now Satan promises man all that he would desire and even more: he would give him his fill so' that he will ask for no more. Man takes up the challenge and declares that his hunger is insatiable, whatever Satan can bring to it, it will take in and press on: satisfaction and satiety will never come in his way. Satan thinks he knows better, for he is armed with a master weapon to lay man low and make him cry halt!
Love Human and Love Divine
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 movements, 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.
The future society of man is envisaged as something of like nature. When the mortal being will have found his immortal soul and divine self, then each one will be able to give full and free expression to his self-nature (swabhava); then indeed the utmost sweep of dynamism in each and all will not cause clash or conflict; on the contrary, each will increase the other and there will be a global increment and fulfilmentparasparam bhavayantah. The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferior level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only thus that a diviner humanity can be born and replace all the other moulds and types that can never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfactory.
***
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is England and nowhere. never and always.7
First, the movement towards transcendence, that is the journey in the Night which you do throwing away one by one all your possessions and burdens till you make yourself bare and naked, you die but you are reborn a new babe:
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I speak of Roerich as a Western soul, but more precisely perhaps he is a soul of the mid-region (as also in another sense we shall see subsequently) intermediary between the East and the West. His external make-up had all the characteristic elements of the Western culture, but his mind and temperament, his inner soul was oriental. And yet it was not the calm luminous staticancientsoul that an Indian or a Chinese sage is; it is a nomad soul, newly awakened, young and fresh and ardent, something primitive, pulsating with the unspoilt green sap of life something in the manner of Whitman. And that makes him all the more representative of the young and ardent West yearning for the light that was never on sea or land.
Is it not strange that one should look to the East for the light? There is a light indeed that dwells in the setting suns, but that is the inferior light, the light that moves level with the earth, pins us down to the normal and ordinary life and consciousness: it" leads into the Night, into Nihil, pralaya. It is the light of the morning sun that man looks up to in his forward march, the sun that rises in the East whom the Vedic Rishi invoked in these magnificent lines:
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is one way of putting it. Mental definitions are never more
than approximations, ways of speaking.
--
own experiences. nevertheless, Sri Aurobindo has often said
and written that his yoga begins where the others leave off.
--
but whom it could never reach if it did not carry him in itself.
One must go beyond notions of space and Matter to be able
--
(1) never forget the goal that one wants to attain.
(2) never allow any part of the being or any of its movements to contradict one's aspiration.
This also makes it necessary to become conscious of one's
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have never discussed with my friends the question
of knowing why we are here on earth, but I have thought
--
be driven out of the consciousness so that they may never come
back again.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I dont know dates. I dont know, I never remember dates. I can only tell you this that it happened before Sri Aurobindo left his body, that he was told about it beforeh and and that he well, he acknowledged the fact.
But there was a formidable battle with the Inconscient, for when I saw that the level of receptivity was not what it should have been, I blamed the Inconscient and tried to wage the battle there.
--
But as I said, bit by bit things changed. However, this had one advantage: we were too much outside of life. So there were a number of problems which had never arisen but which would have suddenly surged up the moment we wanted a complete manifestation. We took on all these problems a little prematurely, but it gave us the opportunity to solve them. In this way we learned many things and surmounted many difficulties, only it complicated things considerably. And in the present situation, given such a large number of elements who havent even the slightest idea why theyre here (!) well, it demands a far greater effort on the disciples part than before.
Before, when there were we started with 35 or 36 people but even when it got up to 150, even with 150it was as if they were all nestled in a cocoon in my consciousness: they were so near to me that I could constantly guide ALL their inner or outer movements. Day and night, at each moment, everything was totally under my control. And naturally, I think they made a great deal of progress at that time: it is a fact that I was CONSTANTLY doing the sadhana2 for them. But then, with this baby boom The sadhana cant be done for little sprouts who are 3 or 4 or 5 years old! Its out of the question. The only thing I can do is wrap them in the Consciousness and try to see that they grow up in the best of all possible conditions. However, the one advantage to all this is that instead of there being such a COMPLETE and PASSIVE dependence on the disciples part, each one has to make his own little effort. Truly, thats excellent.
--
It is very clear. So it is not I who can make Her stay. And I certainly cannot ask Her to stay for egotistical reasons. Moreover, all these Aspects, all these Personalities manifest constantly but they never manifest for personal reason. Not one of them has ever thought of helping my bodybesides, I dont ask them to because that is not their purpose. But it is more than obvious that if the people around me were receptive, She could permanently manifest since they could receive Herand this would help my body enormously because all these vibrations would run through it. But She never gets even a chance to manifestnot a single one. She only meets people who dont even feel Her when Shes there! They dont even notice Her, theyre not even aware of her presence. So how can She manifest in these conditions? Im not going to ask Her, Please come and change my body. We dont have that kind of relationship! Furthermore, the body itself wouldnt agree. It never thinks of itself, it never pays attention to itself, and besides, it is only through the work that it can be transformed.
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!
0 1955-03-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Mother, without Mahakalis grace, I shall never be able to get out of this mechanical round, to shatter these old formations, ever the same, which keep coming back. Mother, I beg of you, help. me to BREAK this shell in which I am suffocating. Deliver me from myself, deliver me in spite of myself. Alone, I am helpless; sometimes I cannot even call you! May your force come and burn all my impurities, shatter my resistances.
Signed: Bernard2
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
When I am not immediately engrossed in work, I have to confront a thousand little temptations and daily difficulties that come from my contact with other beings and a life that does indeed remain in life. Here, even more, there is the feeling of an impossible struggle, and all these little difficulties seem to gnaw away at me; scarcely has one hole been filled when another opens up, or the same one reappears, and there is never any real victoryone has constantly to begin everything again. Finally, it seems to me that I really live only one hour a day, during the evening distribution at the playground.2 It is scarcely a life and scarcely a sadhana!
Consequently, I understand much better now why in the traditional yogas one settled all these difficulties once and for all by escaping from the world, without bothering to transform a life that seems so untransformable.
0 1955-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Mother, it is an impossible, absurd, unlivable life. I feel as though I have no hand in this cruel little game. Oh Mother, why doesnt your grace trust that deep part in me which knows so well that you are the Truth? Deliver me from these evil forces since, profoundly, it is you and you alone I want. Give me the aspiration and strength I do not have. If you do not do this Yoga for me, I feel I shall never have the strength to go on.
There is something that must be SHATTERED: can it not be done once and for all without lingering on indefinitely? Mother, I am your child.
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
When the mind came down upon earth, something like a million years went by between the manifestation of the mind in the earth atmosphere and the appearance of the first man. But it will go faster this time because man is waiting for something, he has a vague idea: he is awaiting in some way or another the advent of the superman. Whereas the apes were certainly not awaiting the birth of man, they never thought of it for the excellent reason that they probably dont think very much! But man has thought about it and is waiting, so it will go faster. But faster probably still means thousands of years. We shall speak of this again in a few thousand years!
(silence)
--
I am not speaking of people from outside who have never thought about it, who have never felt concerned and who do not even know that there may be something like the Supermind to receive, in fact. I am speaking of people who have built their lives upon this aspiration (and I dont doubt their sincerity for a minute), who have workedsome of them for thirty years, some for thirty-five, others somewhat lessall the while saying, When the supermind comes When the supermind comes That was their refrain: When the supermind comes Consequently, they were really in the best possible frame of mind, one could not have dreamt of a better predisposition. How is it, then, that their inner preparation was so lets just say incomplete, that they did not feel the Vibration immediately, as soon as it came, through a shock of identity?
Individually, each ones goal was to make himself ready, to enter into a more or less intimate individual relationship with this Force, so as to help the process; or else, if he could not help, at least be ready to recognize and be open to the Force when it would manifest. Then instead of being an alien element in a world in which your OWN inner capacity remains unmanifest, you suddenly become THAT, you enter directly, fully, into the very atmosphere: the Force is there, all around you, permeating you.
--
There was indeed a possibility to enter into contact with the Thing individuallythis was even what Sri Aurobindo had described as being the necessary procedure: a certain number of people would enter into contact with this Force through their inner effort and their aspiration. We had called it the ascent towards the Supermind. And IF and when they had touched the Supermind through an inner ascent (that is, by freeing themselves from the material consciousness), they should have recognized it SPONTANEOUSLY as soon as it came. But a preliminary contact was indispensableif you have never touched it, how can you recognize it?
Thats how the universal movement works (I read this to you a few days ago): through their inner effort and inner progress, certain individuals, who are the pioneers, the forerunners, enter into communication with the new Force which is to manifest, and they receive it in themselves. And because a number of calls like this surge forth, the thing becomes possible, and the era, the time, the moment for the manifestation comes. This is how it happened and the Manifestation took place.
0 1956-09-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
An experience I had never had.
I begin to see what the supramental body will be.
0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But perhaps you have felt this way because you had left your work in the Ashram for an entirely personal, that is, necessarily egoistical reason, and egoism always isolates one from the great current of universal forces. That is why, too, you no longer clearly perceive my love and my help which nevertheless are always with you.
You asked me what I see and whether your difficulties will not reappear upon your return to the Ashram. It may well be. If you return as you still are at present, it may be that after a very short period it will all begin again. That is why I am going to propose something to you but to accept it you will have to be heroic and very determined in your consecration to my work.
--
All my affection is with you, and my blessings never leave you.
Signed: Mother
0 1956-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
One is never anything but a divine apprentice: the Divine of yesterday is only an apprentice to the Divine of tomorrow No, I am not speaking of a progressive manifestation that is much farther below.
When I am at my highest, I am already too high for the manifestation.
0 1956-12-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This is actually what is happening in me: I never really accepted the W solution, and the solution of Somalil and doesnt appeal to me. But I feel drawn by the idea of Turkestan, as I already told you, and this is why:
Ten years ago, I had two intuitions the first of which, to my great astonishment, was realized. It was that I had something important to do in South America and though I never could have foreseen such a voyage, I went there. The second was that I had something to do in Turkestan.
Mother, this is the problem around which I have desperately been turning in circles. What is the truth of my destiny? Is it that which is urging me so strongly to leave, or that which is struggling against my freedom? For ultimately, sincerely, what I want is to fulfill my lifes truth. If I have ever had a will, then it is: LET BE WHAT MUST BE. Mother, how can one truly know? Is this drive, this very old and very CLEAR urge in me, false??
0 1957-09-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Had I not come as you are, I would never have been able to be close to you and tell you:
Become what I am.
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
One of the very first results of the supramental manifestation was to give the body a freedom and an autonomy it has never before known. And when I say freedom, I dont mean some psychological perception or an inner state of consciousness, but something else and far betterit is a new phenomenon in the body, in the cells of the body. For the first time, the cells themselves have felt that they are free, that they have the power to decide. When the new vibrations came and combined with the old ones, I felt it at once and it showed me that a new world was really taking birth.
In its normal state, the body always feels that it is not its own master: illnesses invade it without its really being able to resist thema thousand factors impose themselves or exert pressure upon it. Its sole power is the power to defend itself, to react. Once the illness has got in, it can fight and overcome iteven modern medicine has acknowledged that the body is cured only when it decides to get cured; it is not the drugs per se that heal, for if the ailment is temporarily suppressed by a drug without the bodys will, it grows up again elsewhere in some other form until the body itself has decided to be cured. But this implies only a defensive power, the power to react against an invading enemyit is not true freedom.
0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
To conclude, a final recommendation: never pose as an examiner. For while it is good to remember constantly that perhaps one is passing a very important test, it is, on the other hand, extremely dangerous to imagine oneself entrusted with applying tests to others, for that is an open door to the most absurd and harmful vanities. It is not an ignorant human will that decides these things but the Supreme Wisdom.
***
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Humility, a perfect humility, is the condition for all realization. The mind is so cocksure. It thinks it knows everything, understands everything. And if ever it acts through idealism to serve a cause that appears noble to it, it becomes even more arrogant more intransigent, and it is almost impossible to make it see that there might be something still higher beyond its noble conceptions and its great altruistic or other ideals. Humility is the only remedy. I am not speaking of humility as conceived by certain religions, with this God that belittles his creatures and only likes to see them down on their knees. When I was a child, this kind of humility revolted me, and I refused to believe in a God that wants to belittle his creatures. I dont mean that kind of humility, but rather the recognition that one does not know, that one knows nothing, and that there may be something beyond what presently appears to us as the truest, the most noble or disinterested. True humility consists in constantly referring oneself to the Lord, in placing all before Him. When I receive a blow (and there are quite a few of them in my sadhana), my immediate, spontaneous reaction, like a spring, is to throw myself before Him and to say, Thou, Lord. Without this humility, I would never have been able to realize anything. And I say I only to make myself understood, but in fact I means the Lord through this body, his instrument. When you begin living THIS kind of humility, it means you are drawing nearer to the realization. It is the condition, the starting point.
***
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This immense ship had just arrived at the shore of the supramental world, and a first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental 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 supramental 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.
0 1958-05-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I saw there (center of the heart) the Master of the Yoga; he was no different from me, but nevertheless I saw him, and he even seemed slightly imbued with color. Well, he does everything, he decides everything, he organizes everything with an almost mathematical precision and in the smallest detailseverything.
To do the divine Will I have been doing the sadhana for a long time, and I can say that not a day has passed that I have not done the Divines Will. But I didnt know what it was! I was living in all the inner realms, from the subtle physical to the highest regions, yet I didnt know what it was I always had to listen, to refer things, to pay attention. Now, no morebliss! There are no more problems, and everything is done in such harmony! Even if I had to leave my body, I would be in bliss! And it would happen in the best possible way.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It is a hard path. I try to make it as comfortable as possible, but nevertheless, it is a hard path. And it is obvious that it cannot be otherwise. You are beaten and battered until you understand. Until you are in that state in which all bodies are your body. But at that point, you begin to laugh! You were upset by this, hurt by that, you suffered from this or that but now, how laughable it all seems! And not only the head, but the body too finds it laughable!
(silence)
--
Well, to be able to cure that, which of all the obstacles is the greatest (I mean the habit of putting spiritual life on one side and material life on the other, of acknowledging the right of material laws to exist), one must make a resolution never to legitimize any of these movements, at any cost.
To be able to see the problem as it is, it is absolutely indispensable, as a first step, to get out of the mental consciousness, even out of a mental transcription (in the highest mind) of the supramental vision and truth. A thing cannot be seen as it is, in its truth, except in the supramental consciousness, and if you try to explain, it immediately begins to escape you because you are obliged to give it a mental formulation.
--
And the proof I have the proof because I experienced it myselfis that from the minute you are in the other consciousness, the true consciousness, all these things which appear so real, so concrete, change INSTANTLY. There are a number of things, certain material conditions of my bodymaterial that changed instantly. It did not last long enough for everything to change, but some things changed and never returned, they remained changed. In other words, if that consciousness were kept constantly, it would be a perpetual miracle (what we would call a miracle from our ordinary point of view), a fantastic and perpetual miracle! But from the supramental point of view, it would not be a miracle at all, it would be the most normal of things.
Therefore, if we do not want to oppose the supramental action by an obscure, inert and obstinate resistance, we have to admit once and for all that none of these things should be legitimized.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Its all the same thing, but the word realization can be reserved for something that is durable, that does not wear off. Because everything on earth fades awayeverything fades away, nothing remains. In this sense, there has never been any realization, for everything fades away. Nothing is ever permanent. And I know for myself: I am doing the sadhana at a gallop, as it were; never are two experiences identical nor do they recur in the same way. As soon as something is established, the next thing begins immediately. It may appear to fade away, but it doesnt fade away; rather, it is the basis upon which the next thing is built.
***
--
From that moment on, I was conscious that all one does is the expression of the indwelling Divine Will. But it is the Divine Will AT THE VERY CENTER of oneself, although for a while there remained an activity in the physical mind. But this was stilled two or three days after I saw Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1914, and it never started up again. Silence settled. And the consciousness was established above the head.
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.
--
As it was the first experience, it started to fade slightly when I began having contact with people; but I really had the feeling that it was a first experience, new upon earth. For I have experienced an absolute identity of the will with the divine Will ever since 1910, it has never left me. It isnt that, its SOMETHING ELSE. It is MATTER BECOMING THE DIVINE. And it really came with the feeling that this thing was happening for the first time upon earth. It is difficult to say for sure, but Ramakrishna died of cancer, and now that I have had the experience, I know in an ABSOLUTE way that this is impossible. If he had decided to go because the Divine wanted him to go, it would have been an orderly departure, in total harmony and with a total will, whereas this illness is a means of disorder.
Is this experience of May 1 related to the Supramental Manifestation of 1956? Is it a supramental experience?
--
When you had this experience of February 3, 1958 [the supramental ship], the vision of your usual consciousness, which is nevertheless a Truth Consciousness, no longer seemed true to you at all. Did you see things you had never before seen, or did you see things in another way?
Yes, one enters into another world.
0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Something I have never said completely. On the one hand, there is the attitude of those in yesterday evenings film2: God is everything, God is everywhere, God is in he who smites you (as Sri Aurobindo wroteGod made me good with a blow, shall I tell Him: O Mighty One, I forgive you your harm and cruelty but do not do it again!), an attitude which, if extended to its ultimate conclusion, accepts the world as it is: the world is the perfect expression of the divine Will. On the other hand, there is the attitude of progress and transformation. But for that, you must recognize that there are things in the world which are not as they should be.
In The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that this idea of good and bad, of pure and impure, is a notion needed for action; but the purists, such as Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and others, do not agree. They do not agree that it is indispensable for action. They simply say: your acceptance of action as a necessary thing is contrary to your perception of the Divine in all things.
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I recall that once I tried to speak of this, but no one followed me, no one understood, so I did not insist. I left it open and never pursued it further, for they could not decipher anything or find any meaning in what I was saying. But now I could give a very simple answer: Let the Supreme do the work. It is He who has to progress, not you!
Ramdas does not at all consider that the world as it is, is good.
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But this crystal clear vision Sri Aurobindo had, where everything is in its place, where contradictions no longer existthey never soared to that height. This was the thing, this really crystalline, perfect supramental vision, even from the standpoint of understanding and knowledge. They never went that far.
***
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And it is always like that. I never ask for anything, but if by chance I say to myself, Hmm, wouldnt it be nice to have that, mountains of them pour in! So last year, I made an experiment, I told Nature, Listen, my little one, you say that you will collaborate, you told me I would never lack anything. Well then, to put it on a level of feelings, it would really be fun, it would give me joy (in the style of Krishnas joy), to have A LOT of money to do everything I feel like doing. Its not that I want to increase things for myself, no; you give me more than I need. But to have some fun, to be able to give freely, to do things freely, to spend freely I am asking you to give me a crore of rupees1 for my birthday!
She didnt do a thing! Nothing, absolutely nothing: a complete refusal. Did she refuse or was she unable to? It may be that I always saw that money was under the control of an asuric force. (I am speaking of currency, cash; I dont want to do business. When I try to do business, it generally succeeds very well, but I dont mean that. I am speaking of cash.) I never asked her that question.
You see, this is how it happened: theres this Ganesh2 We had a meditation (this was more than thirty years ago) in the room where Prosperity3 is now distributed. There were eight or ten of us, I believe. We used to make sentences with flowers; I arranged the flowers, and each one made a sentence with the different flowers I had put there. And one day when the subject of prosperity or wealth came up, I thought (they always say that Ganesh is the god of money, of fortune, of the worlds wealth), I thought, Isnt this whole story of the god with an elephant trunk merely a lot of human imagination? Thereupon, we meditated. And who should I see walk in and park himself in front of me but a living being, absolutely alive and luminous, with a trunk that long and smiling! So then, in my meditation, I said, Ah! So its true that you exist!Of course I exist! And you may ask me for whatever you wish, from a monetary standpoint, of course, and I will give it to you!
0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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 1958-08-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
My blessings never leave you.
Signed: Mother
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I have a whole stock of mantras; they have all come spontaneously, never from the head. They sprang forth spontaneously, as the Veda is said to have sprung forth.
I dont know when it begana very long time ago, before I came here, although some of them came while I was here. But in my case, they were always very short. For example, when Sri Aurobindo was here in his body, at any moment, in any difficulty, for anything, it always came like this: My Lord!simply and spontaneouslyMy Lord! And instantly, the contact was established. But since He left, it has stopped. I can no longer say it, for it would be like saying My Lord, My Lord! to myself.
0 1958-10-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Each time we try to realize something and we encounter a resistance or an obstacle, or even a failurewhat appears to be a failurewe should know, we should nevER forget, that it is exclusively, absolutely, to make the realization more perfect.
So this habit of cringing, of being discouraged or even feeling ill at ease or abusing oneself, saying, There, Ive done it again All this is absolute foolishness.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
If we could truly, perfectly know all the details of the ceremony of life, the worship of the Lord in physical life, it would be wonderfulto know, and no longer to err, never again to err. To perform the ceremony as perfectly as an initiation.
To know life utterly Oh, there is a very interesting thing in this regard! And its strange, but this particular knowledge reminds me of one of my Sutras1 (which I read out, but no one understood or understood only vaguely, like that):
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And this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it works, how it functions in the world.3 I was saying to myself, But I have no powers, I have no powers! Several days ago, I said, But after all, I KNOW WHO is there, I know, yet how is it that ? There, up to there (the level of the head), it is all-powerful, nothing can resist but here it is ineffective. So those who have faith, even an ignorant but real faith (it can be ignorant but nevertheless it is real), say, What! How can you have no powers? Because the sadhana is not yet over.
The Lord will possess his universe only when the universe will have consciously become the Lord.
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
'If mankind only caught a glimpse of what infinite enjoyments, what perfect forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all and never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are hard to force, and fear, distrust and scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature to forbid the turning away of our feet from less ordinary pastures.'
Cent. Ed. Vol. XVII, p. 79
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I learned all this through Theon. Probably, he was I dont know if he was Russian or Polish (a Russian or Polish Jew), he never said who he really was or where he was born, nor his age nor anything.
He had assumed two names: one was an Arab name he had adopted when he took refuge in Algeria (I dont know for what reason). After having worked with Blavatsky and having founded an occult society in Egypt, he went to Algeria, and there he first called himself Aa Aziz (a word of Arabic origin meaning the beloved). Then, when he began setting up his Cosmic Review and his cosmic group, he called himself Max Theon, meaning the supreme God (!), the greatest God! And no one knew him by any other name than these twoAa Aziz or Max Theon.
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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.
It was the same thing for visions of past lives. I knew NOTHING when I would have the experience, not even the possibility of past lives, and only after having had the experience would I study the question and, for example, even verify certain historical facts that had occurred in my vision but about which I had no prior knowledge.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Truly speaking, perhaps one is never rid of the hostile forces as long as one has not permanently emerged into the Light, above the lower hemisphere. There, the term hostile forces loses its meaning; they become only forces of progress, they force you to progress. But to see things in this way, you have to get out of the lower hemisphere, for below, they are very real in their opposition to the divine plan.
It was said in the ancient traditions that one could not live for more than twenty days in this higher state without leaving ones body and returning to the supreme Origin. Now this is no longer true.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I have just received your letter of the 15th. Yes, I know that the hour is critical. It has been grave here as well. I had to stop everything, for the attack upon my body was too violent. Now it is better but I have not yet resumed any of my outer activities, and I remain in my room upstairs. The battle continues in the invisible and I consider it decisive. You are a very intimate part of this battle. This is to tell you that I am with you in the most integral sense of these words. I know what you are suffering, I feel it but you must hold on. The Grace is there, all-powerful. As soon as it is possible and without going through one minute more than needed to transform that which has to be transformed, the trial will reach its end and we shall emerge into the light and joy. So never forget that I am with youin youand that WE SHALL TRIUMPH:
With all that love can bring of solace and endurance,
0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I never leave you, and my love too is always with you.
Signed: Mother
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
They would never resume.
About the tantric initiation.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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.
Sweet Mother, I have a kind of fear that all these mantras are not bringing me nearer to you I mean you in your physical body, for it is not upon you physically that I was told to concentrate. Also, I almost never see you in my dreams any longer, or else only very vaguely. Last night, I dreamed that I was offering you flowers (not very pretty ones), one of which was called mantra, but I did not see you in my dream. Mother, I would like to be true, to do the right thing, to be as you want me to be.
I am your child. I belong to you alone.
--
In constant communion in the effort towards victory; my love and my force never leave you.
Signed: Mother
0 1959-03-10 - vital dagger, vital mass, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Take these movements of anger, for example, when someone is carried away by his passion and does things which, in his normal state, he would never do: he is not doing it, it is done by these little formations which are there, swarming in the atmosphere, just waiting for an occasion to rush in.
When you see them, oh! its suffocating. When youre in contact with that Really, you wonder how anyone can brea the in such an atmosphere. And yet people CONSTANTLY live in that atmosphere! They live in it. Only when they rise above are they NOT in it. Or else there are those who are entirely below; but those are the toys of these things, and their reactions are sometimes not only unexpected but absolutely dreadfulbecause they are puppets in the hands of these things.
0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
May you never again suffer because of me. O Mother, purify me and open my heart.
Your child,
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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, #Integral Yoga
I can easily understand that your task on this earth is not particularly encouraging and you must find our human matter stupid and rebellious. I do not wish to throw upon you more bad things than you already receive, but I wish you could also understand certain things. I am not made for this withered life, not made for putting sentences together all day long, not made for living alone in my holefriendless, loveless, with nothing but mantras, and waiting for a better that never comes. For three years I have wanted to leave and each time I yielded out of scruples that you needed me, though also because I am attached to you. But after the [book on] Sri Aurobindo, there will be something else, there will always be something else that will make my departure look like a betrayal. I am fed up with living in my head, always in my head, with paper and ink. It was not of this that I dreamed when I was ten years old and ran with the wind over the untamed heaths. I am suffocating. You ask too much of me; or rather, I am not worth your expectation.
A love for you might have held me here. And indeed, for you I have devotion, veneration, respect, an attachment, 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.
--
There is someone here who could have saved me, whom I could have loved. Oh, it has nothing to do with all those things you might imagine! My soul loves her soul. It is something very serene. We have known each other for five years, and I had never even dreamed of calling it love. But all the outer circumstances are against us. And I do not want to turn anyone away from you. Anyway, if I sink into the depths of the pit, or so I tell myself, it is no reason to drag someone else along with me. So this too is one more reason for me to leave. I cannot continue suffocating all alone in my corner. (It is useless to ask her name, I will say nothing.)
You are imposing a new ordeal on me by asking me to go to Rameswaram. For you, I have accepted. But I shall go there sheathed in my sturdiest armor and I will not yield, because I know that it is always to be begun again. I do not want to become a great Tantric or whatever else it may be. I want only to love. And since I cannot love, I am leaving. I will arrive in Rameswaram at 2 in the morning, and will leave again by the 11 oclock train.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Regarding me, this is more or less what he said: First of all, I want an agreement from you so that under any circumstances you never leave the Ashram. Whatever happens, even if Yama1 comes to dance at your door, you should never leave the Ashram. At the critical moment, when the attack is the strongest, you should throw everything into His hands, then and then only the thing can be removed (I no longer know whether he said removed or destroyed ). It is the only way. SARVAM MAMA BRAHMAN [Thou art my sole refuge]. Here in Rameswaram, we are going to meditate together for 45 days, and the Asuric-Shakti may come with full strength to attack, and I shall try my best not only to protect but to destroy, but for that, I need your determination. It is only by your own determination that I can get strength. If the force comes to make suggestions: lack of adventure, lack of Nature, lack of love, then think that I am the forest, think that I am the sea, think that I am the wife (!!) Meanwhile, X has nearly doubled the number of repetitions of the mantra that I have to say every day (it is the same mantra he gave me in Pondicherry). X repeated to me again and again that I am not merely a disciple to him, like the others, but as if his son.
This was a first, hasty conversation, and we did not discuss things at length. I said nothing. I have no confidence in my reactions when I am in the midst of my crises of complete negation. And truly speaking, at the time of my last crisis in Pondicherry, I do not know if it was really Xs occult working that set things right, for personally (but perhaps it is an ignorant impression), I felt that it was thanks to Sujata and her childlike simplicity that I was able to get out of it.
--
In any case, I had never heard him attacking the Congress as he did yesterday evening, almost violently.
That is all, Sweet Mother. In spite of my anesthesia, I think of you. (I am not blocked; on the contrary, it seems to me that the bond has been renewed since our last meeting, but I feel strangely empty.) I am unable to understand how you can love me. Oh Mother, I have truly to begin living, truly loving!
0 1959-06-13a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I have received your last two letters of the 10th and 11th. I told X what you wrote about this trip to France and that your finances are in an almost desperate state. He replied with perfect assurance, Soon it will increase, very soon it will change. I am obviously hesitant to accept your generous offer and I do not know what I should do. I had never thought of returning to France, except in a distant future. I dont know why X told me that I should return there, except perhaps because he felt who my mother is. I know that she is sad, that she believes me lost to her and thinks she will die without seeing me again. It would surely be a great joy to her. But other than that, I have no desire to go there, for each time I go to France, I feel like I am entering a prison. Naturally I would be happy for my mothers joy; she is a great soul, but is this reason enough?
Sunday, 14th
0 1959-06-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
These last days I have come to realize that to blame all my crises on the hostile forces is perhaps to oversimplify things. I understand better and better, for in my suffering, my soul is all I have and I rely on that alone; otherwise I could never bear all that I have borne, all that I still bear. I understand, too, that there was also a truth in the force which periodically impelled me to leave, the truth of that destiny in me which is not fulfilled in the Ashram.
Mother, I have suffered so much and prayed so much this last while that I am sure my soul cannot but arrange circumstances in such a way that somehow I may live at last that somehow EVERYTHING may truly become reconciled: not later on or one of these days, but soon for it cannot go on any longer; I am at my end.
0 1959-07-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
A moment ago I barely found the strength not to kill myself. Destiny has repeated itself once again, but this time it was not I who rejected her, as in past existences, it is she who rejected me: Too late. For a moment, I thought I was going to go crazy too, so much pain did I have then finally I said, May Thy Will be done, (that of the Supreme Lord) and I kept repeating, Thy Grace is there, even in the greatest suffering. But I am broken, rather like a living dead man. So be happy, for I will never wear the white robe that Guruji gave me.
You will understand that I do not have the strength to come to see you. My only strength is not to rebel, my only strength is to believe in the Grace in the face of everything. I believe I have too much grief in my heart to rebel against anything at all. I seem to have a kind of great pity for this world.
0 1959-07-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This is what I should have told you this morning, but I was afraid. For the last month I have been afraid of you, afraid that you might not understand. But I cannot leave with this weight on me. I beg of you to understand, Sweet Mother. I want nothing bad, nothing impure. I feel I have something to create with Sujata, I feel she is absolutely a part of something I have to achieve, that we have something to achieve together. For the five years we have known each other I have never had a single wrong thought but suddenly she opened my heart, which had been so completely walled-off, and this was like a wonder in me and at the same time a fear. A fear, perhaps because this love has been thwarted for so many lives.
Mother, I need Sujata like my very soul. It seems to me that she is a part of me, that she alone can help me break with this horrible past, that she alone can help me to love truly at last. I need peace so much, a quiet, PEACEFUL happinessa base of happiness upon which I could use my strength to build, instead of always fighting, always destroying. Mother, I am not at all sure of what must be, but I know that Sujata is part of this realization.
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
In fact, when I walk back and forth in my room, I dont cut myself off from the rest of the worldalthough it would be so much more convenient! All kinds of things come to mesuggestions, wills, aspirations. But automatically I make a movement of offering: things come to me and just as they are about to touch my head, I turn them upwards and offer them to the Light. They dont enter into me. For example, if someone speaks to me while I am saying my japa, I hear quite well what is being said, I may even answer, but the words remain a little outside, at a certain distance from the head. And yet sometimes, there are things that insist, more defined wills that present themselves to me, so then I have to do a little work, but all that without a pause in the japa. If that happens, there is sometimes a change in the quality of my japa, and instead of being fully the power, fully the light, it is certainly something that produces results, but results more or less sure, more or less long to fructify; it becomes uncertain, as with all things of this physical world. Yet the difference between the two japas is imperceptible; its not a difference between saying the japa in a more or less mechanical way and saying it consciously, because even while I work I remain fully conscious of the japa I continue to repeat it putting the full meaning into each syllable. But nevertheless, there is a difference. One is the all-powerful japa; the other, an almost ordinary japa There is a difference in the inner attitude. Perhaps for the japa to become true, a kind of joy, an elation, a warmth of enthusiasm has to be added but especially joy. Then everything changes.
Well, it is the same thing, the same imperceptible difference, when it comes to entering the world of Truth. On one side there is the falsehood, and on the other, close by, like the lining of this one, the true life. Only a little difference in the inner quality, a little reversal, is enough to pass to the other side, into the Truth and Light.
0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo had made it clear to me when I was still in France that this yoga in matter is the most difficult of all. For the other yogas, the paths have been well laid, you know where to tread, how to proceed, what to do in such-and-such a case. But for the yoga of matter, nothing has ever been done, never, so at each moment everything has to be invented.
Of course, things are now going better, especially since Sri Aurobindo became established in the subtle physical, an almost material subtle physical.2 But there are still plenty of question marks The body understands once, and then it forgets. The Enemys opposition is nothing, for I can see clearly that it comes from outside and that its hostile, so I do whats necessary. But where the difficulty lies is in all the small things of daily material lifesuddenly the body no longer understands, it forgets.
0 1960-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And there are many, many experiences like this. It is only a small, a very small beginning. This one in particular came to mark the new stage: four years have elapsed, and now four years to come. Because everything has focused on this body to prepare it, everything has concentrated on itNature, the Master of the Yoga, the Supreme, everything So only when its over, not before, will it really be interesting to speak of all this. But maybe it will never be over, after all. Its a small beginning, very small.
The Darshan on February 29, 1960, the first anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation.
0 1960-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
A few lines to tell you that I miss you. I truly realize more and more that I shall never be happy until I have disappeared in you entirely. There must be nothing left but That. I understand well enough, but Im so blocked, so thick. In any case, I think of you a lot and I really only live by this something that pulls me deep within. If that were not there, it would all be so absurd.
Ive booked my ticket to Rameswaram for the evening of the 13th, so I will probably reach there on the 15th.
0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And what is wonderful is that at each moment the Grace, the Joy, the Light, the Love never cease pouring down in the very midst of all thisdespite the ego, despite the shame, despite the unworthiness. To be humble
***
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
At times, I feel that Ill never get over the difficulty. We are besieged by this enormous world of hostile forcesoceans of forces, churning and combining and submerging each other in gigantic pralayas,1 then again regrouping and combining. When you see that, it feels as if you had to be the Divine Himself to get over the difficulty. Precisely so! (And its the hostile forces who help you to see this, its their role.) You have TO BE THE DIVINE, that is the solution, that is the true divine purity.
***
--
For example, there was one difficulty he helped me resolve. I have always been literally pestered, constantly, night and day, by all kinds of thoughts coming from peopleall kinds of calls, questions, formations2 that have naturally to be answered. For I have trained myself to be conscious of everything, always. But it disturbed me in the work, particularly when I needed absolute concentration and I could never cut myself off from people or cut myself off from the world. I had to answer all these calls and these questions, I had to send the necessary force, the necessary light, the healing power, I constantly had to purify all these formations, these thoughts, these wills, these false movements that were falling on me.
What was needed was to effect a shift, a sort of transference upwards, a lifting up of all these things that come to meso that each one, each thing, each circumstance could directly and automatically receive the force from above, the light, the response from above, and I would be a mere intermediary and a channel of the Light and the Force.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
These experiences are always absolute, as long as they last; then, through certain signs that I know (I am accustomed to it), I notice that the body consciousness begins closing up again. Or rather, somethingevidently a Supreme Wisdomdecides its sufficient for this time and that the body has had enough. It ought not to break, which is why certain precautions are taken. So this comes in several little stages that I know quite well. The final one is always a bit unpleasant because my body gets into rather peculiar positions as a result of the work. As its only a sort of machine, towards the end I have some difficulty straightening my knees, for example, or opening my fingers I think they even make a noise, like something forced into one position whose life has become purely spontaneous and mechanical. There are plenty of people like that, plenty, who enter into trance and then can no longer get out by themselves; they get themselves into a certain position and someone has to free them. This has never happened to me; I have always managed to extricate myself. But yesterday evening, the experience lasted a very long time. There was even a little cracking at the end, as when people have rheumatism.
And during all this time, approximately three hours, the consciousness was completely, completely different. It was here, however; it was not outside the earth, it was on earth, but it was completely differenteven the body consciousness was different. And what remained was very mechanical; it was a body, but it could just as well have been anything. All this power of consciousness that for more than seventy years Ive gradually pushed into each of the bodys cells so that each cell could become conscious (and it goes on constantly, constantly), all this seemed to have withdrawn there only remained one almost lifeless thing. However, I could raise myself up from my bed and even drink a glass of water, but it was all so bizarre. And when I went back to bed, it took nearly forty-five minutes for the body to regain its normal state. Only after I had entered into another type of samadhi2 and again come out of it did my consciousness fully return. It is the first time I have had an experience of this kind.
--
It moves and it doesnt move. How can you explain that? It was in motion, a constant, unceasing motion, and yet there was no shifting of place. I had the perception, or rather there was the perception, of something which WAS forever, which never repeated itself, neither began nor ended, which didnt shift places yet was always in motion.
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
--
And during the time my experience lasted, I had no feeling of anything exceptional, but rather simply the fact that after all its preparation, the body consciousness was ready for a total identification with Thatin my consciousness its always the same, a perpetual, constant and eternal state in that it never leaves me. Its like that, and it never varies. What diminishes the immensity of the Vibration are the limitations of the material consciousness which can color it and even sometimes change it by giving it a personal appearance. Thus, when I see someone and speak to him, for example, when my eyes concentrate on the person, I have almost the sensation of this flood flowing from me towards the person or of it passing through me to go onto the person. There is an awareness of the eyes, the body. And it is this which limits or even changes a little the immensity of the thing But already this feeling has almost disappeared; this immensity seems to be acting almost constantly. There are moments when I am less interiorized, when I am more on the surface, and it feels like its passing through a bodymoments when the body consciousness comes back a little. And this is what diminishes the thing.
This experience last night also enabled me to understand what X had felt during one of our meditations. He had explained his experience by way of saying that I was this mystic tree whose roots plunge into the Supreme and whose branches spread forth over the world,3 and he said that one of these branches had entered into himand it had been a unique experience. He had said, this is the Mother.
0 1960-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It is even good for people whove never been in trance to repeat a mantra (or a word, a prayer) before going to sleep. But the words must have a life of their ownby this I dont mean an intellectual meaning, nothing of the kind, but rather a vibration. And this has an extraordinary effect on the body, it starts vibrating, vibrating, vibrating and so calm, you let yourself go, like falling off to sleep. And the body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and you drift off.
Such is the cure for tamas.
0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I had a startling experience one day when X was doing his pujas to encircle the titans. He was in difficulty and I was about to intervene to help him when I was abruptly stopped. I was faced by a massive blackness (blacker than the blackest physical thing) and suddenly, right at its center, I saw the Divine Love shining with such a splendor I had never seen it so splendid.
And now it has become constant; each time I hear or see something ugly or horrible, or each time something ugly or horrible happens, something which is a negation of the divine life just behind is this flameso wonderful. And then the effect is annulled.
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
These were universal forces. I cant say it means war. Ive foreseen many warswidespread wars, local wars, so many warsand up to now they have never been presented to me in that form. Theyve always come as a fireflames, flames, the home burning. Not as an inundation.
A cataclysm?
--
In fact, the Ashrams financial situation has never been so bad. Were living from day to day, minute to minute One day, it will crackall these things are connected (Mother is alluding to the vision of the flood She has just described).
I myself am clearly seeing it from the other side; I see a black, muddy forma black, black force. And I see the [Divine] Force acting on people and, miraculously, the money comesand then its like something armored1it seeps in with difficulty, a thin trickle from day to day.
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I answered. The letters must have left. I wrote (in English) that its not so much a question of organization as of attitudeto begin with. Then I said, It seems to me that unless the teachers themselves get out of this ordinary intellectuality (!), they will never be able to fulfill their duty.
And this is what I wrote to Z (Mother reads):
--
Im continuing The Yoga of Self-Perfection. Its really something I shall never tire of saying its fabulous. Everything, absolutely everything, in detail, everything is there. And he foresawforesaw, gave the remedy; foresaw, gave the remedy; foresaw, gave
Have you read it?
--
Sri Aurobindo and the Transformation of the World, an initial book on Sri Aurobindo by Satprem that was never published. It was meant to be part of a certain 'Series of Spiritual Masters,' but finally Sri Aurobindo never took part.
***
0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
You know, someone who appreciates this work tremendously is Nolini. Once he timidly asked me, Could I have a copy9? Fine, I said. Oh, he really appreciates it. And when I have something amusing like these most recent notes, I give him a copy. With that, hes happy. So he blesses you! (Mother laughs) Oh! Without you, this would never have been doneyou can be quite sure. never.
***
0 1960-08-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
We should not allow all this to upset us. There is but one thing to doremain in a state of constant peace, constant equanimity, for things are not they are not very pleasant. Oh, if you only knew all the letters they write me if you knew, first of all, the tremendous pile of stupidities that need never be written at all; then, added to that, such a display of ignorance, egoism, bad will, total incomprehension and unequalled ingratitude, and all this so candid, my child! They heap all this on me daily, you know, and it comes from the most unexpected quarters.
If this were to affect me (Mother laughs), I would long ago have been who knows where. I dont care at all, not at all, really not at allit doesnt bother me, it makes me smile.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
When Amrita,5 seized with zeal, wanted to make him understand what we were doing here and what Sri Aurobindo had wanted, it almost erupted into an unpleasant situation. So after that, I decided to identify myself with him to see I had never done this, because normally I only do it when I am responsible for someone, in order to truly help someone, and Ive never felt any responsibility in regard to X. So I wanted to see his inner situation, what could and could not be done. That was the day you saw him coming down from our meditation in an ecstatic state, when he told you that all separation between him and me had dropped awayit was to be expected, I anticipated as much!
But when I did that, I saw what X wanted to do for me. As a matter of fact, I recalled that when we first met I had told him that everything was all right up to this point (Mother indicates the region above the head), but below that, in the outer being, I wanted to hasten the transformation, and things there were difficult to handle.
When Sri Aurobindo was here, I never bothered about all this; I was constantly up above and I did what the Gita and the traditional writings advise I left it to Natures care. In fact I left it to Sri Aurobindos care. He is making the best use of it, I would say. He will manage it, he will do with it what he wants. And I was constantly up above. And from up there I worked, leaving the instrument as it was because I knew that he would see to it.
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 supramental 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 movements, 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 moment, all the mental constructions, all the mental, speculative structures none of it remaineda big hole.
And such a peaceful, such a luminous hole!
--
So I saw this I saw it moving about. And it kept coming and coming and coming, accumulating, piling up (they work 24 hours a day, six days a weekonly on the seventh do they rest). So I thought that this angry force must have some effect on the peoplewho knows, maybe this is what creates accidents. For I could see that once the sugar cane was fully crushed and had gone back up the chute, this force that had been beaten out was right there. And this worried me a little; I thought that there must be a certain danger in doing such a thing! What saves them is their ignorance and their insensitivity. But Indians are never entirely insensitive in the way Westerners arethey are much more open in their subconscious.
I didnt speak of it to anyone, but it caused me some concern. And just the next day the machine broke down! When I was informed, immediately I thought It was then repaired, and again it broke downthree times. Then the following night, just before ten oclock I should mention that during the day I had thought, But why not attract these forces to our side, take them and satisfy them, give them some peace and joy and use them? I thought about it, concentrated a little, but then I didnt bother any further. At ten oclock that evening, they came upon mein a flood! They kept coming and coming. And I was busy with them the whole time. They were not ugly (not so luminous either! ), they were wholesome, straightforwardhonest forces. So I worked on them. This began exactly at 9:30, and for one hour I was busy working. After an hour, Id had enough: Listen, this is quite fine, youre very nice, but I cant spend all my time like this! We shall see what to do later for it absorbed my whole consciousness. They kept coming and coming (you understand what that means to a body?!). So at 10:30 I told them, Listen, my little ones, be quiet now, thats enough for today At 10:30, the machine broke down!
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This has protected me from all seeking for pleasure in life. It was a wonderful protection, because pleasure always seemed so futile to meyes, futile; for the sake of your personal satisfaction. Later, I even understood how foolish it is, for you can never be satisfiedthough when youre small you dont yet know that. I never liked it: But is it really useful, does it serve some purpose? And I still have this attitude in regard to my nights. I have this widening of the consciousness, this impersonalization, this wonderful joy of being above all that. But at the same time I also have, Im here in this body, on earth, to do something I mustnt forget it. And this is what I have to do. But probably Im wrong!
Im waiting for the Lord to tell me clearly.
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And its true, those things I saw this morning which seemed so above all stupid and ugly (Ive never had a sense of morality at any time in my life, thank God! But stupid and ugly things have always seemed Ive always done my best to distance myself from them, even when I was very small). And now I see that these things which seem not only ridiculous but, well, almost shameful were considered, as I recall, remarkably noble earlier on and they represented an exceptionally lofty attitude in life the very same things. So then I understood that its quite simply a question of proportion.
And thats how the world isthings which now seem totally unacceptable to us, things we CANNOT tolerate, were quite all right in the past.
--
It has never left. I have always kept it. Like a smooth white surface turned upwards. And at any moment at all You see, we speak like a machine, but there nothing moves; at any moment 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 told this to Xor rather had someone tell himto see his reaction. And I realized that he did not understand in the least! Once Amrita asked him how he himself SAW and KNEW things. So he tried to explain; he told Amrita that he had to pull his consciousness upwards by a gradual effort, to go beyond the heart, beyond the throat center to pull it right up here (the top of the head), and once there, youre divine, you know! All of a sudden, I understood that when I said it was there, above the head, it must have seemed absolutely impossible to him! For him, its the crown of the head1 (what they call the thousand-petalled lotus), just at the top of the head, whereas in my experience it opens, it rises and you go above, and then you settle there For a number of years it even changed my [physical] visionit was as if I were looking at things from above. It returns from time to time, too, as if suddenly I were seeing from above instead of from here, at eye level.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Theons wife dictated it in English while she was in trance. Another English lady who was there claimed to know French like a Frenchman. Myself, I never use a dictionary, she would say, I dont need a dictionary. But then she would turn out such translations! She made all the classic mistakes of English words that mustnt be translated like that. Then it was sent to me in Paris for correcting. It was literally impossible.
There was this Themanlys, my brothers schoolmate; he wrote books, but he was lazy-minded and didnt want to work! So he had passed that job on to me. But it was impossible, you couldnt do a thing with it. And what words! Theon would invent words for the subtle organs, the inner senses; he had found a word for each thinga frightful barbarism! And I took care of everything: I found the printer, corrected the proofsall the work for a long time.
--
And never in my life, never, had I felt such peaceit was absolutely luminous and soft a peace, such a soft, tender, luminous peace. After a moment, she bent down and whispered in my ear, One must never question ones master! It wasnt I who was questioning!
She was a wonderful woman, wonderful. But as for him well
--
Traditionally, one's mantra is never to be repeated before anyone except the guru.
Tamas: inertia.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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.
I did what had to be done.
--
Only, there is all that comes from outside thats what is most dangerous. Constantly, constantlywhen you eat, you catch it oh, what a mass of vibrations! The vibrations of the thing you eat when it was living (they always remain), the vibrations of the person who cooked it, vibrations of All the time, all the time, they never stopyou breathe, they enter. Of course, when you start talking to someone or mixing with people, then you become a bit more conscious of what is coming, but even just sitting still, uninvolved with othersit comes! There is an almost total interdependenceisolation is an illusion. By reinforcing your own atmosphere (Mother gestures, as if building a wall around her), you can hold these things off TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, but simply this effort to keep them at a distance creates (Im thinking in English and speaking in French) disturbances.8 Anyway, now all this has been SEEN.
But I know in an absolute way that once this whole mass of the physical mind is mastered and the Brahmic consciousness is brought into it in a continuous way, you CAN you become the MASTER of your health.
--
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.
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
When I meditate with you When Im alone, there is never this power, this Its something else Sometimes its strong but it always lacks this particular quality. There are powerful moments when Im alone, but not like this.
Of course! Im also with you there in your room when you meditate, but it does make a difference
0 1960-11-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I have so totally forgotten a whole world of incidents and events that when someone reminds me of something (the people around me have lived with me, so theyve seen things and remember them), I get the feeling that they are speaking of someone or something elseit no longer has any connection with me at all. And its the same with everything, whether near or far, which has brought to my consciousness whatever it had to bring, lost its utility anddisappeared. Only, these memories probably still have some utility for the others, so they remain. But for me its completely erased, absolutely, as if it had never been.
Its the only way to forget.
--
I went down into a place a place simply in the human consciousness, thus necessarily in my body I have never seen anything more timorous, fearful, feeble and mean! Its it must be a part of the cells, part of the consciousness, something that lives in apprehension, fear, dread, anxiety It was truly, truly dreadful.
And we carry that within us! We arent aware of it, its almost subconscious for you see, the consciousness is there to prevent us from yielding to thatits cowardly, and it can make you fall sick IN A MINUTE. I saw it, I saw things that had been cured and overcome in myself (cured in the true manner, not in an outer way), and then they return! Its cured, but then it begins again.
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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.
(silence)
I have experienced all kinds of things in life, but I have always felt a sort of lightso INTANGIBLE, So perfectly pure (not in the moral sense, but pure light!)and it could go anywhere, mix everywhere without ever really getting mixed with anything. I felt this flame as a young childa white flame. And nevER have I felt disgust, contempt, recoil, the sense of being dirtiedby anything or anyone. There was always this flamewhite, white, so white that nothing could make it other than white. And I started feeling it long ago in the past (now my approach is entirely differentit comes straight from above, and I have other reasons for seeing the Purity in everything). But it came back when I met Z (because of the contact with him)and I felt nothing negative, absolutely nothing. Afterwards, people said, Oh, how he used to be this, how he used to be that! And now look at him! See what hes become! Someone even used the word rotten that made me smile. Because, you see, that doesnt exist for me.
What I saw is this world, this realm where people are like that, they live that, for its necessary to get out from below and this is a wayits a way, the only way. It was the only way for the vital formation and the vital creation to enter into the material world, into inert matter. An intellectualized vital, a vital of ideas, an artist; it even fringes upon or has the first drops of Poetrythis Poetry which upon its peaks goes beyond the mind and becomes an expression of the Spirit. Well, when these first drops fall on earth, it stirs up mud.
--
They also find I give too much time and too much force (and maybe too much attention) to people and things that should be regarded with more severity. That never bothered me much. It doesnt matter, they can say what they like.
But since Zs visit yesterday, and this morning on the balcony Oh, its so I had already seen this long agothis whole milieu that is not very pretty and I had said, Well, its all right, thats how it is, and I didnt discuss it further: Thats how it is, and absolutely the whole world belongs to the Lord IS the Lord! And the Lord made it so, and the Lord wants it so, and its quite all right. Then I put it aside. But with his visit yesterday, it found its placesuch a smiling place. And theres a whole world of things of life which have found their true place in this waywith a smile!
--
If you werent there, all these things would never get said.
I dont know why. I dont know why I wouldnt say them. But I know why I say them to you I already gave you a hint. 3 I told you, didnt I, that there was a reason.
--
And, even with Sri Aurobindo, even with him I didnt speak of these things for I wouldnt waste his time, and I found it quite useless to burden him with all this. I would tell him I always described my visions and experiences at night I always recounted that to him. And he would remember (I myself would forget; the next day, the whole thing would be gone), he would remember; then sometimes, long afterwards, even years afterwards, he would say, Ah, yes! You had seen that back then. He had a wonderful memory. While myself, I would already have forgotten. But those were the only things I told him, and even then only when I saw that it had a very sure, very superior quality. I didnt bother him with a whole jumble of words. But otherwise . even Nolini,4 who understands well I never, never felt even the (its not the need) not even the POSSIBILITY.
I dont want to tell you this too precisely, to expand on it, for these things cannot be explained. I want you tonot know nor think it, but feel it suddenly, like a little electric shock within that leaps forth.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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.
--
Theres a certain sensibility which makes any increase in humidity felt. Before it starts raining, even several hours before, it feels like there are drops falling on my body. I can always say when its going to rain. Its entirely physical, actually, merely a heightened sensitivity. It feels like very tiny drops (you know, like drizzle), the feeling of a very fine spray falling on the body. And yet the sky is clear; I say, Hmm, its going to rain. And it rains I felt it. I feel the water, and it never fails to come a few hours later.
(silence)
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
So I understood that this must correspond to a certain realm of experience; I understood all those who say, If it has to be like this, if it can never be otherwise, then (this opposition, this abyss between a TRUE life, a TRUE consciousness, a TRUE activity, something living, powerful, fulfilling and life as it now is), if there must always be this difference between the physical expression as it is or as it can be in the present circumstances, and the true life, then For if despite everythingdespite this tremendous distance Ive covered in my life (these memories go back more than sixty years) and all the evolutionary effort upwards I have made since that time IN MATTER (Im not speaking of leaving Matter behind, but IN MATTER, IN action)if that doesnt further reduce this gap between the true consciousness and the possible material realization, then I understand I understand why people say, Its hopeless. (Of course, this hopeless is meaningless to me.)
But I (how can I put this?) I lived their experience, I lived it; and even events which seem quite extraordinary when seen from afar, which is the way they appear to most people, even historical things which have furthered the earths transformation and its upheavals the crucial events, the great works, you might sayare woven from the SAME fabric, they are the SAME thing! When you look at all this from afar, on the whole it can make an impression, but the life of each minute, of each hour, of each second is woven from this SAME fabric, drab, dull, insipid, WITHOUT ANY TRUE LIFEa mere reflection of life, an illusion of lifepowerless, void of any light or anything that resembles joy in the least. Oh! if it has always to remain like that, then we dont want any of it.
--
While it was all coming up, I thought, How is this possible? For during those years of my life (Im now outside things; I do them but Im entirely outside, so they dont involve mewhether its like this or like that makes no difference to me; Im only doing my work, thats all), I was already conscious, but nevertheless I was IN what I was doing to a certain extent; I was this web of social life (but thank God it wasnt here in India, for had it been here I could not have withstood it! I think that even as a child I would have smashed everything, because here its even worse than over there). You see, there its its a bit less constricting, a bit looser, you can slip through the mesh from time to time to brea the some air. But here, according to what Ive learned from people and what Sri Aurobindo told me, its absolutely unbearable (its the same in Japan, absolutely unbearable). In other words, you cant help but smash everything. Over there, you sometimes get a breath of air, but still its quite relative. And this morning I wondered (you see, for years I lived in that way for years and years) just as I was wondering, How was I ABLE to live that and not kick out in every direction?, just as I was looking at it, I saw up above, above this (it is worse than horrible, it is a kind of Oh, not despair, for there isnt even any sense of feeling there is NOTHING! It is dull, dull, dull gray, gray, gray, clenched tight, a closed web that lets through neither air nor life nor lightthere is nothing) and just then I saw a splendor of such sweet light above itso sweet, so full of true love, true compassion something so warm, so warm the relief, the solace of an eternity of sweetness, light, beauty, in an eternity of patience which feels neither the past nor the inanity and imbecility of thingsit was so wonderful! That was entirely the feeling it gave, and I said to myself, THAT is what made you live, without THAT it would not have been possible. Oh, it would not have been possible I would not have lived even three days! THAT is there, ALWAYS there, awaiting its hour, if we would only let it in.
(silence)
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
You see, Im doing the sadhana really along a a path that has never been trod by anyone. Sri Aurobindo did it in principle. But he gave the charge of doing it in the body to me.
That was the wonderful thing when we were together and all these hostile forces were fighting (they tried to kill me any number of times. He always saved me in an absolutely miraculous and marvelous way). But you see, this seemed to create very great BODILY difficulties for him. We discussed this a great deal, and I told him, If one of us must go, I want that it should be me.
--
This interests me, for these things do not at all enter through the mind (he doesnt receive a thing there, hes closed there). So in his letter he says that this thing or that is necessary (he describes it in his own words), and he adds, This is why we must be so grateful to have among us the the great Mother7 (as he puts it), the great Mother who knows these things.Good! I said to myself. (It had to do with something specific concerning the capacity for discrimination in the outside world, the different qualities and different functions of different beings, all of which depends on ones inner construction, as it were.) So I see that even this, even these physical experiences, is received (and yet I hadnt tried, I had never tried to make him receive it); it merely works like this, you see (gesture of a widespread diffusion), and the experience is veryhow should I say?drastic, with a kind of (power of radiation). Imperative.
Original English.
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Nature is a marvelous inventoreverything She does is beautiful. I dont believe that man has succeeded in producing anything so perfect. Later, its true, some new species were developed by him, but nevertheless Nature still remains the origin.
Yes, ugliness seems to begin with man.
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
X seemed happy about his visit this time. We had long meditations of half an hourhe never seemed to want to leave at all! There was above all a kind of extremely calm universalization. An absolute and universal calm in all the cells of the body. I dont know if it was only me, but it seemed he was in the same stateunable to move, quite content, smiling. Once I heard the clock chime, and as I thought it was time and that perhaps he was ready to leave, I looked; he had removed the mala3 that he wears around his neck and I found him doing japa. As soon as he saw me looking, he quickly put it back on!
But whats most surprising is that with me, not a word, nothing, neither he nor I. And it seems to be just as comfortable for him as it is for me!
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is quite elementary: 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.
nevertheless, it ought to be a very general rule; yet its critics have a reply: If you dont see evil you can never cure it. If you leave someone to his squalor he will never emerge from it. (Its not exactly true, but its how they legitimize their actions.) In this aphorism, Sri Aurobindo has anticipated these objections: it is not through ignorance or unconsciousness or indifference that you fail to see evilyou can see and even feel it, but you refuse to collaborate in spreading it by giving it the force of your attention or the support of your consciousness. And for that, you must yourself be above the perception and sensationable to see evil or ugliness without suffering, without feeling shocked or troubled. You see them from a height where such things do not exist, yet you have the conscious perception of themthey dont affect you, you are free. This is the first step.
The second step is to be POSITIVELY conscious of the supreme Goodness and Beauty behind all things and supporting all things, permitting them to exist. Once you have seen Him, you can perceive Him behind the mask and the distortio neven ugliness, even cruelty, even evil are a disguise for that Something which is essentially good or beautiful, luminous, pure.
--
Oh no, my child, you dont see at all! To speak I must have a receptive atmosphere! The idea of talking aloud all alone in my room would never occur to me. Sound doesnt come: what comes is a direct transmission and if I manage to connect it to my hand and write its transmitted, although it always gets somewhat pulled down. I can be doing anything at all, it doesnt matter, but it must be something that doesnt monopolize my attention, like brushing my hair in the morning for example: then it comes directly and nothing stops it! But I would never think of uttering a word! That only happens when I find some receptivity in front of me, something I can use.
What I say to people depends entirely upon their inner state. Thats precisely why I had such enormous difficulty at the Playground3the atmosphere was so mixed! It was a STRUGGLE to find someone receptive so I could speak. And if Im in the presence of people who understand nothing, I cant say a word. On the other hand, some people come prepared to receive and then suddenly it all comes but usually theres no tape-recorder!
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, people who dont think deeply enough will say, Oh, but if we see that things are exactly as they should be, then nothing will budge. But no! There isnt a fraction of a second when things arent moving: theres a continuous and total transformation, a movement that never stops. Only because its difficult for us to feel that way can we imagine that by our entering certain states of consciousness things would not change. Even if we entered into an apparently total inertia, things would continue to change and we along with them!
Ultimately, disgust, rebellion and anger, all movements of violence, are necessarily movements of ignorance and of limitation with all the weakness that limitation implies. Rebellion is a weakness, for its the feeling of an impotent will. When you feel, when you see that things are not as they should be, then you rebel against whatever is out of keeping with your vision. But if you were all-powerful, if your will and your vision were all-powerful, there would be no opportunity to rebel! You would always see that all things are as they should be! That is omnipotence.1 Then all these movements of violence become not only useless but profoundly ridiculous.
0 1961-01-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its not a random experience coming now and then, its something you can witness minute by minute. You generally see it far more readily in others! But if you watch yourself carefully, you will catch yourself a thousand times a daylooking at things in a favorable way: Oh, its NOT the same thing! And besides, its nevER the same for you as it is for your neighbor!
For Sri Aurobindo and Mother, the 'vital' represents the regions of consciousness or the centers of consciousness below the mind between the throat and the sex center, i.e. the whole region of emotions, feelings, passions, etc., which constitute the various expressions of the Life-Energy.
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not at all the same as in the West, in Europe or America, not at all. Basically, the people in those countries are made of the same stuff as we are. But here thats not the case, because for centuries it never changeda Brahmin, for example, always remained a Brahmin, a Kshatria was always a Kshatria and all his servants were Kshatrias. It stayed in the family, in the sense that in each caste the servantsoften poor relativesbe longed to that same caste. From a social standpoint this might not have been too pleasant, but as far as atmosphere was concerned, it was very good. This was changed, however, first by the Muslim invasion, and then especially by the British.
The British, you see, were served only by pariahs (in fact, its we Europeans who named them that!). But they were not actually pariahs by birth, they became pariahs out of HABIT.
--
All this is just to tell you that some contacts are not very favorable. And I understand full well: I could never tolerate people like that coming into my room sometimes it would take me hours and hours to put things right!
We have to be careful.
There was a time when we had only a minimum of servants here and they always remained apartwe never had an epidemic. I dont know for how many years it wasyears and years while Sri Aurobindo was herewe never had a single case of an epidemic disease. It began when people started coming here with children; necessarily they brought their servants along with them, who went to the bazaar and even to the movies and here and there. Then everything came in.
But now the situation is bad. There are something like thirty cases of measles, four or five of smallpox and some chickenpox as well. You must be careful. I need you in good health, otherwise well have to stop everything!
--
Later, Mother added: 'All the experiences took place one after the other, but the new experience did not cancel the preceding one. The Consciousness this supreme Unity that I hadremained all the time, to the very end, even while the other centers were awakening. And each center that awakened was a kind of addition, taking away nothing from what had come before. So at the end it was all simultaneous: a kind of global consciousness total and simultaneousof everything.... You see, while rising up (one is obliged to say "rising" and "descending" for otherwise one would never be understood), while "rising up" to reach this supreme Consciousness, all the rest was annulled, there was only That. When the supreme Consciousness was realized, it remained ALL the time, continuously, to the very end, it did not move; but meanwhile, the other centers began to awaken one after another. And each awakening center assumed its place but canceled nothing either of what had come before or of what was about to come, so that when I reached the end, all of it together was a simultaneous whole the Supreme Consciousness.' When Satprem asked if this Supreme Consciousness was the 'New Consciousness,' Mother replied, 'Not "new!" One can't say "new"Supreme Consciousness.'
This entire experience and Mother's insistence that it all happened 'without moving,' unlike the experience of the ascent of the Kundalini, suggests that it is the supramental consciousness concealed in the depths of the cells, that somehow emerges and traverses all the layers until the junction is made with the most material body-consciousness.
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was about the Word, the primal sound. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it in Savitri: the essence of the Word and how it will express itself, how it will bring in the possibility of a supramental expression that will take the place of languages. I began by speaking to him about the different languages, their limitations and possibilities; and I warned him against the deformations imposed on languages with the idea of making them a more flexible means of expressing something else. I told him how completely ridiculous it all was, and that it didnt correspond at all to the truth. Then little by little I began ascending to the Origin. So yesterday again, I had this same experience: a whole world of knowledge, of consciousness and of CERTAINTYprecluding the least possibility of contradiction, discussion, or opposition; the possibility DOES NOT EXIST, it doesnt exist. And the mind was absolutely silent and immobile, listening with obvious pleasure because these things had never before come into my consciousness; I had never been concerned with them in that way. It was completely newnot new in principle but completely new in action.
The experiences are multiplying.
0 1961-01-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have never said anything. I never say a word.
You can tell her anything you like, it doesnt matterjust tell her to keep it to herself.
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, yes, this is very, very annoying, my child! You dont need to tell me! I have never in my life had enough time. Whatever I do, whether I am speaking to someone, organizing something, doing a particular work, the time is always too short, and I have the feeling, Oh, if I could only do that quietly! Anything, no matter what, becomes interesting if it can be done calmly, with the right attitude and the right concentration. Yet we are perpetually hurried by the next thing coming along.
But this is a shortcoming. And I know it, I know it I will find the solution. And when I have found it, it will be.
--
With my japa the contrast is the same, its absolutely astounding: I feel I am saying the words in the same way, with the same sound, exactly the same rhythm, but in some cases, with a particular inner attitude, the time by the clock is different! Yet nevertheless, bound up as we are in our physical Matter, we imagine it has taken exactly the same amount of time! Thats what is so strange, this extraordinary relativity vis--vis the clock.
This must be what they tried to express by Joshua making the sun stand still.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then after these two incidents, I received a visit one night from the King of Serpents. He was wearing a superb crown on his headsymbolic, of course, but anyway, he was the spirit of the species. He had the appearance of a cobra, and he was wonderful! A formidable beast, and wonderful! He said he had come to make a pact with me: I had demonstrated my power over his species, so he wanted to come to an understanding. All right, I said, what do you propose? I not only promise that serpents wont harm you, he replied, but that they will obey you. But you must promise me something in return: never to kill one of them. I thought it over and said, No, I cant make this promise, because if ever one of yours attacks one of mine (a being that depends upon me), my pact with you could not stop me from protecting him. I can assure you that I have no bad feelings and no intention of killingkilling is not on my program! But I cant commit myself, because it would restrict my freedom of decision. He left without replying, so it remains status quo.
I have had several experiences demonstrating my power over snakes (not so much as over catswith cats its extraordinary!). Long ago, I often used to take a drive and then stop somewhere for a walk. One day after my walk, as I was getting back into the car to drive away (the door was still open), a very large snake came out, right from the spot I had just left. He was furious and heading straight towards the open door, ready to strike (luckily I was alone, neither the driver nor Pavitra were there, otherwise). When the snake had come quite near, I looked at him closely and said, What do you want? Why have you come here? There was a pause. Then he fell down flat and off he went. I hadnt made a move, only asked him, What do you want? Why have you come here? You know, they have a way of suddenly falling back, going limp, and prrt! Gone!
--
And do you know how he received me when I arrived there? It was the first time in my life I had traveled alone and the first time I had crossed the Mediterranean. Then there was a fairly long train ride between Oran and Tlemcenanyway, I managed rather well: I got there. He met me at the station and we set off for his place by car (it was rather far away). Finally we reached his estatea wonder! It spread across the hillside overlooking the whole valley of Tlemcen. We arrived from below and had to climb up some wide pathways. I said nothingit was truly an experience from a material standpoint. When we came in sight of the house, he stopped: Thats my house. It was red! Painted red! And he added, When Barley came here, he asked me, Why did you paint your house red? (Barley was a French occultist who put Theon in touch with France and was his first disciple.) There was a mischievous gleam in Theons eyes and he smiled sardonically: I told Barley, Because red goes well with green! With that, I began to understand the gentleman. We continued on our way uphill when suddenly, without warning, he spun around, planted himself in front of me, and said, Now you are at my mercy. Arent you afraid? Just like that. So I looked at him, smiled and replied, Im never afraid. I have the Divine here. (Mother touches her heart.)
Well, he really went pale.
--
Someone had wanted to plant pine treesScotch firs, I think and by mistake Norway spruce were sent instead. And it began to snow! It had never snowed there before, as you can imagineit was only a few kilometers from the Sahara and boiling hot: 113 in the shade and 130 in the sun in summer. Well, one night Madame Theon, asleep in her bed, was awakened by a little gnome-like beinga Norwegian gnome with a pointed cap and pointed slippers turned up at the toes! From head to foot he was covered with snow, and it began melting onto the floor of her room, so she glared at him and said:
What are You doing here? Youre dripping wet! Youre making a mess of my floor!
--
It was the first time. They had lived there for years but had never seen snow. And every winter after that, the hillsides would be covered with snow.
(silence)
--
It doesnt matter! Put your ideas down on paper. There are things you already know you want to say. Put it all on paper. I assure you it will do you good. I have seen it several times recently and I wanted to tell you: begin your book on Sri Aurobindo! Begin anywhere at all, at any point the middle, the end, the beginningit doesnt matter! Whatever you feel you have to say, write it down. Its good to keep yourself occupied like that now, during this period. And for our next meetings you can work a little on The Synthesis of Yoga and we will look at it together instead of you always making me talk! I have increased your work, there will be no end to it. If it goes on like this, there will never be an end!
Fortunately!
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For Sri Aurobindo, the important thing was always the Mother. As he explained it, the Mother has several aspects, and certain aspects are still unmanifest. So if he has represented the Mother by Kali in particular, I believe its in relation to all those gods. Because, as he wrote in The Mother, the aspects to be manifested depend upon the time, the need, the thing to be done. And he always said that unless one understands and profoundly feels the aspect of Kali, one can never really participate in the Work in the worldhe felt that a sort of timid weakness makes people recoil before this terrible aspect.
***
--
It is attached to nothing: none of its habits, none of its ways of being-nothing. It says in all sincerity, I ask only for the Light, only to change. That is its state. it has never, never said, Oh, Im tired, Ive had enough! Bah! Its not like that. It is attached to nothing for a long, long time it has ceased to have desiresit is attached to nothing at all, to nothing. There isnt a single thing for which it says, Oh, I cant do without that! Not one. It doesnt care-if something comes, it takes it; if it doesnt come, the body doesnt think about it. In other words, its truly good-natured. But if this isnt sufficient, then it doesnt know and it says, If there is something I cant do or I dont know or I am not doing It asks for nothing more than to make the necessary effort!
(silence)
--
Two nights ago, I saw a formation of illness over the entire Ashram, a kind of adverse formation trying to prevent me from leaving my room, and I had to hide to get out, leave clandestinely. Oh, what a terrible atmosphere, so heavy, so grayeverybody was ill. And this formation had some actual effects because many people fell ill who normally never do. It is an adverse formation and theres no reason to concede its victory; its simply a force which doesnt want us to succeed, of courseso we need not pay attention.
The trouble is, if I were thirty or forty years old, people wouldnt be affected. But unfortunately they think about how old I am all the time and it creates a bad atmosphere. After all, they keep saying, Mother is old and. All the usual nonsense.
But I know differently and so does my bodyto me its all foolishness and has no importance. For instance, when Vinoba Bhave came to see me4 (the man who takes care of poor people), he looked at me and said, Oh, youll live a hundred years! And I simply said, Yes, it all seemed so natural. At that moment, there wasnt even (how to put it?) the least intimation of a doubt. Of course its a clich, but nevertheless, he said it; afterwards he told people that this was what he had felt. And it seems completely natural I know if my body can last till its a hundred (a little less than twenty years more), then we will be on the other side the difficulty will be over.
I rather feel that your dream is another part of this present mass attack, but.
--
(Mother gets up to leave when suddenly, turning upon the threshold, She looks at Satprem with her eyes like diamonds and, in a tone of voice he has never heard before, as if it were a Command from above, says:)
In any case, one thing: never forget that what we have to do, we shall do; and we shall do it together because we have to do it together, that is alllike this, like that, in this way, in that way (Mother tilts her hand from right to left as though to indicate this side of the world or the other, life or death), it has no importance. But this is the true fact.
There, petit.
--
A recentand unifying (!)theory postulated by the American Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann, would reduce this somewhat startling enumeration to more reasonable proportions through the introduction of a unique sub-particle constituting all matter: the quark. nevertheless, there would still exist several kinds of quarks (e.g., 'strange,' 'charmed,' 'colored' in red, yellow and blue) for accommodating the various qualities of matter. A proton, for example, would consist of three quarks: red, yellow and blue. However, it should be noted that quarks are basically mathematical intermediaries to facilitate the comprehension or interpretation of certain experiments thus far unexplained. Moreover, the simple question still remains, even if they do exist materially: 'What are quarks made of?'
nevertheless, a mathematical model resulting from a recent theory that attempts to represent our material universe strangely resembles Mother's perception, for it postulates a milieu consisting entirely of electromagnetic waves of very high frequency. According to this theory, Matter itself is the 'coagulation' of these waves at the moment they exceed a certain frequency threshold; our perception of emptiness, of fullness, of the hard or the transparent, being finally due only to the differences in vibratory frequencies'vibratory modes within the same thing.'
But what is this 'same thing'?
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So well see how long this is going to last. I understand why people have never tried to change it: stir up that quagmire? No! It takes a lot (laughing), a lot of courage! Oh, its so easy to escape, so easy to say, None of that concerns me. I belong to higher spheres, it doesnt concern me.
Anyway, its obvious that nobody has succeeded, so far not a single person and I understand! I understand. When you find yourself face to face with it, you wonder, How could anything possibly withstand this!
--
Even mastery can be achievedits quite easy to do from above. But for the transformation one must descend, and that is terrible. Otherwise, the subconscient will never be transformed, it will remain as it is.
One can even pose as a superman! (Mother laughs) But it remains like that (gesture in the air), its not the real thing. Its not the new creation, its not the next step in terrestrial evolution.
--
Oh, in that, too, there are a lot of. I myself wasnt present, so I dont know what Sri Aurobindo said, but I have a kind of feeling. Just recently they wanted to publish something similar in Mother India6Conversations with me noted by A. Luckily it was sent to me first: I Cut EVERYTHING! Such platitudes, my child! Oh, it was disgusting. I said, This is impossible. I have nevER spoken like that, never! It was flat, flat, flat, with a superficial, word-for-word understanding! Oh, horrible, horrible. Whatever passes through people is terribly, terribly loweredpopularized, made commonplace.
Anyhow. Only Sri Aurobindo can speak of Sri Aurobindo. And as for their notes, its still Sri Aurobindo A la Z, or Sri Aurobindo A la A, and all the more so since Sri Aurobindo wrote in very different ways depending upon the person he was writing to (gesture indicating different levels).
--
Sri Aurobindo et la Transformation du Monde [Sri Aurobindo and the Transformation of the World], a book that Editions du Seuil had asked Satprem to write and subsequently refused on the pretext that it did not conform to the 'spirit of the collection.' This book would never see the light of day. Satprem would later write another book entitled Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness.
A long-time disciple (Suzanne Karpeles) and a member of the cole Franaise d'Extrme Orient.
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, its dreadful, each one (Mother is referring to the disciples). Well, never mind.
Im not so late today.
--
In addition, I told them it was preferable not to hold any functions herethey can be held at Tapogiri in the Himalayas, or elsewhere and this is understood. They did hold a seminar here (a perfect fiasco, besides), but it had been arranged a long time ago. They invited people who promised to come (I think very few showed up in the end), and it was of very secondary importance. nevertheless, I told them, This is the last time; dont do it here any more. At Tapogiri, as often as you like: its a beautiful spot in the mountains, a health resort, people go there in the summer for the fresh air and to sit around and chat!
What shocked me was. You know I rarely leave my house, but each time I would come to the Ashram for darshan or to see you, always, as if by chance, I would find J. off in a corner with some European visitor. The repetition of this coincidence made me wonder, Whats he doing so systematically with ALL the European visitors?! And it shocked me to imagine myself in their place: just suppose, I said to myself, you are coming to the Ashram for the first time, very open, in search of a great truth, and you stumble upon this man who tells you: Sri Aurobindo = World Union. Well, my first reaction would be, Im leaving, Im not interested!
--
Then it proves they have never read anything by Sri Aurobindo. Its unimportant. No, its even better than unimportant: its a test. This place is full of tests, full, full, full! People dont realize. One can see it happening, as though it were done on purpose just to trip people up (not really on purpose, but thats how it acts). It protects me from hordes of good-for-nothings! I am not eager to have a lot of people here.
Another thing that shocked me was in their journal.
Ive never seen itfull of stupidities?
Its outrageous! First of all, they use Sri Aurobindos name, putting it on a level with Vinoba Bhave or Dr. Schweitzer or who knows what other sage; then at the end they launch an appeal for people to enroll! So the reader is left wondering, But I thought Sri Aurobindo. You understand, this indiscriminate mixture, this diminishing.
--
Oh, Ive had all sorts of examples! All these errors serve as tests. Take the case of P.: for a long time, whe never someone arrived from the outside world and asked to be instructed, he was sent to P.s room. (I didnt send them, but they would be told, Go speak to P.!) And P. is the sectarian par excellence! He would tell people, Unless you acknowledge Sri Aurobindo as the ONLY one who knows the truth, you are good for nothing! Naturally (laughing), many rebelled! (You see, out of lazinessso as not to be bothered with seeing people or answering their questionsone says, Go find so-and-so, go ask so-and-so, and passes off the work to another.) Well, it was finally understood that this wasnt very tactful, and perhaps it would be better not to send visitors to P., since so many had been put off. But actually. I was told about it afterwards and I replied, Let people read and see for THEMSELVES whether or not it suits them! What difference does it make if theyre put off! If they are, it means they NEED to be put off! Well see later. Some of them have come full circle and returned. Others never came backbecause they werent meant to. Thats how it goes. Basically, all this has NO importance. Or we could put it in another way: everything is perfectly all right.
(silence)
Each one of us must learn his lesson thats a different matter. WE are not perfectly all right because we can be bettercircumstances are simply the outgrowth of what we are, nothing else. And we neednt worry I never worry myself!
Whats more, I find it so funny! A time comes when all such things seem so childish, so stupid, so meaningless! What difference can it make! As long as people are still at that level, thats where they are. The day they get away from it, they too will smile!
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I knew when I caught it: it was at the Playground.4 Certain people poisoned me with a mosquito bite the instant the mosquito bit me, I knew, because it so happens I am a little bit conscious! But I controlled it like this (gesture of holding the disease in abeyance and under control), so it couldnt stir. Probably it would never have stirred if I hadnt had that experience of January 24 and the body didnt need to be made ready. For the body to be ready, a host of things belonging to the dasyus, as the Vedas say, cant be stored inside it! These are very nasty little dasyus (laughing), they have to be chased away!
When the disease came back, I said to myself, Very well, this means it must be dealt with in a new way.
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theon used to say it wasnt (how to put it?) i nevitable. In the total freedom of the manifestation, this voluntary separation from the Origin is the cause of all the disorder. How to explain it? Words express these things so poorly. We can call it i nevitable because it happened! But outside of this creation, a creation can be imagined (or could have been) where this disorder would not have occurred. Sri Aurobindo saw it in approximately the same way: a sort of accident, as it were but an accident allowing the manifestation a far greater and more total perfection than if it had never occurred. But this is all still in the realm of speculation, and useless speculation at that. In any case, the experience, the feeling, is that all at once (Mother makes the gesture of a brutal fall) oh!
For the earth it probably happened like that, all at once: a sort of ascent, then the fall. But the earth is a tiny concentrationuniversally, its something else.
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Man questions himself because the mental instrument 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 i nevitable for a total development.
***
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, there are certain symptoms which never appear with filariasis. And the doctor has been astounded at the control Ive had over it: it began in the feet, I checked it there; it went higher, I checked it there; then it went higher still and I continued to control it. Finally, the other day, it tried to get into the arms, but it couldnt hold outand last night there was a real riot! (Mother laughs) So perhaps its the deformation or transposition of some sort of mantric effort, like last time in 58 when there was an attempt to make me throw up all my blood but only food came out! Its probably something similar. My impression (Ive had it from the start) is that they have made a try at thrombosis (you know, when something blocks the circulation). Besides, it seems that X asked the doctor if blood-poisoning might be involved, so he must have seen this possibility. There has been absolutely nothing of the kind, but there has been an effort to block the circulation in the veins, probably an adaptation of the magic attack. And along with this have come all the usual things: all the usual suggestions, all the usual prophecies [about Mothers departure]. But for me, these are the normal facts of life, thats all. I am used to it. It has no importance.
Do you really believe Z could be behind this magician you saw?
--
Z was Satprem's first guru when he became a sannyasi. Then Z tried to exert his control over Satprem and predicted to Mother that he would never remain in the Ashram. Finally Satprem broke with him and Z went away furious.
Satprem has never believed for a minute that Z practiced black magic against Mother: it must have been something or someone else.
Satprem was trying to patch up some French translations of Sri Aurobindo done by well-meaning but not very gifted disciples, who of course wanted 'to publish' at all costs.
0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(On the previous day, Satprem had written a letter to Mother complaining of never having any concrete experiences. After a meditation together, this is what Mother replied.)
[This letter has disappeared.]
--
Several times in my life I have met with the particular phenomenon of having an absolutely exceptional and unique experience and at the same time feeling that a part of my being was unaware of it! I would tell myself, if I hadnt been both here and there at the same moment (Mother indicates two different levels in her consciousness), I might have had all these experiences and never known it! And this happened not just once but many times. Some were utterly unique, like certain ancient Vedic experiencesutterly unique. When I recounted them to Sri Aurobindo, he told me, Oh, its extremely rare! Some people try all their lives to attain that. And it happened to me not just once but often: the experience took place there (gesture above) and something up there knew, and yet there was something down here that would never have known if the other hadnt (same gesture). nevertheless the total experience was there.
Its very difficult to explain, its extremely subtle.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know he said someone has been doing black magic against me; but I have never felt anything of the sort in the room where we meditate, because I make a point of coming half an hour early and this of course clears the atmosphere: everything is always ready when he arrives, in silence, in perfect peace. Hasnt he always told you that when he comes into that room he enters another world, like Kailas?1 And thats the way it has always been. If there has been a change, its that now its even more like thatbecause (how to put it?) its more stable. Before, it fluctuated a bit: it came, went, came. But now its like a tranquil mass (Mother lowers her arms) that doesnt stir. Yesterday in particular, this was the experience: I felt him coming (when he is about to come in, I always sense something drawing me outward a little so that I wont be completely in trance and can stand up), and this prayer came so spontaneously, oh! And then (laughing) in the afternoon N. tells me, Oh, X said he had some difficulty at the start of todays meditationa hostile force was present and it took him five minutes to clarify the atmosphere!
It gave me the impression you get in outer life: all the pieces more or less dovetail but with no inner unitytheres not ONE thing, not one, that is true, essentially and always true. We know it is like that outwardly, of course; but I have always felt that with people who have an inner life, one could attain a kind of identity of vibration and knowledge but no!
--
What ruffles me is that someone like X, who has worked on himself, ought to have felt it. Why do I feel it? Because since I have been doing all this work on my body, it senses things and it is never mistaken. I have had repeated proof that it is never mistaken. When a higher vibration comes, it feels it right away! But I must say that this has only been the case since the body became very universalized. However, I was under the impression that X must have been somewhat universalized to have the powers he has, but now I dont know.
Its not that I was disappointed by his way of being, certainly not; but it has suddenly confronted me with a terrible problem: Is it impossible to live a truth in material consciousness? Is it really impossible? An absolute, I mean an absolute truthnot something entirely subjective and relative, each one living his own truth in his own manner. Will one person always be like this and the other like that and the third like something else? So that only by putting all the pieces together do we actually amount to anything and yet to what?! Is it completely impossible for absolute truth to manifest in the present state of Matter? This is the problem that has seized me.
--
It ruffles me because its like a negation of my power. Till yesterday I had never experienced anything of the kind! On the 29th, you know, it will be forty-seven years since I first came here3thats not exactly yesterday! And ever since I began working with Sri Aurobindo, I have had the sense of this Power, it has never left me; so. It is disconcerting to have this kind of episode come up after such a long time.
Ill try to speak with X and find out exactly what happened.
--
I believe this body has suffered as much as a body can bear without going to pieces, and it keeps going, it has never asked for mercynot once has it said, No, its too much, not once. It says, As You will, Lord: here I am.
And so it continues.
--
Well, Im never going to tell people that its just a promenade! No, its nothing like a promenade. Some say, Oh, youre too severe! But too bad for them; its better to tell the truth, isnt it?
We mustnt get discouraged.
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theoretically, it shouldnt be that way, but in fact it is. Something will never be perfect until this accident has been abolished.
That is my experience.
--
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 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had another cat I called Big Boy. Oh, how beautiful he was! Enormous! A tail like the train of a gown. He was beautiful! Since there were all kinds of cats prowling around, including a big fierce tomcat who was extremely vicious, I was very afraid for this one when he was little and I got him used to spending his nights inside (which is hard for a cat to do). I forbade him to go out. So he spent his nights inside and when I got up in the morning, he got up too and came and sat down in front of me. Then I would say, All right, Big Boy, you can go, and he would jump out the window and go off but never before. And this is the one who was poisoned.
Because later on he would go roaming about; he had become terribly strong and would prowl around everywhere. At that time I was living in the Library house, and he would go off as far as the Ashram street (the Ashram didnt belong to us yet, the house was owned by all kinds of people), but when I would go out on the terrace across from Champaklals kitchen and call, Big boy! Big Boy! although he couldnt hear it, he could sense it, and he would come back galloping, galloping. He always came back, unfailingly. The day he didnt come back, I got worried; the servant went looking for himand found him moaning, vomiting, poisoned. He brought him to me. Oh, really! it was. He was so nice! He wasnt a thief or anythinghe was a wonderful cat. Someone had laid out poison for god knows what cat, and he ate it. I showed him to Sri Aurobindo and said, He has been killed.
--
That one too was beautiful, with such a color! Golden chestnut, I have never seen a cat like him. He is buried here beneath the tree I named Service. I put him beneath the roots myself. There had been an old mango tree there that was withering away. We replaced it with a little copper pod tree with yellow flowers.
These animals are so nice when you know how to handle them.
--
And she taught them everything. To eat, to. This cat would never eat before they had all eaten. She would show them what to do, give each one what it needed. And once they had grown up and she didnt have to look after them anymore, if they kept coming back she would send them away: Go away! Your turn is over, its finished. Go out into the world! And she would take care of the new ones.
Once one of her kittens was ill. She was pretty and gray colored, clear gray like a very soft fur, very pretty. She had caught this cat sickness and was lying down. And the mother was teaching all the little ones not to come near her; she would make them go all the way around, as if her instinct told her it was contagious. And you would see them (the sick kitten was right in their way) going all the way around, never coming near.
These cat stories went on for years and years.
--
Mind you, I would never have considered having any, but two cats were already there when I came to the house. They were not very interesting cats, but they became the parents of the one I just told you about (those boys who were living with Sri Aurobindo had already had some experience; they knew quite a few things about cats), and that was the origin of all the cats I had here. But people (you know how simplistic they always are!) believed I had some special attachment for cats, so then of course everybody started keeping cats! It was no use my telling them, No, its a particular study were making I wanted to see, to learn certain things, and I learned what I had to but now that I have moved to another house, the cat era is over; the old friends are gone, only the younger generation is left. I gave them all away and said) Thats enough. But its hard to make people understandsome people here have 25 cats! Thats unreasonable! Its not the way to deal with cats. You have to look after them as I did, and then it becomes interesting.
There was one I know I SAW it: when he died there was already the embryo of a psychic being, ready for a human incarnation. I made them progress like wildfire.
0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I feel that Ive never been as low as I am now.
Low? No, you arent low I see you too, among the things I am looking at, and it isnt true. No, you are much better than you were! (Mother laughs)
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These are political texts from the revolutionary period, concerning bomb attacks against the English. And then he says that the man God has protected can never be touched. However hard you try, you will never be able to slay him. But who can protect the man God has already slain? He has already been slain by God. And man is simply the instrument used by God to do here what has been done there (it has ALREADY been done there). Its very simple.
Yes, I quite understand. But in general, does EVERYTHING that happens here first get played out on the other side in some way? Its an occult problem, and furthermore a problem of freedom.
--
No! Thats exactly our falsehood! What we see is not THE THING; its a reflection, a distorted image in our consciousness. The thing itself exists outside this reflection, and in that existence it doesnt have the character we attri bute to it. Once we have grasped this, we understand that we can get out of itotherwise, we could never get out!
There is a universal unfolding, the true unfolding, that of the Supreme Lord who watches (this is the best way to put it) his own unfoldment. But for some reason or other, there has been a deformation of consciousness which makes us see this unfolding as something separate, a more or less adequate expression of the Divine Will. But it isnt so! It is the very unfolding of the Divine within Himselfwithin Himself, from Himself, for Himself. And its simply our falsehood that makes a separate thing of it The very fact of objectifying (what WE call objectification) is already a falsehood.5
0 1961-04-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I never manage to finish my mornings program. Things just keep piling up.
(Soon afterwards, concerning X, who had stated that the most recent attacks against Mother, and even those of two years earlier when she had been forced to withdraw to her room, were the result of black magic, and that certain members of the Ashram were DIRECTLY responsible for them, or in any case, had served as intermediariesas a switchboard, to quote himin connection with an outside magician.)
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Already, with all the people here. (But I never told them they were my disciples, I told them they were my children and with children, to begin with, theres no need to do everything they want!) I already waste all my time answering their letters, which are worse than stupid. What questions they askquestions already answered at least fifty timessimply for the pleasure of writing! So now Ive stopped answering. I write one or two words, and thats it.
No, its disgusting!
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
Let me repeat that when we speak of Sri Aurobindo, it is not a question of teaching nor even of revelation, but of an Action from the Supreme; upon this, no religion whatsoever can be founded.
--
It has always been like that for mealways. And I have never, never had the religious sense at allyou know, what people call this kind of what they have in religions, especially in Europe. I see only the English word for it: awe, like a kind of terror. This always made me laugh! But I have always felt whats behind, the presences behind.
I remember once going into a church (which I wont name) and I found it a very beautiful place. It wasnt a feast or ceremony day, so it was empty. There were just one or two people at prayer. I went in and sat down in a little chapel off to the side. Someone was praying there, someone who must have been in distressshe was crying and praying. And there was a statue, I no longer know of whom: Christ or the Virgin or a Saint I have no idea. And, oh! Suddenly, in place of the statue, I saw an enormous spider like a tarantula, you know, but (gesture) huge! It covered the entire wall of the chapel and was just waiting there to swallow all the vital force of the people who came. It was heart-rending. I said to myself, Oh, these people There was this miserable woman who had come seeking solace, who was praying there, weeping, hoping to find solace; and instead of reaching a consciousness that was at least compassionate, her supplications were feeding this monster!
--
In fact, I have seen this all over the world. I have never been on very good terms with religions, neither in Europe, nor Africa, nor Japan, nor even here.
(silence)
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 apartments), and in the apartment 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!
--
I remember a good-hearted priest in Pau [Southern France] who was an artist and wanted to have his church decorateda tiny cathedral. He consulted a local anarchist (a great artist) about it. The anarchist was acquainted with Andrs father and me. He told the priest, I recommend these people to do the paintings they are true artists. He was doing the mural decorationsome eight panels in all, I believe. So I set to work on one of the panels. (The church was dedicated to San Juan de Compostello, a hero of Spanish history; he had appeared in a battle between the Christians and the Moors and his apparition vanquished the Moors. And he was magnificent! He appeared in golden light on a white horse, almost like Kalki.6) All the slaughtered and struggling Moors were depicted at the bottom of the painting, and it was I who painted them; it was too hard for me to climb high up on a ladder to paint, so I did the things at the bottom! But anyway, it all went quite well. Then, naturally, the priest received us and invited us to dinner with the anarchist. And he was so nicereally a kind-hearted man! I was already a vegetarian and didnt drink, so he scolded me very gently, saying, But its Our Lord who gives us all this, so why shouldnt you take it? I found him charming. And when he looked at the paintings, he tapped Morisset on the shoulder (Morisset was an unbeliever), and said, with the accent of Southern France, Say what you like, but you know Our Lord; otherwise you could never have painted like that!
Well.
0 1961-05-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I never knew Vivekananda. I only know what I have heard or read about him, but that isnt what I call knowing. So I cant say anything, and above all I dont want to seem to give credence to all the gossip that has been spread about him. I have had no personal contact with him, neither in the physical nor elsewherenot with him personally. Naturally I could if I made an effort, but.
To tell the truth, this question seems stupid to me, because one can have mastery over circumstances only if one becomes the Supremebecause the Supreme alone has mastery over circumstances. So the question is senseless.
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thou art the sure friend who never fails,
the Power, the Support, the Guide. Thou art
--
Thou who never gainsayest our highest will
because it is Thou Thyself who willest in it!
--
ready to our call and never wilt Thou fail us!
Thou hast made me know the supreme,
--
And I see that the translation would go quickly if one moved into another domain. In one domain it is laborious, terrible, difficult, and the result is never very satisfying. But contrary to what I had thought, the domain of comprehension does not suffice, even the domain of experience does not suffice: something else is needed (oh, how to explain it?), a state in which effort is left totally behind. There is a state (which probably must be beyond the mind, because one no longer thinks at all, not at all) where everything is smiling and easy, and the sentences come to you all by themselves. Its peculiar I read, and even before I finish reading the sentence to be translated I know whats in it; and then without waitingalmost without waiting to know whats in it I know what to put for it. When its like that I can translate a page in half an hour.
But it doesnt lastit ought to last. Usually it ends in a trance: I go off into the experience, I am in a beatific state and ten minutes later I notice that Ive been in that state with my pen poised in my hand. Its not favorable to the work! But otherwise its I cant even say its like someone dictating (its not that, I dont hear); it comes by itself. Oh, the other day there were one or two sentences! I wrote something and suddenly saw what I was writing and doing so pulled me out of that state. Well, I said to myself, how nicely put! And plop! (Mother laughs) Everything was gone.
Be in that domain, and you will never grow tired.
But to get there, believe me, you must accept to be a total imbecile for quite some time! I am not exaggerating. I have found myself in such states: you no longer understand anything, no longer know anything, no longer think anything, no longer want anything, no longer can do anythingno more power, no more will, no more thought, no more anythingyou are like that. And when I am like that (when I WAS, because now its beginning to go away), I see the external world, people like those around me, looking at me and thinking, Ah! Mother is lapsing into her second childhood! Their vibrations come to me and unfortunately they sometimes have the power to shake me I have to make a movement to free myself from the thoughts of others.
--
In one of the handwritten notes left by Mother, we found the following: 'Sri Aurobindo told me: never give them the impression that they can do whatever they like, they will always be protected.'
With the exception of the second asterisked passage, which was not included in his English version of selected Prayers and Meditations, the following translations are Sri Aurobindo's.
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No. I had finished reading the Veda and wanted to take up The Life Divine, but as I had never read On Himself,1 I chose it instead. I read the first chapter dealing with his life in England and to me it all seemed. Oh, why speak of all these things in connection with Sri Aurobindo? Why? I know quite well that he himself has repliedor rather rectified inexact things people had said about him but it made such a painful impression on me! Such a painful impression.
Something must definitely be done which is free of that whole useless jumble about who his father was and so forthpah! I dont like that sort of thing.
0 1961-06-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, it depends entirely upon the plane in which you find yourself! No, five different people will see five different things. Only when one is in marvelous accord, in an identical vibration, as happened to me with Sri Aurobindo. But that never took the form of little stories!
Whe never there was a special force descending, or an opening, or a supramental manifestation, we would know it at the same time, in the same manner. And we didnt even need to talk about it; we would sometimes exchange a word or two concerning the consequences, the practical effects on the work, but thats all. I never had this with anyone except Sri Aurobindo.
There have been times when I did things for people and they sensed exactly what I had done. It has happened. It is rather rare, but still it has happened.
--
The time has not yet come when we can stop eating. never in my life has food interested me; there have been long periods when I ate almost nothing. One day I said to myself, Why lose so much time eating? And the reply was, Dont stop yet, wait; thats not your look-out.
After that I decided I would encourage everyone to eat!
0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have never seen anyone but Sri Aurobindo do that.
X's deceased guru. See Agenda I, October 4, 1958, pp. 200-201
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He went away and he never came back. That is, he stayed tranquilly with me, until I was able to put him into C.s child.
This correlation in the work is very interesting because it has quite practical effectsV. was able to communicate exactly what I had to say to I.B., and I.B. understood better through him than through me directly (because I do the work, but dont have time to deal with all the details, to tell each individual what to do).
--- Grep of noun nev
brezhnev
ivan sergeevich turgenev
ivan turgenev
kishinev
leonid brezhnev
leonid ilyich brezhnev
neva
neva river
nevada
nevadan
nevado de colima
neve
nevelson
never-never
never-never land
nevil shute
nevil shute norway
neville chamberlain
nevirapine
nevis
nevoid elephantiasis
nevus
nevus flammeus
turgenev