1. A covering. 2. Either of two folds of skin that can be moved to cover or open the eye; hence eyelids. Also fig. **lids.**
1. A curved or angular piece of metal or other hard substance for catching, pulling, holding, or suspending something. 2.* Fig.* That by which any one is attracted or ensnared and caught; a snare; a catch.
1. Brings out of a folded state; spreads or opens out. 2. Discloses or lays open to the view; displays. Also fig.
1.* Fig. To hold steadfastly to; cling to; cherish. 2. To stay close to, esp. the shore. *hugs, hugged, hugging.
1. Personal liberty, as opposed to bondage. 2. Liberation or deliverance from fate or necessity. 3. The state or power of being able to act without hindrance or restraint, liberty of action. 4. Exemption from an unpleasant or onerous condition. 5. The quality of being able to conceive and execute boldly. Freedom, Freedom"s.
1. Spirited and original; daring; bold. 2. Fearlessly, often recklessly daring; bold; defiant; insolent; brazen; unrestrained by convention or propriety.
1. That unfolds, discloses, or develops. 2. Spreading out or laying open to view; revealing; displaying. unfoldings. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.)
"1. ‘The Golden Embryo" in Hindu cosmology; the name given to the golden-hued Egg which floated on the surface of the primeval waters. In time the egg divided into two parts, the golden top half of the shell becoming the heavens and the silver lower half the earth. 2. ‘God imaginative and therefore creative"; the ‘Spirit in the middle or Dream State"; Lord of Dream-Life who takes from the ocean of subconsciously intelligent spiritual being the conscious psychic forces which He materializes or encases in various forms of gross living matter. (Enc. Br.; A)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
“1. ‘The Golden Embryo’ in Hindu cosmology; the name given to the golden-hued Egg which floated on the surface of the primeval waters. In time the egg divided into two parts, the golden top half of the shell becoming the heavens and the silver lower half the earth. 2. ‘God imaginative and therefore creative’; the ‘Spirit in the middle or Dream State’; Lord of Dream-Life who takes from the ocean of subconsciously intelligent spiritual being the conscious psychic forces which He materializes or encases in various forms of gross living matter. (Enc. Br.; A)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works.
1. To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid. 2. To defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded. justifies, justified, justifying.
1. To give light to; illuminate; shine on. 2. Make lighter or brighter. 3. To bestow spiritual enlightenment. 4. To enlighten, as with knowledge. 5. To make lucid or clear; throw light on (a subject). 6. To make resplendent or illustrious. 7. To decorate (a manuscript, book, etc.) with colours and gold or silver, as was often done in the Middle Ages. illumines, illumined, illumining, half-illumined.
1. To support or defend, as against opposition or criticism. 2. To support, sustain, maintain, by aid or assistance; to preserve unimpaired or intact. upholds, upheld.
1. Touchstone; a very smooth, fine-grained, black or dark-coloured variety of quartz or jasper (also called basanite), used for testing the quality of gold and silver alloys by the colour of the streak produced by rubbing them upon it; a piece of such stone used for this purpose. 2. *fig.* That which serves to test or try the genuineness or value of anything; a test, criterion.
"A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the status of a free Superconscient containing or basing everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos; — this and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle, subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is the support of all physical experience, can be taken as the whole field of Maya.” The Life Divine
“A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the status of a free Superconscient containing or basing everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos;—this and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle, subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is the support of all physical experience, can be taken as the whole field of Maya.” The Life Divine
abide ::: 1. To wait, stay, remain. 2. To remain in residence; to sojourn, reside, dwell. 3. To remain with; to stand firm by, to hold to, remain true to. 4. To continue in existence, endure, stand firm or sure. abides, abode, abiding.
ablaze ::: 1. Burning; on fire. 2. Gleaming with bright lights, bold colours, etc.
“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
ABSOLUTE. ::: The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a quality less void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe.
Absolute Divine ::: personal, supreme and omnipresent Godhead, transcendent as well as universal, an infinite master of all relations and determinations upholding a million universes and pervading each with a single ray of his self-light.
ADHYATMA YOGA. ::: The principle of adhyātma yoga is, in knowledge, the realisation of all things that we see or do not see but are aware of, - men, things, ourselves, events, gods, titans, angels, - as one divine Brahman, and in action and attitude, an absolute self-surrender to the Paratpara Purusha, the transcendent, infinite and universal Personality who is at once personal and impersonal, finite and infinite, self-limiting and illimitable, one and many, and informs with his being not only the Gods above, but man and the worm and the cold below.
admonishing ::: 1. Reproving or scolding, especially in a mild or good-willed manner. 2. Urging to a duty; reminding.
adventure ::: n. 1. Any novel or unexpected event in which one shares; an exciting or remarkable incident befalling any one. 2. The encountering of risks or participation in novel and exciting events; bold or daring activity, enterprise. adventure"s, world-adventure, world-adventure"s. *v. 3. To take the chance of; to commit to fortune; to undertake a thing of doubtful issue; to try, to chance, to venture into or upon. 4. To risk or hazard; stake. *adventuring.
AFFINITIES. ::: As a general rule, all these affinities have to be surrendered to the Divine along with the rest of the old nature, so that only what is in harmony with the Divine Truth can be kept and transformed for its work in you. All relations with others must be relations in the Divine and not of the old personal nature.
a game in which a blindfolded player tries to catch and identify one of the other players. The game has been around for at least 2000 years and probably longer. It is known to have been played in Greece about the time of the Roman Conquest.
age ::: n. **1. A great period or stage of the history of the Earth. 2. Hist. Any great period or portion of human history distinguished by certain characters real or mythical, as the Golden Age, the Patriarchal Age, the Bronze Age, the Age of the Reformation, the Middle Ages, the Prehistoric Age. 3. A generation or a series of generations. 4. Advanced years; old age. age"s, ages, ages". v. 5.** To grow old; to become aged.
aging ::: the process of growing old or maturing; showing signs of advancing age.
A legendary treasure city of South America believed to contain an abundance of gold, sought by the early Spanish Conquistadors. 2. Any place offering great wealth.
"All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.” ::: "The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings" or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined"? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see"?” Letters on Savitri
"All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise , express the Divine.” Social and Political Thought
“All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise , express the Divine.” Social and Political Thought
alloy ::: 1. A substance composed of two or more metals, or of a metal or metals with a nonmetal, intimately mixed, as by fusion or electrodeposition; a less costly metal mixed with a more valuable one, such as that which is added to gold and silver coinage. 2. Admixture, as with good with evil.
"All supramental gnosis is a twofold Truth-Consciousness, a consciousness of inherent self-knowledge and, by identity of self and world, of intimate world-knowledge; this knowledge is the criterion, the characteristic power of the gnosis.” The Life Divine*
“All supramental gnosis is a twofold Truth-Consciousness, a consciousness of inherent self-knowledge and, by identity of self and world, of intimate world-knowledge; this knowledge is the criterion, the characteristic power of the gnosis.” The Life Divine
All wealth belongs to the Divine and those who bold it are trustees, not possessors. It is with them today, tomorrow it may be elsewhere. All depends on the way they discharge their trust while it is with them, in what spirit, with what consciousness in their use of it, to what purpose.
"Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and fill you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.” Letters on Yoga
“Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and fill you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.” Letters on Yoga
Amal: “I believe this phrase—like ‘The sun-eyed Guardians and the Golden Sphinx’—refers to the denizens of the Supermind just as do the lines mentioning ‘the belt of the unchanging Truth’ and ‘the presence of the Ineffable’. The earlier words—‘The gold ridge of the world-dream’—point to the overmind. In the same context the words ‘Between the slayer and the saviour fires’ remind us of the closing lines of the sonnet ‘Nirvana’ which ends with lines:
Amal: “In occult vision the colour of the mind is either yellow or blue. The yellow intensifies into the gold of the Supramental and the blue into the Divine Mother’s compassionate infinity.”
Amal: “In the old photography there used to be negatives made of glass. These negatives are”plates”.
Amal: “ ‘Resist’ means ‘hold back’ or rather ‘force back’. Death is giving gifts. Savitri asks him to keep or rather force back his gifts.”
Amal: “‘The gold Hawk’ is the spiritual-mental being.”
Amal: “The reference here seems to be to satchitananda in its ultimate reality. There it is one single reality with a threefold aspect on the one hand and on the other an exclusive character of its own. This character is beyond everything—and is a mystery which cannot be expressed.”
Amal: “This must be sat-chit-ananda - Being, Consciousness and Bliss. Here the threefold reality seems subsumed under one category doing duty for the three.
amuse ::: to hold the attention of (someone) pleasantly; entertain or divert in an enjoyable or cheerful manner. amused, amusing.
Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines! Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe. But human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth move- ment and the supramental action become possible.
anchor ::: 1. Any of various devices dropped by a chain, cable, or rope to the bottom of a body of water for preventing or restricting the motion of a vessel or other floating object, typically having broad, hooklike arms that bury themselves in the bottom to provide a firm hold. 2. A person or thing that can be relied on for support, stability, or security; mainstay.
ancient ::: 1. Of or in time long past or early in the world"s history. 2. Dating from a remote period; of great age; of early origin. 3. Being old in wisdom and experience; venerable. Ancient.
— anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest, — not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of thesS things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit. It is not easy to have this equality in any full perfect measure, but one should always try more and more to make it the basis of one's inner state and outer movements.
ANUBHAVA. ::: The system of getting rid of things by anubhava* has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by vicāra+ t or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place. The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability ; for in order to reject anything from the being, one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is en entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement.
A person engaged or experienced in warfare; soldier. 2. One who shows or has shown great vigour, courage, etc. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) warriors.
a person holding an inferior relation to a superior; a subject, subordinate, servant, follower, or retainer.
a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives; one who pretends to be what he is not. (Sri Aurobindo also uses the term as an adjective.) hypocrite"s.
"A philosophy of change?(1) But what is change? In ordinary parlance change means passage from one condition to another and that would seem to imply passage from one status to another status. The shoot changes into a tree, passes from the status of shoot to the status of tree and there it stops; man passes from the status of young man to the status of old man and the only farther change possible to him is death or dissolution of his status. So it would seem that change is not something isolated which is the sole original and eternal reality, but it is something dependent on status, and if status were non-existent, change also could not exist. For we have to ask, when you speak of change as alone real, change of what, from what, to what? Without this ‘what" change could not be. ::: —Change is evidently the change of some form or state of existence from one condition to another condition.” Essays Divine and Human
“A philosophy of change?(1) But what is change? In ordinary parlance change means passage from one condition to another and that would seem to imply passage from one status to another status. The shoot changes into a tree, passes from the status of shoot to the status of tree and there it stops; man passes from the status of young man to the status of old man and the only farther change possible to him is death or dissolution of his status. So it would seem that change is not something isolated which is the sole original and eternal reality, but it is something dependent on status, and if status were non-existent, change also could not exist. For we have to ask, when you speak of change as alone real, change of what, from what, to what? Without this ‘what’ change could not be.
Apsaras ::: Sri Aurobindo: “The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic conception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the moment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal raiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty and light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and gleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they are the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the soul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines, by the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the hero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage, musing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from his white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the attraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining background, but most in the older allegories, especially the strange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in the Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.
apsaras ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic conception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the moment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal raiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty and light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and gleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they are the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the soul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines, by the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the hero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage, musing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from his white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the attraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining background, but most in the older allegories, especially the strange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in the Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.
Apsaras ::: “The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic conception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the moment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal raiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty and light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and gleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they are the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the soul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines, by the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the hero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage, musing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from his white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the attraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining background, but most in the older allegories, especially the strange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in the Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.
A radiance of a golden artifice,
arch- ::: a combining form that represents the outcome of archi- in words borrowed through Latin from Greek in the Old English period; it subsequently became a productive form added to nouns of any origin, which thus denote individuals or institutions directing or having authority over others of their class (archbishop; archdiocese; archpriest): principal. More recently, arch-1 has developed the senses "principal” (archenemy; archrival) or "prototypical” and thus exemplary or extreme (archconservative); nouns so formed are almost always pejorative. Arch-intelligence.
a secure or fortified place; stronghold; fortress.
::: "As for immortality, it cannot come if there is attachment to the body, — for it is only by living in the immortal part of oneself which is unidentified with the body and bringing down its consciousness and force into the cells that it can come. I speak of course of yogic means. The scientists now hold that it is (theoretically at least) possible to discover physical means by which death can be overcome, but that would mean only a prolongation of the present consciousness in the present body. Unless there is a change of consciousness and change of functionings it would be a very small gain.” Letters on Yoga
“As for immortality, it cannot come if there is attachment to the body,—for it is only by living in the immortal part of oneself which is unidentified with the body and bringing down its consciousness and force into the cells that it can come. I speak of course of yogic means. The scientists now hold that it is (theoretically at least) possible to discover physical means by which death can be overcome, but that would mean only a prolongation of the present consciousness in the present body. Unless there is a change of consciousness and change of functionings it would be a very small gain.” Letters on Yoga
"As for the spectator and the coils of the dragon, it is the Chino-Japanese image for the world-force extending itself in the course of the universe and this expresses the attitude of the witness seeing it all and observing in its unfolding the unrolling of the play of the Divine Lila.” Letters on Yoga
“As for the spectator and the coils of the dragon, it is the Chino-Japanese image for the world-force extending itself in the course of the universe and this expresses the attitude of the witness seeing it all and observing in its unfolding the unrolling of the play of the Divine Lila.” Letters on Yoga
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
"As there is a cosmic Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so too there is a cosmic Force that moves all things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and act many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its universal action.” The Life Divine
“As there is a cosmic Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so too there is a cosmic Force that moves all things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and act many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its universal action.” The Life Divine
“As the Sun is image and godhead of the golden Light of the divine Truth, so Dawn is image and godhead of the opening out of the supreme illumination on the night of our human ignorance. Dawn daughter of Heaven and Night her sister are obverse and reverse sides of the same eternal Infinite.” The Secret of the Veda
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.
"A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
“A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
aureate ::: golden or gilded; brilliant or splendid.
balance ::: n. **1. A state of equilibrium or equipoise; mental, psychological or emotional. 2. A weighing device, especially one consisting of a rigid beam horizontally suspended by a low-friction support at its center, with identical weighing pans hung at either end, one of which holds an unknown weight while the effective weight in the other is increased by known amounts until the beam is level and motionless. 3. An undecided or uncertain state in which issues are unresolved. v. 4. To have an equality or equivalence in weight, parts, etc.; be in equilibrium. adj. 5. Being in harmonious or proper arrangement or adjustment, proportion. 6. Mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behaviour, judgement. balanced, balancing.**
bastioned ::: 1. Anything seen as preserving or protecting some quality, condition, etc. 2. A well-fortified position, a defensive stronghold.
bold ::: 1. Fearless and daring; courageous. 2. Clear and distinct to the eye.
boldness or daring without regard for conventional thought or other restrictions.
boldness or determination in facing great danger, esp. in battle; heroic courage; bravery.
bear ::: 1. To carry. Also fig. 2. To hold up, support. Also fig. 3. To have a tolerance for; endure something with tolerance and patience. 5. To possess, as a quality or characteristic; have in or on. 6. To tend in a course or direction; move; go. 7. To render; afford; give. 8. To produce by natural growth. bears, bore, borne bearing.
bearer ::: one who carries, supports, holds up or brings. torch-bearer, torch-bearers.
bear up ::: carry; hold up; support.
Behold, at noon leaving this house of clay
behold ::: v. 1. To perceive by the visual faculty; see. beholds. Interj. **2.** Look; see.
beheld ::: pt. of behold.
being, Master of ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Vamadeva goes on to say, "Let us give expression to this secret name of the clarity, — that is to say, let us bring out this Soma wine, this hidden delight of existence; let us hold it in this world-sacrifice by our surrenderings or submissions to Agni, the divine Will or Conscious-Power which is the Master of being.” The Secret of the Veda
Being (true) ::: the true being is the inner with all its vast possibilities of reaching and expressing the Divine and especially the inmost, the soul, the psychic Purusha which is always in its essence pure, divine, turned to all that is good and true and beautiful, The exterior being has to be taken hold of by the inner being and turned into an instrument no longer of the upsurging of the ignorant subconscient Nature, but of the Divine.
benumbed ::: made (any part of the body) insensible, torpid, or powerless; made numb, deprived of sensation; stupefied or stunned, as by a blow or shock; now mostly used for the effects of cold.
bivouac ("s) ::: a temporary camp with shelters such as tents, as used by soldiers or mountaineers, often unprotected from an enemy.
bleak ::: 1. Exposed to the elements; unsheltered and barren; desolate; cold and cutting; raw, windswept. 2. Offering little or no hope or encouragement.
blindfold ::: fig. With the awareness or clear thinking impaired, the mind blinded and without perception.
blinding ::: 1. Withholding light from. 2. Dazzling with a bright light.
old-world ::: of, relating to, or characteristic of the ancient world or a past era.
brazen ::: shameless and bold; marked by flagrant and insolent audacity.
breaks up. ::: 1. Breaks into many parts; divides or become divided into pieces. 2. Dissolves, disbands, puts an end to, gives up; breaks up a house, household, etc.
brocade ::: a thick, rich fabric woven with a raised design, often using gold or silver threads. brocades.
broideries ::: embroidered needle-work designs in gold, silver, and other threads on cloth.
bureau ::: 1. A chest of drawers, especially a dresser for holding clothes, often with a desk top. 2. An office, usually of large organization, that is responsible for a specific duty such as administration, public business, etc.
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
camp ::: n. 1. A place where tents, huts, or other temporary shelters are set up, as by soldiers, nomads, or travelers. 2. The people using such shelters. 3. Temporary living quarters for soldiers or prisoners. v. 4. To make or set up a camp. or to live temporarily in or as if in a camp or outdoors. 5. To settle down securely and comfortably; become ensconced. camps, camped.
canvas ::: 1. A piece of such fabric on which a painting, especially an oil painting, is executed. 2. A painting executed on such fabric, esp. an oil painting. 3. The background against which events unfold. canvases, canvas-strips.
capacity ::: 1. The ability to receive, hold, or absorb. 2. The power to learn or retain knowledge; mental ability.
casket ::: a small and often ornate box for holding jewels or other valuables.
castle ::: lit. A large fortified building or group of buildings with thick walls, usually dominating the surrounding country. Fig. A stronghold, fortress.
cold-hearted ::: lacking sympathy or feeling; indifferent; unkind, unfeeling.
chalice ::: a cup or goblet often of gold or silver used esp. in religious services.
chameleon ::: any of numerous Old World lizards of the family Chamaeleontidae, characterized by the ability to change the colour of their skin, very slow locomotion, and a projectile tongue.
CHANGE OF NATURE. ::: The first step is to become cons- cious and separate from the old surface nature. For this rajasic vital nature
charge ::: 1. An assigned duty or task; a responsibility given to one. 2. Care; custody. 3. An order, an impetuous onset or attack, command, or injunction. 4. The quantity of anything that a receptacle is intended to hold. v. 5. *Fig. To load to capacity; fill. *charged.
cherish ::: 1. To hold great love for someone; feel love for one. 2. To care for, protect and love —(a person). 3. To cling fondly to (a hope, idea, etc.); nurse. cherished.
chides ::: expresses disapproval of; scolds; reproaches. chiding.
Child, Golden
child, Golden
child, the Golden
chill ::: adj. 1. Cold, often unpleasantly so; numbing. 2. Discouraging; dispiriting. 3. Unduly formal; unfriendly; unfeeling. v. 4. To lower in temperature; cool; make cold. 5. Fig. To depress (enthusiasm, etc.); discourage. chilled, chilling.
cipher ::: n. 1. Something having no influence or value; a zero; a nonentity. 2. A secret method of writing, as by transposition or substitution of letters, specially formed symbols, or the like. unintelligible to all but those possessing the key; a cryptograph. ciphers. *v. 3. To put in secret writing; encode. *ciphers. Note: Sri Aurobindo also spelled the word as Cypher, the old English spelling.
Citta-vrtti ::: w-aves of consciousness, its manifold activities ; waves of reaction and response from the basic consciousness.
clamped ::: 1. Fastened with or fixed in a clamp (a device for binding, holding, compressing or fastening objects together); hence, fig. Restricted, repressed, tightened down, restrained. 2. Established by authority; imposed clamps. (Sri Aurobindo also employs clamped as an adj.)
clasp ::: n. 1. A grip or grasp of the hand, also reciprocal. 2. Union. 3. An embrace or hug. Also fig. v. 4. To seize, grasp, or grip with the hand. **5. To hold in a tight embrace. clasps, clasped, clasping.**
cling ::: 1. To come or be in close contact with; stick or hold together and resist separation 2. To hold fast or adhere to as if by embracing. 3. To be emotionally or intellectually attached or remain close to. 4. To hold on tightly or tenaciously to. 5. To remain attached as to an idea, hope, memory, etc. clings, clung, clinging.
clutch ::: n. 1. A tight grasp. v. 2. To grip or hold tightly or firmly. 3. To try to seize or grasp (usually fol. by at) clutched, clutching.
Coilas ::: Tehmi: “Coilas is the old Bengali spelling of Kailas and is the heaven of Shiva.”
colloques ::: converses with; holds colloquy.
combs ::: a structure of hexagonal, thin-walled cells constructed from beeswax by honeybees to hold honey and larvae.
conceive ::: 1. To form or hold an idea. 2. To begin, originate, or found (something) in a particular way (usually used in the passive). 3. To apprehend mentally; understand. 4. To be created or formed in the womb; to be engendered; begotten. conceives, conceived, self-conceived.
CONCENTRATION ::: Fixing the consciousness in one place or on one object and in a single condition.
A gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g. the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point.
Concentration is necessary, first to turn the whole will and mind from the discursive divagation natural to them, following a dispersed movement of the thoughts, running after many-branching desires, led away in the track of the senses and the outward mental response to phenomena; we have to fix the will and the thought on the eternal and real behind all, and this demands an immense effort, a one-pointed concentration. Secondly, it is necessary in order to break down the veil which is erected by our ordinary mentality between ourselves and the truth; for outer knowledge can be picked up by the way, by ordinary attention and reception, but the inner, hidden and higher truth can only be seized by an absolute concentration of the mind on its object, an absolute concentration of the will to attain it and, once attained, to hold it habitually and securely unite oneself with it.
Centre of Concentration: The two main places where one can centre the consciousness for yoga are in the head and in the heart - the mind-centre and the soul-centre.
Brain concentration is always a tapasyā and necessarily brings a strain. It is only if one is lifted out of the brain mind altogether that the strain of mental concentration disappears.
At the top of the head or above it is the right place for yogic concentration in reading or thinking.
In whatever centre the concentration takes place, the yoga force generated extends to the others and produces concentration or workings there.
Modes of Concentration: There is no harm in concentrating sometimes in the heart and sometimes above the head. But concentration in either place does not mean keeping the attention fixed on a particular spot; you have to take your station of consciousness in either place and concentrate there not on the place, but on the Divine. This can be done with eyes shut or with eyes open, according as it best suits.
If one concentrates on a thought or a word, one has to dwell on the essential idea contained in the word with the aspiration to feel the thing which it expresses.
There is no method in this yoga except 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 to 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 a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be.
Powers (three) of Concentration ::: By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself we can become whatever we choose ; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fears, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love ; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object.
Stages in Concentration (Rajayogic) ::: that in which the object is seized, that in which it is held, that in which the mind is lost in the status which the object represents or to which the concentration leads.
Concentration and Meditation ::: Concentration means fixing the consciousness in one place or one object and in a single condition Meditation can be diffusive,e.g. thinking about the Divine, receiving impressions and discriminating, watching what goes on in the nature and acting upon it etc. Meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.
vide Dhyāna.
confident ::: 1. Having or showing confidence or certainty; sure. 2. Sure of oneself; having no uncertainty about one"s own abilities, correctness, successfulness, etc.; self-confident; bold.
conscience ::: that part of one"s mind which holds one"s knowledge or sense of right and wrong; inner knowledge. half-conscience.
contain ::: 1. To be capable of holding. 2. To halt the spread or development of; check, esp. of opposition. 3. To hold or keep within limits; restrain. contained, contains, containing, all-containing, All-containing.
Contemplate, for a moment, this wondrous reply in six lines, of Satyavan to his father’s gentle scolding of Savitri.”at noon leaving this house of clay”, for in the epic his death in the forest takes place at noon, not a departure of an early morning soul or one who leaves enfolded in the dark rooms of night, but at a time when the sun is at its most brilliant, showering the earth with light.
control ::: n. 1. Power to direct, determine or command. 2. A means of regulation or restraint; curb; check. v. 3. To exercise authoritative control or power over. 4. To hold in restraint; check, esp. one"s emotions. controls, controlled, controlling.
cord ::: 1. An influence, feeling, or force that binds or restrains; a bond or tie. 2. Fig. Like a thin rope made of several strands woven together to hold the parts of anything. cords, heart-cords.
coronet ::: 1. A crown worn by nobles or peers. 2. A crown-like ornament decorated with gold or jewels.
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Spirit ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Cosmic Spirit or Self contains everything in the cosmos — it upholds cosmic Mind, universal Life, universal Matter as well as the overmind. The Self is more than all these things which are its formulations in Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"[The Divine in one of its three aspects] . . . is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe - although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
". . . the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the universe, . . . .” *The Life Divine
"For the cosmic Spirit inhabits each and all, but is more than all; . . . .”The Life Divine
cradle ::: n. 1. A small low bed for an infant, often furnished with rockers. 2. Where something originated or was nurtured in its early existence. cradles v. 2.* *To hold gently and carefully as in a cradle. 3. To hold gently or protectively. cradles, cradled.**
dare ::: 1. To have the boldness and courage to try; venture; hazard; risk. 2. To meet defiantly; face courageously. dares, dared, daring.
daring ::: n. 1. Adventurous courage; boldness. daring"s. adj. 2. Bold or courageous; fearless or intrepid; adventurous.
DARK PATH. ::: The dark path is there and there are many who make a Gospel of spiritual suffering; many hold it to be the unavoidable price of victory. It may be so under certain circumstances, as it has been in so many lives at the beginning. or one may choose to make it so. But then the price has to be paid with resignation, fortitude or a tenacious resilience. Borne that way, the attacks of the dark forces or the ordeals they impose have a meaning. After each victory gained over them, there is then a sensible advance; often they seem to show us the difficulties in ourselves which we have to overcome. But all the same it is a too dark and difficult way which nobody need follow on whom the necessity does not lie.
dateless ::: 1. Endless, limitless. 2. So old as to be undatable.
defied ::: opposed or resisted with boldness and assurance; unaffected by; resisted or withstood. defying.
deny ::: 1. To refuse to recognize or acknowledge; disavow. 2. To declare untrue; contradict. 3. To refuse to fulfil the requests or expectations; refuse to give. 4. To give a refusal to; turn down or away. 5. To withhold the possession, user, or enjoyment of. denies, denied, denying.
::: ". . . desire, wrath and greed, the three powers of the rajasic ego, and these are the threefold doors of Hell. . . .” Essays on the Gita
“… desire, wrath and greed, the three powers of the rajasic ego, and these are the threefold doors of Hell….” Essays on the Gita
destiny ::: “Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One’s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” Letters on Yoga
DESTINY. ::: Destiny in the ripd sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and detenmning the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiri- tual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher
"Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
“Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
developing ::: undergoing the process of growth; evolving; unfolding.
DHARANA. ::: Holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of all other ideas and mental activities.
Difference in the Descent in old Yogas and this Yoga ::: I explain the absence of the descent experiences by the old yogas having been mainly confined to the psj'cho-spiritual-occult range of experience in which the higher experiences come into the still mind or the conceniraied heart by a sort of filtration or reflection — the field of this experience being from the
disengage ::: 1. To release from something that holds fast, connects, or entangles. 2. To free or detach oneself; withdraw. disengaging.
Divine, he holds in himself the -world-existence and it is in his consciousness that it moves, so by entering into the Supreme one rises above subjection to Nature, but one docs not disappear from all consciousness of world-extstcncc.
“Divine Love, in my view of it, is again not something ethereal, cold and far, but a love absolutely intense, intimate and full of unity, closeness and rapture using all the nature for its expression.” Letters on Yoga
divine love ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Divine Love, in my view of it, is again not something ethereal, cold and far, but a love absolutely intense, intimate and full of unity, closeness and rapture using all the nature for its expression.” *Letters on Yoga
DIVISION. ::: Division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.
Division of being ■ A necessary stage In the yogic develop- ment and experience. One feels that there is a twofold being, the inner psychic which is the true one and the other, the outer human being which is instrumentaf for the outward life. To live in the inner psychic being in union with the Divine while doing the outward work is the first stage in Karmayoga.
Live always in the psychic being, your true being. The psychic will, in due time, awaken and turn to the Divine all the rest of the nature, so that even the outer being will feel itself in touch with the Divine and moved by the Divine in all it is and feels and does.
dominions ::: territories, usually of considerable size, in which a single rulership holds sway.
double ::: 1. Composed of two like or unlike parts. 2. Twofold in character or meaning, dual.
draped ::: covered, dressed, or hung with or as if with cloth in loose folds. drapes.
draperies ::: fig. Cloth gracefully draped and arranged in loose folds.
dual ::: 1. Composed of two usually like or complementary parts; double. 2. Having a two-fold, or double, character or nature. dual"s.
Durga ::: “In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works.
durga ::: "In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br.)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
eidolon ::: Behind the gold eidolon of a Name
eldorado(s) ::: 1. A legendary treasure city of South America believed to contain an abundance of gold, sought by the early Spanish Conquistadors. 2. Any place offering great wealth.
EMPrY QUIETUDE. ::: TIic consciousness is often like a vessel which has to be emptied of Its mixed or undesirable con- tents ; it has to Iw kept vacant for a while till it can be filled with things new and true, right and pure. The one tiling to be avoided is the refilling of the cup with the old turbid contents.
emptied ::: holding or containing nothing of meaning, or certain specified qualities.
empty ::: 1. Holding or containing nothing. 2. Having no occupants or inhabitants; vacant. 3. Destitute of some quality or qualities; devoid. 4. Without purpose, substance, or value. emptier.
“Empty and cold is the chamber of the Bride;”
enfolding ::: embracing; enveloping.
entwined ::: clasped as a twining plant; wrapped around; enfolded, embraced. Also fig.
::: Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements, — anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest, — not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit.” *Letters on Yoga
Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements,—anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest,—not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit.” Letters on Yoga
eternity ::: “The timeless Spirit is not necessarily a blank; it may hold all in itself, but in essence, without reference to time or form or relation or circumstance, perhaps in an eternal unity. Eternity is the common term between Time and the Timeless Spirit. What is in the Timeless unmanifested, implied, essential, appears in Time in movement, or at least in design and relation, in result and circumstance. These two then are the same Eternity or the same Eternal in a double status; they are a twofold status of being and consciousness, one an eternity of immobile status, the other an eternity of motion in status.” The Life Divine
Even as of old in the raw youth of Time,
“Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength’ or ‘Behold God’s power in me’, but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate.’” The Synthesis of Yoga
Every sadbaka Is faced with two elements in him, the inner being which wants the Divine and the sadhana and the outer mainly vital and physical being which does not want them but remains attached to the things of the ordinary life. The mind is sometimes led by one, someUoves by the other. One of the most important things he has to do, therefore, is to decide fundamentally the quarrel between these two parts and to persuade or compel by psychic aspiration, by steadiness of the mind’s thought and will, by the choice of the higher vital in his emotional being, the opposing elements to be first quiescent and then consenting. So long as he is not able to do that his progress must be either very slow or fluctuating and chequered as the aspiration within cannot have a continuous action or a continuous result. Besides so long as thb is so, there are likely to be periodical revolts of the vita! repining at the slow progress, des- pairing, desponding, declaring the Adhar unfit ; calls from old life will come ; circumstances will be attracted which seem to justify it, suggestions will come from men and unseen powers pressing the sadhaka away from the sadhana and pointing back- ward to the former life. And yet in that life he is not likely to get any real satisfaction.
evolution ::: “Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being.” The Hour of God
evolution ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being.” *The Hour of God
expand ::: 1. To increase in extent, size, volume, scope, etc. 2. To unfold, open out, widen. expands, expanding.
expanding ::: adj. 1. That opens up or out; unfolds. 2. That unfolds or develops; spreads out. 3. That increases in bulk, extent, volume, etc.
Fastened with or fixed in a clamp (a device for binding, holding, compressing or fastening objects together); hence, fig. Restricted, repressed, tightened down, restrained. 2. Established by authority; imposed clamps. (Sri Aurobindo also employs clamped as an adj.)
fate ::: “The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.” Letters on Yoga
FATE. ::: Tlic Indian explanation of fate is karma. We our- selves arc our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us ; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still, we arc creating our fate tor the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present,
folded ::: 1. Enclosed, wrapped, enveloped. 2. Clasped as in prayer. 3. Brought (the arms, hands, etc.) together in an intertwined or crossed manner; clasped, crossed.
fold (s) ::: v. 1. To envelope or clasp; enfold. 2. To bring (the wings) close to the body, as a bird on alighting. folding. *n. 3. The doubling of any flexible substance, as cloth; one part turned or bent and laid on another. Also fig. *4. A coil of a serpent, string, etc.
fearless ::: without fear; bold or brave; intrepid.
feudal ::: of, pertaining to, or like the feudal system (the system of civil government which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages, and which was based on the relation of superior and vassal arising out of the holding of lands.)
flame ::: “The true soul secret in us,—subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil,—this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
foothold ::: a place providing support for the foot in climbing or standing. Also fig.
footing ::: 1. A secure place for the feet; a foothold.
fortress ::: 1. A large fortified place; a fort or a group of forts, often including a town; citadel. 2. Any place of exceptional security; stronghold.
fourfold being
fourfold ::: composed of four parts; comprising four parts or members.
[French, from Old French, craftsmanship, from Latin artificium, from artifex, artific-, craftsman: ars, art-, art; see art1 + -fex, maker; see dh —in Indo-European roots.]
FRIENDSHIP. ::: Friendship or affection is not excluded fron the yoga. Friendship with the Divine is a recognised relation in the snd/ianii. Friendships between the sddhakas exist and are encouraged. Only, we seek to found them on a surer basis than that on which the bulk of human friendships are insecurely founded. It is precisely because we hold friendship, brotherhood, love to be sacred things that we want this change. We want them rooted in the soul, founded on the rock of the Divine.
[from Old French, from Latin artificium skill, from artifex one possessed of a specific skill, from ars skill + -fex, from facere to make]
Golden Child
golden Child ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
golden house
goldening ::: covering with the appearance of gold.
Golden light always means the light of Truth ; but the nature of the Truth varies according to the plane to which it belongs.
Golden light is a light from the Supermind but naturally it is modified in the plane in which h works. It becomes the light of Truth in the OvermInd, light of Truth in the intuition.
Golden light is usually a light from the supermind, a light of
golden ::: of, relating to, made of, or containing gold.
golden Path ::: also known as the sunlit path.
Golden Path
golden Sphinx
golden Sphinx ::: Sri Aurobindo: "…the luminous veiled Sphinx of the infinite Consciousness and eternal Wisdom.” The Life Divine
gold Hawk
gold-leaf ::: gold beaten into extremely thin sheets used especially for gilding.
gilded ::: 1. Made from or covered with gold. 2. Having a deep golden colour.
GOLDEN LIGHT. ::: Tlic golden light is that of the Divine
GOLD, vide Symbol.
Gorgon ::: Greek myth any of three winged monstrous sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, who had live snakes for hair, huge teeth, and brazen claws. A glance at Medusa who was slain by Perseus) turned the beholder to stone.
gorgon ::: greek myth any of three winged monstrous sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, who had live snakes for hair, huge teeth, and brazen claws. A glance at Medusa who was slain by Perseus) turned the beholder to stone.
grasp ::: v. 1. To seize and hold firmly; lit. and fig. 2. To take hold of intellectually; comprehend. grasps, grasped, grasping.* n. 3. A hold or grip. 4. Fig. Total rule, possession or control. 5. Capacity or power to understand or comprehend. 6. One"s power of seizing and holding; reach. 7. The act of grasping or gripping, as with the hands or arms. 8. One"s arms or hands, in embracing or gripping. ::: to grasp at: To try to seize someone or something. Also fig.*
grate ::: a framework of metal bars used to hold fuel or food in a stove, furnace, or fireplace.
grip ::: n. 1. A tight hold; a firm grasp. stone-grip. *v. 2. To seize, catch; to take firm hold or possession of. Also fig. *grips, gripped.
guard ::: n. 1. Something that gives protection; a safeguard. 2. A body of people, esp. soldiers, charged with guarding a place from disturbance, theft, etc. guards. v. 3. To keep safe from harm or danger; to take care of, watch over, protect, defend. 4. To protect from harm by or as if by watching over. guards, guarded, guarding, deep-guarded, self-guarded. ::: on guard. Vigilant; watchful.
Hand, the golden
hold
hold up. 16. To present to notice; expose.
herds ::: gold horned herds trooped into earth’s cave-heart:
* Householder.
householder
household
house of gold**
"Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation*
“Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation
::: "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
“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
"If we take this fourfold status as a figure of the Self passing from its superconscient state, where there is no subject or object, into a luminous trance in which superconscience becomes a massed consciousness out of which the subjective status of being and the objective come into emergence, then we get according to our view of things either a possible process of illusionary creation or a process of creative Self-knowledge and All-knowledge.” The Life Divine
“If we take this fourfold status as a figure of the Self passing from its superconscient state, where there is no subject or object, into a luminous trance in which superconscience becomes a massed consciousness out of which the subjective status of being and the objective come into emergence, then we get according to our view of things either a possible process of illusionary creation or a process of creative Self-knowledge and All-knowledge.” The Life Divine
If we would understand the difference of this global Overmind Consciousness from our separative and only imperfectly synthetic mental consciousness, we may come near to it if we compare the strictly mental with what would be an overmental view of activities in our material universe. To the Overmind, for example, all religions would be true as developments of the one eternal religion, all philosophies would be valid each in its own field as a statement of its own universe-view from its own angle, all political theories with their practice would be the legitimate working out of an Idea Force with its right to application and practical development in the play of the energies of Nature. In our separative consciousness, imperfectly visited by glimpses of catholicity and universality, these things exist as opposites; each claims to be the truth and taxes the others with error and falsehood, each feels impelled to refute or destroy the others in order that itself alone may be the Truth and live: at best, each must claim to be superior, admit all others only as inferior truth-expressions. An overmental Intelligence would refuse to entertain this conception or this drift to exclusiveness for a moment; it would allow all to live as necessary to the whole or put each in its place in the whole or assign to each its field of realisation or of endeavour. This is because in us consciousness has come down completely into the divisions of the Ignorance; Truth is no longer either an Infinite or a cosmic whole with many possible formulations, but a rigid affirmation holding any other affirmation to be false because different from itself and entrenched in other limits. Our mental consciousness can indeed arrive in its cognition at a considerable approach towards a total comprehensiveness and catholicity, but to organise that in action and life seems to be beyond its power. Evolutionary Mind, manifest in individuals or collectivities, throws up a multiplicity of divergent viewpoints, divergent lines of action and lets them work themselves out side by side or in collision or in a certain intermixture; it can make selective harmonies, but it cannot arrive at the harmonic control of a true totality. Cosmic Mind must have even in the evolutionary Ignorance, like all totalities, such a harmony, if only of arranged accords and discords; there is too in it an underlying dynamism of oneness: but it carries the completeness of these things in its depths, perhaps in a supermind-overmind substratum, but does not impart it to individual Mind in the evolution, does not bring it or has not yet brought it from the depths to the surface. An Overmind world would be a world of harmony; the world of Ignorance in which we live is a world of disharmony and struggle. …
IGNORANCE. ::: Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life.
This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth.
Sevenfold Ignorance ::: If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, ip a spatial and temporal universe, wc see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many- sided self-ignorance. We are Ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming ; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence — that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self ; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becom- ing in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence — that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming ; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-sclf — that is the tViTid, \Vie egoistic ignorance. V/c aie ignorant of oat eteinai becoming in Time ; we take this Uttle life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space for our beginning, our middle and our end, — that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is super-conscient, sub- conscient, intraconscient, circumcooscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence — that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming ; we take the mind or life or body or any two or all three tor our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to deter- mine sovereignly by its emergence from their operations, — that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoy- ment of our life in the world ; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal, — that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.
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.”
importunate ::: persistent, pressing, relentless; holding tenaciously to a purpose or course of action in demand or solicitation.
Impose the illusion of their twofold screen
In Book II, Canto II, ‘a golden artifice’
individual ::: “But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative senseof individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings.” Letters on Yoga
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
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.
intermediate zone ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers. ::: It is not necessary for everyone to struggle through the intermediate zone. If one has purified oneself, if there is no abnormal vanity, egoism, ambition or other strong misleading element, or if one is vigilant and on one"s guard, or if the psychic is in front, one can either pass rapidly and directly or with a minimum of trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth.
"In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning — it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one"s being, one"s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of ‘making sacred" and is used as an equivalent of the word yajna. When the Gita speaks of the ‘sacrifice of knowledge", it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works. The Mother has written somewhere that the spiritual sacrifice is joyful and not painful in its nature. On the spiritual path, very commonly, if a seeker still feels the old ties and responsibilities strongly he is not asked to sever or leave them, but to let the call in him grow till all within is ready. Many, indeed, come away earlier because they feel that to cut loose is their only chance, and these have to go sometimes through a struggle. But the pain, the struggle, is not the essential character of this spiritual self-offering.” Letters on Yoga
“In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning—it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one’s being, one’s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of ‘making sacred’ and is used as an equivalent of the word yajna. When the Gita speaks of the ‘sacrifice of knowledge’, it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works. The Mother has written somewhere that the spiritual sacrifice is joyful and not painful in its nature. On the spiritual path, very commonly, if a seeker still feels the old ties and responsibilities strongly he is not asked to sever or leave them, but to let the call in him grow till all within is ready. Many, indeed, come away earlier because they feel that to cut loose is their only chance, and these have to go sometimes through a struggle. But the pain, the struggle, is not the essential character of this spiritual self-offering.” Letters on Yoga
INTOXICANTS. ::: It is the habit in the subconscient material that feels an artificial need created by the past and does not care whether it is harmful or disturbing to the nerves or not. That is the feature of all intoxicants (wine, tobacco, cocaine etc.), people go on even after the deleterious effects have shown themselves and even after all real pleasure in it has ceased because of this artificial need (it is not real). The will has to get hold of this subconscient persistence and dissolve it.
involved ::: enveloped, enfolded, enwrapped.
“I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
“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
I -The’thousand'petalled lotus, sahasradala, commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an over- flooding directness the ovennind can have with the rest com- munication or .an liramediate contact,, (Colour ::: .blue with' gold light around.) i. ' j i i . n ,•,,/! i, ,i i i
Its thoughts or run about among the objects it pursues, remaining at the back of the mind quiet and separate ; (2) to practise quietude and concentration in this separateness, until the habit of quiet takes hold of the physical mind and replaces the habit of these activities.
jaws ::: 1. In pl. The bones of the skull that frame the mouth and serve to open it; the bones that hold the teeth. 2. In pl. Anything resembling a pair of jaws or evoking the concept of grasping and holding, as the ‘jaws of death" etc.
Jhumur: “She (Savitri) has gone into this world of light not having really left her body. It is not an experience that is beyond the body. It is in the physical life that she has attained this plane, so topaz, a yellow colour, is the colour of the mind, stone is the consciousness in matter, so physical life, body, life, mind. Mother had told us I remember that a precious stone symbolises consciousness that is lodged in matter. It shows how blazing light is present even in the hardest matter. So you have the image of the physical light, like a kind of a wall, a barrier.”
Jhumur: “That is the god, the order of light, the Divine Presence. He [Sri Aurobindo] uses many images, the golden nimbus, the white spiritual ray, the secret voice. In so many ways the divine presence makes itself felt. Sometimes as a voice, sometimes as a nimbus, sometimes as a very much more concrete presence, according to one’s receptivity.”
Jupiter is usually thought to have originated as a sky god. His identifying implement is the thunderbolt, and his primary sacred animal is the eagle,[1] which held precedence over other birds in the taking of auspices[2] and became one of the most common symbols of the Roman army (see Aquila). The two emblems were often combined to represent the god in the form of an eagle holding in its claws a thunderbolt, frequently seen on Greek and Roman coins.[3] As the sky-god, he was a divine witness to oaths, the sacred trust on which justice and good government depend. Many of his functions were focused on the Capitoline (“Capitol Hill”), where the citadel was located. He was the chief deity of the early Capitoline Triad with Mars and Quirinus.[4] In the later Capitoline Triad, he was the central guardian of the state with Juno and Minerva. His sacred tree was the oak.
knead ::: 1. To mix and work into a uniform mass, as by folding, pressing, and stretching with the hands. 2. To make or shape by or as if by folding, pressing, and stretching; manipulate. kneaded.
Lakshmi ::: “Lakshmi is usually golden, not white. Saraswati is white.” Letters on Yoga
::: "Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
leaf ::: 1. A usually green, flattened, lateral structure attached to a stem and functioning as a principle organ of photosynthesis and transpiration in most plants. 2. A page of a book or manuscript. lotus-leaf. (See also gold-leaf.)
Madhav: “Alchemy is changing base metal into gold. So heaven experiments in changing this creature called man into a godhead. And this experiment is done on the base of nature, earth.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy: Life is symbolised by Horse, aswa in the old tradition of the Vedas. The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy steps into a veritable wonderland of the Glory of God. The Glory is pictured as a huge Bird whose wings are brooding over the new creation to come. Just as a hen broods over its egg, these Wings enfold and incubate the new truth in the offing.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Eidolon is an unsubstantial figure. The name we give is only such an unsubstantial label. The secret is not touched. Gold is to indicate that though the name as such may appear to be unsubstantial, there is some truth in it.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Gold represents Truth, Divinity. The Hawk is the high soaring bird, the soul embodied in higher nature.”
Madhav: “The Animal represents the lower rajasic nature; the sacred fence is the human being with all its scaffolding.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The Golden Child is the Divine Soul that is evolving in the universe; it has arrived at a stage where, as a result of the ingressions of the Light from the planes of Mind, the growing Soul is able to think and see.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “There is in this creation of God an everlasting No. ‘NO’ is negation of the fleeting pleasures of life, unsubstantial movements of life, the attraction of the senses, the hold of ego, ignorance. For that the answer is no. This is not it, this is not it, neti, neti, thou hast only neared this everlasting No.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The Scripture Wonderful refers to the Supreme Knowledge. The Spirit-mate of Life hopes to divine the Supreme Knowledge in the transcript made by Life of God’s intention; but that script, however bright and attractive is a product of her fancy. The true Word lies covered under her fanciful rendering. The Supreme Knowledge that holds the key to the celestial beatitudes escapes him.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The wheel of determinism in material Nature turns mechanically without any saving sensation, it moves under the pressure of a gathered momentum without questioning; it is immaterial in its operations without the slightest breath of the warmth of life. All circumstances are cogs in this wheel of Fate that revolves relentlessly. It is only a force of will from an existence beyond the domain of this mechanism that can hold the movement, change its direction and displace the instrumental condition.” Readings in Savitri, Vol. I.
Madhav: “When Aswapathy lifts the curtain of the flesh i.e. when he gets through the barrier of his physical existence, he comes to the threshold of another domain, subtle and occult. He sees a serpent watching, guarding the entrance. In all traditions, especially the ancient, at the doors of every subtle kingdom there is a sentinel and that sentinel is imaged as a serpent. In spiritual symbolism the serpent stands for Energy. Depending on the colour of the serpent, it is physical energy or vital energy, mental energy, spiritual energy. Unless this serpent allows one to pass one cannot enter. The serpent, in this context, is the guard whose consent is necessary before one can pass. The Book of the Divine Mother
MAHAKALI ::: Goddess of the supreme strength ; with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest austerity of lapas and swiftness to the battle and the victory and the laughter, the attahosya, that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance. .*
Afa/ifliflh' and Kdh are not the same. Kali is a lesser form.
Mahakali in the higher planes appears usually with the golden colour.
MAHASAKTI ::: Original Power, supreme Nature, holding in herself infinite existence and creating the wonders of the cosmos.
maintains ::: 1. Keeps in an existing state; preserves or retains. 2. Defends against contradiction; upholds. maintained.
manifold ::: having numerous different parts, elements, features, forms, etc.
marble ::: n. 1. A hard crystalline metamorphic rock resulting from the recrystallization of a limestone: takes a high polish and is used for building and sculpture. adj. 2. Resembling metamorphic rock in consistency, texture, venation, color, or coldness, smoothness, whiteness, etc. 3. Hard, rigid and inflexible, as marble.
march ::: n. 1. The steady forward movement of a body of troops. 2. Steady forward movement or progression. Also fig. marches, marchings, sun-march. v. 3. To walk steadily and rhythmically forward in step with others, as soldiers on parade; advance in step in an organized body. 4. To proceed directly and purposefully; to go forward; advance; proceed. 5. To progress steadily onward; advance. Also fig. marches, marched, marching. ::: forced marches. Marches that are longer than troops are accustomed to and maintained at a faster pace than usual, generally undertaken for a particular objective under emergency conditions.
“Mental intelligence thinks out because it is merely a reflecting force of consciousness which does not know, but seeks to know; it follows in Time step by step the working of a knowledge higher than itself, a knowledge that exists always, one and whole, that holds Time in its grasp, that sees past, present and future in a single regard.: The Life Divine
Messengers, the golden
mind, Ideal Mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijñâna and which we may describe in our modern turn of language as the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind. There the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.” The Life Divine
“Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.” The Life Divine
n. 1. The lower interior part of a ship or airplane where cargo is stored. 2. The act or a means of grasping. v. 3. To have or keep in the hand; keep fast; grasp. 4. To bear, sustain, or support, as with the hands or arms, or by any other means. 5. To contain or be capable of containing. 6. To keep from departing or getting away. 7. To withstand stress, pressure, or opposition; to maintain occupation of by force or coercion. 8. To have in its power, possess, affect, occupy. 9. To engage in; preside over; carry on. 10. To have or keep in the mind; think or believe. 11. To regard or consider. 12. To keep or maintain a grasp on something. 13. To maintain one"s position against opposition; continue in resistance. 14. To agree or side (usually followed by with). holds, holding. ::: hold back. 15. a. To retain possession of; keep back. b. To refrain from revealing; withhold. c. To refrain from participating or engaging in some activity.
Name ::: Jhumur: “Hold onto the Name. That is the only power. I remember Mother once told me—because there was a moment when I was attacked by a certain person. She was mad and so had a certain number of people she chose to attack with her vibrations, with her words. If she could she would throw stones. I was very, very young, about 17 or 18. I said, ‘Every time I see her, Mother, I really start to tremble. It has become something so physically terrifying. Once she (the mad person) had thrown a big paperweight, a cement paperweight in the library. It went just past my head, it could have killed me. After that I became really frightened. So Mother told me ‘Nothing will happen to you. Each time you see her just say ‘Ma, Ma, Ma.’ But it was so difficult. Each time I saw her from far I would think, ‘I have to say Ma.’ But when she came close enough I could not say the Name, for a long time, for a very long time. I was so frightened the fear would take the Name away. I knew very well I had to say the Name That is what Mother told me. And one day I could, finally I could and the mad person lost interest in me!”
nerve ::: 1. Any of the cordlike bundles of fibers made up of neurons through which sensory stimuli and motor impulses pass between the brain or other parts of the central nervous system and the eyes, glands, muscles, and other parts of the body. Nerves form a network of pathways for conducting information throughout the body. 2. Fortitude; stamina. Forceful quality; boldness. nerve"s, nerves, nerve-beat.
niche ::: a recess in a wall, as for holding a statue or urn.
nimbus ::: “The golden Nimbus now is seen no more,”
Nolini: “Griffin-Golden Hawk + Winged Lion—The piercing eye of soaring aspiration + Upsurging energy of the pure vital—Remember Vishnu’s Garuda + Durga’s lion—With these twin powers you cross safely the borderland between the lower and the upper hemisphere—the twilight world (Night and Day)—Griffin is the guardian God of this passage—dvarapalaka. Mother India—Nolini’s reply to a question from Huta.
Nolini: “The hawk is a symbol of the vital; the ‘gold hawk’ is the vital soul transformed.”
Nolini: “This world of absolute light which Savitri names ‘everlasting day’ is what the Upanishadic Rishi sees and describes as the golden lid upon the face of the Sun. The Sun is the complete integral light of the Truth in its fullness. The golden covering has be removed if one is to see the Sun itself—to live the integral life, one has to possess the integral truth.” Collected Works, Vol. 4.
nursery ::: a room or area in a household set apart for the use of children.
obstacle ::: one or that which opposes, stands in the way of, or holds up progress. obstacles.
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
Oh, a tremendous power—tremendous. The first time I heard it … The first time I heard it … There was a certain Bernard who had spent a year in India, in the Himalayas, and he was visited by yogis whom he didn’t know (he lived in a hut in the Himalayas, all alone). One yogi came to see him; he didn’t say anything, he just sat by his side and then left. And that yogi simply told him,”Om …” Then he came back to France, recounted his experiences in India, and he said that. Me, I knew absolutely nothing of India at the time, and when he uttered the word OM … (Mother brings her arms down), it came: a Force like this, my whole, entire body, everything vibrated in an extraordinary way! It was like a revelation—everything, but everything started vibrating. Then I said,”At last, here’s the true sound!” Yet I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, neither what it meant nor anything. Mother’s Agenda, Volume 10, 1969.
Oh, a tremendous power—tremendous. The first time I heard it … The first time I heard it … There was a certain Bernard who had spent a year in India, in the Himalayas, and he was visited by yogis whom he didn"t know (he lived in a hut in the Himalayas, all alone). One yogi came to see him; he didn"t say anything, he just sat by his side and then left. And that yogi simply told him, "Om …” Then he came back to France, recounted his experiences in India, and he said that. Me, I knew absolutely nothing of India at the time, and when he uttered the word OM … (Mother brings her arms down), it came: a Force like this, my whole, entire body, everything vibrated in an extraordinary way! It was like a revelation—everything, but everything started vibrating. Then I said, "At last, here"s the true sound!” Yet I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, neither what it meant nor anything.
Old forms of evil cling to the world’s soul:
"One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us. "Letters on Yoga
“One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us.”Letters on Yoga
one who occupies or owns a house. house-holder.
Orange or Red Gold ::: light of the supramenial in the physical.
"Ordinarily we mean by it [consciousness] our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed.” Letters on Yoga
“Ordinarily we mean by it [consciousness] our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed.” Letters on Yoga
— or in it, our Father in heaven, — and t\e'do not feel or sec him in ourselves or around us. So long as we keep this vision, fbe mortaUty in us is queilcd by that Immortality ; it feeis the light, power and joy and responds to it according to its capa- city ; or it feels the descent of the spirit and it is then for a time transformed or else uplifted into some lustre of reflection of the light and power ; it ^comes a vessel of the Ananda. But at other times it lapses into old mortality and exists or works dully or pettily in the ruck of its earthly habits. The complete redemption comes by the descent of the divine Power into the
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from mani- festing in the body.
outfacing ::: facing or confronting boldly; defying.
passionless ::: not feeling or moved by passion; cold or unemotional; calm, detached or unimpassioned.
pass ::: v. 1. To move on or ahead; proceed. 2. To move by. 3. To go or get through (something), lit. and fig. **4. To go across or over (a stream, threshold, etc.); cross. 5. To cross, traverse, in reference to times, stages, states, conditions, processes, actions, experiences, etc. 6. To be transferred from one to another; circulate. 7. To come to or toward, then go beyond. 8. To come to an end. 9. To cease to exist. 10. To convey, transfer, or transmit; deliver (often followed by on). 11. To be accepted as or believed to be. 12. To sanction or approve. passes, passed, passing. n. 13. A way, such as a narrow gap between mountains, that affords passage around, over, or through a barrier. passes. ::: pass by. To let go without notice, action, remark, etc.; leave unconsidered; disregard; overlook.
path, Golden ::: see **Golden Path.**
pegst ::: a native English form of the verb, to peg, now only in formal and poetic usage. To mark with pegs (pins of wood); esp. to mark the boundaries of (a piece of ground, a claim for mining or gold-digging, etc.) with pegs placed at the corners. Also fig. in the sense of marking one"s position, claim, etc.
pitcher ::: a vase-shaped vessel usually with a handle and a spout or lip for holding and pouring liquids.
plastic ::: n. 1. Any of numerous substances that can be shaped and molded when subjected to heat or pressure. adj. 2. Any of various organic compounds produced by polymerization, capable of being molded, extruded, cast into various shapes and films. 3. Capable of being shaped, moulded or formed. 4. Having the power of moulding or shaping formless or yielding material.
predicted ::: foretold something; prophesized. predicting.
Prema Nandakumar: “The title itself, at any rate to Hindu ears, is charged with untold significance. A very gem of a title, Savitri has a self-sufficing beauty of its own; trisyllabic, trinitarian, a union of light, strength and silence, three circles radiating from one centre, Love. Again, ‘Savitri’, being the other name of the holiest and hoariest of the Vedic mantras—the Gayatri—which for some thousands of years Hindus have chanted morning, noon and evening, at once starts psychic vibrations of incommensurable potency.” A Study of Savitri
Premature consolation is but the remembrancer of sorrow.—Goldsmith.
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"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
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
press ::: n. 1. A crowd, throng, or multitude. 2. A crowding, thronging, or pressing together; a collective force. 3. Pressure or demands of affairs; urgency, haste, hurry. v. 4. To exert weight, force or pressure. 5. To advance or carry on vigorously despite obstacles in one"s way. 6. To impress (a thing) upon the mind, etc., emphasize, inculcate. 7. To beset or harass; afflict. 8. To cause to move in some direction or into some position by pressure; to push, drive, thrust. 9. To compress or squeeze. 10. To squeeze out or express, as juice. 11. To urge or entreat strongly or insistently. 12. To hold closely as in an embrace; clasp. presses, pressed, pressing.
presumption ::: behaviour or attitude that is boldly arrogant or offensive; effrontery.
prophecy ::: “If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past.
pt. of uphold. Also: Raised or lifted up; directed upwards.
Purani: “He [Sri Aurobindo] does the same [improving spontaneously upon the original in the alchemy of his poetical process] with several Vedic symbols which he employs. It [gold-horned herds] indicates the descent of the ‘gold-horned’ Cows—symbolising the richly-laden Rays of Knowledge—into the Inconscient of the earth, its ‘cave-heart’. Generally in the Veda the action is that of breaking open the Cave of the inconscient and releasing the pen of Cows, the imprisoned Rays of Life for the conscious possessions by the seeker. Here is how a Vedic hymn speaks about it: ‘They drove upwards, the luminous ones,—the good milch-cows, in their stone-pen within the hiding cave.’ Rig Veda IV, 1-13. One sees in Savitri the process reversed and the Master’s vision lays open the original act of involution of the Light into the darkness of the Inconscient.” Sri Aurobindo’s”Savitri”: An Approach and a Study.
quiver ::: a portable case for holding arrows.
rank ::: 1. A relative position in a society. 2. A line of persons, esp. soldiers, standing abreast in close-order formation (distinguished from file). 3. Orderly arrangement; array. 4. A row, line, series, or range. ranks, ranked.
rash ::: n. 1. An outbreak of many instances within a brief period. adj. 2. Characterized by or resulting from ill-considered haste or boldness; impetuous. 3. Characterized by defiant disregard for danger or consequences.
ray ::: “Even if there is much darkness—and this world is full of it and the physical nature of man also—yet a ray of the true Light can prevail eventually against a tenfold darkness. Believe that and cleave to it always.” Letters on Yoga
receptacles ::: objects that hold or receive something; containers. Also fig.
Red ; Deep red is the Divine Love. Deep red light is tlic light that comes down into the physical for its change. It is associated with the sunlight and the golden light. Golden red is the colour of the supramcntal physical light. The golden red light has a strong transforming power. Rosy red is the psychic love.
restrain ::: to hold back or keep in check; control. restraining.
retain ::: 1. To maintain possession of. 2. To keep or hold in a particular place, condition, or position. retaining.
retold ::: related or told again.
rippled ::: v. 1. Flowed with a light rise and fall. 2. Of sound: undulated or rose and fell in tone, inflection, or magnitude. rippling. *adj. 3. Marked with small undulations, ruffles, or folds; formed of small waves as water agitated by a breeze. *wind-rippled, forward-rippling.
sacrifice ::: gold tongue of sacrifice
Satyavan, as Sri Aurobindo writes,”…is the soul carrying the truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance;”. Descended into the grip of death and ignorance, the divine realized soul, does not become ignorance but descends into death and then is saved by Savitri, the Divine Mother. After leaving his body”this house of clay” and wandering”in far-off eternities”, all the while a captive in Savitri’s “golden hands” he returns and replies to his father,
Satyavan ::: “Son of King Dyumatsena; the tale of Satyavan and Savitri is told in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death.” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
satyavan ::: "Son of King Dyumatsena; the tale of Satyavan and Savitri is told in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
solders ::: joins, unites, cements, bonds, as by soldering (fusing alloys, usually tin and lead, to join metallic parts).
soldiers ::: those who work diligently for a cause.
scaffold ::: a raised platform used in the execution of condemned prisoner, as by hanging or beheading.
screened ::: 1. Concealed, hidden. 2. Sifted or filtered by means of a frame holding a mesh of wire, cloth, etc. half-screened, thought-screened.
sculptor ::: 1. One who shapes, molds, or fashions especially with artistry or precision. 2. An artist who carves or models in stone, clay, wood, etc.
seize ::: 1. To grasp with the mind; apprehend; understand clearly and completely. 2. To take hold of quickly; grab with the hands. 3. Of a fear, a belief, etc.: To take sudden possession of (a person, his mind). 4. To take possession of control of as if by suddenly laying hold. 5. To take possession of by force or at will. seizes, seized, seizing.
self-fulfilling ::: achieving fulfillment as a result of have been expected or foretold; esp. by prophecy.
sentinel ::: 1. A tower used by the military to watch for the enemy and defend a camp, etc. 2. A person or thing that watches or stands as if watching. 3. A soldier stationed as a guard to challenge all comers and prevent a surprise attack; a sentry. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adjective.) sentinels.
serpent of the Threshold
shelter ::: n. 1. Something that provides cover or protection, as from the weather, danger, etc. v. 2. To provide with refuge as by shelter, to harbour; to take under (one"s) protection. adj. **3. Protected from troubles, annoyances, sordidness, etc. 4. Protected or shielded from storms, cold, the sun, etc. by a wall, roof, barrier, or the like. sheltered, sheltering.**
Shruti: “The aisle holds the fire of purity, of truth; it holds Agni, the spark of the Divine illumination.”
Shruti: “The approach to the fiery aisle and the golden house.”
Shruti: “The seven radiances of the Dawn, Usha (infinite consciousness, truth vision), the sevenfold principle of existence, the seven Sisters, rivers. The seven manifesting radiances of the primal light, Usha (Dawn).”
Shruti: “Vijnana maya purusha. The angel who holds and brings forth the occult mysteries of life, the mysterious truths of existence, the occult laws of Nature, the level of being. Hiranyagarbha, the golden embryo is also the Angel of mysterious ecstasies. He is also the man who has attained the state of Vijnana where he is now Mind, Life, Matter.”
shudder ::: to tremble with a sudden convulsive movement as from horror, fear, or cold. shuddered.
sill ::: a ledge of wood, stone, etc. at the foot of an opening, such as a window or a door; the threshold.
Since the Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence is the universal creatrix, the nature of a given world will depend on whatever self-formulation of that Consciousness expresses itself in that world. Equally, for each individual being, his seeing or representation to himself of the world he lives in will depend on the poise or make which that Consciousness has assumed in him. Our human mental consciousness sees the world in sections cut by the reason and sense and put together in a formation which is also sectional; the house it builds is planned to accommodate one or another generalised formulation of Truth, but excludes the rest or admits some only as guests or dependents in the house. Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences together in a reconciling vision. Thus the mental reason sees Person and the Impersonal as opposites: it conceives an impersonal Existence in which person and personality are fictions of the Ignorance or temporary constructions; or, on the contrary, it can see Person as the primary reality and the impersonal as a mental abstraction or only stuff or means of manifestation. To the Overmind intelligence these are separable Powers of the one Existence which can pursue their independent self-affirmation and can also unite together their different modes of action, creating both in their independence and in their union different states of consciousness and being which can be all of them valid and all capable of coexistence. A purely impersonal existence and consciousness is true and possible, but also an entirely personal consciousness and existence; the Impersonal Divine, Nirguna Brahman, and the Personal Divine, Saguna Brahman, are here equal and coexistent aspects of the Eternal. Impersonality can manifest with person subordinated to it as a mode of expression; but, equally, Person can be the reality with impersonality as a mode of its nature: both aspects of manifestation face each other in the infinite variety of conscious Existence. What to the mental reason are irreconcilable differences present themselves to the Overmind intelligence as coexistent correlatives; what to the mental reason are contraries are to the Overmind intelligence complementaries. Our mind sees that all things are born from Matter or material Energy, exist by it, go back into it; it concludes that Matter is the eternal factor, the primary and ultimate reality, Brahman. Or it sees all as born of Life-Force or Mind, existing by Life or by Mind, going back into the universal Life or Mind, and it concludes that this world is a creation of the cosmic Life-Force or of a cosmic Mind or Logos. Or again it sees the world and all things as born of, existing by and going back to the Real-Idea or Knowledge-Will of the Spirit or to the Spirit itself and it concludes on an idealistic or spiritual view of the universe. It can fix on any of these ways of seeing, but to its normal separative vision each way excludes the others. Overmind consciousness perceives that each view is true of the action of the principle it erects; it can see that there is a material world-formula, a vital world-formula, a mental world-formula, a spiritual world-formula, and each can predominate in a world of its own and at the same time all can combine in one world as its constituent powers. The self-formulation of Conscious Force on which our world is based as an apparent Inconscience that conceals in itself a supreme Conscious-Existence and holds all the powers of Being together in its inconscient secrecy, a world of universal Matter realising in itself Life, Mind, Overmind, Supermind, Spirit, each of them in its turn taking up the others as means of its self-expression, Matter proving in the spiritual vision to have been always itself a manifestation of the Spirit, is to the Overmind view a normal and easily realisable creation. In its power of origination and in the process of its executive dynamis Overmind is an organiser of many potentialities of Existence, each affirming its separate reality but all capable of linking themselves together in many different but simultaneous ways, a magician craftsman empowered to weave the multicoloured warp and woof of manifestation of a single entity in a complex universe. …
slave ::: 1. One bound in servitude as the property of a person or household, 2. One who is abjectly subservient to a specified person or influence. 3. Fig. One who is under the domination of some habit or influence. slaves, body-slave, slave-girl.
"Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods" is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
“Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods’ is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
“Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharvaitthâpadamasyarakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâtidevânâmjanimâniadbhutah. The ‘births of the gods’ is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
Sphinx, golden *See *golden Sphinx.
spread ::: 1. To extend or cause to extend over a larger expanse of space or time. Also fig. 2. To become stretched out or extended; expand, as in growth. 3. To be distributed or dispersed (a substance or a number of things) over a certain or area; to be scattered. 4. To spread out or open from a closed or folded state, like sails. 5. To distribute and expand widely. spreads, far-spread.
squads ::: mil. The smallest military formations, typically comprising a dozen soldiers, used esp. as a drill formation.
Sri Aurobindo: "But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Dawn always means an opening of some kind — the coming of something that is not yet fully there.” Letters on Yoga ::: "As the Sun is image and godhead of the golden Light of the divine Truth, so Dawn is image and godhead of the opening out of the supreme illumination on the night of our human ignorance. Dawn daughter of Heaven and Night her sister are obverse and reverse sides of the same eternal Infinite.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One"s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Even if there is much darkness — and this world is full of it and the physical nature of man also — yet a ray of the true Light can prevail eventually against a tenfold darkness. Believe that and cleave to it always.” Letters on Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength" or ‘Behold God"s power in me", but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate."” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past. ::: Footnote: In this sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.]” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) 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: "Lakshmi is usually golden, not white. Saraswati is white.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Lakshmi is usually golden, not white. Saraswati is white.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " Mental intelligence thinks out because it is merely a reflecting force of consciousness which does not know, but seeks to know; it follows in Time step by step the working of a knowledge higher than itself, a knowledge that exists always, one and whole, that holds Time in its grasp, that sees past, present and future in a single regard.: The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Absolute cannot indeed be bound in its nature to manifest a cosmos of relations, but neither can it be bound not to manifest any cosmos. It is not itself a sheer emptiness; for a vacant Absolute is no Absolute, — our conception of a Void or Zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know or grasp it: it bears in itself some ineffable essentiality of all that is and all that can be; and since it holds in itself this essentiality and this possibility, it must also hold in itself in some way of its absoluteness either the permanent truth or the inherent, even if latent, realisable actuality of all that is fundamental to our or the world"s existence.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijñâna and which we may describe in our modern turn of language as the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind. There the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge.” The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "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: "The timeless Spirit is not necessarily a blank; it may hold all in itself, but in essence, without reference to time or form or relation or circumstance, perhaps in an eternal unity. Eternity is the common term between Time and the Timeless Spirit. What is in the Timeless unmanifested, implied, essential, appears in Time in movement, or at least in design and relation, in result and circumstance. These two then are the same Eternity or the same Eternal in a double status; they are a twofold status of being and consciousness, one an eternity of immobile status, the other an eternity of motion in status.” The Life Divine ::: "The spiritual fullness of the being is eternity; . . . ” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "We have distinguished a fourfold principle of divine Being creative of the universe, — Existence, Conscious-Force, Bliss and Supermind.” *The Life Divine
stay ::: 1. To continue or remain in a certain place, or in the company of others. 2. To hold back or restrain. 3. To delay or hinder an action or a process. stays, stayed.
stereotypes ::: 1. A process, now often replaced by more advanced methods, for making metal printing plates by taking a mold of composed type or the like in papier-mâché or other material and then taking from this mold a cast in type metal. 2. Also fig. Of unchanging, habitually repeated things, set forms; conventions.
::: "Still, of all relations oneness is the secret base, not multiplicity. Oneness constitutes and upholds the multiplicity, multiplicity does not constitute and uphold the oneness.” *The Upanishads
“Still, of all relations oneness is the secret base, not multiplicity. Oneness constitutes and upholds the multiplicity, multiplicity does not constitute and uphold the oneness.” The Upanishads
stone-eyed ::: with the eyes hardened and coldly fixed on something.
stone ::: n. 1. A small piece of rock. 2. Fig. Something resembling stone in shape or hardness. stones, stone-bound, hearth-stone, stepping-stone, stepping-stones, term-stones. 3. Of a person"s expression etc.), like a stone in coldness, hardness, stillness, etc. stone-calm, stone-still. adj. 4. Made of, pertaining to or having the characteristics of stone. Also fig. stone-grip, stone-laws. adv. 5. Completely; totally (usually used in combination).
stronghold ::: a fortified place or a fortress; a secure defensible place.
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.
subliminal ::: existing or operating below the threshold of sensation or consciousness. subliminal"s.
*sun"s, suns, sun-beams, sun-beat, sun-blaze, sun-bright, sun-capped,, sun-clear, sun-dream, sun-eyed, sun-frank, sun-gaze, sun-gazing, sun-god"s, sun-gold, sun-held, sun-herds, sun-kissed, sun-laugh, sun-lift, sun-like, sun-march, sun-orb, sun-steppes, sun-stone, sun-thoughts, sun-vast, sun-veil, sun-white, sun-word, Sun-Word.
supporting ::: that holds in position so as to keep from falling, sinking, or slipping.
support ::: v. **1. To bear, hold, or prop up; sustain; serve as a foundation for. 2. To bear; withstand; endure. supports, supported, supporting, all-supporting.* *n. 3. A person or thing that furnishes aid. 4. An act or instance of supporting or sustaining. 5.** Spiritual or mental aid.
surprise ::: to encounter suddenly or unexpectedly; take or catch unawares. To ‘take hold of" or affect suddenly or unexpectedly; a desire, emotion, etc.
sustain ::: 1. To support, uphold or bear up. 2. To affirm the validity of. 3. To maintain or prolong. 4. To hold up under; withstand. sustains, sustained, sustaining, all-sustaining.
swathed ::: fig. Enveloped or surrounded as with a wrapping; enwrapped, enfolded; encircled so as to confine or restrain.
Tehmi: “A symbolic legend that the golden riches of the divine are buried in the subconscient, swallowed by the Panis and a Dasyu’s and must be retrieved again.”
Tehmi: “In the old world a sense of a touch of madness.”
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.”**
tenure ::: the act, fact, or condition of holding something in one"s possession, as real estate, an office or anything immaterial.
THAT is no country for old men. The young
"The Adversary will disappear only when he is no longer necessary in the world. And we know very well that he is necessary, as the touch-stone for gold: to know if it is pure. But if one is really sincere, the Adversary can"t even approach him any longer; and he doesn"t try it, because that would be courting his own destruction.” Questions and Answers 1955, MCW Vol. 7.
“The Adversary will disappear only when he is no longer necessary in the world. And we know very well that he is necessary, as the touch-stone for gold: to know if it is pure. But if one is really sincere, the Adversary can’t even approach him any longer; and he doesn’t try it, because that would be courting his own destruction.” Questions and Answers 1955, MCW Vol. 7**
"The old writings call the Titans the elder gods. So they still are; nor is any god entirely divine unless there is hidden in him also a Titan.” Essays Divine and Human
“The old writings call the Titans the elder gods. So they still are; nor is any god entirely divine unless there is hidden in him also a Titan.” Essays Divine and Human
"The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: — (1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga, — (1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error — the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga*
“The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top:—(1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga,—(1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error—the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga
“The Cosmic Spirit or Self contains everything in the cosmos—it upholds cosmic Mind, universal Life, universal Matter as well as the overmind. The Self is more than all these things which are its formulations in Nature.” Letters on Yoga
the cosmological theory holding that the universe is expanding, based on the interpretation of the color shift in the spectra of all the galaxies as being the result of the Doppler effect and indicating that all galaxies are moving away from one another.
". . . the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there has emerged the true self, the spiritual being, which is at once wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre and the circumference.” The Life Divine
“… the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there has emerged the true self, the spiritual being, which is at once wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre and the circumference.” The Life Divine
"The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine*
“The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine
The hold of inertia always increases when the working of s3dhana comes down into the physical and subconscient. Before that the inertia is overpowered though not eradicated by the
The heart centre, hrdpadma or andJiata, commanding the high- er emotional being with the psychic deep behind it, governs the emotional being. (Colour: golden pinV ; petals: twelve.)
"The idea of purpose, of a goal is born of the progressive self-unfolding by the world of its own true nature to the individual Souls inhabiting its forms; for the Being is gradually self-revealed within its own becomings, real Unity emerges out of the Multiplicity and changes entirely the values of the latter to our consciousness.” The Upanishads
“The idea of purpose, of a goal is born of the progressive self-unfolding by the world of its own true nature to the individual Souls inhabiting its forms; for the Being is gradually self-revealed within its own becomings, real Unity emerges out of the Multiplicity and changes entirely the values of the latter to our consciousness.” The Upanishads
“The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers.
"The light outside means a touch or influence of the force indicated by the light (golden is Truth-light, blue some spiritual force from the upper plane) while the light within means that it has penetrated or is established or frequently active in the nature itself. Light above means a force descending upon the mind, light around a general enveloping influence.” Letters on Yoga
“The light outside means a touch or influence of the force indicated by the light (golden is Truth-light, blue some spiritual force from the upper plane) while the light within means that it has penetrated or is established or frequently active in the nature itself. Light above means a force descending upon the mind, light around a general enveloping influence.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.” The Life Divine*
“The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.” The Life Divine
"The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The message of the Gita is the gospel of the Divinity in man who by force of an increasing union unfolds himself out of the veil of the lower Nature, reveals to the human soul his cosmic spirit, reveals his absolute transcendences, reveals himself in man and in all beings. The potential outcome here of this union, this divine Yoga, man growing towards the Godhead, the Godhead manifest in the human soul and to the inner human vision, is our liberation from limited ego and our elevation to the higher nature of a divine humanity.” Essays on the Gita ::: *Divinity"s.
“The message of the Gita is the gospel of the Divinity in man who by force of an increasing union unfolds himself out of the veil of the lower Nature, reveals to the human soul his cosmic spirit, reveals his absolute transcendences, reveals himself in man and in all beings. The potential outcome here of this union, this divine Yoga, man growing towards the Godhead, the Godhead manifest in the human soul and to the inner human vision, is our liberation from limited ego and our elevation to the higher nature of a divine humanity.” Essays on the Gita
::: The Mother: "Of all the aspects of the Mother, Kali most powerfully expresses vibrant and active love, and despite her sometimes terrible aspect, she carries in herself the golden splendour of an all-powerful love.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15*.
The Mother: “Of all the aspects of the Mother, Kali most powerfully expresses vibrant and active love, and despite her sometimes terrible aspect, she carries in herself the golden splendour of an all-powerful love.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother or myself send a force. If there is no openness, the force may be thrown back or returned (unless we put a great force which it is not always adwsablc to do) as from an obstruc- tion or resistance ::: if there is some openness, the result may be partial or slow ; if there is the full openness or receptivity, then the result may be immediate. Of course there are things that cannot be removed all at once, being an old part of the nature, but with receptivity these also can be more effectively and rapidly dealt with. Some people are so open that even by writing they get free before the book or letter reaches us.
theoricians ::: those who hold theories; theorists.
“The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings’ or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined’? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see’?” Letters on Savitri
“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 Remembrancer was originally one of certain subordinate officers of the English Exchequer. The office itself is of great antiquity, the holder having been termed remembrancer, memorator, rememorator, registrar, keeper of the register, despatcher of business. The Remembrancer compiled memorandum rolls and thus”reminded” the barons of the Exchequer of business pending.
“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 contains all its knowledge in itself, is in its highest divine wisdom in eternal possession of all truth and even in its lower, limited or individualised forms has only to bring the latent truth out of itself, — the perception which the old thinkers tried to express when they said that all knowing was in its real origin and nature only a memory of inwardly existing knowledge.” The Synthesis of Yoga ::: *knowledge-bales, knowledge-scrap, half-knowledge, self-knowledge, world-knowledge.
“The supermind contains all its knowledge in itself, is in its highest divine wisdom in eternal possession of all truth and even in its lower, limited or individualised forms has only to bring the latent truth out of itself,—the perception which the old thinkers tried to express when they said that all knowing was in its real origin and nature only a memory of inwardly existing knowledge.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The surface mental individuality is, in consequence, always ego-centric; even its altruism is an enlargement of its ego: the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there has emerged the true self, the spiritual being, which is at once wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre and the circumference.” *The Life Divine
“The surface mental individuality is, in consequence, always ego-centric; even its altruism is an enlargement of its ego: the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there has emerged the true self, the spiritual being, which is at once wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre and the circumference.” The Life Divine
the trait of lacking boldness and courage.
“The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three powers overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation; this is the first of the Trinities. In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental terms and none of them can be neglected if we would have the experience of the whole Truth of existence. Out of the individual we wake into a vaster freer cosmic consciousness; but out of the universal too with its complex of forms and powers we must emerge by a still greater self-exceeding into a consciousness without limits that is founded on the Absolute.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The triple principle was doubly recognised, first in the threefold divine principle answering to the later Sachchidananda, the divine existence, consciousness and bliss, and secondly in the threefold mundane principle, Mind, Life, Body, upon which is built the triple world of the Veda and Puranas.” *The Secret of the Veda
“The triple principle was doubly recognised, first in the threefold divine principle answering to the later Sachchidananda, the divine existence, consciousness and bliss, and secondly in the threefold mundane principle, Mind, Life, Body, upon which is built the triple world of the Veda and Puranas.” The Secret of the Veda
“The true soul secret in us,—subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil,—this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
"The universe is certainly or has been up to now in appearance a rough and wasteful game with the dice of chance loaded in favour of the Powers of darkness, the Lords of obscurity, falsehood, death and suffering. But we have to take it as it is and find out — if we reject the way out of the old sages — the way to conquer. Spiritual experience shows that there is behind it all a wide terrain of equality, peace, calm, freedom, and it is only by getting into it that we can have the eye that sees and hope to gain the power that conquers.” Letters on Yoga
“The universe is certainly or has been up to now in appearance a rough and wasteful game with the dice of chance loaded in favour of the Powers of darkness, the Lords of obscurity, falsehood, death and suffering. But we have to take it as it is and find out—if we reject the way out of the old sages—the way to conquer. Spiritual experience shows that there is behind it all a wide terrain of equality, peace, calm, freedom, and it is only by getting into it that we can have the eye that sees and hope to gain the power that conquers.” Letters on Yoga
"The Vedas are the oldest holy books of India, perhaps the oldest of such works in the world. They are the foundation of the Hindu religion. The hymns they contain, written in an old form of Sanskrit, are said to have been ‘revealed" to the Rishis and subsequently were transmitted orally from generation to generation. They continued to be so handed down even after they had been collected and arranged by Krishna Dwaipayana (Veda Vyasa). It is not known when they were committed to writing. The Vedas are four in number: Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva. In reality the Rig-Veda is the Veda; many of its hymns occur with a different arrangement in the other three Vedas. According to some scholars, each Veda is divided into four parts: Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanisad. But generally the term ‘Veda" is reserved for the Samhita, the metrical hymns. (Dow)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
“The Vedas are the oldest holy books of India, perhaps the oldest of such works in the world. They are the foundation of the Hindu religion. The hymns they contain, written in an old form of Sanskrit, are said to have been ‘revealed’ to the Rishis and subsequently were transmitted orally from generation to generation. They continued to be so handed down even after they had been collected and arranged by Krishna Dwaipayana (Veda Vyasa). It is not known when they were committed to writing. The Vedas are four in number: Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva. In reality the Rig-Veda is the Veda; many of its hymns occur with a different arrangement in the other three Vedas. According to somescholars, each Veda is divided into four parts: Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanisad. But generally the term ‘Veda’ is reserved for the Samhita, the metrical hymns. (Dow)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
“The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” Letters on Yoga
"The world we live in is not a meaningless accident that has unaccountably taken place in the void of Space; it is the scene of an evolution in which an eternal Truth has been embodied, hidden in a form of things, and is secretly in process of unfoldment through the ages. There is a meaning in our existence, a purpose in our birth and death and travail, a consummation of all our labour. All are parts of a single plan; nothing has been idly made in the universe; nothing is vain in our life.” Essays Divine and Human
“The world we live in is not a meaningless accident that has unaccountably taken place in the void of Space; it is the scene of an evolution in which an eternal Truth has been embodied, hidden in a form of things, and is secretly in process of unfoldment through the ages. There is a meaning in our existence, a purpose in our birth and death and travail, a consummation of all our labour. All are parts of a single plan; nothing has been idly made in the universe; nothing is vain in our life.” Essays Divine and Human
This opposition has been permitted from of old not merely as a test or ordeal, but as a compulsion on us to seek a greater strength, a more perfect self-knowledge, an intenser purity and force of aspiration, a faith that nothing can crush, a more power- ful descent of the Divine Grace.
"This Self is fourfold, — the Self of Waking who has the outer intelligence and enjoys external things, is its first part; the Self of Dream who has the inner intelligence and enjoys things subtle, is its second part; the Self of Sleep, unified, a massed intelligence, blissful and enjoying bliss, is the third part… the lord of all, the omniscient, the inner Control. That which is unseen, indefinable, self-evident in its one selfhood, is the fourth part: this is the Self, this is that which has to be known.” Mandukya Upanishad. (5) The Life Divine*
“This Self is fourfold,—the Self of Waking who has the outer intelligence and enjoys external things, is its first part; the Self of Dream who has the inner intelligence and enjoys things subtle, is its second part; the Self of Sleep, unified, a massed intelligence, blissful and enjoying bliss, is the third part… the lord of all, the omniscient, the inner Control. That which is unseen, indefinable, self-evident in its one selfhood, is the fourth part: this is the Self, this is that which has to be known.” Mandukya Upanishad. (5) The Life Divine
thousandfold ::: multiplied by a thousand.
Three ways of the Mothers bring ; There arc three ways of being of the Mother of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of oneness with the Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original supreme
threshold ::: 1. A piece of wood or stone placed beneath a door; a doorsill. Also fig. 2. Fig. A level or point at which something would happen, would cease to happen, or would take effect, become true, etc. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
threshold :::
threshold"s.
ticket ::: a paper slip or card indicating that its holder has paid for or is entitled to a specified service, right, or consideration.
Transcendent ::: “A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence—and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal—of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth—a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos.” The Synthesis of Yoga
transcendent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence — and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal — of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth — a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three powers overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation; this is the first of the Trinities. In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental terms and none of them can be neglected if we would have the experience of the whole Truth of existence. Out of the individual we wake into a vaster freer cosmic consciousness; but out of the universal too with its complex of forms and powers we must emerge by a still greater self-exceeding into a consciousness without limits that is founded on the Absolute.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge.” The Life Divine
The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her — the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities.” Letters on Yoga
**Transcendent"s.**
triple heavens ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Vishnu is the wide-moving one. He is that which has gone abroad — as it is put in the language of the Isha Upanishad, sa paryagât, — triply extending himself as Seer, Thinker and Former, in the superconscient Bliss, in the heaven of mind, in the earth of the physical consciousness, tredhâ vicakramânah. In those three strides he has measured out, he has formed in all their extension the earthly worlds; for in the Vedic idea the material world which we inhabit is only one of several steps leading to and supporting the vital and mental worlds beyond. In those strides he supports upon the earth and mid-world, — the earth the material, the mid-world the vital realms of Vayu, Lord of the dynamic Life-principle, — the triple heaven and its three luminous summits, trîni rocanâ. These heavens the Rishi describes as the higher seat of the fulfilling. Earth, the mid-world and heaven are the triple place of the conscious being"s progressive self-fulfilling, trishadhastha, earth the lower seat, the vital world the middle, heaven the higher. All these are contained in the threefold movement of Vishnu.” The Secret of the Veda
trumpeting ::: sounding or proclaiming loudly, (often boldly or forcefully like the sound of a trumpet).
twi-. As a prefix, twofold, double. natured. Having a nature or disposition (of a specified kind).
twin ::: n. 1. One of two offspring born at the same birth. 2. Either of two persons or things that are identical or very similar; counterpart. 3. One of a pair; identical. twins. adj. 4. Being two identical. 5. Twofold or double. v. 6. To bring two objects, ideas, or people together; unite. lit. and fig. **twinned.**
twofold ::: composed of two parts; dual.
Types of illnesses ::: An illness which comes in the ordinary course as the result of physical causes — even though adverse universal forces are the first cause — is an ordinary illness. One brought by the forces hostile to yoga to upset the system and prevent or disturb progress — without any adequate physical reason — is a hostile attack. It may have the appearance of a cold or other illness, but to the eye which sees the action of the forces and not only the outward symptoms or results, the diHerence is clear.
unfolding :::
unfolds :::
untold :::
upholding :::
uphold :::
“Vamadeva goes on to say,”Let us give expression to this secret name of the clarity,—that is to say, let us bring out this Soma wine, this hidden delight of existence; let us hold it in this world-sacrifice by our surrenderings or submissions to Agni, the divine Will or Conscious-Power which is the Master of being.” The Secret of the Veda
vessel ::: 1. A hollow or concave utensil, as a cup, bowl, pitcher, or vase, used for holding liquids or other contents. Also fig. 2. A person regarded as a holder or receiver of something; esp. something nonmaterial. vessels.
visa ("s) ::: an endorsement made by an authorised representative of one country upon a passport issued by another, permitting the passport holder entry into or transit through the country making the endorsement.
“Vishnu is the wide-moving one. He is that which has gone abroad—as it is put in the language of the Isha Upanishad, sa paryagât,—triply extending himself as Seer, Thinker and Former, in the superconscient Bliss, in the heaven of mind, in the earth of the physical consciousness, tredhâ vicakramânah. In those three strides he has measured out, he has formed in all their extension the earthly worlds; for in the Vedic idea the material world which we inhabit is only one of several steps leading to and supporting the vital and mental worlds beyond. In those strides he supports upon the earth and mid-world,—the earth the material, the mid-world the vital realms of Vayu, Lord of the dynamic Life-principle,—the triple heaven and its three luminous summits, trîni rocanâ. These heavens the Rishi describes as the higher seat of the fulfilling. Earth, the mid-world and heaven are the triple place of the conscious being’s progressive self-fulfilling, trishadhastha, earth the lower seat, the vital world the middle, heaven the higher. All these are contained in the threefold movement of Vishnu.” The Secret of the Veda
void ::: “The Absolute cannot indeed be bound in its nature to manifest a cosmos of relations, but neither can it be bound not to manifest any cosmos. It is not itself a sheer emptiness; for a vacant Absolute is no Absolute,—our conception of a Void or Zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know or grasp it: it bears in itself some ineffable essentiality of all that is and all that can be; and since it holds in itself this essentiality and this possibility, it must also hold in itself in some way of its absoluteness either the permanent truth or the inherent, even if latent, realisable actuality of all that is fundamental to our or the world’s existence.” The Life Divine
wallet ::: a flat, folding pocketbook, especially one large enough to hold paper money, and sometimes having a compartment for coins.
warrior ::: 1. A person engaged or experienced in warfare; soldier. 2. One who shows or has shown great vigour, courage, etc. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) warriors.
"We. . . become conscious, in our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“We. . . become conscious, in our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“We have distinguished a fourfold principle of divine Being creative of the universe,—Existence, Conscious-Force, Bliss and Supermind.” The Life Divine
::: "We have to face the future"s offer of death as well as its offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant death to our old names and forms that we shall live most vitally in greater and newer forms and names.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“We have to face the future’s offer of death as well as its offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant death to our old names and forms that we shall live most vitally in greater and newer forms and names.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
—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; for though we have applied that word for want of a better to any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to our intuitions something of its own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate. 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. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance….
When it is golden red it mc.ins Ute same modified Supramcntal- physical Light, — the Light of Divine Truth in the physical. The golden red light has a strong iransformiog power.
When the psychic being is awake, it begins to take hold of the rest of the being, to iofluence it and change it so that al! may become the true expression of the inner soul. Jt is this change that is called the inner conversion. There can be no conversion without the awakening of the psychic being.
Yeilow * charactensuc colour of the mind It is the light of the rmnd growmg bnghter as one goes higher till it meets the golden light of the Divine Truth
Yet still, a captive in her golden hands,
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.
zero ::: Madhav: “Before existence, non-existence; before being, non-being. Before this manifestation of names and forms came to be, it was all a state of indefiniteness, a featureless Blank, as it were. There was simply the Unmanifest; it was an infinite Zero. But this was not an empty zero. It was contentful, holding in itself potentialities without end, immeasurable. And it was because this Nothing contained all in seed in its bosom that things could at all manifest from it.
KEYS (10k)
54 Sri Aurobindo
17 The Mother
7 Buson
6 Saint Thomas Aquinas
5 Anonymous
4 C S Lewis
4 Sri Ramakrishna
3 Satprem
3 Joseph Campbell
3 Albert Einstein
3 Saint Augustine of Hippo
3 Ogawa
2 Taigu Ryokan
2 Robert Anton Wilson
2 Ramakrishna
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 Manly P Hall
2 Majjhima Nikaya
2 Ken Wilber
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Franz Kafka
2 Carl Sagan
2 Carl Jung
2 Buddhist Canons in Pali
2 Bertrand Russell
2 Swami Vivekananda
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Matsuo Basho
2 Kobayashi Issa
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Dogen Zenji
1 Yosa Buson
1 Yasunari Kawabata
1 William S Burroughs
1 Von Balthasar
1 Umberto Eco
1 Tsen-tse-tsung-yung
1 Thomas Merton
1 Thomas Keating
1 The Tibetan Book of Everyday Wisdom
1 The Mother
1 Stephen Richard
1 Stephen LaBerge
1 Sri Sarada Devi
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 Sogyal Rinpoche
1 Socrates?
1 Socrates
1 Simon & Garfunkel
1 Simone de Beauvoir
1 Shiki
1 Saul Ader
1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1 Saint Robert Bellarmine
1 Saint John Chrysostom
1 Saint Cyril
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1 Robert Heinlein
1 Ritu Ghatourey
1 Rilke
1 Phil Hine
1 Pablo Neruda
1 Owen Barfield
1 Oriah Mountain Dreamer
1 Old Testament
1 Old Latin palindrome
1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
1 Nietzsche
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1 Mortimer J Adler
1 Matthew IX.17
1 Mark Twain
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1 Laura Whitcomb
1 Lama Surya Das
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1 Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy
1 John Maynard Keynes
1 John Lennon
1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 Jean Gebser
1 James S A Corey
1 James George Frazer
1 it is not as though I had invented it with my mind
1 Israel Regardie
1 II Corinthians V. 17
1 Hermes
1 G Santayana
1 G K Chesterton
1 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 George Eliot
1 George Bernard Shaw
1 Gabriel García Marquez
1 Friedrich Schiller
1 Friedrich Nietzsche
1 Frank Visser
1 Evagrius
1 euripedes
1 Eugene Paul Wigner
1 Etsujin
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1 Ernest Cline
1 Emilia Fox
1 Ella Wheeler Wilcox
1 Elizabeth Anscombe
1 Dylan Thomas
1 Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
1 Dante Alighieri
1 C.S. Lewis
1 Chamtrul Rinpoche
1 Buddhist Texts
1 Benjamin Disraeli
1 Basil the Great
1 Allen Ginsberg
1 Ali
1 Alfred Korzybski
1 Albert Camus
1 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
1 Kabir
1 Jorge Luis Borges
1 Aleister Crowley
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
30 Kim Holden
30 Anonymous
25 William Goldman
19 Oliver Goldsmith
18 William Shakespeare
17 Samuel Goldwyn
17 Alice Sebold
15 Matthew Arnold
12 George Herbert
11 William Golding
11 Dag Hammarskjold
10 Aurora Rose Reynolds
9 Rick Riordan
9 Horace
9 Homer
9 Debbie Reynolds
8 Christie Golden
7 Ovid
7 Natalie Goldberg
7 Lois McMaster Bujold
1:Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. ~ euripedes #KEYS
2:Hello darkness, my old friend
~ Simon & Garfunkel,#KEYS
3:copying poetry
from the past
an old diary ~ Buson#KEYS
4:You can't use an old map to explore a new world. ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
5:You are never too old to be what you might have been. ~ George Eliot, #KEYS
6:The old calendar fills me with gratitude like a song. ~ Yosa Buson, 1716-1783, #KEYS
7:You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. ~ C S Lewis, #KEYS
8:Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.
~ Benjamin Disraeli,#KEYS
9:You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." ~ C.S. Lewis, #KEYS
10:Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
~ C S Lewis,#KEYS
11:When the old plum tree blooms, the entire world blooms. ~ Dogen Zenji, #KEYS
12:mushrooms gathering
on an old maple stump
autumn rain
~ Ogawa,#KEYS
13:And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. ~ Old Testament, #KEYS
14:If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
15:Don't stop having fun when you get old. You get old when you stop having fun." ~ Ritu Ghatourey, #KEYS
16:We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
17:True knowledge does not grow old, so have declared the sages of all times. ~ Buddhist Canons in Pali, #KEYS
18:We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." ~ George Bernard Shaw, #KEYS
19:Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, #KEYS
20:I find that the more I relinquish my old habits of thought, the happier I am. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #KEYS
21:It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
22:The young grasp at the future. The old grasp at the past. The wise remain in the present. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS
23:The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. ~ Socrates, #KEYS
24:Neither, do men put new wine into old bottles. ~ Matthew IX.17, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
25:In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni - We circle in the night and are consumed by the fire ~ Old Latin palindrome, #KEYS
26:The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
~ Socrates?,#KEYS
27:an old well
a fish leaps
dark sound
~ Buson, @BashoSociety#KEYS
28:amoung
the fallen leaves
an old frog
~ Buson, @BashoSociety#KEYS
29:This dark autumn old age settles down on me like heavy clouds or birds. ~ Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694, #KEYS
30:Break, break the old Tables, ye who seek after the knowledge. ~ Nietzsche, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
31:Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge.
~ Albert Einstein,#KEYS
32:No one can begin a new life, unless he repent of the old. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
33:Whenever they rebuild an old building, they must first of all destroy the old one. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
34:In old times a lamb, a Calf was offered; now Christ is offered. But He is offered as man and as enduring suffering. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
35:Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
~ Franz Kafka,#KEYS
36:I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Psalms, 143:5, #KEYS
37:Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. ~ II Corinthians V. 17, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
38:an old pond
floating upside-down
an empty cicada shell
~ Shiki, @BashoSociety#KEYS
39:Sleepy spring days
how long ago were
those "Old Times"
~ Buson, @BashoSociety#KEYS
40:sparrows perched
on an old plum tree
returning to sleep
~ Buson, @BashoSociety#KEYS
41:ivy clinging
to an old bridge
body and soul together
~ Etsujin, @BashoSociety#KEYS
42:through the short night
the guard never slept
an old dog
~ Buson, @BashoSociety#KEYS
43:mountain sparrows
and an old plum tree
returning to sleep
~ Buson, @BashoSociety#KEYS
44:Poetry... it consumed Sappho's young years, it nourished Goethe's old age. Drug, the Greeks called it, both poison and medicine. ~ Umberto Eco, #KEYS
45:All education is the art of making men ethical (sittlich), of transforming the old Adam into the new Adam. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, [T5], #KEYS
46:Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
~ Dylan Thomas,#KEYS
47:The Facts were right there waiting for me, hidden in old books written by people who weren't afraid to be honest ~ Ernest Cline, Ready Player One, #KEYS
48:It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.
~ Gabriel García Marquez,#KEYS
49:Remember, the Rishis of old gave up the world in order to attain God. This is the one thing needful. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
50:True knowledge does not grow old, so have declared the sages of all times. ~ Buddhist Canons in Pali, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
51:evening shadows
enjoying the company
of old friends
~ Ogawa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
52:mushrooms gathering
on an old maple stump
autumn rain
~ Ogawa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
53:Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians, V. 7, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
54:We need new myths, but we need to understand we stand on the old myths. These must be completly understood to be able to create new myths ~ James George Frazer, #KEYS
55:like you
growing old
autumn butterfly
~ Kobayashi Issa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
56:will I grow
old like you?
autumn butterfly
~ Kobayashi Issa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
57:All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.
~ J R R Tolkien,#KEYS
58:Young and old and those who are growing to age, shall all die one after the other like fruits that fall. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
59:and our story, an old forgotten dream." ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, ( 1207 - 1273), Persian poet, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic, Wikipedia., #KEYS
60:I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them.There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood. ~ Rilke, #KEYS
61:This day foreshadows the state which is to follow the present age: a day without sunset, nightfall, or successor, an age which does not grow old or come to an end. ~ Basil the Great, #KEYS
62:All truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Life and Yoga, #KEYS
63:For as the old adage says, God slumbers in nature, begins to awaken in the human being, and is fully awake in the enlightened individual.
~ Frank Visser, Ken Wilber Thought as Passion,#KEYS
64:Heaven ever young and earth too firm and old
Delay the heart by immobility: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Ideal,#KEYS
65:The new dawns repeat the old and lean forward in light to join the dawns of the future. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Doctrine of the Mystics, #KEYS
66:Our mind is a house haunted by the slain past,
Ideas soon mummified, ghosts of old truths, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, In the Self of Mind,#KEYS
67:The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.
~ Yasunari Kawabata,#KEYS
68:When I calmed my mind And entered my heart, The Love of the Lord Leapt like a flame within me. All my old ideas and beliefs Just blew away like chaff to the wind. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
69:Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
70:The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #KEYS
71:Into inertia revolution sinks,
In a new dress the old resumes its role; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
72:The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character. (461) ~ G Santayana, #KEYS
73:Word-Armor
Forward steps are made by giving up old armor because words are built into you - in the soft typewriter of the womb you do not realize the word-armor you carry. ~ William S Burroughs,#KEYS
74:We are creating new fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Fate, Free Will and Prediction, #KEYS
75:There is no one who is without faults, and who is not in some way a burden to others, whether he is a superior or a subject, an old man or a young one, a scholar or a dunce. ~ Saint Robert Bellarmine, #KEYS
76:Circumcision signified "the passing away of the old generation" from the decrepitude of which we are freed by Christ's Passion ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.37.1ad1)., #KEYS
77:Often when after falling into sin we strive to return to God, we experience further and more grievous attacks from the old enemy ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.44.1ad4)., #KEYS
78:An old self lurks in the new self we are;
Hardly we escape from what we once had been: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
79:When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. ~ Mark Twain #KEYS
80:Our days are links of a disastrous chain,
Necessity avenges casual steps;
Old cruelties come back unrecognised, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
81:The old law not only had five loaves, that is, the five books of Moses, but also two fishes, that is, the Psalms and the prophets ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (In 1 John 6, lect. 1)., #KEYS
82:In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
~ Mugai Nyodai,#KEYS
83:Let your old age be childlike, and your childhood like old age; that is, so that neither may your wisdom be with pride, nor your humility without wisdom. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
84:Drsti and sruti, sight and hearing, revelation and inspiration are the two chief powers of that supramental faculty which belongs to the old Vedic idea of the Truth, the Ritam. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
85:An old pull of subconscious cords renews;
It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
86:A half attention prepares the way for new illusions and allows the old to grow. By a sustained attention prevent the birth of new errors and destroy the old. ~ Majjhima Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
87:An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.
~ Carl Jung,#KEYS
88:For all we have acquired soon loses worth,
An old disvalued credit in Times bank,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
89:Go back, go back to the old days when there was strength and vitality. Be strong once more, drink deep of this fountain of yore, and that is the only condition of life in India. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
90:It was fitting that the Giver of all holiness should enter this world by a pure and holy birth. For He it is that of old formed Adam from the virgin earth, and from Adam without help of woman formed woman. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
91:An abstract logic must always arrive, as the old systems arrived, at an infinite empty Negation or an infinite equally vacant Affirmation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, #KEYS
92:Repeat the old practice, "To whom do thoughts arise?"
Keep up the practice until there are no breaks.
Practice alone will bring about continuity of awareness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 628,#KEYS
93:An adversary Force was born of old:
Invader of the life of mortal man,
It hides from him the straight immortal path. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
94:When death finally comes, you will welcome it like an old friend, being aware of how dreamlike and impermanent the phenomenal world really is. You should leave this life like an eagle soaring up into the blue sky. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, #KEYS
95:But when I call for a hero, out comes my lazy old self; so I never know who I am, nor how many I am or will be. I'd love to be able to touch a bell and summon the real me, because if I really need myself, I mustn't disappear. ~ Pablo Neruda, #KEYS
96:Gods change not their strength, but are of old
And as of old, and man, though less than these,
May yet proceed to greater, self-evolved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,#KEYS
97:These revolutions, demon or drunken god,
Convulsing the wounded body of mankind
Only to paint in new colours an old face; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
98:Young Monk: "Are we human beings having a spiritual experience or are we spiritual beings having a human experience?" Old Monk: "What's the difference?" ~ Saul Ader, "Gifts From Stillness,", (2001). Known as " ~ the Socrates of Provincetown.", #KEYS
99:"Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Isaiah, 43:18-19, #KEYS
100:A half-attention prepares the way for fresh errors, fresh illusions and allows the old to increase. Prevent by a sustained attention the birth of new errors and destroy the old. ~ Majjhima Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
101:I never feel lonely if Ive got a book - theyre like old friends. Even if youre not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And theyre part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life
~ Emilia Fox,#KEYS
102:This universe an old enchantment guards;
Its objects are carved cups of World-Delight
Whose charmed wine is some deep soul's rapture-drink. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
103:What do I need to develop most? And what do I need to reject most?
Develop - sincerity (that is, an integral adhesion to the Divine's way. Reject - the pull of the old human habits.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
104:Yet you must not cling to the words of the old sages either; they, too, may not be right. Even if you believe them, you should be alert so that, in the event that something superior comes along, you may follow that.
~ Dogen Zenji,#KEYS
105:Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness." ~ Lama Surya Das, #KEYS
106:220. Broken begging bowl,
My old begging bowl,
Now as before, bear it high,
Broken begging bowl,
My old begging bowl,
Broken begging bowl,
My old begging bowl,
Bear it high, and go begging,
All day and each day. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#KEYS
107:What has to be overcome is the opposition of the Ignorance that does not want the transformation of the nature. If that can be overcome, then old spiritual ideas will not form an obstacle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS
108:Should I spend some time in solitude?
It is the old methods of yoga which demand silence and solitude. The yoga of tomorrow is to find the Divine in work and in relation with the world.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
109:There are two spirits: the old and the new. The old spirit is the spirit of slavery; the new is the spirit of love. The first produces slaves; the second, children by adoption ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (In Jn. 13, lect. 7)., #KEYS
110:If we could speak of God only in the very terms themselves of Scripture, it would follow that no one could speak about God in any but the original language of the Old or New Testament ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.29.3ad1)., #KEYS
111:A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
112:Before we can discern the new, we must know the old. It is true that everything has always been there, but in another way, in another light, with a different value attached to it, in another realization or manifestation." ~ Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin, #KEYS
113:Our dead past round our future's ankles clings
And drags back the new nature's glorious stride,
Or from its buried corpse old ghosts arise, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
114:When we lose out spiritual child then that is when we have grown old." ~ Stephen Richard, (1879-1959) a prominent leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (LDS Church), member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church, Wikipedia., #KEYS
115:Continue to pray without losing heart. Everything will happen in time. For how many cycles did the Munis and Rishis of old practice austerities to realize God, and do you believe you will attain to Him in a flash? Is it so easy to realize God? ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
116:Yama, the strong pure Hades sad and subtle,
Dharma, who keeps the laws of old untouched,
Critanta, who ends all things and at last
Himself shall end. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,#KEYS
117:Ye have been taught that ye put off the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that ye put on the new man. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ephesians, IV. 21-24, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
118:O the difference, the unspeakable difference, between an historicocritical intellective Study of the Old Testament, and the praying of the same! I mean the perusal of it with a personal moral and religious Interest… ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Notebooks V:6241, #KEYS
119:How shall we conquer the old man in us? When the flower becomes a fruit, the petals fall of themselves; so when the divinity increases in us, all the weaknesses of human nature vanish of their own accord. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
120:To love one another is… half of wisdom. Grief… is half of old age." ~ Ali, (601 - 661), the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He ruled as the fourth caliph from 656 to 661, Wikipedia. Quote from "The Sufi Bible,", (latest ed. 2016). Trans. Paul Smith., #KEYS
121:When an old dog howls, other dogs join in for no reason. 118 Even when the wise fall into terrible decline, they please others by giving good advice. Even when fools become prosperous, they only argue, burning themselves and others ... ~ The Tibetan Book of Everyday Wisdom, #KEYS
122:I am not of the mild and later gods,
But of that elder world; Lemuria
And old Atlantis raised me crimson altars,
And my huge nostrils keep that scent of blood
For which they quiver. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Prologue,#KEYS
123:Within her presence, I had once been used to feeling-trembling-wonder, dissolution; but that was long ago. Still, though my soul, now she was veiled, could not see her directly, by way of hidden force that she could move, I felt the mighty power of old love. ~ Dante Alighieri, #KEYS
124:I knew a child, close upon three years old and only then beginning to talk... "Is he in you?" The child asked when the mother came back [from communion]. "Yes," she said, and to her amazement the child prostrated itself before her. ~ Elizabeth Anscombe, 'On Transubstantiation', #KEYS
125:When the mind has put off the old self & put on the one born of grace, it will see its own state in the time of prayer resembling sapphire or the color of heaven; this state scripture calls the place of God that was seen by the elders on Mount Sinai. ~ Evagrius, On Thoughts 39, #KEYS
126:At the point where all roads meet which lead from the Old Testament to the New we encounter the Marian experience of God, at once so rich and so secret that it almost escapes description.... In Mary, Zion passes over into that church ~ Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord I, 338, #KEYS
127:When our Savior came, he appeared as a divine temple, glorious beyond any comparison, far more splendid and excellent than the older temple. He exceeded the old as much as worship in Christ and the gospels exceeds the cult of the laws, as truth exceeds its shadows. ~ Saint Cyril, #KEYS
128:Julian gets greater and greater in my eyes as I grow older and whereas in the old days I used to be crazy about St John of the Cross, I would not exchange him now for Julian if you gave me the world and the Indies & all the Spanish mystics rolled up in one bundle. ~ Thomas Merton, #KEYS
129:Imagination… reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference;... the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects. ~ Saint Coleridge, #KEYS
130:Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them. ~ Eugene Paul Wigner, #KEYS
131:The new Yoga cannot be used as a sort of sauce for old dishes; it must occupy the whole place on peril of serious difficulties in the siddhi & even disasters. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To Motilal Roy, #KEYS
132:A huge inertness is the world's defence,
Even in change is treasured changelessness;
Into inertia revolution sinks,
In a new dress the old resumes its role; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
133:When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life. ~ John Lennon, #KEYS
134:Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
135:To him who is perfect in meditation salvation is near" is an old saying. Do you know when a man is perfect in meditation? When as soon as he sits to meditate, he is surrounded with the divine atmosphere and his soul communes with the Ineffable. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
136:For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. ~ C S Lewis, "Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare", Rehabilitations and Other Essays (1939), #KEYS
137:I know, O God, the day shall dawn at last
When man shall rise from playing with the mud
And taking in his hands the sun and stars
Remould appearance, law and process old. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,#KEYS
138:One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. ~ Franz Kafka, #KEYS
139:..yet it is with the old treasure as our initial capital or so much of it as we can recover that we shall most advantageously proceed to accumulate the largest gains in our new commerce with the ever-changeless and ever-changing Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
140:DAWN
I have returned to my native village after twenty years;
No sign of old friends or relatives-they have all died or gone away.
My dreams are shattered by the sound of the temple bell struck at sunrise.
An empty floor, no shadows; the light has long been extinguished. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#KEYS
141:Nothing is wholly dead that once had lived;
In dim tunnels of the world's being and in ours
The old rejected nature still survives;
The corpses of its slain thoughts raise their heads ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
142:The restless nether members tire of peace;
A nostalgia of old little works and joys,
A need to call back small familiar selves,
To tread the accustomed and inferior way, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
143:To him who is perfect in meditation salvation is near" is an old saying. Do you know when a man is perfect in meditation? When as soon as he sits to meditate, he is surrounded with the divine atmosphere and his soul communes with the Ineffable. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
144:Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence." ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
145:All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages;
Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure;
Goal seems there none for the ball that is chased throughout Time by the Fate-teams;
Evil once ended renews and no issue co ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,#KEYS
146:The majority of mankind do not think, they have only thought-sensations; a large minority think confusedly, mixing up desires, predilections, passions, prejudgments, old associations and prejudices with pure and disinterested thought. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The National Value of Art, #KEYS
147:You have been changing every moment of your life. You were a child & thought in one way, now you are a man & think another way, again you will be an old man & think differently. Everybody is changing. If so,where is your individuality? Certainly not in the body,mind,or in thought~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
148:CHRISTIANITY: Belief that one God created a universe 13.79 billion yrs old, 93 billion light yrs in diameter ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (1 light yr = approx.6 trillion miles), consisting of over 200 billion galaxies,each containing ave.of 200 billion stars,only to have a personal relationship with you. Lol, #KEYS
149:There is an old, old story about a theologian who was asked to reconcile the Doctrine of Divine Mercy with the doctrine of infant damnation. 'The Almighty,' he explained, 'finds it necessary to do things in His official and public capacity which in His private and personal capacity He deplores.
~ Robert Heinlein, Methuselah's Children.,#KEYS
150:And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ~ Albert Camus, The Plague, #KEYS
151:The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done, it is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time which was before us. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, VIII. 9, 18, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
152:A shadowy unity with a vanished past
Treasured in an old-world frame was lurking there,
Secret, unnoted by the illumined mind,
And in subconscious whispers and in dream
Still murmured at the mind's and spirit's choice.
Its treacherous elements sp ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,#KEYS
153:Become conscious of being conscious. Say or think "I am", and add nothing to it. Be aware of the stillness that follows the "I am". Sense your presence, the naked unveiled, unclothed beingness. It is untouched by young or old, rich or poor, good or bad, or any other attributes. It is the spacious womb of all creation, all form. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
154:One should not think that a religion is true because it is old. On the contrary the more mankind lives, the more the true law of life becomes clear to it. To suppose that in our epoch one must continue to believe what our grandfa thers and ancestors believed is to think that an adult can continue to wear the garments of children ~ Tsen-tse-tsung-yung, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
155:There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men. ~ C S Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943), #KEYS
156:Those who dedicate themselves to the processes of discipline and self improvement set down by the old masters, are preparing themselves to enter the house of wisdom by the proper gate. On the other hand, such foolish mortals as believe they can breathe, chant, intone, psychologize or affirm themselves into a state of all knowing are trying to pick locks for which they have not filed the key. ~ Manly P Hall, #KEYS
157:When you fall from the contact, the first and only thing you have to do is to reestablish it - to remain quiet and open yourself. Everything else you must detach yourself from and reject. It is because you listen to ideas and suggestions of all kinds and still attach value to the old kind of "experiences", that you cannot reestablish the contact. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T4], #KEYS
158:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, "What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
159:Only those years that are passed uselessly make you grow old.
A year spent uselessly is a year during which no progress has been accomplished, no growth in consciousness has been achieved, no further step has been taken towards perfection.
Consecrate your life to the realisation of something higher and broader than yourself and you will never feel the weight of the passing years. ~ The Mother, Words of the Mother III#KEYS
160:[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel--back in 1980, before I was online--I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.' ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #KEYS
161:To be miserable may remind you of the defects of your external nature, but I do not see how it is going to cure them. I am not asking you to be frivolously happy, but to be quiet and quietly confident, rejecting these old movements, but for the rest trusting not in a restless self-torturing personal effort but to the Divine Force to change the external nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
162:All we have acquired soon loses worth,
An old disvalued credit in Time's bank,
Imperfection's cheque drawn on the Inconscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness
Time's bank
Though Time is immortal,
Mortal his works are and ways and the anguish ends like the rapture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry and Art, Hexameters, Alcaics, Sapphics,#KEYS
163:Raise thyself above every height, descend below every depth, assemble in thyself all the sensations of created things, of water, of fire, of the dry, of the moist; suppose that thou art at once everywhere, on earth, in the sea, in the heavens, that thou wast never born, that thou art still in the womb, that thou art young, old, dead, beyond death; comprehend all at once, times, spaces, things, qualities, and thou shalt comprehend God. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
164: The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species. ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates, Intro, #KEYS
165:The Maze is an old Native myth. The Maze itself is the sum of a man's life. The choices he makes, the dreams he hangs onto. And there at the center there's a legendary man who had been killed over and over again countless times. But always clawed his way back to life. The man returned for a last time to vanquish all his oppressors in a tireless fury. Built a house and around that house he built a maze so complicated only he could navigate through it. I reckon he's seen enough fighting.
~ Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy, Westworld, Teddy to the Man in Black,#KEYS
166:I think a good way to conceive of sacred space is as a playground. If what you're doing seems like play, you are in it. But you can't play with my toys, you have to have your own. Your life should have yielded some. Older people play with life experiences and realizations or with thoughts they like to entertain. In my case, I have books I like to read that don't lead anywhere. One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment ~ Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, #KEYS
167:The rishis of old attained the Knowledge of Brahman. One cannot have this so long as there is the slightest trace of worldliness. How hard the rishis laboured ! Early in the morning they would go away from the hermitage, and would spend the whole day in solitude, meditating on Brahman. At night they would return to the hermitage and eat a little fruit or roots. They kept their mind aloof from the objects of sight, hearing, touch, and other things of a worldly nature. Only thus did they realize Brahman as their own inner conciousness. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
168:The library smells like old books - a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks.
~ Laura Whitcomb,#KEYS
169:Man came silently into the world. As a matter of fact he trod so softly that, when we first catch sight of him as revealed by those indestructible stone instruments, we find him sprawling all over the old world from the Cape of Good Hope to Peking. Without doubt he already speaks and lives in groups ; he already makes fire. After all, this is surely what we ought to expect. As we know, each time a new living form rises up before us out of the depths of history, it is always complete and already legion. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon Of Man, The Birth of Thought, 186, #KEYS
170:High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
Discoverers of beauty's sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love's laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture's golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature's face.
Although Fate lingers in the high Beyond
And the work seems vain on which our heart's force was spent,
All shall be done for which our pain was borne.
Even as of old man came behind the beast
This high divine successor surely shall come
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
171:What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The conditions for your existence are as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man-or woman-sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? ~ Erwin Schrodinger, #KEYS
172:What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
173:The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual forms of thought, - these things are the life-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but combat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present.
For to the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and adored their memories when dead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
174:When a man attains the Knowledge of Brahman he shows certain characteristics. The Bhagavata describes four of them: the state of a child, of an inert thing, of a madman, and of a ghoul. Sometimes the knower of Brahman acts like a five-year-old child. Sometimes he acts like a madman. Sometimes he remains like an inert thing. In this state he cannot work; he renounces all action. You may say that jnanis like Janaka were active. The truth is that people in olden times gave responsibility to their subordinate officers and thus freed themselves from worry. Further, at that time men possessed intense faith. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
175:What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One's spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, [T1],#KEYS
176:I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us. For me, the problem of time is linked up with that of death, with the thought that we inevitably draw closer and closer to it, with the horror of decay. It's that, rather than the fact that things disintegrate, that love peters out. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #KEYS
177:His most obvious obstacle, one of which he has not in the least got rid of up to now, is a strongly Rajasic vital ego for which his mind finds justifications and covers. There is nothing more congenial to the vital ego than to put on the cloak of Yoga and imagine itself free, divinised, spiritualised, siddha, and all the rest of it, or advancing towards that end, when it is really doing nothing of the kind, but [is] just its old self in new forms. If one does not look at oneself with a constant sincerity and an eye of severe self-criticism, it is impossible to get out of this circle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings, #KEYS
178:Patrul Rinpoche tells the story of an old frog who had lived all his life in a dank well. One day a frog from the sea paid him a visit. "Where do you come from?" asked the frog in the well. "From the great ocean," he replied. "How big is your ocean?" "It's gigantic." "You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?" "Bigger." "Bigger? You mean half as big?" "No, even bigger." "Is it . . . as big as this well?" "There's no comparison." "That's impossible! I've got to see this for myself." They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, #KEYS
179:Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.
All now seems Nature's massed machinery;
An endless servitude to material rule
And long determination's rigid chain,
Her firm and changeless habits aping Law,
Her empire of unconscious deft device
Annul the claim of man's free human will.
He too is a machine amid machines;
A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,
A beating heart cuts out emotion's modes;
An insentient energy fabricates a soul.
Or the figure of the world reveals the signs
Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps
In circles around Matter's binding-posts.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
180:so you distill these stories great authors distill stories and we have soties that are very very very old they are usually religious stories they could be fairy tales because some people ahve traced fairy tales back 10 000 years ... a story that has been told for 10000 years is a funny kind of story its like people have remembered it and obviously modified it, like a game of telephone that has gone on for generations and all that is left is what people remember and maybe they remember whats important, because you tend to remember what's important and its not necessarily the case that you know what the hell it means ... and you dont genereally know what a book that you read means not if its profound it means more than you can understand because otherwise why read it? ~ Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning 2017 - 1, #KEYS
181:None is travelling :::
None is travelling
Here along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
The first day of the year:
thoughts come - and there is loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.
An old pond
A frog jumps in -
Splash!
Lightening -
Heron's cry
Stabs the darkness
Clouds come from time to time -
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.
In the cicada's cry
There's no sign that can foretell
How soon it must die.
Poverty's child -
he starts to grind the rice,
and gazes at the moon.
Won't you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.
Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening! ~ Matsuo Basho,#KEYS
182:Because children have abounding vitality,
because they are in spirit fierce and free,
therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.
They always say, "Do it again";
and the grown-up person does it again
until he is nearly dead.
For grown-up people are not strong enough
to exult in monotony.
But perhaps God is strong enough
to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning,
"Do it again"
to the sun; and every evening,
"Do it again" to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity
that makes all daisies alike;
it may be that God makes every daisy separately,
but has never got tired of making them.
It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy;
for we have sinned and grown old,
and our Father is younger than we."
~ G K Chesterton, Orthodoxy,#KEYS
183:Why do you indulge in these exaggerated feelings of remorse and despair when these things come up from the subconscient? They do not help and make it more, not less difficult to eliminate what comes. Such returns of an old nature that is long expelled from the conscious parts of the being always happen in sadhana. It does not at all mean that the nature is unchangeable. Try to recover the inner quietude, draw back from these movements and look at them calmly, reducing them to their true proportions. Your true nature is that in which you have peace and ananda and the love of the Divine. This other is only a fringe of the outer personality which in spite of these returns is destined to drop away as the true being extends and increases. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
184:Therefore there is only one solution: to unite ourselves by aspiration, concentration, interiorisation and identification with the supreme Will. And that is both omnipotence and perfect freedom at the same time. And that is the only omnipotence and the only freedom; everything else is an approximation. You may be on the way, but it is not the entire thing. So if you experience this, you realise that with this supreme freedom and supreme power there is also a total peace and a serenity that never fails.
Therefore, if you feel something which is not that, a revolt, a disgust, something which you cannot accept, it means that in you there is a part which has not been touched by the transformation, something which has kept the old consciousness, something which is still on the path - that is all.
~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS
185:There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the crash of great downfalls, and the turmoil of swift and violent revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock.... ~ Sri Aurobindo, in a statement of 16 April 1907, as published in India's Rebirth : A Selection from Sri Aurobindo's Writings, Talks and Speeches 3rd Edition (2000) #KEYS
186:Dare to be wise! Energy and spirit is needed to overcome the obstacles which indolence of nature as well as cowardice of heart oppose to our instruction. It is not without significance that the old myth makes the goddess of Wisdom emerge fully armed from the head of Jupiter; for her very first function is warlike. Even in her birth she has to maintain a hard struggle with the senses, which do not want to be dragged from their sweet repose. The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error. Content if they themselves escape the hard labor of thought, men gladly resign to others the guardianship of their ideas, and if it happens that higher needs are stirred in them, they embrace with a eager faith the formulas which State and priesthood hold in readiness for such an occasion. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #KEYS
187:Savitri is neither fantasy nor yet mere philosophical thought, but vision and revelation of the actual structure of the inner Cosmos and of the pilgrim of life within its sphere — the Stairway of the Worlds reveals itself to our gaze — worlds of Light above, worlds of Darkness beneath, and we see also ever-encircling life ('kindled in measure and quenched in measure') ascending that stair under the calm unwinking gaze of the Cosmic Gods who shine forth now as of old. Poetry is indeed the full manifestation of the Logos and, when as here, it is no mere iridescence dependent on some special standpoint, but the wondrous structure of the mighty Cosmos, the 'Adored One', that is revealed, then in truth does it manifest its full, its highest grandeur.
It is an omen of the utmost significance and hope that in these years of darkness and despair such a poem as Savitri should have appeared. ~ Krishnaprem,#KEYS
188:When you feel unhappy like that, it means that you have a progress to make. You can say that we always need to progress, it is true. But at times our nature gives its consent to the needed change and then everything goes smoothly, even happily. On the contrary sometimes the part that has to progress refuses to move and clings to its old habits through inertia, ignorance, attachment or desire. Then, under the pressure of the perfecting force, the struggle starts translating itself into unhappiness or revolt or both together. The only remedy is to keep quiet, look within oneself honestly to find out what is wrong and set to work courageously to put it right. The Divine Consciousness will always be there to help you if your endeavour is sincere; and the more sincere your endeavour the more the Divine Consciousness will help and assist you.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
189:Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.
Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
Something that wished but knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
A throe that came and left a quivering trace,
Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave
To raise its head and look for absent light,
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,
Like one who searches for a bygone self
And only meets the corpse of his desire.
It was as though even in this Nought's profound,
Even in this ultimate dissolution's core,
There lurked an unremembering entity,
Survivor of a slain and buried past
Condemned to resume the effort and the pang,
Reviving in another frustrate world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
190:The hostile forces have a certain self-chosen function: it is to test the condition of the individual, of the work, of the earth itself and their readiness for the spiritual descent and fulfilment. At every step of the journey, they are there attacking furiously, criticising, suggesting, imposing despondency or inciting to revolt, raising unbelief, amassing difficulties. No doubt, they put a very exaggerated interpretation on the rights given them by their function, making mountains even out of what seems to us a mole-hill. A little trifling false step or mistake and they appear on the road and clap a whole Himalaya as a barrier across it. But this opposition has been permitted from of old not merely as a test or ordeal, but as a compulsion on us to seek a greater strength, a more perfect self-knowledge, an intenser purity and force of aspiration, a faith that nothing can crush, a more powerful descent of the Divine Grace.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
191:Therefore, we can attain the overmental consciousness in many different ways: through religious passion, through poetic, intellectual, artistic, or heroic zeal, or through anything that helps man to exceed himself. - Sri Aurobindo assigned a special place to art, which he considered one of the major means of spiritual progress. Unfortunately, artists and creators too often have a considerable ego standing in the way, which is their main difficulty. The religious man, who has worked to dissolve his ego, finds it easier, but he rarely attains universality through his own individual efforts, leaping instead beyond the individual without bothering to develop all the intermediate rungs of the personal consciousness, and when he reaches the top he no longer has a ladder to come down, or he does not want to come down, or there is no individual self left to express what he sees, or else his old individual self tries its best to express his new consciousness, provided he feels the need to express anything at all.
~ Satprem,#KEYS
192:The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]-so at least it seems to me-is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done. ~ Bertrand Russell, #KEYS
193:The earth too, one with the surrounding mass of darkness and inconscience is asleep and insentient. She has to wake up and start on her journey moving forward, unveiling her secret mysteries towards the supreme revelation, the Divine incarnation in matter. The Gods are awake, in order to awaken the earth. A first ray is sent down and it touches as it were the sleeping Mother. The Divine Ray is just like a finger of a child touching her mother trying, as it were, to persuade her to open her eyes and look at her child. The first ray, however, comes not as a caress to the inert being of darkness, it is a sharp prick, even a hard blow. Such is the first impact of light upon dead matter; and the light is thrown back, as an unwelcome intruder, into what it came from; and the darkness grovels in its old groove. The second stage comes when the impact is not felt as a pain or something totally foreign and strange; its touch is felt as something soothing, something that heals an eternal sore. But this too was not suffered long and the light has to go back again. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, On Savitri, #KEYS
194:What you write is no doubt true and it is necessary to see it so as to be able to comprehend and grasp the true attitude necessary for the sadhana. But, as I have said, one must not be distressed or depressed by perceiving the weaknesses inherent in human nature and the difficulty of getting them out. The difficulty is natural, for they have been there for thousands of lives and are the very nature of man's vital and mental ignorance. It is not surprising that they should have a power to stick and take time to disappear. But there is a true being and a true consciousness that is there in us hidden by these surface formations of nature and which can shake them off once it emerges. By taking the right attitude of selfless devotion within and persisting in it in spite of the surface nature's troublesome self-repetitions one enables this inner being and consciousness to emerge and with the Mother's Force working in it deliver the being from all return of the movements of the old nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
195:The alchemist of today is not hidden in caves and cellars, studying alone, but as he goes on with his work, it is seen that walls are built around him, and while he is in the world, like the master of old, he is not of it. As he goes further in his work, the light of other people's advice and outside help grows weaker and weaker, until finally he stands alone in darkness, and then comes the time that he must use his own lamp, and the various experiments which he has carried on must be his guide. He must take the Elixir of Life which he has developed and with it fill the lamp of his spiritual consciousness, and holding that above his head, walk into the Great Unknown, where if he has been a good and faithful servant, he will learn of the alchemy of Divinity. Where now test tubes and bottles are his implements, then worlds and globes he will study, and as a silent watcher will learn from that Divine One, who is the Great Alchemist of all the universe, the greatest alchemy of all, the creation of life, the maintenance of form, and the building of worlds. ~ Manly P Hall, The Initiates of the Flame, #KEYS
196:To enlarge the sense-faculties without the knowledge that would give the old sense-values their right interpretation from the new standpoint might lead to serious disorders and incapacities, might unfit for practical life and for the orderly and disciplined use of the reason. Equally, an enlargement of our mental consciousness out of the experience of the egoistic dualities into an unregulated unity with some form of total consciousness might easily bring about a confusion and incapacity for the active life of humanity in the established order of the world's relativities. This, no doubt, is the root of the injunction imposed in the Gita on the man who has the knowledge not to disturb the life-basis and thought-basis of the ignorant; for, impelled by his example but unable to comprehend the principle of his action, they would lose their own system of values without arriving at a higher foundation.
Such a disorder and incapacity may be accepted personally and are accepted by many great souls as a temporary passage or as the price to be paid for the entry into a wider existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
197:3. Meeting the Mentor:For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass. What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance-promise that the peace of Paradise, which was known first within the mother womb, is not to be lost; that it supports the present and stands in the future as well as in the past (is omega as well as alpha); that though omnipotence may seem to be endangered by the threshold passages and life awakenings, protective power is always and ever present within or just behind the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side. Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task. And in so far as the hero's act coincides with that for which his society is ready, he seems to ride on the great rhythm of the historical process. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
198:To us poetry is a revel of intellect and fancy, imagination a plaything and caterer for our amusement, our entertainer, the nautch-girl of the mind. But to the men of old the poet was a seer, a revealer of hidden truths, imagination no dancing courtesan but a priestess in God's house commissioned not to spin fictions but to image difficult and hidden truths; even the metaphor or simile in the Vedic style is used with a serious purpose and expected to convey a reality, not to suggest a pleasing artifice of thought. The image was to these seers a revelative symbol of the unrevealed and it was used because it could hint luminously to the mind what the precise intellectual word, apt only for logical or practical thought or to express the physical and the superficial, could not at all hope to manifest. To them this symbol of the Creator's body was more than an image, it expressed a divine reality. Human society was for them an attempt to express in life the cosmic Purusha who has expressed himself otherwise in the material and the supraphysical universe. Man and the cosmos are both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden Reality.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Chapter 1, The Cycle of Society,#KEYS
199:If we do not objectify, and feel instinctively and permanently that words are not the things spoken about, then we could not speak abouth such meaningless subjects as the 'beginning' or the 'end' of time. But, if we are semantically disturbed and objectify, then, of course, since objects have a beginning and an end, so also would 'time' have a 'beggining' and an 'end'. In such pathological fancies the universe must have a 'beginning in time' and so must have been made., and all of our old anthropomorphic and objectified mythologies follow, including the older theories of entropy in physics. But, if 'time' is only a human form of representation and not an object, the universe has no 'beginning in time' and no 'end in time'; in other words, the universe is 'time'-less. The moment we realize, feel permanently, and utilize these realizations and feelings that words are not things, then only do we acquire the semantic freedom to use different forms of representation. We can fit better their structure to the facts at hand, become better adjusted to these facts which are not words, and so evaluate properly m.o (multi-ordinal) realities, which evaluation is important for sanity. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, #KEYS
200:For this is the other face of the psychic: not only is it joy and sweetness, but also quiet strength, as if it were forever above every possible tragedy - an invulnerable master. In this case, too, the details of a scene can be indelibly engraved. But what passes on to the next life is not so much the details as the essence of the scene: we will be struck by certain repetitive patterns of events or deadlocked situations that have an air of déjà vu and seem surrounded by an aura of fatality - for what has not been overcome in the past returns again and again, each time with a slightly different appearance, but basically always identical, until we confront the old knot and untie it. Such is the law of inner progress. Generally, however, the memory of actual physical circumstances does not remain, because, although our small surface consciousness makes much of them, they are, after all, of little significance. There is even a spontaneous mechanism that erases the profusion of useless past memories, just as those of the present life soon become eradicated. If we glance behind us, without thinking, what is actually left of our present life? A nebulous mass with perhaps two or three outstanding images; all the rest is blotted out. This is likewise the case for the soul and its past lives.
~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure Of Consciousness,#KEYS
201:A book like this, a problem like this, is in no hurry; we both, I just as much as my book, are friends of lento. It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to say, A TEACHER OF SLOW READING:- in the end I also write slowly. Nowadays it is not only my habit, it is also to my taste - a malicious taste, perhaps? - no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is 'in a hurry'. For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow - it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the WORD which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But precisely for this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book:- this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read WELL, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers...My patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists: LEARN to read me well! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #KEYS
202:Endure and you will triumph. Victory goes to the most enduring. And with the Grace and divine love nothing is impossible. My force and love are with you. At the end of the struggle there is Victory And so we find once more that the Ego-idea must be ruthlessly rooted out before Understanding can be attained The emptiness that you described in your letter yesterday was not a bad thing - it is this emptiness inward and outward that often in Yoga becomes the first step towards a new consciousness. Man's nature is like a cup of dirty water - the water has to be thrown out, the cup left clean and empty for the divine liquor to be poured into it. The difficulty is that the human physical consciousness feels it difficult to bear this emptiness - it is accustomed to be occupied by all sorts of little mental and vital movements which keep it interested and amused or even if in trouble and sorrow still active. The cessation of these things is hard to bear for it. It begins to feel dull and restless and eager for the old interests and movements. But by this restlessness it disturbs the quietude and brings back the things that had been thrown out. It is this that is creating the difficulty and the obstruction for the moment. If you can accept emptiness as a passage to the true consciousness and true movements, then it will be easier to get rid of the obstacle.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
203:Shouldn't we consider in every nation major changes in the traditional ways of doing things, a fundamental restructuring of economic political social and religious institutions. We've reached a point where there can be no more special interests or special cases, nuclear arms threaten every person on the Earth. Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labelled impractical or contrary to human nature, as if nuclear war were practical or as if there's only one human nature. But fundamental changes can clearly be made, we're surrounded by them. In the last two centuries abject slavery which was with us for thousands of years has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring worldwide revolution. Women, systematically mistreated for millennia are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied them and some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations. The old appeals to racial sexual religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work. A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
204:Listen to Erwin Schroedinger,the Nobel Prize-winning cofounder of quantum mechanics,and how can I convince you that he means this literally?Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown.It is not possible that this unity of knowledge,feelings,and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago;rather,this knowledge,feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all people,nay in all sensitive beings.The conditions for your existence are almost as old as rocks.For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought in pain.A hundred years ago (there's the test),another man sat on this spot;like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman.He felt pain and brief joy as you do.Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself?WAS IT NOT YOU,YOURSELF? Are you not humanity itself? Do you not touch all things human,because you are it's only Witness? Do you not therefore love the world,and love all people,and love the Kosmos,because you are its only Self? Do you not weep when one person is hurt,do you not cry when one child goes hungry,do you not scream when one soul is tortured? You know you suffer when others suffer.You already know this! "Was it someone else? Was it not you yourself?" ~ Ken Wilber, One Taste, p. 342-343, #KEYS
205:When I was a child of about thirteen, for nearly a year every night as soon as I had gone to bed it seemed to me that I went out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the city, very high above. Then I used to see myself clad in a magnificent golden robe, much longer than myself; and as I rose higher, the robe would stretch, spreading out in a circle around me to form a kind of immense roof over the city. Then I would see men, women, children, old men, the sick, the unfortunate coming out from every side; they would gather under the outspread robe, begging for help, telling of their miseries, their suffering, their hardships. In reply, the robe, supple and alive, would extend towards each one of them individually, and as soon as they had touched it, they were comforted or healed, and went back into their bodies happier and stronger than they had come out of them. Nothing seemed more beautiful to me, nothing could make me happier; and all the activities of the day seemed dull and colourless and without any real life, beside this activity of the night which was the true life for me. Often while I was rising up in this way, I used to see at my left an old man, silent and still, who looked at me with kindly affection and encouraged me by his presence. This old man, dressed in a long dark purple robe, was the personification-as I came to know later-of him who is called the Man of Sorrows. ~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, #KEYS
206:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#KEYS
207:In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is called 'the resurrection body ' and 'the glorified body.' The prophet Isaiah said, 'The dead shall live, their bodies shall rise' (Isa. 26:19). St. Paul called it 'the celestial body' or 'spiritual body ' (soma pneumatikon) (I Corinthians 15:40). In Sufism it is called 'the most sacred body ' (wujud al-aqdas) and 'supracelestial body ' (jism asli haqiqi). In Taoism, it is called 'the diamond body,' and those who have attained it are called 'the immortals' and 'the cloudwalkers.' In Tibetan Buddhism it is called 'the light body.' In Tantrism and some schools of yoga, it is called 'the vajra body,' 'the adamantine body,' and 'the divine body.' In Kriya yoga it is called 'the body of bliss.' In Vedanta it is called 'the superconductive body.' In Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, it is called 'the radiant body.' In the alchemical tradition, the Emerald Tablet calls it 'the Glory of the Whole Universe' and 'the golden body.' The alchemist Paracelsus called it 'the astral body.' In the Hermetic Corpus, it is called 'the immortal body ' (soma athanaton). In some mystery schools, it is called 'the solar body.' In Rosicrucianism, it is called 'the diamond body of the temple of God.' In ancient Egypt it was called 'the luminous body or being' (akh). In Old Persia it was called 'the indwelling divine potential' (fravashi or fravarti). In the Mithraic liturgy it was called 'the perfect body ' (soma teilion). In the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, it is called 'the divine body,' composed of supramental substance. In the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, it is called 'the ultrahuman'.
~ ?, http://herebedragons.weebly.com/homo-lumen.html,#KEYS
208:You say that you feel you have returned to your old life and that you have fallen from that state of spiritual consciousness in which you remained for some time. And you ask whether it comes from the fact that Sri Aurobindo and myself have withdrawn our protection and our help because you had been unable to fulfil your promise.
It is a mistake to think that anything at all has been withdrawn by us. Our help and our protection are with you as always, but it would be more correct to say that both your inability to feel our help and your inability to keep your promise are the simultaneous effects of the same cause.
Remember what I wrote to you when you went to Calcutta to fetch your family: do not let any influence come in between you and the Divine. You did not pay sufficient attention to this warning: you have allowed an influence to interfere strongly between you and your spiritual life; your devotion and your faith have been seriously shaken by this. As a consequence, you became afraid and you did not find the same joy in your offering to the Divine Cause; and also, quite naturally, you fell back into your ordinary consciousness and your old life.
You are quite right, nevertheless, not to let yourself be discouraged. Whatever the fall, it is always possible not only to get up again but also to rise higher and to reach the goal. Only a strong aspiration and a constant will are needed.
You have to take a firm resolution to let nothing interfere with your ascent towards the Divine Realisation. And then the success is certain.
Be assured of our unfailing help and protection. 3 February 1931 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I,#KEYS
209:She"
How shall I welcome not this light
Or, wakened by it, greet with doubt
This beam as palpable to sight
As visible to touch? How not,
Old as I am and (some say) wise,
Revive beneath her summer eyes?
How not have all my nights and days,
My spirit ranging far and wide,
By recollections of her grace
Enlightened and preoccupied?
Preoccupied: the Morning Star
How near the Sun and yet how far!
Enlightened: true, but more than true,
Or why must I discover there
The meaning in this taintless dew,
The dancing wave, this blessed air
Enchanting in its morning dress
And calm as everlastingness?
The flame that in the heart resides
Is parcel of that central Fire
Whose energy is winds and tides-
Is rooted deep in the Desire
That smilingly unseals its power
Each summer in each springing flower.
Oh Lady Nature-Proserpine,
Mistress of Gender, star-crowned Queen!
Ah Rose of Sharon-Mistress mine,
My teacher ere I turned fourteen,
When first I hallowed from afar
Your Beautyship in avatar!
I sense the hidden thing you say,
Your subtle whisper how the Word
From Alpha on to Omega
Made all things-you confide my Lord
Himself-all, all this potent Frame,
All save the riddle of your name.
Wisdom! I heard a voice that said:
"What riddle? What is that to you?
How! By my follower betrayed!
Look up-for shame! Now tell me true:
Where meet you light, with love and grace?
Still unacquainted with my face?"
Dear God, the erring heart must live-
Through strength and weakness, calm and glow-
That answer Wisdom scorns to give.
Much have I learned. One problem, though,
I never shall unlock: Who then,
Who made Sophia feminine?
~ Owen Barfield, 1978,#KEYS
210:Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. ~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
211:The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the mental being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijnana and which we may term the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind where the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge. If we can break down the veil of the intellectual, emotional, sensational mind which our ordinary existence has built between us and the Divine, we can then take up through the Truth-mind all our mental, vital and physical experience and offer it up to the spiritual -- this was the secret or mystic sense of the old Vedic "sacrifice" -- to be converted into the terms of the infinite truth of Sachchidananda, and we can receive the powers and illuminations of the infinite Existence in forms of a divine knowledge, will and delight to be imposed on our mentality, vitality, physical existence till the lower is transformed into the perfect vessel of the higher. This was the double Vedic movement of the descent and birth of the gods in the human creature and the ascent of the human powers that struggle towards the divine knowledge, power and delight and climb into the godheads, the result of which was the possession of the One, the Infinite, the beatific existence, the union with God, the Immortality. By possession of this ideal plane we break down entirely the opposition of the lower and the higher existence, the false gulf created by the Ignorance between the finite and the Infinite, God and Nature, the One and the Many, open the gates of the Divine, fulfil the individual in the complete harmony of the cosmic consciousness and realise in the cosmic being the epiphany of the transcendent Sachchidananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 2.15, #KEYS
212:The obsession clouds all reason, impairs the ability to act, makes anything secondary to it seem unimportant. It's a double-bind tug o'war. The desire to maintain the fantasy may be stronger than the desire to make it real.
In classical occult terms I am describing a thought-form, a monster bred from the darker reccesses of mind, fed by psychic energy, clothed in imagination and nurtured by umbilical cords which twist through years of growth. we all have our personal Tunnels of Set; set in our ways through habit and patterns piling on top of each other. The thought-form rides us like a monkey; it's tail wrapped firmly about the spine of a self lost to us years ago; an earlier version threshing blindly in a moment of fear, pain, or desire.
Thus we are formed; and in a moment of loss we feel the monster's hot breath against our backs, it's claws digging into muscle and flesh. we dance to the pull of strings that were woven years ago, and in a lightning flash of insight, or better yet, the gentle admonitions of a friend, we may see the lie; the program. it is first necessary to see that there is a program. To say perhaps, this creature is mine, but not wholly me. What follows then is that the prey becomes the hunter, pulling apart the obsession, naming its parts, searching for fragments of understanding in its entrails. Shrinking it, devouring it, peeling the layers of onion-skin.
This is in itself a magick as powerful as any sorcery. Unbinding the knots that we have tied and tangled; sorting out the threads of experience and colour-coding the chains of chance. It may leave us freer, more able to act effectively and less likely to repeat old mistakes. The thing has a chinese puzzle-like nature. We can perceive only the present, and it requires intense sifting through memory to see the scaffolding beneath.
~ Phil Hine, Oven Ready Chaos,#KEYS
213:Hence, it's obvious to see why in AA the community is so important; we are powerless over ourselves. Since we don't have immediate awareness of the Higher Power and how it works, we need to be constantly reminded of our commitment to freedom and liberation. The old patterns are so seductive that as they go off, they set off the association of ideas and the desire to give in to our addiction with an enormous force that we can't handle. The renewal of defeat often leads to despair. At the same time, it's a source of hope for those who have a spiritual view of the process. Because it reminds us that we have to renew once again our total dependence on the Higher Power. This is not just a notional acknowledgment of our need. We feel it from the very depths of our being. Something in us causes our whole being to cry out, "Help!" That's when the steps begin to work. And that, I might add, is when the spiritual journey begins to work. A lot of activities that people in that category regard as spiritual are not communicating to them experientially their profound dependence on the grace of God to go anywhere with their spiritual practices or observances. That's why religious practice can be so ineffective. The real spiritual journey depends on our acknowledging the unmanageability of our lives. The love of God or the Higher Power is what heals us. Nobody becomes a full human being without love. It brings to life people who are most damaged. The steps are really an engagement in an ever-deepening relationship with God. Divine love picks us up when we sincerely believe nobody else will. We then begin to experience freedom, peace, calm, equanimity, and liberation from cravings for what we have come to know are damaging-cravings that cannot bring happiness, but at best only momentary relief that makes the real problem worse. ~ Thomas Keating, Divine Therapy and Addiction, #KEYS
214:More often, he listened to the voice of Eros. Sometimes he watched the video feeds too, but usually, he just listened. Over the hours and days, he began to hear, if not patterns, at least common structures. Some of the voices spooling out of the dying station were consistent-broadcasters and entertainers who were overrepresented in the audio files archives, he guessed. There seemed to be some specific tendencies in, for want of a better term, the music of it too. Hours of random, fluting static and snatched bits of phrases would give way, and Eros would latch on to some word or phrase, fixating on it with greater and greater intensity until it broke apart and the randomness poured back in.
"... are, are, are, ARE, ARE, ARE... "
Aren't, Miller thought, and the ship suddenly shoved itself up, leaving Miller's stomach about half a foot from where it had been. A series of loud clanks followed, and then the brief wail of a Klaxon. "Dieu! Dieu!" someone shouted. "Bombs son vamen roja! Going to fry it! Fry us toda!"
There was the usual polite chuckle that the same joke had occasioned over the course of the trip, and the boy who'd made it-a pimply Belter no more than fifteen years old-grinned with pleasure at his own wit. If he didn't stop that shit, someone was going to beat him with a crowbar before they got back to Tycho. But Miller figured that someone wasn't him.
A massive jolt forward pushed him hard into the couch, and then gravity was back, the familiar 0.3 g. Maybe a little more. Except that with the airlocks pointing toward ship's down, the pilot had to grapple the spinning skin of Eros' belly first. The spin gravity made what had been the ceiling the new floor; the lowest rank of couches was now the top; and while they rigged the fusion bombs to the docks, they were all going to have to climb up onto a cold, dark rock that was trying to fling them off into the vacuum.
Such were the joys of sabotage. ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,#KEYS
215:It doesnt interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing. It doesnt interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesnt interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by lifes betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesnt interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when its not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, Yes! It doesnt interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesnt interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesnt interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer,#KEYS
216:For centuries and centuries humanity has waited for this time. It is come. But it is difficult.
I don't simply tell you we are here upon earth to rest and enjoy ourselves, now is not the time for that. We are here..... to prepare the way for the new creation.
The body has some difficulty, so I can't be active, alas. It is not because I am old, I am not old, I am younger than most of you. If I am here inactive, it is because the body has given itself definitely to prepare the transformation. But the consciousness is clear and we are here to work - rest and enjoyment will come afterwards. Let us do our work here.
So I have called you to tell you that. Take what you can, do what you can, my help will be with you. All sincere effort will be helped to the maximum.
It is the hour to be the heroic. Heroism is not what it is said to be; it is to become wholly unified - and the Divine help will always be with those who have resolved to be heroic in full sincerity.
There!
You are here at this moment that is to say upon earth, because you chose it at one time - you do not remember it any more, but I know it - that is why you are here. Well, you must rise to the height of the task. You must strive, you must conquer all weakness and limitations; above all you must tell your ego: "Your hour is gone." We want a race that has no ego, that has in place of the ego the Divine Consciousness. It is that which we want: the Divine Consciousness which will allow the race to develop itself and the Supramental being to take birth.
If you believe that I am here because I am bound - it is not true. I am not bound, I am here because my body has been given for the first attempt at transformation. Sri Aurobindo told me so. Well, I am doing it. I do not wish anyone to do it for me because.... Because it is not very pleasant, but I do it willingly because of the result; everybody will be able to benefit from it. I ask only one thing: do not listen to the ego.
If there is in your hearts a sincere Yes, you will satisfy me completely. I do not need words, I need the sincere adhesion of your hearts. That's all. ~ The Mother, (This talk was given by the Mother on April 2,1972,#KEYS
217:At the basis of this collaboration there is necessarily the will to change, no longer to be what one is, for things to be no longer what they are. There are several ways of reaching it, and all the methods are good when they succeed! One may be deeply disgusted with what exists and wish ardently to come out of all this and attain something else; one may - and this is a more positive way - one may feel within oneself the touch, the approach of something positively beautiful and true, and willingly drop all the rest so that nothing may burden the journey to this new beauty and truth.
What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a reality - perhaps of a not too distant future - a reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighed down by old habits, will surely have the good fortune not only to see but to realise. People sleep, they forget, they take life easy - they forget, forget all the time.... But if we could remember... that we are at an exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.
So, the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when one doesn't have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support, this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.
We can participate in it, we can become this new world. And truly, when one has such a marvellous opportunity, one should be ready to give up everything for its sake. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, [T1],#KEYS
218:There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should continue. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work. Then He placed the Gita in my hands. His strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I was not only to understand intellectually but to realise what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and opponent, success andfailure, yet not to do His work negligently. I realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindureligion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin,#KEYS
219:An old man of sixty began practising Yoga by reading your books. Eventually he developed signs of insanity. His son describes his condition and asks for advice. I am sending his letter.
As for the letter, I suppose you will have to tell the writer that his father committed a mistake when he took up Yoga without a Guru—for the mental idea about a Guru cannot take the place of the actual living influence. This Yoga especially, as I have written in my books, needs the help of the Guru and cannot be done without it. The condition into which his father got was a breakdown, not a state of siddhi. He passed out of the normal mental consciousness into a contact with some intermediate zone of consciousness (not the spiritual) where one can be subjected to all sorts of voices, suggestions, ideas, so-called aspirations which are not genuine. I have warned against the dangers of this intermediate zone in one of my books. The sadhak can avoid entering into this zone—if he enters, he has to look with indifference on all these things and observe them without lending any credence, by so doing he can safely pass into the true spiritual light. If he takes them all as true or real without discrimination, he is likely to land himself in a great mental confusion and, if there is in addition a lesion or weakness of the brain—the latter is quite possible in one who has been subject to apoplexy—it may have serious consequences and even lead to a disturbance of the reason. If there is ambition, or other motive of the kind mixed up in the spiritual seeking, it may lead to a fall in the Yoga and the growth of an exaggerated egoism or megalomania—of this there are several symptoms in the utterances of his father during the crisis. In fact one cannot or ought not to plunge into the experiences of this sadhana without a fairly long period of preparation and purification (unless one has already a great spiritual strength and elevation). Sri Aurobindo himself does not care to accept many into his path and rejects many more than he accepts. It would be well if he can get his father to pursue the sadhana no farther—for what he is doing is not really Sri Aurobindo's Yoga but something he has constructed in his own mind and once there has been an upset of this kind the wisest course is discontinuance.
21 April 1937
~ Sri Aurobindo, LOHATA, The Guru,#KEYS
220:There is one point in particular I would like to single out and stress, namely, the notion of evolution. It is common to assume that one of the doctrines of the perennial philosophy... is the idea of involution-evolution. That is, the manifest world was created as a "fall" or "breaking away" from the Absolute (involution), but that all things are now returning to the Absolute (via evolution). In fact, the doctrine of progressive temporal return to Source (evolution) does not appear anywhere, according to scholars as Joseph Campbell, until the axial period (i.e. a mere two thousand years ago). And even then, the idea was somewhat convoluted and backwards. The doctrine of the yugas, for example, sees the world as proceeding through various stages of development, but the direction is backward: yesterday was the Golden Age, and time ever since has been a devolutionary slide downhill, resulting in the present-day Kali-Yuga. Indeed, this notion of a historical fall from Eden was ubiquitous during the axial period; the idea that we are, at this moment, actually evolving toward Spirit was simply not conceived in any sort of influential fashion.
But sometime during the modern era-it is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly-the idea of history as devolution (or a fall from God) was slowly replaced by the idea of history as evolution (or a growth towards God). We see it explicitly in Schelling (1775-1854); Hegel (1770-1831) propounded the doctrine with a genius rarely equaled; Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) made evolution a universal law, and his friend Charles Darwin (1809-1882) applied it to biology. We find it next appearing in Aurobindo (1872-1950), who gave perhaps its most accurate and profound spiritual context, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) who made it famous in the West.
But here is my point: we might say that the idea of evolution as return-to-Spirit is part of the perennial philosophy, but the idea itself, in any adequate form, is no more than a few hundred years old. It might be 'ancient' as timeless, but it is certainly not ancient as "old."...
This fundamental shift in the sense or form of the perennial philosophy-as represented in, say, Aurobindo, Hegel, Adi Da, Schelling, Teilhard de Chardin, Radhakrishnan, to name a few-I should like to call the "neoperennial philosophy." ~ Ken Wilber, The Eye Of Spirit,#KEYS
221:I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth ~ it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it. And so how can I go wrong? I shall make some slips no doubt, and shall perhaps talk in second-hand language, but not for long: the living image of what I saw will always be with me and will always correct and guide me. Oh, I am full of courage and freshness, and I will go on and on if it were for a thousand years! Do you know, at first I meant to conceal the fact that I corrupted them, but that was a mistake ~ that was my first mistake! But truth whispered to me that I was lying, and preserved me and corrected me. But how establish paradise ~ I don't know, because I do not know how to put it into words. After my dream I lost command of words. All the chief words, anyway, the most necessary ones. But never mind, I shall go and I shall keep talking, I won't leave off, for anyway I have seen it with my own eyes, though I cannot describe what I saw. But the scoffers do not understand that. It was a dream, they say, delirium, hallucination. Oh! As though that meant so much! And they are so proud! A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted ~ you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times ~ but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness ~ that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, #KEYS
222:Who could have thought that this tanned young man with gentle, dreamy eyes, long wavy hair parted in the middle and falling to the neck, clad in a common coarse Ahmedabad dhoti, a close-fitting Indian jacket, and old-fashioned slippers with upturned toes, and whose face was slightly marked with smallpox, was no other than Mister Aurobindo Ghose, living treasure of French, Latin and Greek?" Actually, Sri Aurobindo was not yet through with books; the Western momentum was still there; he devoured books ordered from Bombay and Calcutta by the case. "Aurobindo would sit at his desk," his Bengali teacher continues, "and read by the light of an oil lamp till one in the morning, oblivious of the intolerable mosquito bites. I would see him seated there in the same posture for hours on end, his eyes fixed on his book, like a yogi lost in the contemplation of the Divine, unaware of all that went on around him. Even if the house had caught fire, it would not have broken this concentration." He read English, Russian, German, and French novels, but also, in ever larger numbers, the sacred books of India, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, although he had never been in a temple except as an observer. "Once, having returned from the College," one of his friends recalls, "Sri Aurobindo sat down, picked up a book at random and started to read, while Z and some friends began a noisy game of chess. After half an hour, he put the book down and took a cup of tea. We had already seen him do this many times and were waiting eagerly for a chance to verify whether he read the books from cover to cover or only scanned a few pages here and there. Soon the test began. Z opened the book, read a line aloud and asked Sri Aurobindo to recite what followed. Sri Aurobindo concentrated for a moment, and then repeated the entire page without a single mistake. If he could read a hundred pages in half an hour, no wonder he could go through a case of books in such an incredibly short time." But Sri Aurobindo did not stop at the translations of the sacred texts; he began to study Sanskrit, which, typically, he learned by himself. When a subject was known to be difficult or impossible, he would refuse to take anyone's word for it, whether he were a grammarian, pandit, or clergyman, and would insist upon trying it himself. The method seemed to have some merit, for not only did he learn Sanskrit, but a few years later he discovered the lost meaning of the Veda. ~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure of Consciousness, #KEYS
223:It is your birthday tomorrow?
Yes, Mother.
How old will you be?
Twenty-six, Mother.
I shall see you tomorrow and give you something special. You will see, I am not speaking of anything material- that, I shall give you a card and all that- but of something...You will see, tomorrow, now go home and prepare yourself quietly so that you may be ready to receive it.
Yes, Mother.
You know, my child, what "Bonne Fete" signifies, that is, the birthday we wish here?
Like that, I know what it means, Mother, but not the special significance you want to tell me.
Yes, it is truly a special day in one's life. It is one of those days in the year when the Supreme descends into us- or when we are face to face with the Eternal- one of those days when our soul comes in contact with the Eternal and, if we remain a little conscious, we can feel His Presence within us. If we make a little effort on this day, we accomplish the work of many lives as in a lightning flash. That is why I give so much importance to the birthday- because what one gains in one day is truly something incomparable. And it is for this that I also work to open the consciousness a little towards what is above so that one may come before the Eternal. My child, it is a very, very special day, for it is the day of decision, the day one can unite with the Supreme Consciousness. For the Lord lifts us on this day to the highest region possible so that our soul which is a portion of that Eternal Flame, may be united and identified with its Origin.
This day is truly an opportunity in life. One is so open and so receptive that one can assimilate all that is given. I can do many things, that is why it is important.
It is one of those days when the Lord Himself opens the doors wide for us. It is as though He were inviting us to rekindle more powerfully the flame of aspiration. It is one of those days which He gives us. We too, by our personal effort, could attain to this, but it would be long, hard and not so easy. And this- this is a real chance in life- the day of Grace.
It is an occult phenomenon that occurs invariably, without our knowledge, on this particular day of the year. The soul leaves behind the body and journeys up and up till it merges into the Source in order to replenish itself and absorb from the Supreme Its Power, Light and Ananda and comes down charged for a whole year to pass. Then again and again... it continues like this year after year. ~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, Mona Sarkar,#KEYS
224:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother. It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Human Aspiration, #KEYS
225:Why do we forget things?
Ah! I suppose there are several reasons. First, because one makes use of the memory to remember. Memory is a mental instrument and depends on the formation of the brain. Your brain is constantly growing, unless it begins to degenerate, but still its growth can continue for a very, very long time, much longer than that of the body. And in this growth, necessarily some things will take the place of others. And as the mental instrument develops, things which have served their term or the transitory moment in the development may be wiped out to give place to the result. So the result of all that you knew is there, living in itself, but the road traversed to reach it may be completely blurred. That is, a good functioning of the memory means remembering only the results so as to be able to have the elements for moving forward and a new construction. That is more important than just retaining things rigidly in the mind.
Now, there is another aspect also. Apart from the mental memory, which is something defective, there are states of consciousness. Each state of consciousness in which one happens to be registers the phenomena of a particular moment, whatever they may be. If your consciousness remains limpid, wide and strong, you can at any moment whatsoever, by concentrating, call into the active consciousness what you did, thought, saw, observed at any time before; all this you can remember by bringing up in yourself the same state of consciousness. And that, that is never forgotten. You could live a thousand years and you would still remember it. Consequently, if you don't want to forget, it must be your consciousness which remembers and not your mental memory. Your mental memory will be wiped out inevitably, get blurred, and new things will take the place of the old ones. But things of which you are conscious you do not forget. You have only to bring up the same state of consciousness again. And thus one can remember circumstances one has lived thousands of years ago, if one knows how to bring up the same state of consciousness. It is in this way that one can remember one's past lives. This never gets blotted out, while you don't have any more the memory of what you have done physically when you were very young. You would be told many things you no longer remember. That gets wiped off immediately. For the brain is constantly changing and certain weaker cells are replaced by others which are much stronger, and by other combinations, other cerebral organisations. And so, what was there before is effaced or deformed.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS
226:Worthy The Name Of Sir Knight
Sir Knight of the world's oldest order,
Sir Knight of the Army of God,
You have crossed the strange mystical border,
The ground floor of truth you have trod;
You have entered the sanctum sanctorum,
Which leads to the temple above,
Where you come as a stone, and a Christ-chosen one,
In the kingdom of Friendship and Love.
II
As you stand in this new realm of beauty,
Where each man you meet is your friend,
Think not that your promise of duty
In hall, or asylum, shall end;
Outside, in the great world of pleasure,
Beyond, in the clamor of trade,
In the battle of life and its coarse daily strife
Remember the vows you have made.
III
Your service, majestic and solemn,
Your symbols, suggestive and sweet,
Your uniformed phalanx in column
On gala days marching the street;
Your sword and your plume and your helmet,
Your 'secrets' hid from the world's sight;
These things are the small, lesser parts of the all
Which are needed to form the true Knight.
IV
The martyrs who perished rejoicing
In Templary's glorious laws,
Who died 'midst the fagots while voicing
The glory and worth of their cause-
935
They honored the title of 'Templar'
No more than the Knight of to-day
Who mars not the name with one blemish of shame,
But carries it clean through life's fray.
To live for a cause, to endeavor
To make your deeds grace it, to try
And uphold its precepts forever,
Is harder by far than to die.
For the battle of life is unending,
The enemy, Self, never tires,
And the true Knight must slay that sly foe every day
Ere he reaches the heights he desires.
VI
Sir Knight, have you pondered the meaning
Of all you have heard and been told?
Have you strengthened your heart for its weaning
From vices and faults loved of old?
Will you honor, in hours of temptation,
Your promises noble and grand?
Will your spirit be strong to do battle with wrong,
'And having done all, to stand?'
VII
Will you ever be true to a brother
In actions as well as in creed?
Will you stand by his side as no other
Could stand in the hour of his need?
Will you boldly defend him from peril,
And lift him from poverty's curseWill the promise of aid which you willingly made,
Reach down from your lips to your purse?
VIII
The world's battle field is before you!
Let Wisdom walk close by your side,
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Let Faith spread her snowy wings o'er you,
Let Truth be your comrade and guide;
Let Fortitude, Justice and Mercy
Direct all your conduct aright,
And let each word and act tell to men the proud fact,
You are worthy the name of 'Sir Knight'.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#KEYS
227:root of the falsification and withdrawl of divine love :::
At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,#KEYS
228:What do we understand by the term "chance"? Chance can only be the opposite of order and harmony. There is only one true harmony and that is the supramental - the reign of Truth, the expression of the Divine Law. In the Supermind, therefore, chance has no place. But in the lower Nature the supreme Truth is obscured: hence there is an absence of that divine unity of purpose and action which alone can constitute order. Lacking this unity, the domain of lower Nature is governed by what we may call chance - that is to say, it is a field in which various conflicting forces intermix, having no single definite aim. Whatever arises out of such a rushing together of forces is a result of confusion, dissonance and falsehood - a product of chance. Chance is not merely a conception to cover our ignorance of the causes at work; it is a description of the uncertain mele ́e of the lower Nature which lacks the calm one-pointedness of the divine Truth. The world has forgotten its divine origin and become an arena of egoistic energies; but it is still possible for it to open to the Truth, call it down by its aspiration and bring about a change in the whirl of chance. What men regard as a mechanical sequence of events, owing to their own mental associations, experiences and generalisations, is really manipulated by subtle agencies each of which tries to get its own will done. The world has got so subjected to these undivine agencies that the victory of the Truth cannot be won except by fighting for it. It has no right to it: it has to gain it by disowning the falsehood and the perversion, an important part of which is the facile notion that, since all things owe their final origin to the Divine, all their immediate activities also proceed directly from it. The fact is that here in the lower Nature the Divine is veiled by a cosmic Ignorance and what takes place does not proceed directly from the divine knowledge. That everything is equally the will of God is a very convenient suggestion of the hostile influences which would have the creation stick as tightly as possible to the disorder and ugliness to which it has been reduced. So what is to be done, you ask? Well, call down the Light, open yourselves to the power of Transformation. Innumerable times the divine peace has been given to you and as often you have lost it - because something in you refuses to surrender its petty egoistic routine. If you are not always vigilant, your nature will return to its old unregenerate habits even after it has been filled with the descending Truth. It is the struggle between the old and the new that forms the crux of the Yoga; but if you are bent on being faithful to the supreme Law and Order revealed to you, the parts of your being belonging to the domain of chance will, however slowly, be converted and divinised. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #KEYS
229:on purifying ego and desire :::
The elimination of all egoistic activity and of its foundation, the egoistic consciousness, is clearly the key to the consummation we desire. And since in the path of works action is the knot we have first to loosen, we must endeavour to loosen it where it is centrally tied, in desire and in ego; for otherwise we shall cut only stray strands and not the heart of our bondage.These are the two knots of our subjection to this ignorant and divided Nature, desire and ego-sense. And of these two desire has its native home in the emotions and sensations and instincts and from there affects thought and volition; ego-sense lives indeed in these movements, but it casts its deep roots also in the thinking mind and its will and it is there that it becomes fully self conscious. These are the twin obscure powers of the obsessing world-wide Ignorance that we have to enlighten and eliminate.
In the field of action desire takes many forms, but the most powerful of all is the vital selfs craving or seeking after the fruit of our works. The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material, -wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, niskama karma. ...
The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to all results, to all reactions, to all happenings. If good fortune and ill fortune, if respect and insult, if reputation and obloquy, if victory and defeat, if pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, not responding with the least disturbance or vibration in any spot of the nature, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise. The tiniest reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings still to the old nature. Our self-conquest is only partially accomplished; it is still imperfect or unreal in some stretch or part or smallest spot of the ground of our nature. And that little pebble of imperfection may throw down the whole achievement of the Yoga
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [102],#KEYS
230:Sweet Mother, there's a flower you have named "The Creative Word".
Yes.
What does that mean?
It is the word which creates.
There are all kinds of old traditions, old Hindu traditions, old Chaldean traditions in which the Divine, in the form of the Creator, that is, in His aspect as Creator, pronounces a word which has the power to create. So it is this... And it is the origin of the mantra. The mantra is the spoken word which has a creative power. An invocation is made and there is an answer to the invocation; or one makes a prayer and the prayer is granted. This is the Word, the Word which, in its sound... it is not only the idea, it is in the sound that there's a power of creation. It is the origin, you see, of the mantra.
In Indian mythology the creator God is Brahma, and I think that it was precisely his power which has been symbolised by this flower, "The Creative Word". And when one is in contact with it, the words spoken have a power of evocation or creation or formation or transformation; the words... sound always has a power; it has much more power than men think. It may be a good power and it may be a bad power. It creates vibrations which have an undeniable effect. It is not so much the idea as the sound; the idea too has its own power, but in its own domain - whereas the sound has a power in the material world.
I think I have explained this to you once; I told you, for example, that words spoken casually, usually without any re- flection and without attaching any importance to them, can be used to do something very good. I think I spoke to you about "Bonjour", "Good Day", didn't I? When people meet and say "Bonjour", they do so mechanically and without thinking. But if you put a will into it, an aspiration to indeed wish someone a good day, well, there is a way of saying "Good Day" which is very effective, much more effective than if simply meeting someone you thought: "Ah! I hope he has a good day", without saying anything. If with this hope in your thought you say to him in a certain way, "Good Day", you make it more concrete and more effective.
It's the same thing, by the way, with curses, or when one gets angry and says bad things to people. This can do them as much harm - more harm sometimes - than if you were to give them a slap. With very sensitive people it can put their stomach out of order or give them palpitation, because you put into it an evil force which has a power of destruction.
It is not at all ineffective to speak. Naturally it depends a great deal on each one's inner power. People who have no strength and no consciousness can't do very much - unless they employ material means. But to the extent that you are strong, especially when you have a powerful vital, you must have a great control on what you say, otherwise you can do much harm. Without wanting to, without knowing it; through ignorance.
Anything? No? Nothing?
Another question?... Everything's over? ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 347-349,#KEYS
231:There is no invariable rule of such suffering. It is not the soul that suffers; the Self is calm and equal to all things and the only sorrow of the psychic being is the sorrow of the resistance of Nature to the Divine Will or the resistance of things and people to the call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body. When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt - which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance, then obviously there may be much suffering of the mind and vital parts. The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability to respond to the higher consciousness, a habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is moreover the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence on the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses, desires, feelings, responses continue even after they are thrown out and rejected, and can return like an invading army from outside, until the whole nature, given to the Divine, refuses to admit them. This is the subjective form of the universal resistance, but it may also take an objective form - opposition, calumny, attacks, persecution, misfortunes of many kinds, adverse conditions and circumstances, pain, illness, assaults from men or forces. There too the possibility of suffering is evident. There are two ways to meet all that - first that of the Self, calm, equality, a spirit, a will, a mind, a vital, a physical consciousness that remain resolutely turned towards the Divine and unshaken by all suggestion of doubt, desire, attachment, depression, sorrow, pain, inertia. This is possible when the inner being awakens, when one becomes conscious of the Self, of the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner physical, for that can more easily attune itself to the divine Will, and then there is a division in the being as if there were two beings, one within, calm, strong, equal, unperturbed, a channel of the Divine Consciousness and Force, one without, still encroached on by the lower Nature; but then the disturbances of the latter become something superficial which are no more than an outer ripple, - until these under the inner pressure fade and sink away and the outer being too remains calm, concentrated, unattackable. There is also the way of the psychic, - when the psychic being comes out in its inherent power, its consecration, adoration, love of the Divine, self-giving, surrender and imposes these on the mind, vital and physical consciousness and compels them to turn all their movements Godward. If the psychic is strong and master...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Resistances, Sufferings and Falls, 669,#KEYS
232:It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 183, #KEYS
233:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,#KEYS
234:Allow the Lord to Do Everything :::
Now, when I start looking like this (Mother closes her eyes), two things are there at the same time: this smile, this joy, this laughter are there, and such peace! Such full, luminous, total peace, in which there are no more conflicts, no more contradictions. There are no more conflicts. It is one single luminous harmony - and yet everything we call error, suffering, misery, everything is there. It eliminates nothing. It is another way of seeing.
(long silence)
There can be no doubt that if you sincerely want to get out of it, it is not so difficult after all: you have nothing to do, you only have to allow the Lord to do everything. And He does everything. He does everything. It is so wonderful, so wonderful!
He takes anything, even what we call a very ordinary intelligence and he simply teaches you to put this intelligence aside, to rest: "There, be quiet, don't stir, don't bother me, I don't need you." Then a door opens - you don't even feel that you have to open it; it is wide open, you are tkane over to the other side. All that is done by Someone else, not you. And then the other way becomes impossible.
All this... oh, this tremendous labour of hte mind striving to understand, toiling and giving itself headaches!... It is absolutely useless, absolutely useless, no use at all, it merely increases the confusion.
You are faced with a so-called problem: what should you say, what should you do, how should you act? There is nothing to do, nothing, you only have to say to the Lord, "There, You see, it is like that" - that's all. And then you stay very quiet. And then quite spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflection, without calculation, nothing, nothing, without the slightest effect - you do what has to be done. That is to say, the Lord does it, it is no longer you. He does it. He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words into your mouth or your pen - He does everything, everything, everything, everything; you have nothing more to do but allow yourself to live blissfully.
I am more and more convinced that people do not really want it.
But clearing the ground is difficult, the work of clearing the ground before hand.
But you don't even need to do it! He does it for you.
But they are constantly breaking in: the old consciousness, the old thoughts....
Yes, they try to come in again, by habit. You only have to say, "Lord, You see, You see, You see, it is like that" - that's all. "Lord, You see, You see this, You see that, You see this fool" - and it is all over immediately. And it changes automatically, my child, without the slightest effort. Simply to be sincere, that is to say, to truly want everything to be right. You are perfectly conscious that you can do nothing about it, that you have no capacity.... But there is always something that wants to do it by itself; that's the trouble, otherwise...
No, you may be full of an excellent goodwill and then you want to do it. That's what complicated everything. Or else you don't have faith, you believe that the Lord will not be able to do it and that you must do it yourself, because He does not know! (Mother laughs.) This, this kind of stupidity is very common. "How can He see things? We live in a world of Falsehood, how can He see Falsehood and see..." But He sees the thing as it is! Exactly!
I am not speaking of people of no intelligence, I am speaking of people who are intelligent and try - there is a kind of conviction, like that, somewhere, even in people who know that we live in a world of Ignorance and Falsehood and that there is a Lord who is All-Truth. They say, "Precisely because He is All-Truth, He does not understand. (Mother laughs.) He does not understand our falsehood, I must deal with it myself." That is very strong, very common.
Ah! we make complications for nothing. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
235:To arrive then at this settled divine status must be the object of our concentration. The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect. Nor must it be merely the consecutive thought of the intellectual thinker, whose only object is to conceive and intellectually link together his conceptions. It is not, except perhaps at first, a process of reasoning that is wanted so much as a dwelling so far as possible on the fruitful essence of the idea which by the insistence of the soul's will upon it must yield up all the facets of its truth. Thus if it be the divine Love that is the subject of concentration, it is on the essence of the idea of God as Love that the mind should concentrate in such a way that the various manifestation of the divine Love should arise luminously, not only to the thought, but in the heart and being and vision of the Sadhaka. The thought may come first and the experience afterwards, but equally the experience may come first and the knowledge arise out of the experience. Afterwards the thing attained has to be dwelt on and more and more held till it becomes a constant experience and finally the Dharma or law of the being.
This is the process of concentrated meditation; but a more strenuous method is the fixing of the whole mind in concentration on the essence of the idea only, so as to reach not the thought-knowledge or the psychological experience of the subject, but the very essence of the thing behind the idea. In this process thought ceases and passes into the absorbed or ecstatic contemplation of the object or by a merging into it m an inner Samadhi. If this be the process followed, then subsequently the state into which we rise must still be called down to take possession of the lower being, to shed its light, power and bliss on our ordinary consciousness. For otherwise we may possess it, as many do, in the elevated condition or in the inward Samadhi, but we shall lose our hold of it when we awake or descend into the contacts of the world; and this truncated possession is not the aim of an integral Yoga.
A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altogether. This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altogether not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet. Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.
Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary. A free concentration of will using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place. This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Concentration,#KEYS
236: Sri Aurobindo writes here: "...Few and brief in their visits are the Bright Ones who are willing or permitted to succour." Why?
(1 "The Way", Cent. Vol. 17, p. 40.)
One must go and ask them! But there is a conclusion, the last sentences give a very clear explanation. It is said: "Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling?" This comes back to the question why the adverse forces have the right to interfere, to harass you. But this is precisely the test necessary for your sincerity. If the way were very easy, everybody would start on the way, and if one could reach the goal without any obstacle and without any effort, everybody would reach the goal, and when one has come to the end, the situation would be the same as when one started, there would be no change. That is, the new world would be exactly what the old has been. It is truly not worth the trouble! Evidently a process of elimination is necessary so that only what is capable of manifesting the new life remains. This is the reason and there is no other, this is the best of reasons. And, you see, it is a tempering, it is the ordeal of fire, only that which can stand it remains absolutely pure; when everything has burnt down, there remains only the little ingot of pure gold. And it is like that. What puts things out very much in all this is the religious idea of fault, sin, redemption. But there is no arbitrary decision! On the contrary, for each one it is the best and most favourable conditions which are given. We were saying the other day that it is only his friends whom God treats with severity; you thought it was a joke, but it is true. It is only to those who are full of hope, who will pass through this purifying flame, that the conditions for attaining the maximum result are given. And the human mind is made in such a way that you may test this; when something extremely unpleasant happens to you, you may tell yourself, "Well, this proves I am worth the trouble of being given this difficulty, this proves there is something in me which can resist the difficulty", and you will notice that instead of tormenting yourself, you rejoice - you will be so happy and so strong that even the most unpleasant things will seem to you quite charming! This is a very easy experiment to make. Whatever the circumstance, if your mind is accustomed to look at it as something favourable, it will no longer be unpleasant for you. This is quite well known; as long as the mind refuses to accept a thing, struggles against it, tries to obstruct it, there are torments, difficulties, storms, inner struggles and all suffering. But the minute the mind says, "Good, this is what has to come, it is thus that it must happen", whatever happens, you are content. There are people who have acquired such control of their mind over their body that they feel nothing; I told you this the other day about certain mystics: if they think the suffering inflicted upon them is going to help them cross the stages in a moment and give them a sort of stepping stone to attain the Realisation, the goal they have put before them, union with the Divine, they no longer feel the suffering at all. Their body is as it were galvanised by the mental conception. This has happened very often, it is a very common experience among those who truly have enthusiasm. And after all, if one must for some reason or other leave one's body and take a new one, is it not better to make of one's death something magnificent, joyful, enthusiastic, than to make it a disgusting defeat? Those who cling on, who try by every possible means to delay the end even by a minute or two, who give you an example of frightful anguish, show that they are not conscious of their soul.... After all, it is perhaps a means, isn't it? One can change this accident into a means; if one is conscious one can make a beautiful thing of it, a very beautiful thing, as of everything. And note, those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness are those who never think about it, who are not haunted all the time by this "horror" facing them which they must escape and which they try to push as far away from them as they can. These, when the occasion comes, can lift their head, smile and say, "Here I am."
It is they who have the will to make the best possible use of their life, it is they who say, "I shall remain here as long as it is necessary, to the last second, and I shall not lose one moment to realise my goal"; these, when the necessity comes, put up the best show. Why? - It is very simple, because they live in their ideal, the truth of their ideal; because that is the real thing for them, the very reason of their being, and in all things they can see this ideal, this reason of existence, and never do they come down into the sordidness of material life.
So, the conclusion:
One must never wish for death.
One must never will to die.
One must never be afraid to die.
And in all circumstances one must will to exceed oneself. ~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-4, page no.353-355,#KEYS
237:Death & Fame
When I die
I don't care what happens to my body throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But I want a big funeral St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren, companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche, there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousandday retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997 and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head, my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat, seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-harp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India, Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive
February 22, 1997
~ Allen Ginsberg,#KEYS
238:For instance, a popular game with California occultists-I do not know its inventor-involves a Magic Room, much like the Pleasure Dome discussed earlier except that this Magic Room contains an Omniscient Computer.
To play this game, you simply "astrally project" into the Magic Room. Do not ask what "astral projection" means, and do not assume it is metaphysical (and therefore either impossible, if you are a materialist, or very difficult, if you are a mystic). Just assume this is a gedankenexperiment, a "mind game." Project yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy. You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle this astral computer. It exists early in the next century; you are getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is amusing and helpful to you. It is so built that it responds immediately to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their meaning. (Crude prototypes of such computers already exist.) So, when you are in this magic room, you can ask this Computer anything, just by thinking of what you want to know. It will read your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the correct answer.
There is one slight problem. The computer is very sensitive to all brain-waves. If you have any doubts, it registers them as negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question." So, the way to use it is to start simply, with "easy" questions. Ask it to dig out of the archives the name of your second-grade teacher. (Almost everybody remembers the name of their first grade teacher-imprint vulnerability again-but that of the second grade teacher tends to get lost.)
When the computer has dug out the name of your second grade teacher, try it on a harder question, but not one that is too hard. It is very easy to sabotage this machine, but you don't want to sabotage it during these experiments. You want to see how well it can be made to perform.
It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of your perception. Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination and visualization on your first trial runs.
After a few trivial experiments of the second-grade-teacher variety, you can try more interesting programs. Take a person toward whom you have negative feelings, such as anger, disappointment, feeling-of-betrayal, jealousy or whatever interferes with the smooth, tranquil operation of your own bio-computer. Ask the Magic Computer to explain that other person to you; to translate you into their reality-tunnel long enough for you to understand how events seem to them. Especially, ask how you seem to them.
This computer will do that job for you; but be prepared for some shocks which might be disagreeable at first. This super-brain can also perform exegesis on ideas that seem obscure, paradoxical or enigmatic to us. For instance, early experiments with this computer can very profitably turn on asking it to explain some of the propositions in this book which may seem inexplicable or perversely wrong-headed to you, such as "We are all greater artists than we realize" or "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" or "mind and its contents are functionally identical."
This computer is much more powerful and scientifically advanced than the rapture-machine in the neurosomatic circuit. It has total access to all the earlier, primitive circuits, and overrules any of them. That is, if you put a meta-programming instruction into this computer; it will relay it downward to the old circuits and cancel contradictory programs left over from the past. For instance, try feeding it on such meta-programming instructions as: 1. I am at cause over my body. 2. I am at cause over my imagination. 3.1 am at cause over my future. 4. My mind abounds with beauty and power. 5.1 like people, and people like me.
Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of present technology, so it cannot "understand" your commands if you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform. Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic transformations of your past reality-tunnels.
This represents cybernetic consciousness; the programmer becoming self-programmer, self-metaprogrammer, meta-metaprogrammer, etc. Just as the emotional compulsions of the second circuit seem primitive, mechanical and, ultimately, silly to the neurosomatic consciousness, so, too, the reality maps of the third circuit become comic, relativistic, game-like to the metaprogrammer. "Whatever you say it is, it isn't, " Korzybski, the semanticist, repeated endlessly in his seminars, trying to make clear that third-circuit semantic maps are not the territories they represent; that we can always make maps of our maps, revisions of our revisions, meta-selves of our selves. "Neti, neti" (not that, not that), Hindu teachers traditionally say when asked what "God" is or what "Reality" is. Yogis, mathematicians and musicians seem more inclined to develop meta-programming consciousness than most of humanity. Korzybski even claimed that the use of mathematical scripts is an aid to developing this circuit, for as soon as you think of your mind as mind 1 , and the mind which contemplates that mind as mind2 and the mind which contemplates mind2 contemplating mind 1 as mind3, you are well on your way to meta-programming awareness. Alice in Wonderland is a masterful guide to the metaprogramming circuit (written by one of the founders of mathematical logic) and Aleister Crowley soberly urged its study upon all students of yoga. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising,#KEYS
239:The Two Paths Of Yoga :::
14 April 1929 - What are the dangers of Yoga? Is it especially dangerous to the people of the West? Someone has said that Yoga may be suitable for the East, but it has the effect of unbalancing the Western mind.
Yoga is not more dangerous to the people of the West than to those of the East. Everything depends upon the spirit with which you approach it. Yoga does become dangerous if you want it for your own sake, to serve a personal end. It is not dangerous, on the contrary, it is safety and security itself, if you go to it with a sense of its sacredness, always remembering that the aim is to find the Divine.
Dangers and difficulties come in when people take up Yoga not for the sake of the Divine, but because they want to acquire power and under the guise of Yoga seek to satisfy some ambition. if you cannot get rid of ambition, do not touch the thing. It is fire that burns.
There are two paths of Yoga, one of tapasya (discipline), and the other of surrender. The path of tapasya is arduous. Here you rely solely upon yourself, you proceed by your own strength. You ascend and achieve according to the measure of your force. There is always the danger of falling down. And once you fall, you lie broken in the abyss and there is hardly a remedy. The other path, the path of surrender, is safe and sure. It is here, however, that the Western people find their difficulty. They have been taught to fear and avoid all that threatens their personal independence. They have imbibed with their mothers' milk the sense of individuality. And surrender means giving up all that. In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it has nothing to do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma.
If you take up this path of surrender fully and sincerely, there is no more danger or serious difficulty. The question is to be sincere. If you are not sincere, do not begin Yoga. If you were dealing in human affairs, then you could resort to deception; but in dealing with the Divine there is no possibility of deception anywhere. You can go on the Path safely when you are candid and open to the core and when your only end is to realise and attain the Divine and to be moved by the Divine. There is another danger; it is in connection with the sex impulses. Yoga in its process of purification will lay bare and throw up all hidden impulses and desires in you. And you must learn not to hide things nor leave them aside, you have to face them and conquer and remould them. The first effect of Yoga, however, is to take away the mental control, and the hungers that lie dormant are suddenly set free, they rush up and invade the being. So long as this mental control has not been replaced by the Divine control, there is a period of transition when your sincerity and surrender will be put to the test. The strength of such impulses as those of sex lies usually in the fact that people take too much notice of them; they protest too vehemently and endeavour to control them by coercion, hold them within and sit upon them. But the more you think of a thing and say, "I don't want it, I don't want it", the more you are bound to it. What you should do is to keep the thing away from you, to dissociate from it, take as little notice of it as possible and, even if you happen to think of it, remain indifferent and unconcerned. The impulses and desires that come up by the pressure of Yoga should be faced in a spirit of detachment and serenity, as something foreign to yourself or belonging to the outside world. They should be offered to the Divine, so that the Divine may take them up and transmute them. If you have once opened yourself to the Divine, if the power of the Divine has once come down into you and yet you try to keep to the old forces, you prepare troubles and difficulties and dangers for yourself. You must be vigilant and see that you do not use the Divine as a cloak for the satisfaction of your desires. There are many self-appointed Masters, who do nothing but that. And then when you are off the straight path and when you have a little knowledge and not much power, it happens that you are seized by beings or entities of a certain type, you become blind instruments in their hands and are devoured by them in the end. Wherever there is pretence, there is danger; you cannot deceive God. Do you come to God saying, "I want union with you" and in your heart meaning "I want powers and enjoyments"? Beware! You are heading straight towards the brink of the precipice. And yet it is so easy to avoid all catastrophe. Become like a child, give yourself up to the Mother, let her carry you, and there is no more danger for you.
This does not mean that you have not to face other kinds of difficulties or that you have not to fight and conquer any obstacles at all. Surrender does not ensure a smooth and unruffled and continuous progression. The reason is that your being is not yet one, nor your surrender absolute and complete. Only a part of you surrenders; and today it is one part and the next day it is another. The whole purpose of the Yoga is to gather all the divergent parts together and forge them into an undivided unity. Till then you cannot hope to be without difficulties - difficulties, for example, like doubt or depression or hesitation. The whole world is full of the poison. You take it in with every breath. If you exchange a few words with an undesirable man or even if such a man merely passes by you, you may catch the contagion from him. It is sufficient for you to come near a place where there is plague in order to be infected with its poison; you need not know at all that it is there. You can lose in a few minutes what it has taken you months to gain. So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
240:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants#KEYS
241:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.
Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6
The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called "half-dream states" provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:
I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7
Ouspensky's half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all "without definite efforts." 8
Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky's: "While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention." 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:
Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.
At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.
I thought, "Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?" As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints - delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10
Hypnagogic Imagery Technique
1. Relax completely
While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.
Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,
slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.
2. Observe the visual images
Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind's eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.
3. Enter the dream
When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,
but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don't forget that you are dreaming now!
Commentary
Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, "It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,
since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear." 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey's words, "Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively." 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: "While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand." 13
Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport's WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,#KEYS
242:
Why do we forget our dreams?
Because you do not dream always at the same place. It is not always the same part of your being that dreams and it is not at the same place that you dream. If you were in conscious, direct, continuous communication with all the parts of your being, you would remember all your dreams. But very few parts of the being are in communication.
For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five o'clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentive - quietly attentive - and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is established - very rarely is there no communication.
Now, dreams are mostly forgotten because you have a dream while in a certain state and then pass into another. For instance, when you sleep, your body is asleep, your vital is asleep, but your mind is still active. So your mind begins to have dreams, that is, its activity is more or less coordinated, the imagination is very active and you see all kinds of things, take part in extraordinary happenings.... After some time, all that calms down and the mind also begins to doze. The vital that was resting wakes up; it comes out of the body, walks about, goes here and there, does all kinds of things, reacts, sometimes fights, and finally eats. It does all kinds of things. The vital is very adventurous. It watches. When it is heroic it rushes to save people who are in prison or to destroy enemies or it makes wonderful discoveries. But this pushes back the whole mental dream very far behind. It is rubbed off, forgotten: naturally you cannot remember it because the vital dream takes its place. But if you wake up suddenly at that moment, you remember it. There are people who have made the experiment, who have got up at certain fixed hours of the night and when they wake up suddenly, they do remember. You must not move brusquely, but awake in the natural course, then you remember.
After a time, the vital having taken a good stroll, needs to rest also, and so it goes into repose and quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of adventures. Then something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering, seeing the rooms and... why, this thing that was there, but it has come here and that other thing which was in that room is now in this one, and so on. If you wake up without stirring, you remembeR But this has pushed away far to the back of the consciousness all the stories of the vital. They are forgotten and so you cannot recollect your dreams. But if at the time of waking up you are not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long as you wish, you need not even open your eyes; you keep your head exactly where it was and you make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of the tail of your dream. You catch it and start pulling gently, without stirring in the least. You begin pulling quite gently, and then first one part comes, a little later another. You go backward; the last comes up first. Everything goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole dream reappears: "Ah, there! it was like that." Above all, do not jump up, do not stir; you repeat the dream to yourself several times - once, twice - until it becomes clear in all its details. Once that dream is settled, you continue not to stir, you try to go further in, and suddenly you catch the tail of something else. It is more distant, more vague, but you can still seize it. And here also you hang on, get hold of it and pull, and you see that everything changes and you enter another world; all of a sudden you have an extraordinary adventure - it is another dream. You follow the same process. You repeat the dream to yourself once, twice, until you are sure of it. You remain very quiet all the time. Then you begin to penetrate still more deeply into yourself, as though you were going in very far, very far; and again suddenly you see a vague form, you have a feeling, a sensation... like a current of air, a slight breeze, a little breath; and you say, "Well, well...." It takes a form, it becomes clear - and the third category comes. You must have a lot of time, a lot of patience, you must be very quiet in your mind and body, very quiet, and you can tell the story of your whole night from the end right up to the beginning.
Even without doing this exercise which is very long and difficult, in order to recollect a dream, whether it be the last one or the one in the middle that has made a violent impression on your being, you must do what I have said when you wake up: take particular care not even to move your head on the pillow, remain absolutely still and let the dream return.
Some people do not have a passage between one state and another, there is a little gap and so they leap from one to the other; there is no highway passing through all the states of being with no break of the consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not remember. It is like a precipice across which one has to extend the consciousness. To build a bridge takes a very long time; it takes much longer than building a physical bridge.... Very few people want to and know how to do it. They may have had magnificent activities, they do not remember them or sometimes only the last, the nearest, the most physical activity, with an uncoordinated movement - dreams having no sense.
But there are as many different kinds of nights and sleep as there are different days and activities. There are not many days that are alike, each day is different. The days are not the same, the nights are not the same. You and your friends are doing apparently the same thing, but for each one it is very different. And each one must have his own procedure.
Why are two dreams never alike?
Because all things are different. No two minutes are alike in the universe and it will be so till the end of the universe, no two minutes will ever be alike. And men obstinately want to make rules! One must do this and not that.... Well! we must let people please themselves.
You could have put to me a very interesting question: "Why am I fourteen years old today?" Intelligent people will say: "It is because it is the fourteenth year since you were born." That is the answer of someone who believes himself to be very intelligent. But there is another reason. I shall tell this to you alone.... I have drowned you all sufficiently well! Now you must begin to learn swimming!
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 36?,#KEYS
243:
The whole question.
The whole question? And now, do you understand?... Not quite? I told you that you did not understand because it was muddled up; in one question three different ideas were included. So naturally it created a confusion. But taken separately they are what I explained to you just now, most probably; that is to say, one has this altogether ignorant and obliterated consciousness and is convinced that he is the cause and effect, the origin and result of himself, separate from all others, separate with a limited power to act upon others and a little greater capacity to be set in movement by others or to react to others' influence. That is how people think usually, something like that, isn't that so? How do you feel, you? What effect do you have upon yourself? And you? And you?... You have never thought about it? You have never looked into yourself to see what effect you exercise upon yourself? Never thought over it? No? How do you feel? Nobody will tell me? Come, you tell me that. Never tried to understand how you feel? Yes? No? How strange! Never sought to understand how, for example, decisions take place in you? From where do they come? What makes you decide one thing rather than another? And what is the relation between a decision of yours and your action? And to what extent do you have the freedom of choice between one thing and another? And how far do you feel you are able to, you are free to do this or that or that other or nothing at all?... You have pondered over that? Yes? Is there any one among the students who has thought over it? No? Nobody put the question to himself? You? You?...
Even if one thinks over it, perhaps one is not able to answer!
One cannot explain?
No.
It is difficult to explain? Even this simple little thing, to see where in your consciousness the wills that come from outside meet your will (which you call yours, which comes from within), at what place the two join together and to what extent the one from outside acts upon that from within and the one from within acts upon that from outside? You have never tried to find this out? It has never seemed to you unbearable that a will from outside should have an action upon your will? No?
I do not know.
Oh! I am putting very difficult problems! But, my children, I was preoccupied with that when I was a child of five!... So I thought you must have been preoccupied with it since a long time. In oneself, there are contradictory wills. Yes, many. That is one of the very first discoveries. There is one part which wants things this way; and then at another moment, another way, and a third time, one wants still another thing! Besides, there is even this: something that wants and another which says no. So? But it is exactly that which has to be found if you wish in the least to organise yourself. Why not project yourself upon a screen, as in the cinema, and then look at yourself moving on it? How interesting it is!
This is the first step.
You project yourself on the screen and then observe and see all that is moving there and how it moves and what happens. You make a little diagram, it becomes so interesting then. And then, after a while, when you are quite accustomed to seeing, you can go one step further and take a decision. Or even a still greater step: you organise - arrange, take up all that, put each thing in its place, organise in such a way that you begin to have a straight movement with an inner meaning. And then you become conscious of your direction and are able to say: "Very well, it will be thus; my life will develop in that way, because that is the logic of my being. Now, I have arranged all that within me, each thing has been put in its place, and so naturally a central orientation is forming. I am following this orientation. One step more and I know what will happen to me for I myself am deciding it...." I do not know, I am telling you this; to me it seemed terribly interesting, the most interesting thing in the world. There was nothing, no other thing that interested me more than that.
This happened to me.... I was five or six or seven years old (at seven the thing became quite serious) and I had a father who loved the circus, and he came and told me: "Come with me, I am going to the circus on Sunday." I said: "No, I am doing something much more interesting than going to the circus!" Or again, young friends invited me to attend a meeting where we were to play together, enjoy together: "No, I enjoy here much more...." And it was quite sincere. It was not a pose: for me, it was like this, it was true. There was nothing in the world more enjoyable than that.
And I am so convinced that anybody who does it in that way, with the same freshness and sincerity, will obtain most interesting results.... To put all that on a screen in front of yourself and look at what is happening. And the first step is to know all that is happening and then you must not try to shut your eyes when something does not appear pleasant to you! You must keep them wide open and put each thing in that way before the screen. Then you make quite an interesting discovery. And then the next step is to start telling yourself: "Since all that is happening within me, why should I not put this thing in this way and then that thing in that way and then this other in this way and thus wouldn't I be doing something logical that has a meaning? Why should I not remove that thing which stands obstructing the way, these conflicting wills? Why? And what does that represent in the being? Why is it there? If it were put there, would it not help instead of harming me?" And so on.
And little by little, little by little, you see clearer and then you see why you are made like that, what is the thing you have got to do - that for which you are born. And then, quite naturally, since all is organised for this thing to happen, the path becomes straight and you can say beforehand: "It is in this way that it will happen." And when things come from outside to try and upset all that, you are able to say: "No, I accept this, for it helps; I reject that, for that harms." And then, after a few years, you curb yourself as you curb a horse: you do whatever you like, in the way you like and you go wherever you like.
It seems to me this is worth the trouble. I believe it is the most interesting thing.
...
You must have a great deal of sincerity, a little courage and perseverance and then a sort of mental curiosity, you understand, curious, seeking to know, interested, wanting to learn. To love to learn: that, one must have in one's nature. To find it impossible to stand before something grey, all hazy, in which nothing is seen clearly and which gives you quite an unpleasant feeling, for you do not know where you begin and where you end, what is yours and what is not yours and what is settled and what is not settled - what is this pulp-like thing you call yourself in which things get intermingled and act upon one another without even your being aware of it? You ask yourself: "But why have I done this?" You know nothing about it. "And why have I felt that?" You don't know that, either. And then, you are thrown into a world outside that is only fog and you are thrown into a world inside that is also for you another kind of fog, still more impenetrable, in which you live, like a cork thrown upon the waters and the waves carry it away or cast it into the air, and it drops and rolls on. That is quite an unpleasant state. I do not know, but to me it appears unpleasant.
To see clearly, to see one's way, where one is going, why one is going there, how one is to go there and what one is going to do and what is the kind of relation with others... But that is a problem so wonderfully interesting - it is interesting - and you can always discover things every minute! One's work is never finished.
There is a time, there is a certain state of consciousness when you have the feeling that you are in that condition with all the weight of the world lying heavy upon you and besides you are going in blinkers and do not know where you are going, but there is something which is pushing you. And that is truly a very unpleasant condition. And there is another moment when one draws oneself up and is able to see what is there above, and one becomes it; then one looks at the world as though from the top of a very very high mountain and one sees all that is happening below; then one can choose one's way and follow it. That is a more pleasant condition. This then is truly the truth, you are upon earth for that, surely. All individual beings and all the little concentrations of consciousness were created to do this work. It is the very reason for existence: to be able to become fully conscious of a certain sum of vibrations representing an individual being and put order there and find one's way and follow it.
And so, as men do not know it and do not do it, life comes and gives them a blow here: "Oh! that hurts", then a blow there: "Ah! that's hurting me." And the thing goes on like that and all the time it is like that. And all the time they are getting pain somewhere. They suffer, they cry, they groan. But it is simply due to that reason, there is no other: it is that they have not done that little work. If, when they were quite young, there had been someone to teach them to do the work and they had done it without losing time, they could have gone through life gloriously and instead of suffering they would have been all-powerful masters of their destiny.
This is not to say that necessarily all things would become pleasant. It is not at all that. But your reaction towards things becomes the true reaction and instead of suffering, you learn; instead of being miserable, you go forward and progress. After all, I believe it is for this that you are here - so that there is someone who can tell you: "There, well, try that. It is worth trying." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 199,#KEYS
244:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.
The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.
The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.
It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.
As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.
It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!
This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.
My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?
A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.
First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!
Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"
I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.
Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.
These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."
Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.
If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'
The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passage
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae.
Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?
And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?
And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.
I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!
"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'
Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,
Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vain
Upon the axis of its pain,
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."
Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.
But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!
'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Every old poem is sacred. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 2:Even the old should learn. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 3:A lie never lives to be old. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 4:No lie ever reaches old age. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 5:Asleep in lap of legends old. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 6:Old men ought to be explorers. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 7:Who stops learning may be old. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 8:Truth - is as old as God-. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 9:Getting old is not for sissies. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 10:Nobody loves life like an old man. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 11:Old age is no place for sissies. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 12:Old age spiritualizes people naturally ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 13:How young can you die of old age? ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 14:Old words are reborn with new faces. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 15:To learn is to be young, however old. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 16:Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 17:The old men know when an old man dies. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 18:We never thought we could ever get old. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 19:You are never too old to become younger! ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 20:A man growing old becomes a child again. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 21:library is a beautiful old thing ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 22:Time waxing old can many a lesson teach. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 23:He tells old wives' tales much to the point. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 24:Not even old age knows how to love death. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 25:Time, waxing old, doth all things purify. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 26:Old man! & 27:The soul never grows old. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 28:I'm an old sinner. Nothing shocks me. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 29:I'm growing old, I delight in the past. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 30:The adulterer dies. An old custom, justice. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 31:Beauty and folly are old companions. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 32:Education is the best provision for old age. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 33:For sight is woman-like and shuns the old. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 34:It is always in season for old men to learn. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 35:Old age creeps on us ere we think it nigh. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 36:Ther is no newe gyse that it nas old. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 37:We grow old because we stop playing. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 38:A man's only as old as the woman he feels. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 39:I do not expect old heads on young shoulders. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 40:It is always the season for the old to learn. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 41:Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 42:Spare when young, and spend when old. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 43:The wise man does not grow old, but ripens. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 44:You can't teach an old dogma new tricks. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 45:No man loves life like him that's growing old. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 46:Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 47:All diseases run into one, old age. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 48:Medicines are only fit for old people. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 49:Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends. ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 50:Everyone grows old but not everyone grows up. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 51:Old age hath stronger sense of right than youth. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 52:Old age is not a total misery. Experience helps. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 53:There's never a new fashion but it's old. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 54:A love grown old is not the love once new. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 55:Men grow old quickly on the battlefield. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 56:No one who is young is ever going to be old. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 57:Old age and the passage of time teach all things. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 58:Refuse to let an old person move into your body. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 59:Richard Strauss& 60:The men of old breathed clear down to their heels. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 61:An old young man, will be a young old man. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 62:It`s not how old you are, it`s how you are old. ~ jules-renard, @wisdomtrove 63:Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 64:There is no such thing as the old age of the wise. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 65:All would live long, but none would be old. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 66:As we grow old, the beauty steals inward. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 67:History is just new people making old mistakes. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 68:If were not foolish young, were foolish old. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 69:I have the problems of, I must confess, old age. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 70:No one longs to live more than someone growing old. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 71:When the old plum tree blooms, the entire world blooms. ~ dogen, @wisdomtrove 72:All we ever see of stars are their old photographs. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 73:Good friends walk in when the old ones walk out. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 74:Love is ever new because it never groweth old. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 75:Old age hath yet his honour and his toil. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 76:Old men are always young enough to learn with profit. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 77:Snuffy old drone from the German hive. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 78:The best contraceptive for old people is nudity. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 79:The young may die, but the old must! ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 80:An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 81:Beware of the young doctor and the old barber. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 82:Come grow old with me, for the best is yet to come! ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 83:I'm from such an old family, it's been condemned. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 84:Old is definitely not cool in America. Never has been. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 85:Old. Just words. Inside we feel like our shoe size. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 86:Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 87:It is not well to make great changes in old age. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 88:The old order changes yielding place to new. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 89:We should all start to live before we get too old. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 90:America is a young country with an old mentality. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 91:Hope remains the highest reality, the age-old power. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 92:I'm thirty-six years old. I'm just getting started! ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 93:Old age is fifteen years older than I am. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 94:Old, that's an affront no woman can well bear. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 95:Old Zen was the reduction of concepts to absurdity. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 96:The most important thing is growing old gracefully. ~ audrey-hepburn, @wisdomtrove 97:With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 98:You know you're old when your walker has an airbag. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 99:Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 100:Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 101:The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 102:Burdening people with debt is an old deal not a new deal. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 103:He who loves, never grows old. God it a shining example. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 104:Old and young, we are all on our last cruise. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 105:The & 106:To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 107:I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 108:In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 109:No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 110:suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 111:Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 112:Mickey Mouse to a three-year-old is a six-foot-tall RAT! ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 113:Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 114:The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 115:To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 116:Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 117:I am not old, but my young way was never the way to age. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 118:I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 119:Old age is when the liver spots show through your gloves. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 120:The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 121:Beware of meat twice boiled, and an old foe reconciled. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 122:Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 123:I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old, ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 124:Many a politician wishes there was a law to burn old records. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 125:No one can begin a new life, unless he repent of the old. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 126:The problem with new is you don't have time for the old ones. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 127:You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 128:I am an old man who will live until I die," Anselmo said. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 129:It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 130:A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 131:Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 132:Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 133:Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 134:Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 135:There is nothing like the sight of an old enemy down on his luck. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 136:You must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 137:Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 138:Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 139:A soldier when aged is not appreciated; the love of an old man sickens. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 140:Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 141:I am the blank page between the Old and the New Testament. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 142:Nothing hurts a new truth more than an old error. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 143:Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 144:Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day? ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 145:If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 146:I prefer the old theaters because the audience is... trapped. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 147:Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 148:The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or "no fuss." ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 149:The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 150:We don't have to wait until we are old to gather the riches... ~ susan-jeffers, @wisdomtrove 151:You know you're old if they have discontinued your blood type. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 152:My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 153:The gods bestowed on Max [Beerbohm] the gift of perpetual old age. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 154:The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 155:If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 156:Life's Tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 157:his old life lay behind in the mists, dark adventure lay in front. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 158:If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality! ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 159:I have the highest respect for your nerves, they are my old friends. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 160:Old Zen is the way of nothingness, the way of having a good time. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 161:The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 162:While we've youth in our hearts, we can never grow old. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 163:Although I am an old man, night is generally my time for walking. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 164:Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 165:Marrying an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 166:Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 167:Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 168:Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 169:The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 170:The young feel tired at the end of an action, the old at the beginning. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 171:Welcome, my old friend, Welcome to a foreign fireside. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 172:He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 173:You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 174:If anybody else says it's like old times, I'll jump out the window. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 175:I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 176:I'm getting so old my insurance company sends me 1/2 a calendar! ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 177:love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 178:So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 179:Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 180:Young men not ought to marry yet, and old men never ought to marry at all. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 181:And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 182:God will not pour fresh, creative ideas and blessing into old attitudes. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 183:Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit, The power of beauty I remember yet. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 184:The old proverb was now made good, "the mountain had brought forth a mouse. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 185:The only game I like to play is "Old Maid", providing she's not too old ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 186:When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist. ~ jianzhi-sengcan, @wisdomtrove 187:Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure? ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 188:[Andrew Jackson] was actually 70 years old when he left the White House ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 189:Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 190:Don't focus on the good old days, look forward towards the good new days. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 191:Fictional character: Kit Marlowe. "Old Acquaintance", www.imdb.com. 1943. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 192:If we could be twice young and twice old we could correct all our mistakes. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 193:She was old too, when she went to school they didn't have history. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 194:Who keeps the old akindle and adds new knowledge is fitted to be a teacher. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 195:Women are as old as they feel and men are old when they lose their feelings. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 196:Drawn to childhood, the old man will seek it in a thousand different ways. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 197:I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 198:In my old age there is a coming into flower. My body wanes; my mind waxes. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 199:New friends can often have a better time together than old friends. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 200:The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 201:There's an old saying. Never send a boy to do a man's job, send a lady. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 202:The twilight that surrounds the border-land of old romance. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 203:Trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 204:When new hopes fail, old hopes return in the endless cycle of desperation. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 205:You know the old adage: Plant an expectation, reap a disappointment. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 206:You know the old joke, I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 207:A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 208:for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song! ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 209:I'm getting old, that's the thing! What's in me now won't be there anymore. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 210:I'm saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 211:In youth all doors open outward; in old age all open inward. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 212:I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 213:Let no one delay the study of philosophy while young nor weary of it when old. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 214:The child's toys and the old man's reasons are the fruits of two seasons. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 215:There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young! ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 216:A little humour is good for the soul - regardless of how old you may be. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 217:He felt like an old sponge steeped in paraffin and left in the sun to dry. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 218:OLD: Be No.1 or No.2 in Your Market. NEW: Find a Niche, Create Something New. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 219:There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 220:We were old sinners - but when we came to Christ we are not sinners anymore. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 221:When my old man wanted sex, my mother would show him a picture of me. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 222:When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 223:Any product of the mind is a reaction of the past, a synthesis of what is old. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 224:Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 225:How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 226:I have gotten so used to melancholia that I greet it like an old friend. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 227:I've got the brain of a four year old. I'll bet he was glad to be rid of it. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 228:My eight-year-old bought a bicycle with the money he saved by not smoking. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 229:The perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 230:When nations grow old the Arts grow cold And commerce settles on every tree ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 231:After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 232:Europe's the mayonnaise all right, but America supplies the good old lobster. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 233:It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 234:old emotions like old families have intermarried and have many connections. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 235:The Child's Toys and the Old Man's ReasonsAre the Fruits of the Two seasons. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 236:The good thing about being old, is you don’t have to worry about dying young. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 237:You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 238:You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child. ~ dr-seuss, @wisdomtrove 239:A man who reviews the old so as to find out the new is qualified to teach others. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 240:Creativity is bound up in our ability to find new ways around old problems. ~ martin-seligman, @wisdomtrove 241:It's in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 242:My old man never liked me. He gave me my allowance in traveler's checks. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 243:No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 244:Taking jobs to build up your resume is the same as saving up sex for old age. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 245:Having a 2 year old is like having a blender that you don't have the top for. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 246:I love the old way best, the simple way of poison, where we too are strong as men. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 247:I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 248:The old dog barks backward without getting up I can remember when he was a pup. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 249:Whoever neglects old friends for the sake of new deserves what e gets if he loses both ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove 250:Growth and fulfillment come from abandoning old practices and embracing new ones. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 251:I grow old . . . I grow old . . . / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 252:There are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 253:But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 254:Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest he fail in the lists and the spectators laugh. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 255:No matter how old you get, hug and kiss your mother whenever you greet her. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 256:Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 257:The old should be explorers, be curious, risk transgression, explore oldness itself. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 258:There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 259:Women's hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 260:A yokel mind loves stories from of old, Being the kind it can repeat and hold. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 261:For new technology to replace old, it has to have at least ten times the benefit. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 262:Most people do not understand until old age what Plato tells them when they are young. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 263:The harlot's cry from street to street / Shall weave old England's winding-sheet. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 264:The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 265:The pride of youth is in strength and beauty, the pride of old age is in discretion. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove 266:There is something to that old saying that hate injures the hater, not the hated. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 267:All my life I've been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 268:A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 269:Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 270:Few things are as foolish as hoping old behaviors will somehow present new results. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 271:Filth and old age, I'm sure you will agree, are powerful wardens upon chastity. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 272:He wears himself out by his labours, and grows old through his love of possessing wealth. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 273:I always like to know everything about my new friends and nothing about my old ones. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 274:I’m thirty, I said. I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 275:It is my wish to delight all members of the family, young and old, parent and child. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 276:The old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new ones. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 277:There will never be a time when the old horse is not superior to any auto ever made. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 278:We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 279:When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 280:You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 281:Don't ever think it's too late for you or that you're too old to dream and have goals. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 282:Growing up isn't simply getting old... Growing up is when you don't believe anymore. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 283:I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 284:I'm never proud of my old work. I always feel as though my skills have since improved. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 285:It is silly not to hope, besides I believe it is a sin." The Old Man and the Sea ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 286:I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 287:One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 288:The great art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 289:There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days, ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 290:There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 291:What a childhood I had, why, when I took my first step, my old man tripped me! ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 292:While strength and years permit, endure labor; soon bent old age will come with silent foot. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 293:And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 294:Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 295:I comfortably and easily release the old and and welcome the new in my life. I am safe. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 296:It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 297:Keep the Pineal Gland operating and you will Never grow Old, You will always be Young. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 298:Speech is an old torn net, through which the fish escape as one casts it over them. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 299:Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 300:Any scientist who can't explain to an eight-year-old what he is doing is a charlatan. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 301:I'm thirty, I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor." ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 302:Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 303:Old Marley was dead as a doornail... The wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 304:Old men are children once again a dream that sways and wavers into the hard light of day. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 305:What a childhood I had - I was ten years old when I found out Alpo was dog food. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 306:I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 307:Personal growth is not a matter of learning new information but of unlearning old limits. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 308:Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 309:The poets continually and sometimes wilfully mistake love. Love is the old slaughterer. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 310:Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 311:Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 312:I learned to walk when I was ten months old and I've been walking this way ever since. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 313:Let go of the old, take hold of the new and believe that 2013 will be your best year yet! ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 314:Breaking old habits and forming new ones always takes time, but it is worth it in the end. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 315:Oftener than not the old are uncontrollable; Their tempers make them difficult to deal with. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 316:Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 317:Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 318:The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 319:When the body is still healthy and diseaseless, When old age has not yet attacked it ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 320:An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 321:Anybody who believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old needs psychiatric help. ~ francis-crick, @wisdomtrove 322:If you stay in the business long enough and get to be old enough, you get to be new again. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 323:It takes a long time to grow an old friend. Trust is built one single moment at a time. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 324:Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 325:Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 326:Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 327:Touch has a memory. O say, love say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty? ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 328:When I worry, it’s patterns of old thought that has nothing to do with my current reality. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 329:A little old lady sitting at the front of the bus can do nothing to change civil rights. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 330:Don’t hold on to the old when you're being led somewhere new. Come out of your comfort zone. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 331:From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 332:Look at the bright side no matter how old you are, you are younger than you'll ever be again. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 333:The Gospel never grows old. It applies to every generation alike. We have to make a choice. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 334:The Old (Testament) is in the New (Testament) revealed, the New is in the Old concealed. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 335:The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 336:To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 337:What emerges from the silence is the deafening sound of an old world disintegrating. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 338:young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 339:Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 340:I don't worry about getting old. I'm old already. Only young people worry about getting old. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 341:It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 342:It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 343:The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 344:What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 345:When young, beware of fighting; when strong, beware of sex; and when old, beware of possession. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 346:You know, words have strange destiny, too. They grow. They get old. They die. They come back. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 347:Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 348:Even evangelicals realize that Pinocchio's father was a carpenter too. That's the old joke. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 349:I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 350:It was too nerve-wracking, a shocking spectacle, like seeing an old, calm friend go insane. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 351:Old age: The estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours into the Great Sea. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 352:Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 353:There is nothing so aggravating as a fresh boy who is too old to ignore and too young to kick. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 354:All truths are old, and all that we have to do is recognize and utter them anew. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 355:Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 356:It doesn't matter how old you are, there is a little child within who needs love and acceptance. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 357:It is said that the propriety even of old Cato often yielded to the exciting influence of the grape. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 358:Oh, I was an ugly kid. My old man took me to the zoo. They thanked him for returning me. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 359:Old ways will always remain unless some one invents a new way and then lives and dies for it ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 360:That fair face will as years roll on lose its beauty, and old age will bring its wrinkles to the brow. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 361:The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream! ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 362:which is new is not true. It is the old that is true, for truth is as old as God himself." ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 363:Elena, my four year old, says to me in all seriousness; "Mommy, you need to buy another baby". ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 364:Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach Who please, the more because they preach in vain ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 365:His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 366:My friend Winnie is a procrastinator. He didn't get his birth mark til he was eight years old. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 367:Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 368:Winter giveth the fields, and the trees so old, their beards of icicles and snow. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 369:It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 370:I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 371:One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 372:The good old horse-and-buggy days: then you lived until you died and not until you were run over. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 373:The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, / The young men's vision, and the old men's dream! ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 374:When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 375:You know you're old when someone compliments you on your alligator shoes, and you're barefoot. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 376:A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 377:Autumn is really the best of the seasons; and I'm not sure that old age isn't the best part of life. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 378:Businessmen go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot change. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 379:Nor is it wiser to weep a true occasion lost, but trim our sails, and let old bygones be. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 380:The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness. ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove 381:The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 382:They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast! ~ dr-seuss, @wisdomtrove 383:When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 384:A young mind in a healthy body is a wonderful thing. Especially for an old man with an open night. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 385:What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried? ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 386:A child is not frightened at the thought of being patiently transmuted into an old man. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 387:As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, all my dreams, come back to me. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 388:For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 389:Instead of just getting old and giving up and dying, let's learn to make a huge contribution to life. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 390:Love is Love no matter old you are, and I knew if I gave you enough time, you'd come back to me. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 391:No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 392:But I remember more dearly autumn afternoons in bottoms that lay intensely silent under old great trees ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 393:Fish," the old man said. "Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too? ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 394:Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 395:When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 396:When I die, now don't think that I'm a nut, don't want no fancy funeral, just one like old King Tut. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 397:When I was 3 years old, my parents got a dog. I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 398:After all, we did not invent symbolism; it is a universal age-old activity of the human imagination. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 399:As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 400:Grown old in love from seven till seven times seven,I oft have wished for Hell for ease from Heaven. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 401:In coming to Christ we don't bring our old life up to a higher plane; we leave it at the cross. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 402:Is my growing old making me any closer to Christ? Am I only getting older or am I getting more godly? ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 403:It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 404:I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 405:For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 406:I asked my old man if I could go ice-skating on the lake. He told me, "Wait til it gets warmer." ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 407:If you look in the eyes of the young, you see flame. If you look in the eyes of the old, you see light. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 408:Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 409:Prepare for the new; expect the new; embrace the new. Otherwise, you'll just repeat what's old. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 410:Secrets of the Old One. "Groks Science" with Frank Ling, grokscience.wordpress.com. January 18, 2009. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove 411:Surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 412:The Alps are a simple folk, living on a diet of old shoes. And the Lord Alps those who alp themselves. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 413:War is rich old men protecting their property by sending middle class and lower class men off to die. ~ george-carlin, @wisdomtrove 414:Doubt is an old disease. Faith is an old medicine. Compassion is an old doctor. Concern is an old nurse. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 415:Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 416:It is not too late. You are not too old. You are right on time-And you are better than you know. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 417:I've been car crazy my whole life, since I was nine years old. It's just something I'm very aware of. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 418:I want to grow old without facelifts. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 419:The old, old gospel is the newest thing in the world; in its very essence it is for ever good news. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 420:This is what I am learning, at 82 years old: the main thing is to be in love with the search for truth. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 421:Until higher institutions have been evolved, any attempt to break the old ones will be disastrous. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 422:Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 423:Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 424:I feel like an old warhorse at the sound of a trumpet when I read about the capturing of rare beetles. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 425:Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 426:The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 427:We old folks have to find our cushions and pillows in our tankards. Strong beer is the milk of the old. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 428:Education gives sobriety to the young, comfort to the old, riches to the poor and is an ornament to the rich. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 429:Genius can write on the back of old envelopes but mere talent requires the finest stationery available. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 430:Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 431:Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 432:She - philosophy is equally helpful to the rich and poor: neglect her, and she equally harms the young and old. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 433:There's an old saying, & 434:you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 435:Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 436:An old man was asked what had robbed him of joy in his life. His reply was, "Things that never happened." ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 437:I believe I shall never be old enough to speak without embarrassment when I have nothing to talk about. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 438:I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 439:The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 440:By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 441:Eden is that old-fashioned house we dwell in every day Without suspecting our abode until we drive away. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 442:In old days men studied for the sake of self-improvement; nowadays men study in order to impress other people. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 443:We don't have to wait until we are old to gather the riches... We can gather them every day of our lives. ~ susan-jeffers, @wisdomtrove 444:By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 445:It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 446:I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 447:Miranda in Miranda's sight is old, gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 448:The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 449:The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 450:To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 451:And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 452:An inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness... played the calm and virtuous old men. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 453:A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 454:Change is not so much about being the first one to embrace a new idea, but being the first to forget an old one ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 455:Christmas is here, Merry old Christmas, Gift-bearing Christmas, Day of grand memories, King of the year! ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 456:I have no desire to walk on water, said Siddhartha. Let the old shamans satisfy themselves with such skills. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 457:It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 458:I told my wife & 459:My heart needs only one thing. It needs to be guided Along the age-old path Of life-blossoming self-awareness. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 460:Old age is when you resent the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated because there are fewer articles to read. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 461:There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 462:You've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 463:Growing old is an emotion which comes over us at almost any age; I had it myself between the ages of 25 and 30. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 464:If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge so as continually to be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 465:Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 466:Since death will take us anyway, why live our life in fear? Why not die in our old ways and be free to live? ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 467:To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 468:A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 469:It was the beginning of the war. I was twelve years old, my parents were alive, and God still dwelt in our town. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 470:Secrets of the Old One. "The Groks Science Show" with Frank Ling, grokscience.wordpress.com. January 18, 2009. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove 471:There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in fifteen minutes. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 472:The secret of change consists in concentrating one's energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 473:To an old father, nothing is more sweet than a daughter. Boys are more spirited, but their ways are not so tender. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 474:When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 475:You never see the old austerity That was the essence of civility; Young people hereabouts, unbridled, now Just want. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 476:Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 477:The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 478:There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 479:With my old man I got no respect. He told me never take candy from a stranger unless he offered me a ride. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 480:Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 481:One thing is sure, there are just two respectable ways to die. One is of old age, and the other is by accident. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 482:Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 483:The Nile, forever new and old, Among the living and the dead, Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 484:I don't know how you feel about old age... but in my case I didn't even see it coming. It hit me from the rear. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 485:I have no name: I am but two days old. What shall I call thee? I happy am, Joy is my name. Sweet joy befall thee! ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 486:I love thee, I love but thee With a love that shall not die Till the sun grows cold And the stars grow old. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 487:Old people think young people haven't learned about love. Young people think old people have forgotten about love. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 488:So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 489:Wisdom delights in water; love delights in hills. Wisdom is stirring; love is quiet. Wisdom is merry; love grows old. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 490:A man who says he can see through a woman is missing a lot.-Groucho Marx A man's only as old as the woman he feels. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 491:I have made noise enough in the world already, perhaps too much, and am now getting old, and want retirement. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 492:It would be a good thing if young people were wise and old people were strong, but God has arranged things better. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 493:my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 494:Of old the expert in battle would first make himself invincible and then wait for his enemy to expose his vulnerability. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 495:The age-old and noble thought of & 496:There is an old saying "well begun is half done"-'tis a bad one. I would use instead-Not begun at all 'til half done. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 497:Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 498:I saw that worrying had come to nothing and gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 499:It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 500:Let your life yield a sweet, winsome melody that this old world needs so desperately. Yes you can if you will. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Hello, you old fraud, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
2:I'm a very old man. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
3:A lie never grows old. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
4:Every old poem is sacred. ~ Horace, #NFDB
5:Gold wrapped old crap. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
6:I am an old punk. ~ Dee Dee Ramone, #NFDB
7:not this old chestnut. ~ E L James, #NFDB
8:Old habits die hard, ~ James Bowen, #NFDB
9:THE OLD COUNTRY, 1731 F ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
10:But old habits die hard. ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
11:Dancing is as old as love. ~ Lucian, #NFDB
12:Old friends are best. ~ John Selden, #NFDB
13:Old liars
hold lies. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
14:I'm little but I'm old. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
15:Old age is ~ William Carlos Williams, #NFDB
16:are the crown of old men, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
17:Be nice to old people. ~ Jaime Murray, #NFDB
18:How did I get so old? ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
19:I am too old to think. ~ Keith Miller, #NFDB
20:I miss my old life ~ Richard C Morais, #NFDB
21:It's the old shell game. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
22:Jason hated being old. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
23:Let us search the old highways. ~ H D, #NFDB
24:Old Habits Die Hard ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
25:some of that old Sam rose up. ~ Tijan, #NFDB
26:The old Lena is dead, ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
27:An old flame,” Harper said. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
28:Doubt is an old disease. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
29:Even the old should learn. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
30:He's as old as some trees. ~ Pat Burns, #NFDB
31:I don't use old music. ~ Gyorgy Ligeti, #NFDB
32:shattered like old glass, ~ Neal Asher, #NFDB
33:These are the good old days. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
34:if Rand was equal to Old ~ H Beam Piper, #NFDB
35:I'm a big old romantic. ~ Colin Farrell, #NFDB
36:I'm just a big old nerd. ~ Claire Danes, #NFDB
37:Old age ain't for sissies ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
38:Old gods do new jobs. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
39:Old men need applause too. ~ Don Everly, #NFDB
40:Old saws have no teeth. ~ Cynthia Ozick, #NFDB
41:The good old days are now. ~ Tom Clancy, #NFDB
42:What are old friends for? ~ B J Daniels, #NFDB
43:(Wine is) the nurse of old age. ~ Galen, #NFDB
44:A lie never lives to be old. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
45:Be kind to an old man. ~ Walter Cronkite, #NFDB
46:fifteen-year-old teenagers, ~ Jane Green, #NFDB
47:For as the old saying is, ~ Samuel Foote, #NFDB
48:No Country for Old Men ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
49:No lie ever reaches old age. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
50:she treads lightly old man. ~ John Green, #NFDB
51:Tale as old as time, ~ Danielle L Jensen, #NFDB
52:The Beatles never get old. ~ Mark Hoppus, #NFDB
53:themselves with old ragged ~ Sharon Maas, #NFDB
54:I'm an old-fashioned guy. ~ Demian Bichir, #NFDB
55:It was a brave old world. ~ Mark A Rayner, #NFDB
56:I was born 10 years old. ~ Drew Barrymore, #NFDB
57:That old bald cheater, Time. ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
58:Vertue never growes old. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
59:Winter makes you old ~ Frances Greenslade, #NFDB
60:You get old, you slow down. ~ Ben Affleck, #NFDB
61:Asleep in lap of legends old. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
62:grip my arm. I willed the old ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
63:heard, she was old enough ~ Winter Renshaw, #NFDB
64:He felt old at eleven. Amy ~ Gordon Korman, #NFDB
65:I grow old on my bitterness. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
66:Imagination is an old soul. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
67:I'm a little old-fashioned. ~ Barbara Bush, #NFDB
68:I'm too old to be forced. ~ Garry Marshall, #NFDB
69:Is 'tired old cliché' one? ~ Steven Wright, #NFDB
70:It is time to be old ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
71:I wish I was old Hollywood. ~ Darren Criss, #NFDB
72:Old men ought to be explorers. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
73:Old-school as in Dark Ages. ~ Laird Barron, #NFDB
74:Passion makes the old medicine new: ~ Rumi, #NFDB
75:Racism is kinda old. For real. ~ Matt Kemp, #NFDB
76:Sometimes I miss the old me. ~ Ann Aguirre, #NFDB
77:Take what the old-church ~ Hilda Doolittle, #NFDB
78:THE OLD MAN AND HIS GRANDSON ~ Jacob Grimm, #NFDB
79:Well said, old mole! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
80:Come on, old duck,” he coaxed. ~ Rhys Bowen, #NFDB
81:Fresh pain, exposing old pain ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
82:I'm a big fan of old boots. ~ David Beckham, #NFDB
83:I'm too old to do things by half ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
84:It's a funny old world. ~ Margaret Thatcher, #NFDB
85:Jay Gatsby: Old sport. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
86:O heart, we are old; ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
87:Old age is a shipwreck. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
88:Old age is second childhood. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
89:Old. A viable die-able age. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
90:Sometimes I feel like an old hooker. ~ Cher, #NFDB
91:Today I found an old friend. ~ Edward Burns, #NFDB
92:What soon grows old? Gratitude. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
93:Who stops learning may be old. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
94:You fatuous old bag of tripe! ~ Ngaio Marsh, #NFDB
95:A rock star never gets old! ~ Anthony Kiedis, #NFDB
96:bike. “Got the old girl out of ~ Marie Force, #NFDB
97:Even a three-year-old can tidy! ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
98:Every old sock meets an old shoe ~ Kate Bush, #NFDB
99:Getting old ain't for sissies. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
100:I'm an old-school guy. ~ LaDainian Tomlinson, #NFDB
101:I'm too old to know everything ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
102:Jason hated being an old man. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
103:Nature abhors the old. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
104:Old age is not for sissies. ~ Malcolm Forbes, #NFDB
105:Old age is women's hell. ~ Ninon de L Enclos, #NFDB
106:old folks is the nation. ~ Toni Cade Bambara, #NFDB
107:Old ties give place to new ones. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
108:Repetition—the curse of the old. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
109:Shut your noise, you old c***! ~ Alan Pardew, #NFDB
110:though, he rounded up the old ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
111:Truth - is as old as God-. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
112:we’re too old to be young. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
113:You're as old as you behave. ~ Harvey Mackay, #NFDB
114:Being old is such a treat! ~ Shirley MacLaine, #NFDB
115:Darlin', old don't mean dead. ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
116:Getting old is not for sissies. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
117:girls running around this old ~ Maggie Shayne, #NFDB
118:Hello, Paranoia, My Old Friend ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
119:I don't want to die an old lady. ~ Edith Piaf, #NFDB
120:I grew up listening to old soul ~ Erykah Badu, #NFDB
121:I like the old '90s music. ~ Michael B Jordan, #NFDB
122:I'm an old-school type of guy. ~ Kevin Durant, #NFDB
123:I’m little but I’m old,” he said. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
124:Impossible. An old elf swearword. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
125:I'm too old to make drawings. ~ Quentin Crisp, #NFDB
126:I'm too young to be that old. ~ James Crumley, #NFDB
127:Mathematics is as old as Man. ~ Stefan Banach, #NFDB
128:Nature's old felicities. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
129:Old folks are the nation. ~ Toni Cade Bambara, #NFDB
130:The old must be discarded. The ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
131:Thirty-four is not even old! ~ Mark Childress, #NFDB
132:An old dog barks not in vain. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
133:An old friend is a new house. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
134:But old bones prefer their rest. ~ Julie Berry, #NFDB
135:Do old scars ever stop hurting? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
136:fucking thirty-year-old virgin. ~ Silver James, #NFDB
137:Gravity is the bringer of old age. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
138:However old one is, we need a ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
139:I have very old-fashioned tastes. ~ Jerry Hall, #NFDB
140:I hope I die before I get old. ~ Roger Daltrey, #NFDB
141:I'm kind of an old-fashioned guy. ~ Joe Arpaio, #NFDB
142:In my old age, I'll be in L.A. ~ David Hockney, #NFDB
143:I've always been old at heart. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
144:Never let an old flame bum you twice ~ Unknown, #NFDB
145:New ideas must use old buildings ~ Jane Jacobs, #NFDB
146:nobody ever intends to be old. ~ Marie Corelli, #NFDB
147:Nobody loves life like an old man. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
148:No one is too old for fairy tales. ~ Nick Lake, #NFDB
149:Old age is a woman's hell. ~ Ninon de L Enclos, #NFDB
150:Old age is life's parody. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
151:Old age is no place for sissies. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
152:Old age is the new childhood. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
153:old habits die slow deaths. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
154:Old pond, frog jumps in - plop. ~ Matsuo Basho, #NFDB
155:Old pond, leap-splash - a frog. ~ Matsuo Basho, #NFDB
156:The older I get, the older old is. ~ Tom Baker, #NFDB
157:There is no fashion for the old. ~ Coco Chanel, #NFDB
158:We’re as old as we feel, Johnny. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
159:We're never too old for dreams. ~ Tobias Wolff, #NFDB
160:You're only as old as you feel. ~ Paul Simonon, #NFDB
161:Your mom shtick is getting old. ~ Robert Bevan, #NFDB
162:Ah earth you old extinguisher. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
163:Always challenge the old ways. ~ Howard Schultz, #NFDB
164:An ancient old raisin of a man. I ~ Esi Edugyan, #NFDB
165:Complacency serves the old gods. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
166:Fake is as old as the Eden tree. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
167:Growing old isn’t for pussies. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
168:his voice was centuries old ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
169:I am just an old-fashioned girl. ~ Rose Kennedy, #NFDB
170:I'm not a crazy old cat lady! ~ Melanie Laurent, #NFDB
171:It smells like old whore in here. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
172:Maybe I'll be a feminist in my old age. ~ Bjork, #NFDB
173:New arts destroy the old. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
174:Well, you can't make old friends. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
175:Who the fuck is Old Jolene? ~ Matthew Rosenberg, #NFDB
176:Yes, you're very very old ~ John Walter Bratton, #NFDB
177:You must be very old!” said Jane, ~ P L Travers, #NFDB
178:Young men preen. Old men scheme. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
179:Busy old fool, unruly Sophie ~ Diana Wynne Jones, #NFDB
180:Eating is sex for old people. ~ Jonathan Carroll, #NFDB
181:He was old but full of beans, ~ Lawrence Osborne, #NFDB
182:Holmes, I'm a 24 year old prude. ~ Laurie R King, #NFDB
183:I am becoming old and queer. ~ Sherwood Anderson, #NFDB
184:I dress like a 30-year-old woman. ~ Selena Gomez, #NFDB
185:I'm pretty good for an old geek. ~ Peter Capaldi, #NFDB
186:I'm twice as old, but I feel good. ~ James Brown, #NFDB
187:Never bored, so I'll never get old ~ David Bowie, #NFDB
188:Old Age Is Not for the Young. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
189:Old age makes caricatures of us all. ~ P D James, #NFDB
190:Old fools are babes again. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
191:Old habits died hard, but they died. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
192:Old man! 'Tis not difficult to die. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
193:Old things can become new things. ~ Karen Foxlee, #NFDB
194:Old Time the clock-setter. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
195:The elephant, the huge old beast, ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
196:There is no fool like an old fool. ~ Betty White, #NFDB
197:There is no fool to the old fool. ~ John Heywood, #NFDB
198:the trees were ancient and old, ~ Robert Masello, #NFDB
199:To grow old is to grow remorseful. ~ Randy Cohen, #NFDB
200:To grow old is to lose everything. ~ Donald Hall, #NFDB
201:Two old fools left over from love ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
202:Watching my four year old daughter dance ~ Ikkyu, #NFDB
203:we can become not just old but wise. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
204:We'll grow old waiting. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
205:We'll grow old waiting. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB
206:Why are old maps always burnt? ~ Chelsea Peretti, #NFDB
207:You're never too old for anything! ~ Betty White, #NFDB
208:as old as seas and mountains. . . . ~ Larry Niven, #NFDB
209:Dying the old fashioned way sucks. ~ Tim Marquitz, #NFDB
210:Elderberry,” the old woman told her. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
211:enough to impress the old woman. ~ Leighann Dobbs, #NFDB
212:Growing old is not for sissies. ~ Emilie Richards, #NFDB
213:Here I am, an old man in a dry month, ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
214:How young can you die of old age? ~ Steven Wright, #NFDB
215:... I am old now, or oldening ... ~ John Banville, #NFDB
216:I felt like giving old Jane a buzz ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
217:I just don't have time to get old! ~ Dolly Parton, #NFDB
218:I like to think that I'm not old yet. ~ Neko Case, #NFDB
219:I'm old-fashioned beyond my years. ~ Muriel Spark, #NFDB
220:I'm old, I'm rich and I'm tired. ~ Jerry Seinfeld, #NFDB
221:I'm too old-school to tweet. ~ Julianna Margulies, #NFDB
222:I recognize the vestiges of an old flame ~ Virgil, #NFDB
223:Lest I should be old-fashioned, ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
224:Modern dancing is old fashioned. ~ Samuel Goldwyn, #NFDB
225:New ideas often need old buildings. ~ Jane Jacobs, #NFDB
226:No good-byes among old friends. ~ Mark T Sullivan, #NFDB
227:Old age ain't no place for sissies. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
228:Old age is but a second childhood. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
229:Old age is the harbor of all ills. ~ Wilfred Bion, #NFDB
230:Old age spiritualizes people naturally ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
231:Old, Middle, and New or Modern English. ~ Various, #NFDB
232:Old words are reborn with new faces. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
233:our surroundings are strangely old: ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
234:Quite like old times,' the room says. ~ Jean Rhys, #NFDB
235:Slim Shady, Eminem was the old initials. ~ Eminem, #NFDB
236:The old are in a second childhood. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
237:...there is no old age of the soul. ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
238:To learn is to be young, however old. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
239:You can't be a 25-year-old forever. ~ John Legend, #NFDB
240:You raze the old to raise the new. ~ Justina Chen, #NFDB
241:You're never too old to be crazy. ~ Michael Caine, #NFDB
242:As you get old, you live and learn. ~ Frank Thomas, #NFDB
243:But old habits die slow deaths. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
244:Don’t waste time fighting old wars. ~ Daniel Silva, #NFDB
245:Fear the power of estrogen, old man. ~ John Corwin, #NFDB
246:He had a thousand-year-old stare. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
247:History is as Old as My Grandfather ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
248:I am ridiculously old-fashioned. ~ Gerhard Richter, #NFDB
249:I am so tired of that old suffering. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
250:I know the game, it's old and lame: ~ Kool Moe Dee, #NFDB
251:I met this girl when I was ten years old, ~ Common, #NFDB
252:I was thirty. An old man in Fallujah. ~ Chris Kyle, #NFDB
253:I wish for you to grow old with me. ~ Grace Draven, #NFDB
254:memory shines in all its old glory. ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
255:My old man is a man of few words. ~ Scott Eastwood, #NFDB
256:My thousands-of-years-old virgin... ~ Lisa Kessler, #NFDB
257:Never repeat old grievances. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
258:Old is always fifteen years from now. ~ Bill Cosby, #NFDB
259:One is never too old for romance. ~ Ingrid Bergman, #NFDB
260:Power seldome grows old at Court. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
261:Read two old books for every new one. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
262:She remembered an old nightmare. ~ Katherine Arden, #NFDB
263:shutters as old as Herman Melville. ~ Lucia Berlin, #NFDB
264:The best antiques are old friends. ~ Keira Andrews, #NFDB
265:The best mirror is an old friend. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
266:There’s a dance in the old dame yet. ~ Don Marquis, #NFDB
267:There’s no fool like an old fool. ~ Jeffrey Archer, #NFDB
268:Trade is 10 times as old as farming. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
269:Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
270:Why is this ship so old and shitty? ~ Martha Wells, #NFDB
271:Why was Sandynose such an old badger ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
272:You Know I’m Old In Some Ways ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
273:50 years old is like springtime to me. ~ Lena Horne, #NFDB
274:A good old rodeo never hurt anyone. ~ Taylor Kitsch, #NFDB
275:be 123 years old dies in Andean village ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
276:Grace was only a few months old and ~ Steena Holmes, #NFDB
277:I live like a crazy old pack rat. ~ Martha Plimpton, #NFDB
278:I'm 86, and too old to be President. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
279:I may be getting old, but not foolish. ~ Elia Kazan, #NFDB
280:In actual life I am a grumpy old bag. ~ Dawn French, #NFDB
281:I think I am a little too old now. ~ Robert Englund, #NFDB
282:I would fain grow old learning many things. ~ Plato, #NFDB
283:Nostalgia is heroin for old people. ~ Dara O Briain, #NFDB
284:Old and cherished ideas die hard. ~ Graham E Fuller, #NFDB
285:Old guys can still do fun things. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
286:Old Mrs. Hempstock sniffed. “You’re a ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
287:Play it cool, that's the old school rule man. ~ Nas, #NFDB
288:The new is older than the old; ~ Helen Hunt Jackson, #NFDB
289:The old men know when an old man dies. ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB
290:There’s no tonic like an old friend. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
291:We never thought we could ever get old. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
292:When a man grows old his joy ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
293:You are never too old to become younger! ~ Mae West, #NFDB
294:A man growing old becomes a child again. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
295:At home I drive an old Land Rover. ~ Richard Hammond, #NFDB
296:Even idiots can reach old age. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
297:God bless child even when he get old. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
298:Hello darkness, my old friend
~ Simon & Garfunkel,#NFDB
299:his old school that if there’d been ~ Jeffrey Archer, #NFDB
300:I'm an old curmudgeon and I know it. ~ Jonathan Frid, #NFDB
301:I'm a teenager trapped in an old body. ~ Betty White, #NFDB
302:I'm too old to do crazy things anymore. ~ Rick James, #NFDB
303:L.A.'s not a good place to grow old. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
304:Let's die of it before we're too old. ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
305:library is a beautiful old thing ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
306:My heart is a thousand years old. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
307:New titles are born. Old titles die. ~ Pippa DaCosta, #NFDB
308:Observation is an old man's memory. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
309:Of a young hermit, an old devil. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
310:Old loves are dropped when new ones come ~ Euripides, #NFDB
311:Old women with mobile phones look wrong. ~ Peter Kay, #NFDB
312:Repetition – the curse of the old. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
313:The old die softly or the old die hard, ~ Donna Leon, #NFDB
314:The old priest Peter Gilligan ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
315:the sun burnt my little day old eyes ~ Kathryn Lasky, #NFDB
316:Time rides with the old ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
317:Time waxing old can many a lesson teach. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
318:What wouldst thou do, old man? ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
319:You are never too old to play chess! ~ Bobby Fischer, #NFDB
320:You can't teach an old hater new truths. ~ Dane Cook, #NFDB
321:Youth is always an enemy to the old. ~ Ellen Glasgow, #NFDB
322:An old cat sports not with her prey. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
323:...an old man is twice a child. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
324:Custom without truth is error grown old. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
325:Death laughs when old women frolic. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
326:Eric turned the corner onto his old ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
327:Everybody is doing the same old thing. ~ Missy Elliot, #NFDB
328:Getting old is not for sissies, kid. ~ Frank Langella, #NFDB
329:Getting old is no way to stop being young. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
330:God does not patch up the old life, ~ Kathryn Kuhlman, #NFDB
331:He tells old wives' tales much to the point. ~ Horace, #NFDB
332:His real name is Walder, Old Nan told me. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
333:If we fix on the old, we get stuck. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
334:If you want the old me, go buy my old albums. ~ Jay Z, #NFDB
335:I had an old typewriter and a big idea. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
336:I have the libido of a 15-year-old boy... ~ Megan Fox, #NFDB
337:Let's die of it before we're too old. ~ John le Carre, #NFDB
338:Load of old tosh,” said Peter, crossly. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
339:Not even old age knows how to love death. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
340:Old politicians chew on wisdom past, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
341:Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven ~ John Irving, #NFDB
342:Sunshine, the old clown, rims the room. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
343:The Navy is very old and very wise. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
344:There's no friends like the old friends ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
345:Time, waxing old, doth all things purify. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
346:Tranquility is the old man's milk. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
347:We live in an old chaos of the sun. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
348:You and billy gossip like old woman ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
349:“You raze the old to raise the new.” ~ ~ Justina Chen, #NFDB
350:(a.k.a. old white guy shiterature). ~ Becky Albertalli, #NFDB
351:An antique is anything old with class. ~ John Bartlett, #NFDB
352:An old Apache storyteller reminds us ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
353:Elided ~ Unthreaded beauty in the old forest. ~ Rose 🌹, #NFDB
354:Ever seen the play Arsenic and Old Lace? ~ B J Daniels, #NFDB
355:Few know how to be old. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
356:He had pored over old photographs, ~ David Lagercrantz, #NFDB
357:I could walk and swim at 10 months old. ~ Brandon Cruz, #NFDB
358:I like my whisky old and my women young. ~ Errol Flynn, #NFDB
359:I like the Whisky old an the women young ~ Errol Flynn, #NFDB
360:I may be old fashioned, but I am right. ~ Max Beerbohm, #NFDB
361:I'm so old they've cancelled my blood type. ~ Bob Hope, #NFDB
362:It looked like an old painting, but real. ~ John Green, #NFDB
363:It’s been gang-tagged up the old wazoo, ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
364:I use a lot of old-fashioned expressions. ~ Susan Cain, #NFDB
365:I've gotten crankier in my old age. ~ Shirley MacLaine, #NFDB
366:I was x years old in the year x2. ~ Augustus De Morgan, #NFDB
367:Men grow old, but they do not ripen. ~ Alphonse Daudet, #NFDB
368:My kids think I'm old and over the hill. ~ Simon Baker, #NFDB
369:Old age is not just for grown up's ~ Benny Bellamacina, #NFDB
370:old habits died hard—or not at all. ~ Sharon Hannaford, #NFDB
371:Old stories often turn out to be true. ~ Arthur Machen, #NFDB
372:She felt old, looked young, was neither. ~ Joseph Fink, #NFDB
373:She looked old, felt young, was neither. ~ Joseph Fink, #NFDB
374:The desert's an old dream of the sea. ~ Holly Ringland, #NFDB
375:There's no friends like the old friends. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
376:There was no fool like an old fool. ~ Karen McQuestion, #NFDB
377:These old people. These human ruins. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
378:The soul never grows old. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
379:The wind is old, but it keeps blowing. ~ Roberto Duran, #NFDB
380:Though old himself, he disliked old men. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
381:three-year-old girl in a car unattended. ~ Gregg Olsen, #NFDB
382:Time, as it grows old, teaches all things. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
383:To the old, the new is usually bad news. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
384:When I am old I shall wear midnight. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
385:Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd. ~ May Sarton, #NFDB
386:You don't get to be old bein' no fool. ~ Richard Pryor, #NFDB
387:cramped room, wearing nothing but an old ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
388:Don't accept the old order. Get rid of it. ~ John Lydon, #NFDB
389:Education is the best provision for old age ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
390:I haven't danced since 1973; I'm too old. ~ Len Goodman, #NFDB
391:I'm an old-fashioned theatre major at heart. ~ Tom Lenk, #NFDB
392:I'm an old sinner. Nothing shocks me. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
393:I'm growing old, I delight in the past. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
394:I'm old enough to make my own decisions. ~ Cheech Marin, #NFDB
395:It is hard to teach an old dog tricks. ~ William Camden, #NFDB
396:Old age is the lubricant of belief. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
397:old doesn’t always mean less advanced. ~ Nnedi Okorafor, #NFDB
398:Old praise dies, unlesse you feede it. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
399:Old things have strange hungers. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
400:Old women should not seek to be perfumed. ~ Archilochus, #NFDB
401:Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
402:Seek to live,remembrance is for the old. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
403:she would never be too old for cartoons. ~ Lili Valente, #NFDB
404:That grand old poem called Winter ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
405:The adulterer dies. An old custom, justice. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
406:Though old and wise, yet still advise. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
407:Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
408:Too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
409:What the hell was wrong with old people? ~ Randall Wood, #NFDB
410:You cannot teach an old dog new tricks ~ William Camden, #NFDB
411:You're never too old to take baby steps ~ Capital STEEZ, #NFDB
412:You're old when your dreams become regrets ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
413:And you old enough to be her father! ~ Margaret Mitchell, #NFDB
414:A youth of frolic, an old age of cards. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
415:Beauty and folly are old companions. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
416:Come forth, old man,--thy daughter's side ~ Walter Scott, #NFDB
417:Education is the best provision for old age. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
418:For sight is woman-like and shuns the old. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
419:God grant our new may inwrap our old! ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
420:How they love the old boxcar! ~ Gertrude Chandler Warner, #NFDB
421:I am old enough now to know I know nothing ~ Amy Poehler, #NFDB
422:I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
423:I'd like to grow old with my face moving. ~ Kate Winslet, #NFDB
424:If the old dog barke he gives counsell. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
425:I learned a woman is never an old woman. ~ Joni Mitchell, #NFDB
426:I'm like old shoes, I've never been hip. ~ Harrison Ford, #NFDB
427:I’m the solution to a two-hundred-year-old ~ Ally Carter, #NFDB
428:In old age, mirror is not a friend! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
429:I prefer old age to the alternative. ~ Maurice Chevalier, #NFDB
430:It is always in season for old men to learn. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
431:It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned. ~ Tom Waits, #NFDB
432:It was an old, old, old, old lady, ~ Henry Cuyler Bunner, #NFDB
433:I was there. I remember. It’s old and ratty. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
434:I would that I were an old beggar ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
435:Memory is what makes us young or old. ~ Alfred de Musset, #NFDB
436:My wife says OBE stands for Old Big 'Ead. ~ Brian Clough, #NFDB
437:...New Beginning to the same old story ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
438:Not everything old and ugly is wicked. ~ Jonathan Auxier, #NFDB
439:Nothing ever grows in this rotting old hole. ~ Meat Loaf, #NFDB
440:Of old sat Freedom on the heights ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
441:Old age is a continuous series of losses. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
442:Old guns rarely die, they just hang on walls. ~ A A Gill, #NFDB
443:old lovers? Why didn’t you tell me? ~ Jacqueline Sheehan, #NFDB
444:Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
445:Old women can see through walls. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca, #NFDB
446:passacaglia by the old master Buxtehude. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
447:Remember the old guy with the bell? The— ~ Joseph Finder, #NFDB
448:Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
449:Same old Satanic pact, only more of it. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
450:Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
451:some evil old ruffian of a Dog-stealer ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
452:team of old-time, swashbuckling warriors. ~ Jordan Rivet, #NFDB
453:The ham tastes like an old handbag. ~ Marie Darrieussecq, #NFDB
454:Ther is no newe gyse that it nas old. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
455:The wise man does not grow old, but ripes. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
456:The worst old age is that of the mind. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
457:To grow old was to have lived a full life. ~ S Jae Jones, #NFDB
458:We are not old unless we desire to be. ~ Taylor Caldwell, #NFDB
459:We cannot put old heads on young shoulders. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
460:When scandal has new-minted an old lie, ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
461:You can't give a Dementor the old one-two! ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
462:You can't use an old map to see a new land. ~ Gary Hamel, #NFDB
463:You never see an old man eating a Twix ~ Karl Pilkington, #NFDB
464:Young men have visions, old men have dreams. ~ Red Smith, #NFDB
465:young, old, British or foreign, the entire ~ Julia Baird, #NFDB
466:All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
467:All diseases run into one, old age. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
468:All things are one,” the old man had said. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
469:A man's only as old as the woman he feels. ~ Groucho Marx, #NFDB
470:And sometimes I remember days of old ~ Christina Rossetti, #NFDB
471:An old cat is a good friend to talk to. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
472:An old man in a house is a good sign. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
473:A sly old fish, too cunning for the hook. ~ George Crabbe, #NFDB
474:A young man is a theory, an old man is a fact. ~ E W Howe, #NFDB
475:But old fools is the biggest fools there is. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
476:But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
477:Christ, I think I'd grow old if I lost you. ~ Garth Ennis, #NFDB
478:Huzza for the Queen! Huzza for Old England! ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
479:I am grown peaceful as old age tonight. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
480:I am old, but the Gods still love me. ~ Erich von Daniken, #NFDB
481:I do not expect old heads on young shoulders. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
482:I lost my virginity when I was 6 years old. ~ Flavor Flav, #NFDB
483:I'm used to watching old movies of myself. ~ Jeff Bridges, #NFDB
484:I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
485:Isn’t it delightful to forget how old we are? ~ Euripides, #NFDB
486:It is always the season for the old to learn. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
487:It’s old advice, but it’s good: be yourself. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
488:I used to be so young, how did I get so old? ~ Dan Mangan, #NFDB
489:I was sixteen years old when you were born. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
490:I won't quit to become someone's old lady. ~ Janis Joplin, #NFDB
491:Lord, give to me who are old and rougher ~ John Masefield, #NFDB
492:Men become old, but they never become good. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
493:My dog is so old, she now has a lot of cats. ~ Dana Gould, #NFDB
494:My old man. He always knew just what to say. ~ John Green, #NFDB
495:New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ Large. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
496:Now, the old man happened to be the Lord. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
497:Old habits for old people; reinvent yourself! ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
498:old people had to work until they died. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
499:Patch up thine old body for heaven. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
500:Regrets are born in old age, never in youth. ~ Beem Weeks, #NFDB
501:Spare when young, and spend when old. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
502:That's all gone, now, the old, Hollywood. ~ Warren Beatty, #NFDB
503:THE ADVENTURE OF SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
504:The boy, a ten-year-old copy of the man... ~ Billie Letts, #NFDB
505:The Logan Café was narrow, wide and old, ~ Heidi Cullinan, #NFDB
506:The old brown hen and the old blue sky, ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
507:There was a wise old owl who sat in a tree ~ Paul Ricoeur, #NFDB
508:The unlived life is not worth examining. ~ Old Tom Morris, #NFDB
509:The wise man does not grow old, but ripens. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
510:They would grow old. They would forget me. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
511:Those who laugh often never grow old. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
512:We cannot fight new wars with old weapons. ~ Vinoba Bhave, #NFDB
513:When I was young my teachers were the old. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
514:While on that old grey stone I sat ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
515:You can't teach an old dogma new tricks. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
516:Ah, there's no friends like the old friends. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
517:All the old fellows stole our best ideas. ~ Frederic Goudy, #NFDB
518:As above, so below,” runs the old motto. It ~ Frank Joseph, #NFDB
519:A young mistress is better than an old master. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
520:Beautiful old people are works of art. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
521:education is the best provision for
old age ~ Aristotle,#NFDB
522:eight days old shall be circumcised among you, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
523:Faith sir! She looks like the Old Course. ~ Old Tom Morris, #NFDB
524:Get down with your old Allman Bros. records! ~ Bryan Ferry, #NFDB
525:Grow old with me! The best is yet to be. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
526:If you know too much, you'll get old too soon. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
527:I have a wonderful respect for old people. ~ Craig Kilborn, #NFDB
528:I keep thinking how young can you die from old age ~ Drake, #NFDB
529:I like old people when they have aged well. ~ M F K Fisher, #NFDB
530:I'm an old creaky staircase when I wake up. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
531:I’m an old creaky staircase when I wake up. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
532:I'm an old fashioned joint smoker ya know. ~ Willie Nelson, #NFDB
533:I mean the future has become old fashioned. ~ Baz Luhrmann, #NFDB
534:I’m too young and the world is too old ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
535:I once aged 90 years old in one episode. ~ DeForest Kelley, #NFDB
536:Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
537:I still feel like I'm 19. We're old now! ~ Francois Arnaud, #NFDB
538:It is sad to grow old but nice to ripen. ~ Brigitte Bardot, #NFDB
539:Language is an old-growth forest of the mind. ~ Wade Davis, #NFDB
540:like that old Plymouth in the horror movie, ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
541:No man loves life like him that's growing old. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
542:Observation, not old age, brings wisdom. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
543:Old enough to kill means old enough to die ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
544:Old formulas don’t give new solutions. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
545:Old friends are memories personified. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
546:Old ideas are their biggest liability. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
547:Old men need affection as they need the sun. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
548:Ready to give up so I seek the old Earth. ~ Inspectah Deck, #NFDB
549:Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
550:The GOP of old has grown old and moss covered. ~ Rand Paul, #NFDB
551:The spirit should never grow old. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
552:They say an old man is twice a child ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
553:Treat each person as you would an old friend. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
554:We can't reach old age by another man's road. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
555:Wisdom comes through suffering or old age. ~ Lesley Pearse, #NFDB
556:You are never too old to reinvent yourself. ~ Steve Harvey, #NFDB
557:You can't teach an old dog new tricks, ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
558:You can't teach the old maestro a new tune. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
559:An old ass knows more than a young colt ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
560:A three-year-old is not half a six-year-old. ~ Ken Robinson, #NFDB
561:A woman is as old as she looks before breakfast. ~ E W Howe, #NFDB
562:Don't clap too loudly—it's a very old world. ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
563:Enoch can be a wrinkle-hearted old titmouse, ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
564:Getting old ain't for the faint of heart. ~ Anthony Hopkins, #NFDB
565:I have forgiven all the old actors for dying. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
566:I hope I never get so old I get religious. ~ Ingmar Bergman, #NFDB
567:I've been auditioning since I was 7 years old. ~ Vin Diesel, #NFDB
568:Maybe I'm getting precognitive in my old age. ~ Jim Starlin, #NFDB
569:Medicines are only fit for old people. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
570:Never let an old person live in your body. ~ Michael Savage, #NFDB
571:Never stop dreaming,” the old king had said. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
572:New things are always better than old things. ~ Andy Warhol, #NFDB
573:No one on this Earth knows how old I am. ~ Rudolf Wanderone, #NFDB
574:Old beliefs do not lead you to new cheese ~ Spencer Johnson, #NFDB
575:...old habits are crawling out of my skin... ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
576:One never knows when one is old for certain. ~ Enid Bagnold, #NFDB
577:Remember me for these days, not the old ones. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
578:The moon had the old moon in her arms. ~ Dorothy Wordsworth, #NFDB
579:There is poetry of sailing as old as the world, ~ E L James, #NFDB
580:The worship of power is an old religion. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
581:They weren’t old enough to know their way home. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
582:was an old Ranger joke and they all smiled. ~ John Flanagan, #NFDB
583:We are judges of wounds, we old soldiers, ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
584:We will burn the old grass and the new will grow. ~ Pol Pot, #NFDB
585:What can I but enumerate old themes? ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
586:When does the loneliness of old age begin? ~ Janusz Korczak, #NFDB
587:When the forms of an old culture are dying, ~ Rudolf Bahro, #NFDB
588:Wisdom comes through suffering or old age. ~ Lesley Pearse, #NFDB
589:Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends. ~ Hafez, #NFDB
590:Age is never so old as youth would measure it. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
591:An old monkey never makes a pretty face. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
592:as a “crafty and lecherous old hypocrite.”45 ~ Susan Cheever, #NFDB
593:at least as old as synthetic penicillin—you ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
594:Because now I am grown so old and neutral.... ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
595:Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old. ~ Anne Frank, #NFDB
596:Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
597:Everyone grows old but not everyone grows up. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
598:Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. ~ John Green, #NFDB
599:I AM AN OLD NOBODY AND I LOVE WHAT I DO ~ Heather Havrilesky, #NFDB
600:if you don't want to get old, don't mellow. ~ Linda Ellerbee, #NFDB
601:I loved Allan Dwan. He was a tough old guy. ~ Harry Carey Jr, #NFDB
602:I’m an immortal, hundred-year-old vampire. ~ Robyn Schneider, #NFDB
603:I'm hungry for you. Old you, new you. ~ Megan Mayhew Bergman, #NFDB
604:In an old war, everybody has an ax to grind. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
605:I only envy as basic old sexual jealousy. ~ Joan Juliet Buck, #NFDB
606:I started skating when I was six years old. ~ Nancy Kerrigan, #NFDB
607:I've been driving since I was 19 years old. ~ Kathleen Wynne, #NFDB
608:Life is a cabaret, old chum! Come to the Cabaret. ~ Fred Ebb, #NFDB
609:Like old time... wanna arm wrestle for her? ~ Catherine Vale, #NFDB
610:Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss. ~ Pete Townshend,#NFDB
611:My mentors grow old and foolish. I am afraid. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
612:Never argue with a six-year-old who shaves. ~ Bill Watterson, #NFDB
613:No man is ever old enough to know better. ~ Holbrook Jackson, #NFDB
614:No one will die if they don't know how old I am. ~ Ken Stott, #NFDB
615:Not the old, not the new, but the necessary. ~ Tristan Tzara, #NFDB
616:Old age hath stronger sense of right than youth. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
617:old age' is always ten years more than we are. ~ Joan Rivers, #NFDB
618:Old age is just a record of one's whole life. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
619:Old age is not a total misery. Experience helps. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
620:Old age isn't a battle, old age is a massacre. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
621:Old age isn't a battle: old age is a massacre. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
622:Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
623:Old age likes indecency. It's a sign of life. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
624:Old-Fashioned Pound Cake (Creaming Method) ~ Michael Ruhlman, #NFDB
625:Old homes! old hearts! Upon my soul forever ~ Madison Cawein, #NFDB
626:Old love is a row of beach huts in November. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
627:Pain for the old was no longer a surprise. ~ Cormac McCarthy, #NFDB
628:Remembering itself is becoming old-fashioned. ~ Tommy Orange, #NFDB
629:She was old; millions of years old, she felt. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
630:Sodomy is as old as the human species. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
631:Sooner or later, everything old is new again. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
632:the goal is to get old without getting feeble. ~ Lou Schuler, #NFDB
633:The greatest surprise in life is old age’? ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
634:The homely beauty of the good old cause ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
635:The memory of man is as old as misfortune ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
636:The old woman’s face was wreathed in smiles. ~ Luo Guanzhong, #NFDB
637:There's never a new fashion but it's old. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
638:Thirteen years old. Not a boy, not a man. ~ Kathleen Grissom, #NFDB
639:What are you ruminating on? Old suffering? ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
640:What he yearned for was his old life. What ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
641:When I was 9 years old, Star Trek came on. ~ Whoopi Goldberg, #NFDB
642:When the devil grows old he turns hermit. ~ Ludovico Ariosto, #NFDB
643:When the old men fight, the young people die. ~ Anne Fortier, #NFDB
644:Why do old people drive with their mouths open? ~ Dana Gould, #NFDB
645:You can be the dead fish. I'll be the old stick ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
646:you think I would be old enough? I'm a grown ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
647:Youth may outrun the old, but not outwit. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
648:Adults were pack rats of old, useless emotions. ~ Reif Larsen, #NFDB
649:A love grown old is not the love once new. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
650:An old man is twice a child, and so is a drunken man. ~ Plato, #NFDB
651:An old-shoe lover loves loving old shoes. ~ Theodore Sturgeon, #NFDB
652:Archer! Let us fetch a spot of tea, old boy! ~ Rachel Hawkins, #NFDB
653:Australia is, in fact, an old man's bureaucracy. ~ Robin Boyd, #NFDB
654:be called Clem. I am twenty-seven years old. I am ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
655:Everyone desires long life, not one old age. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
656:Few people know how to be old. ~ Fran ois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
657:Getting old and dying alone is my worst fear. ~ Norman Reedus, #NFDB
658:God, don’t let me be an old fool, I prayed. ~ James Lee Burke, #NFDB
659:God is a twelve year old boy with Asperger's. ~ Eugene Mirman, #NFDB
660:How are you? You old love-house of always. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
661:How old does one have to be still to say tits? ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
662:I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces. ~ T S Eliot,#NFDB
663:I got sober when I was 22 years old. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman, #NFDB
664:I have a kind of old-fashioned, artisan approach. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
665:I have come too late into a world too old. ~ Alfred de Musset, #NFDB
666:I just got pinned by a freakin' twelve year old. ~ Kurt Angle, #NFDB
667:I know one day I'll be considered too old. ~ Claudia Schiffer, #NFDB
668:In our heads we're all about 33 years old. ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
669:It rolled over you like old oil from a fryer. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
670:It's not an old movie if you haven't seen it. ~ Lauren Bacall, #NFDB
671:it sucks to get old...but there's always beer ~ James Rollins, #NFDB
672:I've never been touched by such an old man. ~ Karl Pilkington, #NFDB
673:I would not knock old fellows in the dust ~ John Crowe Ransom, #NFDB
674:Known to the Chinese as ‘Iron-Headed Old Rat ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
675:leverage – a fancy term for good old debt. ~ Yanis Varoufakis, #NFDB
676:Like old times... wanna arm wrestle for her? ~ Catherine Vale, #NFDB
677:Men grow old quickly on the battlefield. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
678:No one who is young is ever going to be old. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
679:nothing smells quite as wonderful as old books. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
680:Old age and the passage of time teach all things. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
681:Old and young disbelieve one another's truths. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
682:Old men make war, young men fight and die ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
683:Quil. . .imprinted. . .with a two year old? ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
684:Refuse to let an old person move into your body. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
685:Ted's old single bed had weird dreams in it. ~ David Duchovny, #NFDB
686:The clever old conniver continued to cogitate. ~ James D Doss, #NFDB
687:The old brain can’t conjure up ideas or read. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
688:The old folk, time's doting chronicles. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
689:They say the good die young, so the bad die old. ~ Jon Connor, #NFDB
690:Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
691:When gossip gets old it becomes a myth. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
692:When you get old, peace is about all you want. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
693:Who is old enough to ask, is old enough to know. ~ Sharon Lee, #NFDB
694:A deep meaning often lies in old customs. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
695:Age ain't got nothing to do with how old you are. ~ Dick Clark, #NFDB
696:An old young man, will be a young old man. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
697:Arise, go forth, and conquer as of old. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
698:Can't get around the old minimum wage, Mortimer. ~ Dan Aykroyd, #NFDB
699:Death's an old story, but new for each person. ~ Ivan Turgenev, #NFDB
700:Destroy the old files, but make copies first. ~ Samuel Goldwyn, #NFDB
701:Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building. ~ John Osborne, #NFDB
702:Don’t go away! Have a taste of old Monkey’s rod! ~ Wu Cheng en, #NFDB
703:Funny how the new things are the old things. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
704:he was about as erotic as an old football coach. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
705:I don't wanna get old and stagnant and hang around. ~ GG Allin, #NFDB
706:I find it hard to get old and hard to say, 'No.' ~ Ronnie Wood, #NFDB
707:I heard the pitter patter of little old feet. ~ Lawrence Block, #NFDB
708:I'm 37 years old and don't have a steady paycheck. ~ Joe Lando, #NFDB
709:I'm old and my knowledge is strictly horizontal. ~ Greg Proops, #NFDB
710:I'm old, but I'm not good enough to be jaded. ~ John Feinstein, #NFDB
711:In bringing up a child, think of its old age. ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
712:Infinite sadness is not to trust an old friend. ~ Dick Francis, #NFDB
713:I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old. ~ Mose Allison, #NFDB
714:It looks like they've been watching old Japan tapes! ~ CM Punk, #NFDB
715:It’s an old pirate tradition. Burial at C. ~ Alastair Reynolds, #NFDB
716:It`s not how old you are, it`s how you are old. ~ Jules Renard, #NFDB
717:I was always too young. And now I am too old. I ~ Joanna Walsh, #NFDB
718:I was five years old the first time I got drunk. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
719:I would only date a 15 year old high school girl. ~ Seth Rogen, #NFDB
720:Lee was tough as hickory, but the tree was old. ~ Ralph Peters, #NFDB
721:Lucky for me, as old as I am, I can still change. ~ Alice Neel, #NFDB
722:markets rather than merely chasing old ones. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
723:My brain cannot conceive how old my body is. ~ Michael Douglas, #NFDB
724:Neither, do men put new wine into old bottles. ~ Matthew IX.17, #NFDB
725:not made for you. You’re an old white guy in ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
726:Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
727:Old age by nature is rather talkative. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
728:Old age is by nature rather talkative. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
729:Old age is not a battle. Old age is a massacre. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
730:Old friends are like old clothes: they fit the best. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
731:Old ghosts, the shadows of might-have-beens. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
732:Old men dream dreams; young men see visions. ~ Melvin B Tolson, #NFDB
733:Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
734:One of my rules is: Never listen to your old stuff. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
735:Pakistan is an old ally of the United States. ~ Stephen Hadley, #NFDB
736:The ache of empty arms was an old tale to you. ~ Sara Teasdale, #NFDB
737:The old sleep poorly. Perhaps they stand watch. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
738:The old will die and the young will forget. ~ David Ben Gurion, #NFDB
739:There is no such thing as the old age of the wise. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
740:To an old man any place that's warm is homeland. ~ Maxim Gorky, #NFDB
741:Young atheists abound, but old atheists are rare. ~ James Cook, #NFDB
742:All would live long, but none would be old. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
743:And one day a little old woman ran up and down ~ Beatrix Potter, #NFDB
744:As a 12-year-old, I think everything seems scary. ~ Rooney Mara, #NFDB
745:As we grow old, the beauty steals inward. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
746:Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
747:Everyone looks old to the young,” Ravn said. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
748:Going down the old mine with a transistor radio. ~ Van Morrison, #NFDB
749:Good friends walk in when the old ones walk out. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
750:Growing old is something you do if you're lucky. ~ Groucho Marx, #NFDB
751:Guys are idiots, till they're what, 40 years old. ~ Wes Borland, #NFDB
752:hey bitch, you’re never too old to rock and roll ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
753:History is just new people making old mistakes. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
754:I always fish out antique ideas, very old ideas. ~ Sergio Leone, #NFDB
755:I am fond of lovely old words like 'locomotive'. ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
756:I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
757:If were not foolish young, were foolish old. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
758:I have the problems of, I must confess, old age. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
759:I’m too young to be old and too old to be young. ~ Fannie Flagg, #NFDB
760:Is it possible to be nostalgic about old fears? ~ Peter Ackroyd, #NFDB
761:I slept with my mom until I was 16 years old. ~ Jennifer Hudson, #NFDB
762:It's old. Really old.
Is that a technical term? ~ Alex Adams,#NFDB
763:I was just 20 years old when I wrote Broken Arrow. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
764:I was not so old that I would deny my own senses. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
765:I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
766:I write like a two-year-old and I can't spell. ~ Harry Redknapp, #NFDB
767:Just as well then that kings did not grow old. ~ Edoardo Albert, #NFDB
768:love Mary, everyone does, but she’s old as dirt. ~ Dawn Martens, #NFDB
769:Man does not cease to play because he grows old, ~ Drew Lachey, #NFDB
770:MY FIRST KISS “HOW OLD WERE YOU when you had yours? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
771:My little old dog
a heart-beat
at my feet ~ Edith Wharton,#NFDB
772:neglected, it still retained an old-fashioned ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
773:Never read a book that is not a year old. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
774:New wars started even before the old ones were won ~ John Green, #NFDB
775:No one longs to live more than someone growing old. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
776:Now for good lucke, cast an old shooe after mee. ~ John Heywood, #NFDB
777:Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
778:Old man with an old phone. That's never not funny. ~ Adam McKay, #NFDB
779:Old men go to Death, Death comes to Young men. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
780:One taste of the old time sets all to rights. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
781:Perhaps I have a strange affinity for old books. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
782:Poetry must be as new as foam & old as rock. ~ Delmore Schwartz, #NFDB
783:Rap is still an art, and no-one's from the Old School ~ KRS One, #NFDB
784:So all my best is dressing old words new. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
785:Sometimes the old-age serenity thing is crap. ~ Becky Masterman, #NFDB
786:Stop whining about getting old. It's a privilege. ~ Amy Poehler, #NFDB
787:The biggest surprise in a man's life is old age. ~ Ben Kingsley, #NFDB
788:The more one knows, the sooner one grows old. ~ Katherine Arden, #NFDB
789:The Old Guard dies but it never surrenders. ~ Margaret Mitchell, #NFDB
790:The old woman dies, the burden is lifted. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
791:There is nothing more revolting than an old busybody. ~ Martial, #NFDB
792:There is, they say, no fool like an old fool. ~ William Golding, #NFDB
793:This shows you are never too old to get surprised. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
794:took her old place in the corner of the front row, ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
795:Too old to die young, and too young to grow up. ~ Marty Feldman, #NFDB
796:Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
797:Vlad the Impaler–style on an old speed-limit sign, ~ M D Massey, #NFDB
798:What was the old saying? Fake it ‘til you make it? ~ Celia Kyle, #NFDB
799:When I was 5-years-old, I knew who Khrushchev was. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
800:When the old plum tree blooms, the entire world blooms. ~ Dogen, #NFDB
801:You get old faster when you think about retirement. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
802:You’re too old for this type of living,’ he told ~ Wilbur Smith, #NFDB
803:A guitar is like an old friend that is there with me. ~ B B King, #NFDB
804:All we ever see of stars are their old photographs. ~ Alan Moore, #NFDB
805:An old black ram is tupping your white ewe ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
806:An old man dies, a little girl lives. Fair trade. ~ Frank Miller, #NFDB
807:As we grow old...the beauty steals inward. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
808:But I liked my gossip fresh, not day-old stale. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
809:Every hour wounds. The last one kills. —OLD SAYING ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
810:glanced at nine-year-old Micah, who poked at his ~ Debra Holland, #NFDB
811:Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional. ~ Cindy Gerard, #NFDB
812:Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
813:Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
814:Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be! ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
815:Grow old along with me--the best is yet to be, ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
816:History -- its what those bitter old men write. ~ Jackie Kennedy, #NFDB
817:I don't buy fur coats or jewelry. I have old cars. ~ Peta Wilson, #NFDB
818:I got into politics when I was eight years old. ~ Jonathan Krohn, #NFDB
819:I have a twelve year old sex doll. Brand new. ~ Anthony Jeselnik, #NFDB
820:I'm just an old man and I smell bad, remember? ~ Stanley Kubrick, #NFDB
821:I'm like an old dog, I hate to be run off from home ~ Doc Watson, #NFDB
822:I'm too old to scare and too stubborn to budge. ~ Stephen Hunter, #NFDB
823:It is not how old you are, but how you are old. ~ Marie Dressler, #NFDB
824:It's hard to really compare new love and old love. ~ Hugh Hefner, #NFDB
825:Let's grow old and die together. Let's do it now. ~ Ani DiFranco, #NFDB
826:Love is ever new because it never groweth old. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
827:Man rarely knows his own power," the old man said. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
828:Men should be explorers no matter how old they are. ~ Don Ameche, #NFDB
829:New wars started even before the old ones were won. ~ John Green, #NFDB
830:Not Churchill. Sixty-five, old for a Churchill. ~ Clement Attlee, #NFDB
831:Nothing says a fun time like an old leper colony. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
832:"Oh to be old again," said a young corpse. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
833:Old age hath yet his honour and his toil. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
834:Old age transfigures or fossilizes. ~ Marie von Ebner Eschenbach, #NFDB
835:Old family motto: "The best revenge is revenge. ~ Anne McCaffrey, #NFDB
836:old habits are hard to break, but not impossible! ~ Pearl Cleage, #NFDB
837:Old people are often impatient, but for what? ~ Jonathan Carroll, #NFDB
838:Old secrets are like old wounds; they fester. ~ Paul Christopher, #NFDB
839:Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. ~ Douglas MacArthur, #NFDB
840:People don't die of old age, they die of neglect. ~ Jack LaLanne, #NFDB
841:Robert E. Lee Prewitt. Isn't that a silly old name. ~ Donna Reed, #NFDB
842:Sometimes grown ups don't act their right old age ~ Barbara Park, #NFDB
843:The 'good old times' - all times when old are good. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
844:The old-boobs Pamela or the new-boobs Pamela? ~ Michele Bardsley, #NFDB
845:The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. ~ Wilfred Owen, #NFDB
846:The passions of the young are vices in the old. ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
847:They should kick it old school with the Bard.> ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
848:To me, fair friend, you never can be old, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
849:Use the new technologies for the old purposes. ~ Leon Wieseltier, #NFDB
850:We have come a long way on that old molecule DNA. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
851:When a young man talks to an old man, it is always a gift. ~ Avi, #NFDB
852:When I was five years old I knew I wanted to act. ~ Debra Wilson, #NFDB
853:You know, I may have another book in me, old man. ~ Oliver North, #NFDB
854:Ahead, an old barn sheds paint into the grass. ~ Beatriz Williams, #NFDB
855:a little old lady from Peoria who wouldn’t shut up. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
856:And I continued to grow until I was 25 years old. ~ Julius Erving, #NFDB
857:And old movies, of course, brought me and Ed together. ~ A J Finn, #NFDB
858:Annie and Jack waved good-bye to the old man. ~ Mary Pope Osborne, #NFDB
859:Artists are kids. I feel like I'm six years old. ~ Sergei Polunin, #NFDB
860:Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
861:Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes. ~ John O Hara, #NFDB
862:breathing in the bushy nostrils of old men ~ Armando Lucas Correa, #NFDB
863:But always and sometimes questioning the old modes ~ John Ashbery, #NFDB
864:But pearls are fair; and the old saying is: ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
865:But whats the use of being old if you cant be dumb? ~ John O Hara, #NFDB
866:Choose old people for enemies. They die. You win. ~ Jacob M Appel, #NFDB
867:Fifty years old, 212 fights, and I'm still pretty. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
868:France is an old country that needs to wake up. ~ Melanie Laurent, #NFDB
869:Habiba. It's an old word that means dear friend. ~ Jessica Khoury, #NFDB
870:Here I am, the brand new me living the same old life. ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
871:I am old, I am fat, but I am still Tetrazzini. ~ Luisa Tetrazzini, #NFDB
872:I am scared of getting old. I am scared of being ill. ~ Ben Stein, #NFDB
873:I certainly don't want to be an angry old artist. ~ Joni Mitchell, #NFDB
874:I feel like an old man. hell, I am an old man. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
875:I'm fifty-six years old - I'm as old as rock 'n roll. ~ Don Letts, #NFDB
876:I'm filled with a new joy mixed with old grief. ~ Sandra Cisneros, #NFDB
877:I'm too old to adapt to somebody else's ways. ~ Claudia Christian, #NFDB
878:I’m too young to be old and too old to be young. I ~ Fannie Flagg, #NFDB
879:It is a pity the spirit does not grow old too. ~ Chingiz Aitmatov, #NFDB
880:I've been learning martial arts since I was 8 years old. ~ Jet Li, #NFDB
881:I've been playing a guitar since I was 10 years old. ~ Mac Miller, #NFDB
882:I was nine-years-old when I first put on skates. ~ Scott Hamilton, #NFDB
883:Love is old, Love is new, Love is all, Love is you. ~ The Beatles, #NFDB
884:Marry a nearsighted man and you’ll never look old. ~ Fannie Flagg, #NFDB
885:Musically, he was like an old man in a boy's skin. ~ Eric Clapton, #NFDB
886:My parents come from old money in Kansas City. They ~ Alexa Riley, #NFDB
887:Never read any book that is not a year old. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
888:Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old? ~ W B Yeats, #NFDB
889:Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
890:Old hands can hold memories of good things. ~ Sarah Addison Allen, #NFDB
891:Old maids do not mind giving people trouble. ~ Thomas Nelson Page, #NFDB
892:Old Man, right (sighing): Death to the fascists! ~ Bertolt Brecht, #NFDB
893:Old men are always young enough to learn with profit. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
894:Russia is new in terms of nuclear. America is old. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
895:Since I was 15 I've felt kinda like... an old man. ~ Michael Cera, #NFDB
896:So many of my old friends, gathered in one place. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
897:Some old ugly woman says she’ll teach you magic. ~ Claire Legrand, #NFDB
898:still in use though coeval with the old house. Then ~ Carola Dunn, #NFDB
899:Tap dancing all started with the old clog waltz. ~ Sammy Davis Jr, #NFDB
900:Tempering chocolate,” said the old woman. “Tempering? ~ H Y Hanna, #NFDB
901:The best contraceptive for old people is nudity. ~ Phyllis Diller, #NFDB
902:The best mirror is an old friend. GEORGE HERBERT ~ Robert Whitlow, #NFDB
903:The hare grows old as she plays in the sun ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
904:There is rust in my mouth,the stain of an old kiss. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
905:There's the young Jon Voight and the old Jon Voight. ~ Jon Voight, #NFDB
906:The young break rules for fun. The old for profit. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
907:The young may die, but the old must! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
908:To grow old is to move from passion to compassion. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
909:To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
910:Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old. ~ Dick Gregory, #NFDB
911:When you've set goals and dreams, you don't feel old. ~ Burl Ives, #NFDB
912:You don't grow old. You get old by not growing. ~ E Stanley Jones, #NFDB
913:Ah! How good it feels the hand of an old friend. ~ Mary Engelbreit, #NFDB
914:And Pham drowned in an old, old rage, remembering…. ~ Vernor Vinge, #NFDB
915:A new wound makes all the old ones ache again. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
916:An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
917:An old man, broken with the storms of state, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
918:An old man dies. A young woman lives. A fair trade. ~ Frank Miller, #NFDB
919:An old mans staffe is the rapper of deaths doore. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
920:An old man with an ashen face and bulbous yellow eyes, ~ Teju Cole, #NFDB
921:A thirteen-year-old heart shouldn't feel like this. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
922:Beware of the young doctor and the old barber. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
923:But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
924:Come grow old with me, for the best is yet to come! ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
925:Come grow old with me. The best is yet to be. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
926:Death is almost never timely, even for the old. ~ Christopher Bram, #NFDB
927:Discussing how old you are is the temple of boredom. ~ Ruth Gordon, #NFDB
928:Does forty-two seem very old to you?” he said. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
929:Every hour wounds. The last one kills.’ – Old saying ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
930:Every hour wounds. The last one kills. —OLD SAYING T ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
931:Everything that comes together falls apart. - Old Man ~ John Green, #NFDB
932:Fear not of evil.. Everyday dem flesh it grow old ~ Damian Marley, #NFDB
933:Girls just want to have fun. Well, so do old ladies! ~ Joan Rivers, #NFDB
934:Golf - a young man's vice and an old man's penance. ~ Irvin S Cobb, #NFDB
935:I always thought October was a kind old Love-light. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
936:I am old enough to know that a red carpet is just a rug. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
937:I don't like to overdose. Call me old-fashioned. ~ Chelsea Handler, #NFDB
938:I don t wanna see old people on a rock & roll stage. ~ Grace Slick, #NFDB
939:I have a daughter, she's twenty years old. ~ Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, #NFDB
940:I have no aspirations of growing old and boring. ~ Freddie Mercury, #NFDB
941:I hope we'll get lucky enough to grow old together. ~ Paula McLain, #NFDB
942:I love you the way I love the smell of old books. ~ J T Geissinger, #NFDB
943:I’m an old creaky staircase when I wake up. Someone ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
944:I'm from such an old family, it's been condemned. ~ Phyllis Diller, #NFDB
945:I'm too old to be governed by fear of dumb people. ~ Sam Waterston, #NFDB
946:I was partly old-fashioned and partly modern. ~ Eric Allin Cornell, #NFDB
947:Love, as is told by the seers of old, ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne, #NFDB
948:Make-strong old dreams lest this our world lose heart ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
949:Medicine is a very old joke, but it still goes on. ~ Andre Maurois, #NFDB
950:Mothers shouldn’t be allowed to get old and fragile. ~ J A Konrath, #NFDB
951:My old coach used to say two points was two points. ~ Vince Carter, #NFDB
952:nothing is so sad as the injustices of old age. ~ Beryl Bainbridge, #NFDB
953:Obsessing about weight is a big old waste of time. ~ Anne Hathaway, #NFDB
954:Oh, to be old again,” said the young corpse. ~ Stanis aw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
955:Old age learns about less after a lifetime of more. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
956:Old age,” she says, “is a powerful disguise. ~ Katherine Applegate, #NFDB
957:Old dogs care about you, even when you make mistakes. ~ Tom T Hall, #NFDB
958:Old is man when he is born and young, young ever after. ~ Taliesin, #NFDB
959:Old men are always young enough to learn, with profit. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
960:Old Spice Body Spray will make you smell like power! ~ Terry Crews, #NFDB
961:Old wine, and an old friend, are good provisions. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
962:She may be old, but she's more goblin than human. ~ Nahoko Uehashi, #NFDB
963:Some magic is so old, it's hardly magic anymore. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
964:That old ball and chain had me chained up for weeks, ~ Consequence, #NFDB
965:The newest books are those that never grow old. ~ Holbrook Jackson, #NFDB
966:There are more old drunkards than old doctors. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
967:There's many a good tune played by an old banjo. ~ Anthony Hopkins, #NFDB
968:The times are new, but the informers are old. ~ William T Vollmann, #NFDB
969:Times is always hard for some, the old man observed. ~ William Gay, #NFDB
970:To search for the old is to understand the new. ~ Gichin Funakoshi, #NFDB
971:vanguard. Jackson’s division was the old valley army: ~ S C Gwynne, #NFDB
972:WARNING! Life leads to old age, illness and death. ~ Will Ferguson, #NFDB
973:When I was 17 years old, I was in the music business. ~ Scott Caan, #NFDB
974:Yes, well, years. Some die young; some are born old. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
975:You are as old as you feel. So I reckon I'm about sixty. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
976:You can't use an old map to explore a new world. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
977:You read the past in some old faces. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
978:About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
979:And watch out for flying monkeys, you old bitch! ~ Delilah S Dawson, #NFDB
980:As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, do it. ~ Margaret Deland, #NFDB
981:A voice called out, cold as chloroform and old shame. ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
982:Besides, at 62 years old I look like I'm about 27. ~ Chubby Checker, #NFDB
983:Cold weather doesn't care if your coat is old or new. ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
984:Cold weather doesn’t care if your coat is old or new. ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
985:Don't frown so, you'll look old before your time. ~ Lloyd Alexander, #NFDB
986:Every man at three years old is half his height ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
987:Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
988:Every...woman," the old lady said, "loves a ...rogue. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
989:German reminded her of an old man hacking up phlegm. ~ Sara Shepard, #NFDB
990:Growing old is compulsory - growing up is optional. ~ Bob Monkhouse, #NFDB
991:Growing old seemed to be full of never-again moments. ~ Kaje Harper, #NFDB
992:Having old friends is the politics of last resort. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
993:Hee that would bee well old, must bee old betimes. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
994:I am old, so give me your peace. Wisdom comes with age. ~ Hammurabi, #NFDB
995:I don’t call fifty very old,” said Miss Maudie tartly. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
996:I feel old and finished. I’m nearly thirty now. ~ Rosamunde Pilcher, #NFDB
997:I found her as lovable as a cheap old toy. She ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
998:I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep. ~ James Elroy Flecker, #NFDB
999:I'm 29 years-old and, sure, I'm looking to find a wife. ~ Tyson Gay, #NFDB
1000:I made my money the old-fashioned way, I inherited it. ~ John Raese, #NFDB
1001:I'm just an old hippie. You know, peace and love. ~ Sherman Hemsley, #NFDB
1002:Oh God, I’m old and I’ve never been young. ~ Rafael Yglesias, #NFDB
1003:I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30. ~ V S Pritchett, #NFDB
1004:It is always in season for old men to learn. ~ Æschylus, Agamemnon., #NFDB
1005:It is not well to make great changes in old age. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1006:It was great to play with some of my old linemates. ~ Mario Lemieux, #NFDB
1007:I've wanted to be a writer since I was four years old! ~ Susan Cain, #NFDB
1008:I wanted to be an actor since I was nine years old. ~ Ewan McGregor, #NFDB
1009:Looking at old photographs was like that. Magic. ~ Susanna Kearsley, #NFDB
1010:My favorite pudding is good old English apple pie. ~ Jeremy Bulloch, #NFDB
1011:My mom put me in dance classes when I was 5 years old. ~ Danny Pudi, #NFDB
1012:No old Men (excepting Dr. Wallis) love Mathematicks. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
1013:Old age," she says, "is a wonderful disguise. ~ Katherine Applegate, #NFDB
1014:Old Camels carry young Camels skins to the Market. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1015:Old enough to be drafted but not old enough to vote. ~ Alice Cooper, #NFDB
1016:Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1017:Old Testament prophets. ‘You savvy dis fetish thing? ~ William Boyd, #NFDB
1018:old textile mill, which was in the process of being ~ Richard Russo, #NFDB
1019:Old violence is not too old to beget new values. ~ Robinson Jeffers, #NFDB
1020:[On old age:] You wake up one morning and you got it. ~ Moms Mabley, #NFDB
1021:Philip Roth: “Old age is not a battle, it’s a massacre. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1022:She makes my old pick-up truck feel like a limousine. ~ Rhett Akins, #NFDB
1023:That right there...was more like 13 year old Mitch. ~ Penelope Ward, #NFDB
1024:The best security for old age: respect your children. ~ Sholem Asch, #NFDB
1025:The council is old school. Really, really old school. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1026:The old language of colonialism surfaces once again. ~ Ahdaf Soueif, #NFDB
1027:The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori. ~ Wilfred Owen,#NFDB
1028:The old order changes yielding place to new. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
1029:These palm trees like my old homeboys, hella shady ~ Chamillionaire, #NFDB
1030:Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, #NFDB
1031:To love is a pleasure of youth, a sin in old age. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
1032:Unlike old age or cancer, no one anticipates a suicide. ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
1033:watched dusk fall in shades of blood and old bruises. ~ Leah Raeder, #NFDB
1034:We had a deal, and it was only about fifteen minutes old. ~ M Mabie, #NFDB
1035:We should all start to live before we get too old. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
1036:When all sinnes grow old, coveteousnesse is young. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1037:With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar, #NFDB
1038:You are as old as God and as young as the morning. ~ Hilda Charlton, #NFDB
1039:You are only old once, but you can be immature forever. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1040:You gotta keep changing. Shirts, old ladies, whatever. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
1041:Youth is immortal; Tis the elderly only grow old! ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1042:You will know you're old when you cease to be amazed. ~ Noel Coward, #NFDB
1043:America is a young country with an old mentality. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
1044:As I live I must die daily My old nature I must kill ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
1045:At 6 years old I knew there was no place for me. ~ Herve Villechaize, #NFDB
1046:But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet. ~ Philip Levine, #NFDB
1047:But though an old man, I am but a young gardener. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1048:cracked. The tub was as old as God and pitted. There ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
1049:directly to the apartments of his old friend, ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs, #NFDB
1050:dont let the old break you; let the love make you ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1051:Europe is endearingly old fashioned in its secularism. ~ Sally Quinn, #NFDB
1052:Faith builds the bridge from this old world to the new. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
1053:Getting old we can deal with. Being old is the problem ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
1054:Growing old-it's not nice, but it's interesting. ~ August Strindberg, #NFDB
1055:He's a good old sort. If only he weren't plumb crazy! ~ Michael Ende, #NFDB
1056:He was a funny old dog. He liked strawberries. ~ Margaret Wise Brown, #NFDB
1057:History, that excitable and unreliable old lady. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
1058:Hope remains the highest reality, the age-old power. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
1059:I can take a three-year-old and make a hit record with him. ~ Dr Dre, #NFDB
1060:I'd rather be a creature of the night than an old dude. ~ Gerard Way, #NFDB
1061:I'm thirty-six years old. I'm just getting started! ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
1062:I started with Sam Cooke when I was 6 or 7 years old. ~ Bobby Womack, #NFDB
1063:It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1064:I've been doing theatre since I was 5 years old. ~ Claudia Christian, #NFDB
1065:I've been having a midlife crisis since I was four years old. ~ Moby, #NFDB
1066:I was just about 6 weeks old when we moved to Detroit. ~ Eddie Floyd, #NFDB
1067:I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. ~ Stephen Ambrose, #NFDB
1068:Like crucifixions and pornography, it never got old. ~ Joe Schreiber, #NFDB
1069:Lilin-Demon in old Mesopotamia. Lidérc in Hungary. ~ Victoria Danann, #NFDB
1070:My dream is to have a beautiful old house in Monaco. ~ Eva Herzigova, #NFDB
1071:Nothing grows old-fashioned so fast as modernity. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
1072:Old age had distilled her down to her essence. ~ J Courtney Sullivan, #NFDB
1073:Old age is fifteen years older than I am. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, #NFDB
1074:Old enough to know better, but too young to care. ~ Whitley Strieber, #NFDB
1075:Old enough to know better, young enough to do it anyway. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1076:Old guys have seen too much, and they trust no one. ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
1077:Old I may be, but, given the chance, I will learn. ~ Simin Behbahani, #NFDB
1078:Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like viral video ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1079:Old, that's an affront no woman can well bear. ~ Miguel de Cervantes, #NFDB
1080:Old Zen was the reduction of concepts to absurdity. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1081:oohing and aahing over the Old Whaling Church and ~ Elin Hilderbrand, #NFDB
1082:↟↟Rereading books is like visiting old friends↟↟ ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1083:Tell the truth and . . .run!"
Old Croatian proverb ~ Teresa Toten,#NFDB
1084:That old feeling is still in my leaking heart. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
1085:"The good old days." The only good days are ahead. ~ Alice Childress, #NFDB
1086:their, through Soho’s rainswept streets, around the old ~ Roy Robson, #NFDB
1087:The most important thing is growing old gracefully. ~ Audrey Hepburn, #NFDB
1088:The old pond, ah! A frog jumps in: The water's sound. ~ Matsuo Basho, #NFDB
1089:The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating. ~ Sonny Liston, #NFDB
1090:There should always be one old maid in a family. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1091:To be with old friends is very warming and comforting. ~ Ian Ziering, #NFDB
1092:We don’t want to become old, rich and useless ~ Roger Meddows Taylor, #NFDB
1093:When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
1094:Why do all balls look like they're 150 years old? ~ Whitney Cummings, #NFDB
1095:With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1096:You know you're old when your walker has an airbag. ~ Phyllis Diller, #NFDB
1097:All I want to do is throw a tantrum like a two-year-old. I ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
1098:All new news is old news happening to new people ~ Malcolm Muggeridge, #NFDB
1099:A new truth is a truth, an old error is an error. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1100:An old lady doesn't deal, darlin', she breathes easy ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
1101:An old man who's happy not to have cowshit on his neck. ~ Mark Spragg, #NFDB
1102:At my age, if I make it up, it's still an old saying. ~ Robert Jordan, #NFDB
1103:bringing in an old woman with breathing problems, caught ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
1104:Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
1105:Growing old on screen is not for the faint of heart. ~ George Clooney, #NFDB
1106:He wore his own innocence like a comfortable old coat. ~ Alice Sebold, #NFDB
1107:Hills tell old stories. Cliffs are poets with harps. ~ George MacKay, #NFDB
1108:hope you can wear her down before you both die of old age, ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
1109:I am 67, but I'm not too old to make a fresh start. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
1110:I cannot, in my old age, live off pieces of my youth. ~ Peter Biskind, #NFDB
1111:I don't want to always be doing the same old thing. ~ Joseph Plaskett, #NFDB
1112:I have not come to put new patches on old garments. ~ Taylor Caldwell, #NFDB
1113:I have programmed myself to be at least 105 years old. ~ Oleg Cassini, #NFDB
1114:I have this obsession with really cool, old books. ~ Constance Zimmer, #NFDB
1115:I'm 36 years old, and I'm growing up. Little by little. ~ Elena Anaya, #NFDB
1116:I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay. ~ Jason Collins, #NFDB
1117:I'm a gentleman, call me old fashioned if you want. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
1118:I'm a old hoodlum, so I will jump on you if I have to. ~ Steve Harvey, #NFDB
1119:I'm too old for amusingly neurotic misunderstandings. ~ Dennis Liggio, #NFDB
1120:Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
1121:I think I was always an old soul, even as a teenager. ~ Brooke Fraser, #NFDB
1122:It's not the days that are old, it's you that's old. ~ Karl Lagerfeld, #NFDB
1123:I've got my old favorites like The Eagles and Bon Jovi. ~ Niall Horan, #NFDB
1124:I was raised Catholic until I was old enough to say no. ~ John Cusack, #NFDB
1125:I wrote the book in my head when I was 6 years old. ~ Steven Cojocaru, #NFDB
1126:Leaders who kill new ideas love living with old problems. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1127:My old man's got a problem, he lives with the bottle. ~ Tracy Chapman, #NFDB
1128:nebulous and milky, like light from an old, old star. ~ Gail Honeyman, #NFDB
1129:Nobody's too old for stories--not even God himself. ~ Jonathan Auxier, #NFDB
1130:Not the last of the old Jedi, Luke. The first of the new. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1131:Old dreams are too beautiful the way they once were. ~ Joseph Legaspi, #NFDB
1132:"Old" is definitely not cool in America. Never has been. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
1133:Old man take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you were. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
1134:Old men, when they scorne young, make much of death. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1135:O madam, my old heart is cracked, it's cracked! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1136:One is never too old to be a student of the enemy. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1137:Our children grow old and elbow us into the grave. ~ Shirley Ann Grau, #NFDB
1138:People are still emulating the old fashioned criminal. ~ Shia LaBeouf, #NFDB
1139:Shame is an ornament to the young; a disgrace to the old. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1140:shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
1141:Some lawns have all the cheer of old cemeteries. ~ Richard Brookhiser, #NFDB
1142:Tell her the Town told you to come read old dreams. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1143:The calm and wisdom of old age are achieved over time. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
1144:The earth neither grows old or wears out if it is dunged. ~ Columella, #NFDB
1145:The good thing about being old is not being young. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
1146:the impatience of the old is the worst impatience of all. ~ L T Meade, #NFDB
1147:the knife out and searching for the old woman in the ~ Robert Masello, #NFDB
1148:The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
1149:The old Internet rallying cry: pics or it didn’t happen. ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
1150:The personal is the political. That's an old tagline. ~ Frances Stark, #NFDB
1151:There are more old drunkards than old physicians. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
1152:There are more old drunks than there are old doctors. ~ Willie Nelson, #NFDB
1153:There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met. ~ Jim Henson, #NFDB
1154:the woman he would grow old and cranky with. ~ Deborah Fletcher Mello, #NFDB
1155:The youth is better than the old age of friendship. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
1156:Time passed slowly, like and old man climbing a hill. ~ Roger Zelazny, #NFDB
1157:Tis said that wrath is the last thing in a man to grow old. ~ Alcaeus, #NFDB
1158:Up and down went the ends of the old man’s moustache ~ David Walliams, #NFDB
1159:walked into a home theater, where the old man was shoving ~ T R Ragan, #NFDB
1160:We all get old together/And we all get old forever. ~ Jeff Rosenstock, #NFDB
1161:Yet, do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1162:You have to get old because of the geometry of spacetime. ~ Brian Cox, #NFDB
1163:you see that old Chinese guy?” Gwyn asked. “Down the ~ Cidney Swanson, #NFDB
1164:amplified siren. I make it to the old subway entrance. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
1165:An old bandit adage: A bell is a cup until it is struck. ~ Colin Meloy, #NFDB
1166:As you are old and reverend, you should be wise. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1167:Bear with my weakness. My old brain is troubled. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1168:Breezy days
deserve the union
of two old friends. ~ Sanober Khan,#NFDB
1169:Burdening people with debt is an old deal not a new deal. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
1170:But now I remember, of course, I'm never going to be old. ~ Sara Baume, #NFDB
1171:Cock-blocked by a twelve-year-old,” Mace drawled. His ~ Sloane Kennedy, #NFDB
1172:Come here handsome and give this old lady some thrills. ~ Harper Sloan, #NFDB
1173:Creating new paths requires moving old obstacles. ~ Anthony D Williams, #NFDB
1174:FEAR stands for fuck everything and run. —Old AA saying ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1175:From Day 1 I wasnt planning to run until I am very old. ~ Asafa Powell, #NFDB
1176:Getting old, we can deal with. Being old is the problem. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
1177:Greyhound, just as he too was escaping his old life. I was ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1178:Happiness was a stranger, but misery was dear old friend. ~ L H Cosway, #NFDB
1179:He wanted to grow old with her, or not grow old at all. ~ Eloisa James, #NFDB
1180:.....he was gonna teach her to say a big old f*ck you. ~ Jordan Silver, #NFDB
1181:He who loves, never grows old. God it a shining example. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1182:hey sparrows
no pissing on my old
winter quilt! ~ Kobayashi Issa,#NFDB
1183:I am Otomiya Haine. I'm a spirited fifteen year old!! ~ Arina Tanemura, #NFDB
1184:I am too old to think that numbers are creating change ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
1185:If you like the fairy tales, visit the old towns! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1186:I like physical comedy. And I like the old comedies. ~ Patrick Dempsey, #NFDB
1187:I like the old wisdom--puns, riddles, spells, proverbs. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1188:I look as young as a person can look given how old I am. ~ Nora Ephron, #NFDB
1189:I look forward to growing old and wise and audacious. ~ Glenda Jackson, #NFDB
1190:I made up my mind to be an actress when I was 4 years old. ~ Eva Gabor, #NFDB
1191:I might be old and cranky, but I'm not bloody stupid. ~ Jennifer Estep, #NFDB
1192:I'm passionate about old people because I am one myself. ~ Len Goodman, #NFDB
1193:In 1957, I was a 16-year-old office boy for the Dodgers. ~ Marv Albert, #NFDB
1194:I see a lot of new faces. Especially on the old faces. ~ Johnny Carson, #NFDB
1195:It's over. I can't believe it. Back to boring old life. ~ Ann M Martin, #NFDB
1196:I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
1197:I've had the same barber since I was about 14 years old. ~ Victor Cruz, #NFDB
1198:I’ve known how to whistle since I was five years old. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
1199:I've worked since I was a five-year-old to be a performer. ~ Lady Gaga, #NFDB
1200:I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf. ~ Brian Grazer, #NFDB
1201:I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1202:Who's there?
Something old? Someone holy...? ~ Helen Oyeyemi,#NFDB
1203:Morgan threw tantrums that would impress a two-year-old. ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB
1204:My father had coats the way old spinsters have cats. ~ Molly Wizenberg, #NFDB
1205:Nobody gets to grow old in the America they grew up in. ~ Gail Collins, #NFDB
1206:Of all children how can the children of God be old? ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1207:Old and young, we are all on our last cruise. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
1208:Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1209:Pray you now forget, and forgive: I am old and foolish, ~ Jean Hegland, #NFDB
1210:Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1211:Seventy is old enough. After that there is too much risk. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1212:Sometimes I wake up, I feel like, I'm like 80-years-old. ~ Bam Margera, #NFDB
1213:So what if I have more regrets Than birthdays I am old ~ Morgan Parker, #NFDB
1214:Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner. ~ Theodore Roethke, #NFDB
1215:The first story I finished was when I was six years old. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1216:The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil. ~ Joni Mitchell, #NFDB
1217:Then, like a great hero of old, I crawled into my hole. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1218:The old farfetchers' motto: Opinion ends reception. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1219:The old saying is: 'Time off is a wrestler's worst enemy.' ~ Ric Flair, #NFDB
1220:The Old Testament is my favourite science fantasy reading. ~ Tom Baker, #NFDB
1221:They make money the old fashioned way... they earn it. ~ John Houseman, #NFDB
1222:Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1223:To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1224:(T. S. Eliot said it: “Old men ought to be explorers.”) ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
1225:We grew up together but we won't grow old together. ~ Lurlene McDaniel, #NFDB
1226:What is noise to the old order is harmony to the new. ~ Jacques Attali, #NFDB
1227:What makes me feel old is having no hair on the top of my head. ~ Moby, #NFDB
1228:When I sit down and play the guitar, Im 20 years old again. ~ J J Cale, #NFDB
1229:when I turned back to my old friend. “Who’s Judge Cooley? ~ Tim Tigner, #NFDB
1230:Where Old India and New India collide making New India ~ Katherine Boo, #NFDB
1231:Age isn’t how old you are but how old you feel ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
1232:A house with nothing old in it seems - unseasoned. ~ Maud Hart Lovelace, #NFDB
1233:A woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
1234:Better to go than sit around being a terrible old bore. ~ Auberon Waugh, #NFDB
1235:God always does His new things in the same old way. ~ Fred A Hartley Jr, #NFDB
1236:He was old and wise, which meant tired and disappointed. ~ T E Lawrence, #NFDB
1237:I am old. And tired of the terrible clarity of the young. ~ Sarah Blake, #NFDB
1238:I came in on the tail end of the old school of Hollywood ~ Tom Berenger, #NFDB
1239:I'd rather be a silly old fool than a lonely old woman. ~ Candy Darling, #NFDB
1240:If they’re old enough to pee, they’re old enough for me. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1241:I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1242:I'm an old man at 54, without teeth, and with rheumatism. ~ Karl Donitz, #NFDB
1243:I might grow old in Brisbane, but I would never grow up. ~ David Malouf, #NFDB
1244:I'm just a little old cartoonist, tryin' to make a buck. ~ Walter Lantz, #NFDB
1245:I'm old and rich, and people let me say whatever I want. ~ Shannon Hale, #NFDB
1246:I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself. ~ Lillian Hellman, #NFDB
1247:In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg, #NFDB
1248:It's a long old road, but I know I'm gonna find the end. ~ Bessie Smith, #NFDB
1249:I was compulsively overeating when I was eight years old. ~ Demi Lovato, #NFDB
1250:I was trying to be an entrepreneur at seven years old. ~ Tyler Hoechlin, #NFDB
1251:I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1252:Like it or not, fight it or don't, your old life is over. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
1253:Love hurts us all, no matter how old or young we are. ~ Jess Rothenberg, #NFDB
1254:Monte Carlo (the old name for a roulette wheel) ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1255:My old daddy used to say "kill the closest snake first". ~ John Dingell, #NFDB
1256:No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1257:Nothing in the world ever went right for fifteen-year-old ~ Chanda Hahn, #NFDB
1258:Nothing is more beautiful than cheerfulness in an old face. ~ Jean Paul, #NFDB
1259:Old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1260:Old professors never die, they just lose their faculties. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1261:Old School has humongous laughs all the way through it. ~ Thomas Lennon, #NFDB
1262:Old women are the secret to the fluffiest cakes. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
1263:Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1264:Some things, like brain-bursting orgasms, never get old. ~ Kennedy Ryan, #NFDB
1265:suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
1266:Swift defined observation to be an old man's memory. ~ James A Garfield, #NFDB
1267:That is a question you have to ask the Old Man of the Moon. ~ Grace Lin, #NFDB
1268:The gloom was increased by several grand old trees ~ J Sheridan Le Fanu, #NFDB
1269:There's no new news, just old news with new dates ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1270:There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
1271:The very old and the very young always saw most clearly. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1272:The village road was as narrow as her old granny’s mind. ~ Faith Martin, #NFDB
1273:The young man must store up, the old man must use. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
1274:To grow old means to be rid of anxieties about the past. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1275:Usually you don't think about re-releasing an old movie. ~ Milos Forman, #NFDB
1276:We are all old-timers, each of us holds a locked razor. ~ Robert Lowell, #NFDB
1277:What are you smiling at? You look like a creepy, old geezer, ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
1278:What twelve year old wouldn't want to play an evil wizard? ~ Tom Felton, #NFDB
1279:When a new book appears one should read an old one. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1280:When I cease to be indignant I will have begun my old age. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
1281:When you're 84, a 70-year-old is still pretty young. ~ Christian Horner, #NFDB
1282:winter days, but distantly. Like very old ghosts. ~ Anne Rivers Siddons, #NFDB
1283:You can't tell a 6-year-old your sister is going to die. ~ Barbara Bush, #NFDB
1284:Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
1285:Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB
1286:A man is as old as his arteries and as young as his ideas. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1287:...an age-old patter that seemed like chaos but was not... ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1288:A new year can begin only because the old year ends. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
1289:An old warrior is never in haste to strike the blow. ~ Pietro Metastasio, #NFDB
1290:A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be. ~ Steven Brust, #NFDB
1291:Brother, I am too old to go again to my travels. ~ Charles II of England, #NFDB
1292:By the time you know what to do, you're too old to do it. ~ Ted Williams, #NFDB
1293:Don’t long for “the good old days.” This is not wise. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1294:Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong. ~ A E Housman, #NFDB
1295:Fight me if you wish, but know this, I am old for a reason ~ John Gwynne, #NFDB
1296:Forty is the old age of youth, fifty the youth of old age. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1297:Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1298:Go back to hell where you came from, you old warthog ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1299:How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are? ~ Satchel Paige, #NFDB
1300:I am just old-fashioned enough to prefer long hair. ~ Erich von Stroheim, #NFDB
1301:I don't believe that the Earth's but about 9,000 years old. ~ Paul Broun, #NFDB
1302:I don't think about my old stuff. I just move forward. ~ Madonna Ciccone, #NFDB
1303:I knew revenge like the ghost of an old friend." ~ #1001 ~ Pippa DaCosta, #NFDB
1304:I like old people falling over, that's what makes me laugh. ~ Allen Carr, #NFDB
1305:I may not be old, but I’m too old to have this much nothing. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1306:I'm old, but I'm still cute and strong. And very butch. ~ Geraldo Rivera, #NFDB
1307:I'm very old-fashioned. Occasionally I do wear underwear. ~ Sharon Stone, #NFDB
1308:I’m young enough to do it, and old enough to do it right. ~ Cameron Jace, #NFDB
1309:In philosophy all truth is old and only error is original. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1310:In the good old days when I was a senator, I was my own man. ~ Joe Biden, #NFDB
1311:In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1312:I release you!” I shout to that old sorrow. “I release you! ~ Edith Eger, #NFDB
1313:It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York. ~ O Henry, #NFDB
1314:I've been doing old-people things since I was a child. ~ Martha Plimpton, #NFDB
1315:I've spent a life chasing stories to tell when I'm old. ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
1316:keep moving. It's hard for old age to hit a moving target. ~ Joan Rivers, #NFDB
1317:Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1318:Memories are very beautiful things, when you are old ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
1319:NEUROLOGY: NEW BRAIN NEURONS FOUND TO OVERWRITE OLD MEMORIES ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1320:Never tease an old dog; he might have one bite left. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1321:...nothing dies of old age. Everything dies of something. ~ Arturo Arias, #NFDB
1322:of family rooms and guest accommodation, the old skittle ~ Sarah Bennett, #NFDB
1323:Old Age Ain't For Sissies. Taken from a Bette Davis quote. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
1324:Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1325:Old age is but the reduced capacity of a failing machine. ~ Mick Jackson, #NFDB
1326:Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
1327:Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1328:Old enemies must be friends when a greater evil looms. ~ Raymond E Feist, #NFDB
1329:Old enough to know better, pissed enough not to care. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1330:old men complaining that the world is going to the dogs. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
1331:Old soldiers never die, you know; they only fade away. ~ Dennis Wheatley, #NFDB
1332:One should never tie his faith to how old the earth is. ~ Norman Geisler, #NFDB
1333:Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
1334:Rev is about as aggressive as an old golden retriever. ~ Brigid Kemmerer, #NFDB
1335:Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply. ~ Susanna Clarke, #NFDB
1336:Singing about being rescued will never get old. Never. ~ Travis Thrasher, #NFDB
1337:So they watch over us like gods of old. Our patron sinners. ~ Hal Duncan, #NFDB
1338:suck your damn old aspirator until someone pulls you out. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1339:That old man...had my division massacred at Gettysburg! ~ George Pickett, #NFDB
1340:The century's getting old and stale; it needs new tribes. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
1341:the ladies, young or old. There is no resisting a cockade, ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1342:The new is threatening to those who have mastered the old. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
1343:The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1344:There is no new world that you make without the old world. ~ Jane Jacobs, #NFDB
1345:There's nothing like being old to be sure of everything. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
1346:there they sit, like a constipated old maid on a chamberpot. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1347:There will be always something old in the New Year! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1348:The way prices are rising, the good old days are last week. ~ Les Dawson, #NFDB
1349:Today I found an old friend. –Ed Burns via Purple Violets ~ Edward Burns, #NFDB
1350:up by itself, like that old Plymouth in the horror movie, ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1351:When our memories outweigh our dreams, we have grown old. ~ Bill Clinton, #NFDB
1352:Who is old enough to have learned from experience? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1353:You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1354:You never want to look like an old fart doing young rap music. ~ DJ Quik, #NFDB
1355:Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books. ~ G H Hardy, #NFDB
1356:"You're an old man who dresses like a Hooter's waitress." ~ Greg Giraldo, #NFDB
1357:5 year old granddaughter: Grandma, what is reptile dysfunction? ~ Unknown, #NFDB
1358:Actually, I wanted to be an actor when I was two years old. ~ Keith David, #NFDB
1359:A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. ~ John Barrymore, #NFDB
1360:And if I,' said she, 'am young in years, I am old in sorrow; ~ Anne Bront, #NFDB
1361:And intellect at Christminster is new wine in old bottles. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
1362:An old hen is worth 40 chickens. ~ Julia Stuart Hebe Jones ~ Julia Stuart, #NFDB
1363:Break, break the old Tables, ye who seek after the knowledge. ~ Nietzsche, #NFDB
1364:Country music is about new love and it's about old love. ~ Jeff Foxworthy, #NFDB
1365:Education is the best provision for old age. — ARISTOTLE ~ Michael J Gelb, #NFDB
1366:he breathed like an old Ford with a leaky head gasket. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
1367:He was old and wise, which meant tired and disappointed... ~ T E Lawrence, #NFDB
1368:How beautiful an old woman's skin is! All those wrinkles! ~ Thomas Eakins, #NFDB
1369:I became a Christian when I was a little six-year-old boy. ~ Larry Gatlin, #NFDB
1370:I'd never even seen a play by the time I was 24 years old. ~ John Corbett, #NFDB
1371:I hear rustling in your dark magic; the old seas of midnight. ~ Yvan Goll, #NFDB
1372:I like a lot of old-school R&B, soul, and classic rock. ~ Wiz Khalifa, #NFDB
1373:I'm an old man, and she's gone now. So don't worry, okay? ~ Rebecca Stead, #NFDB
1374:I'm comfortable being old... being black... being Jewish. ~ Billy Crystal, #NFDB
1375:I'm gonna enjoy being old I think I'll be awesome at it. ~ Craig Ferguson, #NFDB
1376:Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
1377:It's very tiring, being so old. But I do love living. ~ Elisabeth Murdoch, #NFDB
1378:It was just as summer arrived that I met an old man named Fugui. ~ Yu Hua, #NFDB
1379:It was time to call on my old paisan Steve Van Zandt. ~ Bruce Springsteen, #NFDB
1380:I used to spend every morning in detention at my old school. ~ Jake Lloyd, #NFDB
1381:Love is ever new because it never groweth old. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1382:Maybe I'm an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on. ~ Steve Ballmer, #NFDB
1383:Mickey Mouse to a three-year-old is a six-foot-tall RAT! ~ Robin Williams, #NFDB
1384:My father and mother separated when I was two months old. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
1385:My suck was losing my best friend to an eleven year old. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
1386:Never ask your wife if she still hears from her old pimp. ~ Johnny Carson, #NFDB
1387:Newly Found Sugary Spill: Tastes Like Dried Spit or Old Soda ~ Chris Ware, #NFDB
1388:no good ever comes of a man who forgets an old friend ~ Mikhail Lermontov, #NFDB
1389:No one leaves an old friend unless they are ashamed. ~ Julian Casablancas, #NFDB
1390:No one remembering that old man.
Except, I just did, there ~ Ali Smith,#NFDB
1391:Nothing lasts forever, but old Fords and a natural stone. ~ Willie Nelson, #NFDB
1392:Oh, you young people act like old men. You have no fun. ~ Josephine Baker, #NFDB
1393:Old loves turn up in dreams, still livid at every slight. ~ Tracy K Smith, #NFDB
1394:old photograph of his father, Sirius, Lupin, and Pettigrew, ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1395:Old Titme the clock-settter, that bald sexton,Time. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1396:Old wisdom out of the cluster of gathering shadows. ~ George Mackay Brown, #NFDB
1397:Only a fool could set eyes on you and see an old maid. ~ Lori G Armstrong, #NFDB
1398:People have grown fond of me, like some old building. ~ Katharine Hepburn, #NFDB
1399:Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
1400:Rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1401:snippets from here and there—she’s old, she tends to digress ~ Kavita Kan, #NFDB
1402:Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1403:Sophie was too old for lies and too young for the truth. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
1404:That old sick joy, her first and favorite drug. Control. ~ Seth Dickinson, #NFDB
1405:The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
1406:The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1407:The old resists the new one.
'Change hurts' is the reason. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
1408:There are old riders and bold riders, but no old bold riders. ~ J A Jance, #NFDB
1409:There was only one child, a 21-year-old daughter, and natch, ~ Kate White, #NFDB
1410:There were so many ways to be twenty-six years old. ~ J Courtney Sullivan, #NFDB
1411:These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1412:the sound of old winter ice breaking at spring’s touch, ~ Raymond E Feist, #NFDB
1413:Those [old] days are gone... accept the reality and do it. ~ Ava DuVernay, #NFDB
1414:To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
1415:To me old age is always fifteen years older than I am. ~ Bernard M Baruch, #NFDB
1416:To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1417:Want a sugar cube?" he asks in his old seductive voice. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
1418:We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie. ~ Michael Ondaatje, #NFDB
1419:We cannot avoid growing old; but we can avoid growing cold. ~ Max De Pree, #NFDB
1420:Weird old insect collectors are such a catch,” she says, ~ Nicola Rendell, #NFDB
1421:We've got 12-year-old boys dressing up as transvestites. ~ David Walliams, #NFDB
1422:What is the old American saying? Pretend it is chicken? ~ James L Cambias, #NFDB
1423:When you are too old to play golf, you had better die. ~ King Edward VIII, #NFDB
1424:Write on your doors the saying wise and old, ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
1425:Your body gets old but your mind can always accept that. ~ Owsley Stanley, #NFDB
1426:A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
1427:And now I'm old and going--I'm sure I can't tell where; ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
1428:Better is old wine than new, and old friends like-wise. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
1429:But with what incessant and grievous ills is old age surrounded! ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
1430:Dirty old men, ignoring society, continue to follow nature. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1431:Don’t start from the good old things but the bad new ones. ~ Benjamin Noys, #NFDB
1432:Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos’s twenty-two-year-old founder, ~ John Carreyrou, #NFDB
1433:❛Every fairy-tale needs a good old-fashioned villain❜ ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1434:Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
1435:Face of the spring moon- about twelve years old, I'd say. ~ Kobayashi Issa, #NFDB
1436:Failure can get to be a rather comfortable old friend. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
1437:father loved to watch old westerns and the evening news, ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
1438:FEAR stands for face everything and recover – Old AA saying ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1439:FEAR stands for face everything and recover. —Old AA saying ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1440:Hell, I don't want to grow old at all. I never want to die. ~ Kate Millett, #NFDB
1441:He that steals the old man's supper does him no wrong. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1442:Hitesh, old flower, Christmas is exactly the same, it’s you ~ Sue Townsend, #NFDB
1443:I always say I was born too late in the world, too old. ~ Olivier Martinez, #NFDB
1444:I am not old, but my young way was never the way to age. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1445:I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
1446:I haven’t been happy since I was eight years old,” she said. ~ Jonice Webb, #NFDB
1447:I loved old movies as a kid, so I always watched old movies. ~ Keith David, #NFDB
1448:I?m 57 years old and there are adventures out there for me. ~ Tom Cavanagh, #NFDB
1449:I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
1450:I'm old enough to make you look like an embryo. [Thorn] ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1451:I'm too young for Medicare and too old for women to care. ~ Kinky Friedman, #NFDB
1452:I'm very happy and lonely single old man - and bitter. ~ Chris Kirkpatrick, #NFDB
1453:In my medicine cabinet, the winter fly has died of old age. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1454:Inside every working anarchy, there's an Old Boy Network. ~ Mitchell Kapor, #NFDB
1455:In the world of old memories, there's room for visitors ~ Nobuhiro Watsuki, #NFDB
1456:I remember old Elvis when he forgot to remember to forget. ~ George Strait, #NFDB
1457:I started taking gymnastic classes when I was 3 years old. ~ Shawn Johnson, #NFDB
1458:It has been said that there is no fool like an old fool ~ Harold MacMillan, #NFDB
1459:It is magnificent to grow old, if one keeps young. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick, #NFDB
1460:It is not becoming to lay to virtue the weariness of old age. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
1461:It isn’t like I’m a stranger. It’s a new hat on an old head. ~ Sarah McCoy, #NFDB
1462:It's funny how despair can soon become an old companion ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
1463:It's hard to think of yourself as a loser at 2 years old. ~ Jeff Foxworthy, #NFDB
1464:Jobs pointed out as we walked in front of his old house. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1465:Learning suits youth, the pleasure of teaching--old age. ~ Vladimir Bartol, #NFDB
1466:Love belongs to Desire. And Desire is always Cruel. -Old Man ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1467:My ambition when I was four years old was to be married. ~ Priyanka Chopra, #NFDB
1468:My mom's hot. I mean she's old, but my mom's out of control. ~ Paul Walker, #NFDB
1469:no more hasty meals, and weary attendance on fitful old women, ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
1470:Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-yr-old girl. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
1471:Of all the trees that grow so fair Old England to adorn, ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
1472:Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
1473:Old age is a humble victory in this killing universe. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1474:Old age is not synonymous with being 'glad to die. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross, #NFDB
1475:Old age is when the liver spots show through your gloves. ~ Phyllis Diller, #NFDB
1476:Old contradictions never die; they just get new outfits. ~ Susan J Douglas, #NFDB
1477:Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones. ~ Dana Gioia, #NFDB
1478:Old friends are like old memories they always remind your past ~ Rida Noor, #NFDB
1479:Old habits are hard to forget, and old fears are habits. ~ Raymond E Feist, #NFDB
1480:Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1481:She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1482:Sometimes I think I'm liquefying like an old Camembert. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1483:Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
1484:Stupid Sixteen year old kid falling from the sky! I'm late! ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1485:Stupid sixteen-year-old kid falling from the sky! I’m late! ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1486:suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. ~ E E Cummings,#NFDB
1487:ten-year-old Buick. I don’t have a license; I don’t even ~ Suzanne Jenkins, #NFDB
1488:The case called for plain, old-fashioned police leg work! ~ Donald J Sobol, #NFDB
1489:The old adage is if they are laughing, they are listening. ~ Garr Reynolds, #NFDB
1490:The old Chinese proverb springs to mind - No pain, no gain. ~ Marian Keyes, #NFDB
1491:THE OLD MAN with a hammer and the one-eyed man with a spear ~ Lord Dunsany, #NFDB
1492:The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1493:There’s an old Japanese saying: Fall seven, rise eight. ~ Angela Duckworth, #NFDB
1494:There's nothing like the feel of an old book in your hands. ~ Kathryn Shay, #NFDB
1495:They who had never wanted family are now lonely old men. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1496:This is an old problem: Knowledge calls for more knowledge, ~ Jeremy Narby, #NFDB
1497:Too young to hold on and too old to just break free and run ~ Jeff Buckley, #NFDB
1498:We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor. ~ Robert Lowell,#NFDB
1499:Well, little old Noisyville-on-the Subway is good enough for me. ~ O Henry, #NFDB
1500:What a childhood I had - I was ten years old when I ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
1292 Integral Yoga
939 Poetry
196 Mysticism
183 Occultism
143 Fiction
142 Philosophy
89 Christianity
70 Psychology
65 Yoga
38 Philsophy
20 Mythology
18 Science
14 Hinduism
11 Education
10 Integral Theory
9 Zen
8 Buddhism
6 Baha i Faith
3 Sufism
2 Cybernetics
1 Theosophy
1 Thelema
1 Kabbalah
1 Alchemy
710 Sri Aurobindo
597 The Mother
467 Satprem
198 Nolini Kanta Gupta
174 William Butler Yeats
123 William Wordsworth
117 Walt Whitman
115 H P Lovecraft
67 Carl Jung
65 James George Frazer
65 Aleister Crowley
60 Robert Browning
57 John Keats
50 Percy Bysshe Shelley
49 Sri Ramakrishna
49 Friedrich Nietzsche
38 Ralph Waldo Emerson
29 Saint Augustine of Hippo
28 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
25 Lucretius
25 Friedrich Schiller
23 Li Bai
23 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
23 A B Purani
22 Rabindranath Tagore
20 Anonymous
18 Jorge Luis Borges
17 Edgar Allan Poe
16 Aldous Huxley
13 Ovid
12 Plato
12 Nirodbaran
10 Vyasa
10 Plotinus
10 George Van Vrekhem
9 Swami Vivekananda
9 Saint John of Climacus
8 Swami Krishnananda
7 Rainer Maria Rilke
7 Omar Khayyam
7 Joseph Campbell
7 Henry David Thoreau
7 Franz Bardon
7 Baha u llah
6 Jordan Peterson
6 Hafiz
5 Matsuo Basho
5 Aristotle
4 Taigu Ryokan
4 Sri Ramana Maharshi
4 Patanjali
4 Jalaluddin Rumi
3 Thubten Chodron
3 Saint Teresa of Avila
3 Rudolf Steiner
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Ken Wilber
3 Hakim Sanai
3 Bokar Rinpoche
3 Al-Ghazali
2 Wang Wei
2 Shiwu (Stonehouse)
2 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Mirabai
2 Kobayashi Issa
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Italo Calvino
2 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
2 H. P. Lovecraft
2 Genpo Roshi
310 Record of Yoga
174 Yeats - Poems
123 Wordsworth - Poems
115 Lovecraft - Poems
113 Whitman - Poems
69 The Synthesis Of Yoga
65 The Golden Bough
60 Browning - Poems
57 Keats - Poems
50 Shelley - Poems
49 Magick Without Tears
48 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
44 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
44 Agenda Vol 03
43 Agenda Vol 10
42 Agenda Vol 13
42 Agenda Vol 08
40 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
38 Emerson - Poems
37 Letters On Yoga IV
37 Agenda Vol 12
36 Agenda Vol 06
34 Agenda Vol 11
33 Mysterium Coniunctionis
32 Savitri
32 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
32 Agenda Vol 01
30 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
30 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
29 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
29 Agenda Vol 09
28 Agenda Vol 04
26 The Life Divine
26 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
25 Schiller - Poems
25 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
25 Of The Nature Of Things
25 Letters On Yoga II
24 Agenda Vol 05
24 Agenda Vol 02
23 Li Bai - Poems
23 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
23 Collected Poems
22 Tagore - Poems
22 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
22 Agenda Vol 07
21 The Human Cycle
21 The Bible
19 Questions And Answers 1956
19 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
19 City of God
18 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
17 Liber ABA
16 The Perennial Philosophy
16 Poe - Poems
15 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
15 Questions And Answers 1955
15 On the Way to Supermanhood
15 Labyrinths
15 Essays On The Gita
14 Words Of Long Ago
14 Questions And Answers 1953
14 Faust
13 The Practice of Psycho therapy
13 Metamorphoses
12 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
12 Questions And Answers 1954
11 The Future of Man
11 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
11 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
11 On Education
11 Letters On Yoga I
10 Vishnu Purana
10 Talks
10 Preparing for the Miraculous
10 Letters On Yoga III
10 Aion
9 Vedic and Philological Studies
9 Twilight of the Idols
9 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
9 Goethe - Poems
9 Essays Divine And Human
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 The Study and Practice of Yoga
8 The Phenomenon of Man
8 Some Answers From The Mother
8 Prayers And Meditations
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
7 Walden
7 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
7 The Divine Comedy
7 The Blue Cliff Records
7 Rilke - Poems
7 Letters On Poetry And Art
7 Let Me Explain
7 Anonymous - Poems
6 Words Of The Mother II
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Practice of Magical Evocation
6 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Kena and Other Upanishads
6 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
6 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
5 Words Of The Mother III
5 The Secret Of The Veda
5 The Red Book Liber Novus
5 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
5 Poetics
5 Isha Upanishad
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
5 Basho - Poems
4 The Integral Yoga
4 Song of Myself
4 Ryokan - Poems
4 Raja-Yoga
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
4 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
4 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
3 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
3 The Gateless Gate
3 The Book of Certitude
3 The Alchemy of Happiness
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Tara - The Feminine Divine
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Rumi - Poems
3 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
3 Borges - Poems
2 The Way of Perfection
2 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Symposium
2 Selected Fictions
2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
2 Hymn of the Universe
2 Hafiz - Poems
2 Cybernetics
2 Crowley - Poems
2 Agenda Vol 1
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
- and it is terribly disturbing for all those who still climb trees in the old, millennial way. Perhaps it is even a heresy. Unless it is some cerebral disorder? A first man in his little clearing had to have a great deal of courage. Even this little clearing was no longer so sure. A first man is a perpetual question. What am I, then, in the midst of all that? And where is my law? What is the law? And what if there were no more laws? ... It is terrifying. Mathematics - out of order. Astronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the world's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, claws all around, a lot of claws against this uncommon creature. A first man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable for the pre-human 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.
One day, we were like this first man in the great, stridulant night of the Oyapock. Our heart was beating with the rediscovery of a very ancient mystery - suddenly, it was absolutely new to be a man amidst the diorite cascades and the pretty red and black coral snakes slithering beneath the leaves. It was even more extraordinary to be a man than our old confirmed tribes, with their infallible equations and imprescriptible biologies, could ever have dreamed. It was an absolutely uncertain 'quantum' that delightfully eluded whatever one thought of it, including perhaps what even the scholars thought of it. It flowed otherwise, it felt otherwise. It lived in a kind of flawless continuity with the sap of the giant balata trees, the cry of the macaws and the scintillating water of a little fountain. It 'understood' in a very different way. To understand was to be in everything. Just a quiver, and one was in the skin of a little iguana in distress. The skin of the world was very vast.
To be a man after rediscovering a million years was mysteriously like being something still other than man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. It was not in the dictionary, it was fluid and boundless - it had become a man through habit, but in truth, it was formidably virgin, as if all the old laws belonged to laggard barbarians. Then other moons began whirring through the skies to the cry of macaws at sunset, another rhythm was born that was strangely in tune with the rhythm of all, making one single flow of the world, and there we went, lightly, as if the body had never had any weight other than that of our human thought; and the stars were so near, even the giant airplanes roaring overhead seemed vain artifices beneath smiling galaxies. A man was the overwhelming Possible. He was even the great discoverer of the Possible.
Never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to discover that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After rediscovering a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done.
--
Yes, She was in the midst of a spiritual 'horde,' for the pioneer of a new species must always fight against the best of the old: the best is the obstacle, the snare that traps us in its old g olden mire.
As for the worst, we know that it is the worst. But then we come to realize that the best is only the pretty muzzle of our worst, the same old beast defending itself, with all its claws out, with its sanctity or its electronic gadgets. Mother was there for something else.
'Something else' is ominous, perilous, disrupting - it is quite unbearable for all those who resemble the old beast. The story of the Pondicherry 'Ashram' is the story of an old clan ferociously clinging to its 'spiritual' privileges, as others clung to the muscles that had made them kings among the great apes. It is armed with all the piousness and all the reasonableness that had made logical man so 'infallible' among his less cerebral brothers. The spiritual brain is probably the worst obstacle to the new species, as were the muscles of the old orangutan for this fragile stranger who no longer climbed so well in the trees and sat, pensive, at the center of a little, uncertain clearing.
There is nothing more pious than the old species. There is nothing more legal. Mother was searching for the path of the new species as much against all the virtues of the old as against all its vices or laws. For, in truth, 'Something Else' ... is something else.
We landed there, one day in February 1954, having emerged from our Guianese forest and a certain number of dead-end peripluses; we had knocked upon all the doors of the old world before reaching that point of absolute impossibility where it was truly necessary to embark into something else or once and for all put a bullet through the brain of this slightly superior ape. The first thing that struck us was this exotic Notre Dame with its burning incense sticks, its effigies and its prostrations in immaculate white: a Church. We nearly jumped into the first train out that very evening, bound straight for the Himalayas, or the devil. But we remained near Mother for nineteen years. What was it, then, that could have held us there? We had not left Guiana to become a little saint in white or to enter some new religion. 'I did not come upon earth to found an ashram; that would have been a poor aim indeed,' She wrote in 1934. What did all this mean, then, this 'Ashram' that was already registered as the owner of a great spiritual business, and this fragile, little silhouette at the center of all these zealous worshippers? In truth, there is no better way to smother someone than to worship him: he chokes beneath the weight of worship, which moreover gives the worshipper claim to ownership. 'Why do you want to worship?' She exclaimed. 'You have but to become! It is the laziness to become that makes one worship.' She wanted so much to make them
become this 'something else,' but it was far easier to worship and quiescently remain what one was.
She spoke to deaf ears. She was very alone in this 'ashram.' Little by little, the disciples fill up the place, then they say: it is ours. It is 'the Ashram.' We are 'the disciples.' In Pondicherry as in Rome as in Mecca. 'I do not want a religion! An end to religions!' She exclaimed. She struggled and fought in their midst - was She therefore to leave this Earth like one more saint or yogi, buried beneath haloes, the 'continuatrice' of a great spiritual lineage? She was seventy-six years old when we landed there, a knife in our belt and a ready curse on our lips.
She adored defiance and did not detest irreverence.
--
We had our bellyful of adventure at last: if you go astray in the forest, you get delightfully lost yet still with the same old skin on your back, whereas here, there is nothing left to get lost in! It is no longer just a matter of getting lost - you have to CHANGE your skin. Or die. Yes, change species.
Or become one more nauseating little worshipper - which was not on our program. 'We are the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' She t old us one day with her mischievous little smile.
--
She were making fun of us, then loving us in secret), She t old us, 'I have the feeling that ALL we have lived, ALL we have known, ALL we have done is a perfect illusion ... When I had the spiritual experience that material life is an illusion, personally I found that so marvelously beautiful and happy that it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, but now it is the entire spiritual structure as we have lived it that is becoming an illusion! - Not the same illusion, but an illusion far worse. And I am no baby: I have been here for forty-seven years now!' Yes, She was eighty-three years old then. And that day, we ceased being 'the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' for this entire Divine was shattered to pieces - and we met Mother, at last. This mystery we call
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.
--
TRULY to the conquest of the new. The 'new' is painful, discouraging, it resembles nothing we know! We cannot hoist the flag of an unconquered country - but this is what is so marvelous: it does not yet exist. We must MAKE IT EXIST. The adventure has not been carved out: it is to be carved out. Truth is not entrapped and fossilized, 'spiritualized': it is to be discovered. We are in a nothing that we must force to become a something. We are in the adventure of the new species. A new species is obviously contradictory to the old species and to the little flags of the alreadyknown. It has nothing in common with the spiritual summits of the old world, nor even with its abysms - which might be delightfully tempting for those who have had enough of the summits, but everything is the same, in black or white, it is fraternal above and below. SOMETHING ELSE is needed.
'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a short time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far more radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, for after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily uncovered are the grandfa ther and the grandmo ther and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that form a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfa thers and grandmo thers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, which is still the best of an old mortal habit. All this is not uprooted nor entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out for man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had momentarily trapped with a few machines.
She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inexorably being a man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few improvements in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to discover what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West for the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one nor the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must discover what Matter TRULY is, for it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of
Capitalism and business is drawing to its close. But the age of Communism too will pass ... 'It is the hour of a pure little cell THAT WILL HAVE TERRESTRIAL REPERCUSSIONS, infinitely more radical than all our political and scientific or spiritualistic panaceas.
This fabulous discovery is the whole story of the AGENDA. What is the passage? How is the path to the new species hewed open? ... Then suddenly, there, on the other side of this old millennial habit - a habit, nothing more than a habit! - of being like a man endowed with time and space and disease: an entire geometry, perfectly implacable and 'scientific' and medical; on the other side ... none of that at all! An illusion, a fantastic medical and scientific and genetic illusion:
death does not exist, time does not exist, disease does not exist, nor do 'scar' and 'far' - another way of being IN A BODY. For so many millions of years we have lived in a habit and put our own thoughts of the world and of Matter into equations. No more laws! Matter is FREE. It can create a little lizard, a chipmunk or a parrot - but it has created enough parrots. Now it is SOMETHING
--
Day after day, for seventeen years, She sat with us to tell us of her impossible odyssey. Ah, how well we now understand why She needed such an 'outlaw' and an incorrigible heretic like us to comprehend a little bit of her impossible odyssey into 'nothing.' And how well we now understand her infinite patience with us, despite all our revolts, which ultimately were only the revolts of the old species against itself. The final revolt. 'It is not a revolt against the British government which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature!' Sri Aurobindo had proclaimed fifty years earlier. She listened to our grievances, we went away and we returned. We wanted no more of it and we wanted still more. It was infernal and sublime, impossible and the sole possibility in this old, asphyxiating world. It was the only place one could go to in this barbedwired, mechanized world, where Cincinnati is just as crowded and polluted as Hong Kong. The new species is the last free place in the general Prison. It is the last hope for the earth. How we listened to her little faltering voice that seemed to return from afar, afar, after having crossed spaces and seas of the mind to let its little drops of pure, crystalline words fall upon us, words that make you see. We listened to the future, we touched the other thing. It was incomprehensible and yet filled with another comprehension. It eluded us on all sides, and yet it was dazzlingly obvious. The 'other species' was really radically other, and yet it was vibrating within, absolutely recognizable, as if it were THAT we had been seeking from age to age, THAT we had been invoking through all our illuminations, one after another, in Thebes as in Eleusis as everywhere we have toiled and grieved in the skin of a man. It was for THAT we were here, for that supreme Possible in the skin of a man at last. And then her voice grew more and more frail, her breath began gasping as though She had to traverse greater and greater distances to meet us. She was so alone to beat against the walls of the old prison. Many claws were out all around. Oh, we would so quickly have cut ourself free from all this fiasco to fly away with Her into the world's future. She was so tiny, stooped over, as if crushed beneath the 'spiritual' burden that all the old surrounding species kept heaping upon her. They didn't believe, no. For them, She was ninety-five years old + so many days. Can someone become a new species all alone? They even grumbled at Her: they had had enough of this unbearable Ray that was bringing their sordid affairs into the daylight. The Ashram was slowly closing over Her. The old world wanted to make a new, g olden little Church, nice and quiet. No, no one wanted TO
BECOME. To worship was so much easier. And then they bury you, solemnly, and the matter is settled - the case is closed: now, no one need bother any more except to print some photographic haloes for the pilgrims to this brisk little business. But they are mistaken. The real business will take place without them, the new species will fly up in their faces - it is already flying in the face of the earth, despite all its isms in black and white; it is exploding through all the pores of this battered old earth, which has had enough of shams - whether illusory little heavens or barbarous little machines.
It is the hour of the REAL Earth. It is the hour of the REAL man. We are all going there - if only we could know the path a little ...
--
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?
It begins in a cell.
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From 1960, the Agenda took its final shape arid grew for thirteen years, until May 1973, filling thirteen volumes in all (some six thousand pages), with a change of setting in March 1962 at the time of the Great Turning in Mother's yoga when She permanently retired to her room upstairs, as had Sri Aurobindo in 1926. The interviews then took place high up in this large room carpeted in g olden wool, like a ship's stateroom, amidst the rustling of the Copper Pod tree and the cawing of crows. Mother would sit in a low rosewood chair, her face turned towards Sri Aurobindo's tomb, as though She were wearing down the distance separating that world from our own. Her voice had become like that of a child, one could hear her laughter. She always laughed, this Mother. And then her long silences. Until the day the disciples closed her door on us. It was May 19, 1973. We did not want to believe it. She was alone, just as we were suddenly alone. Slowly, painfully, we had to discover the why of this rupture. We understood nothing of the jealousies of the old species, we did not yet realize that they were becoming the 'owners' of Mother - of the Ashram, of Auroville, of
Sri Aurobindo, of everything - and that the new world was going to be denatured into a new
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
knowledge that the old open-edged, infinite world system had closed back on itself
in all circumferential directions to become a finite system: a closed sphere. The
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his mother in the discharge of her househ old duties. He gave more attention to reading and hearing the religious stories recorded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of renunciation of the world and all-absorbing love of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and worship.
--
But in a few months his health showed improvement, and he recovered to some extent his natural buoyancy of spirit. His happy mother was encouraged to think it might be a good time to arrange his marriage. The boy was now twenty-three years old. A wife would bring him back to earth. And she was delighted when her son welcomed her suggestion. Perhaps he saw in it the finger of God.
Saradamani, a little girl of five, lived in the neighbouring village of Jayrambati. Even at this age she had been praying to God to make her character as stainless and fragrant as the white tuberose. Looking at the full moon, she would say: "O God, there are dark spots even on the moon. But make my character spotless." It was she who was selected as the bride for Sri Ramakrishna.
--
Sri Ramakrishna now devoted himself to scaling the most inaccessible and dizzy heights of dualistic worship, namely, the complete union with Sri Krishna as the Beloved of the heart. He regarded himself as one of the gopis of Vrindavan, mad with longing for her divine Sweetheart. At his request Mathur provided him with woman's dress and jewelry. In this love-pursuit, food and drink were forgotten. Day and night he wept bitterly. The yearning turned into a mad frenzy; for the divine Krishna began to play with him the old tricks He had played with the gopis. He would tease and taunt, now and then revealing Himself, but always keeping at a distance. Sri Ramakrishna's anguish brought on a return of the old physical symptoms: the burning sensation, an oozing of blood through the pores, a loosening of the joints, and the stopping of physiological functions.
The Vaishnava scriptures advise one to propitiate Radha and obtain her grace in order to realize Sri Krishna. So the tortured devotee now turned his prayer to her. Within a short time he enjoyed her blessed vision. He saw and felt the figure of Radha disappearing into his own body.
--
The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beh older of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing cloth.
Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manif old of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
--
Totapuri, discovering at once that Sri Ramakrishna was prepared to be a student of Vedanta, asked to initiate him into its mysteries. With the permission of the Divine Mother, Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal. But Totapuri explained that only a sannyasi could receive the teaching of Vedanta. Sri Ramakrishna agreed to renounce the world, but with the stipulation that the ceremony of his initiation into the monastic order be performed in secret, to spare the feelings of his old mother, who had been living with him at Dakshineswar.
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 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."
--- PILGRIMAGE
--
Sri Ramakrishna visited Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna, and then proceeded to Vrindavan and Mathura, hallowed by the legends, songs, and dramas about Krishna and the gopis. Here he had numerous visions and his heart overflowed with divine emotion. He wept and said: "O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent." He visited the great woman saint, Gangamayi, regarded by Vaishnava devotees as the reincarnation of an intimate attendant of Radha. She was sixty years old and had frequent trances. She spoke of Sri Ramakrishna as an incarnation of Radha. With great difficulty he was persuaded to leave her.
On the return journey Mathur wanted to visit Gaya, but Sri Ramakrishna declined to go. He recalled his father's vision at Gaya before his own birth and felt that in the temple of Vishnu he would become permanently absorbed in God. Mathur, honouring the Master's wish, returned with his party to Calcutta.
--
In 1872 Sarada Devi paid her first visit to her husband at Dakshineswar. Four years earlier she had seen him at Kamarpukur and had tasted the bliss of his divine company. Since then she had become even more gentle, tender, introspective, serious, and unselfish. She had heard many rumours about her husband's insanity. People had shown her pity in her misfortune. The more she thought, the more she felt that her duty was to be with him, giving him, in whatever measure she could, a wife's devoted service. She was now eighteen years old. Accompanied by her father, she arrived at Dakshineswar, having come on foot the distance of eighty miles. She had had an attack of fever on the way. When she arrived at the temple garden the Master said sorrowfully: "Ah! You have come too late. My Mathur is no longer here to look after you." Mathur had passed away the previous year.
The Master took up the duty of instructing his young wife, and this included everything from housekeeping to the Knowledge of Brahman. He taught her how to trim a lamp, how to behave toward people according to their differing temperaments, and how to conduct herself before visitors. He instructed her in the mysteries of spiritual life — prayer, meditation, japa, deep contemplation, and samadhi. The first lesson that Sarada Devi received was: "God is everybody's Beloved, just as the moon is dear to every child. Everyone has the same right to pray to Him. Out of His grace He reveals Himself to all who call upon Him. You too will see Him if you but pray to Him."
Totapuri, coming to know of the Master's marriage, had once remarked: "What does it matter? He alone is firmly established in the Knowledge of Brahman who can adhere to his spirit of discrimination and renunciation even while living with his wife. He alone has attained the supreme illumination who can look on man and woman alike as Brahman. A man with the idea of sex may be a good aspirant, but he is still far from the goal." Sri Ramakrishna and his wife lived together at Dakshineswar, but their minds always soared above the worldly plane. A few months after Sarada Devi's arrival Sri Ramakrishna arranged, on an auspicious day, a special worship of Kali, the Divine Mother. Instead of an image of the Deity, he placed on the seat the living image, Sarada Devi herself. The worshipper and the worshipped went into deep samadhi and in the transcendental plane their souls were united. After several hours Sri Ramakrishna came down again to the relative plane, sang a hymn to the Great Goddess, and surrendered, at the feet of the living image, himself, his rosary, and the fruit of his life-long sadhana. This is known in Tantra as the Shorasi Puja, the "Adoration of Woman". Sri Ramakrishna realized the significance of the great statement of the Upanishad: "O Lord, Thou art the woman. Thou art the man; Thou art the boy. Thou art the girl; Thou art the old, tottering on their crutches. Thou pervadest the universe in its multiple forms."
By his marriage Sri Ramakrishna admitted the great value of marriage in man's spiritual evolution, and by adhering to his monastic vows he demonstrated the imperative necessity of self-control, purity, and continence, in the realization of God. By this unique spiritual relationship with his wife he proved that husband and wife can live together as spiritual companions. Thus his life is a synthesis of the ways of life of the househ older and the monk.
--
By far the ablest leader of the Brahmo movement was Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884). Unlike Raja Rammohan Roy and Devendranath Tagore, Keshab was born of a middle-class Bengali family and had been brought up in an English school. He did not know Sanskrit and very soon broke away from the popular Hindu religion. Even at an early age he came under the spell of Christ and professed to have experienced the special favour of John the Baptist, Christ, and St. Paul. When he strove to introduce Christ to the Brahmo Samaj, a rupture became inevitable with Devendranath. In 1868 Keshab broke with the older leader and founded the Brahmo Samaj of India, Devendra retaining leadership of the first Brahmo Samaj, now called the Adi Samaj.
Keshab possessed a complex nature. When passing through a great moral crisis, he spent much of his time in solitude and felt that he heard the voice of God, When a devotional form of worship was introduced into the Brahmo Samaj, he spent hours in singing kirtan with his followers. He visited England land in 1870 and impressed the English people with his musical voice, his simple English, and his spiritual fervour. He was entertained by Queen Victoria. Returning to India, he founded centres of the Brahmo Samaj in various parts of the country. Not unlike a professor of comparative religion in a European university, he began to discover, about the time of his first contact with Sri Ramakrishna, the harmony of religions. He became sympathetic toward the Hindu gods and goddesses, explaining them in a liberal fashion. Further, he believed that he was called by God to dictate to the world God's newly revealed law, the New Dispensation, the Navavidhan.
--
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-h olders and vagabonds, philanthropists and self-seekers, dramatists and drunkards, builders-up and pullers-down. He gave to them all, without stint, from his illimitable store of realization. No one went away empty-handed. He taught them the lofty .knowledge of the Vedanta and the soul
-melting love of the Purana. Twenty hours out of twenty-four he would speak without out rest or respite. He gave to all his sympathy and enlightenment, and he touched them with that strange power of the soul which could not but melt even the most hardened. And people understood him according to their powers of comprehension.
--
Suresh Mitra, a beloved disciple whom the Master often addressed as Surendra, had received an English education and held an important post in an English firm. Like many other educated young men of the time, he prided himself on his atheism and led a Bohemian life. He was addicted to drinking. He cherished an exaggerated notion about man's free will. A victim of mental depression, he was brought to Sri Ramakrishna by Ramchandra chandra Dutta. When he heard the Master asking a disciple to practise the virtue of self-surrender to God, he was impressed. But though he tried thenceforth to do so, he was unable to give up his old associates and his drinking. One day the Master said in his presence, "Well, when a man goes to an undesirable place, why doesn't he take the Divine Mother with him?" And to Surendra himself Sri Ramakrishna said: "Why should you drink wine as wine? Offer it to Kali, and then take it as Her prasad, as consecrated drink
. But see that you don't become intoxicated; you must not reel and your thoughts must not wander. At first you will feel ordinary excitement, but soon you will experience spiritual exaltation." Gradually Surendra's entire life was changed. The Master designated him as one of those commissioned by the Divine Mother to defray a great part of his expenses. Surendra's purse was always open for the Master's comfort.
--
Nitya Niranjan Sen was a disciple of heroic type. He came to the Master when he was eighteen years old. He was a medium for a group of spiritualists. During his first visit the Master said to him: "My boy, if you think always of ghosts you will become a ghost, and if you think of God you will become God. Now, which do you prefer?" Niranjan severed all connexions with the spiritualists. During his second visit the Master embraced him and said warmly: "Niranjan, my boy, the days are flitting away. When will you realize God? This life will be in vain if you do not realize Him. When will you devote your mind wholly to God?" Niranjan was surprised to see the Master's great anxiety for his spiritual welfare. He was a young man endowed with unusual spiritual parts. He felt disdain for worldly pleasures and was totally guileless, like a child. But he had a violent temper. One day, as he was coming in a country boat to Dakshineswar, some of his fellow passengers began to speak ill of the Master. Finding his protest futile, Niranjan began to rock the boat, threatening to sink it in mid stream. That silenced the offenders. When he reported the incident to the Master, he was rebuked for his inability to curb his anger.
--- JOGINDRA
--
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 t old 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
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
uphill; the old life is no more; there is a new life
that is not his.
--
The new Christ, like the old, it the friend of publicans
and sinners; because his nature is ascetic.
--
The title of the chapter refers to the old rime:
"See-saw, Margery Daw,
--
Sabbath, say men; He is the old Goat himself,
say women.
--
"New Thoughtist" is only old Eunuch writ small.
Paragraph 2 gives the very struggle for life, which
--
All the force won by its old woe and stress
In now annihilating Nothingness.
--
The chapter is a setting of an old story.
A man advertises that he could tell anyone how to
--
And seeing that I am old and well stricken in years,
and that my natural forces fail, therefore do I rise
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
As time went on and the number of devotees increased, the staircase room and terrace of the 3rd floor of the Morton Institution became a veritable Naimisaranya of modern times, resounding during all hours of the day, and sometimes of night, too, with the word of God coming from the Rishi-like face of M. addressed to the eager God-seekers sitting around. To the devotees who helped him in preparing the text of the Gospel, he would dictate the conversations of the Master in a meditative mood, referring now and then to his diary. At times in the stillness of midnight he would awaken a nearby devotee and tell him: "Let us listen to the words of the Master in the depths of the night as he explains the truth of the Pranava." ( Vednta Kesari XIX P. 142.) Swami Raghavananda, an intimate devotee of M., writes as follows about these devotional sittings: "In the sweet and warm months of April and May, sitting under the canopy of heaven on the roof-garden of 50 Amherst Street, surrounded by shrubs and plants, himself sitting in their midst like a Rishi of old, the stars and planets in their courses beckoning us to things infinite and sublime, he would speak to us of the mysteries of God and His love and of the yearning that would rise in the human heart to solve the Eternal Riddle, as exemplified in the life of his Master. The mind, melting under the influence of his soft sweet words of light, would almost transcend the frontiers of limited existence and dare to peep into the infinite. He himself would take the influence of the setting and say,'What a blessed privilege it is to sit in such a setting (pointing to the starry heavens), in the company of the devotees discoursing on God and His love!' These unforgettable scenes will long remain imprinted on the minds of his hearers." (Prabuddha Bharata Vol XXXVII P 497.)
About twenty-seven years of his life he spent in this way in the heart of the great city of Calcutta, radiating the Master's thoughts and ideals to countless devotees who flocked to him, and to still larger numbers who read his Kathmrita (English Edition : The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna), the last part of which he had completed before June 1932 and given to the press. And miraculously, as it were, his end also came immediately after he had completed his life's mission. About three months earlier he had come to stay at his home at 13/2 Gurdasprasad Chaudhuary Lane at Thakur Bari, where the Holy Mother had herself installed the Master and where His regular worship was being conducted for the previous 40 years. The night of 3rd June being the Phalahrini Kli Pooja day, M.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
But, goaded by youth, we older ones are now taking second looks at almost everything. And that promises many ultimately favorable surprises. The oldsters do have vast experience banks not available to the youth. Their memory banks, integrated and reviewed, may readily disclose generalized principles of eminent importance.
The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to h old true in every special case.
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HERE are two necessities of Nature's workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
The Conditions of the Synthesis
0.02 - II - The Home of the Guru, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Guru-griha-vsa staying in the home of the Guru is a very old Indian ideal maintained by seekers through the ages. The Aranyakas the ancient teachings in the forest-groves are perhaps the oldest records of the institution. It was not for education in the modern sense of the term that men went to live with the Guru; for the Guru is not a 'teacher'. The Guru is one who is 'enlightened', who is a seer, a Rishi, one who has the vision of and has lived the Truth. He has, thus, the knowledge of the goal of human life and has learnt true values in life by living the Truth. He can impart both these to the willing seeker. In ancient times seekers went to the Guru with many questions, difficulties and doubts but also with earnestness. Their questions were preliminary to the quest.
The Master, the Guru, set at rest the puzzled human mind by his illuminating answers, perhaps even more by his silent consciousness, so that it might be able to pursue unhampered the path of realisation of the Truth. Those ancient discourses answer the mind of man today even across the ages. They have rightly acquired as everything of the past does a certain sanctity. But sometimes that very reverence prevents men from properly evaluating, and living in, the present. This happens when the mind instead of seeking the Spirit looks at the form. For instance, it is not necessary for such discourses that they take place in forest-groves in order to be highly spiritual. Wherever the Master is, there is Light. And guru-griha the house of the Master can be his private dwelling place. So much was this feeling a part of Sri Aurobindo's nature and so particular was he to maintain the personal character of his work that during the first few years after 1923 he did not like his house to be called an 'Ashram', as the word had acquired the sense of a public institution to the modern mind. But there was no doubt that the flower of Divinity had blossomed in him; and disciples, like bees seeking honey, came to him. It is no exaggeration to say that these Evening Talks were to the small company of disciples what the Aranyakas were to the ancient seekers. Seeking the Light, they came to the dwelling place of their Guru, the greatest seer of the age, and found it their spiritual home the home of their parents, for the Mother, his companion in the great mission, had come. And these spiritual parents bestowed upon the disciples freely of their Light, their Consciousness, their Power and their Grace. The modern reader may find that the form of these discourses differs from those of the past but it was bound to be so for the simple reason that the times have changed and the problems that puzzle the modern mind are so different. Even though the disciples may be very imperfect representations of what he aimed at in them, still they are his creations. It is in order to repay, in however infinitesimal a degree, the debt which we owe to him that the effort is made to partake of the joy of his company the Evening Talks with a larger public.
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
imagination; they are always repeating the same old tricks! They
ought to be worn out by this time.
--
The old servant X wants a job for her young son
(who is less than eight years old, I think). Can he be
employed to clear the rubble at Ganapati House?
--
of wood. A large quantity of old planks were thus used
up. But Y expressed his dissatisfaction when he saw the
--
that it is I who gave the order to make all possible use of the old
pieces of wood.
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But by that very utility such men and the life they lead are condemned to be limited, irrationally conservative and earthbound. The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual forms of thought, - these things are the life-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but combat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present. For to the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and adored their memories when dead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. In the ancient Indian distinction between the once born and the twice born, it is to this material man that the former description can be applied. He does Nature's inferior works; he assures the basis for her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the glories of her second birth.
Yet he admits so much of spirituality as has been enforced on his customary ideas by the great religious outbursts of the past and he makes in his scheme of society a place, venerable though not often effective, for the priest or the learned theologian who can be trusted to provide him with a safe and ordinary spiritual pabulum. But to the man who would assert for himself the liberty of spiritual experience and the spiritual life, he assigns, if he admits him at all, not the vestment of the priest but the robe of the Sannyasin. Outside society let him exercise his dangerous freedom. So he may even serve as a human lightning-rod receiving the electricity of the Spirit and turning it away from the social edifice.
--
The mental life concentrates on the aesthetic, the ethical and the intellectual activities. Essential mentality is idealistic and a seeker after perfection. The subtle self, the brilliant Atman,1 is ever a dreamer. A dream of perfect beauty, perfect conduct, perfect Truth, whether seeking new forms of the Eternal or revitalising the old, is the very soul of pure mentality. But it knows not how to deal with the resistance of Matter. There it is hampered and inefficient, works by bungling experiments and has either to withdraw from the struggle or submit to the grey actuality. Or else, by studying the material life and accepting the conditions of the contest, it may succeed, but only in imposing temporarily some artificial system which infinite Nature either rends and casts aside or disfigures out of recognition or by withdrawing her assent leaves as the corpse of a dead ideal. Few and far between have been those realisations of the dreamer in Man which the world has gladly accepted, looks back to with a fond memory and seeks, in its elements, to cherish.
1 Who dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of abstractions, the Brilliant.
--
In India, for the last thousand years and more, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion of the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms for itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It has obtained from society the right of free spiritual development for all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb of the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as man's goal and those who live it as worthy of an absolute reverence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the formal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving element of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider movement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, for the most part, observed.
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
become old very soon. That is why I do not wish them to be
given that work.
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the being which remain attached to their old activities and refuse
to change. They will have to yield and be transformed one day
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is an old Hindu belief that one should not lie down
or sleep with one's head towards the North. Has it got
--
with me. It is the same old thing, but nonetheless distressing. It is civil war, a conflict between two different
tendencies and ideals, a pull from two different types
--
the way I used to feel for the old ideal of liberation. The
path, the ideal you represent, your values still leave me
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
away. The old calendars, for example; we have a thick
pile of them.
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 c old 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.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Although we may not know it, the New Man the divine race of humanity is already among us. It may be in our next neighbour, in our nearest brother, even in myself. Only a thin veil covers it. It marches just behind the line. It waits for an occasion to throw off the veil and place itself in the forefront. We are living in strenuous times in which age-long institutions are going down and new-forces rearing their heads, old habits are being cast off and new impulsions acquired. In every sphere of life, we see the urgent demand for a recasting, a fresh valuation of things. From the base to the summit, from the economic and political life to the artistic and spiritual, humanity is being shaken to bring out a new expression and articulation. There is the hidden surge of a Power, the secret stress of a Spirit that can no longer suffer to remain in the shade and behind the mask, but wills to come out in the broad daylight and be recognised in its plenary virtues.
That Power, that Spirit has been growing and gathering its strength during all the millenniums that humanity has lived through. On the momentous day when man appeared on earth, the Higher Man also took his birth. Since the hour the Spirit refused to be imprisoned in its animal sheath and came out as man, it approached by that very uplift a greater freedom and a vaster movement. It was the crest of that underground wave which peered over the surface from age to age, from clime to clime through the experiences of poets and prophets and sages the Head of the Sacrificial Horse galloping towards the Dawn.
01.01 - The One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
... the principle of this Yoga is not perfection of the human nature as it is but a psychic and spiritual transformation of all the parts of the being through the action of an inner consciousness and then of a higher consciousness which works on them, throws out the old movements or changes them into the image of its own and so transmutes lower into higher nature. It is not so much the perfection of the intellect as a transcendence of it, a transformation of the mind, the substitution of a larger greater principle of knowledge - and so with all the rest of the being.
This is a slow and difficult process; the road is long and it is hard to establish even the necessary basis. The old existing nature resists and obstructs and difficulties rise one after another and repeatedly till they are overcome. It is therefore necessary to be sure that this is the path to which one is called before one finally decides to tread it.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave
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And old experience laboured out once more.
All can be done if the god-touch is there.
--
Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place,
But knew not why it was there nor whence it came.
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One from of old possessed Himself above
Who was not anyone nor had a form,
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We have been speaking of philosophy and the philosophic manner. But what are the exact implications of the words, let us ask again. They mean nothing more and nothing lessthan the force of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present human consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-world poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shakespeare of the poet
Of imagination all compact.. . .
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And because our Vedic poets always looked beyond humanity, beyond earth, therefore could they make divine poetry of humanity and what is of earth. Therefore it was that they were pervadingly so grandiose and sublime and puissant. The heroic, the epic was their natural element and they could not but express themselves in the grand manner Sri Aurobindo has the same outlook and it is why we find in him the ring of the old-world manner.
Mark the stately march, the fullness of voice, the wealth of imagery, the vigour of movement of these lines:
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In the due measure that they chose of old.. . .
The superb and the right imperial tone instinct with a concentrated force of
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the centre of this energy, the matrix of creativity is the soul itself, one's own soul. If you want to createlive, grow and be real-find yourself, be yourself. The simple old wisdom still remains the eternal wisdom. It is because we fall off from our soul that we wander into side-paths, paths that do not belong to our real nature and hence that lead to imitation and repetition, decay and death. This is what happens to what we call common souls. The force of circumstances, the pressure of environment or simply the momentum of custom or habit compel them to choose the easiest and the readiest way that may lie before them. They do not consult the demand of the inner being but the requirement of the moment. Our bodily needs, our vital hungers and our mental prejudices obsess and obscure the impulsions that thrill the hidden spirit. We hasten to gratify the immediate and forget the eternal, we clutch at the shadow and let go the substance. We are carried away in the flux and tumult of life. It is a mixed and collective whirla Weltgeist that moves and governs us. We are helpless straws drifting in the current. But manhood demands that we stop and pause, pull ourselves out of the Maelstrom and be what we are. We must shape things as we want and not allow things to shape us as they want.
Let each take cognisance of the godhead that is within him for self is Godand in the strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he- creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourselfma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad. The fountain-head of creative genius lies there, in the free choice and the particular delight the self-determination of the spirit within you and not in the desire for your neighbours riches. The world has become dull and uniform and mechanical, since everybody endeavours to become not himself, but always somebody else. Imitation is servitude and servitude brings in grief.
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The trail of old forgotten thoughts and deeds,
Disown the legacy of our buried selves,
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An old account of suffering exhaust,
Strike out from Time the soul's long compound debt
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Obedient to the statutes fixed of old,
Admitting without appeal the nether gods.
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Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps
In circles around Matter's binding-posts.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.9
I do not know if this is not mysticism, what else is. Neither is religious poetry true mysticism (or true spirituality). I find more mysticism in
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The growth of a philosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. For man's consciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which includes and presupposes a development along that line. The mot d'ordre in old-world poetry was "fancy", imaginationremember the famous lines of Shakespeare characterising a poet; in modern times it is Thought, even or perhaps particularly abstract metaphysical thought. Perceptions, experiences, realisationsof whatever order or world they may beexpressed in sensitive and aesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. But a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistencea definite time has been given to that, since the Renaissance, it is said: it is the growing importance of Thought or brain-power as a medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear articulation, a definite and strong formulation. Rationalisation of all experiences and realisations is the keynote of the modern mentality. Even when it is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant realities, that the irrational or the submental plays a greater role in our consciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the expression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and through a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which cannot be found in the old-world frankly non-intellectual creations.
The religious, the mystic or the spiritual man was, in the past, more or Jess methodically and absolutely non-intellectual and anti-intellectual: but the modern age, the age of scientific culture, is tending to make him as strongly intellectual: he has to explain, not only present the object but show up its mechanism alsoexplain to himself so that he may have a total understanding and a firmer grasp of the thing which he presents and explains to others as well who demand a similar approach. He feels the necessity of explaining, giving the rationality the rationale the science, of his art; for without that, it appears to him, a solid ground is not given to the structure of his experience: analytic power, preoccupation with methodology seems inherent in the modern creative consciousness.
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Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
The earliest preoccupation of man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the world and worldly things, he referred all that to the other world, thought of gods and goddesses, of after-death and other where. That also will be his last and ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way, when he has passed through a process of purification and growth, a "sea-change". For although religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or behind the world, it is married too much to man's actual worldly nature and carries always with it the shadow of profanity.
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This, I say, is something different from the religious and even from the mystic. It is away from the merely religious, because it is naked of the vesture of humanity (in spite of a human face that masks it at times) ; it is something more than the merely mystic, for it does not stop being a signpost or an indication to the Beyond, but is itself the presence and embodiment of the Beyond. The mystic gives us, we can say, the magic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It is the record of fundamental experiences and there was no question of any logical exposition. But, as I have said, the modern mind requires and demands a logical element in its perceptions and presentations. Also it must needs be a different kind of logic that can satisfy and satisfy wholly the deeper and subtler movements of a modern consciousness. For the philosophical poet of an earlier age, when he had recourse to logic, it was the logic of the finite that always gave him the frame, unless he threw the whole thing overboard and leaped straight into the occult, the illogical and the a logical, like Blake, for instance. Let me illustrate and compare a little. When the older poet explains indriyani hayan ahuh, it is an allegory he resorts to, it is the logic of the finite he marshals to point to the infinite and the beyond. The stress of reason is apparent and effective too, but the pattern is what we are normally familiar with the movement, we can say, is almost Aristotelian in its rigour. Now let us turn to the following:
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme. ||26.15||
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 h olding 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
Evidently the eminent politician and his school of activism are labouring under a Himalayan confusion: when they speak of Sri Aurobindo, they really have in their mind some of the old schools of spiritual discipline. But one of the marked aspects of Sri Aurobindo's teaching and practice has been precisely his insistence on putting aside the inert and life-shunning quietism, illusionism, asceticism and monasticism of a latter-day and decadent India. These ideals are perhaps as much obstacles in his way as in the way of the activistic school. Only Sri Aurobindo has not had the temerity to say that it is a weakness to seek refuge in contemplation or to suggest that a Buddha was a weakling or a Shankara a poltroon.
This much as regards what Sri Aurobindo is not doing; let us now turn and try to understand what he is doing. The distinguished man of action speaks of conquering Nature and fighting her. Adopting this war-like imagery, we can affirm that Sri Aurobindo's work is just such a battle and conquest. But the question is, what is nature and what is the kind of conquest that is sought, how are we to fight and what are the required arms and implements? A good general should foresee all this, frame his plan of campaign accordingly and then only take the field. The above-mentioned leader proposes ceaseless and unselfish action as the way to fight and conquer Nature. He who speaks thus does not know and cannot mean what he says.
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This is the present nature of man, with its threef old 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 h olds 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 h old 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
To ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings;
It raised the servitors of mind and life
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A nostalgia of old little works and joys,
A need to call back small familiar selves,
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An old pull of subconscious cords renews;
It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights,
--
To feel again the old sublimities,
Bring the high saving touch, the ethereal flame,
--
Mid old forsaken dreams of hastening Mind
And buried remnants of forgotten space.
01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The supreme secret of the Gita, rahasyam uttamam, has presented itself to diverse minds in diverse forms. All these however fall, roughly speaking, into two broad groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modem school. The orthodox school as represented, for example, by Shankara or Sridhara, viewed the Gita in the light of the spiritual discipline more or less current in those ages, when the purpose of life was held out to be emancipation from life, whether through desireless work or knowledge or devotion or even a combination of the three. The Modern School, on the other hand, represented by Bankim in Bengal and more thoroughly developed and systematised in recent times by Tilak, is inspired by its own Time-Spirit and finds in the Gita a gospel of life-fulfilment. The older interpretation laid stress upon a spiritual and religious, which meant therefore in the end an other-worldly discipline; the newer interpretation seeks to dynamise the more or less quietistic spirituality which held the ground in India of later ages, to set a premium upon action, upon duty that is to be done in our workaday life, though with a spiritual intent and motive.
This neo-spirituality which might claim its sanction and authority from the real old-world Indian disciplinesay, of Janaka and Yajnavalkyalabours, however, in reality, under the influence of European activism and ethicism. It was this which served as the immediate incentive to our spiritual revival and revaluation and its impress has not been thoroughly obliterated even in the best of our modern exponents. The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the lan of the ethical man,the spiritual element, as a consciousness of supreme unity in the Absolute (Brahman) or of love and delight in God, serving only as an atmosphere for the mortal activity.
Sri Aurobindo has raised action completely out of the mental and moral plane and has given it an absolute spiritual life. Action has been spiritualised by being carried back to its very source and origin, for it is the expression in life of God's own Consciousness-Energy (Chit-Shakti).
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not only so, the future development of the poetic consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate but form part of one and indivisible movement. Historically, human consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to self-consciousness; man's creative and artistic genius too has moved pari passu in the same direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious, that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them spontaneously, without effort, without reflection, they do not seem to know the whence and wherefore and whither of it all, they know only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when man had not yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became more and more conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is called "primitives", the later one, that of conscious artists, usually goes by the name of "classicists." Modern creators have gone one step farther in the direction of self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An unconscious artist in the sense of the "primitives" is almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern world. All are scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate, purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has cost something of the old-world spontaneity and supremacy of utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot comm and the tide to roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy and new orientation discovered.
The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist originated with the Romantics. The very essence of Romanticism is curiosity the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experimenting, changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or sentimental or even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unforeseen or unexpected modes of "psychoses" or psychological states. Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a movement which led logically to the age of Hardy, Housman and Bridges and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of the classicists married to the very quintessence of Romanticism. A hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a c old scalpel-like gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm and constitutes almost the whole of Valry's. The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry, conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.
The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and 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.
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
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I have spoken of the source of inspiration as essentially and originally being a super-consciousness or over-consciousness. But to be more precise and accurate I should add another source, an inner consciousness. As the super-consciousness is imaged as lying above the normal consciousness, so the inner consciousness may be described as lying behind or within it. The movement of the inner consciousness has found expression more often and more largely than that of over-consciousness in the artistic creation of the past : and that was in keeping with the nature of the old-world inspiration, for the inspiration that comes from the inner consciousness, which can be considered as the lyrical inspiration, tends to be naturally more "spontaneous", less conscious, since it does not at all go by the path of the head, it evades that as much as possible and goes by the path of the heart.
But the evolutionary urge, as I have said, has always been to bring down or instil more and more light and self-consciousness into the depths of the heart too: and the first result has been an intellectualisation, a rationalisation of the consciousness, a movement of scientific observation and criticism which very naturally leads to a desiccation of the poetic enthusiasm and fervour. But a period of transcendence is in gestation. All efforts of modern poets and craftsmen, even those that seem apparently queer, bizarre and futile, are at bottom a travail for this transcendence, including those that seem contradictory to it.
--
All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
and the imaginative idealist, the romantically spiritual poet says that these or
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 inevitable order of earthlylifebhasmantam idam shariramhe continued to sing the song of the Rishis that Ananda and Immortality are the breath of things, the birth right of human beings. When Modernism declared with a certitude never tobe contested that Matter is Brahman, Tagore said with the voice of one who knows that Spirit is Brahman.
Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual 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.
The world being nothing but Spirit made visible is, according to Tagore, fundamentally a thing of beauty. The scars and spots that are on the surface have to be removed and mankind has to repossess and clo the itself with that mantle of beauty. The world is beautiful, because it is the image of the Beautiful, because it harbours, expresses and embodies the Divine who is Beauty supreme. Now by a strange alchemy, a wonderful effect of polarisation, the very spiritual element in Tagore has made him almost a pagan and even a profane. For what are these glories of Nature and the still more exquisite glories that the human body has captured? They are but vibrations and modulations of beauty the delightful names and forms of the supreme Lover and Beloved.
--
Tagore the poet reminds one often and anon of Kalidasa. He was so much in love, had such kinship with the great old master that many of his poems, many passages and lines are reminiscences, echoes, modulations or a paraphrase of the original classic. Tagore himself refers in his memoirs to one Kalidasian line that haunted his juvenile brain because of its exquisite music and enchanting imagery:
Mandki nirjharikarm vodh muhuh-kamPita-deva-druh
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
A conscious wideness filled the old dumb Space.
In the Void he saw throned the Omniscience supreme.
--
An old disvalued credit in Time's bank,
Imperfection's cheque drawn on the Inconscient.
--
The old adamantine vetoes stood no more:
Overpowered were earth and Nature's obsolete rule;
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The answer is as old as that of Nachiketas: "These horses and these songs and dances of yours, let them remain yours, man is not appeased with riches"; or that of Maitreyi, "What am I to do with that which will not bring me immortality?" This is then man's mission upon earth:
"Man is higher than all animals, than all angels: none is greater than man. Even the Devas will have to come down again and attain to salvation though a human body. Man alone attains to perfection, not even the Devas." Indeed, men are gods upon earth, come down here below to perfect themselves and perfect the worldonly, they have to be conscious of themselves. They do not know what they are, they have to be actually and sovereignly what they are really and potentially. This then is the life-work of everyone:
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The French Revolution wanted to remould human society and its ideal was liberty, equality and fraternity. It pulled down the old machinery and set up a new one in its stead. And the result? "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" remained always in effect a cry in the wilderness. Another wave of idealism is now running over the earth and the Bolshevists are its most fiercely practical exponents. Instead of dealing merely with the political machinery, the Socialistic Revolution tries to break and remake, above all, the social machinery. But judged from the results as yet attained and the tendencies at work, few are the reasons to hope but many to fear the worst. Even education does not seem to promise us anything better. Which nation was better educatedin the sense we understood and still commonly understand the wordthan Germany?
And yet we have no hesitation today to call them Huns and Barbarians. That education is not giving us the right thing is proved further by the fact that we are constantly changing our programmes and curriculums, everyday remodelling old institutions and founding new ones. Even a revolution in the educational system will not bring about the desired millennium, so long as we lay so much stress upon the system and not upon man himself. And finally, look to all the religions of the worldwe have enough of creeds and dogmas, of sermons and mantras, of churches and templesand yet human life and society do not seem to be any the more worthy for it.
Are we then to say that human nature is irrevocably vitiated by an original sin and that all our efforts at reformation and regeneration are, as the Indian saying goes, like trying to straighten out the crooked tail of a dog?
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
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 h old 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.
--
The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
If you are t old 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, h old 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!
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such is to be the ideal, the perfect, the spiritual man. Have we here the progenitor of the Nietzschean Superman? Both smell almost the same sulphurous atmosphere. But that also seems to lie in the direction to which the whole world is galloping in its evolutionary course. Humanity in its agelong travail has passed through the agony, one might say, of two extreme and opposite experiences, which are epitomised in the classic phrasing of Sri Aurobindo as: (1) the Denial of the Materialist and (2) the Refusal of the Ascetic.1 Neither, however, the Spirit alone nor the body alone is man's reality; neither only the earth here nor only the heaven there embodies man's destiny. Both have to be claimed, both have to belivedubhayameva samrt, as the old sage, Yajnavalkya, declared.
The earliest dream of humanity is also the last fulfilment. The Vedic Rishis sang of the marriage of heaven and earthHeaven is my father and this Earth my mother. And Blake and Nietzsche are fiery apostles of that dream and ideal in an age crippled with doubt, falsehood, smallness, crookedness, impotence, colossal ignorance.
We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition, this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across one aspirant in the line, and being a contemporary, his views and reviews in the matter will be all the more interesting to us.2 He is Gustave Thibon, a Frenchman-not a priest or even a religious man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly self-educated laque. Of late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as well as religious people, especially the Catholics, because of his remarkable conceptions which are so often unorthodox and yet so often ringing true with an old-world au thenticity.
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
eleven years old! It is strange.
It is atavistic and comes from the subconscient.
--
You have even remarked that to read these old classics
is to lower the level of one's consciousness.
--
those that come from the old inertia and falsehood - in order
to accept the first and to refuse or reject the others.
--
body at will"? For example, will a hundred-year old man
be able to renew his body and become a young man of
--
You are still in the old rut that separates spirituality from life.
Whereas Sri Aurobindo has declared, "All life is Yoga" and
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 h olding 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 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
They devoted themselves to study in their boyhood, in youth they pursued the objects of life; when old they took to spiritual austerities, and in the end they died united with the higher consciousness.
Only this process of integration was not done in a day, it took some centuries and had to pass through some unpleasant intermediary stages.
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Satan is jealous of man who is God's favourite. He tells God that his partiality to man is misplaced. God has put into man a little of his light (reason and intelligence and something more perhaps), but to what purpose? Man tries to soar, he thinks he flies high and wide, but in fact he is and will be an insect that "lies always in the grass and sings its old song in the grass." God answers that whatever the perplexity in which man now is, in the end he will come out and reach the Light with a greater and richer experience of it. Satan smiles in return and says he will prove otherwise. Given a free hand, he can do whatever he likes with man: "Dust shall he eat and with a relish." God willingly agrees to the challenge: there is no harm in Satan's trying his hand. Indeed, Satan will prove to be a good companion to man; for man is normally prone to inertia and sinks into repose and rest and stagnation. Satan will be the goad, the force that drives towards ceaseless activity. For activity is life, and without activity no progress.
Thus, as sanctioned by God, there is a competition, a wager between man and Satan. The pact between the parties is this that, on the one hand, Satan will serve man here in life upon earth, and on the other hand, in return, man will have to serve Satan there, on the other side of life. That is to say, Satan will give the whole world to man to enjoy, man will have to give Satan only his soul. Man in his ignorance says he does not care for his soul, does not know of a there or elsewhere: he will be satisfied if he gets what he wants upon earth. That, evidently, is the demand of what is familiarly known as life-force (lan vital): the utmost fulfilment of the life-force is what man stands for, although the full significance of the movement may not be clear to him or even to Satan at the moment. For life-force does not necessarily drag man down, as its grand finale as it were, into hellhowever much Satan might wish it to be so. In what way, we shall see presently. Now Satan promises man all that he would desire and even more: he would give him his fill so' that he will ask for no more. Man takes up the challenge and declares that his hunger is insatiable, whatever Satan can bring to it, it will take in and press on: satisfaction and satiety will never come in his way. Satan thinks he knows better, for he is armed with a master weapon to lay man low and make him cry halt!
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Declaration of Rights is a characteristic modern phenomenon. It is a message of liberty and freedom,no doubt of secular liberty and freedomthings not very common in the old world; and yet at the same time it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has sanctified the individual or a unit collectivity, it has also pari passu developed a fissiparous tendency in human organisation. Society based on or living by the principle of Right becomes naturally and inevitably a competitive society. Where man is regarded as nothing moreand, of course, nothing lessthan a bundle of rights, human aggregation is bound to be an exact image of Darwinian Naturered in tooth and claw.
But Right is not the only term on which an ideal or even a decent society can be based. There is another term which can serve equally well, if not better. I am obviously referring to the conception of duty. I tis an old world conception; it isa conception particularly familiar to the East. The Indian term for Right is also the term for dutyadhikara means both. In Europe too, in more recent times, when after the frustration of the dream of a new world envisaged by the French Revolution, man was called upon again to rise and hope, it was Mazzini who brought forward the new or discarded principle as a mantra replacing the other more dangerous one. A hierarchy of duties was given by him as the pattern of a fulfilled ideal life. In India, in our days the distinction between the two attitudes was very strongly insisted upon by the great Vivekananda.
Vivekananda said that if human society is to be remodelled, one must first of all learn not to think and act in terms of claims and rights but in terms of duties and obligations. Fulfil your duties conscientiously, the rights will take care of themselves; it is such an attitude that can give man the right poise, the right impetus, the right outlook with regard to a collective living. If instead of each one demanding what one considers as one's dues and consequently scrambling and battling for them, and most often not getting them or getting at a ruinous pricewhat made Arjuna cry, "What shall I do with all this kingdom if in regaining it I lose all my kith and kin dear to me?"if, indeed, instead of claiming one's right, one were content to know one's duty and do it as it should be done, then not only there would be peace and amity upon earth, but also each one far from losing anything would find miraculously all that one most needs and must have,the necessary, the right rights and all.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A modern Neo-Brahmin, Aldous Huxley, has given a solution of the problem in his now famous Shakespearean apothegm, "Time must have a stop". That is an old-world solution rediscovered by the modern mind in and through the ravages of Time's storm and stress. It means, salvation lies, after all, beyond the flow of Time, one must free oneself from the vicious and unending circle of mortal and mundane life. As the Rajayogi controls and h olds his breath, stills all life-movement and realises a dead-stop of consciousness (Samadhi), even so one must control and stop all secular movements in oneself and attain a timeless stillness and vacancy in which alone the true spiritual light and life can descend and manifest. That is the age-long and ancient solution to which the Neo-Brahmin as well the Neo-Christian adheres.
Eliot seems to demur, however, and does not go to that extreme length. He wishes to go beyond, but to find out the source and matrix of the here below. As I said, he seeks a synthesis and not a mere transcendence: the transcendence is indeed a part of the synthesis, the other part is furnished by an immanence. He does not cut away altogether from Time, but reaches its outermost limit, its rim, its summit, where it stops, not altogether annihilated, but held in suspended animation. That is the "still point" to which he refers in the following lines:
--
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here d oldrums like
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The stress of the inner urge to the heights and depths of spiritual values and realities found special and significant expression in his paintings. It is a difficult problem, a problem which artists and poets are tackling today with all their skill and talent. Man's consciousness is no longer satisfied with the customary and the ordinary actions and reactions of life (or thought), with the old-world and time-worn modes and manners. It is no more turned to the apparent and the obvious, to the surface forms and movements of things. It yearns to look behind and beyond, for the secret mechanism, the hidden agency that really drives things. Poets and artists are the vanguards of the age to come, prophets and pioneers preparing the way for the Lord.
Roerich discovered and elaborated his own technique to reveal that which is secret, express that which is not expressed or expressible. First of all, he is symbolical and allegorical: secondly, the choice of his symbols and allegories is hieratic, that is to say, the subject-matter refers to objects and events connected with saints and legends, shrines and enchanted places, hidden treasures, spirits and angels, etc. etc.; thirdly, the manner or style of execution is what we may term pantomimic, in other words, concrete, graphic, dramatic, even melodramatic. He has a special predilection for geometrical patterns the artistic effect of whichbalance, regularity, fixity, soliditywas greatly utilised by the French painter Czanne and poet Mallarm who seem to have influenced Roerich to a considerable degree. But this Northerner had not the reticence, the suavity, the tonic unity of the classicist, nor the normality and clarity of the Latin temperament. The prophet, the priest in him was the stronger element and made use of the artist as the rites andceremoniesmudras and chakrasof his vocation demanded. Indeed, he stands as the hierophant of a new cultural religion and his paintings and utterances are, as it were, gestures that accompany a holy ceremonial.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The oldest tradition says that the first four emanations of
the Mahashakti - Consciousness, Love, Truth and Life - cut
--
are mentioned in nearly all the old legends of the saints?
Tears and anguish indicate the presence of a weak and paltry
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are at a decisive hour in the history of the earth. It is preparing for the coming of the superman and because of this the old
way of life is losing its value. We must strike out b oldly on the
--
The best way to avoid growing old is to make progress the
goal of our life.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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.
I dont know to whom I was mentioning this today (I think it was for a Birthday3 No, I dont know now. It was to someone who t old me he was 18 years old. I said that between the ages of 18 and 20, I had attained a constant and conscious union with the Divine Presence and that I had done this ALL ALONE, without ANYONES help, not even books. When a little later I chanced upon Vivekanandas Raja Yoga, it really seemed so wonderful to me that someone could explain something to me! And it helped me realize in only a few months what would have otherwise taken years.
I met a man (I was perhaps 20 or 21 at the time), an Indian who had come to Europe and who t old me of the Gita. There was a French translation of it (a rather poor one, I must say) which he advised me to read, and then he gave me the key (HIS key, it was his key). He said, Read the Gita (this translation of the Gita which really wasnt worth much but it was the only one available at the timein those days I wouldnt have understood anything in other languages; and besides, the English translations were just as bad and well, Sri Aurobindo hadnt done his yet!). He said, Read the Gita knowing that Krishna is the symbol of the immanent God, the God within. That was all. Read it with THAT knowledgewith the knowledge that Krishna represents the immanent God, the God within you. Well, within a month, the whole thing was done!
--
Yes, certainly had there been any receptivity when She came down and had She been able to manifest with the power with which She came But I can tell you one thing: even before Her coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time I didnt seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month of this yoga, I looked exactly like an 18 year old! And someone who knew me and had stayed with me in Japan5 came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, But my god, is it you? I said, Of course!
Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went awaybecause on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change.
0 1955-03-26, #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
--
Such was our old, meaningless name (except for its Germanic root: 'hard bear') until a certain March 3, 1957, when Mother named us Sat-prem ('the one who loves truly').
***
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
An American artist, an old friend of D.H. Lawrence, and Satprem's friend.
***
0 1955-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Mother, I cannot say that it is a nostalgia for the outside world that is drawing me backwards nor some attachment to a personal form of life, nor even some vital desire seeking its own satisfaction. That old world no longer attracts me, and I do not see at all what I would do there. Yet something is standing in my way.
If only I could see a distinct error blocking my path which I could clearly attack But I feel that I am not responsible, that it is not my personal fault if I remain without aspiration, stagnating. I feel like a battlefield of contending forces that are beyond me and against which I can do NOTHING. Oh Mother, it is not an excuse for a lack of will, or at least I dont think so I profoundly feel like a helpless toy, totally helpless.
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
What I call a descent is the individual movement in an individual consciousness. But when a new world is manifesting in an old worldas when similarly the mind spread over the earth I call it a manifestation.
You may call it whatever you like, it makes no difference to me, but we must understand each other.
0 1956-12-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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??
Your child,
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.
--
Naturally, all this is a gradual process, but I am hopeful that little by little this new consciousness will grow, gain ground and victoriously resist the old forces of destruction and annihilation, and this Fatality we believed to be so inexorable.
***
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And suddenly, as if resounding from every corner of the earth, I heard these great notes which are sometimes heard in the subtle physicalra ther like those of Beethovens Concerto in Dwhich come at moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras were bursting forth all at once without a single discordant note, to sound the joy of this new communion of Nature and Spirit, the meeting of old friends who, after a long separation, find each other once more.
Then came these words: O Nature, Material Mother, thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate, and there is no limit to the splendor of this collaboration.
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
As for the people I saw aboard ship, I recognized them all. Some were here in the Ashram, some came from elsewhere, but I knew them as well. I saw everyone, but as I realized that I would not remember everyone when I came back, I decided not to give any names. Besides, it is unnecessary. Three or four faces were very clearly visible, and when I saw them, I understood the feeling that I have had here, on earth, while looking into their eyes: there was such an extraordinary joy On the whole, the people were young; there were very few children, and their ages were around fourteen or fifteen, but certainly not below ten or twelve (I did not stay long enough to see all the details). There were no very old people, with the exception of a few. Most of the people who had gone ashore were of a middle ageagain, except for a few. Several times before this experience, certain individual cases had already been examined at a place where people capable of being supramentalized are examined; I had then had a few surprises which I had noted I even t old some people. But those whom I disembarked today I saw very distinctly. They were of a middle age, neither young children nor elderly people, with only a few rare exceptions, and this quite corresponded to what I expected. I decided not to say anything, not to give any names. As I did not stay until the end, it would be impossible for me to draw an exact picture, for it was neither absolutely clear nor complete. I do not want to say things to some and not say them to others.
What I can say is that the criterion or the judgment was based EXCLUSIVELY on the substance constituting the peoplewhe ther they belonged completely to the supramental world or not, whether they were made of this very special substance. The criterion adopted was neither moral nor psychological. It is likely that their bodily substance was the result of an inner law or an inner movement which, at that time, was not in question. At least it is quite clear that the values are different.
0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
On the way, I stopped at J and Es place. They are living like native fishermen, in loincloths, in a coconut grove by the sea. The place is exceedingly beautiful, and the sea full of rainbow-hued coral. And suddenly, within twenty-four hours, I realized an old dreamor rather, I purged myself of an old and tenacious dream: that of living on a Pacific island as a simple fisherman. And all at once, I saw, in a flash, that this kind of life totally lacks a center. You float in a nowhere. It plunges you into some kind of higher inertia, an illumined inertia, and you lose all true substance.
As for me, I am totally out of my element in this new life, as though I were uprooted from myself. I am living in the temple, in the midst of pujas,1 with white ashes on my forehead, barefoot dressed like a Hindu, sleeping on cement at night, eating impossible curries, with some good sunburns to complete the cooking. And there I am, clinging to you, for if you were not there I would collapse, so absurd would it all be. You are the only realityhow many times have I repeated this to myself, like a litany! Apart from this, I am h olding up quite well physically. But inside and outside, nothing is left but you. I need you, thats all. Mother, this world is so horrifyingly empty. I really feel that I would evaporate if you werent there. Well, no doubt I had to go through this experience Perhaps I will be able to extract some book from it that will be of use to you. We are like children who need a lot of pictures in order to understand, and a few good kicks to realize our complete stupidity.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I began my sadhana at birth, without knowing that I was doing it. I have continued it throughout my whole life, which means for almost eighty years (even though for perhaps the first three or four years of my life it was only something stirring about in unconsciousness). But I began a deliberate, conscious sadhana at about the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, upon prepared ground. I am now more than eighty years old: I have thought of nothing but that, I have wanted nothing but that, I had no other interest in life, and not for a single minute have I ever forgotten that it was THAT that I wanted. There were not periods of remembering and forgetting: it was continuous, unceasing, day and night, from the age of twenty-four and I had this experience for the first time about a week ago! So, I say that people who are in a hurry, people who are impatient, are arrogant fools.
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!
0 1958-05-11 - the ship that said OM, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I said to myself, Who could have done that? I was not sure if only I had heard it, so I asked. The reply was, But it was the ship leaving! There was actually a ship which had left during the night3that is in support of those who said it was a ship. But for me, it was SOMEONE because I felt someone there and I thought, Oh! If someone, in the ardor of his soul, said that in this what I could call an atheistic silence. Because people here are so afraid of following tradition, of being the slaves of the old things, that they cast out anything closely or remotely resembling religion.
It was very strange, because my first reaction was one of bewilderment: how is it that someone I was really bewildered for a fraction, not even the fraction of a second. And then
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But yesterday, in fact, I was looking (with all these mantras and these prayers and this whole vibration that has descended into the atmosphere, creating a state of constant calling in the atmosphere), and I remembered the old movements and how everything now has changed! I was also thinking of the old disciplines, one of which is to say, I am That.7 People were t old to sit in meditation and repeat, I am That, to reach an identification. And it all seemed to me so obsolete, so childish, but at the same time a part of the whole. I looked, and it seemed so absurd to sit in meditation and say, I am That! I, what is this I who is That; what is this I, where is it? I was trying to find it, and I saw a tiny, microscopic point (to see it would almost require some gigantic instrument), a tiny, obscure point in an im-men-sity of Light, and that little point was the body. At the same timeit was absolutely simultaneous I saw the Presence of the Supreme as a very, very, very, VERY immense Being, within which was I in an attitude of (I was only a sensation, you see), an attitude (gesture of surrender) like this. There were no limits, yet at the same time, one felt the joy of being permeated, enveloped and of being able to widen, widen, widen indefinitelyto widen the whole being, from the highest consciousness to the most material consciousness. And then, at the same time, to look at this body and to see every cell, every atom vibrating with a divine, radiant Presence with all its Consciousness, all its Power, all its Will, all its Loveall, all, really and a joy! An extraordinary joy. And one did not disturb the other, nothing was contradictory and everything was felt at the same time. That was when I said, But truly! This body had to have the training it has had for more than seventy years to be able to bear all that without starting to cry out or dance or leap up or whatever it might be! No, it was calm (it was exultant, but it was very calm), and it remained in control of its movements and its words. In spite of the fact that it was really living in another world, it could apparently act normal due to this strenuous training in self-control by the REASONby the reasonover the whole being, which has tamed it and given it such a great cohesive power that I can BE in the experience, I can LIVE this experience, and at the same time respond with the most amiable of smiles to the most idiotic questions!
And then, it always ends in the same way, by a canticle to the action of the grace: O, Lord! You are truly marvelous! All the experiences I have needed to pass through You have given to me, all the things I needed to do to make this body ready You have made me do, and always with the feeling that it was You who was making me do itand with the universal disapproval of all the right-minded humanity!
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
It could apply to the old Greek mythology, though.
No, not uniquely. It could apply in many other eases. Even if the Christians dont understand, there are many others who will!
0 1958-12-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
If you want, I can return to the Ashram and throw myself headlong into the work in order to forget all this. There is a lot of work with Herberts things to correct, the revision of The Synthesis of Yoga, your old Questions and Answers and the Dhammapada, and perhaps you would accept to take up our work together again?
Otherwise, if you consider it preferable to wait, I could go join Swami in Rameswaram, discarding all my little personal reactions towards him. And I would try my best to find again the Light of the first time and return to you stronger. I dont know. I will do what you say. All this really has to change. I dont know, moreover, whether Swami wishes to have me.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I clearly see that the hour has come: either I will perish right here, or else I will emerge from this COMPLETELY changed. But something has to change. Mother, you are with me, I know, and you are protecting me, you love me I have only you, only you, you are my Mother. If these moments of utter darkness return and they are bound to return for everything to be exorcised and conqueredprotect me in spite of myself. Mother, may your Grace not abandon me. I want to be done with all these old phantoms, I want to be born anew in your Light; it has to beotherwise I can no longer go on.
Mother, I believe I understand something of all that you yourself are suffering, and the crucifixion of the Divine in Matter is a real crucifixion. In this moment of consciousness, I offer you all my trials and little sufferings. I would like to triumph so that it be your triumph, one weight less upon your heart.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
As I t old you, I have resumed neither classes nor translations, and I still do not know when I will do so. So there is only the old work to finish up, but it will not take very long.
My body would also like to have a mantra to repeat. Those it has are not enough for it anymore. It would like to have one to hasten its transformation. It is ready to repeat it as many times as needed, provided that it does not have to be out loud, for it is very rarely alone and does not want to speak of this to anyone. Truly, the Ashram atmosphere is not very favorable for this kind of thing. You will have to take precautions so as not to be disturbed or interrupted in an inopportune way. Domestic servants, curious people, so-called friends can all serve as instruments of the hostile forces to put a spoke in the wheels. I will do my best to protect you, but you will have a lot to do yourself and will have to be as firm as an iron rod.
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
P.S. All the old Questions and Answers will also have to be revised with you, perhaps not in their entirety, but certain problems need clarification. What a grace to be able to work with you!
***
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.
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
(Soon afterwards, regarding an old Question and Answer)
Heaven and hell are at once true and false. They exist and dont exist. Ive seen various people go to heavens or hells after their death, and its very difficult to make them understand that it is not real. Once it took me more than a year to convince someone that his so-called hell was not hell, and to get him out of it.
0 1960-07-18 - triple time vision, Questions and Answers is like circling around the Garden, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Of course, were dating all these old Questions and Answers, but not everyone pays attention to dates. How can those old ones be mixed with the present things which are on an altogether different plane?
There is an experience in which one is entirely outside of time that is, ahead, behind, above, below, all these things are one and the same. And at the very moment the identification takes place, there is no longer any past, present or future. And really, its the only way to know.
As the experiences unf old, these old Questions and Answers give me the feeling of someone circling outside a garden while describing whats inside it. But a day comes when you enter the garden, and then you know a little better whats inside. And Im starting to enter. Im starting.
***
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And finally, Sweet Mother, what I would really like to know is the purpose of our Center of Education. Is it to teach the works of Sri Aurobindo? And only these? All the works or some only? Or is it to prepare the students to read the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? Is it to prepare them for the Ashram life or for outside occupations as well? So many opinions are floating in the air, and even the old disciples from whom we expect some knowledge make so many contradictory statements
(Laughing, to Pavitra:) I suppose thats for you!
0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
(While filing various old papers, notes, etc., Mother happens upon the plan for a film studio at the lake)
[Some five miles from Pondicherry.]
--
With a lot of patience and time, it could all be organized, but Id have to be convinced that its worth the trouble. All these old papers are like dead leaves. We should make a bonfire.7
Oh, no!
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But this way of seeing is too far removed from the state of mind and spiritual education in which X has lived,4 of course, for him to understand. Nor am I in favor of proselytizing (to convince X); it would disturb him quite needlessly. He has not come here for that. He came here for something special, something I wanted which he brought, and I have learnt it. Now its excellent, he is a part of the group in his own fashion, thats all. And in a certain way, his presence here is having a very good effect on a whole category of people who had not been touched but who are now becoming more and more favorably inclined. It was difficult to reach all the traditionalists, for example, the people attached to the old spiritual forms; well, they seem now to have been touched by something.
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 t old you that all separation between him and me had dropped awayit was to be expected, I anticipated as much!
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
(Concerning an old Question and Answer of July 4, 1956 at the Playground in which Mother speaks of her first realization of the Divine, in Paris)
Just as the shooting star flashed past, there sprang from my consciousness: To realize the divine union, for my body! And before twelve months were out, it was done.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
About two weeks later (in other words, ten days or so before September 26), some more news the boys older brother, who lives in Ahmedabad (not Bombay), came to visit his mother, father and grandmo ther (theres also a grandmo ther), and he asked about his brother. He had come with a friend. Your brother has disappeared, they explained, we dont know what has happened to him. So the two of them decided to search for him: Well find him .
The day before their departure, the elder brothers friend said he was going to visit the grandmo ther (she lives some hundred yards away). He went outand didnt return. Disappeared.
--
Its so contrary not only to the education but to the make up of people from the West! For an Indian for a modern Indian it would be difficult, but for those who have kept something of the old tradition it would not be difficult. Its easy for children raised in a monastery or near the guru
(silence)
--
Theres also this old idea rooted in religions of Chaldean or Christian origin of a God with whom you can have no true contactan abyss between the two. That is terrible.
That absolutely has to stop.
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Ive tried everything, you know, from complete fasting to a meat dieteverything, everything. Well, I noticed that you can have pleasant experiences while fasting, but its not good, it shouldnt be donethese are all old ideas. No, the body must be solid, solid otherwise
(Mother gives the disciple a carnation, named by her Collaboration)
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
How strange it is! You have the feeling of ascending, of a progress in consciousness, and everything, all the events and circumstances of life follow one another with an unquestioning logic. You see the Divine Will unf olding with a wonderful logic. Then, from time to time, there appears a little set of circumstances (either isolated or repeated), which are like snags on the way; you cant explain them, so you put them aside for later on. Some such accidents have been quite significant, but they dont seem to follow this ascending line of the present individuality. Theyre scattered along the way, sometimes repeated, sometimes only once, and then they vanish. And when you go through such an experience, you sense that they are things put aside for later on. And then, all of a sudden (especially during these last two years when I have again descended to take all that up), all of a sudden, one after another, all these snags return. And they dont follow the same curve; rather, its as if suddenly you reach a certain state and a certain impersonal breadth that far surpasses the individual, and this new state enters into contact with one of those old accidents that had remained in the deepest part of the subconscientand that makes it rise up again, the two meet in an explosion of light. Everything is explained, everything is understood, everything is clear! No explanation is needed: it has become OBVIOUS.
This is entirely another way of understandingits not an ascent, not even a descent nor an inspiration it must be what Sri Aurobindo calls a revelation. Its the meeting of this subconscious notationthis something which has remained buried within, held down so as not to manifest, but which suddenly surges forth to meet the light streaming down from above, this very vast state of consciousness that excludes nothing and from it springs forth a lightoh, a resplendence of light!like a new explanation of the world, or of that part of the world not yet explained.
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It was no longer this (that is, life as it is on earth) becoming conscious of That (the eternal soul, this portion of the Supreme as Sri Aurobindo said); it was the eternal soul seeing life in its own way but without separation, without any separation, not like something looking from above that feels itself to be different How strange it is! Its not something else, its NOT something else, its not even a distortion, not even Its losing its illusory quality as described in the old spiritualities thats not what it is! In my experience, there was there was clearly an emotion I cant describe it, there are no words. It wasnt a feeling, it was something like an emotion, a vibration of such TOTAL closeness and at the same time of compassion, a compassion of love. (Oh, words are so pitiful! ) One was this outer thing, which was the total negation of the other and AT THE SAME TIME the other, without the least separation between them. It WAS the other. So what was born in one was born in the other as well, in this eternal light. A sweetness of identity, precisely, an identity that was necessarily such total understanding with such perfect love but love says it poorly, all words are poor! Its not that; its something else! Its something that cannot be expressed.
I lived that this morning, upstairs.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But immediately, the following dayDarshan dayas the thing developed (you see, something was working inside), I could again turn my attention to the people who were there. And oddly enough, just when you came, there was suddenly a kind of little shock, like an electric shock, and a spark leapt out. And at that moment the Power acted for perhaps a split second You see, there has been this bad karma, this old formation around you for a very long time, and it hadnt I recall telling you several years ago, I shall be able to cure such cases as yours only when the Supramental descends. And this feeling of incapacity, of something resisting, was still present, still aliveof not having the right power to dominate it. But just as you went by, for a second, there was this flash of like a spark when two electric wires touch. It was a g olden spark, a resplendent lightzzzt! And it leapt out. Ah! I thought; its good.
That was it.
0 1960-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
During these last days, I was face to face with a problem as old as the world which had taken on an extraordinary intensity.
Its what Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief, and its located in the most material physical consciousness it isnt doubt (which mainly belongs to the mind), it is almost like a refusal to accept the obvious as soon as it doesnt belong to the little daily routine of ordinary sensations and reactionsa sort of incapacity to accept and recognize the exceptional.
--
For the last several days, Ive been at grips fighting with it. How can I stop this idiotic, coarse and above all defeatist automatism from constantly manifesting? Its truly an automatism; it doesnt respond to any conscious will, nothing. So what will it take to ? And its QUITE INTIMATELY related to the bodys illnesses (the old habits the body has of coming out of its rhythmic movement, of entering into confusion)the two things are very intimately linked.
Im deep in the problem.
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
'It was his house, and it was rather complicated to enter. I was saying a mantra or japa when X came along; he had a ... a terribly reproachful air! Then he smelled my hands: 'It's a bad habit to wear perfume. (Mother laughs) You cannot live a spiritual life when you wear perfume.' then I looked at him and thought, 'My God, does he have to be so backward!' But it annoyed me, so I said, 'Very well, I'm going.' When I got near the door, he started saying, 'Is it true you have been married several times, and that you've been divorced?' Then a kind of anger entered me (laughing) and I t old him, 'No, not just once, but twice!' Thereupon, I left. All the old ideas...
After that was when I saw the little squirrel.'
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you make the experiment, you will come to see that this supreme freedom and this supreme power are accompanied by a total peace and an unfaltering serenity; if you notice any contradictionrevolt, disgust or something inadmissiblethis indicates that some part in You is not touched by the transformation, is still en route: something still h olding on to the old consciousness, thats all.
In this aphorism, Sri Aurobindo speaks of those who hate sinners that one mustnt hate sinners.
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At last I found myself in a big place down below where there was a row of houses, all kinds of things, and it was absolutely essential that I go back upwhen suddenly a somewhat indistinct form (rather dark, unluminous) came to me and said, Oh, dont go there, its very bad, very dangerous! Theyve set it all up in a terrifying way: none can withstand it! You mustnt go there, wait a bit. And if you need something, do come, you know I have everything you need! (Mother laughs) its a little old and dusty but youll manage! Then she led me into a huge room filled with objects piled one on top of another, and in one corner she showed me a bathtubmy child, it was a marvel! A splendid pink marble bathtub! But it was unused, dusty and old. Well just wipe it off, she said, and youll be able to use it! She showed me other areas for washing and dressing, there was everything one could possibly need. You can use it all. Dont go up there! I looked at her closely. She struck me as having a tiny face, it was oddit wasnt a form, it was it was a form and yet it wasnt! As imprecise as that. Then I clasped her in my arms and cried out, Mother, you are nice! (Mother laughs) I knew then that she was material Mother Nature.
After that I felt quite at ease. The battle was overit was over FOR THE MOMENT, because they werent finished: they continued their uproar on the other side; but I didnt have to go there anymore.
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then yesterday afternoon, when I went upstairs to walk,1 a couple of things occurrednot personal, but of a general natureconcerning, for instance, certain old-fashioned conventions having to do with women and their particular nature (not psychological, physical) old ideas like that which had always seemed utterly stupid to me suddenly provoked a kind of reprobation completely out of proportion to the fact itself. Then one or two other things2 happened in regard to certain people, certain circumstances (nothing to do with me personally: it came from here and there). Then suddenly, I saw a Force coming (coming, well, manifesting) which was the same as that thing I had felt within me but even bigger; it began whirling upon the earth and within circumstances oh, like a cyclone of compact power moving forward with the intention of changing all this! It had to change. At all costs, it must change!
I was above, as usual (Mother points above her head, indicating the higher consciousness), and I looked at that (Mother bends over, as if looking down at the earth), and said to myself, Hmm, this is getting dangerous. If it continues like this, it will result in in a war or a revolution or some catastrophea tidal wave or an earthquake. So I tried to counteract it by applying the highest consciousness to it, that of a perfect serenity. And I saw especially that this consciousness has been missioned to transform the earth through the Supermind and by the supramental Force, avoiding all catastrophes as far as possible: the Work is to be done as luminously and harmoniously as the earth would allow, even by going at a slower pace if need be. That was the idea. And I tried to counteract that whirlwind power with this consciousness.
--
I had a woman here with me who was born among these people. She had been adopted by Thomas (the French musician who composed the comic-opera, Mignon). They had come to India and found this little girl who at the time was very young; she was only thirteen, quite pretty and nice. So they took her back to France with them as a nanny and treated her as one of their own children. She was cared for, educated, given everything, treated absolutely like one of the family; she remained there for twenty years. Moreover, she was gifted with clairvoyance and could tell fortunes by reading palms, which she did remarkably well. She even worked for a while in a caf, the Moulin-Rouge or a similar place, as a Hindu Fortune Teller! What a maharani she was, with her magnificent jewelsand beautiful, as well. In short, she had completely left all her old habits behind.
Then she returned to India and I took her in with me. I continued to treat her almost as a friend and I helped her to develop her gifts. Mon petit,10 how dirty she started to get, lying, stealing, and absolutely needlesslyshe had money, she was well treated, she had everything she needed, she ate what we didthere was absolutely no reason! When I finally asked her, But why, why!? (she was no longer young at this point), she replied, When I came back here, it took h old of me again; its stronger than I am. That was a revelation for me! Those old habits had been impervious to education.
We think these people are the way they are because the environment is bad, the education is poor, the conditions are difficultits not true! In the universal economy of things they REPRESENT something, a certain type of force and vibration. It will have to be either dissolved or transformed. Transformed? But perhaps that is. It may disappear along with the hostile forces. Perhaps once everything has been transformed it will disappear I dont know when.
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, yesterday I saw R. He was asking me questions about his work and particularly about the knowledge of languages (hes a scholar, you know, and very familiar with the old traditions). This put me in contact with that whole world and I began speaking to him a little about what I had already said to you concerning my experience with the Vedas. And all at once, in the same [absolute] way as I t old you, when I entered into contact with that world a whole domain seemed to open up, a whole field of knowledge from the standpoint of languages, of the Word, of the essential Vibration, that vibration which would be able to reproduce the supramental consciousness. It all came, so clear, so clear, luminous, indisputable but unfortunately there was no tape recorder!
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 t old 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.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Have you seen his photo? No? Ill have to show it to you. He was a handsome man, about sixty years oldbetween fifty and sixty.
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 t old 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.)
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 t old 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.
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a feeling (but these are old ideas) that if I were all alone somewhere and didnt have to look after these people and things, it would be easier. But that would not be the TRUE thing. For when I had the experience [of January 24], all that is normally under my care was present: the whole earth seemed to be present at the experience. There is no individuality (Mother indicates her body). I have difficulty finding an individuality now, even in my own body. What I do find in this body are the subconscious vibrations (conscious as well as subconscious) of a WORLD, a whole world of things. So it can be done ONLY on a large scale, otherwise its the same old story but then its not the power HERE [in matter]one simply quits this world. Oh, these people cant imagine what it is! They have made such a fuss over their departure. They have wanted us to believe it was something quite extraordinary. But its infantile, its childs play, its nothing at all to quit this world! One simply goes poff!, like diving into watera little kick and one resurfaces, and thats all there is to it, its done (Mother laughs).
And the same goes for their stories about attachments and desiresmy god! Theres nothing to it! Imagine, with anything concerning my body, through all this horror of the subconscient, NOT ONCE have I had to bear the consequence of a desire; I have always had to bear the consequences of the battle against lifes unconscious and malicious resistances, but not once has something come up like that (gesture of something resurging from below) to tell me, You see! You had a desire, now heres the result of it! Not oncevery, very sincerely.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You can easily make a speech using flowers and I have noticed that this can effectively replace the old Vedic images, for instance, which no longer h old meaning for us, or the ambiguous phraseology of the ancient initiations. Flower language is much better because it contains the Force and is extremely plasticsince its not formulated in words, each one is free to arrange and receive it according to his own capacity. You can make long speeches using flowers!
I have nothing more to say now, except that the same situation prevails.
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo's old cook.
'... What Sri Aurobindo represents is not a teaching, not even a revelation, it is an ACTION direct from the Supreme.'
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was certainly with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop for and in itself, that ALL the complications, all the deformations began. Indeed, this story of Genesis that seems so childish does contain a truth. The old traditions like Genesis resembled the Vedas in that each letter6 was the symbol of a knowledge; it was the pictorial rsum of a traditional knowledge, just as the Veda contains a pictoral rsum of the knowledge of its time. But whats more, even the symbol had a reality in the sense that there was truly a period when life upon earth (the first manifestation of mentalized Matter in human forms) was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later that.
The tree of knowledge symbolizes this kind of knowledge a material knowledge, no longer divine because its origin was the sense of division and this is what began to spoil everything. How long did this period last? I am unable to say. (Because my recollection is of an almost immortal life; it seems that it was through some sort of evolutionary accident that the destruction of forms became necessary for progress.) And where did it take place? From certain impressions (but these are only impressions), it would seem that it was in the vicinity of either this side of Ceylon and India or the other, I dont know exactly (Mother indicates the Indian Ocean either west of Ceylon and India or to the east between Ceylon and Java), although certainly the place no longer exists; it must have been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of the place and a consciousness of that life and its forms, but I cant give precise material details. Did it last for centuries, was it ? I dont know. To tell the truth, when I was reliving those moments I wasnt curious about such details (for one is in another mental state where there is no curiosity about material details: all things turn into psychological facts). It was something so simple, luminous, harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupationsthose very preoccupations with time and space. It was a spontaneous life, extremely beautiful, and so close to Naturea natural flowering of animal life. There were no oppositions or contradictions, nothing of the kindeverything happened in the best way possible.
--
In my view, all these old Scriptures and ancient traditions have a graduated content (gesture showing different levels of understanding), and according to the needs of the epoch and the people, one symbol or another was drawn upon. But a time comes when one goes beyond these things and sees them from what Sri Aurobindo calls the other hemisphere, where one realizes that they are only modes of expression to put one in contacta kind of bridge or link between the lower way of seeing and the higher way of knowing.
A time comes when all these disputesAh, no, this is like this, that is like thatseem so silly, so silly! And there is nothing more comical than this spontaneous reply so many people give: Oh, thats impossible! Because with even the most rudimentary intellectual development, you would know you couldnt even think of something if it werent possible!
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother goes on to the work and listens to the reading of an old Talk of September 26, 1956, to be used in the Bulletin. In it she speaks of moments of opening in the yoga:
Then there are days when you are in contact with the divine Consciousness, with the Grace, and all is tinged, colored by this Presence, and things which usually seem dull to you become charming and pleasant all is alive, all is vibrant. At other moments you are clouded, closed, you no longer feel anything, everything loses its flavor you are like a walking block of wood.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It reinforces what the old Schools have always taught but Sri Aurobindo rejected it! Sri Aurobindo t old us precisely that the Truth could be lived IN material life. Of course, there must be a change of consciousness, but I thought.
(silence)
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first was with a boy who was a Sanskritist and had wanted to come to India with us. He was the son of a French ambassadoran old, noble family. But he learned that his lungs were bad, and so he joined the Army; he enlisted as an officer, just at the start of the 1914 war. And he had the courage of those who no longer cling to life; when he received the order to advance on the enemy trenches (it was incredibly stupid, simply sending people to be slaughtered!), he didnt hesitate. He went. And he was hit between the two lines. For a long time, it was a no mans land; only after some days, when the other trench had been taken, could they go and collect the dead. All this came out in the newspapers AFTERWARDS. But on the day he was killed, of course, no one was aware of it.
I had a nice photo of him with a Sanskrit dedication, placed on top of a kind of wardrobe in my bedroom. I open the door and the photo falls. (There was no draft or anything.) It fell and the glass broke into smithereens. Immediately I said, Oh! Something has happened to Fontenay. (That was his name: Charles de Fontenay.) After that I came back down from my room, and then I hear a miaowing at the door (the door opened onto a large garden courtyard1). I open the door: a cat bursts in and jumps on me, like that (Mother thumps her breast). I speak to him: What is it, whats the matter? He drops to the ground and looks at meFontenays eyes! Absolutely! No one elses. And he just stayed put, he didnt want to go. I said to myself, Fontenay is dead.
--
That one too was beautiful, with such a color! G olden 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.
When I moved here to the Ashram, I said, We cant bring any cats into this house, its quite impossible. This was after Big Boys death, and we had had enough of cats. I gave away the others, but the first one, the mother of the whole line, was old and didnt want to leave, so I felt her behind. She stayed in a house over there, within the Ashram compound. And one dayshe was very old and could no longer move I saw her come dragging in and sit down on that terrace on the other side. (Now you cant see it any more the Service Tree has hidden it completely but in those days you could see it very clearly.) She came and sat down over there where she could watch me until she died. Quietly, without moving, she died watching me.
All these cat stories! If we had photographs, we could make a pretty little album of cat stories.
--
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 t old 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 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All this is based on the old idea that whatever the imagewhich we disdainfully call an idolwhatever the external form of the deity may be, the presence of the thing represented is always there. And there is always someonewhe ther priest or initiate, sadhu or sannyasisomeone who has the power and (usually this is the priests work) who draws the Force and the Presence down into it. And its true, its quite real the Force and the Presence are THERE; and this (not the form in wood or stone or metal) is what is worshipped: this Presence.
Europeans dont have the inner sense at all. To them, everything is like this (gesture), a surfacenot even that, a film on the surface. And they cant feel anything behind. But its an absolutely real fact that the Presence is there I guarantee it. People have given me statuettes of various gods, little things in metal, wood or ivory; and as soon as I take one in my hand, the god is there. I have a Ganesh2 (I have been given several) and if I take it in my hand and look at it for a moment, hes there. I have a little one by my bedside where I work, eat, and meditate. And then there is a Narayana3 which comes from the Himalayas, from Badrinath. I use them both as paperweights for my handkerchiefs! (My handkerchiefs are kept on a little table next to my bed, and I keep Ganapati and Narayana on top of them.) And no one touches them but me I pick them up, take a fresh handkerchief, and put them back again. Once I blended some nail polish myself, and before applying it, I put some on Ganapatis forehead and stomach and fingertips! We are on the best of terms, very friendly. So to me, you see, all this is very true.
--
In churches, I dont know. I havent been to them very often. I have been to mosques and templesJewish temples. The Jewish temples in Paris have such beautiful music; oh, what beautiful music! I had one of my first experiences in a temple. It was at a marriage, and the music was wonderfulSaint-Saens, I later learned; organ music, the second best organ in Pariswonderful! I was 14 years old, sitting high up in the galleries with my mother, and this music was being played. There were some leaded-glass windowswhite, with no designs. I was gazing at one of these windows, feeling uplifted by the music, when suddenly through the window came a flash like a bolt of lightning. Just like lightning. It enteredmy eyes were openit entered like this (Mother strikes her breast violently), and then I I had the feeling of becoming vast and all-powerful. And it lasted for days.
Of course, my mother was such an out-and-out materialist, thank God, that it was impossible to speak to her of invisible thingsshe took them as evidence of a deranged brain! Nothing counted for her but what could be touched and seen. But this was a divine grace I had no opportunity to say anything. I kept my experience to myself. But it was one of my first contacts with. I learned later that it was an entity from the past who had come back into me through the aspiration arising from the music.
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was an odd thing, it seized me suddenly I was no longer able to climb the stairs! I didnt know how to do it! It also took h old of me once as I was having lunch I no longer knew how to eat! This, of course, is what the external world calls lapsing into second childhood. So I considered the problem of the poor old people who are thought to be lapsing into their second childhoodsmight they not, by chance, be on the frontier of liberation?! Perhaps.
My brain is good!! (Mother laughs)
0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, its the old traditionyou step back from Nature and Nature does whatever she wants. It doesnt concern you, you have no responsibility, you are not that. Its the old idea.
Sri Aurobindo was completely against it. Somewhere he makes fun of a man who said he was the Supreme and that whatever he did, it wasnt he himself doing itand then he was angry when his meal was late! But of course it wasnt him: the stomach-nature was angry!2
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There have been very, very few cases, a quite minimal number, when people have called (not very sincerely) and their call hasnt had much effect. But even these people have a protection. There was a woman here, an old woman who was not very sincere (she didnt live hereshe only came to visit) and the last time she visited she fell ill and died. Then I saw that she was completely dispersed into all her desires, all her memories, all her attachments and it had all been scattered here and there, into all sorts of things (one part of her was seeking, seeking where to go and what to do); anyway, it was rather pitiful. Afterwards I was asked, How did it happen? She was calling all the time. I replied that I had not heard her callit must not have been very sincere, only a formula.4
But its very rare that people get no response.
--
Some time before his heart attack he said to his children: the gown is old, it must be thrown away.
(silence)
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What I myself have seen was a plan that came complete in all details, but that doesnt at all conform in spirit and consciousness with what is possible on earth now (although, in its most material manifestation, the plan was based on existing terrestrial conditions). It was the idea of an ideal city, the nucleus of a small ideal country, having only superficial and extremely limited contacts with the old world. One would already have to conceive (its possible) of a Power sufficient to be at once a protection against aggression or bad will (this would not be the most difficult protection to provide) and a protection (which can just barely be imagined) against infiltration and admixture. From the social or organizational standpoint, these problems are not difficult, nor from the standpoint of inner life; the problem is the relationship with what is not supramentalizedpreventing infiltration or admixture, keeping the nucleus from falling back into an inferior creation during the transitional period.
(silence)
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are two lines in the ancient traditions, two ways of explaining this. One says it is by the descent of what already exists in all its perfection that what is involved can be awakened to consciousness and evolution. Its like the old story: when what Sri Aurobindo calls the universal Mother or the Shakti (or Sachchidananda1) realized what had happened in Matter (that is, in what had created Matter) and that this involution had led to a state of Inconscience, total unconsciousness, the ancient lore says that at once the divine Love descended straight from the Lord into Matter and began to awaken what was involved there.
Other traditions speak of the Consciousness, the divine Consciousness, instead of Love. One even finds accounts full of imagery depicting a Being of prismatic light lying in deep sleep in the cave of the Inconscient; and this Descent awakens him to an activity which is still (how to put it?) inner, an immobile activity, an activity by radiation. Countless rays issue from his body and spread throughout the Inconscient, and little by little they awaken in each thing, in each atom, as it were, the aspiration to Consciousness and the beginning of evolution.
--
Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said (Mother laughs): Well, heres what has happened. Whats to be done? Then from the Divine came an emanation of Love (in the first emanation it wasnt Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, the Delight of being which became Suffering), and from the Supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of Inconscience, the result of the creation of the first emanation, Consciousness Consciousness and Light had become Inconscience and Darkness. Love descended straight from the Supreme into this Inconscience; the Supreme, that is, created a new emanation, which didnt pass through the intermediate worlds (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the Supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counterbalance this fallits the old story of the Fall, this fall into the Inconscient. But that wasnt enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. Thats the story of the first Descent. But youre speaking of the descent heralded by Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Descent, arent you?
Not only that. For example, Sri Aurobindo says that when Life appeared there was a pressure from below, from evolution, to make Life emerge from Matter, and simultaneously a descent of Life from its own plane. Then, when Mind emerged out of Life, the same thing from above happened again. Why this intervention from above each time? Why dont things emerge normally, one after another, without needing a descent?
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember once (I must have been ten or twelve years old at the time), there was a luncheon at my parents house for a dozen or so people, all decked out in their Sunday bestthey were family but all the same it was a luncheon and there was a certain protocol; in short, one had to behave properly. I was at one end of the table next to a first-cousin of mine who later became director of the Louvre for a while (he had an artistic intelligence, a rather capable young man). So there we were, and I remember I was observing something rather interesting in his atmosphere (mind you, although the faculties were already there, I knew nothing about occult things; if someone had spoken to me of auras and all that. I knew nothing). I was observing a kind of sensation I had felt in his atmosphere and then, just as I was putting the fork into my mouth, I took off! What a sc olding I got! I was t old that if I didnt know how to behave, I shouldnt come to the table! (Mother goes into peals of laughter)
It was during this period that I used to go out of my body every night and do the work Ive spoken of in Prayers and Meditations (I only mentioned it in passing).8 Every night at the same hour, when the whole house was very quiet, I would go out of my body and have all kinds of experiences. And then my body gradually became a sleepwalker (that is, the consciousness of the form became more and more conscious, while the link remained very solidly established). I got into the habit of getting up but not like an ordinary sleepwalker: I would get up, open my desk, take out a piece of paper and write poems. Yes, poems I, who had nothing of the poet in me! I would jot things down, then very consciously put everything back into the drawer, lock everything up again very carefully and go back to bed. One night, for some reason or other, I forgot and left it open. My mother came in (in France the windows are covered with heavy curtains and in the morning my mother would come in and violently throw open the curtains, waking me up, brrm!, without any warning; but I was used to it and would already be prepared to wake upotherwise it would have been most unpleasant!). Anyway, my mother came in, calling me with unquestionable authority, and then she found the open desk and the piece of paper: Whats that?! She grabbed it. What have you been up to? I dont know what I replied, but she went to the doctor: My daughter has become a sleepwalker! You have to give her a drug.
--
Its strange. I say strange because its due to her that I took birth in this body, that it was chosen. When she was very young she had a great aspiration. She was exactly twenty years older than 1; she was twenty when I was born and I was her third child. The first was a son who died in Turkey when he was two months old, I thinkthey vaccinated him against smallpox and poisoned him, (laughing) god knows what it means! He died of convulsions. Next was my brother who was born in Egypt, at Alexandria, and then me, born in Paris when she was exactly twenty years old. At that time (especially since the death of her first child) she had a kind of GREAT aspiration in her: her children had to be the best in the world. It wasnt an ambition, I dont know what it was. And what a will she had! MY mother had a formidable will, like an iron bar, utterly impervious to all outside influence. Once she had made up her mind, it was made up; even if someone had been dying before her eyes, she wouldnt have budged! And she decided: My children will be the best in the world.
One thing she did have was a sense of progress; she felt that the world was progressing and we had to be better than anything that had come before and that was sufficient.
--
When my grandmo ther died. My grandmo ther had the occult sense. She had made her own fortune (a sizeable fortune) and had had five children, each one more extravagant than the other. She considered me the only sensible person in the family and she shared her secrets with me. You see, she t old me, these people are going to squander all my money! She had a sixty year old son (she had married in Egypt at the age of fifteen, and had had this son when she was quite young). You see this boy, he goes out and visits impossible people! And then he starts playing cards and loses all my money! I saw this boy, I was there in the house when he came to her and said very politely, Good-bye, mother, Im going out to so-and-sos house. Ah, please dont waste all my money, and take an overcoatits getting chilly at night. Sixty years old! It was comical. But to return to my story, after my grandmo ther died (I took a lot of care over her), she came to my mother (my mother was with her when she died; they embalmed hershe had gotten it into her head that she wanted to be burned, and since she died at Nice they had to embalm her so she could be burned in Paris). I was in Paris. My mother arrived with the body and t old me, Just imagine, Im constantly seeing her! And whats more, she gives me advice! Dont waste your money! she tells me. Well, shes right, one must be careful, I replied. But look here, shes dead! Dead! How can she talk to me! Shes dead, I tell you, and quite dead at that! I said to her, What does it mean, to die?
It was all very funny.
0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This morning when I was walking, the program of the day and the work ahead of me was so formidable that I felt it to be impossible. And yet simultaneously there was this immobile inner POSITION in me; as soon as I stop my movement of formation and action, it becomes like a dance of joy: all the cells vibrating (there is a sort of vivacity, and an extraordinary music), all the cells vibrant with the joy of the Presence the divine Presence. But when I see the outside world entering and attacking, well this joy doesnt exactly disappear, but it retreats. And the result is that I always feel like sitting down and keeping stillwhen I can do that it is marvelous. But of course, all the suggestions from outside come in: suggestions of helplessness and old age, of wear and tear, of diminishing power, all thatand I know positively that its false. But calm in the body is indispensable. Well, for me also Sri Aurobindos answer is always the same: Be simple, be simple, very simple.
And I know what he means: to deny entry to regimenting, organizing, prescriptive, judgmental though the wants none of all that. What he calls being simple is a joyous spontaneity; in action, in expression, in movement, in lifebe simple, be simple, be simple. A joyous spontaneity. To rediscover in evolution that condition he calls divine, which was a spontaneous and happy condition. He wants us to rediscover that. And for days now he has been here telling me (and the same goes for your work): Be simple, be simple, be simple. And in his simplicity was a luminous joy.
--
What to do about it? Oh, that will come. But its true, we are always too tensealways. And I know that as long as we are controlled by that admirable mind, we feel that to relax means to fall into tamas and unconsciousness. All these old notions remain, prolonging themselves; and theres something like the residue of one of those marvelous censors, telling you: Be careful, tamas, tamas! Be careful, you are dozing offvery bad, very bad. And its idiotic, because tamas is neither joyous nor luminous, while this is an immediate joy and light.
***
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He is there and the atmosphere is full of a sort of concentration of force, and there are these two things: This is how legends come into being how legends begin. The beginning of the legend. I hear this. And there is also a kind of analogy to the old stories of Buddha, of Christ. Its strange.
I seemed to be looking back into the present from some thousands of years ahead (its no longer now, but as if I were propelled somewhere several thousand years ahead, looking backwards) and its the beginning of the legend.
And the photo adopted by the legend is this full-face one of him as a young man. It was made in France from an old snapshot (a poor one, and only the bust was kept); that photo of me wearing a veil was done at the same time.
A strange impression.
--
Nor was it insignificant that fire, Agni, was the core of the Vedic mysteries: Agni, the inner flame, the soul within us (for who can deny that the soul is fire?), the innate aspiration drawing man towards the heights; Agni, the ardent will within us that sees, always and forever, and remembers; Agni, the priest of the sacrifice, the divine worker, the envoy between earth and heaven (Rig-veda III, 3.2) he is there in the middle of his house (I.70.2). The Fathers who have divine vision set him within as a child that is to be born (IX.83.3). He is the boy suppressed in the secret cavern (V.2.1). He is as if life and the breath of our existence, he is as if our eternal child (I.66.1). O Son of the body (III.4.2), O Fire, thou art the son of heaven by the body of the earth (III.25.1). Immortal in mortals (IV.2. 1), old and outworn he grows young again and again (II.4.5). When he is born he becomes one who voices the godhead: when as life who grows in the mother he has been fashioned in the mother he becomes a gallop of wind in his movement (III.29.11). O Fire, when thou art well borne by us thou becomest the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side (II.1.12). O Fire brilliant ocean of light in which is divine vision (III.22.2), the Flame with his hundred treasures O knower of all things born(I.59).
But the divine fire is not our exclusive privilegeAgni exists not only in man: He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there (I.70.2).
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of Supermind, but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, new heavens and a new earth,1 which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didnt actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into. They used different words, another classification (I dont remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely developed, you seeindividualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it and so on, twelve times.
I learned to do the same thing, and with great dexterity; I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, see, observe, and then speak about what I had seen. And my last stage, which Theon called pathtisme,2 a very barbaric but very expressive word, bordered on the Formlesshe sometimes used the Jewish terminology, calling the Supreme The Formless. (From this last stage one passed to the Formless there was no further body to leave behind, one was beyond all possible forms, even all thoughtforms.) In this domain [the last stage before the Formless] one experienced total unityunity in something that was the essence of Love; Love was a manifestation more dense, he would always say (there were all sorts of different densities); and Love was a denser expression of That, the sense of perfect Unityperfect unity, identitywith no longer any forms corresponding to those of the lower worlds. It was a Light! An almost immaculate white light, yet with something of a g olden-rose in it (words are crude). This Light and this Experience were truly wonderful, inexpressible in words.
--
When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. Its strange, he said to me, its an endless work! Nothing seems to get doneeverything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again. Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: It will be like that until we touch bottom. So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience how to put it? practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.
Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old! There was a young man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied.4 What has happened to you! he exclaimed. He hardly recognized me. During that same period (it didnt last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. There! he said, Thats how you are now! I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again.
This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical and all the trouble began.5 But we didnt stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence there, in the midst of Darkness.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I came here. But something in me wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo all alone the first time. Richard went to him in the morning and I had an appointment for the afternoon. He was living in the house thats now part of the second dormitory, the old Guest House.5 I climbed up the stairway and he was standing there, waiting for me at the top of the stairs. EXACTLY my vision! Dressed the same way, in the same position, in profile, his head held high. He turned his head towards me and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked (gesture of instantaneous shock), the inner experience immediately became one with the outer experience and there was a fusion the decisive shock.
But this was merely the beginning of my vision. Only after a series of experiencesa ten months sojourn in Pondicherry, five years of separation, then the return to Pondicherry and the meeting in the same house and in the same waydid the END of the vision occur. I was standing just beside him. My head wasnt exactly on his shoulder, but where his shoulder was (I dont know how to explain itphysically there was hardly any contact). We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGETHER, at exactly the same moment, we felt, Now the Realization will be accomplished. That the seal was set and the Realization would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on there was nothing to sayno words, nothing. We knew it was THAT.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But following that, and because of the overwork, an old thing I thought I had cured has come back. It was originally brought on by overwork when I was going to the Playground and resting only two hours out of twenty-four, which wasnt enougha sort of ulcer formed between my nose and throat. Its an old complaint, dating from the removal of adenoids in my childhood; the operation left a kind of small cavity, which was nothing in itself, except that occasionally it would give me a c old. But as a result of overwork it came back in the form of an ulcer, and gave me artificial c olds; it was so sour and corrosive, a terrible irritation in the throat and nose. It got much worse when I was giving classes at the Playground, and once I showed it to the doctor. Why, you have an ulcer! he said. A big fuss. He offered to treat me. No thanks! I said. Dont worry, it will pass. And I began my own yogic treatment. It was over in a week and for three years there was no further sign of it. Recently (the last two or three months) I had felt it trying to come back, for exactly the same reason of overwork. And with that little adventure the other day, it did come backit gave me one of those stupid c olds: sneezing, coughing. Its not quite over yet. But its nothing, it just gives me an excuse (laughing) to tell people I am still not quite well!
I am resting.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for the physical, its an old and well-known storyascetics have always rejected it; but they also reject the vital. And theyre all like that here, even X may have changed somewhat by now, but at the beginning he was no different either. Only things classically recognized as holy or admitted by religious tradition were accepted the sanctity of marriage, for example, and things like that. But a free life? Not a chance! It was wholly incompatible with religious life.
Well, all that has been completely swept away, once and for all.
--
But even accepting all these misadventures a priori, things remain difficult because theres a double movement: both a cellular transformation and a capacity for something that could replace expansion with readjustment, a constant intercellular reorganization.3 The way they are now, of course, our bodies are rigid and heavyits unspeakable, actually; if it werent for that we would never grow old. For instance, my vital being is more full of energy, and thus full of youth and power to grow, than when I was twenty. Theres really no comparison. The power is INFINITELY greater yet the body is going to piecesits really something unspeakable. So a way has to be found to bridge this gap between the vital and the material being.
Not that the problem hasnt been partially solved: hatha yogis have solved it, partiallyprovided you do nothing else (thats the trouble). Yet having the knowledge, we should have the power to do whats necessary without making it our exclusive preoccupation. At any rate, this possibility is certainly not altogether unknown; for the first few months after I retired to my room,4 when I had cut all contact with the outside, it was working very well even extraordinarily so! Lots of disorders in my body were surmounted, and I had many fairly precise indications that if I continued like that long enough I would regain everything that had been lost, and with an even better equilibrium. I mean that the functional equilibrium was far superior. Only when I came back into contact with the world did it all come to a halt and begin to deteriorateall the more so as it was aggravated by this discipline of expansion making me constantlyCONSTANTLYabsorb mountains of difficulties to be resolved. And so.
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Sri Aurobindo's play, Andromeda, daughter of the King of Syria, is condemned by her own people to be devoured by Poseidon, the Sea-god, for some impiety she had committed against him. The story is actually about the passage of a half-primitive tribe, living in terror of the old dark and cruel gods, to a more evolved and sunlit stage. Perseus, son of Diana and Zeus, and protected by Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom and intelligence, comes to deliver Andromeda from the rock she is chained to (the rock symbolizes the Inconscient for the Rishis), and founds the religion of Athene, "... the Omnipotent / Made from His being to lead and discipline / The immortal spirit of man, till it attain / To order and magnificent mastery / Of all his outward world" (in the words of Sri Aurobindo). It is the force of progress pitted against the old priests of the old religions, symbolized by the cruel and ambitious Polydaon. Here Mother is scrutinizing an old problem"Always the same problem"that she must have encountered in many existences (Egypt included) and would encounter again eleven years later: the acceptance of the death she is forced into as the Supreme's Will, and then this "love of Life" she twice mentions here.
***
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But will this present period between the old world and the other last a long time? Theres nothing in between.
Not for the moment.
--
You see, its like trying to alter the functioning of the organs. What is the process? Already the two are beginning to exist simultaneously. What does it take for one to disappear and the other to remain on its own, changed? Changed, because as it is now it wouldnt be enough to make the body function; the body wouldnt perform all the things it must perform, it would stay in a blissful state, delighting in its condition, but not for longit still has a lot of needs! Thats the trouble. It will be very easy for those who come in one or two hundred years; they will only have to choose: not to belong to the old system any more or else to belong to the new.2 But now. A stomach has got to digest, after all! Well, that will mean a new way of adapting to the forces of Nature, a new functioning.
But for that to happen, some beings would have to prepare this new functioning.
--
Oh, its peoples thoughts that are so annoying! Everybody, everybody is constantly thinking about old age and death, and death and old age and illness oh, theyre such a nuisance! Me, I never think of it. Thats not the question. The difficulty lies in the Work itself; it doesnt depend on a certain number of years, which besides is completely its nothing, one second in eternity, a mere nothing!
But truly, if someone (I dont know who or what this Someone is) if I am given the time, I will know I am convinced of it. For despite all the growing difficulties, there is also a growing knowledge, a constant progress. So from that standpoint, I CANNOT be mistaken; it is impossible. This Presence is becoming so concrete and so (what shall I say?) so helpful, so concrete in its help. But it obviously takes a long time.
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And in the afternoon, I had a funny experience at the Playground.3 When I got down from the car to go inside, I felt. For close to a year now I have been saddled with (I mean it was imposed on me) a useless pair of legs: weak, awkward, old, worn outworthless. I constantly had to will them to walk, and even then they were more than clumsy. And it was all swept away in the same manner (sweeping gesture). I literally almost danced! Imagine, getting rid of a pair of legs just like that! INSTANTLY my legs felt the way they used to (I have always had strong legs)that alert, solid, agile strength and I had to restrain myself from cavorting about! Ah, now we can walk! Keep calm, I had to tell them, or they would have started skipping and prancing!
And they stayed that way, there was no relapse. I was waiting to see if it would lastit did. Something seems to be over with now.
--
But is it necessary? Is all this disorganization necessary? Perhaps I call it disorganization when it isnt. You know, we are totally ignorant in that realm. We have our old human ways of seeing, but when it comes to the bodys functioning, we know nothing about whats good or not. Or even whats painful or not: the bodys initial impulse is to feel the pain, but upon reflection and attentive observation, we see it is simply an intensity of sensation were not used to. So it could well have been that. And if we were used to it (and especially if we didnt think of it as something troublesome), we would feel quite differently about it. In any case, its not something unbearablewe can bear a lot of things, much more than we imagine.
I am not sure, you see. We keep going on with old notions, old routines and old habitswhat can we possibly know!
Anyway, this thing had to follow its course and wind up somewhere.
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a kind of extension of the physical senses. In American Indians, for instance, the senses of hearing and smell are far more extended than ours (in dogs too!). When I was eight or ten years old, I had an Indian friend who came with Buffalo Bill in the days of the Hippodrome that was a long time ago, I was around eight. He was so sharp that he could put his ear to the ground and tell, from the intensity of the vibrations, how far the sound of footsteps was coming from. All the children immediately said, Id really like to know how to do that! And so you try.
Thats how you prepare yourself. You think youre just having fun, but you are preparing yourself for later.
0 1962-03-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember the whole experience, of course, but the body-consciousness forgot. The slightest difficulty, even the shadow or the recollection of a difficulty, was enough for it to start up all over again: Oh oh! Now whats going to happen? The same old anxieties and stupidities.
So I realize that we have to keep on trying.
--
Although sometimes, yes, all of a sudden. Take this example (it may seem a mere trifle, but when you have reached this point): the first sudden glimmer of conscious control over a bodily functioning, giving you a glimpse of the time when everything will function through the action of a conscious will. That has begun but its a tiny, tiny, tiny beginning. And the slightest mental intrusion from the old movement spoils it all I mean the old way of behaving with your body: you want this and you want that and you want to make it do this and you want to make it The minute that pops up, everything stops. Progress comes to a standstill. One must be in a state of beatific union then one can feel the new functioning begin.
But it has become such a delicate play! A MINUTE thing, minute, can throw everything out of gearone simple ordinary movement. If through habit you slip back into the ordinary functioning (these are infinitesimal things, not easily seen, subtle, tenuous; one must be very, very, VERY alert), if this happens, the whole new thing stops. Then you have to wait. Wait until the ordinary functioning consents to stop, and that means meditating, entering into contemplationgoing over the whole path again. Then, when you have caught h old of That again and can stay there for a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes (its marvelous when it lasts a few minutes). And then it gets jammed again and everything has to be done over.
--
Its that old habit, the old fear of being lazy. It took me. But Sri Aurobindo cured me of that rather quickly. Thats how it was before I met him. And thats the first thing he did: he gave me a tap on the head, and all activity ceasedtotal silence, all mental constructions and habits swept away in the blink of an eye.
I was very careful not to let it come back.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had said [on April 3] I would find the date of my first encounter with that fake Sri Aurobindo. What I found was the date of another experience that followed that encounter by perhaps three or four weeks, so that pins it down (Mother h olds up an old desk-calendar page on which she had written:)
Night of July 24-25, 59: first penetration of the supramental force into the body. Sri Aurobindo alive in a concrete and permanent subtle physical body.
--
(Somewhat later, Mother gives Satprem the old desk-calendar page on which she had noted the experience of July 24-25, 59the first meeting with Sri Aurobindo in the subtle physicalalong with another sheet of paper on which she had written: I am only realizing what He has conceived. I am only the protagonist and the continuator of His work.6 Mother explains.)
Some people wanted to get me nominated for the Nobel peace prize; I was asked for a statement and thats what I wrote. I wanted to say that it wasnt this person who did thingsit was all Sri Aurobindo.
0 1962-05-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I have the perception a sensation, really, the sensation of something not at all me, but entrusted to me. More and more now, there is the feeling of something being entrusted to me in the universal organization for a definite purpose. Thats really the sensation I have now (the mind is very calm, so its difficult to express I dont think all these things, they are more like perceptions). And its not the usual kind of sensation: the ONLY (I insist on this), the ONLY sensation that remains in the old way is physical pain. And really, those points of pain they seem like the SYMBOLIC POINTS of what remains of the old consciousness.
Pain is the one thing I sense the way I used to. Food, for instance, taste, smell, vision, hearingall thats completely changed. They belong to another rhythm. And this condition has come progressively, like a crystallization of something behind the senses that doesnt come from herein taste, smell, vision, hearing, touch. Except this one point. Even the sense of touch is different now but PAIN.
Pain is the old world.
Its quite odd, you know; pain is like the symbolic (and rather too concrete!) sign of life in the Ignorance.
--
Something really radical has happened, in the sense that. I tried once just to see if I could do it (I had wisely been t old not to try) and I didnt succeed: I cant go back to the old way of relating to my body. Its impossible.
What is coming back is the way objects the whole mass of material substance making up this bodys environmenthad been organized; thats what is coming back, with some small changes (none of this comes through the head; the head has nothing to do with it). It is a sort of formation reconcretizing itself for lifes outer organization.
The old way of relating no longer exists at all.
(silence)
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What we should actually do is make a selection and only talk about aphorisms that give us an opportunity to explain a few things. But these two. People arent ready to understand. And besides, they dont fit the style of the Bulletin. What we need is a combat magazine, a journal that combats all the ordinary ideas; then all these aphorisms (the ones on doctors, for instance) would be like yes, like commanders in the battle. A journal with the goal of demolishing the old idols. Something along those lines. It would be very interesting to do such a magazinea combat magazine.
But it cant be an Ashram organ. It should look like a literary review (it cant be politicalyoud be thrown in jail the day after it came out!). It shouldnt be presented as something practical, but merely as literary or philosophical speculation; that wouldnt matter at all, but it would give the journal a certain security which, as a combat magazine, it would need.
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously its the continuation of the same experience I t old you about,1 but now it has come to this. I mean the two states are now distinctnoticeably distinct; but so far I havent found either the why or the wherefore. Is it something coming from outside or just an old rut: yes, it really feels like an old rut, like a wrinkle in a piece of cloth; you know, you iron it out again and again, and the wrinkle comes back. Thats more the feeling it gives menot at all a conscious habit, just an old rut. But might something from outside also be provoking it?
And the dreams it gives me! Oh, theres a whole series of them, with particular styles and categories. You start down a flight of stairsno more stairs; you want to take a certain road the road closes; you want to catch someoneyou cant. All kinds of things. And although these dreams (I have a whole collection of them, in fact) recur with certain minor outward differences, they are all of the same type. Its a well-known type which I now classify as self-imposed troubles. When I get out of it and look, I see very clearly that its only this nasty habit we have of fretting over nothing! (Laughingly) Oh, whatever we want to do, immediately theres a complication, a difficulty.
--
The only thing to do is not torment yourself and to say to the Lord (in all sincerity, of course), Its up to You. Rid me of this. And it is very effective. Very effective. At times I have had old things like that dissolved in a flash; certain inveterate little habitsso stupid, but so ingrained you cant get rid of them. Then, while doing japa or walking or meditating or whatever, suddenly the flame flares up and (you have really had enough of it; it disgusts you, you want it to change, you really want the change) and you say to the Lord, I cant do it on my own. (You very sincerely know you cant do it; you have tried and tried and tried and have achieved exactly nothingyou cant do it.) Well then, I offer it to YouYou do it. Just like that. And all at once you see the thing fading away. It is simply wonderful. You know how Sri Aurobindo used to take away someones pain? Its exactly the same. Certain habits bound up with the bodys formation.
One day I will certainly use the same method on those room changes, but for that it will have to become very clear and distinct, well defined in the consciousness. Because that change of room (intellectually you would call it a change of consciousness, but that means nothing at all; were dealing here with something very, very material) I have sometimes gone through it without experiencing ANY CHANGE OF EFFECT, which probably means I was centered not in the material consciousness but in a higher consciousness dwelling and looking on from elsewherea witness consciousness and I was in a state where everything flows flows like a river of tranquil peace. Truly, its marvelousall creation, all life, all movements, all things, and everything like a single mass, with the body in the midst of it all, blending homogeneously with the whole and it all flows on like a river of peace, peaceful and smiling, on to infinity. And then oops! You trip (gesture of inversion2) and once again find yourself SITUATEDyou ARE somewhere, at some specific moment of time; and then theres a pain here, a pain there, a pain. And sometimes I have seen, I have witnessed the change from the one to the other WITHOUT feeling the pains or experiencing the thing concretely, which means that I wasnt at all in the body, I wasnt BOUND to the body I was seeing, only seeing, just like a witness. And its always accompanied by the kind of observation an indulgent (but not blind) friend might make: But why? Why that again? Thats how it comes. Whats the use of that? And I cant catch h old of what makes it happen.
--
It is plainly something hooked up with other people and reacting to them. But this hook-up is something I cannot undoits the product of years of work, years of universalization, and I am not going to spend my time undoing it now! I dont want to. I dont want to find anything for myself alone; I have no personal interest whatsoever. I havent stayed on for that. I have to find the mechanism. Moreover, I have been doing just the opposite: every time I am in that state I spread it around, I pass it on. But that may be why these old habits come in.
***
0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then someone came. There are symbolic people in these dreams; they seem to be made up of various parts of the beings of those around me, people who have a particular relationship with me and bring a particular help to the Work. They are symbolic characters and always the same: one of them is tall and thin, some are small, there are young ones, old ones. I cant say its this person or that person, but rather that something IN this or that person is represented in these characters. And one of them is like a big brotherhe helps out in certain circumstances; if theres a boat, for instance, the big brother steers it. So he came up to me and said, Yes, I know the method, and began to try. Stop, for heavens sake! I said. Youll spoil everything; to make it work I have to say: I WANT TO GO THERE. When he began trying to bring me across with his own methods, the water grew muddy again and I started to sink! No no no! I protested. Dont do that, thats notit at all! THAT has to (although I wasnt formulating it to myself, what I meant was the sense of a certain higher Will) THAT has to say: I WANT TO GO THERE; then it works.
After that, the experience changed, other things happened. But what I have just related is certainly part and parcel of that experience the other day [the two rooms, one inside the other], because the two were coexistent.1
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But one thing has happened practically without my noticing it. In the past, before that experience [April 13], the body used to feel the struggle against the forces of wear and tear (different organs wearing out, losing their endurance, their power of reaction, and certain movements, for instance, becoming less easy to make). Thats what the body felt, although the body-consciousness never sensed any aging, never, none that simply didnt exist. But in actual material fact, there was some difficulty. And now, looking at it in the ordinary way, externally, superficially, you might say there has been a great deterioration; well, the body doesnt feel that way at all! What it feels is that a particular movement, effort, gesture or action belongs to the worldthis world of ignorance and isnt being performed in the true way: its not the true movement, done in the true way. And its sensation or perception is that the state I was speaking of, soft, with no angles, has to develop along a certain line and produce effects on the body that will make true action possible, action expressing the true will. With no difference on the surface, perhaps (I dont know about that yet) but done in another way. And I am not talking about grandiose things, mind you, but of everyday activities: getting up, walking, taking a bath. I no longer have a feeling of incapacity, but a feeling of (whats the word for it?) an unwillingnessa bodily unwillingnessto do things in the old way.
There is another way to be found.
0 1962-06-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The notion of subjective and objective STILL belongs to the old world and to the three, or at most four, dimensions. It is one and the same Power that changes the interrelations within one and the same element; to put things simply, the Power that gives the subjective experience AND the objective realization is the same; it is only a matter of a greater or lesser totality of experience, as it were. And if the experience were total it would be the experience of the Supreme, and it would be universal.
Does what I am saying make any sense?
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Everything that happened prior to the experience of April 13 has disappeared, as it were, and the usual functioning of the consciousness has been totally annulled; it is trying little by little to create a new mode of operationnot merely trying: it is in the PROCESS of doing so on a truer foundation; a truer foundation, or truer relations, or vibrations, or functionings (I dont know the right word for it: all these things at once). That presence the other day [the tall white Being] was nothing essentially newit had already intervened a good many times; and yet it was new, because the whole functioning was new. Its like my experience two nights ago [the recharging of batteries], I had it for months on end; well, it was new because it was based on a new functioning. And each time (is it out of habit, or to make me understand, to make me see the difference?), each time the old functioning starts up, first of all I really feel I am losing the true contact, that the TRUE thing is escaping, and then I wonder how anybody can function like that without going insane! Thats what strikes me nowthis feeling of going insane! I mean it grates, it scrapes, it makes no senseit misses the point. It is not the TRUE thing, its beside the point. It tries to imitate something inimitable. And so I ask myself, What is this? Am I going crazy? Am I losing my faculties? And then I realize its not that at all! Above theres a state of immutable and UNSHAKABLE concentration, constant and almighty, and with but a drop of That, a spark of That, all problems are solved. Then I see clearly that its only a demonstration to make me see the inadequacy of the old, habitual functioningto really and truly convince me that its inadequate. Its rather hard to bear, actually. Last night I had it, I have seen it again in recent days: it lasts a few secondsjust enough for a satisfactory lesson! It may also happen to make me understand, but afterwards I wonder, Well, if everybody is in this state they dont know it, but its just terrible! And I realize that the LEAST thing, the slightest circumstance, is COMPLETELY distorted, instantly distorted by the way people work it out, the way they cause events to develop.
Thats an ever-present experience.
--
Someone reads me a letter, for instance, and I have to answer; and there, superimposed, are both functionings: the ordinary reaction coming from above (nothing from here: it comes from above but its the ordinary reaction) and if I follow that and start writing, after a moment comes a kind of sensation that its inadequate; and then theres the other functioning which is not yet (whats the word? I should be speaking in English!) handy, not yet at my disposal. I have to keep myself quiet, then it starts operating [the new functioning]. But when theres something to be done, the two are superimposed and I have to keep the old one quiet for the other to come. And the other one ohh, it has some unexpected ways! I answer a letter, for example, or I want to say something to someone: my old way is an expression of what comes from above (it is luminous enough, but ADAPTED) but then theres that sensation of inadequacyit wont do. All right. I step back and something else comes; and what comes, I must admit its enough to drive people crazy! Its so MUCH SOMETHING ELSE!
I wrote a letter like that yesterday; I took a piece of paper and wrote in my habitual way, my old way. While I was writing, the feeling that it wasnt right came in; then I added a comment, written in the same manner, with the vision from above (a comment on a letter written by the person I was writing to). When that was done, the feeling of inadequacy lingered, so I took another piece of paperit was blue and wrote something and that still wasnt it. So I ended up taking yet another piece of paper and writing something else again then I put all three in one envelope! I hope that person has a solid head! But at the same time something was telling me, It will do him good; so I let it go.
It happened yesterday I dont yet know the outcome!
--
Ageless something neither young nor old nor something totally different. And tall, strong.
Thats how I see myself.
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother gives Satprem an old note to keepunfortunately, he does not recall exactly what it wasone of those little scraps of paper, scattered about almost everywhere, on which Mother would jot down notations of her experiences; or, to be more exact, on which she concretized in material words the Force then manifesting. As a comment on this note, Mother adds:)
I have experienced this hundreds and hundreds of times: one has a deep, true experience, but the mind, even the higher mind, immediately latches onto it (usually its the higher mind) and very actively makes its OWN thing out of the experience, thus bringing in its own distortion.
--
As a child, when I was around ten or twelve years old, I had some rather interesting experiences which I didnt understand at all. I had some history booksyou know, the textbooks they give you to learn history. Well, Id read and suddenly the book would seem to become transparent, or the printed words would become transparent, and Id see other words or even pictures. I hadnt the faintest idea what was happening to me! And it appeared so natural to me that I thought it was the same for everybody. But my brother and I were great chums (he was only a year and a half older), so I would tell him: They talk nonsense in history, you knowit is LIKE THIS; it isnt like that: it is LIKE THIS! And several times the corrections I got on one person or another turned out to be quite exact and detailed. And (I see it now I understood it later on) they were certainly memories. About some passages I would even say, How stupid! It was never that; THIS is what was said. It never happened like that; THIS is how it happened. And the book was simply open before me; I was just reading along like any other child and suddenly something would occur. It was something in me, of course, but I used to think it was in the book!
I found out many, many things about Joan of Arcmany things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I wont repeat them because I dont remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the French Renaissance: Franois I, Marguerite de Valois,2 and so forth.
Twice I knew that it wasnt just images but something that had happened to ME, but it took another form. Once (when I was older, around twenty) it happened at Versailles. I had been invited to dinner by a cousin who, with no warning, served me dry champagne during dinner and I drank it unsuspectingly (I who never drank at all, neither wine nor liquor!). When I had to get up and cross the crowded room, oh, how very difficult it became, so difficult! Then we went to a place near the chateau, with a view of the whole park. And I was staring at the park, when I saw I saw the park filling up with lights (the electric lights had vanished), with all kinds of lights, torches, lanterns and then crowds of people walking about in Louis XIV dress! I was staring at this with my eyes wide open, h olding on to the balustrade to keep from falling down (I wasnt too sure of myself!). I was seeing it all, then I saw myself there, engrossed in conversation with some people (I dont remember now, but there were certain corrections here too). I mean I was a certain person (I dont remember who) and there were those two brothers who were sculptors (Mother vainly tries to recollect the names3) anyhow, all kinds of people were there and I saw myself talking, chatting. And I seem to have been sufficiently in control of myself, because when I related all that I had seen, there were some quite interesting details and corrections. That was one time.
There was another time at Blois. They make Anjou wine at Blois. It was the same story: I never drank anything but water or herb tea, but there was a luncheon and they served us sparkling Anjou wine it seemed so light! Afterwards (I was with an artist friend, we were all artists) we went to see the museum, and it appears I was sparkling with wit! And I suddenly halted in front of a painting by now lets see, who was it? Cou? No, Clouet! Clouet: the princess one of the princesses.4 And I started making a few remarks out loud (it took me a little while to notice that people were listening). Look at this! I was saying. Just look at this! Look what this fellow has done to me! See what hes done to meit wasnt at all like that! It was actually a beautiful painting, but I was quite unhappy about it: Look what hes done to me! Lookhe made this like that, but thats not at all how it was, it was LIKE THIS! Details. And then I became aware (I wasnt too conscious physically) I realized that people were standing around listening, so I got a grip on myself, and left without a word. But I t old my friends, Listen, it was definitely me! It was MY portrait, it was ME!
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a while yesterday I was put in contact with the way people think, how they think. And I saw that I must be very careful; it is better to keep silent or theyll think Ive finally gone off the deep end! You know: She is getting old, theres arteriosclerosis of the brain, she is becoming a little silly, reverting to a second childhood. I saw this, its really funny. I saw, I was shown a whole way of thinking. Ah, they think theyre intelligent, they think they know a lot!
Anyhow.
--
But anyway, the old World is an old world in the true sense of the word. India is much, much older, but more alive. Yet now it strikes me as so very rotten! They went rotten. You know what happens when a rotten apple is put next to a good one: England came and stayed much too long. It made things go quite rotten. Very, very rotten; its difficult to heal. Otherwise, whats not rotten is truly good.
But there is a place where something is awakening, a small something like what little children and animals have, going like this (Mother imitates a baby bird poking its beak out of the nest and peering around), peep-peep-peep, oh, alert and eager to know: America. They have a carapace as hard as an automobilesit has to be hammered open, but underneath theres something that wants to know and knows nothing, nothing, is totally ignorant but oh, it wants to know! And this can be touched. They may be the first to awaken.
0 1962-07-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And do you know how this body is? It immediately began wondering (I was quietly watching it all from above), What if (ifs are always idiotic but its an old bodily habit), what if the object had been sharp, would the results have been so easy to annul? (Mother laughs) Then I distinctly heard someone reply (I am putting it into words), You idiot! That wouldnt have happened in the first place! That is, the necessary protection would have been there. The protection intervenes only when necessary, not just for the fun of it. You numbskull, it said (I am translating freely), how silly can you be! It wouldnt have happened.
But what a world it isa world of experiences! And the consciousness is somewhere way up high but seeing very clearly, watching with interest.
--
Oh, such humorous things happen. The other day I saw T. Her old mother lives in Moscow; shes very old and on her deathbed, and has asked T. to come see her. So T. is going to go there. Its a risky adventure. She wrote to ask if she could see me before leaving (I dont see anyone and I had no intention of receiving her, but it was decided in spite of me and I let her come). She had been t old not to speak, but thats impossible for such a chatterbox! So she began by lamenting (probably thinking it was the thing to do) over my serious illness and god knows what else I didnt listen. I simply t old her, No, its not that, its the yoga. Then, with the effervescence of an ignorant child: Yoga! But you shouldnt be doing yoga! You shouldnt be. Just then, the Lords face came (the Lords face often takes on Sri Aurobindos appearancean idealized Sri Aurobindo, not exactly as he was physically), and it came here (right up against Mothers face), and it was blue. Then It made my finger touch her cheek, like this (Mother seems to tap T.s cheek), and It t old that child, Little children dont know what theyre talking about. And it was so thoroughly Him! He was speaking and I saw only Him, his appearance: Little children dont know what theyre talking about.
I dont know how I looked (I was enjoying myself enormously), but she must have felt something (she didnt say a word), she must at least have felt something strange because a shudder went through her being. And I was t old that when she left, she said, I may come back before I leave, but I wont ask to see Mother! (Mother laughs.)
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other day, speaking of Europe, you said that the old World is truly old.
Ah, look at thisyesterday someone read me a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to Barin in April 1920, a few days before I returned from Japan. It was written in Bengalitremendously interesting! He speaks of the state of the world, particularly India, and of how he envisaged a certain part of his action after completing his yoga. Its extremely interesting. And theres some very high praise for Europe. Sri Aurobindo says something like this: You all think Europe is over and done with, but thats not true, its not finished yet. In other words, its power is still alive.
--
First, about your yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your yoga and I am willing to take it, but that means to give its charge to Him who is moving by His divine Shakti [Energy], whether secretly or openly, both you and me. But you must know that the necessary result of this will be that you will have to walk in the special path which He has given to me, the path which I call the path of the Integral Yoga. What I began with, what Lele1 gave me, was a seeking for the path, a circling in many directionsa first touch, a taking up, a handling and scrutiny of this or that in all the old partial yogas, some sort of complete experience of one and then the pursuit of another.
Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition came to an end. The Guru of the world who is within us then gave me complete directions for my pathits complete theory, the ten limbs of the body of this Yoga. These past ten years He has been making me develop it in experience, and this is not yet finished. It may take another two years, and as long as it is not finished I doubt if I shall be able to return to Bengal. Pondicherry is the appointed place for my yoga siddhi [realization], except indeed one part of it, and that is action. The centre of my work is Bengal, although I hope that its circumference will be all India and the whole earth.
I shall write and tell you afterwards what this way of yoga is. Or if you come here I shall speak to you about it. In this matter the spoken word is better than the written. At present I can only say that its root-principle is to make a harmony and unity of complete knowledge, complete works and complete Bhakti [Devotion], to raise all this above the mind and give it its complete perfection on the supramental level of Vijnana [Gnosis]. This was the defect of the old yoga the mind and the Spirit it knew, and it was satisfied with the experience of the Spirit in the mind. But the mind can grasp only the divided and partial; it cannot wholly seize the infinite and indivisible. The minds means to reach the infinite are Sannyasa [Renunciation], Moksha [Liberation] and Nirvana, and it has no others. One man or another may indeed attain this featureless Moksha, but what is the gain? The Brahman, the Self, God are ever present. What God wants in man is to embody Himself here in the individual and in the community, to realize God in life.
The old way of yoga failed to bring about the harmony or unity of Spirit and life: it instead dismissed the world as Maya [Illusion] or a transient Play. The result has been loss of life-power and the degeneration of India. As was said in the Gita, These peoples would perish if I did not do worksthese peoples of India have truly gone down to ruin. A few sannyasins and bairagis [renunciants] to be saintly and perfect and liberated, a few bhaktas [lovers of God] to dance in a mad ecstasy of love and sweet emotion and Ananda [Bliss], and a whole race to become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep tamas [inertia]is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the worlds final secret and the problem it raises remains unsolved. There, the ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Play of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. Then it becomes possible to fully know and fully realize Godto do what is said in the Gita, To know Me integrally. The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda these are the spirits five levels. The higher man rises on this ascent the nearer he comes to the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless Parabrahman [Absolute] but in the body, in life, in the world. The integral being, the integral consciousness, the integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.
This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this siddhi will be complete, then I am absolutely certain that through me God will give to others the siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in Gods appointed time. I have no hasty or disorderly impulse to rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but Gods. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me then I will move.
I know very well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not the real transformation. However this too was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old yogas and exhausting their samskaras [ old habitual tendencies], extracting their essence and with it fertilizing the soil. At first it was the time of VedantaAdwaita, Sannyasa, Shankaras Maya and the rest. It is now the turn of Vaishnava DharmaLila, love, the intoxication of emotional experience. All this is very old, unfitted for the new age and will not endure for such excitement has no capacity to last. But the merit of the Vaishnava Bhava [emotional enthusiasm] is that it keeps a connexion between God and the world and gives a meaning to life; but since it is a partial bhava the whole connexion, the full meaning is not there. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. The nature of the mind is to take a part and call it the whole and exclude all other parts. The Siddha [illuminated being] who brings the bhava, although he leans on its partial aspect, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral whole, even though he may not be able to give it form. But his disciples do not get that knowledge precisely because it is not in a form. They are tying up their little bundles, let them. The bundles will open of themselves when God manifests himself fully. These things are the signs of incompleteness and immaturity. I am not disturbed by them. Let the force of spirituality play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or the embryonic condition of the new age. It is a first hint, not even the beginning.
The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
What I am aiming at is not a society like the present rooted in division. What I have in view is a Samgha [community] founded in the spirit and in the image of its oneness. It is with this idea that the name Deva Samgha has been given the commune of those who want the divine life is the Deva Samgha. Such a Samgha will have to be established in one place at first and then spread all over the country. But if any shadow of egoism falls over this endeavor, then the Samgha will change into a sect. The idea may very naturally creep in that such and such a body is the one true Samgha of the future, the one and only centre, that all else must be its circumference, and that those outside its limits are not of the f old or even if they are, have gone astray, because they think differently.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, if I look at the order my own yoga took. When I was five years old (I must have begun earlier, but the memory is a bit vague and imprecise) but from five onwards, in my consciousness (not a mental memory buthow can I put it?its noted, a notation in my consciousness) well, I began with consciousness. Of course I had no idea what it was. But my first experience was of the consciousness here (gesture above the head), which I felt like a Light and a Force; and I felt it there (same gesture) at the age of five.
It was a very pleasant sensation. I would sit in a little armchair made especially for me, all alone in my room, and I (I didnt know what it was, you see, not a thing, nothingmentally zero) and I had a VERY PLEASANT feeling of something very strong, very luminous, and it was here (above the head). Consciousness. And I felt, Thats what I have to live, what I have to be. Not with all those words, naturally, but (Mother makes a gesture of aspiration Upward). Then I would pull it down, for it was it was truly my raison dtre.
That is my first memoryat five years old. Its impact was more on the ethical side than the intellectual; and yet it took an intellectual form too, since. You see, apparently I was a child like any other, except that I was hard to handle. Hard in the sense that I had no interest in food, no interest in ordinary games, no liking for going to my friends houses for snacks, because eating cake wasnt the least bit interesting! And it was impossible to punish me because I really couldnt have cared less: being deprived of dessert was rather a relief for me! And then I flatly refused to learn reading, I refused to learn. And even bathing me was very hard, because I was put in the care of an English governess, and that meant c old bathsmy brother took it in stride, but I just howled! Later it was found to be bad for me (the doctor said so), but that was much later. So you get the picture.
But whenever there was unpleasantness with my relatives, with playmates or friends, I would feel all the nastiness or bad willall sorts of pretty ugly things that came (I was rather sensitive, for I instinctively nurtured an ideal of beauty and harmony, which all the circumstances of life kept denying) so whenever I felt sad, I was most careful not to say anything to my mother or father, because my father didnt give a hoot and my mother would sc old me that was always the first thing she did. And so I would go to my room and sit down in my little armchair, and there I could concentrate and try to understand in my own way. And I remember that after quite a few probably fruitless attempts I wound up telling myself (I always used to talk to myself; I dont know why or how, but I would talk to myself just as I talked to others): Look here, you feel sad because so-and-so said something really disgusting to you but why does that make you cry? Why are you so sad? Hes the one who was bad, so he should be crying. You didnt do anything bad to him. Did you tell him nasty things? Did you fight with her, or with him? No, you didnt do anything, did you; well then, you neednt feel sad. You should only be sad if youve done something bad, but. So that settled it: I would never cry. With just a slight inward movement, or something that said, Youve done no wrong, there was no sadness.
--
Next came the period of learning and developing, but on an ordinary mental levelschool years.1 Curiosity made me want to learn to read. Did I tell you how it happened? When I was around seven, just under seven, my brother, who was eighteen months older, used to bring big pictures home from school with him (you know, pictures for children with captions at the bottom; theyre still used nowadays) and he gave me one of them. Whats written there? I asked. Read it! he said. Dont know how, I replied. Then learn! All right, I t old him, show me the letters. He brought me an A-B-C book. I knew it within two days and on the third day I started reading. Thats how I learned. Oh-oh, they used to say, this child is backward! Seven years old and she still cant readdisgraceful! The whole family fretted about it. And then lo and beh old, in about a week I knew what should have taken me years to learnit made them think twice!
Then, school years. I was a very bright student, always for the same reason: I wanted to understand. I wasnt interested in learning things by heart like the others did I wanted to understand them. And what a memory I had, a fantastic memory for sounds and images! I had only to read a poem aloud at night, and the next morning I knew it. And after I had studied or read a book and someone mentioned a passage to me, I would say, Ah, yes thats on page so and so. I would find the page. Nothing had faded, it was all still fresh. But this is the ordinary period of development.
--
Is it different for men? I dont know. Sri Aurobindos case was quite special, and apart from him I dont see any convincing example. But generally speaking, what is most developed in a man, along with the mind, is the physical consciousness; the vital is very impulsive, practically ungoverned. Thats my experience of the hundreds and hundreds of men I have met. Theres normally a physical strength built up through games and exercises, and side by side a more or less advanced, but primarily mental development, very mental. The vital is terribly impulsive and barely organized, except in artists, and even there. I lived among artists for ten years and found this ground to be mostly fallow. I mingled with all the great artists of the time, I was like a kid sister to them (it was at the turn of the century, with the Universal Exposition in 1900; and these were the leading artists of the epoch); so I was by far the youngest, much younger than any of themthey were all thirty, thirty-five, forty years old, while I was nineteen or twenty. Well I was much more advanced in their own fieldnot in what I was producing (I was a perfectly ordinary artist), but from the viewpoint of consciousness: observations, experiences, studies.
I am not sure, but it seems to me that the problem of consciousness ought to come first.
--
Some receive it from above; for others, it rises from below (gesture to the base of the spine). As I once t old you, the old system always proceeds from below upwards, while Sri Aurobindo pulls from above downwards. This becomes very clear in meditation (well, in yoga, in yogic experience): for those who follow the old system, its invariably the kundalini at the base [of the spine] rising from center to center, center to center, until the lotus (in an ironic tone) bursts open here gesture at the crown of the head). With Sri Aurobindo, it comes like this (gesture of descending Force) and then settles here (above the head); it enters, and from there it comes down, down, down, everywhere, to the very bottom, and even below the feet the subconscientand lower still, the inconscient.
Its the Shakti. He said, you know (I am still translating it), that the shakti drawn up from below (this is what happens in the individual process) is already what could be called a veiled shakti (it has power, but it is veiled). While the Shakti drawn down from above is a PURE Shakti; and if it can be brought down carefully and slowly enough so that it isnt (how shall I put it?) polluted or, in any case, obscured as it enters matter, then the result is immediately much better. As he has explained, if you start out with this feeling of a great power in yourself (because its always a great power no matter where it awakens), theres inevitably a danger of the ego meddling in. But if it comes pure and you are very careful to keep it pure, not to rush the movement but let it purify as it descends, then half the work is done.
0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have the feeling that, consciously or unconsciously (I dont know which), this gentleman has become a tool of Catholic resistance. It is very strong in the old World and in America as well, although there its more Christian than specifically Catholic. But its terribly strong in France: it tries to take advantage of every opening and to block whatever might take a new turn.
It will give way.
0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am making some interesting discoveries. They arent really discoveries, but nowadays none of these things are theoretical, not the least bit mental (the mind is in a quiet ease)theyre essentially practical. And they take unexpected forms. The other day as I was walking, an old formation suddenly popped up, some. thing that had already tried to materialize when Sri Aurobindo was still here, but which he had stopped. It was one possibility among innumerable others, trying to manifest in this bodys existence I wont say what it is.
It was one of the very saddest things that could manifest physically in association with a spiritual life.
--
Ive had this great formative power ever since my earliest childhood, but I had channeled it and stopped it because I considered it useless. But it came back recently, along with the sure sign that it was coming from the very highest origin: This is it, this is how things will be. But thats for later, of course. To our external reason, those things seem totally unrealizable, but they will be realizable in perhaps a few hundred years, I dont knowits the future being prepared. And indeed, that vision has a tremendous power of creation and realization, and it is always felt physically (the rest is very still), its always physical. But it triggered a kind of very rapid movement of the physical consciousness (within the most material substance), and caused a dislocation. And so2 the day before yesterday, that old formation suddenly returned and made me understand one aspect of the bodys nature, the way the body is CONSTRUCTED and the usefulness of that construction. So now things are all right. It has been one more step.
But when you receive those bad vibrations affecting your body,3 are they exhausted by your accepting them?
Its not that I receive bad vibrations, but that the physical substance is not entirely (how can I explain?) in the proper movement or rhythm. For instance, between the vision of that old formation I spoke of and this (I cant call it a toothache, but anyway, something went wrong) there was no visible connection to speak of. The toothache wasnt caused by a particular vibration, its rather as if one thing or another provided the opportunity for absorbing a certain quantity or type of vibration (its more a quantity than a typeprobably both), a vibratory MODE, in order to put it in contact with THE vibratory mode the divine one.
But I understand your question. You want to know if this has an effect on all identical vibratory modes in the world. In principle, yes. But the effects may not be immediately visible; in the first place, our field of observation is nothingmaterially, what do we know? Only our immediate surroundings thats nothing. In 1920, for example, I had an experience of that type, which resulted in a symbolic but terrestrial action. It was a vision (I dont remember enough details to make it interesting) where each nation was represented by a symbolic entity, and there was a certain type of horrorof terror, rather. A certain will of terror was trying to manifest in that gathering of all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the subtle physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I dont remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could say with TOTAL conviction: Terror has been overcome in the world. Of course, its not literally true, plenty of people still feel terror, but a certain type of terror was as if UNDERMINED at the foundations. What had already manifested kept on and is gradually being exhausted, but the terror that was trying to increase and dominate the life of nations was stopped c old.
--
Mother's cheek is swollen from an abscessed tooth.... Note that Satprem had assumed that "I never thought this would have any consequences" referred to the visit from the old formation. Mother corrected: "It is subtler than that! I didn't think THAT EXPERIENCE would have any consequences, because the old formation is meaningless nowit was connected with Sri Aurobindo (I didn't want to say it, but it was connected with Sri Aurobindo's physical presence), so now it has no more meaning, it cannot be realized. He did what was necessary to make its realization utterly impossible. But this experience is like a REMINDER of what was. I didn't think it would have any consequences, but it did!"
Mother touches her cheek.
Later, Satprem asked if this "and so" was connected to what precedes itif the old formation was connected to the vision of the future. Mother answered: "I think it is connected. I am not sure, but I think it is. I have the feeling that this curve of future realization is what put me in contact with the old formations that used to come to me [formations of creative imagination], and this put me in contact with one of the body's habits, and so on; and that habit of the body triggered this kind of toothache."
The abscessed tooth.
0 1962-08-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It will probably be that way one daynothing will have the power to make one fall back into the old movement.
For I got up, walked around, washed and so onnothing could shake That; everything went smoothly, they [Mothers activities] didnt take up any room, (laughing) they were off somewhere and didnt disrupt anything!
0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a fellow (hes neither young nor old) who has been living for twenty-five straight years at one of the sources of the Ganges, in a small cave carved into the mountainsidea tiny, bare space, an earth floor and a tiger skin. He sits on the tiger skin stark naked, without a stitch, naked as a newborn babe, in the dead of winter as well as in summeroutside everything is covered with snow. He eats sometimes passers-by bring him fruit, which he dries in the sun, then puts into water and drinks. Thats all. He hasnt once left there in twenty-five years.
One of our children, V., a courageous boy, went up there all by himself. In winter its completely isolated, theres nothing nearby. It was May and still frightfully c old, it seems, snow still covered the ground. And the man was sitting there stark naked as though it were perfectly natural! He even asked the boy, Do you want to spend the night here? That was a bit too much!
0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres still a bit too much of the old outlook left in you, and thats what keeps worrying you. Something that keeps worrying you, and which is perfectly uselesswe waste our time worrying.
Sri Aurobindo withdrew in 1926, but it was in 1927 that he moved from the Ashram's left wing and settled permanently in the right wing.
0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, the subtle physical seems to DOSE OUT its power and light and capacity of consciousness according to the amount of receptivity in the purely physical vibration. Thats why the effects stretch over a long period of time. Its being done very, very gradually. But its an almost continuous work. Only when theres some bodily activity and the consciousness must turn outwards (not in the same way as before, thats impossible, but still in a way that seems like a continuation of the old consciousness), then, if the work continues at all, its invisible and maybe it doesnt continue. I dont know. But as soon as all activity stops and the body is concentrated or immobileperhaps no more than simply passive that penetration is perceptible: its visible. Visible. And its not like something more subtle penetrating something less subtle without altering it; the essential point is that this penetration actually changes the composition. Its not merely a degree of subtlety, its a change in the internal composition. Ultimately, this action probably has an effect on the atomic level. And thats how the practical possibility of transformation can be accounted for.
Its an experience I have all the time.
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, I am not speaking of what the universal Mother can know, thats quite another category! I am speaking of the experience of the psychic being, the purely terrestrial experience. Well, very few things seem in fact, none of them seem alien or unknown to me. The human state of mind, ah yes! Since my early childhood, I have been flabbergasted by the way people think and feelit seemed monstrous. But as for the circumstances and events of life, thats all more or less old hat.
The experiences that left the most acute impressions on me (Mother makes a poignant gesture)you know, the kind of things that make you say, Oh, no, not that again, Ive had enough!are connected with my lives as a monarch: empress, queen and the like oh! Those are painful impressions, the most painful of all. And I have a keen memory of a resolution taken in my last life as an empress: Never again! I said. Ive had enough, I want no more of it! Id rather be not even Id rather be, I chose deliberately: I WANT to be an obscure being in an obscure family, free at last to do what I want! And thats the first thing I remembered this time: Yes, its an obscure family, an obscure being in an obscure milieu, so I may be free to do what I want; there isnt a horde of people watching me and spying on everything I do and plaguing me with rules about what I ought to be doing.
0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He said he would come here when I called for him; I sent him word that I wouldnt call himbecause I cant disturb such an old man and not even be able to see him!
(Mother looks at the photo) He looks like a good man.
0 1962-09-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats the essential failing of the old yogic system: things go quite nicely on the level where they practice yoga, but as soon as they descend, theyre worse than everyone else!
***
--
In the middle of the First World War, Sri Aurobindo noted with prophetic force: The defeat of Germany could not of itself kill the spirit then incarnate in Germany; it may well lead merely to a new incarnation of it, perhaps in some other race or empire, and the whole battle would then have to be fought over again. So long as the old gods are alive, the breaking or depression of the body which they animate is a small matter, for they know well how to transmigrate. Germany overthrew the Napoleonic spirit in France in 1813 and broke the remnants of her European leadership in 1870; the same Germany became the incarnation of that which it had overthrown. The phenomenon is easily capable of renewal on a more formidable scale.2 Today we are finding that the old gods know how to transmigrate. Gandhi himself, seeing all those years of nonviolence culminate in the terrible violence that marked Indias partition in 1947, ruefully observed shortly before his death: The attitude of violence which we have secretly harboured now recoils on us, and makes us fly at each others throats when the question of distribution of power arises. Now that the burden of subjection is lifted, all the forces of evil have come to the surface. For neither nonviolence nor violence touch upon the root of Evil.
Ahimsa: nonviolence.
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I have a strong impression that that world is still a magnified version of our own, and part of the old path; it has nothing to do with the Supramental Creation, which will bring to earth the sense of the Supreme and the Unique.
Basically, its part of the old path, a consequence of all that has happened, of the whole universal formation as we know it. People who believe in essential Evil would say its a consequence of the accident of creation. But is it an accident? I have my doubts. It has yet to be revealed. And we wont know until until its over.
I am speaking in riddles, but what else can I do!
0 1962-09-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Concerning an old Talk of October 3, 1956, to be published in the next "Bulletin":)
This is what you say:
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
78When knowledge is fresh in us, then it is invincible; when it is old, it loses its virtue. This is because God moves always forward.
So, whats your question?
--
In ordinary life, you think of things, then you do them but this is just the opposite! In this life you have to do things first and understand afterwards but long afterwards. You have to act first, without thinking. If you think, you get nowhere; youre just reverting to the old way of doing things.
***
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But theres a constant invasion: the old consciousness, the old thoughts.
Yes, out of habit it all tries to start up again. But all you need to say is, Look, Lord; see, see how it is. Thats all. Look at this, Lord, look at that, look at this idiot here and its over. Immediately. And the change comes automatically, mon petit, without the slightest effort. Simply simply be sincere, in other words, TRULY want the right thing. One is quite conscious of being powerless, utterly incompetent: more and more, I feel that this amalgam of matter, of cells and all the rest, is just pitiful! Pitiful. I dont know, under certain conditions people may feel powerful, wonderful, luminous, competent but as far as I am concerned, thats because they have no idea what theyre really like! When you really see what youre made of its nothing, really nothing. But its capable of anything, provided provided you let the Lord do it. The trouble is that something always wants to do things on its own. If it werent like that.
--
All this is now ancient historyVERY old. Its not like that at all any more.
Oh, we make things complicated for nothing!
--
But this Presence in all things. It is a Vibrationa Vibration containing everything. A Vibration containing a sort of infinite power, infinite joy, infinite peace, and immensity, IMMENSITY, IMMENSITY: its boundless. But it is solely a Vibration, it doesnt. Oh, Lord! It cant be thought, so it cant be described. If you think as soon as you start thinking, its the same old mess again. Thats why you cant say anything.
Indeed, He is far because you think He is far. If you could just, you know, think of Him being right here, like this (gesture close to the face), touching you if you could feel this. Its not like touching another person, its not like that. Its not something foreign, external, coming to you from outsideno! Its everywhere.
--
Sri Aurobindo's old cook, round as a barrel.
It is quite remarkable that it was the body-consciousness that discoverednine years after his passingSri Aurobindo's abode (experience of July 24-25, 1959). The world where Mother went is thus a material world, not an "inner" world. The other Matter, the true Matter? We recall that in her very last Playground class, on November 28, 1958, Mother said: "Through each individual formation, physical substance progresses, and one day it will be able to build a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life that is to manifest."
0 1962-10-16, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this is just what I am realizing (I dont think its anything unique or exceptional): the closer one draws to the cell itself, the more the cell says, But I am immortal! Only it must become conscious. But this takes place almost automatically: the brain cells are very conscious; the cells of the hands and arms of musicians are very conscious; with athletes and gymnasts, the cells of the entire body are wonderfully conscious. So, being conscious, those cells become conscious of their principle of immortality and say, Why would I want to grow old? Why! They dont want to grow old. It is very interesting.
So all the ideas I used to have about death, all the things I have said about death, practically all the things I have consciously DONE2oh! I have realized that all this, too, belongs to the past, and to a past of Ignorance. Here also, I will probably have other things to say later.
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There used to be a bad attitude in the body, which always hampered my playing, and now that it has gone, I would like to see what happens. It was something in the subconscient standing in the way: everything you learn when you study music, that you cant play this note with that note and so forth and so on. I would tune in above and listen there, but those old subconscious habits kept interfering. That has all changed now and I would like to see what happensit may yield only cacophony!
But what I play isnt music, I dont try to play music: its simply a sort of meditation with sound.
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But that was ages ago. I have done a lot of things since then. It was long ago, in 1912. And now oh, this old carcass!
It does its best.
0 1962-11-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And sometimes it becomes terribly personal, as if you were being personally attacked. I have a whole theme of such things which cant even be spoken about because theyre too personalpersonal in that they appear to involve this body. Last night (ah, by the way, I remember noticing I was physically youngit was in the subtle physical, of course, and I was quite young) but what a life I led, with so many oh, revolutions, battles; I was involved in everything, there was tremendous activity. But I was being personally harassed by four or five of the most vile and disgusting old swine, and I had to confront them, h old them in place, keep them under control and make them obey. Ohh, was I glad to wake up! (It was time to get up; these things always stop automatically because I make it a point to get out of there at four-thirty) But the images, the sensations that went along with it. Oh, how is it possible! And I was fully conscious of the usefulness of this work: I was keeping them under control.1 But the things it involves ugh! Because for me, all knowledge is through identityeven in the subconscient its a knowledge through identityso you can imagine what that means.
Yes oh, there are some horrible beings there!
0 1962-11-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My method is essentially very simple: for each thing that comes, I say, Here, Lord, its for You; change it, transform it. A work of offering and dedication (gesture of presenting something to the Light). And this morning there was a sort of replynot exactly to a question, but as though I were wondering How do I do it? (because the Lord tells me I am here for His work), How do I do His work? Whats the new way of doing the Work? We know all the old ways, but whats the new way? And the reply came, very concrete, without words: By bringing the two extremes together. Everything you see, everything that comes to you or that you discover is automatically put in the presence of the Most High, of the Supreme. You join the two extremes. Your whole work is to make the junction.
And now you read me all this! Its as if you were explaining itdont you find that interesting! (Mother laughs) I find it VERY interesting.
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
August 15th, 1947 is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity.
August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the world-movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large part and take a leading position.
The first of these dreams was a revolutionary movement which would create a free and united India. India today is free but she has not achieved unity. () The old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. Indias internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go.8 ()
Sri Aurobindo
--
In April 1942, when England was struggling against the Nazis and Japan, which was threatening to invade Burma and India, Churchill sent an emissary, Sir Stafford Cripps, to New Delhi with a very generous proposal which he hoped would rally India's goodwill and cooperation in the fight against the worldwide threat. In this proposal, Great Britain offered India Dominion status, as a first step towards an independent government. Sri Aurobindo at once came out of retirement to wire his adhesion to Cripps; he wired all of India's leaders, and even sent a personal messenger to Gandhi and the Indian Congress to convince them to accept this unhoped for proposal without delay. One of Sri Aurobindo's telegrams to Rajagopalachari (the future President of India) spoke of the grave danger, which no one seemed to see, of rejecting Cripps' proposal: "... Some immediate solution urgent face grave peril. Appeal to you to save India formidable danger new foreign domination when old on way to self-elimination." No one understood: "Why is he meddling?" Had it accepted Dominion status, India would have avoided the partition of the country in two, the artificial creation of Pakistan, as well as the three wars that were to follow (and which we haven't heard the last of), and the blood bath that ravaged Bengal and the Punjab in 1947 at the time of the partition. (See in Addendum an extract from Sri Aurobindo's message on the occasion of India's Independence.)
There is another side to the story. When Nehru died, Mother said in a message of May 27, 1964: "Nehru leaves his body but his soul is ONE with the Soul of India, that lives for Eternity."
0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Not many airplanes have pilots nowadays thats old-fashioned. The planes do their business all by themselves. They are completely automatic. So whats needed is truly a Power that can act on the most mechanical matter. I mean for protection, for instance: these things dont depend on human wills, nor even on beings of the terrestrial atmosphere the Supreme alone can decide. Just as He decides This is to be done, so He also decides [This wont be]. Thats all. He is the only recourse.
Theres no longer any hope that a human being can give protection by his own powerit doesnt work any more. If the Lord is protecting you, fine, nothing will happen to you. But as far as knowing what Hes going to decide. For if He decides upon such a destruction, it means the earth truly needs itotherwise He wouldnt decide it.
--
I woke up after two thousand years with a rejuvenated body. It was a very amusing little story. And I say vision, but you dont watch these things like a movie: you LIVE them. I somehow extricated myself from that sort of sealed grotto, and where Pondicherry had once stood (it had been completely razed), I came upon some people working. They were VERY DIFFERENT, and quite bizarre. I myself must have looked funny, with a kind of costume totally alien to their epoch. (My clothing had also survived the destruction the whole thing was right out of a storybook!) So of course I attracted some curiosity and they tried to make me understand. Ah, yes I know one of them said (I understood them because I could understand their thoughtsthose two thousand years had enabled me to read peoples minds), and they led me to a very old sage, a wise old fellow. I spoke to him and he began leafing through all kinds of books (he had many, many books), and suddenly he exclaimed, Ah, French! An ancient language, you see (Mother laughs).
It was very funny. I t old the story to Sri Aurobindo, and he had a good laugh.
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can see I am still (and God knows how long it will last!) in that transitional period Sri Aurobindo describes in The Yoga of Self-Perfection. A period when the true thing is getting established but the tail of the old thing trails behind, mixes in and colors things. Well, its an old habit, and it takes SUCH a long time to go away.
The habit of not understanding something unless it can be mentally explained is disastrous, for instance. This feeling we have that we dont understand something unless we can explain it thats really disastrous. That half-hours experience was something absolute, you see, not for one second was there any concern to know what was going on (naturally!); it was absolute. And only when the time was up and I had to come out of it did I start wondering, What happened? What does it mean? It wasnt even that pronounced. Its simply an old habit, what we call understanding.
A bad habit.
0 1962-12-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What he is now striving to give this body is the consciousness of Permanence, of Immortality, of the Certitude of absolute securityin Matter, in Life, in every moments action. And that is becoming nearer and nearer, more and more constant. Gradually, the mixture of old impressions is disappearing thats the BEDROCK, the basis of the transformation.
In the true movement, you feel the Absolute and Eternity physically. How? Its impossible to describe, but thats how it is. And the minute you get out of That, when you fall back even slightly into the ordinary movement, the old movement, theres a feeling of ABSOLUTE uncertainty! Uncertainty at every second. It would be impossible for an ordinary human being to live in that consciousness, with that sense of total and absolute uncertainty, of total and absolute impermanenceits no longer a destruction,1 but its not yet an ascending transformation. Absolute instability. It doesnt last more than a fraction of a secondjust enough time to become aware of oneself, thats all.
If the other movement werent getting more and more established, it would be unbearable, as they say in English.
0 1962-12-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And simultaneously, an old formation I hadnt seen for a long time fell on me again: distaste for writing, desire to leave, things like that.
Yes, there was a hostile onslaught.
--
Well, my usual answer, the only answer that has some weight with those beings, is Its not up to me. Its up to the Lord, address yourselves to Him. Then they keep quiet. They come back another time, hoping to succeed, and the response is always the same, which they find somewhat discouraging. After a while its over. But really, everything imaginable; and precisely for those who were progressing steadily: a collapse into all the old errors and stupidities. And then a sort of hate coming out of everything and everybody and hurled at me, with this inevitable conclusion: What are you doing here! Go away, youre not wanted. Nobody wants you, cant you see that! Its not up to me, its none of my business. Wanted or not, I am here for as long as the Lord keeps me here; when He no longer wants to keep me here, Hell make me go, thats allits none of my business. That calms them down, its the only thing that calms them down. But it doesnt discourage them!
Now I am just waiting for the hurricane to pass.
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother shows Satprem some pamphlets printed during Theon's time, "Fundamental Axioms of Cosmic Philosophy," which have just been found among some old papers:)
This is pretty funny! (Laughing, Mother reads:)
--
Yes, Edouard Schur. He was a contemporary of Edouard Schur, a bit older (I met Schur, by the waya rather hollow individual). His name began with a B and hes the one who formulated these Axioms.
You once mentioned someone called Barley.
--
It was obviously a tool for demolishing old notions. Its the idea that man is divine, that he can become divine again through evolution: he was originally immortal and is to be immortal again.
One wonders how people in Europe can break through that Christian carapace; it seems extremely solidits terrible, really!
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is also here the sister of the old portly doctor, she is (I think) five or six years older than Ishe is getting on for ninety. She has been dying away too, for several months. The doctors (who dont know the first thing in these matters) had declared she would die after a few days. Wait a little, I t old them, this woman knows how to enter a state of rest, she has a very peaceful consciousness it will last long, it may last for years. She is in bed, she cant move much, but she lives. She too lives out of habit.
In reality, the body should be able to last MUCH LONGER than human beings think. They knock it about: as soon as someone is unwell, they drug or knock his body about, they take away that kind of calm vegetative serenity that can make it last a very long time. The way trees take a very long time to die.
--
An old disciple who has just died.
Before the cremation, so as to give the consciousness time to come out.
0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They sent some papers to the Ashram, asking whether we had g old objects other than jewels! So, (laughing) I could just see a scene in the palaces of old: g old candelabra, the throne!
So ridiculous!
--
I have made some experiments with French too. I wrote something: Pour chacun, le plus important est de savoir si on appartient au passe qui se perpetue, au present qui sepuise, lavenir qui veut natre. [The most important point for everyone is to know whether he belongs to the past perpetuating itself, to the present exhausting itself, or to the future trying to be born.] I gave it to Zhe didnt understand. So I t old him, It doesnt mean our past, our present or our future. I wrote this when I was in that state [the experience Mother t old at the beginning of this conversation], and it was in connection with a very sweet old lady who has just left her body. This is what I said to her. Everybody had been expecting her departure for more than a month or two, but I said, You will see, she is going to last; she will last for at least another month or two. Because she knows how to live within, outside her body, and the body lives on out of habit, without jerks and jolts. That was her condition, and it could last a very long time. They had announced she would leave within two days, but I said, Its not true. I know her well, in the sense that she had come out of her body and there was a link with me. And I said to her, What do you care! (though she wasnt at all worried, she was staying peacefully with me), The whole point is to know whether one belongs to the past perpetuating itself, to the present exhausting itself, or to the future trying to be born. Sometimes what WE call the past is right here, its the future trying to be born; sometimes what WE call the present is something in advance, something that came ahead of time; but sometimes also its something that came late, that is still part of all that is to disappear I saw it all: people, things, circumstances, everything through that perception, the vibration that would go on transforming itself, the vibration that would exhaust itself and disappear, the vibration that, though manifested for a long time, would be entitled to continue, to persist that changes all notions! It was so interesting! So I wrote it down as it waswithout any explanations (you dont feel much like explaining in such a case, the thing is so self-evident!). Poor Z, he stared at meall at sea! So I t old him, Dont try to understand. I am not speaking of the past, present and future as we know them, its something else. (Mother laughs)
But its amusing because I had never paid much attention to that [the questions of language], the experience is novel, almost the discovery of the truth behind expression. Before, my concern was to be as clear, exact and precise as possible; to say exactly what I meant and put each word in its proper place. But thats not it! Each word has its own life! Some are drawn together by affinity, others repel each other its very funny!
0 1963-02-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is rarely felt, except when the pressure from outside is too great. When there is a huge accumulation of scores of small you cant call them wills, but impulses coming from things (from things or people or circumstances) that want to be fulfilled, attended toas long as its within a certain limit you receive it with a smile and it doesnt have any effect, but when the dose is exceeded, suddenly something says, Oh, no! Enough is enough! At that point, the consciousness is hopeless. It falls back into the old rhythm, and consequently that must cause wear and tear. But the other way is a sort of harmonious, undulating movement (Mother draws big waves in the air), ALMOST beyond time, not quite: there is some sort of time sense, but secondary, somewhat in the distance. And this movement (gesture of waves) gives a sense of eternityof everlastingness, at any ratethere is no reason for it to cease. There is no friction, no conflict, no wear and tear, it can go on indefinitely.
It is beginning to be that way.
0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an old Playground Talk of December 4, 1957, in which Mother asked: "Will there be a gradual transition from what we are now to what our inner spirit aspires to become, or will there be a break, will we have to leave our present human form behind until a new form emergesan emergence whose process we cannot foresee, of a new form without any connection to what we are today? Can we expect this body, our means of manifestation on earth until now, to be transformed progressively into something capable of expressing higher life, or will we have to abandon this form altogether in order to take on another one not yet born on earth?" Mother adds:)
Why not both?
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, listen (this is not meant to be published or t old), I dont know if Ive t old you already. I was nine or ten years old, I was running with some friends in the forest of Fontainebleau (Ive t old this story somewhere). The forest is rather dense, so you cant see very far ahead. We were running, and speeding along as I was, I didnt see I was coming to the edge overhanging the road. The place where we were was about ten feet above the road (more than a story high), and the road was paved with stonesfreshly paved. And we were running. I was racing ahead, the others were behind. Well, Id built up such momentum that I couldnt stopwhoosh! I went sailing into the air. I was ten, eleven at the most, mind you, with no notion of the miraculous or the marvelous, nothing, nothing I was just flung into the air. And I felt something supporting me, h olding me up, and I was literally SET DOWN on the ground, on the stones. I got up (I found it perfectly natural, you understand!): not a scratch, not a speck of dust, nothing, absolutely intact. I fell down very, very slowly. Then everyone rushed up to see. Oh, its nothing! I said, I am all right. And I left it at that. But the impression lingered. That feeling of something carrying me (gesture of a slow fall, like a leaf falling in stages with slight pauses): I fell down that slow. And the material proof was there, it was no illusion since I was unscathed the road was paved with stones (you know the flint stones of France?): not a scratch, nothing. Not a speck of dust.
The soul was very alive at the time, and with all its strength it resisted the intrusion of the material logic4 of the worldso it seemed to me perfectly natural. I simply thought, No. Accidents cant happen to me.
--
I remember also, once, there were iron hoops (I dont know if they still exist) bordering the lawns in the Bois de Boulogne and I used to take a walk on them! It was a challenge I threw to my brother (there was a difference of sixteen months between us, he was older and much better behaved too!). I t old him, Can you walk on these? Leave me alone, he answered, its not interesting. Just watch! I t old him. And I started walking on them, with such ease! As if I had done it all my life. It was the same phenomenon: I felt weightless.
Always the feeling of being carried: something h olding me up, carrying me. And now if I compare the movement or the sensation its the same as that vast movement of wings the same vibration.
--- Overview of noun old
The noun old has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. old ::: (past times (especially in the phrase `in days of old'))
--- Overview of adj old
The adj old has 8 senses (first 4 from tagged texts)
1. (108) old ::: ((used especially of persons) having lived for a relatively long time or attained a specific age; "his mother is very old"; "a ripe old age"; "how old are you?")
2. (95) old ::: (of long duration; not new; "old tradition"; "old house"; "old wine"; "old country"; "old friendships"; "old money")
3. (5) old ::: ((used for emphasis) very familiar; "good old boy"; "same old story")
4. (1) old, older ::: (skilled through long experience; "an old offender"; "the older soldiers")
5. erstwhile, former, old, onetime, one-time, quondam, sometime ::: (belonging to some prior time; "erstwhile friend"; "our former glory"; "the once capital of the state"; "her quondam lover")
6. honest-to-god, honest-to-goodness, old, sure-enough ::: ((used informally especially for emphasis); "a real honest-to-god live cowboy"; "had us a high old time"; "went upriver to look at a sure-enough fish wheel")
7. Old ::: (of a very early stage in development; "Old English is also called Anglo Saxon"; "Old High German is High German from the middle of the 9th to the end of the 11th century")
8. previous, old ::: (just preceding something else in time or order; "the previous owner"; "my old house was larger")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun old
1 sense of old
Sense 1
old
=> past, past times, yesteryear
=> time
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun old
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun old
1 sense of old
Sense 1
old
=> past, past times, yesteryear
--- Similarity of adj old
8 senses of old
Sense 1
old (vs. young)
=> aged, elderly, older, senior
=> aged(prenominal), of age(predicate)
=> aging, ageing, senescent
=> ancient
=> anile
=> centenarian
=> darkened
=> doddering, doddery, gaga, senile
=> emeritus
=> grey, gray, grey-haired, gray-haired, grey-headed, gray-headed, grizzly, hoar, hoary, white-haired
=> middle-aged
=> nonagenarian
=> octogenarian
=> oldish
=> overage, overaged, superannuated, over-the-hill
=> sexagenarian
=> venerable
Also See-> experienced#1, experient#1; mature#3; senior#1
Sense 2
old (vs. new)
=> age-old, antique
=> antediluvian, antiquated, archaic
=> antique
=> auld
=> hand-me-down, hand-down
=> hoary, rusty
=> immemorial(postnominal)
=> long-ago
=> longtime(prenominal)
=> patched
=> secondhand, used
=> sunset
=> yellow, yellowed
Also See-> noncurrent#1; nonmodern#1; past#1; stale#1; worn#1
Sense 3
old(prenominal)
=> familiar (vs. unfamiliar)
Sense 4
old, older
=> experienced (vs. inexperienced), experient
Sense 5
erstwhile(prenominal), former(prenominal), old, onetime(prenominal), one-time(prenominal), quondam(prenominal), sometime(prenominal)
=> past (vs. present) (vs. future)
Sense 6
honest-to-god, honest-to-goodness, old(prenominal), sure-enough(prenominal)
=> genuine (vs. counterfeit), echt
Sense 7
Old
=> early (vs. middle) (vs. late)
Sense 8
previous(prenominal), old
=> preceding(prenominal) (vs. succeeding)
--- Antonyms of adj old
8 senses of old
Sense 1
old (vs. young)
young (vs. old), immature
=> one-year-old
=> two-year-old
=> three-year-old
=> four-year-old
=> five-year-old
=> adolescent, teen, teenage, teenaged
=> infantile
=> boyish, boylike, schoolboyish
=> childlike, childly
=> early
=> girlish, schoolgirlish
=> junior
=> little, small
=> newborn
=> preteen, preadolescent
=> puppyish, puppylike
=> tender
=> youngish
=> youthful, vernal, young
Sense 2
old (vs. new)
new (vs. old)
=> brand-new, bran-new, spic-and-span, spick-and-span
=> fresh
=> hot, red-hot
=> newborn, new-sprung(prenominal)
=> newfound
=> novel, refreshing
=> parvenu, parvenue
=> recent
=> revolutionary, radical
=> rising
=> sunrise(prenominal)
=> untested, untried
=> unused
=> virgin
=> young
Sense 3
old(prenominal)
INDIRECT (VIA familiar) -> unfamiliar
Sense 4
old, older
INDIRECT (VIA experienced) -> inexperienced, inexperient
Sense 5
erstwhile(prenominal), former(prenominal), old, onetime(prenominal), one-time(prenominal), quondam(prenominal), sometime(prenominal)
INDIRECT (VIA future, past) -> present
INDIRECT (VIA past, present) -> future
Sense 6
honest-to-god, honest-to-goodness, old(prenominal), sure-enough(prenominal)
INDIRECT (VIA genuine) -> counterfeit, imitative
Sense 7
Old
INDIRECT (VIA late, early) -> middle
INDIRECT (VIA early, middle) -> late
Sense 8
previous(prenominal), old
INDIRECT (VIA preceding) -> succeeding
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun old
1 sense of old
Sense 1
old
-> past, past times, yesteryear
=> yore
=> bygone, water under the bridge
=> old
=> history
=> time immemorial, time out of mind
=> auld langsyne, langsyne, old times, good old days
=> yesterday
--- Pertainyms of adj old
8 senses of old
Sense 1
old (vs. young)
Sense 2
old (vs. new)
Sense 3
old(prenominal)
Sense 4
old, older
Sense 5
erstwhile(prenominal), former(prenominal), old, onetime(prenominal), one-time(prenominal), quondam(prenominal), sometime(prenominal)
Sense 6
honest-to-god, honest-to-goodness, old(prenominal), sure-enough(prenominal)
Sense 7
Old
Sense 8
previous(prenominal), old
--- Derived Forms of adj old
2 of 8 senses of old
Sense 1
old (vs. young)
RELATED TO->(noun) oldness#1
=> oldness
Sense 2
old (vs. new)
RELATED TO->(noun) oldness#2
=> oldness
--- Grep of noun old
18-karat gold
22-karat gold
24-karat gold
absolute threshold
acapulco gold
acellular slime mold
african marigold
alpine gold
arnold
aztec marigold
benedict arnold
big marigold
billfold
blindfold
bold
bread mold
bur marigold
burr marigold
cape marigold
cargo hold
cellular slime mold
centerfold
centrefold
choke hold
chokehold
cold
common cold
common marigold
common scold
copyhold
corn marigold
cotswold
cuckold
dag hammarskjold
dag hjalmar agne carl hammarskjold
dental gold
difference threshold
differential threshold
dirty old man
double gold
drip mold
epicanthic fold
exhaust manifold
false vocal fold
field marigold
fig marigold
fold
fool's gold
foothold
freehold
french marigold
gatefold
gold
good old boy
good old days
green gold
guinea gold
hammarskjold
handhold
head cold
head of household
hold
hoodmold
household
inferior vocal fold
inlet manifold
intake manifold
iron mold
japanese stranglehold
leaf mold
leasehold
mangold
manifold
marigold
marsh marigold
matthew arnold
mold
mosaic gold
old
old-age insurance
old-age pension
old-age pensioner
old-fashionedness
old-field toadflax
old-maid's bonnet
old-man-of-the-woods
old-timer
old age
old bag
old bailey
old boy
old boy network
old bulgarian
old bullion
old catholic
old catholic church
old church slavic
old church slavonic
old codger
old colony
old country
old delhi
old dominion
old dominion state
old english
old english sheepdog
old faithful
old fashioned
old french
old frisian
old geezer
old glory
old gold
old growth
old guard
old hand
old hickory
old high german
old icelandic
old irish
old ironsides
old italian
old lady
old latin
old line state
old maid
old maid flower
old man
old man's beard
old man of the mountain
old master
old money
old nick
old norse
old north french
old north state
old person
old prussian
old rose
old salt
old saxon
old school
old school tie
old sledge
old south
old squaw
old stager
old style
old style calendar
old style font
old testament
old times
old witch grass
old witchgrass
old wives' tale
old woman
old world
old world beaver
old world buffalo
old world chat
old world coot
old world coral snake
old world crayfish
old world flycatcher
old world hop hornbeam
old world jay
old world least weasel
old world leishmaniasis
old world mistletoe
old world monkey
old world oriole
old world porcupine
old world quail
old world rabbit
old world robin
old world scops owl
old world vulture
old world warbler
old world white pelican
old world yew
oldenburg
oldfield
oldie
oldness
oldster
oldtimer
olduvai gorge
oldwench
oldwife
pain threshold
paper gold
pinfold
plasmodial slime mold
pot marigold
potato mold
protective fold
pure gold
safehold
scaffold
scissor hold
scissors hold
scold
scotch marigold
sheepfold
slime mold
stokehold
stranglehold
stronghold
sun marigold
taking hold
three-year-old horse
three year old
threshold
throttlehold
toehold
trifid bur marigold
true slime mold
true vocal fold
two-year-old horse
two year old
ventricular fold
vestibular fold
vocal fold
water mold
white gold
wold
wrestling hold